A first(?) thread on 2008: McCain,Giuliani & the Republicans

This is funny.
When the 9/11 commission report first came out, everyone on the left was hailing it as proof that Bush lied, that he allowed it to happen, that this admin screwed up, etc.

Now, you are saying that it isnt true, that it isnt to be believed.
Why is that?

USDA Shuts Down Congressional Audit

Although his campaign is run by lobbyists; and although his dealings with lobbyists have generated what he, when judging the behavior of others, calls corrupt appearances; and although he has profited from his manipulation of the taxpayer-funding system that is celebrated by reformers -- still, he probably is innocent of insincerity. Such is his towering moral vanity, he seems sincerely to consider it theoretically impossible for him to commit the offenses of appearances that he incessantly ascribes to others.

Such certitude is, however, not merely an unattractive trait. It is disturbing righteousness in someone grasping for presidential powers.

Looks like you boy Bush Jr. got his butt in another sling.

Let me ask you: what about the video specifically makes him weak on national defense?

And yes, you won the other bet.

Cycloptichorn

John McCain has been running mainly against Barack Obama in recent days, and has been running on the successes he says that the Iraqi government has racked up.

McCain (and the US corporate media) manages to avoid noticing that Turkey has staged a major incursion into Iraq and still has ground troops there and is refusing US requests to withdraw! Ironically, Gen. Yasar Buyukanit, the Turkish chief of staff used McCain's own language against the Bush administration, rejecting the idea of any timetable for withdrawal. He said Turkey could be in Iraq for as long as a year! Turkey claims to have killed 230 guerrillas of the Kurdish Workers Party inside Iraq in the past week. I mean, how great can the situation in Iraq be when our NATO ally has invaded the country we militarily occupy in order to kill guerrillas harbored by our Iraqi Kurdish allies, who have been slipping across the border for which we are responsible in order to kill dozens of NATO troops in eastern Anatolia?

Now back to starry-eyed McCain (same link as above) on all that political reconciliation:

McCain: "Earlier this month, a provincial powers law passed that devolves a significant amount of power to the provinces and mandates new provincial elections by October 1 of this year. The parliament passed a partial amnesty for detainees that can facilitate reconciliation among the sects, and it completed a landmark 2008 budget."

Oooops. As usual, McCain is too optimistic too soon. The LA Times reports that:

Quote:

' Iraq's presidential council Wednesday rejected a law on the powers of local government that was approved by parliament and touted by the Bush administration as a sign of reconciliation between the country's ethnic and religious groups. The three-man council asked that parliament reexamine the complicated and multifaceted law when it reconvenes March 18. '

The LAT notes that the rejection of this law could place in jeopardy the package of laws passed in February, which McCain boasts about, including the budget and the prisoner amnesty.

At the time, the way the laws were passed, without an individual voice vote of the members of parliament, was decried as unconstitutional, in any case. Now the most important of the three has been rejected by the presidency council.

The law on the provinces allowed the prime minister to dismiss provincial governors. Since the Islamic Supreme Council of Iraq controls the provincial governments of much of the Shiite south, it doesn't want the federal government to be able to remove them and so weaken ISCI's power base. Likewise, the Kurds are very suspicious of any move to strengthen the central government, because of their memory of Saddam Hussein's brutal interventions against them from Baghdad.

But the law also had set provincial elections for October 1, and this was something the Sunni Arabs very much wanted, since they boycotted the first round of provincial elections and so their provinces don't have representative governments.

The Islamic Supreme Council, in contrast, is afraid that if new provincial elections are held, it might be swept from power in Baghdad and much of the south by the followers of Muqtada al-Sadr, who are Iraqi nativists and see ISCI as an Iranian cat's paw.

So, the political progress of which McCain boasted, and which he threw in the face of Senator Feingold and Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi, has largely been a chimera. Even where parliament has passed laws, there is no evidence that they have contributed or will contribute to actually reducing ethnic and sectarian hatred in Iraq.

McCain argues that violence is down in 17 of 18 provinces. That argument itself suggests the irrelevancy of the US to Iraq. There are no US troops to speak of in the 3 northern Kurdish provinces, or in the southern 4 provinces from which the British have largely withdrawn. There are few US troops in most of the 8 provinces where Shiites predominate. There was no troop escalation or "surge" in the Sunni al-Anbar province. So if violence has declined in 17 of 18 provinces, US policy cannot possibly have anything to do with most of that. General Petraeus has had significant successes in Baghdad, though at the unfortunate (an unintentional) cost of further turning it into a Shiite city from which most Sunnis have been ethnically cleansed. But Petraeus is doing the practical work of trying to make a bad situation better, and makes no claims for success in the political realm in Iraq. McCain is, in contrast, just doing US domestic politics with those hard won achievements of our suffering troops, and is mostly just running on pie in the sky.

Bolton: McCain Could Be Better Than Bush On Iran
By Bradley Vasoli, The Bulletin
02/11/2008

Washington - Former United Nations Ambassador John Bolton, one of the Bush administration's most outspoken and hawkish former diplomats on the issue of nuclear nonproliferation, predicted John McCain could be an improvement over George W. Bush on the nuclear threat from Iran should he become president.

While he praised Mr. Bush for what he believes are valiant efforts to ensure that Iran does not become a nuclear state, he feels that officials in the state department and the intelligence community have consciously worked to hamstring his ability to do so effectively, particularly through the issuance of a National Intelligence Estimate suggesting the Iranians halted their nuclear weapons development program in 2003.

Mr. Bolton and other critics point out, among other perceived flaws, that the NIE focused on the construction of nuclear warheads, a relatively small step in the course of developing nuclear weapons technology.

"The way it was written was intended to have a profound policy impact," the former ambassador said. Iran is "now freer than ever to pursue nuclear weapons."

But in Mr. Bolton's view, Mr. McCain's merit as a conservative policymaker may owe to more than just his newness. He recalled the trying confirmation process he weathered in 2005 when supportive senators failed to muster enough votes to prevent a Democratic-led filibuster. Center-right lawmakers supported the diplomat for his skepticism toward the United Nations and other international institutions and his belief in challenging the judgments of the intelligence community, which he has considered "partisan."

"During my confirmation process, [Mr. McCain] was very active behind the scenes trying to get me confirmed," Mr. Bolton recalled. "To my knowledge he has never spoken of it publicly."

The former ambassador was not the only speaker at CPAC to suggest that Mr. McCain would likely be an improvement over Mr. Bush in certain policy areas by conservative lights. John Gizzi, a reporter for D.C.-based Human Events, suggested that the Arizona senator may be more restrained on government spending than the current president. He noted that Mr. Bush created a massive program to subsidize prescription drug purchases for senior citizens, an entitlement Mr. McCain voted against.

However on the theory that the NR is at least as objective as WAPO

foxfire wrote:

Quote:

However on the theory that the NR is at least as objective as WAPO

Some kind of "theory of objectivity", that one.

I gather your suspicions re the Washington Post center on the regular partisan contributions of:

Charles Krauthammer
Michael Gerson
Bob Novak
George Will

and the editorials of Fred Hyatt

Are you really this stupid, fox? Or are you just lying for the fun of it?

Some excerpts from Juan Coles Feb. 29 blog
...

...
So what's with McCain and prescription drugs? He doesn't want to help seniors who can't pay for medication they can't afford?

foxfire wrote:

Quote:

However on the theory that the NR is at least as objective as WAPO

Some kind of "theory of objectivity", that one.

I gather your suspicions re the Washington Post center on the regular partisan contributions of:

Charles Krauthammer
Michael Gerson
Bob Novak
George Will

and the editorials of Fred Hyatt

Are you really this stupid, fox? Or are you just lying for the fun of it?

The McCain/Hagee story picks up steam
(updated below)

The McCain/Hagee story is growing, though still not as much as it ought to. My new friends from the Catholic League emailed earlier to advise that Bill Donohue was being interviewed for tonight's program of The Situation Room on CNN. Blogs at The Washington Post and ABC News today covered the growing scandal from the anti-Catholic bigotry perspective, with the latter actually featuring the unbelievably inflammatory youtube -- found by Ann Althouse, which I posted yesterday and which is now being distributed by the Catholic League -- of a shirt-sleeved Pastor Hagee spewing the creepiest, most hateful bile imaginable about Catholicism ("This is the Great Whore of Revelation 17").

As The Post noted, Catholics United, a less reactionary group than the Catholic League, has now also denounced McCain's warm embrace of Hagee and demanded that he repudiate his endorsement. Thus far, it is Hagee's anti-Catholicism which is being featured -- largely because when Bill Donohue issues press releases, the media jumps to cover it. While that angle has substantial political ramifications -- Karl Rove identified the Catholic vote in 2004 as the most vital to the GOP's electoral successes -- the reality is that Hagee's hateful and twisted extremism extends far beyond that realm. In sum, John McCain has aligned himself with one of America's purest -- and most powerful -- haters, and that ought to be the story here.

It was the disobedience and rebellion of the Jews, God's chosen people, to their covenantal responsibility to serve only the one true God, Jehovah, that gave rise to the opposition and persecution that they experienced beginning in Canaan and continuing to this very day.

McCAIN EMBRACES BIGOT

February 28, 2008