Mister president, please stop punching yourself.
***Update***
And again, and again, and again, and again, and again. Our president is an assault rifle on full auto, aimed at himself.
by Tim F| 11 Comments
This post is in: Republican Stupidity
by John Cole| 18 Comments
This post is in: Politics, Republican Stupidity
The Politico reports trouble within the McCain camp:
Amid growing internal concern about poor fundraising and the direction of his presidential campaign, Sen. John McCain’s top advisers bluntly told backers on Tuesday of plans to overhaul the campaign and delay its formal announcement until after a major speech on Iraq.
“This is clearly a moment in the campaign that says, ‘Hello? Wake up!’ ” finance chairman Tom Loeffler said in a telephone interview. “It’s not a time to jog anymore. It’s a time to sprint in the fundraising efforts. We have learned the political fundraising realities of 2007, and we are making the proper adjustments.”
Since it is not surprising that the Straight Talk Express, with their avowed hatred of monies used for political purposes, is having difficulties understanding the intracies of campaign fundraising, the two rules seem to be:
1.) Raise lots
2.) Raise more than your opponents
However, the real problems seem to arise when you have no message, are thought to be little more than a front man for some of the worst of this administration’s policies, have alienated EVERY portion of the Republican base, and are the fodder for late night jokes and derided publicly by Iraqi merchants for your laughable assertions about the safety of Iraq. If all that straight talk would lead to any informed thinking, the next public message from John McCain would be “I quit.”
by John Cole| 3 Comments
This post is in: Previous Site Maintenance
Something is wrong with the hosting today, so please bear with us.
by John Cole| 90 Comments
This post is in: Domestic Politics, Politics, War, Outrage
I have long wondered why it is always the smelly dirty hippies who seem to be the most paranoid about government power. The reason is simple- experience:
A secret FBI intelligence unit helped detain a group of war protesters in a downtown Washington parking garage in April 2002 and interrogated some of them on videotape about their political and religious beliefs, newly uncovered documents and interviews show.
For years, law enforcement authorities suggested it never happened. The FBI and D.C. police said they had no records of such an incident. And police told a federal court that no FBI agents were present when officers arrested more than 20 protesters that afternoon for trespassing; police viewed them as suspicious for milling around the parking garage entrance.
But a civil lawsuit, filed by the protesters, recently unearthed D.C. police logs that confirm the FBI’s role in the incident. Lawyers for the demonstrators said the logs, which police say they just found, bolster their allegations of civil rights violations.
The probable cause to arrest the protesters as they retrieved food from their parked van? They were wearing black — a color choice the FBI and police associated with anarchists, according to the police records.
I know my position on anti-war protestors a few years back- they were to be mocked, derided, ignored, out-protested, or countered with “facts” (the facts, in many cases, did not turn out to be on my side, but at least I was arguing from what I thought was an honest position). Nowhere did I even begin to imagine we would arrest people and have them interrogated by secret government units.
But the smelly dirty hippies were expecting it, and once again, this administration has proved them right. Read the whole story- the police just “found” records of this. How convenient.
by John Cole| 95 Comments
This post is in: Foreign Affairs, War, General Stupidity, Outrage
Sullivan rightly mocks the NRO’s Andrew McCarthy (writing here at Human Events Online) for the right’s newfound love of the Geneva Conventions:
Memo to Andy: your beloved administration has derided the Geneva Conventions as “quaint”. They have sanctioned not gentle questioning, but waterboarding, sleep deprivation and stress positions for prisoners captured in a war, Iraq, where Geneva was allegedly never in doubt. Where were you then? And now Iran is in the dock for giving British prisoners treatment that those in Gitmo and Abu Ghraib can only dream of?
Don’t people realize that this is what this episode is partly about? Iran, that disgusting regime, is showing much of the world that it treats prisoners more humanely than the U.S. That’s the propaganda coup they are achieving. And you know who set them up to score this huge victory in the propaganda war? Bush and Cheney and Rumsfeld, who authorized all the abuse at Abu Ghraib and elsewhere throughout the war. And McCarthy, who defended and enabled them. Tehran never had a better friend than George W. Bush. He has given Islamist thugs the moral highground.
All well and true, of course. The reason for those pictures of the kids sitting around on a rug giggling is to do precisely as Sullivan suggest- to try to show adifference between by the Iranians and American treatment of captives. But what Sullivan misses is the belligerence in the opeing grafs of McCarthy’s piece:
For what seems like the millionth time since 1979, the Islamic Republic of Iran has perpetrated an act of war against the West, reaffirmed its hostile, revolutionary intentions, and demonstrated that it is a rogue state which scoffs at the civilizing impulses of international law, including the laws and customs of war.
For what seems like the millionth time in just the last few months, the Iranians have shown that their word is worth nothing.
So will our diplomat class suggest, yet again, that perhaps more negotiations will bring them around?
Sure, the hypocrisy about the Geneva conventions is breathtaking and worth noticing, but what is truly frightening is how quickly McCarthy and others are ramping up the rhetoric. This is little more than the widely ridiculed “We have been at war with Iran since 1979″ nonsense that was peddled just a few weeks back, and now this meme is so widespread that McCarthy doesn’t even break rhetorical stride when mentioning it. According to the lunatics, the case has been made- that we have been at perpetual war with Teheran is just a known fact.
It is all there- the advocating for war, the sneering condescension aimed at ” our diplomat class” (just go ahead and call ’em pussies, McCarthy), the revisionism- one convenient package designed to advocate for the next war. It is only made more frightening when you examine it in the context of the state of our current military- stretched to the breaking point in Iraq.
That should scare the shit out of you, because the nuts are still in charge for two more years.
War Is Hell, Unless You Write for the NROPost + Comments (95)
by John Cole| 17 Comments
This post is in: Sports
Michigan hired John Beilein to coach its men’s basketball team, a person close to the Wolverines program told The Associated Press on Tuesday.
The person spoke on the condition of anonymity because the school wants Beilein to have the opportunity to inform his Mountaineer players that he’s leaving before Michigan publicly announces the hiring.
West Virginia player Darris Nichols said Beilein planned to meet with his players Tuesday.
Beilein will be introduced at a news conference on Wednesday in Ann Arbor, the person close to the program said.
Media reports linked Beilein with the Wolverines just days after he led the Mountaineers to the National Invitation Tournament championship. It will cost Michigan $2.5 million to buy out Beilein at West Virginia, plus his salary, which could run about $1 million per season in a multiyear contract.
I guess order will be restored to the universe and WVU can focus on football and the rifle team.
Damnit.
by John Cole| 55 Comments
This post is in: Previous Site Maintenance, War
Sorry for shirking my responsibilities, but I am behind today. For fun, you could go read the transcript of Bush’s lame attempt to blame the Democrats for all the military readiness issues which have been known for the past few years. My personal favorite:
f Congress does not act, the Army may also have to delay the formation of new brigade combat teams, preventing us from getting those troops into the pool of forces that are available to deploy. If these new teams are unavailable, we would have to ask other units to extend into the theater.
In other news, it appears Henry Kissinger has a book to sell.