According to MSNBC, Senator Ted Kennedy has been taken to the hospital with stroke-like symptoms.

Prayers for his health and rapid recovery.

I’ll post updates as I have them.

A steaming, rolling pile of shit. I debated about whether to even write about this, but I think it’s important to talk about the bigger implications of the politics of personal destruction that sleazeball Johnson is now floating to the top of the bowl.

Let’s go back for a minute and think about who Larry Johnson is, what he represents, and why he isn’t believable.

1. His history of failures in the intelligence arena is chronicled here. This is a guy who didn’t get Osama bin Laden right, yet loves to proclaim himself the king of the political smear.
2. Johnson claims to be a Clinton supporter. If that’s really true — and I somehow don’t think it’s REALLY true, just sort of in-name-only-true in a disruptive, smarmy kind of way — then it is the goal of Hillary Clinton to forever fracture and destroy the Democratic party.
3. Larry Johnson has been credited with the ‘madrassa’ smear back in the early days of the campaign. ¹ Of course, Johnson denies this vehemently, but one would expect him to deny it. After all, CIA operatives are not well-known for stepping up, raising their right hands and admitting all truth with no hope of ‘plausible deniability’. Think back to the Iran/Contra days for shining examples of CIA “honesty”. I’m willing to take a preponderance of the evidence: Clinton operative + CIA clandestine officer + abject hatred of Barack Obama + blogger = opportunity and motive for perpetuating lies on the Internet. Credit where credit is due here. What I’m willing to suspend is the conclusion that Hillary Clinton herself supports such activity

Okay, with the background out of the way, let’s get to the current round of rumors. According to voila over at Daily Kos, Johnson is having an orgasm over a secret Republican video of Michelle Obama railing against “whitey” in church. And sure enough, if you’re willing to roll up your electronic cuffs, take off your shoes and wade through a lying sack of shit, you can see it for yourself over on Johnson’s blog, where he’s also got the video of the Tennessee GOP Michelle Obama smear commercial. My, my, what a thing for a loyal Democrat to have playing on their site!

This style of politics is exactly what Barack Obama’s campaign is turning against. The power churners of the past don’t like that very much. They especially resent the possibility that the new kids might open the doors and let light into the dark corners of our very ugly backroom dealings over these many years.

These are the days of doctored video, faux journalism, and shrill end games. Don’t be fooled. If this were something worth considering, it would have been released in time for the three special elections handily won by Democrats. The GOP would have pulled whatever they could out of their asses in an effort to retain their death grip on the southern states, and that tape would have been all over the airwaves.

What Johnson is selling is snake oil, wrapped in a generous helping of bullshit. Don’t buy it.

¹ McClatchy, 5/8/2008
“One practitioner in Virginia, who hates Obama like a dog hates cats, led a reporter through his efforts. Because the man is a retired clandestine CIA officer, identifying him could endanger officers or operations that remain classified, so McClatchy will not reveal his name”

Technorati Tags: Larry Johnson, Michelle Obama, smear politics, Hillary Clinton, death gasps

Thanks to Hugh McLeod at gapingvoid.com for the cartoon

Technorati Tags: foreign policy, slander, treason, accountability

When pressed by Momocrat Erin Kotecki Vest as to why he would give a target date now when he wasn’t willing to do so earlier , he put his snark on and tried first to humiliate her, then spent the next 300 words or so tossing around terms like “won” and “peace”, but never answering the question, choosing to bully, dodge and duck instead. Here’s the audio. Listen at about 21 minutes in for the entire exchange.

It was a reasonable question for her to ask. In his speech yesterday, he said this:

By January 2013, America has welcomed home most of the servicemen and women who have sacrificed terribly so that America might be secure in her freedom. The Iraq War has been won. Iraq is a functioning democracy, although still suffering from the lingering effects of decades of tyranny and centuries of sectarian tension. Violence still occurs, but it is spasmodic and much reduced. Civil war has been prevented; militias disbanded; the Iraqi Security Force is professional and competent; al Qaeda in Iraq has been defeated; and the Government of Iraq is capable of imposing its authority in every province of Iraq and defending the integrity of its borders. The United States maintains a military presence there, but a much smaller one, and it does not play a direct combat role.

He does not define what “winning” in Iraq might be. Whether John McCain likes it or not, Iraq is a functioning democracy right now. If that’s the definition of winning, we should be out of Iraq already.

As to the tone he took with Erin, it felt bullying and intentional, as though marginalizing her competency somehow elevated his answer. That’s not change I believe in.

Technorati Tags: mccain, snark, bully, 2013, withdrawal

Photo: Lolcats.com: Get more cat pictures ]]> http://politics.drumsnwhistles.com/2008/05/john-mccain-gets-his-snark-on/feed/ http://politics.drumsnwhistles.com/2008/05/while-bush-decries-nazi-appeasement-he-forgets-family-ties/ http://politics.drumsnwhistles.com/2008/05/while-bush-decries-nazi-appeasement-he-forgets-family-ties/#comments Fri, 16 May 2008 13:00:00 +0000 Karoli http://politics.drumsnwhistles.com/2008/05/while-bush-decries-nazi-appeasement-he-forgets-family-ties/ Grandpa Prescott Bush made lots of money through his ties to Nazi-backed companies:

Three sets of archives spell out Prescott Bush’s involvement. All
three are readily available, thanks to the efficient US archive system
and a helpful and dedicated staff at both the Library of Congress in
Washington and the National Archives at the University of Maryland.

The
first set of files, the Harriman papers in the Library of Congress,
show that Prescott Bush was a director and shareholder of a number of
companies involved with Thyssen.

The second set of papers,
which are in the National Archives, are contained in vesting order
number 248 which records the seizure of the company assets. What these
files show is that on October 20 1942 the alien property custodian
seized the assets of the UBC, of which Prescott Bush was a director.
Having gone through the books of the bank, further seizures were made
against two affiliates, the Holland-American Trading Corporation and
the Seamless Steel Equipment Corporation. By November, the
Silesian-American Company, another of Prescott Bush’s ventures, had
also been seized.

The third set of documents, also at the
National Archives, are contained in the files on IG Farben, who was
prosecuted for war crimes.

Of course, this does not mean Prescott was a Nazi sympathizer, but it certainly proves he was willing to talk to the rat bastards, and take their money. ]]> http://politics.drumsnwhistles.com/2008/05/while-bush-decries-nazi-appeasement-he-forgets-family-ties/feed/ http://politics.drumsnwhistles.com/2008/05/diplomacy-or-death-2/ http://politics.drumsnwhistles.com/2008/05/diplomacy-or-death-2/#comments Fri, 16 May 2008 09:03:00 +0000 Karoli http://politics.drumsnwhistles.com/2008/05/diplomacy-or-death-2/

That’s the fundamental choice we all have in the general election. If anyone still believes that John McCain’s inner hawk isn’t dangerous, his statements today should remove all doubt.

I. George W. Bush equates diplomacy and appeasement in a cheap effort to smear Barack Obama abroad.

Of course, diplomacy is not the same as appeasement at all, no matter how hard the gaseous and despicable George W. Bush may twist it. Literacy matters. Bush must have been the child left behind. Here are some definitions, for clarity’s sake:

diplomacy: n.The art or practice of conducting international relations, as in negotiating alliances, treaties, and agreements.

appeasement: n.The policy of granting concessions to potential enemies to maintain peace.

The distinction in that last definition is worth highlighting. In order for there to be appeasement, there must first be peace. Appeasement is the act of offering concessions to maintain peace.

Diplomacy, on the other hand, has no such restriction. Diplomacy is the art of intercession and negotiation. It can be a trade agreement or a peace agreement. It is not conditioned upon military victory, economic performance, or anything other than two parties coming together to negotiate a mutually satisfactory agreement.

Joe Lieberman, George W. Bush, and John McCain forgot to check their dictionaries before going off half-cocked today. It shouldn’t surprise anyone that Bush is illiterate, but it’s a pity that it has infected Senators McCain and Lieberman with an infection as rapid as the rise of the SARS virus.

II. What they said:

George W. Bush

Some seem to believe we should negotiate with terrorists and radicals, as if some ingenious argument will persuade them they have been wrong all along. We have heard this foolish delusion before. As Nazi tanks crossed into Poland in 1939, an American senator declared: “Lord, if only I could have talked to Hitler, all of this might have been avoided.” We have an obligation to call this what it is – the false comfort of appeasement, which has been repeatedly discredited by history.

McCain takes it one step further:

“Yes, there have been appeasers in the past, and the president is exactly right, and one of them is Neville Chamberlain,’’ Mr. McCain told reporters on his campaign bus after a speech in Columbus, Ohio. “I believe that it’s not an accident that our hostages came home from Iran when President Reagan was president of the United States. He didn’t sit down in a negotiation with the religious extremists in Iran, he made it very clear that those hostages were coming home.’

(Note to John McCain: The hostage release was not anything that Reagan did or didn’t do. The hostages were released about an hour after Reagan’s inauguration, and was timed to humilate Carter, mostly because Carter would not engage in any form of discussion with them, choosing instead to launch a failed rescue operation and then ignore them.)

Finally, the pile-on by Joe “hawk-boy” Lieberman:

President Bush got it exactly right today when he warned about the threat of Iran and its terrorist proxies like Hamas and Hezbollah. It is imperative that we reject the flawed and naïve thinking that denies or dismisses the words of extremists and terrorists when they shout “Death to America” and “Death to Israel,” and that holds that — if only we were to sit down and negotiate with these killers — they would cease to threaten us.

Because somehow, words become terrorism and war and diplomacy is appeasement.

III. John McCain was for diplomacy before he was against it.

Two years ago, when interviewed by James P Rubin, Senator McCain said this:

I asked: “Do you think that American diplomats should be operating the way they have in the past, working with the Palestinian government if Hamas is now in charge?”

McCain answered: “They’re [Hamas] the government; sooner or later we are going to have to deal with them, one way or another, and I understand why this administration and previous administrations had such antipathy towards Hamas because of their dedication to violence and the things that they not only espouse but practice, so . . . but it’s a new reality in the Middle East. I think the lesson is people want security and a decent life and decent future, that they want democracy. Fatah was not giving them that.”

During a follow-up conference call with bloggers, he added the following embellishment:

In a reference to Obama’s declared willingness to meet with the leader of Iran, McCain said:

“I think [it] is an unacceptable position, and shows that Senator Obama does not have the knowledge, the experience, the background to make the kind of judgments that are necessary to preserve this nation’s security.”

Yet, I could find no references to McCain’s objection to Iran President Ahmadinejad’s visit to the US last year, nor any objection to Ahmadinejad’s visit to Columbia University during that same visit. Not one press release. Not one public speech. Nothing. Was that visit not “talking”? Why isn’t Columbia held to the same standard?

Those are rhetorical questions, of course. The fact is that there was no political capital to be gained by giving attention to it. President Bush and presumptive Republican nominee John McCain are for democracy until they’re against it. In other words, they’re for democracy as long as the elected party is one they agree with. The Palestinians elected their government, which includes Hamas. It’s democratic, like it or not. The Iranians elected Ahmadinejad in a democratic election, like it or not. John McCain and George Bush do not get to pick and choose the democracies they like. Well, maybe they do, but it exposes the sock puppet argument about the conflict in Iraq being about making Iraq into a democracy. They’ll be for Iraq as long as they agree with the leadership, just like they were for Pakistan until the recent elections put people they don’t like into power.

The fundamental conflict here is not about appeasement. It is about how Republicans pervert ideas like diplomacy into appeasement. It’s about how they make democratic processes into wars.

Refresh your palate with a bit of Joe Biden, straight out of a Senate session and outraged at Bush’s illiteracy:

“This is bullshit, this is malarkey. This is outrageous, for the president of the United States to go to a foreign country, to sit in the Knesset … and make this kind of ridiculous statement.”

and this:

Biden noted that Secretary of Defense Robert Gates and Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice have both suggested that the United States ought to find a way to talk more with its enemies.

“If he thinks this is appeasement, is he going to come back and fire his own cabinet?” Biden asked. “Is he going to fire Condi Rice?”

As a final thought point, consider John McCain’s surrogate Joe Lieberman’s statement yesterday with regard to his feelings on bombing Iran:

BENNETT: Listen, I give her credit. She has found her…three things. She’s found her voice. He is very much in the background now, it’s not this, you know, ventriloquial thing, it’s definitely her voice.

LIEBERMAN: That’s true.

BENNETT: And Joe, you know, this is my style. This is a girl who puts on her pearls, goes down, throws down a shot of liquor and bombs Iran, you know. This is…lookout Mrs. Bennett, this is my kind of girl.

LIEBERMAN: Hehehe, it does have an appeal to it.

Diplomacy = Progress toward peace. Why doesn’t John McCain want peace?

Food for thought.

Technorati Tags: diplomacy, appeasement, democracy, iran, iraq, israel, bush, illiteracy, lunacy, mccain=hawk

It’s interesting to see the reaction, though. Some feel as though it’s too little, too late. Others think the timing is inexplicable.

I think something else. I think it’s completely strategic, and relates to the West Virginia vote yesterday. By withholding his endorsement until today, Edwards pulled votes away from Clinton yesterday in a state that may have been the most difficult in the entire 50 United States for Obama to gain any traction within.

Now that the West Virginia primary is over, Obama only needs 25 delegates to have a majority of the pledged delegates. Edwards has 19 delegates. By endorsing Obama, Edwards tips Obama over the within a hair’s breadth of the majority needed to win the nomination, and opens the door for superdelegates to seal the deal.

This is, of course, all speculation. But from a strategic point of view, this moment could indeed be the best moment for an Edwards endorsement.

Technorati Tags: endorsement, John Edwards, democratic nomination

Donna Summer - She Works Hard For The Money

Street cash. It’s not illegal, but it does smell a little bit like buying the vote with a bit of palm-greasing, if not in reality, at least in appearance.

So when Senator Hillary Rodham Clinton’s presidential campaign arrived in South Texas in February seeking an edge in its uphill battle against Senator Barack Obama, Ms. Espinoza was happy to oblige, for a price. The campaign paid her and seven other members of her family $100 to $200 each to knock on doors, deliver fliers and get voters to the polls for the Democratic primary on March 4, which Mrs. Clinton narrowly won.

Well, I have a little quibble here with the NY Times. She won the first round of voting, but not the caucuses, and Texas actually came out for Barack Obama, not the other way around.

And oops, it wasn’t just Texas:

The records show that Mrs. Clinton did something similar in Ohio, giving $38,300 to a state legislator, Eugene R. Miller, who says he used it to pay more than 200 people to get out the vote in predominantly black neighborhoods in Cleveland.

In the days leading up to the Pennsylvania primary, Barack Obama was questioned rather intensely about whether he would pay street cash to get out the vote in Philadelphia. It was asked as a trap — if he paid it, the door would be open for the Clinton campaign to accuse him of buying votes and playing good old fashioned politics just like everyone else, no matter what he claimed as a ‘change candidate’, and if he didn’t, he risked pushing up against a political machine used to receiving payoffs to get out the vote.

It is all legal — but Obama’s people are telling the local bosses he won’t pay.

That sets up a culture clash, pitting a candidate who promises to transform American politics against the realities of a local political system important to his presidential hopes. Pennsylvania holds its primary April 22.

Obama’s posture confounds neighborhood political leaders sympathetic to his cause. They caution that if the senator from Illinois withholds money that gubernatorial, mayoral and presidential candidates have willingly paid out for decades, there could be defections to Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton of New York. And the Clinton campaign, in contrast, will oblige in forking over the money, these ward leaders predict.

“We’ve heard directly from the Obama organizer who organizes our ward, and he told us it’s an entirely volunteer organization and that I should not expect to see anything from the Obama campaign other than ads on TV and the support that volunteers are giving us,” said Greg Paulmier, a ward leader in the northwest part of the city.

Had he given into that expectation, here’s what it would have cost:

Carol Ann Campbell, a ward leader and Democratic superdelegate who supports Obama, estimated that the amount of street money Obama would need to lay out for election day is $400,000 to $500,000.

“This is a machine city, and ward leaders have to pay their committee people,” Campbell said. “Barack Obama’s campaign doesn’t pay workers, and I guarantee you if they don’t put up some money for those street workers, those leaders will most likely take Clinton money. It won’t stop him from winning Philadelphia, but he won’t come out with the numbers that he needs” to win the state.

And indeed, Barack Obama did not come out with the numbers he needed to win the state, which left the door open for the Clinton campaign to crow over the fact that he didn’t win ‘the big states’. He may not have won even if he had bowed to the machine, but the prophecy certainly did come to pass, didn’t it?

As a contributor to Obama’s campaign, I have to say that I’m grateful he didn’t waste that kind of money paying to get out the vote. Voting is a privilege as well as a right. It’s not for sale, not even for the sake of winning delegates.

Time for that machine to break.

Technorati Tags: street cash, political machine, Ohio, Texas, Philadelphia

Woof. Did you ever hear more crap flying around the airwaves from the pundits than you did tonight?

What’s that saying? Better to be silent and thought to be a fool than to open one’s mouth and remove all doubt?

Obviously none of them follow that advice. They should start.