Right now, I’m tired. And somewhat speechless. But I’m also, for the first time in perhaps my entire life, proud to be an American. We’ve so rarely done the right thing. I’m anxious to get my thoughts together and, hopefully, jot them down.
Jon Stewart is right. It’s just a fucking cartoon.
Watch:
Anyone who lives, as I have for years, in the Hudson River villages — Nyack, Piermont, Grandview, Palisades — knows how obnoxious local E-List celebrity Stephen Baldwin can be. Whether he’s trying to shut down adult-video boutiques or making multiple trips to the Starbucks on the corner of Main and Broadway, the star of such Hollywood classics as Bio-Dome and The Flintstones in Viva Rock Vegas is simply an annoying presence in an otherwise decent community.
Sure, everyone loves them some Alec. And Billy seems content to keep to himself. Hell, even Daniel has been fun to watch in his latest stint as a manic celeb-reality TV star. But holy hell is Stephen irritating. It’s probably the whole insane, right-wing Jesus-loving shit he’s into that drives me most crazy, but even if he wasn’t a Jesus Nazi he’d still bug me. He’s a slimeball and just sort of creeps me out. I think most people who’ve observed him around town would agree, as well.
And that is why I was so happy to hear little Stevie Baldwin pledge to move out of the country if Barack Obama wins the election in November, as if Obama needed any more help winning this uber-liberal portion of New York State. No one man has done more to mobilize support for Obama in the Hudson River Valley than Baldwin did this afternoon. Right now, there are legions of villagers pledging financial and organizational support to the Democratic nominee. It’s not the politics. We just want Stephen Baldwin to go far, far away.
Watch:
Note to Laura Ingraham: Stephen Baldwin only barely counts as an “actor,” and he certainly is not to be considered a “celebrity” guest or Hollywood insider.
Dennis Kucinich read thirty-five lengthy, detailed articles of impeachment against President Bush on the House floor Tuesday night (video below), a move that proves once again that he is a total political badass. The balls it took for Kucinich to introduce those charges into the Congressional record have made me stand by my assessment of Dennis Kucinich as the most important political figure in the United States.
When I made the claim the first time, most people laughed. However, to all those who mock the Ohio Congressman and former presidential candidate, Denny K once again did the country proud by taking this symbolic, yet likely fruitless, stand against the president. It’s his overriding courage, though, that I envy most. He stands up there and does what is right, even as his colleagues jeer and openly mock him. Way to be, Denny. Way to be.
Kucinich introduces Bush impeachment resolution, from CNN.com
WASHINGTON (CNN) — Rep. Dennis Kucinich, a former Democratic presidential candidate from Ohio, introduced a resolution to impeach President Bush into the House of Representatives on Tuesday.
Kucinich announced his intention to seek Bush’s impeachment Monday night, when he read the lengthy document into the record.
House Speaker Nancy Pelosi has repeatedly said she would not support a resolution calling for Bush’s impeachment, saying such a move was unlikely to succeed and would be divisive.
Most of the congressman’s resolution deals with the Iraq war, contending that the president manufactured a false case for the war, violated U.S. and international law to invade Iraq, failed to provide troops with proper equipment and falsified casualty reports for political purposes.
Kucinich also charges that Bush has illegally detained without charge both U.S. citizens and “foreign captives” and violated numerous U.S. laws through the use of “signing statements” declaring his intention to do so. … Read more
Watch video:
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A recap of the primaries, courtesy of Keith Olbermann and Countdown.
What can I say? It’s a good day.
With Barack Obama narrowing in on the Democratic presidential nomination, in recent days both he and John McCain have switched their campaign strategies from primary to all-out general election mode. In 2004, this meant a lot of talk about partisan, red-herring issues like gay marriage and abortion rights. This time around, though, the opening round of debate has focused primarily on foreign policy, something that is actually crucial to a president’s duties in office.
It’s an encouraging sign for American politics, and I’m hopeful the majority of people can handle such a weighty topic. But the more I hear McCain’s delusional, neoconservative rhetoric — all of which seem to have been pulled, unrevised, from an outdated and misguided Cold War playbook — the more I fear what could come if this senile, ill-tempered kook is elected into office.
Not only has McCain butchered on several occasions the vital difference between Sunni and Shiite Muslims, a distinction at the heart of the post-invasion sectarian violence in Iraq that has taken the lives of thousands of American soldiers, a group McCain has sworn to protect despite never stating how he would achieve that goal, but he has also abandoned his role as a so-called maverick, choosing instead to fall in lockstep with the Bush administration’s foreign policy of condescension, vilification, and alienation. Of course, this system has done nothing to curb the influence of terrorist groups or sure up our standing in the Middle East, thus making the United States a more vulnerable target than it could have been had a more robust diplomatic approach been taken.
In the last two weeks alone, McCain has revealed what would be a disastrous approach to international relations, a series of plans that would likely keep the U.S. at war in Iraq and Afghanistan for years to come and, to the satisfaction of military contractors alone, start a few new ones along the way. To recap, he has taken an abrupt about-face on dealing with Hamas, the democratically elected majority government in Palestine, saying to do so would be “a grave and dangerous mistake for an American leader.”
He has referred to Hamas, and implicitly the majority of Palestinians, as a “transcendent evil,” which, even if the claim were true, fails to accept the reality of the situation: that Hamas is the political wing chosen by the Palestinian people to lead their government and represent their interests; that the United States, through the tough-talk and thuggery started by Bush-Cheney and echoed by McCain, has only emboldened Hamas and other extremist groups that use violence to achieve political ends and speak of eliminating the state of Israel.
He has agreed with President Bush’s ignorant, historically inaccurate claim that those who wish to engage Iranian leadership through tough diplomacy, because the Bush policy of antagonizing Tehran has only strengthened fundamentalist rule in the country, are the equivalent of those who handed Czechoslovakia to Hitler in 1938. McCain followed this up by once again proving he knows nothing about the nuances of Middle East politics — remember the persistent Sunni-Shiite confusion — when he was unable to accurately tell reporters who makes and sets Iranian foreign policy.
Joe Klein of Time magazine confronted McCain over false claims made by the Senator regarding Obama’s expressed willingness to meet with Iran’s leaders. McCain has taken this to mean Obama would sit down with Iranian President, and easy-bake villain, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, presumably because it more easily reinforces the idea that Obama is a hack who wants to appease a raging anti-Semite. But, as it turns out, Obama has never said this. He has said he would meet with “Iranian leadership” to negotiate with them on matters of foreign policy and their nuclear program. In Iran, the person responsible for these areas is not Ahmadinejad, as McCain continued to insist even after Klein informed him of the error, but Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei.
“I think if you asked any average American who the leader of Iran is, I think they’d know,” McCain said to Klein, referring to Ahmadinejad. “Go ahead. Or anyone who’s well-versed in the issue.”
First of all, anyone who is well-versed in the issue, to use McCain’s words, should at the very least be aware of the most basic facts of Iran’s political system, one that places Khamenei at the head of government and reduces the president to little more than a spokesman for the government with little influence on setting foreign and domestic policy. McCain is then, by his own definition, not well-versed in the issue and unfit to be president.
And isn’t the job of the president to inform the American people on the facts, correcting public misconceptions when necessary, and to not simply go with the flow when the flow is horribly and dangerously wrong? We have seen the effects of allowing a president to advance the false assumptions of the majority (Saddam Hussein had ties to al-Qaida, was responsible for 9-11). By once again endorsing the misinforming of the American people, McCain is setting this country up for another foreign-policy disaster, one it cannot afford at this time in history.
But McCain’s crash course around the globe doesn’t stop in the Middle East. Just this morning, in a town hall meeting in Miami, McCain expressed his unwillingness to advance U.S.-Cuban relations. McCain insisted his policy on Cuba would maintain the embargo that has led to nothing more than an impoverished Cuban population unable to fundamentally alter its nation’s course from the ground up. Instead of easing the embargo in the wake of Fidel Castro’s resignation, which Obama and many experts agree would provide numerous people with economic and social resources, ultimately strengthening the position of the U.S. on the ground and helping move Cuba to a more democratic system, McCain wants to keep things as they’ve been since the darkest days of the Cold War.
This has been the American approach for fifty years, and nothing at all has changed. There is no indication that the Cuban government is willing to make the “fundamental reforms” the right-wing insists are necessary before discussions can take place. It is time to try a different approach, to realize the benefits of a strong U.S.-Cuban relationship, to offer incentives and rewards for Cuban action, and to not simply stand tough, hands on hips, like a bully demanding Cuba’s lunch money if it wants to avoid a beating at recess.
Perhaps this best describes John McCain’s worldview, though: The United States must force other countries to yield to its demands or risk absolute destruction or global alienation. He comes from a family with a long military history, after all, one that stretches back to battles with Native Americans in colonial times. His grandfather fought in World War II; he and his father served in Vietnam; his own son is now a Marine who has served in Iraq. War is all this family seems to know, and the McCain now running for America’s highest office has shown he intends to use these kindred ties to shape his foreign policy, consequences be damned.
But not all American’s gleefully share in this legacy of war — at least those who are well-versed in the issues, a group whose numbers are increasing, according to most polls, as more and more people realize that not all problems have a military solution.
At this point, after seven and a half years of repeated foreign policy blunders, half-truths and misstatements, it is hard to believe George W. Bush continues to provide new and glaring examples of his diplomatic ineptitude. Speaking earlier today in Israel, Bush likened Barack Obama to Nazi appeasers, because the likely Democratic presidential nominee has said he favors “tough, direct presidential diplomacy with Iran without preconditions” to the deaf ears, blind eyes, and military bravado of Bush, John McCain, and the other right-wing savages whose lust for Middle Eastern blood and oil seems impossible to satisfy.
While no one has been more front and center than Obama in the recent debate over whether or not the U.S. should talk with nations with whom it disagrees, Bush did not name Obama explicitly. The president chose instead to lavish his smear on all those who prefer diplomacy to war, people like Jimmy Carter, former CENTCOM commander Admiral William J. Fallon (who “resigned his post” in March after publicly criticizing the administration’s position on Iran), and the great majority of Americans who are sick and tired of watching their sons and daughters return home in metal boxes, stuffed in the hull of a transport plane, for no good reason. But the president’s implication was nevertheless clear.
“Some seem to believe we should negotiate with terrorists and radicals,” Bush said in a speech before Israel’s parliament, “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.”
I would like to know which history Bush is studying here, because diplomacy has been proven to work time and again throughout our history. Need we remind Bush that the world was spared a nuclear disaster because John Kennedy and his administration were open to discussions with Soviet premier Nikita Khrushchev during the most hostile moments of the Cuban missile crisis? Hell, even Richard Nixon, with his black soul and paranoid dementia, visited Mao’s China in 1972, helping to normalize relations and, perhaps, extinguish an international fire before it sparked.
Bush hides behind the dubious claim that Iran is a state sponsor of terrorism. But regardless of what the president thinks, Iran is a sovereign nation, not a terrorist organization, and it should be treated and dealt with as such. By treating Iran (and Syria and Lebanon) like dirt on his boots, imposing sanctions and choking civil discourse, Bush has done nothing but fuel the sentiment that has led many in the Middle East to sympathize with and support in elections groups like Hamas and Hezbollah. The only way to stem the tide is to treat these nations firmly, but with dignity as well.
Secretary of Defense Robert Gates, apparently among the other appeasers, has also called for increased dialog between the U.S. and Iran. “We need to figure out a way to develop some leverage … and then sit down and talk with them,” Gates said yesterday. “If there is going to be a discussion, then they need something, too. We can’t go to a discussion and be completely the demander, with them not feeling that they need anything from us.” Gates, apparently, has spent a bit more time than his boss studying international relations.
But Bush’s misunderstanding of history doesn’t end with his brushing off of the effectiveness of diplomacy. Comparing Iranian president Mahmoud Ahmadinejad to Hitler, and Iran to Nazi Germany, is so inaccurate it would have been met with laughter had Bush made the juxtaposition in any other country but Israel. It is undeniable that Ahmadinejad spews anti-Semetic, anti-Zionist rhetoric at every turn. However, neither his political nor his military power is anywhere close to that which Hitler accrued in the latter half of the 1930s. Ahmadinejad’s call to “wipe Israel off the map” has all the practical force of a left hook from a geriatric amputee. It is nothing more than rhetorical posturing from an insecure little man without the faculties to otherwise lead his nation. Rather than dignifying the remarks by taking them seriously, as Bush apparently does, they should be ignored and ridiculed by civilized members of the global community.
And this is perhaps the most egregious of Bush’s many miscalculations vis-à-vis Iran. By acknowledging Ahmadinejad, the president gives him more authority than he would have otherwise. What Bush and his minions fail to realize is that Ahmadinejad no more speaks for his people than Bush does for his. Both men have seen their approval ratings dip to near record lows as they speak more and more radically, growing more and more out of touch with reality, threatening the peace and prosperity of their nations.
Like Bush, Ahmadinejad’s core support comes from lower income, less educated, and more religiously radical citizens who are more susceptible to fear tactics and rallying cries for the expansion of nationalist interests at any cost. These groups, as they grow more afraid and deeper into economic and social despair, become more willing to accept the idea that their enemies lie overseas, rather than within their borders, remaining blind to the fact that their own governments are manipulating the truth and preventing real progress by not focusing on the true cause of their problems: a stunted economy, the misappropriation of resources, too little focus on education and social welfare programs, things that limit the ability of people to rise out of their poverty and achieve better lives for themselves and their families.
Bush views himself, and in turn all heads of state, including Ahmadinejad, as the infallible mouthpiece of his country, despite the factual inaccuracy of this delusion. He also chooses to see only the worst in everyone else, their most divisive and cynical elements that are easily exploited and frightened into submission. The fact remains, however, that people simply want peace. They want economic security. They want access to education for their children. And they want these things whether they live in D.C. or Tehran or Kabul or Baghdad. No amount of chest thumping from seedy, evil leaders can change that fact.
Bush’s actions, a cheap, inaccurate fear card only he would play, are unfit for the office of the presidency, not the first time he has disgraced the position. Time and again, he proves himself nothing more than a snake-oil salesmen, using lies and empty propaganda to pitch gullible or willingly misguided people the poison that will ultimately kill them. And he does it so easily, a mischievous glint in his eyes, his mouth a twisted grin, a telltale sign revealing a seemingly logical impossibility: He truly believes his own misguided venom. I would love to spend a day inhabiting such a fairytale. If only the consequences weren’t so dire.
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Update (Thursday, 4:45 p.m. ET): For the record, for those who were unsure, I looked up appeasement and found a practical, working definition: “the policy of accepting the imposed conditions of an aggressor in lieu of armed resistance, usually at the sacrifice of principles. Usually it means giving in to demands of an aggressor in order to avoid war.”
Diplomacy is defined as: “the art and practice of conducting negotiations between representatives of groups or states. It usually refers to international diplomacy, the conduct of international relations through the intercession of professional diplomats with regard to issues of peace-making, trade, war, economics and culture.”
If appeasement means passively giving into the demands of an aggressor, and diplomacy means actively negotiating to achieve a mutual benefit, how, then, are the two terms synonymous, as President Bush suggested in his brainless comments?
I’ll answer that question. They aren’t. The man is just a manipulative scumbag, a complete idiot, and a degenerate, lowlife piece of trash, the worst kind of politician that has ever existed and likely ever will.
A few nuggets — with my own commentary added — from the Financial Times, in a story about Barack Obama’s inability to win votes in West Virginia because, in essence, he is intelligent and black (click here to read the full story):
1. “If [Obama] is the nominee, the Democrats have no chance of winning West Virginia,” said Missy Endicott, a 40- year-old school administrator. “He doesn’t understand ordinary Americans.”
Well, Missy, I think you just helped explain why your state has the lowest college graduation rate in the country. If you are one of the people responsible for educating children, then it’s pretty clear the poor tykes in your care have an uphill climb ahead of them.
What about “ordinary Americans” doesn’t Barack Obama understand, Missy? What is an “ordinary American” anyway? Something tells me, according to your narrow, redneck mind, “ordinary Americans” must believe in God, own at least three guns, be unable to read words of more than three syllables, and religiously TiVo episodes of “American Idol” and “Cops.” And what does understanding “ordinary Americans” have to do with carrying out an effective foreign policy or fixing a broken economy?
2. None of the 22 Democrats interviewed by the Financial Times at the Clinton rally would commit themselves to voting for Mr. Obama if he became the nominee, and half said they definitely would not. … Most people questioned said they mistrusted Mr. Obama because of doubts about his patriotism and “values,” stemming from his cosmopolitan background, his exotic name and the controversy surrounding “anti-American” sermons by Jeremiah Wright, his former pastor. Several people said they believed he was a Muslim — an unfounded rumour that has circulated on the internet for months — despite the contradiction with his 20-year membership of Mr. Wright’s church in Chicago.
Where to begin breaking down the stupidity in this passage? Let me start with this whole notion of patriotism. Here’s the thing: You can’t measure it. You can’t prove that someone is more patriotic than someone else. Questioning someone’s patriotism in the Bush-Cheney era has become this generation’s version of McCarthyism. It’s a bogus slur without any base, and anyone with half a brain knows it — which explains why West Virginians are so preoccupied with it. My hope is that history will one day show today’s Middle-American, flag-waving faux-patriots to be nothing but ignorant pawns used by crooked politicians as a means to their evil end, that they did more harm to this nation than those of us who truly cared about the ideals outlined in the Constitution, things have nothing to do with lapel pins and Bibles.
I would also like to ask people in West Virginia which of Obama’s “values” they doubt. If recent political history is an indicator, I would guess that these include, but are not limited to, his valuing of fairness and equality (he doesn’t think homosexuals are minstrels of Satan actively working to destroy this Christian nation); his valuing of a woman’s right to make medical decisions and the importance of privacy between a doctor and a patient (he’s pro-choice); his valuing of generosity (he’s a liberal, after all, which is just a dirty euphemism for someone who wants to use tax money to help poor people do stuff, like send their kids to good schools and see a doctor when they’re sick); his valuing of not killing people for no reason (he was against the Iraq War). I could go on, because I’m sure there are many other objectionable values flowing through Obama’s heart, but I’m more interested in hearing how John McCain and Hillary Clinton’s “values” trump Obama’s.
Moving on to Obama’s cosmopolitan background. I didn’t know that not knowing your father; being raised by a single mother who used food stamps to put dinner on the table; moving all over the world as a child, even living in a place like Indonesia; working your ass off in the classroom to get scholarships to college and law school — the only way you could otherwise afford it; and passing up corporate jobs and tons of cash to work as a community organizer in the inner city constituted a cosmopolitan background.
Next on the list: his exotic name. Huh? You have doubts about his exotic name? Are you serious, West Virginia?
I’m passing on the Reverend Wright thing because it’s such a tired issue. At this point, there’s nothing you can say to convince a stupid person that the things Wright said, at worst, are just as atrocious as some of the hateful rhetoric spewed by white Christian clerics (see: Jerry Falwell, Pat Robertson, John Hagee, the pope). The bottom line is that all religious leaders are batshit insane, and their comments should be treated as such.
Finally, West Virginia, repeat after me: Barack Obama is not a Muslim. If you hate him for belonging to a Christian church pastored by an “anti-American,” then how can you also hate him for being a non-Christian, which he would have to be if he were a Muslim?
And, for the record, who gives a shit if he was Muslim, you racist, xenophobic assholes? Not all Muslims are terrorists hellbent on killing innocent people. I think you’re confusing Muslims with evangelical Christian presidents from Texas. Zing! Gotcha, West Virginia!
3. Josh Fry, a 24-year-old ambulance driver from Williamson, insisted he was not racist but said he would feel more comfortable with Mr. McCain, the 71-year-old Vietnam war hero, in the White House. “I want someone who is a full-blooded American as president,” he said.
Oh, Josh Fry. You are my favorite of them all. Please know, Josh Fry, that as I sit here in my ivory tower, in this bastion of sin I call home, where I live out of wedlock with a woman and wipe my ass with the Gospel of Luke and the Book of Revelations while silently worshiping my college diploma, I am not just listening to NPR, reading The New York Times, and using my elitist Mac laptop to instant message with an openly and unashamedly gay friend. No, Josh Fry, that is certainly not all I do here. You see, I am also wishing for your death and the death of all people who think and speak like you. You are what make this country an awful and embarrassing place, and things would be so much better if you simply didn’t exist.
And another thing, Josh Fry. Not only are you racist, you’re also a Nazi. When you say that you want a “full-blooded American” to be president, you are saying that only pure, white people should be guaranteed the rights and freedoms of this country. Well here’s a little newsflash, Josh Fry: I guarantee, if we did a genealogical examination of both you and Barack Obama, we’d see that your “full-blooded American” status is about the same as that of the guy with brown skin and a silly name. Seeing as how this country was founded by immigrants who killed, raped, and pillaged their way from sea to shining sea, I think it’s safe to assume there aren’t too many “full-blooded Americans” out there. Besides, even if there were, they’d be too busy to be president. They have casinos to run, after all.