The next ad I would run would be film clips of American soldiers in Iraq, dead, dismembered, dying. Cut to Walter Reed Army Hospital. American soldiers, men and women, struggling with their injuries. Cut to funeral for American soldier. Cut to John McCain, smiling, welcoming a hundred years of war in Iraq.
But I'm not going to be the candidate, and, according to Bill Clinton, if Hillary is the candidate, she is going to sell us out, because "she and John McCain are very close," and they've agreed to use the campaign to put the voters to sleep so that they can get on with consolidating the military-industrial corporate base of the US government.
The press concedes the race to McCain already. In Sunday's column (which I read in the International Herald Tribune, my Times substitute), Frank Rich maintains that Bill Clinton's surge into the primaries will bring him serious trouble from the Republican noise machine, as they rake up one indiscretion after another and throw them in Billary's face. If McCain wins the nomination, according to Rich, the Clintons can't beat him because when Bill and Hillary were in law school, McCain was a prisoner of war in Vietnam, and because Independents like McCain. Apparently, while everyone will rake up Billary's past, McCain's will be allowed to slumber peacefully, and, with the connivance of the swooning press, the US will get to elect a crackpot.
You may remember that in May of 2006, McCain stumbled into the commencement exercises at the New School in New York City, intending to give the same speech to those lefties as he had given to the graduating class of Liberty University, when what to his wondering eyes should appear but a 22-year-old girl who gave him a sound talking-to.
Those kids sent the old man home with his tail between his legs. I would show that, too, in my campaign ads.
Any Republican president would be a disaster, but McCain would be the biggest disaster of all, because, both by who he is and what he professes, he encourages the US, as Reagan did, to engage in sentimental, nostalgic wishful thinking about the effects of American "goodness" and "power". The nation, which is at last waking up to the disasters of the last twenty-eight years--the disasters of the "free market" and "making the world safe for democracy" as a cover for ruthless exploitation of all natural resources no matter where they are and who owns them--would succumb the fantasy again, at least long enough for those disasters to be compounded and rendered absolutely unfixable. McCain is a walking delusion--that we really are brave, that we meant well, that mistakes were made but the policies themselves were sound. McCain reassures us that we weren't so bad after all, when we were. We can't come to terms with why the US is in the pickle it is in without consigning McCain to the dustheap.
The majority of Americans do not want to stay in Iraq. The majority of Americans think that policies McCain supports take the country in "the wrong direction". The majority of Americans do not agree with McCain, but Billary and the press are already telling us that, once he is the nominee, they aren't going to touch him. They are going to let him break the army. They are going to let him break the bank. They are going to let him continue and expand the Bush presidency, because he's a war hero, and if a war hero likes a war, then nobody else's opinion matters.
"The rationale behind the recognition of John McCain as a military hero eludes me. I give him high marks for service to country, but hero? I think that we have stretched the term hero a little too far. In other cultures, captured military are not necessarily thought of as heroic since it is not something that is optional. Conduct during imprisonment can be honorable, but let start using designations such as hero with greater accuracy.
John McCain has many characteristics that make him unacceptable as the person to be in charge of a vast military establishment. Among them is his age; his obvious infirmities; his fondness for military solutions; his doggedness in the face of overwhelming contrary opinion. Consensus is what brings about the best decisions. His presidency will not lean towards consensus building but, as one would expect of the military mind, he will rule by directive. He is certainly not a Dwight Eisenhower.
President Bush is of minor intellectual ability, but he is a healthy man who has been able to endure the riggers of his position. John McCain, though glib, is also of minor intellectual ability. In addition, a problem for the country is that he could physically crumble under the strain of the presidency and produce many bad decisions. I believe that John McCain is the most dangerous of any of the candidates of any party.
John McCain enjoys inordinately good press; they have not examined his record for ethical conduct, nor have they taken a serious look at his physical fitness for the job."
McCain insinuates war in Iraq for the rest of our lives and of the money Bush didn't squander in Iraq he pledges to finish wasting -- so what do people do? Yawn, then go out and vote for him in the primary to ENSURE he completes the destruction of this nation. Why? Well, because it's way too much trouble to select another viable Republican candidate because we can't be so bothered, you know?
Americans are a bunch of very confused people.
It's quite sad.
a war hero? All he did was drop bombs and napalm
on civilian and military targets then back to
the officers club for cocktails. How brave can
you be?
Economy - lip service
Environment - lip service
Education - lip service
Bogeyman - Yee-haw, Slim Pickens riding an H-bomb, [queue Journey singing "Won't Stop"]
Healthcare - lip service
Genocide - lip service
McCain track this script way too closely
if you are busted illegally -
say the cop uses illawful actions
such as pulls you over for no reason,
or suddenly searches your home,
and finds weed,
they throw out the charges.
america invaded iraq illegally.
yet sadaam was hung for it.
i'm not a sadaam apologist,
but the argument that "the world
is a better place without sadaam"
is tiresome.
bush didn't go to congress or the world,
with "let's get rid of sadaam."
there is a strong argument,
especially for the americans that could
have used the trillions in social services,
that the world would be a better
place without george w. bush.
it very well may be that bush has brought
more hate, destruction and troubles
to the world, than has sadaam huessin.
one thing is for certain,
bush would never have had the dignity
of sadaam huessin in the gallows.
Better-defined imperial borders.
Pox Americana harassed at every frontier supply line.
Richer rich, poorer poor, dying middle.
Tyrannical social control at home erases living memory of a democratic republic.
Those wretched ephemeral babblers lusting after the purple in '08 notwithstanding, a slide into the abyss can only be slowed, not reversed.
No reforming political force yet exists which can not be enslaved or aborted by MIXR: the military-investor & xian-right.
Little Bush, our postmodern Caligula, vigorously catalyzes the rot of Empire. This is not necessarily a bad thing.
"Those whom the gods wish to destroy, they first make demented."
bipolar2
© 2008
That's fine. It's your blog. But the other HuffPo bloggers do not scrub my comments. You are the the least tolerant of other points of view of all the HP bloggers.
America must be on a mission to be well... America. Its the founding myth, starting with the native american genocide...its what gets votes.
However - I think a money clock ticking out the millions per second might actually reach some people.If there's one thing that gets an American where it hurts- its money.