Category: Presidential Campaign

McCain Money Man Funded Terrorists

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Not surprisingly, it was an executive at Chiquita, formerly United Fruit, which did so much to destabilize and de-democratize Latin America, who is involved, Carl H. Lindner Jr., whose firm admitted to knowingly supporting a terrorist organization:

Carl H. Lindner Jr., the billionaire Cincinnati businessman, was CEO of Chiquita Brands International from 1984 to 2001, and remained on the company’s board of directors until May 2002. Beginning under his tenure, Chiquita executives paid hundreds of thousands of dollars to the United Self-Defense Forces of Colombia (known by the Spanish acronym AUC), which is described by George Washington University’s National Security Archive as an “illegal right-wing anti-guerrilla group tied to many of the country’s most notorious civilian massacres.”

Following a Justice Department indictment last year, Chiquita admitted to illegally funding the paramilitaries and agreed to pay a $25 million fine. Chiquita’s payments to the AUC began in 1997 and lasted seven years; roughly half of the funds came after the group was designated a Foreign Terrorist Organization by the U.S. State Department in 2001.

According to the Justice Department, the payments “were reviewed and approved by senior executives” of Chiquita, who knew by no later than September 2000 “that the AUC was a violent, paramilitary organization.”

Lindner has hosted a number of fund raisers for McCain, and is on his “Ohio Victory Team”.

Chiquita also did gun running to the AUC, which I suppose is one way to keep the banana plantation workers from organizing.

And, of course, Mr. Straight Talker also did favors for the guy regarding a land deal in Arizona in the 1990s.

Oh, and I almost forgot, his chief political advisor, Charlie Black, lobbied for both Chiquita and Columbia.

What a bloody witches brew we have here….but the press won’t cover it, because McCain is a straight talker and honest.

My First Reaction Was to Say, “Barack Obama Can Kiss My Shiny Metal Ass”

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Because when he talks about expanding Bush’s faith based initiative, it seems to me that he is giving the imprimatur of bipartisanship to what has been a disgraceful, and anti-constitutional, spoils system for Republican supporting churches.

It’s a little better when one looks into it though.

The organizations will not be allowed to discriminate, as they can under the Bush program, at least for federally funded work:

“If you get a federal grant, you can’t use that grant money to proselytize to the people you help and you can’t discriminate against them — or against the people you hire — on the basis of their religion,” Mr. Obama said. “Federal dollars that go directly to churches, temples and mosques can only be used on secular programs.”

Needless to say, the Talibapitsts are freaking about this, because they think that the right to discriminate is what makes them “distinctive”.

I would note that Obama’s statement seems to allow discrimination, just not with public funds. I disagree with this.

Religious groups should held to the same standard as the secular organizations if they take public money.

I’m With Wesley Clark

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Being shot down and being a prisoner of war makes one no more qualified to be president than it makes someone who has had a heart attack to be a cardiac surgeon.

If the qualities of pilot skill and personal bravery in combat were critical criteria for being president, we would have Randall “Duke” Cunningham as president, who was arguably one of the top 50 or so combat pilots in US History.

Wes Clark Completely Owns John McCain

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His statement on Face the Nation, “I don’t think getting in a fighter plane and getting shot down is a qualification to become president,” is both devastating and complex.

  • It plays into the views of most servicemen and ex-servicemen, that the “flyboys” are a bunch of pampered over appreciated folk.
  • It compares to JFK’s statement on his heroism, “It was unavoidable, they sank my boat”.
  • Clark’s position as a general and a soldier allows him to put McCain’s record on the table.
  • It raises McCain’s actual record, which is not so good, he almost made negative ace, which is now on the table.
  • It takes one of the central pillars of his public personae, and challenges it.

After all that, finding out that Libertarian presidential candidate Bob Barr accusing the Republican Party and John McCain of being lying jackals is sort of an anti-climax, but it’s nice to see him piling on.

You Know That Dobson Is Losing It When His Fellow Winger Evangelicals Call Him Out

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Peter Wehner, a man who has been at the forefront of putting religion in the public sphere, just called out James Dobson as an ignorant twit regarding his recent rants regarding Barack Obama.

It appears that Dobson’s main beef is the phrase used by Barack Obama in a speech, “And even if we did have only Christians in our midst, if we expelled every non-Christian from the United States of America, whose Christianity would we teach in the schools? Would we go with James Dobson’s, or Al Sharpton’s?”

His motivation for his rant is largely because he is offended by being compared to Sharpton.

Still, I get the sense that, now that they see the Republican party heading into some very bad years, the Republican party Washington, DC establishment wants to start slapping down the most ignorant and arrogant members of the Christo-fascist community, particularly Mr. Dobson.

Keith Olberman Gets Owned by Glenn Greenwald and John Dean

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Glenn Greenwald savaged Keith Olbermann because he is endorsing Obama’s sellout as clever politics, when earlier he had one of his vaunted “special comments” denounced telco immunity as textbook Fascism.

Olbermann promptly went on Kos, and called Glenn Greenwald names, and asserted that John Dean said that a President Obama could prosecute the telcos criminally.

There are two problems with this assertion:

  1. Nothing prevents a Bush pardon on this, and given the language Bush is using on the civil immunity, such a pardon is almost certain.
  2. John Dean did not say that a President Obama could president the telcos criminally. I saw the interview. What he said was that the had not yet seen anything that would prevent this in the bill.

In fact, we now know that :

I said that when I read the bill, and talked to the folks at the ACLU who had been following it, that it was not clear. I raised it when appearing on Countdown with the hope that someone might figure it out. But that is the nature of this badly drafted bill that it is not clear what it does and does not do, and the drafters are not saying.

But even if the bill is unclear there is no question the Bush Administration is not going to do anything to the telecoms, so the question is whether a future DOJ could — and here there is case law protecting the telecoms. But there may be language buried in the bill that protects them as well but it can only be found by reading the bill with a half dozen other laws which I have not yet done.

I made no declarative statements rather I only raised questions that jumped at me when reading the 114 page monster.

(emphasis mine)

For Keith Olbermann to laud Obama’s decision to sell out, and to suggest that Dean supports this action, when on his own show, Dean called telco immunity a, “grave assault on the Constitution”.

It’s not OK when Bush does it, and it’s not OK when Obama goes along with, Mr. Olbermann.

Clinton’s Healthcare Expert Hired by Obama Campaign

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It appears that Neera Tanden has been hired by Obama to work on his campaign as director of domestic policy.

This is some very friendly signaling from the Obama campaign to hillary supporters:

She was a key architect of, among other things, Clinton’s health care plan, whose more aggressive push for universal coverage through mandates was probably the key domestic policy difference between the Democrats.

My guess is that all these imagines slights that we have heard about over the past are more figments of the imaginations of the Beltway Boyz than anything else.

It’s Been a Busy Few Days in Zimbabwe

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It turns out that Tsvangirai’s withdrawal from the runoff has, if anything, intensified ZANU-PF thuggery.

Of course, in response, you have the African National Congress coming out in favor of doing nothing about all this. Increasingly, I believe that there are elements in the ANC who believe that Mugabe’s fate will be theirs one day, and so they will support him to the bloody end.

Morgan Tsvangirai is calling for international isolation and armed peace keepers before a fair election can be held.

I will say that when the most effective action taken on all this so far is Queen Elizabeth II stripping Mugabe of his knighthood, you know that the regional and international response is pretty pathetic.

Barack Obama has condemned Mugabe, and has talked with Tsvangirai on the phone.

Truth be told, this surprises me.

I don’t think that there is really any electoral advantage in all this.

From a Man Who Advocates Beating Children and Pets….

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James Dobson, is suggesting that Barack Obama distorts biblical values, this from a man who advocates beating children and pets.

It appears that this attack was the result of Obama raising a very valid point, “Even if we did have only Christians in our midst, if we expelled every non-Christian from the United States of America, whose Christianity would we teach in the schools? Would we go with James Dobson’s or Al Sharpton’s?”

Which is a valid point.

Apparently, Dobson feels that Sharpton is a racist, and thus that Obama was tarring him as a racist.

If the show fits dude. A quick google finds many quotes where Dobson claims black genetic inferiority, revulsion toware mixed race marriage, etc.

There Is More Than a Dime’s Difference, Go Figure

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Kevin Drum got a press release via email describing side by side interviews of Obama and McCain.

What do you see as the gravest long-term threat to the U.S. economy?

Obama: If we don’t get a handle on our energy policy, it is possible that the kinds of trends we’ve seen over the last year will just continue. Demand is clearly outstripping supply. It’s not a problem we can drill our way out of. It can be a drag on our economy for a very long time unless we take steps to innovate and invest in the research and development that’s required to find alternative fuels. I think it’s very important for the federal government to have a role in that process.

McCain: Well, I would think that the absolute gravest threat is the struggle that we’re in against Islamic extremism, which can affect, if they prevail, our very existence. Another successful attack on the United States of America could have devastating consequences.

A noun, a verb, and 911 from McCain. Truly pathetic.

Wingnut Heads Exploding

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While the main stream media
studiously ignores John McCain’s campaign finance felonies, wing nut heads are exploding over the fact that Obama will opt out of public financing, and bury McCain with cash.

In the times, we have David Brooks’ head exploding over the fact that Obama is not going to take public campaign financing, revealing that *gasp* Obama will work to gain maximum political advantage, and on CNN, we have Leslie Sanchez, director of the White House Initiative on Hispanic Education from 2001-2003, and hence a professional lier saying that money doesn’t mean anything because after all, the American public can’t be swayed with glitzy ad campaigns.

Yeah…right…

Heh.

Barack Obama Sells Us All Out

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And so did Pelosi, Hoyer, Emmanuel, and all the rest of them.It does not matter if you are a Democrat, or a Republican, black, white, or polka dotted. He sold you out, he sole me out, he sold out George Washington, and Ben Franklin, and Alexander Hamilton, and Abraham Lincoln.

They sold out every last one of us.

Glenn Greenwald nails it when he says that, “Telling Americans that we have to give up basic constitutional rights — and allow rampant lawbreaking — if we want to save ourselves from “the grave threats we face” sounds awfully familiar. He says he will work to remove amnesty from the bill, but once that fails, will vote for the “compromise.” Obama has obviously calculated that sacrificing the rule of law and the Fourth Amendment is a worthwhile price to pay to bolster his standing a tiny bit in a couple of swing states. The full Obama statement is here.”

What Glenn Greenwald does not note, and I will, is that the behavior of this administration shows that this is about their spying on political opponents, not about security, because that is the only thing that would have them freaking out like this, because it’s the only thing that would send them to jail.

To be completely fair, he does say in his statement that he will, “work in the Senate to remove this provision so that we can seek full accountability for past offenses,”, but as Digby says, this translates to, “maybe show up to vote on some amendment that will surely be struck down and then whimper away.”

Atrios gives him a wanker of the day award.

I have post dated this so that it will show at the top of the blog for the next few days.