Bad American

John McGlynn’s exhaustive explanation in Japan Focus

Chris Floyd condenses it here:

McGlynn’s article, in Japan Focus, is long and complex – necessarily so, in order to detail the intricate punitive mechanisms involved, and their earlier test run against North Korea in 2005. You should read the article in full, but to put it briefly, last week the U.S. Treasury Department’s Financial Crimes Enforcement Network (FinCEN), set in motion a process that could make any bank or financial institution in the world that does business with Iran subject to an economic death sentence: complete exclusion from the U.S. financial system. McGlynn, speaking plainly and with no addition, calls the move “a declaration of war on Iran.”

Of course our sanctions killed an untold number of Iraqi children before we sent the Army in to finish the job. Now it seems it is Iran’s turn:

Now the screws are growing even tighter. And the effects will be devastating – not to the leaders of Iran, of course, but, as with the genocidal sanctions against Iraq, to Iran’s general population – a population, as we noted recently, made up overwhelmingly of young people and children: almost 70 percent of Iranians are under 30. As McGlynn puts it:

I seriously wonder if the American people even give a shit. But this will come back to us. When we do strike Iran and they retaliate with sunburn missiles and the carrier USS Enterprise heels over in the Gulf with all hands, don’t come crying for revenge to me. We will have long ago struck the first blows against a country that had not, by any serious measure, attacked us.

Actual unretouched photo of Hillary Clinton avoiding sniper fire in Bosnia. You can’t see Chelsea’s flak jacket but rest assured, she was wearing one. The kid had already been frisked and cleared for explosives.

“I remember landing under sniper fire,” Clinton recounted. “There was supposed to be some kind of a greeting ceremony at the airport, but instead we just ran with our heads down to get into the vehicles to get to our base.”

Greg Saunders in HuffPo details other Hillary whoppers and says this will probably kill her in the general election. I find it funny that Hillary’s own kool aid drinkers, who call Obama fans ‘cult members’ find it so easy to brush aside her long history of lies and obfuscations. If they truly believe she can win a general election with her background and negatives it is they who are living in some kind of cult-land.

I like Andy Borowitz’s take on Hillary’s ‘hot zone landing:’

“I may have misspoke about what went on that particular day,” Sen. Clinton said today. “But it was a very busy time for me, what with having that knife-fight with Kim Jong-Il and all.”

Reporters peppered Sen. Clinton’s new press spokesman with questions about another purported exploit of hers, in which the senator claimed that she and a ragtag team of blue-collar drillers deflected an asteroid on a collision course with the Earth.

“Everything Hillary Clinton says is true,” said her new spokesman, the author James Frey.

Seriously folks. Clinton needs to quit now. And take that embarrassment of a husband with her.

Moron-in-waiting.

Arianna herself

For those who were too busy watching Rev. Jeremiah Wright damn America for the 10,000th time to hear about McCain, let’s review: at a stop in Jordan last week, McCain made the ludicrous claim that Al Qaeda insurgents were being trained in Iran*. Asked again about it, he dug in deeper, claiming it was “common knowledge and has been reported in the media that al-Qaeda is going back into Iran and receiving training and are coming back into Iraq from Iran, that’s well known.”

A few moments later, McCain’s chief lady in waiting, Joe Lieberman, leaned forward and whispered in his ear. McCain promptly offered a quick rewrite: “I’m sorry, the Iranians are training extremists, not al-Qaeda.”

snip

Yet every time McCain packs a suitcase, the press automatically anoints him as “presidential.” They dutifully did it on this latest trip, even though it came just under a year after McCain’s clownish stroll through a Baghdad market, which he declared proof that one could “walk freely” around Baghdad — while being guarded by three Blackhawk helicopters, two Apache gunships, and 100 armed soldiers.

The fact that the presumptive Republican nominee doesn’t grasp the general outlines in Iraq would seem to be a big story. But not to the mainstream media. As soon as they heard that the Straight Talk Express had run off the road, they sprang into action to get the wreckage out of view. Move along folks, nothing to see here.

Of course, this is the notorious ‘liberal media’ that covers for McCain like an embarrassed family covers for a doddering uncle who spouts gibberish at Thanksgiving dinner.

And the sad fact is that many Republicans don’t really care that McCain is ignorant of these issues. That’s why they voted for Bush - a not so bright child of privilege who could be counted upon for backslapping racist jokes while tearing up the country club course.

Because to most conservatives, knowledge is something to be suspicious of - like the ‘eggheads’ of Eisenhower’s era who quietly pocketed their Phi Beta Kappa keys. Besides these are the people who famously declare that they can manufacture their own reality - with a heaping dose of lawyers, guns and money.

But for the swing voters one would hope that the sight of a guy who looks more comfortable in Depends undergarments than in discussing weighty issues with foreign leaders would easily swing this election toward either Clinton or, hopefully, Obama.

But then I remember Ronald Reagan.

Perhaps America will never learn until she’s on her knees and hurt and starving. Until then, as long we’re fat dumb and full of ourselves, ignoramuses who strike tough poses will be seriously considered for leadership of this country.

Maybe,  just maybe this time I’ll be wrong.