Bad American

The speech (the meat of the issue starts around the 13 minute mark and hits it at the 17 minute mark):

When it comes to Barack Obama, I’m not merely disappointed anymore. Now I’m scared.

From Paul Joseph Watson in Infowars

Presidential frontrunner Barack Obama has called for a “civilian national security force” as powerful as the U.S. military, comments that were ignored by the vast majority of the corporate media but compared by one journalist to the Nazi Hitler Youth.

“We cannot continue to rely on our military in order to achieve the national security objectives we’ve set. We’ve got to have a civilian national security force that’s just as powerful, just as strong, just as well-funded,” Obama told a Colorado Springs audience earlier this month.

Hmm. Now I don’t tend to stop at one source when I see something as shockingly provocative as this.

So I found this in the usually reliable Federal Times. Apparently the idea wasn’t Obama’s but Robert Gates’ which might explain why Obama is toying with the idea of keeping him on in his administration:

Hey Peaceniks, you really think Barack Obama isn’t every bit the militarist that Bush and McCain are?

Associated Press

Contending that the U.S. is not pursuing a sound strategy for keeping Americans safe, Democratic presidential candidate Barack Obama said Tuesday that fighting al-Qaida and the Taliban in Afghanistan would be his top priority after ending the war in Iraq.

“This is a war that we have to win,” Obama said in remarks prepared for delivery at the International Trade Center in Washington.

So I wonder how many progressives really feel like suckers for going goo goo over Barack.

The more I look at this country, it’s economy and political process, the less hope I see for us. The lights are going out all over America and we shall not see them lit again in our lifetime.

UPDATE: Secret Service DENIES it had anything to do with Kreck’s removal. McCain’s STAFF apparently told local cops to remove her according to story in Huffpo.

Huffpo apparently gave Kreck her own blog here.

Local cop apparently lied to her telling her the SS told him to remove her.

From the Raw Story link:

When Republican presidential candidate John McCan held a town hall meeting in Denver on July 7, 61-year-old librarian Carol Kreck showed up in the plaza outside holding a sign reading “McCain=Bush.” She was asked by security to leave and then told by a police officer that she would be charged with trespassing on city property if she did not give up her sign.

When Kreck refused, she was ticketed, escorted off the premises, and threatened with arrest if she tried to return. “Why is that offensive?” Kreck said of her sign. “Why would Republicans who voted for Bush find it offensive?“

This is your ‘free country.’ Now this 61-year-old woman gets led away and ticketed by the police and threatened with arrest and jail for standing on public property holding an innocuous sign.

This is what it has come down to, people.

From the Progress Now Action link

I wonder how those big, brave boys in blue felt in hauling this ‘threat’ away from a public place. Who cares if what they’re doing is unconstitutional? They have their orders and they will always obey them.

Raw Story

This was from the Seattle protests where cops fired high velocity tennis ball guns at point blank range shattering people’s jaws. America yawned. They’ll have new high tech torture devices coming for the conventions.

Congress has approved $100 million to pay for security expenses at this summer’s presidential nominating conventions, with $50 million dedicated to each party.

snip

Apart from the traditional pepper spray and rubber bullets employed by police for controlling large protests, Denver, Colorado and St. Paul, Minnesota officials may be spending large sums on weapons CNN calls ’science fiction like’.

Weapons such as the sonic ray gun, which emits a head-splitting frequency and deafens large groups of people. Also rumored for the conventions is the goo gun — which shoots a gel that can coat and wrap people whole, or stop a moving vehicle in its path — and a microwave pulse emitter — a radio frequency device that makes one’s skin feel it is on fire, previously deployed in the streets of Baghdad, Iraq.

See, I was writing a long time ago that these weapons weren’t meant for the battlefield. They were meant fo you and I and anyone who, in the language of this commenter on Raw Story, have the audacity to talk back to the new fascist state:

If you have any doubt that we have become the Soviet Union, consider a government that would burn its citizens with microwaves, encase them in suffocating goo, tase them, bombard them with sonic energy enough to cause pain — all for exercising what at one time was considered our Constitutionally protected right to peacefully assemble and petition our leaders.

Our Constitution isn’t worth the paper it’s written on. Might as well wipe our collective ass with it and get back fretting over Brangelina’s new twins.
trippin | Homepage | 07.08.08 - 11:48 am

Raw Story capitalized on the CNN story I heard while traveling this weekend. In their usual form, CNN, the Controlled News Network, lionized the fascists:

LAVENERA: It can make a Humvee have spin in place. Then there are the weapons that would make unruly crowds run for cover like a sonic ray gun, a device which emits an ear piercing sound and a microwave device that can be focused on an area and can make you feel like your skin is on fire. The ACLU has sued the city of Denver to find out if these weapons are in the arsenal.

SILVERSTEIN: Instead of asking the public, “How come you want to know?” Maybe the question should posed to the government, “Why are you interested in keeping this secret?”

NEWMAN: Rational people are not concerned. Those concerned are the ones causing problems.

LAVENDERA: In Minnesota where republicans are holding their convention, the ACLU says it’s trying to find out how security money is being spent but law enforcement agencies insist these weapons should be kept secret so they have the upper hand in keeping the convention safe.

Lavendera is the CNN hack, Silverstein is the ACLU rep and Bob Newman is the “anti-terrorism consultant” getting paid big bucks to torture and control his fellow citizens.

“Rational people” indeed Mr. Newman. Rational people don’t use such weapons indiscriminately on civilians exercising their First Amendment rights. Fascists do.

“Keeping the convention safe.” Isn’t THAT rich? Safe from who - amped up stormtrooper police?

And think of the use of the term ‘terrorist’ in this venue. The terrorists in this case, are US citizens who have come to the convention to exercise their free speech rights.

We are the ‘terrorists’ to our government now, both Democrats and Republicans.

And you know damn well that police agencies are arranging for agent provocateurs to try and instigate trouble so the bullies in black ninja gear can get a chance to use their new nifty torture toys.

This is the USA 2008. A growing fascist state.

Good comment from Matthew Rothschild in The Progressive

Obama said it “firmly reestablishes basic judicial oversight over all domestic surveillance.”

But the ACLU notes that the bill “permits only minimal court oversight. The FISA Court only reviews general procedures for targeting and minimizing the use of information that is collected. The court may not know who, what, or where will actually be tapped, thereby undercutting any meaningful for the court and violating the Fourth Amendment.”

What’s more, in the incredibly rare instances where the FISA Court denies a warrant to the President, under the new bill the President can go ahead and do the wiretapping anyway while the appeals process continues, a process that the ACLU says can take two months.

Russ Feingold calls the idea that this is a good compromise “a farce” and “political cover.”

Says Feingold: “Anybody who claims this is an OK bill, I really question if they’ve even read it.”

Has Obama?

If not, that’s a problem.

And if he has, and still approves of it, that’s an even bigger one.

Glenn Greenwald in Salon:

It’s either that he “chickened out” or — as Yale Law Professor Jack Balkin asserts and Digby wonders — Obama believes he will be President and wants these extreme powers for himself, no doubt, he believes, because he’ll exercise them magnanimously, for our Own Good. Whatever the motives — and I don’t know (or much care) what they are — Obama has embraced a bill that is not only redolent of many of the excesses of Bush’s executive power theories and surveillance state expansions, but worse, has done so by embracing the underlying rationale of “Be-scared-and-give-up-your-rights.” Note that the very first line of Obama’s statement warns us that we face what he calls “grave threats,” and that therefore, we must accept that our Leader needs more unlimited power, and the best we can do is trust that he will use it for our Good. Making matters worse still, what Obama did yesterday is in clear tension with an emphatic promise that he made just months ago. As the extremely pro-Obama MoveOn.org notes today, Obama’s spokesman, Bill Burton, back in in September, vowed that Obama would “support a filibuster of any bill that includes retroactive immunity for telecommunications companies.” MoveOn believes Obama should be held to his word and is thus conducting a campaign urging Obama to do what he promised — support a filibuster to stop the enactment of telecom amnesty.

And here from MS Bellows in HuffPo: Obama: In the Inspector General We Trust:

Dennis McDonough, a foreign policy adviser to the Obama campaign, said in a conference call this morning that legislation expanding presidential power to conduct warrantless surveillance of Americans’ communications is acceptable to Senator Obama because the United States Inspector General will ensure accountability.

In other words, the Obama campaign’s position is now that the duty and power to protect the Constitution from all enemies, foreign and domestic, now resides primarily not with the President, not with the Congress or the Courts, but with a bureaucrat created by administrative law whose job is to conduct internal investigations of government agencies.

What I find particularly distressing is that there are, apparently smart people who are so emotionally invested in Obama as the black JFK that they are overlooking this rape of the Constitution.

Like this commenter from Huffpo:

pdohan See Profile I’m a Fan of pdohan

Fortune Magazine interview:

He sits in the corner of a sofa, one black, tasseled loafer propped against a coffee table. We’re in the presidential suite on the 41st floor of the New York Hilton. McCain has come here - between a major speech on the economy in Washington, D.C., this morning and a fundraiser tonight at the 21 Club - to talk to us and to let us take his picture. He is wearing a dark suit, as he almost always does, with a blue shirt and a wine-colored tie. He’s looking not at us but into the void. His eyes are narrowed. Nine seconds of silence, ten seconds, 11. Finally he says, “Well, I would think that the absolute gravest threat is the struggle that we’re in against radical Islamic extremism, which can affect, if they prevail, our very existence. Another successful attack on the United States of America could have devastating consequences.”

Not America’s dependence on foreign oil? Not climate change? Not the crushing cost of health care? Eventually McCain gets around to mentioning all three of those. But he starts by deftly turning the economy into a national security issue - and why not? On national security McCain wins. We saw how that might play out early in the campaign, when one good scare, one timely reminder of the chaos lurking in the world, probably saved McCain in New Hampshire, a state he had to win to save his candidacy - this according to McCain’s chief strategist, Charlie Black. The assassination of Benazir Bhutto in December was an “unfortunate event,” says Black. “But his knowledge and ability to talk about it reemphasized that this is the guy who’s ready to be Commander-in-Chief. And it helped us.” As would, Black concedes with startling candor after we raise the issue, another terrorist attack on U.S. soil. “Certainly it would be a big advantage to him,” says Black.

Certainly another ‘Reichstag fire‘ complete with dead bodies of ordinary Americans would be greeted with glee in McCain’s war room. Why does this surprise anyone? These people are fascists and this is how fascists operate.

This line of thinking, of course, assumes Americans are too stupid to differentiate between a false flag attack, incompetence on the part of our counter-terrorist forces, or a masterminded attack by a true outside force AND the motivations and consequences of such an attack.

All they figure is that a majority of the American people, ’soccer’ or ’security’ moms, et. al., would simply stampede in fear to John McCain, begging him to take away the rest of our tenuous civil liberties and throw the entire Middle East into a nuclear cauldron.

And you know, sadly, they might just be right.

Which is why when I read stories like this I get genuinely concerned about what might happen as this election approaches or in the netherworld between Election Day and Inauguration Day.

I suspect there is quite a bit of planned mischief afoot.

NOT that I expect any less from Obama. Should some catastrophe happen between E Day and I Day after Obama wins, I would expect ‘Mr. Change’ to swear absolute fealty to the concept of massive retaliation. Like most Democrats, I would expect him to try to ‘out war’ the cons just to make sure people knew he wasn’t a weak kneed appeaser.

In any case, there’s too much smoke swirling around the latter months of the year not to be prepared for literally anything.

A great article by Robert Parry in Alternet that outlines just how serious Nancy Pelosi and Barack Obama’s lies were in justifying the wiretapping immunity cave in.

I like this part:

A week after the “Protect America Act” was passed, the New York Times and the Washington Post published front-page stories explaining how the Bush administration had ambushed the Democrats.

Pressed up against the start of the August recess and the prospect of Republican taunts that Democrats were “soft on terror,” the Democratic leaders abandoned earlier compromise proposals and accepted the more expansive law. Their one point of resistance was putting a February 2008 sunset provision into the law.

Still, the Democratic cave-in in August 2007 provoked an uproar among rank-and-file Democrats. Pelosi’s office reported receiving more than 200,000 angry e-mails.

And in the end, what did all those angry e-mails accomplish? A temporary retreat leading to what happened this week.

And now, Saint Barack Obama, showing he’s no different from any of the other wanna be Washington insiders, endorses the sell-out.

HuffPo coverage

“Given the grave threats that we face, our national security agencies must have the capability to gather intelligence and track down terrorists before they strike, while respecting the rule of law and the privacy and civil liberties of the American people. There is also little doubt that the Bush Administration, with the cooperation of major telecommunications companies, has abused that authority and undermined the Constitution by intercepting the communications of innocent Americans without their knowledge or the required court orders.”

You can read the rest of his mealy mouthed response for yourself. Spoken like a true creature of the system. Same old scare tactics - this could have been said by any Republican.

Meet the new boss, same as the old boss except better spoken.

Paul Kane in WashPo on what Obama said ‘back then:’

This marks something of a reversal of Obama’s position from an earlier version of the bill, which was approved by the Senate Feb. 12, when Obama was locked in a fight for the Democratic nomination with Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton (D-N.Y.).

Obama missed the February vote on that FISA bill as he campaigned in the “Potomac Primaries,” but issued a statement that day declaring “I am proud to stand with Senator Dodd, Senator Feingold and a grassroots movement of Americans who are refusing to let President Bush put protections for special interests ahead of our security and our liberty.”

Boy his civil liberties Iron Cross sure melted fast didn’t it?

Sens. Christopher Dodd (D-Conn.) and Russ Feingold (D-Wisc.) continue to oppose the new legislation, as does Sen. Patrick Leahy (D-Vt.). All Obama backers in the primary, those senior lawmakers contend that the new version of the FISA law — crafted after four months of intense negotiations between White House aides and congressional leaders — provides insufficient court review of the pending 40 lawsuits against the telecommunications companies alleging privacy invasion for their participation in a warrantless wiretapping program after the terrorist attacks of Sept. 11, 2001.

“The immunity outcome is predetermined,” Feingold wrote in a memo today.

Predetermined - as is everything, isn’t it?

Ok, so what to do? I won’t assail progressives for voting for Obama. Hell, I know how easy it is to buy the hope he’s selling. I think it’s snake oil, but after all we’ve been through under Bush, I can understand the people who say they’d vote for anyone with a D next to his/her name than McCain. I would only caution those folks not to get their hopes up too high.

In reality, I understand that there is no real place for me in the American political system. Even the Greens, who I feel are not friendly to Second Amendment rights which I see as a natural right. And the Libertarians are too split between pro and anti war factions to be effective.

Essentially, in modern America, there is no one I feel I can cast a vote for in good conscience.

After 30+ years of political activity, I have come to the realization that the game is not for me anyway. And there is no one or no party that speaks to me. I have become an ‘auslander’ in my own country. Stuck here, watching the whole retched system circle the drain without any recourse to peaceful deliverance.

I don’t think I’m quite alone on falling into ‘observer’ status. I think there are many more like me out there who are now opting out of what they see as a fixed and rigged game. The basic problem, for those of us who used to be so politically active and believe so much that the system could work, is wanting to jump back in while knowing it’s a fool’s game. It’s hard to watch knowing that it’s not for you and nothing you can do will result in any meaningful changes.

What I can do now is simply to comment on what I see in order to at least impart some understanding to those seeking explanation for why a lifetime of voting doesn’t give us a just and decent society.

Ladies and Gentlemen (sit down John), here’s Carol McCain.

Oh no, this just wouldn’t fly. . .

The original store in the (UK) Daily Mail

The pick up on HuffPo

I can’t for the life of me understand the HuffPo readers who say this is not a campaign issue. Do they think for a moment if Barack Obama treated his first wife this shabbily that the Limbaughs of the world wouldn’t be making a continuing huge story about it? Of course they would!

You see, this is the so-called ‘party of family values’ or so they like to tell us. But this scumbag is the man they are running for POTUS.

You know, it’s really a tossup in the Republican/reptilian scheme of things which was the bigger asshole - McCain or Newt Gingrich who had his wife presented with divorce papers while she was recovering from cancer surgery.

But ‘real men’ Republicans understand the need for a ‘trophy wife’ if one is to aspire for higher nationwide audience. A cancer survivor and a cripple simply couldn’t be sold to middle-Americans, many of whom still view infirmity as a punishment from God.

No, what is needed is arm candy like Cindy McCain. And hey, did it hurt that she was fantastically wealthy and helped greased the skids for McCain’s political ambitions? Of course not - in the conservative Republican world it doesn’t matter how you got the money - only that you got it.

And of course, for all of McCain’s war hero buddies, the ones that like to liquor themselves up before they go out hunting tail(hook), who needs a cripple when you’re a handsome, virile war hero? So many women would jump your bones why stick with the woman who waited for you all those years?

It’s like the end of Catch 22 when Yossarian is made to understand that the privileged are not like you and me (after Captain Nately died ‘in the service’ of uber-capitalist Milo Minderbinder’s M&M Enterprises):

1st Lt. Milo Minderbinder: Nately died a wealthy man, Yossarian. He had over sixty shares in the syndicate.
Yossarian: What difference does that make? He’s dead.
1st Lt. Milo Minderbinder: Then his family will get it.
Yossarian: He didn’t have time to have a family.
1st Lt. Milo Minderbinder: Then his parents will get it.
Yossarian: They don’t need it, they’re rich.
1st Lt. Milo Minderbinder: Then they’ll understand .

And so the conservatives will understand that McCain had to do what he had to do to get where he is. Sometimes people have to be jettisoned, even if they are your wife, for the sake of the mission.

Because as Milo Minderbinder said, even Carol McCain seems to instinctively understand - nothing personal here, just business.

In this corner, the noted Hillary Clinton supporter and champion feminist ERICA (the Hammer) JONNNNNNGGG!

I didn’t know it would feel this bad. I didn’t know it would feel this personal. I’m all for a united Democratic party. But losing my last chance to see a woman in the White House feels like shit. And the gloating by the press is even worse. It sounds like “I told you so.” It feels like watching Joan of Arc burned at the stake. You can smell the burning flesh. And then all the crowing about breaking the race barrier — which we haven’t done yet.

A primary is not a general election. The people who vote in primaries are more sophisticated than the general run of voters. I hope Obama will be our next president. But I can’t watch his triumph without a fearful foreboding. He is not the first charismatic leader we’ve produced and he won’t be the last. But our country is very good at taking down the best and the brightest. Those of us who lived through the unspeakable violence of the sixties can attest to that.

I want to be wrong about violence. I hate the role of Cassandra. I want to believe that America has moved beyond violence and racism and maybe we have. But I thought we had moved beyond sexism, and this campaign proved me wrong.

Yes she did. And that’s why I highlighted that part in blue. He’s gonna die anyway, Jong seems to be saying. Perhaps she and her friends will throw a cocktail and brie party for his funeral. WHY WOULD SHE WRITE THIS? Is it some kind of weird dream people like her keep having that maybe, just maybe, he’ll be disappeared.

This is unforgivable writing.

Not that the Obama fans are doing any better.

In this corner, Barack Obama fan CENK (THE MAD TURK) UYYYYYGUURRRRRRRR:

I couldn’t believe it. She didn’t concede. Is she mental? Her chances of winning aren’t theoretically low now, they’re nonexistent. The race is over. She lost. What is there not to concede? What kind of maniacal move is this?

Yes, I love hard-hitting, driven competitors that never say die. But there are bounds of reason. One of them is that we fight within the confines of the contest. You have to stop hitting your opponent after the match is over. This isn’t even hitting after the end of a round. The other boxer has won and gone home, and you’re trying to follow him there while still swinging at his head. That’s not tenacious, that’s mental.

I’m picturing Hillary shooting baskets after everyone in the stadium has gone home and keeping score with herself and then jumping up and down in the dark saying she had finally won. No, you see, you have to score those baskets while the game is still being played.

So. Hillary Clinton is some kind of hysterical whack-job? Beautiful Cenk - you really know how to talk to the ladies, dont’cha?

In between the screams and cries of sexism, racism, and insanity, John McCain stands ripe for the taking if the Democratic Party could get out of it’s own way and mount a coherent presidential campaign.

I keep telling people that I would not be surprised in the slightest if John McCain won this election.

When the Republicans have a problem with their leaders they keep their arguments down to a dull roar and generally keep the fight in house. When the Democrats fight, the screaming spills out into the streets for everyone to see and hear. It becomes what this has - an unseemly public spectacle.

And how many swing voters find all of this name calling unsettling? In the meantime, McCain may sound like a befuddled idiot but at least he appears like the kind of guy you could trust not to disrupt family Christmas gatherings by starting arguments.

It’s all over the nets today and not just in Huffpo. My blog is getting an unreal number of hits from the Hillbuzz bloggers after my post earlier today was linked there. And what are THEY waiting for?

Well, there’s this tape, see, of Michelle Obama ranting about “whitey.” It’s supposed to torpedo Obama forever and provide for the glorious second coming of Hillary. The problem is that this tape may not even exist. But hope springs eternal.

You have to admit, however, this all makes great copy. The news channels continue to eat this up and roll around in the ratings-generated ad revenue. Primary seasons had become so boring. But this drug out street fight has made for a great show and it may not be over yet.

Meanwhile even though John McCain wears that slightly out of touch befuddled smile, he does, at least, have reason to smile. He may be the cat that eats the canary yet.

What was going through Hillary’s mind? Hey, everyone’s talking about they’ll never let a black man be president! They could shoot him! So why should I quit? It’s a longshot, but, hell. . .

Reuters

Clinton, who later expressed regret over the remark, made it to the editorial board of a South Dakota newspaper, the Sioux Falls Argus Leader, when explaining that other races for the Democratic presidential nomination had lasted into June.

“My husband (Bill Clinton) did not wrap up the nomination in 1992 until he won the California primary somewhere in the middle of June, right? We all remember Bobby Kennedy was assassinated in June in California,” she said.

I’ve been reading all the angry feminists writing over at Jill’s site: Writes Like She Talks. They’ve been going on about how Obama has run a sexist campaign and the media behaved very sexist towards Hillary and they’ve fought too long to not see a woman president in their lifetime, etc. etc.

And there’s been some truth to that. But you’ll see very little in these outraged posts about the role Clinton herself played in her own demise. You won’t read about her arrogance, her megalomania, her outsized sense of entitlement.

But with this last comment, there is nothing, and I mean nothing, that can justify this sad and sorry spectacle of Hillary Clinton any longer. No argument worth it’s salt can be made that she should be the Democratic nominee.

If anyone comes here trying to defend the Clinton comment or paint it as some kind of anomaly, I will blow you out of the water. Fair warning.

This isn’t just beyond the pale - it’s sickening and debasing to the American political process.

As far as I’m concerned, she has given up her right to be in the race with that kind of comment. It’s the latest in a string of incidents that have haunted her campaign but it’s clearly the coup de grace.

Someday there will be a viable woman candidate for President - how about Kathleen Sibelius? But not Hillary - she was fundamentally flawed to begin with and now the flaws are just too evident and lethal.