McCain Is Wrong Again

Yesterday Senator McCain said:

“We have drawn down to pre-surge levels. Basra, Mosul and now Sadr City are quiet.”

Unfortunately for Senator McCain that’s not true. On some level,Senator McCain seemed to realize he was wrong by altering his statement to “I said we’ve drawn down.” However, he refused to admit it:

“Of course not. I said we’ve drawn down, the rest of them will be home at the end of July. we have drawn down, we will continue to draw down and I hope that General (David) Petraeus will see fit to recommend for the consideration of the president of the United States an additional draw down after the end of July.”

Of course, that isn’t what he said and the math isn’t on his side. We currently have 17 brigades in Iraq. Before the surge started there were 15. 15=/= 17 and thus we haven’t drawn down to pre-surge levels. McCain’s refusal to admit an error prompted a response from Senator Obama:

“Today, Senator McCain refused to acknowledge that he had made a mistake,just like George Bush, when he was presented with the truth, he just dug in and refused to admit his mistake.”

Speaking of the surge, there’s also the matter of “is it working?” Senator McCain and President Bush certainly say it is. However, the problem is that they have changed what the goal was. They currently say that the surge is working because it has increased security. Unfortunately for Bush and McCain, Bush had originally said that the goal of the surge was to enable political reconciliation which hasn’t taken place. In fact, the largest Suni political group in Iraq recently called off talks to end their boycott of the government.

McCain’s strong point is supposed to be Iraq, so much so that he has used it as an attack on Senator Obama. Yet, Senator McCain has demonstrated that he is either lying to the American people about Iraq or he simply doesn’t know what’s going on. Neither is a good option.

The Sisterhood of the Terrorist Scarf

A couple of days ago, conservative blogger Michelle Malkin attacked Dunkin Donuts over the ad seen above.In a bout of raging xenophobia, Malkin alleged that the ratty scarf worn by TV chef Rachel Ray was promoting the message of:

“murderous Palestinian jihad.”

Rather than trust in the facts, the donut and coffee chain buckled before the pressure of Malkin and removed the ad. Of course, paranoia and xenophobia once again place their victim into a no-win situation as a picture of Megan McCain recently surfaced wearing a remarkably similar scarf:

Now, of course any sane person knows that wearing a scarf with a pattern doesn’t make you a terrorist. Malkin on the other hand now has to either say that John McCain’s daughter supports terrorists if she wants to keep pretending she has any facts on her side and isn’t a hypocrite.

The GOP Returns Fire On McClellan

Scott McClellan bravely, if belatedly criticized President Bush in his book What Happened: Inside the Bush White House and Washington’s Culture of Deception. His first prime time interview took place last night on Countdown with Keith Olbermann. As you might expect, much of what he said in this interview made Republicans angry. There were multiple mouthpieces for this outrage but the man who exemplifies this outrage is former Senator, former Presidential candidate, and former Viagra spokesman Bob Dole who, in an e-mail obtained by politico.com, said:

“There are miserable creatures like you in every administration who don’t have the guts to speak up or quit if there are disagreements with the boss or colleagues. No, your type soaks up the benefits of power, revels in the limelight for years, then quits, and spurned on by greed, cashes in with a scathing critique. … If all these awful things were happening, and perhaps some may have been, you should have spoken up publicly like a man, or quit your cushy, high profile job.  That would have taken integrity and courage but then you would have had your credibility and your complaints could have been aired objectively. You’re a hot ticket now but don’t you, deep down, feel like a total ingrate?”

Now, I think Dole’s point that McClellan should have spoken up sooner is a good one, however the fact that he resorted to largely simply doing an ad-hominem attack rather than by attempting to deconstruct any of McClellan’s points speaks volumes, especially since the White House received an advance copy of the book early and didn’t ask McClellan to make any changes.

However, this kind of assault is standard operating procedure for Bush loyalists whenever a former administration official criticizes the President. Back in 2004, Scott McClellan was admonishing Richard Clarke for leaving in a political year and selling a book. Now that the shoe is on the other foot however it appears that Mr. McClellan has greater sympathy for Mr. Clarke given that when they bumped into each other in a hotel last night, Mr.McClellan asked Clarke for forgiveness. Clarke said that he thought he could forgive McClellan now.

Another interesting tidbit from the McClellan controversy was that last night when Keith Olbermann asked who he was going to vote for. McClellan said:

“I’m intrigued by what Senator Obama has been running on, about changing the way Washington works. I’ve had respect for Senator McCain as well for the way he’s worked across the aisle with Democrats. But I’m going to take my time and think it through.”

If you had asked me back in 2004 that Scott McClellan was going to transition from being the poster boy for the Bush administration to being the poster boy for Bush fatigue I’d have thought you were crazy.

Top Democrats Move To End The Primary

The Democratic Leadership has announced that they intend to quickly end the Democratic primary next week by encouraging undecided to super delegates to pick a side. In a speech and interview in San Francisco, Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid said:

“By this time next week, it will all be over give or take a day,”

He also said that he had spoken with DNC Chairman Howard Dean and Speaker of the House Pelosi:

“We agree there won’t be a fight at the convention. … We’re going to urge folks to make a decision quickly – next week.”

And of course a quick resolution favors Senator Obama as it would have anyone who was winning. This will in all likelihood create a resentment in some Clinton supporters but is critical for the Democratic Party because historically the party which carries the nomination fight into its convention always loses. Of course, it remains to be seen if Hillary will stop once Obama has achieved the nomination.

Debate About Civil Rights Resumes Due To CA Ruling

The California ruling that gay people deserve to have the same rights as heterosexuals has caused those who oppose equality to lash out:

“I think the California decision does refocus our movement on the threat of marriage being redefined,” – John Stemberger, head of the Florida Family Policy Council

“The California decision shows exactly why the people of Arizona should vote for a marriage definition in November and not leave it for judges or politicians,” – Cathi Herrod of a Focus on the Family affiliate

However, a new poll may pose a problem for them as a recent poll shows that 51% of California voters are in favor of keeping gay marriage illegal as opposed to an older poll which had over 50% favoring violating their rights by banning gay marriage.

Clinton Demands The Impossible

DNC lawyers have ruled that the rules committee is unable to seat more than 50% of the delegates from Florida and Michigan. This of course means that even if the rules committee was solely made up of Clinton supporters they couldn’t give her what they wanted. This however doesn’t stop the Clinton campaign from demanding that all be seated as exemplified by the fact that a top Clinton adviser has referred to splitting the delegates as a “fatally flawed” plan. Many have suggested that this is a horrible ruling for the Clintons as it means that she is now unable to win the popular vote(which she had started using as her metric.) However, it seems to me that this is exactly what the Clintons want. If the committee had been able to rule in the Clintons’ favor they would have nothing else to argue and would have to wind down their campaign.

However now the Clintons’ can draw on outrage(whether real or feigned) and keep the campaign going until the exact moment that Obama is officially named the Democratic nominee.

Lieberman To Speak At Hagee’s Conference

Senator Lieberman is going to speak at a conference hosted by John Hagee. Hagee of course is the man who said that Hitler was a sent by God to fulfill his will and drive the Jews into Israel. Senator Lieberman has denounced Hagee’s remark, but apparently doesn’t believe that saying the holocaust was holy is enough to make him back out of his commitment. Of course, he’s compared Rev. Hagee to Moses so I suppose there’s nothing that would disturb his conscience.

McCain’s Continuing Lobbyist Trouble

Phil Gramm, John McCain’s economic adviser has a very checkered past. He has served in the US government as both a Democrat Representative(until he betrayed them by leaking their strategy to President Reagan) and a Republican. Other than the aforementioned betrayal, that seems good. However, he was also a paid lobbyist for the Swiss bank UBS. UBS is a bank that was so deeply immersed within the current Mortgage crisis that the company has told its non-American employees to stay out the the United States because they might be arrested as part of Congress’s investigation into whether or not UBS inflated the packages it offered investors . The worst part is that he was lobbying the Congress while he was helping McCain create his economic plan.

Some economists also attribute a more personal responsibility for the mortgage crisis to Gramm than that of the standard UBS employee because of his efforts to deregulate the banking industry in the 1990s.

UBS has declined to comment on whether or not Gramm had ever lobbied McCain specifically. Senator McCain was willing to comment and issued a denial that he was ever lobbied by Sen. Gramm.

Scott McClellan ‘Speaks’

In his new book, What Happened: Inside the Bush White House and Washington’s Culture of Deception, former White House Press Secretary Scott McClellan alleges that President Bush has engaged in “self-deception”, has run the White House as if it was a “permanent campaign”, and started the Iraq war simply to help himself “achieve greatness.” None of these allegations are new, but the fact that they are coming from a former Bush loyalist makes them all the more striking.

Excerpts from the book include the following. On Iraq:

“As I have heard Bush say, only a wartime president is likely to achieve greatness. In part because the epochal upheavals of war provide the opportunity for transformative change of the kind Bush hoped to achieve. In Iraq, Bush saw his opportunity to create a legacy of greatness.”

“History appears poised to confirm what most Americans today have decided: that the decision to invade Iraq was a serious strategic blunder. No one, including me, can know with absolute certainty how the war will be viewed decades from now when we can more fully understand its impact. What I do know is that war should only be waged when necessary, and the Iraq war was not necessary.”

On President Bush’s alleged cocaine use:

“I heard Bush say, ‘You know, the truth is I honestly don’t remember whether I tried it or not. We had some pretty wild parties back in the day, and I just don’t remember.’ I remember thinking to myself, how can that be? How can someone simply not remember whether or not they used an illegal substance like cocaine? It didn’t make a lot of sense.”

On propoganda:

“I still like and admire President Bush. But he and his advisers confused the propaganda campaign with the high level of candor and honesty so fundamentally needed to build and then sustain public support during a time of war. … In this regard, he was terribly ill-served by his top advisers, especially those involved directly in national security.”

As you’d expect, people associated with the White House such as Karl Rove, Ari Fleischer, Dana Perino, and McClellan’s former boss Dan Bartlett have jumped to defend the President and in the case of Rove, himself. They all said they were “puzzled” and that in so many words “this isn’t the Scott McClellan I knew.” Perino described McClellan as a “disgruntled employee.” Karl Rove pointed out that while McClellan said that he(Rove) and Libby didn’t know each other, but they actually knew each other quite well and met often. Of course, Mr. Rove’s attempt to defend himself only vindicates Mr. McClellan. It shows that as Rove and McClellan himself both said, the former press secretary was “mislead” or “left out of the loop” depending on who is saying it. Not only does this support McClellan’s claims, but it also severely weakens the claims of Ms. Perino and Mr. Fleischer as if McClellan was able to be effectively cut of the loop, whose to say that Perino isn’t and Fleischer wasn’t?

McClellan’s book also may pose problems for John McCain because it leaves Senator McCain with two bad options. Either he was mislead and thus shouldn’t be president because he is unable to accurately separate truth from fiction or he lied to the American people and shouldn’t be president because he has lied to the American people.

The Truth About Hagee

Now, McCain has renounced Hagee so this may be a moot point, but I want to correct a false narrative that was starting to get around. Conservatives who were forced to defend McCain for his former endorsement simply decided to underplay the amount of influence Hagee has and try to make him seem like he is a fringe figure. This of course is simply not true as Hagee had enough notoriety for not one, but two journalists to do investigative work about him and his church.

Bill Moyers did a piece about Hagee and Christians United for Israel which aired on October 5, 2007. Mr. Moyers pointed out the fact that Hagee’s church had a congregation of 18,000 members as well as the 99 million homes which he reaches with his weekly radio broadcast. He also points out that McCain, Lieberman, and Warner were all lobbied by CUFI. Lieberman described Hagee as:

“an ‘Ish Elokim,’ a man of God and those words really do fit him; and, I’d add something else, like Moses he’s become the leader of a mighty multitude, even greater than the multitude that Moses led from Egypt to the promised land.”

The other journalist who profiled Hagee is Matt Taibbi, who is a contributing editor at Rolling Stone. He went undercover into Hagee’s church and writes about it extensively in his book The Great Derangement. He describes a scene where Hagee explains his view of environmentalists:

“They want to use the environment to force America to reduce its population. And how do they want to do that? Through abortion.”

It’s no longer a campaign issue, but people shouldn’t ignore the fact that a lunatic like Hagee has enough influence that McCain felt it was worth pursuing his endorsement just because he has denounced him. It means McCain certainly disagrees with Hagee(which was obvious anyway) but, Hagee is still something which needs to be addressed by the larger civil society. He’s excercising his freedom of speech which is good, but extremists like Hagee need to be fought by disseminating the truth.