McCain aaangry....

We all know that the republicans have been having a lot of success in the past in painting virtually any Democrat as a rich elite snob.  Of course, we all know that just about anyone who runs for national office these days is seriously richer than you or anyone you know.  However, there's rich, and then there's rich.  McCain falls into the latter category for sure...

From Tapped:

We know John and Cindy McCain are seriously wealthy - Cindy's fortune has been estimated at $100 million, and they have seven, yes, seven homes (if you're keeping track at home, there's the estate in Sedona, which has two houses on it, the $4.7 million condo in Phoenix, the condo in Arlington, VA, the condo in La Jolla, and the two condos in Coronado, California). But today, Politico managed to unearth a few juicy details that show us just what kind of a lifestyle that gets you. Sure, Cindy buys $3000 suits - not that big a deal. But here are some other interesting points:

• Since 2004, they've spent $11 million on real estate.
• At times, Cindy has charged as much as $500,000 on one credit card and $250,000 on another in a single month. You really have to work hard to charge three quarters of a million dollars in one month. What is she buying, gold-plated Ferraris?
  
• Though the McCains spent a modest $184,000 on household staff in 2006, in 2007 they spent $273,000. And who can blame them? It's so hard to get good help these days.
  
• This is my favorite quote, about why they own two condos in the same building in the beachside town of Coronado: "When I bought the first one, my husband, who is not a beach person, said, 'Oh, this is such a waste of money; the kids will never go,'” she told Vogue. “Then it got to the point where they used it so much I couldn't get in the place. So I bought another one.”

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Obama

Ahhhh, finally a Democrat who will not shirk from fighting with the republicans on national security issues!  Not only that, but in Barack, we have someone who can simply and eloquently state the truth... and with that a devastating and damning argument...

Barack Obama continues hitting back hard today at the false McCain/GOP assaults on him for allegedly seeing terrorism as only a law-enforcement problem...

"I refuse to be lectured on national security by people who are responsible for the most disastrous set of foreign policy decisions in the recent history of the United States. The other side likes to use 9/11 as a political bludgeon. Well, let's talk about 9/11.

"The people who were responsible for murdering 3,000 Americans on 9/11 have not been brought to justice. They are Osama bin Laden, al Qaeda and their sponsors -- the Taliban. They were in Afghanistan. And yet George Bush and John McCain decided in 2002 that we should take our eye off of Afghanistan so that we could invade and occupy a country that had absolutely nothing to do with 9/11. The case for war in Iraq was so thin that George Bush and John McCain had to hype the threat of Saddam Hussein, and make false promises that we'd be greeted as liberators. They misled the American people, and took us into a misguided war.

"Here are the results of their policy. Osama bin Laden and his top leadership -- the people who murdered 3000 Americans -- have a safe-haven in northwest Pakistan, where they operate with such freedom of action that they can still put out hate-filled audiotapes to the outside world. That's the result of the Bush-McCain approach to the war on terrorism."

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So here we have our (still) president Bush using some of his time as he runs out the clock to cement his "legacy."  That is, to give medals to some of the heroes of his term in office.

We know that he previously gave medals on Dec. 14, 2004, the president bestowed medals on George J. Tenet, the longtime director of central intelligence who built the case for going to war based in part on assessments that Iraq possessed deadly unconventional weapons; Gen. Tommy R. Franks, the overall commander of the invasion of Iraq; and L. Paul Bremer III, the chief civilian administrator of the American occupation of the country.

You know, those folks sure did deserve medals, mainly because those three really did a wonderful job helping us with the whole Iraq war thing.  Mission Accomplished and all that.

So now, there are a few more luminaries to add to the list. 

Gen. Peter Pace, who was denied a second term as chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff a year ago because of the war in Iraq, will receive a Presidential Medal of Freedom, the nation’s highest civilian award, the White House announced on Wednesday. General Pace, a retired marine, is one of six medal recipients who will be honored by President Bush on June 19, the White House said. Two Democrats are among the six. Donna E. Shalala, president of the University of Miami in Florida and a former president of Hunter College who was secretary of health and human services under President Bill Clinton, is one.

The sixth recipient is Laurence H. Silberman, a senior federal appeals court judge who was co-chairman of a commission appointed by President Bush in 2004 to study failures in intelligence before the Iraq war. The commission’s report was The sixth recipient is Laurence H. Silberman, a senior federal appeals court judge who was co-chairman of a commission appointed by President Bush in 2004 to study failures in intelligence before the Iraq war. The commission’s report was highly critical of the American intelligence bureaucracy.

So we have another failed general who supported Bush's misguided policies getting this award.  Super.  But what really jumps out at me is the award to Silberman.  Note that he authored a report which was "highly critical of the American intelligence bureaucracy."  Also note that Bush previously awarded the same award to George Tenet, who headed said intelligence bureaucracy during the time in question.  You just gotta love Bush.  Of course, there are ulterior motives all around.  Bush gave the medal to Tenet in order to shut him up as the CIA was being blamed for the fiasco in Iraq.  And Silberman's report was used as cover for that deflection of responsibility on Bush's part.  See folks, it wasn't Bush's fault that we got in a war in Iraq... he had "faulty intelligence."  Of course we all know that is a lie.

Just as a side note, Donna Shalala, one of the only Democrats to get the award from Bush, is a pretty funny choice on his part.  She may have been in Clinton's cabinet, but she's had a pretty dubious history since.  She was embroiled in scandals at the University of Florida due to her extravagant lifestyle on the the University's dime.  She also was infamous for fighting the janitor's union at the school.  Nice for a supposed Democrat.  She most recently has been named in a mini-scandal regarding politicians getting favorable rate on mortgages from Countrywide Financial, a prime mover in the mortgage crisis.  Let's give that woman a medal!!

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Obama

Democratic presidential candidate Barack Obama was taking questions at a town hall meeting in Wisconsin yesterday when he fielded a rather unexpected question about who he might have helping implement his Iraq policy.

A questioner asked if Obama would send George W. Bush to Iraq, as ambassador, after the president leaves office. Obama, who was sipping from a bottle of water, seemed to almost do a spit-take at the absurdity of the suggestion.

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1... 2... 3:45, 6-7-8

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McCain aaangry....

Do you still somehow think McCain is a "Maverick", or "will be better than Bush"?  This is something that you should know about McCain. From the Political Animal blog:

December 20, 2007:

"1. Does the president have inherent powers under the Constitution to conduct surveillance for national security purposes without judicial warrants, regardless of federal statutes?

McCain: There are some areas where the statutes don't apply, such as in the surveillance of overseas communications. Where they do apply, however, I think that presidents have the obligation to obey and enforce laws that are passed by Congress and signed into law by the president, no matter what the situation is.

Okay, so is that a no, in other words, federal statute trumps inherent power in that case, warrantless surveillance?

McCain: I don't think the president has the right to disobey any law."

Now:

"A top adviser to Senator John McCain says Mr. McCain believes that President Bush's program of wiretapping without warrants was lawful, a position that appears to bring him into closer alignment with the sweeping theories of executive authority pushed by the Bush administration legal team.

In a letter posted online by National Review this week, the adviser, Douglas Holtz-Eakin, said Mr. McCain believed that the Constitution gave Mr. Bush the power to authorize the National Security Agency to monitor Americans' international phone calls and e-mail without warrants, despite a 1978 federal statute that required court oversight of surveillance."

Here's the letter posted to NRO; here's Andrew McCarthy discussing it, and here's Glenn Greenwald. Glenn sums it up:

"These days, in order to please the self-proclaimed "small government" conservative movement, a candidate must now vow to spy on Americans with no warrants or oversight of any kind; reserve the right to torture; and even break the law -- ignore popular will as expressed through acts of Congress -- whenever such lawbreaking is deemed beneficial. Those are now defining planks in the limited-government "conservative" movement."

Yep. It's a strange, strange world.

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Some of us knew this all along... but now finally, it is confirmed.  So my only question is why this didn't come out before the last election??? 

Read it here.

Senate committee: Bush knew Iraq claims weren't true

WASHINGTON— A long-awaited Senate Select Intelligence Committee report made public Thursday concludes that President Bush and Vice President Dick Cheney made public statements to promote an invasion of Iraq that they knew at the time were not supported by available intelligence.

A companion report found that a special office set up by then Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld undertook "sensitive intelligence activities" that were inappropriate "without the knowledge of the Intelligence Community or the State Department."

“Before taking the country to war, this administration owed it to the American people to give them a 100 percent accurate picture of the threat we faced. Unfortunately, our Committee has concluded that the administration made significant claims that were not supported by the intelligence,” said committee Chairman John D. Rockefeller IV, D- W. Va.

It's long been known that the administration's claims in the runup to the Iraq war, from Saddam Hussein's alleged ties to al Qaida to whether Iraq had an active nuclear weapons program, were incorrect, and White House spokeswoman Dana Perino suggested the problems were faulty intelligence.

"We had the intelligence that we had fully vetted, but it was wrong," she said. "We certainly regret that and we've taken measures to fix it."

But the Senate report, the first official examination of whether the president and vice president knew that their claims were incorrect at the time that they made them, reached a different conclusion.

“There is no question we all relied on flawed intelligence. But, there is a fundamental difference between relying on incorrect intelligence and deliberately painting a picture to the American people that you know is not fully accurate," Rockefeller said in a statement.

But Rockefeller called the administration’s statements delibrate, writing: "There is no question we all relied on flawed intelligence. But, there is a fundamental difference between relying on incorrect intelligence and deliberately painting a picture to the American people that you know is not fully accurate."

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Gitmo

Wow... just chalk this up to one more in the seemingly never-ending list of reports out of the Bush administration which could have been posted in the Onion.

Detainees released from the prison at Guantanamo Bay have complained about inhumane conditions there, but according to the admiral in charge, their living situation is "pretty much" like that in a fraternity house.

"We don't have any solitary confinement down here in Guantanamo," Buzby replied. "What we have is single cells. I mean, there's one person to a cell. All the cells are all right next to each other."

"That's like having a single apartment in a fraternity house," suggested Lubin.

"Pretty much," Buzby agreed.

You know, the writers for the Onion, the Daily Show, and Colbert Report are going to really have to work for a living when the Bush guys are gone...

People wonder why the rest of the world hates us...  I can't even imagine how insensitive crap like this gets covered in the Middle East.  This guy is an idiot.  Guantanamo needs to be shut down... now...

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Hooray!  The California Supreme Court has ruled that same-sex marriage is legal in California!!!

Gays and lesbians have a constitutional right to marry in California, the state Supreme Court said today in a historic ruling that could be repudiated by the voters in November.

In a 4-3 decision, the justices said the state's ban on same-sex marriage violates the "fundamental constitutional right to form a family relationship." The ruling is likely to flood county courthouses with applications from couples newly eligible to marry when the decision takes effect in 30 days.

Read the story here.

Now the battle with bigotry moves on to the voters.  As Kevin Drum notes:

The initiative to strike down their ruling has already gathered over a million signatures and is just waiting for verification from the Secretary of State before it goes on the November ballot. It's 14 words long, identical to the wording of Prop 22 back in 2000: "Only marriage between a man and a woman is valid or recognized in California." This time, however, it's a constitutional initiative, not a statutory initiative, so if it passes it will be immune to court challenges.

Prop 22 passed overwhelmingly with 63% of the vote. Has 13% of the state decided to relax since then and allow gay couples to live in peace? We're about to find out.

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By the "standards" of the Bush administration, this is just another day at the office... but you really have to be amazed that they are doing this crap.  It is almost like they know that there is no way that McCain is going to get elected, so they don't mind being completely oblivious to public outcry... I mean, let's face it, as long as the MegaCorp (tm) is happy, then the Bush people are happy. And as for average citizens?  Who?  As for any government worker who actually tries to do her job... well she clearly has not gotten the Bush & Co. memo which directs them to either do nothing, or actively try to sabotage any publicly beneficial functions.

SAGINAW, Mich. - The battle over dioxin contamination in this economically stressed region had been raging for years when a top Bush administration official turned up the pressure on Dow Chemical to clean it up.

On Thursday, following months of internal bickering over Mary Gade's interactions with Dow, the administration forced her to quit as head of the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency's Midwest office, based in Chicago.

Gade has been locked in a heated dispute with Dow about long-delayed plans to clean up dioxin-saturated soil and sediment that extends 50 miles beyond its Midland, Mich., plant into Saginaw Bay and Lake Huron. The company dumped the highly toxic and persistent chemical into local rivers for most of the last century.

Gade, appointed by President Bush as regional EPA administrator in September 2006, invoked emergency powers last summer to order the company to remove three hotspots of dioxin near its Midland headquarters.

She demanded more dredging in November, when it was revealed that dioxin levels along a park in Saginaw were 1.6 million parts per trillion, the highest amount ever found in the U.S.

Dow then sought to cut a deal on a more comprehensive cleanup. But Gade ended the negotiations in January, saying Dow was refusing to take action necessary to protect public health and wildlife. Dow responded by appealing to officials in Washington, according to heavily redacted letters the Tribune obtained under the Freedom of Information Act.

Regional EPA administrators typically have wide latitude to enforce environmental laws, but in April Gade drew fire from officials in Washington after she sent contractors to test soil in a Saginaw neighborhood where Dow had found high dioxin levels. The levels in one Saginaw yard were nearly six times higher than the federal cleanup standard, and 65 times higher than what Michigan considers acceptable.

Read the whole article..

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