Republican for President

The last bunch of Republicans turned out to be crooks. What can we hope for from the next? On the evidence, gross hypocrisy, with hints of lunacy. For today's consideration, John McCain of Arizona, Senator, former naval aviator, long time prisoner of war in Vietnam, former straight talker and current sell-out. After falling foul of the law and ethics through his involvement with Arizona's anti-pornography crusader and savings and loan swindler Charles Keating, McCain got religion and crusaded against lobbyists influence and pork barrel politics. Until he decided he needed the support of the Christian right and its devotion to lobbying.

Standard politics so far. What qualifies McCain as a genuine lunatic are his pronouncements on war. This is a man whose fond vision is of war unending. Josh Marshall looked at his pronouncements in the Iowa debate:

McCain said that the fight against militant Islam is the calling or fight of our generation, or something to that effect -- and of course that's a quite subjective statement so he can say whatever he wants.

Then he says, though, that this is a fight that will be with us for the rest of this century. To quote the man, "I also firmly believe that the challenge of the 21st century is the struggle against radical Islamic extremism. It is a transcendent issue. It is hydra-headed. It will be with us for the rest of the century."

Now, think about that. That's ninety-three years.

You can almost imagine him licking his chops. Hoo boy, war for-ev-er! No piddling 25 year war against fascism, or sixty year fight against communism, but a whole century.

How preposterous. Most Islamic countries are aligned with us, are our dependents, or are our bankers - or all of the above. All together, their military power is a tiny fraction of ours. The only possible excuse for prolonged war against any or all facets of Islam is a scheme to siphon money from the treasury to military contractors. Unfortunately, that is just what Cheney-Rumsfeld-Bush-Lieberman-McCain and friends have given us.

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

Anti-Libertarian: re-post

The most pointed critique of social security and liberalism in general is the libertarian critique. The problem with libertarians, for a liberal, is that we have too much in common. We both believe in individual rights, tolerance of individual differences, and dislike government prescription of religion. The basic difference, it seems to me, is the different answers we give to Cain's (with thanks to the Captain - my original version had the corpse asking the question!) famous question: "Am I my brother's keeper?" That's not really my basic bitch against the libertarians though. My real complaint is the same as my complaint against most religion - its premise is a fraud. For those who can't stand to wait for the punchline, I believe that trying to implement libertarian principles leads to tyranny or social disintegration. Demonstrating that takes some historical (and pre-historical) context. For all but the last 15,000 or so of the 100,000 years the human spec
Read more

Uneasy Lies The Head

Uneasy lies the head that wears a crown ........... Shakespeare Henry IV, Part II. So it is with us and our slightly distant primate cousins , so it seems. A 9-year study of wild baboons in Kenya by Princeton University and the Institute of Primate Research may turn conventional assumptions of alphas males upside down. The study found that alpha males have high testosterone levels, which allows them to dominate other baboons, get access to more food, and attract better mates. This is expected. Surprisingly, though, the alpha males also have high levels of stress hormone glucocorticoid, which scientists measured from their feces samples. In fact, the stress of alpha baboons was on par with low-ranking baboons. The convention wisdom is that access to food and females provides life security and thus less stress for dominant males. Conversely, weak males who are constantly threatened by starvation and physical violence from stronger males are thought to be more stressed. The st
Read more

We Call it Soccer

The US played its best, and maybe only good game of World Cup, but lost thanks to brilliant goalkeeping by the Swedish keeper and the bizarre method soccer uses to settle ties when three US stars could not put the ball on frame from the 12 yard spot.  At the end it came down to a blocked shot that spun in by maybe a couple of centimeters. Well, that's football - too much like life.   Which brings me to a modest proposal.  Replace the thirty minute overtimes with as many 7-player 15 minute periods as needed to settle it.  Scoring should be much easier with fewer players.
Read more