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What’s up with this?

Wednesday, August 6, 2008

I spent a good deal of time this morning searching the New York Times for coverage of Ron Suskind’s new book. After all, it still isn’t every day that we hear about a new impeachable offense coming out of this administration, though I have to agree we hear about them with depressing regularity. Nonetheless, Suskind’s charges are big even for this administration.

Well, I couldn’t find a mention. Nada. Not even the he said/she said coverage from in the Courant (it is actually an article from the Washington Post). Well, no one’s perfect and I could have missed it, so I went to the Times Reader, which I now have on my computer, and did a little search. The Times on the web, by the way, is updated during the day. Anyway, here’s what I found (click on the image for a larger view):

The Times Reader covers the last seven days, which is why it didn’t retrieve articles from the distant past. Suskind is not the National Enquirer. He’s won the Pulitzer Prize, and he’s uncovered stories that have, consistently, turned out to be “reality based”. If his story on Bush/Cheney’s criminality isn’t news, it’s hard to say what is.

By the way, out of an excess of caution, I assumed the search engine was case sensitive and typed in “Suskind”, with the same results.

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Yawn! Another impeachable offense. I’ve lost count

Tuesday, August 5, 2008

Is anyone surprised at the news that Bush told the CIA to forge a letter linking Saddam to Al Qaeda? I’d be more suprised if someone had established as fact that he hadn’t done it.

Here’s another surprise. The Democrats will tut-tut and do nothing. I suppose an argument can be made that, at this point, Bush would merely run out the clock.

So let me make a suggestion. Other countries that have thrown off dictatorial regimes have established Truth Commissions to get the facts out before memories fade. We need to do that too, assuming we can throw the bums out. And I mean a real commission, composed of people interested in ferreting out the truth, not a “bi-partisan” commission dedicated to continuing the coverup. We either lance this boil or let it continue to infect the body politic.

Hats off to Ron Suskind, by the way, who is among the two or three reporters in this country who has consistently committed journalism during the Bush years. I’m proud to say that my firstborn was his principal assistant when Suskind was writing The Price of Loyalty, the first big Bush bashing book. If we had 10 more like him maybe we wouldn’t be in our current straits.

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Very generous McCain Supporters

Tuesday, August 5, 2008

Remember when John McCain was in favor of campaign finance reform, before he became the biggest campaign finance cheater. First there was his gaming of the public finance system, now his supporters are engaged in blatant money laundering:

Alice Rocchio is an office manager at the New York headquarters of the Hess Corp., drives a 1993 Chevy Cavalier and lives in an apartment in Queens, N.Y., with her husband, Pasquale, an Amtrak foreman.

Despite what appears to be a middle-class lifestyle, the couple has written $61,600 in checks to John McCain’s presidential campaign and the Republican National Committee, most of it within days of McCain’s decision to endorse offshore oil drilling.

At a June fundraiser, the Rocchios joined top executives at Hess Corp. — Chairman and Chief Executive Officer John Hess, his wife, Susan, his mother, Norma Hess, and six other officials in giving a total of $313,500 to a joint McCain-RNC fundraising committee, Federal Election Commission records show.

…

Alice Rocchio, reached at the office, confirmed that she registered her ’93 Chevy in February, but said that she “absolutely” used her own money to make the donations.

But of course. It’s a measure of how broken the system is that this obvious sham will not be investigated, though it should be fairly easy to get to the bottom of it. If she wrote a check the money had to be in an account. When did it go in, and when did it come out.

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Good riddance, but what symbolism

Monday, August 4, 2008

From the Moscow Times:

U.S. auto giant General Motors is negotiating with Russian automakers on a possible sale of the Hummer brand, Vedomosti reported Monday.

Among potential Russian buyers are Oleg Deripaska’s Russian Machines, Vadim Shvetsov’s Sollers and Kaliningrad-based automaker Avtotor, the newspaper said.

GM already has a Hummer assembly plant in Kaliningrad.

GM is also in talks with Indian carmaker Mahindra & Mahindra and automakers in China about selling the Hummer brand, Reuters reported last week.

I’ve always thought it would be cheaper for the Hummer owners if they just responded to those penis enlargement emails everyone gets. Neither technique actually works, but the email approach isn’t quite so obvious.

But still, one must ask, does this mean that America is no longer the land of excess for its own sake, or will the market for these monstrosities still be mainly American?

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Reminder-Drinking Liberally Thursday

Monday, August 4, 2008

As always, the First Thursday of the month brings yet another edition of Drinking Liberally, Southeastern Connecticut version. The fun starts at 6:30 at the Bulkeley House, in New London at 111 Bank Street.

We can all obsess about our various anxieties about the campaign. There’s sure to be some good old fashioned Lieberman bashing mixed with hearty condemnations of the spineless Democrats. Join the fun!

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Who put Barack on the currency?

Monday, August 4, 2008

One of my most frequent commenters pointed out that John McCain put Obama on a dollar bill some time ago. So it would appear that Obama wasn’t just speculating when he said they’d be pointing out that he doesn’t look like other presidents on the currency:

[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CDTJDv4hevU&eurl[/youtube]

This line of attack would be truly baffling it it weren’t for the obvious subtext. The corporate media has done its best to ignore it, but David Gergen broke the code of silence on this on one of the Sunday shows:

[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VfXvK84MPqQ[/youtube]

Funny thing. George Bush was a Texas governor who knew nothing about foreign affairs and was an obvious dunce. He had been picked for the job by a bunch of Republican hotshots who figured they could successfully sell him. He was a certifiable chickenhawk. Had his last name not been Bush, he’d have done time for insider trading, if not for going AWOL. He had no obvious qualifications, and in fact had a history of failure at almost everything he did. No one ever called him presumptuous. No one ever called him arrogant, though he is in fact both of those things. No one even called him unqualified, or at least no one in the national press.

The fact is that you have to be a little bit presumptuous and a little bit arrogant to run for president. I have been following politics since I was a kid. I can’t recall a presidential candidate that was attacked for being either presumptuous or arrogant. I’m sure it’s just coincidence that the first one is a black man.

On the other hand, not many have been senile, although some have been dolts. We will not hear about McCain’s problem unless he demonstrates it in a very public forum, such as, let us fervently hope, the debates.

It’s going to be a long campaign. It was in late July and early August that John Kerry lost his race. Obama has to start hitting back. The McCain sleaze machine is driving the narrative. The media is used to letting the Republicans frame the issues. Unfortunately, Obama is going it alone. The Democrats are, as usual, AWOL themselves and are not pushing a counter-narrative. On the other hand, after Obama sort of threw Wes Clark under the bus, you can understand why they might be a little shy about going on the attack.

Filed in Presidential Politics, The Real McCain | | Comments (0)

Losing it

Sunday, August 3, 2008

It’s pretty clear that this is going to be a dirty election. Obama has the choice of getting dirty, or losing. Just like Kerry. A modest suggestion. Suggest ever so subtly that McCain is, shall we say, losing it. At this point he appears to be already as senile as Reagan was when he left office. Videos like this ought to help make the case. Of course, they should be as selectively edited as McCain’s attack ads. And another thing, ever so politely tell the media to kiss your ass when they accuse you of going dirty.

[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JVgT__TZNdQ[/youtube]

McCain is arguing that Obama isn’t ready to lead. It’s a natural response to say that McCain isn’t capable of doing so.

Filed in Presidential Politics, The Real McCain | | Comments (1)

And it wasn’t so nice to call her a trollop, either

Sunday, August 3, 2008

So far as the mainstream press is concerned, this incident never happened, except apparently it did. Anyway, it’s a funny video (via Suburban Guerilla):

[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RFCl3EUMHSc[/youtube]

Filed in The Real McCain | | Comments (0)

That’s “Yogi”, with a “Y”

Sunday, August 3, 2008

Yesterday took place the last Old Timers Day game to be held at the present Yankee Stadium. The front page of the Courant’s sports section (paper, not on-line edition) has a picture of an aged gnome identified as “Jogi Berra”. Jogi? Surely someone was asleep at the editor’s desk. I have decided to believe that this misspelling was occasioned by the fact that whoever made this mistake is too young to remember Yogi, or, or that matter, his namesake bear. How else explain this grievous error?

Were it any other Yankee I would let it go unnoticed, or even feel a bit of satisfaction. I am an inveterate Yankee hater, as are all us true Red Sox fans, but I think I speak for most of us when I say that even during the 50s, when the Yanks were at their peak and the Sox had reached their nadir, Yogi was always an exception. He transcended the despicable, abhorrent, abominable, contemptible, detestable, loathsome team of which he was a part. He further proved his worth by refusing to enter Yankee Stadium until the despicable etc. George Steinbrenner apologized to him for, essentially, being George Steinbrenner.

A great player, and a great guy, who deserved to play for Boston (well, he may not see it that way) and who surely deserves to have his name spelled correctly.

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Over the top; Jumping the shark

Saturday, August 2, 2008

John McCain’s latest ad compares Obama to the Messiah, or, I suppose, claims that Obama has been doing so. Am I missing something? The negative line at the end seems like an afterthought. In any event, since when does the Messiah have to prove he’s ready to lead? He’s the Messiah, after all. This whole “celebrity” meme, which McCain has now taken to the third power, is puzzling. I guess the theory is that it goes after Obama where he’s strongest, but I’m not sure this line of attack is ultimately a winner, and it’s so ludicrous that it might cost McCain his biggest fans: the media, for as John Aravosis points out at the link above, these attacks are coming directly from him, not from an organization over which he can pretend to have no control.

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