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Doesn't McCain Know That "Never Again" Only Applies to White People
Posted by Joshua Holland, AlterNet on July 24, 2008 at 7:39 AM.

So, I'm sure you've caught McCain's latest sleazy shot at Obama. If not, here's Steve Benen with the recap:

Speaking today at Yad Vashem, Obama said, "Let our children come here and know this history so they can add their voices to proclaim 'never again.' And may we remember those who perished, not only as victims but also as individuals who hoped and loved and dreamed like us and who have become symbols of the human spirit."

Soon after, the hopelessly tasteless McCain campaign alerted reporters to a news item from a year ago.

Democratic presidential hopeful Barack Obama said Thursday the United States cannot use its military to solve humanitarian problems and that preventing a potential genocide in Iraq isn't a good enough reason to keep U.S. forces there.

"Well, look, if that's the criteria by which we are making decisions on the deployment of U.S. forces, then by that argument you would have 300,000 troops in the Congo right now -- where millions have been slaughtered as a consequence of ethnic strife -- which we haven't done," Obama said in an interview with The Associated Press.

In other words, the McCain campaign wants Americans to believe that Obama is weak on genocide. Asked for clarification, McCain aide Michael Goldfarb told the Huffington Post, "Today he says 'never again.' A year ago stopping genocide wasn't a good enough reason to keep U.S. forces in Iraq. Doesn't that strike you as inconsistent?"

A couple of points. First, the point of keeping troops in Iraq is to keep troops in Iraq -- to have a military footprint in the region (bordering Iran), protect our investments and keep our foot in the door of all that oil. We're also there to avoid "losing" Iraq (to the Iraqis), which would expose the rather obvious fact that we're a declining superpower with much less ability to influence events than we believe we have.

While we can have a serious discussion about the possibility that Iraq's various (and overlapping) civil conflicts might become worse if our troops were to depart -- an idea that Iraqis find crazy -- McCain's suggestion that we're there to prevent genocide is a brazen piece of propaganda that's perfectly divorced from reality. It's just one of the ever-shifting rationales for an indefinite occupation, and one that's designed to appeal to good liberals as well as war supporters.

Iraq is as much at risk of genocide -- I'm talking about genocide, not an intensified civil war -- as Canada.

Read the rest of the post on the flip side »

Conservatives are Livid: Obama Printed Flyers for Speech in Germany IN GERMAN!
Posted by Gavin M, Sadly No! on July 24, 2008 at 6:21 AM.

Patrick Ruffini, another one of those puzzlingly well-placed Republican blogger-consultant-columnist-Webmaster-operatives, as well as a general all-around cigar cutter and Kool-Aid drug mule, thinks he's found a good one:

Obama Campaign Prints German-language Flyers for Berlin Rally

by Patrick Ruffini | July 22, 2008 at 10:36 PM This is pretty extraordinary. A candidate for the American Presidency is using flyers printed in German to turn people out for his campaign rally in Berlin on Thursday. This flyer can be found on a bilingual page on BarackObama.com advertising the event:

The German flyers bear Obama's campaign logo and say "Paid for by Obama for America."

Get that? ...For America! For America! But it's in German!!!

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DC Democrats Campaigning Against Progressive Dem Annette Taddeo
Posted by Matt Stoller, Open Left on July 24, 2008 at 5:40 AM.

Here's something to note.

Anxious Miami Beach officials huddled Tuesday with Florida Department of Transportation representatives, summoned by Rep. Ileana Ros-Lehtinen (R-FL), who met with the group, along with representatives of Reps. Lincoln and Mario Diaz-Balart and Debbie Wasserman Schultz.

So that's three Republicans and a top Democratic leader meeting, and that Democratic leader has pretty much endorsed these three Republicans. Odd, but on local issues, there's a logic to it we can accept. When you combine it with a whisper campaign against Ros-Lehtinen's opponent, though, this begins to really smell.

So let's look closer at a subtle campaign against Ros-Lehtinen's progressive Democratic opponent, Annette Taddeo. This campaign is designed to get two memes out there, that Taddeo can't win and that Ros-Lehtinen is 'moderate'. The first meme is designed to lock out institutional support from Taddeo, the second to help Ros-Lehtinen portray herself as moderate to voters. The notable thing about this campaign against a progressive Democrat is that it's coming from Democrats in the local establishment and parts of the DC establishment. The rumors of Ros-Lehtinen's strength are allowing groups like EMILY's List to not come in to the race, citing viability questions. To his credit Chris Van Hollen at the DCCC has reserved airtime in FL-18, so there is recognition she can pull this off. And I will have stats soon on EMILY's List support of candidates of color to show why the group should come in for Taddeo.

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Her Vagina Belongs to Daddy
Posted by Kathy G, The G-Spot on July 24, 2008 at 5:13 AM.

I heart Digby for many reasons, but one of them is that she was among the first to write about the ghastly "purity balls" -- those sick Christian right rituals in which little girls pledge their "purity" to their daddies. She's written another post about this nauseating patriarchal rite, and it's especially sharp, because it concerns two of the things she understands best: the complete freaking horror show that is the American right, and the shallow, patronizing, bizarrely other-directed and thoroughly phony and dishonest spectacle that is the American mainstream media.

Time magazine has published a piece on the purity balls, and apparently, Time thinks they're just swell. Digby's take on this is spot-on as usual, but I especially enjoyed this:

But people like her would no more ask their own kid to do this than they would suggest she join the Hell's Angels, and any husband and daughter of her social circle would think she was nuts if she even tried. No, this lovely rustic ritual is for the little people who are "authentic" and "natural" and have Better Morals Than Us.

Or, in the words of upper class man-about-town Algernon Moncrief in The Importance of Being Earnest, "Really, if the lower orders don't set us a good example, what on earth is the use of them?"

Digby continues:

It's that phony Village provincialism running amok again spreading patronizing, anti-intellectual drivel that allows these elites to wallow in salt of the earth moral superiority that they do not personally possess but take credit for by writing glowing paeans to primitivism and barbarity that nobody but a few fundamentalist weirdos actually believe in.

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Iraq Update: Missed Deadlines; Sadrists in the Streets; "Security Agreement" Watered Down
Posted by Juan Cole, Informed Comment on July 24, 2008 at 4:48 AM.

First there was going to be a status of forces agreement between the US and Iraq, which would be ratified by the Iraqi parliament and would grant the US long-term bases. Private security guards and US troops would be immune from Iraqi law. US commanders would launch operations at will, would decide who a terrorist was, and would arrest and imprison Iraqis at will.

Then al-Maliki went to Iran for consultations. And Grand Ayatollah Ali Sistani forbade a giveaway of Iraqi sovereignty. And the Sadrists began demonstrating every Friday. Then the US launched a unilateral operation in al-Maliki's home town and killed his cousin.

So the private contractors won't have legal immunity. And the agreement will be just for a year, not long-term. And it won't be ratified by the Iraqi parliament, so it is just a vague agreement between two executives. It won't stipulate long-term arrangements, but its interpretive context will be one in which the Iraqi leadership has expressed a desire for US troops to leave in 2010. It isn't clear if US troops will have legal immunity or whether they will have full freedom of action or whether they will be able to arrest and incarcerate Iraqis at will.

And now, it won't be signed by the deadline of July 31.

You have to wonder whether the Iraqis and the Americans in the end won't have to go back to the UN for a troop mandate again. The Iraqis want out from under the UN but don't want to recognize that the American presence detracts from their sovereignty. D'oh.

No provincial election law again on Monday. Maybe Tuesday. Maybe not.

The Iraqi legislative calendar is more like "Waiting for Godot" than it is like ... a legislative calendar.

Read the rest of the post on the flip side »

Obama Stronger Among White Voters than Gore or Kerry
Posted by Jonathan Singer, MyDD.com on July 24, 2008 at 3:19 AM.

Remember all of the talk about Barack Obama's unique weakness among White voters? I noted the absurdity of this assertion earlier this month, but I thought it would be worth passing on a portion of professor Alan Abramowitz's analysis on the issue.

So does Barack Obama have a problem with white voters? The answer is a resounding "yes." And so has every other Democratic presidential candidate in the past forty years. The last Democratic candidate for president to win a majority of the white vote was Lyndon Johnson in 1964. Al Gore lost the white vote by 12 points in 2000. John Kerry lost the white vote by 17 points in 2004.

Based on five national polls that have been conducted this month -- Gallup, Newsweek, Quinnipiac, CBS/New York Times, and ABC/Washington Post -- Barack Obama is currently trailing John McCain by an average of nine points among white voters. So Obama is doing much better than John Kerry and a little better than Al Gore. In fact, the only Democratic presidential candidates in the past four decades who have done better among white voters were Jimmy Carter in 1976 and Bill Clinton in 1992 and 1996. Not coincidentally, they were also the only successful Democratic presidential candidates in the past four decades. Based on his current showing in the polls, Barack Obama may well be the next one. With whites expected to comprise less than 80 percent of the 2008 electorate, and with a 20-1 margin among black voters and a 2-1 margin among Hispanic voters, Obama's current nine point deficit among white voters would translate into a decisive victory in November.

Shocking, no ... the numbers not lining up with the narrative pushed by a large segment of the punditry. Would it be better if Obama were able to secure a greater share of the White vote? Sure. But politics is about building coalitions, and there is no one single path to success that runs only through the support of White voters in America. Democrats can and repeatedly have secured pluralities and even majorities within the broader electorate even while carrying a minority of the White vote -- and, frankly, it seems more likely than not at this juncture that Obama will win in such a manner this year, too.

AlterNet is a nonprofit organization and does not make political endorsements. The opinions expressed by its writers are their own.

Washington Post Editorial Board Peddles 'U.S. Knows Best' Position on Iraq
Posted by Steve Benen, The Carpetbagger Report on July 23, 2008 at 4:59 PM.

The editorial board of the Washington Post continues to be a mysterious group, making strange arguments that are detached from the paper's own reporting. Indeed, the gap between the quality of the WaPo's news division and editorial division is greater than at any major newspaper in the country.

The Post's unwavering editorial support for the war in Iraq has been well-established, but today, the WaPo outdoes itself with an editorial that seems to reject reality altogether.

The initial media coverage of Barack Obama's visit to Iraq suggested that the Democratic candidate found agreement with his plan to withdraw all U.S. combat forces on a 16-month timetable. So it seems worthwhile to point out that, by Mr. Obama's own account, neither U.S. commanders nor Iraq's principal political leaders actually support his strategy.

Over the last several days, we've learned that both the democratically-elected prime minister and the spokesperson for the Iraqi government support Obama's withdrawal timeline of 2010. Maliki, in fact, did so, by name, without prompting. But the Post still doesn't believe Iraq's principal political leaders are on board with Obama's policy.

And why does the WaPo editorial board continue to deny what is plainly true?

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Looking Back: Rumsfeld Praised Mass Murderers Over PM Maliki
Posted by Jonathan Schwarz, A Tiny Revolution on July 23, 2008 at 4:11 PM.

There's no question Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki has recently been giving the White House and John McCain heartburn. On Saturday in an interview with Der Spiegel he essentially endorsed Obama's plan to withdraw U.S. troops from Iraq. Then did it again today, right after speaking with Obama in Baghdad:

After talks with Democratic presidential candidate Barack Obama on Monday, Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri al Maliki reaffirmed that Iraq wants U.S. combat troops to withdraw from Iraq by the end of 2010, a few months later than Obama had proposed.

So it's worth looking back at the Bush administration's private views of Maliki, as stated by Donald Rumsfeld back in 2006.

For the recent New York Time story on the close government ties of TV military analysts, the paper pried loose tons of internal Pentagon records never meant to see the light of day. Buried in the pile was a recording of Rumsfeld having lunch with many of the Pentagon's analysts in December, 2006 just before he was replaced by Robert Gates. (The large .wav file is available here.)

One section of the recording goes like this:

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Mukasey Asks Congress to Legitimize the "War on Terror"
Posted by Digby, Hullabaloo on July 23, 2008 at 3:03 PM.

Congress should explicitly declare a state of armed conflict with al Qaeda to make clear the United States can detain suspected members as long as the war on terrorism lasts, U.S. Attorney General Michael Mukasey said on Monday.

Mukasey urged Congress to make the declaration in a package of legislative proposals to establish a legal process for terrorism suspects held at Guantanamo, in response to a Supreme Court ruling last month that detainees had a constitutional right to challenge their detention.

"Any legislation should acknowledge again and explicitly that this nation remains engaged in an armed conflict with al Qaeda, the Taliban and associated organizations, who have already proclaimed themselves at war with us," Mukasey said in a speech to the American Enterprise Institute.

As I wrote yesterday, this is nothing but a transparent attempt to get bipartisan buy in, before the election, to the Global War on Terror. They need to keep the torture, rendition and concentration camp regime under wraps and ensure that a larger ongoing war narrative, which favor conservatives no matter who runs the government, remains firmly in place.

It would be a political mistake of epic proportions for the Democrats to agree to anything like this, setting the table for possible decades of being pressured and intimidated into supporting wars and military interventions against the best interests of the country and the world -- not to mention their own political interests. It is not a winner for liberals to help the conservatives pursue their imperial goals. There's no political need for this, so if they do it, one can only assume it's because they actually support the Orwellian concept of endless war.

We've been here before, during the Cold War, which was a real existential threat, at least in the beginning. It's unbelievably foolhardy to do it again.

Russ Feingold, Robert Byrd to Bush: You Have no Authority
Posted by Russ Feingold, AlterNet on July 23, 2008 at 2:12 PM.

The President
The White House
1600 Pennsylvania Avenue
Washington, D.C. 20500

Dear President Bush,

The United States is participating in a Ministerial meeting of the World Trade organization (WTO) this week in Geneva, Switzerland. We understand that the purpose of this summit is to finalize an agreement on certain outstanding issues related to the WTO Doha Round.

The announcement of this WTO Ministerial was surprising to us. Typically high-level negotiations only occur when all parties have authority to make a deal. Yet, the U.S. Constitution grants Congress exclusive authority "to regulate commerce with foreign Nations" and to "lay and collect Taxes [and] Duties."

As you know, for decades U.S. presidents have obtained delegations of this congressional trade authority under what is commonly known as Fast Track. However, your delegation of Fast Track Trade Promotion Authority terminated on June 30, 2007. Congress has refused to provide you with further authority -- either more Fast Track or any other form of trade authority -- nor is there any prospect of that occurring before the end of your term. Indeed, it is likely that in the future the Fast Track process will be replaced altogether with a trade negotiation and approval mechanism that better reflects Congress's constitutional role regarding trade policy.

Therefore we are interested in understanding what USTR Schwab or other U.S. trade officials are representing to other countries' officials regarding their capacity to make binding commitments at this Ministerial on behalf of the U.S. Congress.

We are eager to ensure that if U.S. trade negotiators participate in the current WTO ministerial, they represent U.S. positions that comport with the sort of WTO agreement that could obtain support in the U.S. Congress.

Sincerely,
Russell D. Feingold
United States Senator

Robert C. Byrd
United States Senator

Bob Novak Plows into Pedestrian on K Street, Attempts to Flee the Scene
Posted by Lindsay Beyerstein, Majikthise on July 23, 2008 at 1:22 PM.

Journalist Robert Novak plowed into a pedestrian on K Street this morning. Novak said he didn't realize he'd hit the 60-year-old man, but an eyewitness told ABC News that the victim was "splayed on the windshield" of Novak's black corvette and that there was no way that Novak could have failed to realize he'd struck the man. A bicyclist caught up with Novak about a block away from the crash and informed him that he'd just hit someone.

Watch the video. Novak was cited for failure to yield the right of way. I hope they gave him a breathalyser test. He's slurring his words pretty badly, two hours after the accident. Novak starts talking about 55 seconds into the clip, below. At about 1:22, Novak becomes almost unintelligible when the reporters ask him how his victim is doing.

Hate-Speech Connoisseur Michael Savage Goes After Autism; Gets Pulled From Mississippi Airwaves
Posted by Steven D., Booman Tribune on July 23, 2008 at 12:21 PM.

What does it take to get a racist, liberal hating eliminationist, right wing talk show by Michael Savage canceled in Mississippi? Well, you might think that "nothing" Michael Savage could say would get his program removed from the air there. But you would be wrong. Apparently all it took was for him to call autism a "fraud" and a "racket."

The Super Talk Mississippi radio network has canceled The Savage Nation because of comments syndicated host Michael Savage made about autistic children last week.

Steve Davenport, president and CEO of Super Talk's parent company Telesouth Communications, confirmed The Savage Nation had been dropped from the network's lineup as of Monday.

"It was just horrible what he said," Davenport said Monday.

"When you talk about people in politics, business people, that's one thing. But when you talk about defenseless children, that's another."

Savage, a controversial conservative commentator, said during the July 16 broadcast of his show that autism is a "fraud, a racket ...

"I'll tell you what autism is. In 99 percent of the cases, it's a brat who hasn't been told to cut the act out. That's what autism is.

Read the rest of the post on the flip side »

Feminist Porn: Sex, Consent, and Getting Off
Posted by KaeLyn, Feministe on July 23, 2008 at 11:14 AM.

Warning: May not be safe for work ... unless you are like me and work at Planned Parenthood. :) The links at the end of the article are definitely not work-safe and may contain adult content to be viewed only by people over the age of 18.

Feminism has a love/hate relationship with sex. The "Feminist Sex Wars" rage on and not just between second and third-wavers. I once spent an evening at a hole-in-the-wall strip club with a 20-something friend fiercely debating her anti-pornography/anti-prostitution position. We spent half an hour of that night talking with a dancer, a young single mom and the only woman-of-color on the floor. She said it was better than working at a grocery store; she made more money and didn't have to pay for day care. How could I blame her? It was niave and classist for us to engage her in this conversation, but I was in college and didn't know how stupid I was being. This also happened to be the night I bought my first vibrator, with that same friend, at a sleazy adult store in Syracuse, NY. Long story short is that I became passionate about the rights of sex workers and people that work in the sex/adult industry and began a more intelligent and articulate study of why I felt so compelled to defend pornography, prostitution, women's sexual pleasure, and my own sexual desires.

In the 60's and 70's, Andrea Dworkin led a brilliant fight to expose and illuminate rape culture and end violence against women. Her analysis of the gender binary, pornography, and theories of penetrative sex as a patriarchal act is at the titillating center of a lively and necessary conversation in the feminist community. I also believe the work of Dworkin and her peers has contributed to the division of lesbian and heterosexual feminists, persecution and demoralization of sex work and sex workers, exclusion of transfolk from feminist spaces, and a whole lot of personal feminist guilt. But I gotta' give kudos to Dworkin for putting rape culture on the map and, there are many awesome, inspiring, fabulous feminist leaders I admire who also happen to be card-carrying members of the anti-prostitution camp including Gloria Steinem and Robin Morgan.

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"Banned" Bush Video Emerges: Blames Recession on His Drunken Wall Street Cronies
Posted by Greg Mitchell, Huffington Post on July 23, 2008 at 10:28 AM.

An ABC-TV outlet in Houston, and now the Houston Chronicle, have posted a video taken at a political fundraiser for Pete Olson, featuring George W. Bush last week -- capturing some embarrassing/revealing moments after, he noted, he had asked cameras to be turned off.

The first moments form the July 18 event find him speaking almost incoherently in admitting, for once, that his friends in big business had screwed up: "There's no question about it. Wall Street got drunk -- that's one of the reasons I asked you to turn off the TV cameras -- it got drunk and now it's got a hangover. The question is how long will it sober up and not try to do all these fancy financial instruments."

Then, making light of the foreclosure crisis, he said: "And then we got a housing issue ... not in Houston, and evidently not in Dallas, because Laura's over there trying to buy a house. [great laughter] I like Crawford but unfortunately after eight years of sacrifice, I am apparently no longer the decision maker."

(Catch the video on the flip side.)

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McCain, Despite Deep Flaws, Has a Chance... Thank Nixon
Posted by Steve M., No More Mister Nice Blog on July 23, 2008 at 9:00 AM.

Reading the blogosphere these days, I get the feeling that a lot of people think the election is over. Obama's withdrawal plans have been seconded by Maliki; he's being cheered by GIs in Iraq; McCain looks old and tired and cranky. Here's Michael Crowley of The New Republic:

...I can hardly believe how badly John McCain is getting routed in the television-imagery game. As Obama saunters through the Middle East, looking cool and relaxed, McCain has been holding events where he looks stiff, uncomfortable, and, in his bracing claim today that Obama would lose a war to win an election, sounding bitter to the point of nasty. (McCain flashed another bizarre forced smile after his scathing shot at Obama tonight, but it didn't prevent him from coming across as whiny and petulant.)...

And look, there's Obama in a helicopter with General Petraeus while McCain sits in a golf cart with Poppy Bush! McCain has really lousy optics these days, right?

And yet:

For the first time since shortly after clinching the Democratic nomination, we now have Barack Obama as less than a 60 percent favorite to win the election. Our simulations presently project Obama to win the election 58.4 percent of the time, with McCain winning the remaining 41.6 percent.

The main culprit for the decline are the new numbers out of Ohio, where Rasmussen shows John McCain jumping into a 10-point lead.... Obama's numbers had declined among Democrats, Republicans, and independents alike....

There is also new polling out from American Research Group, which has Florida and New Hampshire moving in John McCain's direction. In Florida, Obama now trails by 2 after having led by 5 points, and in New Hampshire, he leads by 2 after having led by 12....

And Gallup still sees a close race -- Obama's up by 3.

What's going on here?

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