But his gains may be the GOP’s loss. Domenico Montanaro notes:
McCain really doesn’t have a money problem. In fact, as Rick Davis bragged last week, money isn’t going to be the issue many thought it would be just two months ago. Why is this? It appears many Republican donors are buying into the argument that the ONLY shot Republicans have of winning anything is the presidency. And this is hurting Republicans running for the House and Senate where Democrats are dominating on the financial front.
Yesterday, the DSCC released a list of 11 races being held in GOP-held seats, and the Democrats were nearly on par or ahead in every race, according to the most recent fundraising report. Question: Are we seeing the reverse ’96 effect taking place inside the GOP? In 1996, the word went out that Dole was a lost cause, and all of the GOP’s resources went to saving House and Senate candidates in order to reserve their control of Congress. This cycle, the chance of the GOP winning control of either the House or the Senate appears beyond remote. Does that mean many of the professional GOP-givers are gravitating toward sending money to causes that help McCain? It sure looks like it.
"Barack Obama’s recent call for "civilian national security force" that is "just as powerful, just as strong, just as well-funded" as the nation’s military didn’t sound any better than it did in the original German," – Confederate Yankee.
Still, it’s good to see some on the right begin to worry about state power. Funny how oblivious they were when a president asserted the right to capture, imprison without charges and torture anyone he named an "enemy conbatant." But the liberals are the fascists, aren’t they?
Kay Ryan, an openly lesbian poet, has been named the new poet laureate. From the Atlantic‘s archives, one of her poems:
"Hailstorm"
Like a storm of hornets, the little white planets layer and relayer as they whip around in their high orbits, getting more and more dense before they crash against our crust. A maelstrom of ferocious little fists and punches, so hard to believe once it’s past.
I’m glad that Mayer responded to Seligman’s non-denial denial–and also glad that you’e been highlighting the back and forth. Just like the APA, Seligman is happy to "strongly disapprove of torture" and to "never provide assistance in its process." But ask the APA what it means by"torture," and it will refuse to answer–or refer you over to the federal government. Credulous news outlets tend to run headlines like "APA passes resolution strongly condemning torture" without noticing the word games at play. (Art Levine wrote a good piece about this in the Washington Monthly.) Seligman plays the exact same game, and, since I once respected his work, it’s a sickening thing to see. So let’s ask Seligman: How do YOU define torture? Is waterboarding, forced standing, or exposure to extremes of heat and cold torture? If what we read about Guantanamo Bay is true, do you condemn it?
I am performing an experiment: for one year, I will live as Oprah advises on her television show, on her website, and in the pages of her magazines. The tagline to her website is “Live Your Best Life” and I wonder, will I truly find bliss if I commit wholeheartedly to her lifestyle suggestions?
Stuart Taylor argues against war crimes for those involved with torture:
The reason for pardons is simple: what this country needs most is a full and true accounting of what took place. The incoming president should convene a truth commission, with subpoena power, to explore every possible misdeed and derive lessons from it. But this should not be a criminal investigation, which would only force officials to hire lawyers and batten down the hatches.
I must say I’m baffled by Stu’s sudden campaign – he already began this in National Journal – to support immunity for war crimes to those responsible for them. His argument seems to be that if we prosecute those who knowingly broke the law, knowingly crafted torture techniques, and knowingly lied about it to the public, the criminals will be less likely to tell us what they know. But war criminals, because of the very gravity of their crimes, are unlikely to confess to anything, even granted immunity. Does anyone think Addington or Yoo will cop to their crimes under any circumstance? And the precedent of letting them off the hook essentially signals to future presidents that torture is fine and forgivable.
It isn’t. These people knew full well what they were doing; there is a growing documentary record of their criminality; and their own "subjective views" that they were only doing it to save the state are what every war criminal has always claimed. Yoo’s memo, drawing on Serbian fascist precedents, cannot conceivably be understood as anything but a candid backing for torture. The man has said he’d be fine if the president crushed the testicles of a terror suspect’s child to get a confession, true or not.
Rumsfeld’s own hand-writing is on a memo fiddling with techniques devised by the Gestapo. And what does Stu think Cheney meant by "the dark side", for Pete’s sake? That we know these people, that they are part of the Washington elite, even friends, should not render us indifferent to the most basic principles of decency and the rule of law.
Cheney and Addington and Bush actively, relentlessly and surreptitiously broke the law, rescinded the Geneva Conventions, approved memos that are laughable hack work in retrospect, used false confessions procured by torture as rationales to go to war, and destroyed the moral reputation of the US, the honor of the armed services and the rule of law. They are immensely powerful, privileged, wealthy men. And they are war criminals, under the strictest interpretation of that term. They have shifted blame on the lowest of the low, while fixing the system to protect them from accountability.
America doesn’t pardon war criminals. It prosecutes and, in the past, has even executed them for the same techniques that Bush and Rumsfeld and Cheney endorsed.
Romney’s "Ms"–the message on the economy, his and his supporters’ money, the Mormons and the enthusiasm they would bring to the campaign, especially in Mormon-heavy states like Colorado and Nevada, and of course Romney’s ties to his home state Michigan– make the case for choosing Romney very strong. An early selection would give the campaign an huge lift throughout the summer, one that could keep the already lower-than-expected Obama lead in the single digits.
If Romney is picked, Independents will flee to Obama.
Beneath his wildly fluctuating ideological positions, McCain is an establishmentarian Republican. Unlike Bush, he cares about elite opinion. He is comfortable sharing power in the traditional postwar style rather than monopolizing it. He might not be another Teddy Roosevelt, but right now another Gerald Ford doesn’t look so bad.
The Dish 