Month: August 2008

Matt Cooper compares Condi Rice’s appearance of competence with her actual record. Cheney is worse.

Joe Klein tells the truth:

McCain isn’t confident that conservative policies and personal experience can win, given the ruinous state of the nation after eight years of Bush. So he has made a fateful decision: he has personally impugned Obama’s patriotism and allows his surrogates to continue to do that. By doing so, he has allied himself with those who smeared him, his wife, his daughter Bridget, in 2000. Those tactics won George Bush a primary–and a nomination. But they proved a form of slow-acting spiritual poison, rotting the core of the Bush presidency. We’ll see if the public decides to acquiesce in sleaze in 2008, and what sort of presidency–what sort of country–that will produce.

You know you wannit:

A reader writes:

"In the councils of government, we must guard against the acquisition of unwarranted influence, whether sought or unsought, by the military industrial complex. The potential for the disastrous rise of misplaced power exists and will persist. … We must never let the weight of this combination endanger our liberties or democratic processes. We should take nothing for granted. Only an alert and knowledgeable citizenry can compel the proper meshing of the huge industrial and military machinery of defense with our peaceful methods and goals, so that security and liberty may prosper together."
–Dwight D. Eisenhower, 1961

"For some, we now realize, the Cold War was not about democratic values versus totalitarianism, in the Kirkpatrick formulation. It was about American hegemony against any rival power, totalitarian or not, globally expansionist or not. The end of Communism was, for some, a problem. It removed a key rationale for military power."
–you, yesterday…

Surely this is exactly what Eisenhower was talking about.

The hopeful part of me likes to think we are simply in the middle of the process of learning as a country just what he meant by "proper meshing…with our peaceful methods and goals…"  It’s depressing, though, to think the process could take longer than my lifetime, and could incur great cost, injury, and injustice along the way.  Still, that certainly seems to be the case and we must not give up hope.  We must fight the Krauthamers and Kristols and Hannitys and Cheneys of the world, even as it seems we’re gaining no ground or this great American experiment will surely die.

K-Lo yesterday:

Thank God, meanwhile, for all who do provide examples of successful marriage in the world. We’re better for you.

Except for the gay couples who are already providing many examples of successful marriages, rearing kids many of whom would otherwise have no stable homes, and championing the idea in an age when so many trivialize it. These couples K-Lo wants divorced, stigmatized and barred any legal protections. In fact, she wanted to amend the Constitution itself to punish them.

The authors of the Left Behind series say Obama isn’t the Anti-Christ.

"I’ve gotten a lot of questions the last few weeks asking if Obama is the antichrist," says novelist Jenkins. "I tell everyone that I don’t think the antichrist will come out of politics, especially American politics."

"I can see by the language he uses why people think he could be the antichrist," adds LaHaye, "but from my reading of scripture, he doesn’t meet the criteria. There is no indication in the Bible that the antichrist will be an American."

Good thing that’s settled.

(Hat tip: Smith)

From Amy Silverman’s hit job on McCain in the Phoenix’s New Times:

That’s the thing about covering John McCain. Someone always wants you to give him the benefit of the doubt. And there’s usually a pretty good case for why he deserves it, though that doesn’t mean he should be let off the hook completely.

(Hat tip: Dayo Olopade)

Goldberg gets a scoop. My favorite:

 

Jacob Sullum isn’t impressed by the hype. Nor is Coates.

It helps if you don’t care about the truth:

Many of the claims in The Obama Nation – including allegations that Obama lied about when he stopped using cocaine and marijuana, and charges about his relationship with Islam and his participation in the congregation of Jeremiah Wright’s Trinity United Church of Christ – are factually inaccurate and have been disproved. But honesty, accuracy and transparency are besides the point, because, as Corsi told the New York Times, ‘The goal is to defeat Obama. I don’t want Obama to be in office’. This is an honest sentiment that has produced a great deal of dishonest ones.

At least we won’t have Glenn Reynolds giving this stuff credit as he did the Swift Boat smears.