I guess he has no choice. Like W. McCain has always believed war and force are major and viable options to face down an enemy, any enemy, really, whether real or imagined. Indeed, Pat Buchanan of all people said Dick Cheney seems like Ghandi when compared to where McCain stands on the use of force. This is a rather horrifying notion. Certainly the last thing the United States needs is another war monger President and reckless, perilous and irresponsible cowboy diplomacy.
Check out the chilling clip where Pat Buchanan made his alarming observation. (This clip was posted by another diarist previously.)
Endless wars will most certainly require a military draft.
I just happened to pick up my little local paper here in Central PA and a small Page 3 column outlines that our friends in the White House have somehow misplaced/lost/deleted/crashed a boat load of emails dating back to 2003.
Oh my my! What will they do now, as Rove is getting closer to plopping his behind in front of the Judiciary Committee. Claim that someone shredded the last 8 years of Presidential memos?
Recruits are still needed for next week's blogathon on Katrina, Rita, New Orleans, Louisiana, Mississippi, and other areas devastated by these storms--which impacted an area nearly as large as the state of Minnesota.
We must never forget, nor must we allow others to forget, what happened in 2005--and how New Orleans has been neglected and her people given the shaft since then.
What will you drink to toast the end of the Bush era? Will it be something to honor the 43rd President, or are you just looking forward to 44? Will it be something from Texas, which Bush calls home, or Connecticut, where he was really raised? Maybe a nice French champagne, a bit of a poke in his eye? Or do you prefer Italian prosecco, since they supported the "War on Terror"? Whatever it is, get ready to lift a glass and toast the end of an era that America will never forget.
This diary is brought to you by my own site, 2 Days per Bottle, and Wine Blogging Wednesday, a cooperative venture of the wine blogging community. Wine bloggers, meet political bloggers. Political bloggers, meet the wine people. And please come back to see the results of the first WBW Special Release, when the world's wine bloggers review their choice for January 20, 2009.
Wine Bloggers around the country and around the world will post their choices on Wednesday, September 3, during the Republican National Convention. I will post a compendium of them here, but hope you will visit all the sites to see what everybody was drinking.
I haven't found this diaried yet and plan on updating throughout the day, so tell me if I'm wrong so I can delete this.
HuffPost via the AP is reporting our obstinate, stubborn, pathetic White House has finally agreed to what We the People (both here and in Iraq) have been demanding for years.
I may be a Rhode Islander now, but I was born and raised just outside New Haven, CT. I was born in the same hospital as George W. Bush, which is pretty darn freaky. I also had an apartment (for a short time) two blocks from Joe Lieberman's house, in the upscale neighborhood near Yale Golf Course along Forest Road.
U.S. and Iraqi negotiators reached agreement on a security deal that calls for American military forces to leave Iraq's cities by next summer as a prelude to a full withdrawal from the country, according to senior American officials.
The draft agreement sets 2011 as the date by which all remaining U.S. troops will leave Iraq...
Teams of American and Iraqi negotiators spent months haggling over the deal, which represents a remarkable turnaround from just a few months ago, when talk of timetables and deadlines was routinely dismissed by the Bush administration and other Republicans in Washington...
President George W. Bush is almost certain to accept the agreement, according to U.S. officials. The administration believes that the deal doesn't require congressional approval and won't present it to U.S. lawmakers.
U.S. and Iraqi negotiators reached agreement on a security deal that calls for American military forces to leave Iraq's cities by next summer as a prelude to a full withdrawal from the country, according to senior American officials.
The draft agreement sets 2011 as the date by which all remaining U.S. troops will leave Iraq, according to Iraqi Deputy Foreign Minister Mohammed al-Haj Humood and other people familiar with the matter.
...."The talking is done," one U.S. official said late Wednesday night. "Now the decision makers choose whether to give it a thumbs up or a thumbs down."
....U.S. President George W. Bush is almost certain to accept the agreement, according to U.S. officials. The administration believes that the deal doesn't require congressional approval and won't present it to U.S. lawmakers.
McCain: "I know war. I can win wars. There will be more wars. It's okay with me if we stay in Iraq for 100 years." Yes, with McCain as president there would be lots more wars and he's just shown us how. Even David Ignatius criticizes Dangerous McCain quips about Georgia!
Poland signed onto a US missile system today that included US Patriot Missiles in the fine print. Shield deal for Poland/neocons The Georgia/Russia fight helped change public opinion to make this deal possible. Bush admired Saakashvili's dancing so Poland signed on for a missile shield.
The announcement today that the United States will deploy up to 15,000 more troops to Afghanistan is just the latest signal of the Pentagon's seeming support for Barack Obama's strategy to fight Al Qaeda in the region. Following by just weeks Obama's latest call to send at least two more brigades of American troops there, the request by U.S. commanders again confirmed Obama's assertion, one denied by John McCain, that Iraq represents a "zero sum game" for scarce American military resources.
There are only a few PB afficianados on this site, and by afficianados I mean people who are willing to hold their noses past the neo-con stink to get at the traditional conservative perspective. Certainly Buchanan has crossed the line too many times. But often, and especially with regard to foreign policy, Buchanan makes sense, like yesterday's article "Who Started Cold War II?"
This story has been covered already by a few blogs, but not here, and none seems to have presented the graphic shown below.
Jowie Chen, a doctoral student in political science at Stanford, obtained the records of 2.6 million applications for FEMA disaster assistance in Florida in 2004. (This happened not because the Bush administration made them available voluntarily, but because four Florida newspapers won a Freedom of Information Act suit.) Chen then mapped these applications and the subsequent FEMA grants into counties and precincts, added data on actual weather conditions in these locations, their demographic characteristics, and finally local voting patterns in recent Federal elections. The paper can be found here. The following map shows part of his results.
</DIV>
Post partisan my ass! That MIGHT be a good theme as a campaign strategy. It MIGHT appeal to an electorate tired of the incompetent, ineffectual and just plain stupid brand of government they have been getting for the last ten years....you know, since the incredibly partisan impeachment of Bill Clinton by the Republican Congress....
It might sound ... nice ...and evenhanded and reasonable and mature and responsible and all that. But it ignores the simple and undeniable fact that since the Republicans lied, cheated and smeared (including smearing their current champion when he was running against Bush) their way into having full unfettered dominance of the government.....just about everything that could go wrong has gone wrong and the country is in sad, sorry shape.
Because of the Republicans.
Everything the Republicans has touched in the last decade has turned to crap. From the micro (life saving stem cell research) to the macro (Climate Crisis) the Republicans have had full power to implement their vision, programs and policies....and have gotten it wrong every single time.
Eight years ago, then Governor George W. Bush revealingly joked about his backers at the 2000 Al Smith Dinner. "This is an impressive crowd - the haves and the have-mores," Bush said, adding, "Some people call you the elites; I call you my base." With his own quip Saturday night that "$5 million" is his definition of "rich," John McCain made no mistake that he is Bush's natural heir.
WTF: There’s no shortage of memorabilia celebrating Dubya’s final 24 hours of power, by which I mean someone of extreme prescience has trademarked the date itself. Well you can stop looking forward to the third Sunday of the first month right now, my friends, because that’s exactly when the worst shit comes to pass and hits the fan in the process and the resultant shit fallout seeps into your drinking water.
Crusty, curmudgeonly commentator Jack Cafferty of CNN has tossed a spanner in the works of the MSM. In his most recent commentary piece, McCain's many shortcomings as commander in chief are laid bare:
