Posts Tagged ‘John McCain’

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Bush may be going. But the religious right is fighting fit

September 7, 2008

Not so long ago, Britain and the rest of Europe were rejoicing in America’s presidential choice of Barack Obama versus John McCain. The hated George W Bush would be gone and a sensible, smart leader would inhabit the White House again – whoever won. The Economist put McCain and Obama on its cover and declared, ‘This is the most impressive choice America has had for a very long time.’ Praise the Lord.

Then along came Sarah Palin, the lightly travelled Christian evangelical McCain chose as his running mate. Much has been made of the soap-operatic side of the governor of Alaska: the caribou-hunting, mooseburger-eating mother-of-five who drives herself to work, her beauty queen past, her pregnant, unwed 17-year-old daughter. What really matters is what she believes in and why McCain selected her. On both counts, much of the world outside America will not be pleased.

Palin describes herself and her family as ‘typical’. But to most of the planet, she’s an exotic. She’s a fundamentalist Christian. She advocated teaching creationism alongside evolution in Alaska’s schools. Her right-to-life convictions extend to stem cell research, which she opposes.

She’s opposed to gay marriage. She’s about as right as a Republican can get. She does not believe human behaviour is responsible for global warming. She supports home schooling and other alternatives to traditional state education. She’s anti-gun control; for example, she supports ending the ban on handguns that has existed in Washington DC for more than three decades.

Palin has said she would not force her views on others. Indeed, she kept a campaign pledge not to push as governor for mandatory inclusion of creationism in her state’s school curriculum. But she cannot pretend always to divorce her personal views from matters of state and governance. In praying that a natural gas pipeline would be built in Alaska, she used traditional evangelical language. She believes the US mission in Iraq is a ‘task that is from God’.

The McCain who chose Palin is not the McCain familiar to many of us outside the US. The McCain we know is a worldly, well-informed, straight-talking Republican who’s a likeable fixture at policy talking shops in London and Berlin, a man at ease with men and women of international affairs across the world. His views do not always coincide with his chums in world capitals – eg, his hawkishness on Iraq – but he’s long been seen as a safe and pragmatic pair of hands on big issues like trade (he’s a free trader, more so than Obama) and the environment (unlike Palin, he accepts that human behaviour is a contributor to climate change).

The McCain who chose Palin is someone who found himself in a political panic. In the weeks before the Democratic national convention, the polls put Obama and McCain head to head. Predictably, Obama got a boost after the Democratic lovefest in Denver. But even discounting that, at a time of widespread disaffection with Bush and the Republican party more generally, the inertia of public opinion heading into an election seemed to favour Obama. The natural inclination of many of McCai n’s advisers was to turn to the base, the far right wing of the party, much of it evangelical, whose money, hard work and get-out-the-vote fervour could make a big difference on 4 November.

Under other circumstances, McCain might have gone for somebody more like himself – Senator Joe Lieberman of Connecticut, a pro-Iraq war Democrat-turned-independent, or former Pennsylvania governor Tom Ridge, chosen by Bush to be the first director of the Office of Homeland Security after 9/11. But Lieberman, who is Jewish, and Ridge, a Catholic, are supporters of abortion rights. McCain occupies a kind of middle ground: he’s in favour of overturning Roe versus Wade, the Supreme Court decision upholding a woman’s right to abortion, but he’s against prosecuting women who have abortions. If how to appeal to the base was the question, neither Lieberman nor Ridge was the answer.

Palin was. Her inexperience is easily ridiculed, especially when Cindy McCain, John’s wife, comes along and tries to portray Palin as a keen Kremlinologist (‘Remember: Alaska is the closest part of our continent to Russia. So, it’s not as if she doesn’t understand what’s at stake.’) Palin’s message to the world is much like the one she delivered last Wednesday to her detractors in America: ‘Here’s a little news flash for all those reporters and commentators: I’m not going to Washington to seek their good opinion – I’m going to Washington to serve the people of this country.’

The message of her candidacy, the message of McCain’s choice, is equally plain. America’s religious right is back. In fact, despite all the wishful thinking riding on the departure of Bush, the religious right never really went away.

· Stryker McGuire is a contributing editor of ‘Newsweek’ and editor of ‘International Quarterly’.

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Palin was member of party calling for vote on Alaskan secession from US

September 4, 2008

Revelations about McCain’s running mate for vice-president raise questions about his selection

John McCain and Sarah Palin

US Republican presidential candidate John McCain with his vice-presidential running mate, Alaska governor Sarah Palin, in Ohio. Photograph: Matt Sullivan/Reuters

New revelations about the Republican vice-presidential candidate Sarah Palin — including her membership of a party that wants Alaskans to vote on becoming a separate country — are raising questions about how thoroughly John McCain’s campaign vetted her background before adding her to the ticket.

Palin was a member of the Alaskan Independence party (AIP) before becoming an elected Republican official, according to party members, and recorded a video message for the AIP convention this year. The AIP’s chief goal is securing Alaska a vote on seceding from the US, a goal that party leaders believe the state was denied before it became part of the US almost 50 years ago.

Yet it is the AIP’s motto, “Alaska First, Alaska Always”, that may cause the most trouble for McCain. The Republican’s campaign slogan this year is “Country First”.

At the convention where Palin’s video was played, the AIP vice-chairman, George Clark, told the audience that she was an AIP member before getting her first political post as mayor of the small town of Wasilla, Alaska.

“But you get along to go along — she eventually joined the Republican party, where she had all kinds of problems with their ethics, and well, I won’t go into that,” Clark said. “She also had about an 80% approval rating, and is pretty well sympathetic to her former membership.”

Palin suggested in a July interview with CNBC news that she would insist on making Alaskan issues a high priority before agreeing to serve as a vice-presidential candidate. “We want to make sure that that VP slot would be a fruitful type of position, especially for Alaskans, and for the things we’re trying to accomplish up here for the rest of the US, before I can even start addressing that question,” she said.

In response to the AIP flap, the McCain camp denied that Palin was a party member and released voter registration documents that showed her affiliating with Republicans. “If the Alaska Independence Party at some point taught Governor Palin their secret handshake, there is no record of it,” McCain aide Michael Goldfarb wrote on the campaign’s website. “Otherwise, the only relevant criterion for membership in a party is registration — and Palin has never been a member of the AIP.

Intense media scrutiny of Palin since she became McCain’s running mate four days ago has led to speculation that the Republican party failed to fully examine her background. In addition to the pregnancy of Palin’s 17-year-old unmarried daughter, Bristol, several other disclosures threaten to throw the McCain camp into turmoil.

Palin has promoted her independence from Alaska’s powerful senior senator, Ted Stevens, who is facing seven criminal charges in Washington. But she served for two years as a director for one of his political groups that was able to raise unlimited money from corporate patrons.

Palin faced pressure to resign as mayor of Wasilla in 1997 after she fired the city police chief for not fully supporting her agenda, leading to a lawsuit for breach of contract.

In Alaska, Palin faces an ethics investigation into whether she abused her office by firing the public safety commissioner, who refused to intervene in a messy divorce case involving her sister. Palin has hired an attorney to help her handle the case, leading to another round of embarrassing press coverage.

McCain’s spokesman, Tucker Eskew, defended the selection: “This legal defence is neither new nor uncommon nor at all political. It is a matter of her job and is not recent and it is not related to her selection on the McCain-Palin ticket.”

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Making a Killing in Iraq: John McCain and the Telecoms

September 2, 2008

Nikolas Kozloff | Counterpunch, Sep 1, 2008

It’s no secret that John McCain has been a longtime friend of the telecom industry.  Indeed, the Arizona Senator has had important historic ties to big corporations like AT&T, MCI and Qualcomm.  In return for their financial contributions, McCain, who partly oversees the telecommunication industry in the Senate, has acted to protect and look out for the political and economic interests of the telecoms on Capitol Hill.

Such connections are well known, yet few have paused to consider how Iraq fits into the wider jigsaw puzzle.  Prior to the war in Iraq, McCain was one of the biggest boosters of the invasion.  While it’s unclear whether the telecoms actually lobbied McCain on this score, they certainly benefited under the subsequent occupation.

To get a sense of the sheer scope of McCain’s incestuous relationship with the telecoms, one need only log on to the Web site of the Center for Responsive Politics.  In the 1998 electoral cycle, AT&T gave $34,000 to McCain.  In the 2000 cycle, the telecom giant provided $69,000, in 2002 $61,000, in 2004 $39,000, in 2006 $29,000 and in 2008 $187,000.  Over the course of his career, AT&T has been McCain’s second largest corporate backer.

What’s more, AT&T has donated handsomely to McCain’s International Republican Institute (IRI), a private/public organization that carries out the far right’s foreign policy agenda in Iraq and elsewhere (for more on McCain and his relationship with the IRI, see my previous column, “Promoting Iraqi Occupation For ‘a Million Years,’ McCain and The International Republican Institute,” June 9, 2008.  In 2006, the company gave the IRI $200,000.  AT&T spokesman Michael Balmoris declined to elaborate on why the international telecommunications provider wrote a big check.  “AT&T contributes to a variety of charitable organizations,” he said flippantly.

If all that money was not enough to secure the Arizona Senator’s allegiance, AT&T may also count on an army of lobbyists who are now allied to the McCain campaign.  Take for example campaign adviser Charlie Black, whose lobbying firm BKSH has represented AT&T for the past decade.  Then there’s Mark Buse, McCain’s Senate Chief of Staff, who worked as a lobbyist for AT&T Wireless from 2002 to 2005.

Other companies such as MCI and Qualcomm have also played a role in the Arizona politician’s Senate career.  Take for instance Tom Loeffler, McCain’s campaign co-chairman and former Congressman of Texas.  Loeffler, through his lobbying firm Loeffler Group, has represented Qualcomm since 1999.  All told, Qualcomm employees, spouses and political action committees have given tens of thousands of dollars to the McCain campaign.  Meanwhile Kirck Blalock, a McCain campaign fundraiser, lobbied MCI from 2002 to 2005 through his firm Fierce, Blalock and Isakowitz.

Though McCain routinely derides the influence of “special interest lobbyists,” his ties to the telecom lobbyists undermine any such claims.  Of the 66 current or former lobbyists working for the Arizona senator or raising money for his presidential campaign, 23 have lobbied for telecommunications companies in the past decade.

McCain is a senior member of the Senate Commerce Committee, which oversees the telecom industry and the Federal Communications Commission (FCC).  The Arizona Senator has repeatedly pushed industry-backed legislation.  McCain’s efforts to eliminate taxes and regulations on telecommunications services have won him praise from industry executives.  In the late 1990s, the Arizona Senator wrote the FCC, urging the agency to give serious consideration to the idea of allowing AT&T and MCI to enter the long-distance market.  Four months later, AT&T wrote a check for $25,800 to McCain.

If that was not enough, high-up McCain officials such as Charlie Black secretly lobbied Congress to approve a measure wiping out all private lawsuits against the telecoms for assisting the U.S. intelligence community’s warrantless surveillance programs.  McCain himself became an “unqualified” supporter of telecom immunity, claiming in a statement to the National Review that “neither the Administration nor the telecoms need apologize for actions that most people, except for the ACLU and the trial lawyers, understand were Constitutional and appropriate.”  Needless to say, McCain voted in favor of granting amnesty to AT&T and other telecoms at exactly the time that his close adviser Black was taking money from AT&T to influence Congress on its behalf.

Making a Killing in Iraq

Even as McCain was lobbying hard for the Telecom industry in the late 1990s, the Arizona Senator worked overtime to build up the case for war in the Middle East.  McCain served as the “honorary co-chair” of the Committee for the Liberation of Iraq, a group which helped push for official government as well as public support for the invasion of Iraq after the 9/11 terror attacks.

Continued . . .

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The US Presidential Elections

September 1, 2008

A view from India

By Badri Raina | ZNet, August 31, 2008

I

First the question: does it matter much whether America elects a Republican or a Democrat as its President?

May be not to the rest of the world, but to American citizens it does.

After all, there are worries related to whether taxes shall go up or be cut—and for which segments of the population; whether health care systems will see greater privatization or greater and more equitable state sponsorship; whether more young people can or cannot afford a college education; whether prices of food and fuel—already the lowest worldwide– shall likewise go up or down; whether corporate profits stand to dwindle or multiply, at home and abroad; whether jobs will continue to be outsourced or retained within the U.S of A; and whether or not more warfare will be in the offing to clean up the world for democracy and concomitant virtues.

Speaking of virtues, the other important consideration must be whether more “pro-life” or “pro-choice” judges will come to adorn the Supreme Court.

Always a wonder, though, that “pro-life” America should worry so little about hundreds of thousands of little babies who through the years have had to die before their time in consequence of its righteous crusades in, for example, Iraq and Afghanistan. Increasingly now also in the friendly land of Pakistan. A mystery that no doubt some innovative twist of evangelical ingenuity can resolve.

Additionally, in the context of an America post the September, 2001 trauma (avoiding with some satisfaction the ritualized nomenclature “9/11”) whether state policy will tilt more towards greater security clampdown on citizen’s “inalienable rights” or whether America’s global pursuit of “democracy” will entail further curtailment of democratic rights at home.

And whether the new President prefers to cut emissions and absorb within indigenous precincts toxic materials, or continue to ship them to regions of the world that after all are too distant and too dark to matter.

II

I said at the outset that these elections may not matter to the world outside America, for the simple reason that it is no longer sensible to count India as being “outside America.”

Indeed it now is the case that elections within India are no longer of great concern (especially after the Left has been excised) to India’s corporate classes, or indeed, to any classes at all. It hardly matters whether these are won by the Congress or the Bhartiya Janata Party—the two “mainstream nationalist” parties—singly or in coalition (the Left excluded), since both now subscribe to a governing hypothesis that comprises a mutually- agreed ideological confluence.

That confluence includes the pursuit of strategic military dominance, the transfer of wealth from public to private interests—both national and foreign–, a generic suspicion of Muslims, a brazen disregard of right-wing Hindu vigilantism of the most violent kind, a statist indulgence of such vigilantism as constituting, after all, not “terroristic” but “nationalistic” impulses, despite some recent proven instances of right-wing Hindu terrorist activity (Nanded, Tinkasi, Kanpur etc.,), a close militarist and technological embrace with the Zionists, superceding India’s traditional links with the Eastern and Middle-Eastern cultures and regions, and a readiness to facilitate American strategic interests to penetrate the Asian and Far-Eastern dominions through strategic defence arrangements, joint military exercises, and inter-operable infrastructures.

In India, therefore, the Presidential election in America is viewed with great trepidation. And chiefly by our corporate ruling class and their influential consumerist support base among upwardly- mobile Indians who define their “nationalism” entirely in militarist, racial, and “cultural-nationalist” terms, in stark contrast to other segments of the intelligentsia who remain boorishly wedded to an anti-colonial and anti-imperialist construct of nationalism. The latter construct entailing archaic ideas about “seculalrism” and “equity” within the self-reliant sovereignty of the nation-state. As well as a commitment to universal disarmament and peaceful co-existence.

Something of that trepidation has been coming across on India’s corporate TV channels, some directly now subsidiaries of American corporate media conglomerates.

Only last night there was this anchor opening her “face the nation” routine by first tendentiously announcing the name “Barrack Hussain Obama” to the two “experts” on the show that asked the question whether, after all, this gentleman would make an adequate “twenty- first- century President.”

To her visible dismay, the ongoing poll on the ticker-tape suggested that some 62% thought he would. How wrong-headed can you get!

Also, none of her pointed prodding would elicit any of the following:

–that maybe even now the Hussain bit, of which “Indonesian past” Barrack spoke not at all, complained the anchor, would put paid to Obama’s chances;

–that maybe, after all, the colour of his skin and his so ‘differentness’ from a “proper” American persona would yet halt his illicit ambition;

–or that, may be, madam Palin’s admirable family values and gun-loving patriotism would, in tandem, rob the Democrats of votaries of Hillary Clinton.

In fairness to her two “experts,” neither of them seemed to think such fears were of substance, as they sought to dwell upon the great changing moment in America. Leaving the good anchor in wonderment as to “which side they were on.”

Continued . . .

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Obama accepts Democratic nomination

August 29, 2008

Al Jazeera, August 29, 2008

Obama said voting for McCain would mean four more years of Bush’s policies [AFP]

Barack Obama has accepted the US Democratic presidential nomination, promising to end what he calls the “broken politics of Washington” if elected president.

The first black presidential nominee from a major political party in the US made a stinging attack on George Bush’s policies, in a speech to 84,000 supporters at a sports stadium in Denver, Colorado, on Thursday.

And he went on the attack against his Republican rival, John McCain, reiterating warnings that voting in the Arizona senator would mean four more years of the policies of the Bush administration.

“John McCain has voted with George Bush 90 per cent of the time. Senator McCain likes to talk about judgment, but really, what does it say about your judgment when you think George Bush was right more than 90 per cent of the time?

“I don’t know about you, but I’m not ready to take a 10 per cent chance on change,” the Illinois senator said.

Amid fireworks and confetti, Obama was joined onstage afterwards by his wife, Michelle, and two daughters, along with Joe Biden, his running-mate, and his family.

But McCain immediately hit back following the speech, with his campaign issuing a statement saying Obama was not ready to become president.

“When the temple comes down, the fireworks end, and the words are over, the facts remain: Senator Obama still has no record of bipartisanship, still opposes offshore drilling, still voted to raise taxes on those making just $42,000 per year, and still voted against funds for American troops in harm’s way.”

Detailed speech

Obama paid tribute to his former rival, Hillary Clinton, and her husband, Bill Clinton, the former president, in a push for party unity early in his speech as the Democrats gear up for the battle for the White House on November 4.

In focus

In-depth coverage of the US election

Al Jazeera’s Rob Reynolds said the speech contained a level of detail that would satisfy those who have been complaining that Obama’s speeches are full of high-flown rhetoric, but lack specifics.

Obama spent a large of his speech addressing what many polls suggest is the greatest concern among voters: the economy.

He said the “economic turmoil” highlighted by soaring home foreclosures, plummeting house values and rising fuel prices was “not all of government’s making”.

“But the failure to respond is a direct result of a broken politics in Washington and the failed presidency of George W Bush,” he said.

Marwan Bishara, Al Jazeera’s senior political analyst, said the speech was progressive by US standards.

“He made sure that he is in no way mentioned as an African-American.  This was an American speaking to other Americans.  Colour was not part of this event.  It was nuanced,” Bishara said.

Details of change

IN DEPTH

Full text of Obama speech

Spelling out what changes he would make as president, Obama promised to “cut taxes for 95% of all working families” and “finally end our dependence on oil from the Middle East” in 10 years.”Washington has been talking about our oil addiction for the last 30 years, and by the way John McCain has been there for 26 of them.

“And in that time, he’s said no to higher fuel-efficiency standards for cars, no to investments in renewable energy, no to renewable fuels. Today, we import triple the amount of oil as the day that Senator McCain took office.

Saying he would tap the country’s “natural gas reserves, invest in clean coal technology, and find ways to safely harness nuclear power”, Obama also promised to invest $150bn over the next decade in affordable, renewable sources of energy – wind power and solar power and the next generation of biofuels.

But he also said that there needed to be “a renewed sense of responsibility from each of us … each of us must do our part to make our homes and businesses more efficient”.

On defence and security – considered by many to be McCain’s strongest policy area – Obama said he was ready to debate McCain on “who has the temperament, and judgment, to serve as the next commander-in-chief”.

“For while senator McCain was turning his sights to Iraq just days after 9/11, I stood up and opposed this war, knowing that it would distract us from the real threats we face,” he said.

The Democratic candidate spoke in front of 84,000 supporters [GALLO/GETTY]

“And today, as my call for a time frame to remove our troops from Iraq has been echoed by the Iraqi government and even the Bush administration, even after we learnt that Iraq has a $79bn surplus while we’re wallowing in deficits, John McCain stands alone in his stubborn refusal to end a misguided war.”If John McCain wants to follow George Bush with more tough talk and bad strategy, that is his choice but it is not the change that America needs.”

Obama said he would “end this war in Iraq responsibly, and finish the fight against al-Qaeda and the Taliban in Afghanistan”.

“But I will also renew the tough, direct diplomacy that can prevent Iran from obtaining nuclear weapons… And I will restore our moral standing so that America is once more the last, best hope for all who are called to the cause of freedom, who long for lives of peace, and who yearn for a better future.”

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Foreign Policy Guru and Adviser to John McCain: Who is Randy Scheunemann?

August 24, 2008
Global Research, August 22, 2008

By Patrick J. Buchanan

He is the principal foreign policy adviser to John McCain and potential successor to Henry Kissinger and Zbigniew Brzezinski as national security adviser to the president of the United States.

But Randy Scheunemann has another identity, another role.

He is a dual loyalist, a foreign agent whose assignment is to get America committed to spilling the blood of her sons for client regimes who have made this moral mercenary a rich man.

From January 2007 to March 2008, the McCain campaign paid Scheunemann $70,000 — pocket change compared to the $290,000 his Orion Strategies banked in those same 15 months from the Georgian regime of Mikheil Saakashvili.

What were Mikheil’s marching orders to Tbilisi’s man in Washington? Get Georgia a NATO war guarantee. Get America committed to fight Russia, if necessary, on behalf of Georgia.

Scheunemann came close to succeeding.

Had he done so, U.S. soldiers and Marines from Idaho and West Virginia would be killing Russians in the Caucasus, and dying to protect Scheunemann’s client, who launched this idiotic war the night of Aug. 7. That people like Scheunemann hire themselves out to put American lives on the line for their clients is a classic corruption of American democracy.

U.S. backing for his campaign to retrieve his lost provinces is what Saakashvili paid Scheunemann to produce. But why should Americans fight Russians to force 70,000 South Ossetians back into the custody of a regime they detest? Why not let the South Ossetians decide their own future in free elections?

Not only is the folly of the Bush interventionist policy on display in the Caucasus, so, too, is its manifest incoherence.

Defense Secretary Robert Gates says we have sought for 45 years to stay out of a shooting war with Russia and we are not going to get into one now. President Bush assured us there will be no U.S. military response to the Russian move into Georgia.

That is a recognition of, and a bowing to, reality — namely, that Russia’s control of South Ossetia and Abkhazia and occupation of a strip of Georgia cannot be a casus belli for the United States. We may deplore it, but it cannot justify war with Russia.

If that be true, and it transparently is, what are McCain, Barack Obama, Bush, and German Chancellor Angela Merkel doing committing the United States and Germany to bringing Georgia into NATO? For that would commit us to war for a cause we have already conceded, by our paralysis, does not justify a war.

Not only did Scheunemann’s two-man lobbying firm receive $730,000 since 2001 to get Georgia a NATO war guarantee, he was paid by Romania and Latvia to do the same. And he succeeded.

Latvia, a tiny Baltic republic annexed by Joseph Stalin in June 1940 during his pact with Adolf Hitler, was set free at the end of the Cold War. Yet hundreds of thousands of Russians had been moved into Latvia by Stalin, and as Riga served as a base of the Baltic Sea fleet, many Russian naval officers retired there.

The children and grandchildren of these Russians are Latvian citizens. They are a cause of constant tension with ethnic Letts and of strife with Moscow, which has assumed the role of protector of Russians left behind in the “near abroad” when the Soviet Union broke apart.

Thanks to the lobbying of Scheunemann and friends, Latvia has been brought into NATO and given a U.S. war guarantee. If Russia intervenes to halt some nasty ethnic violence in Riga, the United States is committed to come in and drive the Russians out.

This is the situation in which the interventionists have placed our country: committed to go to war for countries and causes that do not justify war, against a Russia that is re-emerging as a great power only to find NATO squatting on her doorstep.

Scheunemann’s resume as a War Party apparatchik is lengthy. He signed the PNAC (Project for the New American Century) letter to President Clinton urging war on Iraq, four years before 9-11. He signed the PNAC ultimatum to Bush, nine days after 9-11, threatening him with political reprisal if he did not go to war against Iraq. He was executive director of the “Committee for the Liberation of Iraq,” a propaganda front for Ahmad Chalabi and his pack of liars who deceived us into war.

Now Scheunemann is the neocon agent in place in McCain’s camp.

The neocons got their war with Iraq. They are pushing for war on Iran. And they are now baiting the Russian Bear.

Is this what McCain has on offer? Endless war?

Why would McCain seek foreign policy counsel from the same discredited crowd that has all but destroyed the presidency of George Bush?

“Against the insidious wiles of foreign influence … a free people ought to be constantly awake,” Washington warned in his Farewell Address. Our Founding Father was warning against the Randy Scheunemanns among us, agents hired by foreign powers to deceive Americans into fighting their wars. And none dare call it treason.

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Jerome Corsi: How a Racist, Conspiratorial Crank Became a Top GOP Anti-Obama Point Man

August 23, 2008

By Max Blumenthal, The Nation. Posted August 23, 2008.

Corsi’s success represents the apotheosis of a long, strange trip from the furthest shores of the right into the national spotlight.

These are good times for Jerome Corsi. Already notorious for his factually challenged book-length takedown of 2004 Democratic presidential nominee John Kerry, Unfit For Command, the 61-year-old Corsi has another hit on his hands. His new book, Obama Nation: Leftist Politics and the Cult of Personality has made Corsi a hot commodity again on the right-wing radio circuit, the bane of the Obama campaign and catapulted to the top slot on the New York Times bestseller list. With his newfound notoriety, Corsi has brought his pathographic anti-Obama narrative to hundreds of thousands of readers — and millions on radio and TV — just as he did with Kerry. Corsi has become the court bard of the conservative movement. “The goal is to defeat Obama,” Corsi told the New York Times. “I don’t want Obama to be in office.”

Corsi’s success represents the apotheosis of a long, strange trip from the furthest shores of the right into the national spotlight. During George W. Bush’s first term, Corsi was a little-known financial services marketing specialist. In 1995, according to the Boston Globe, he coaxed twenty people into a shadowy investment venture in Poland that ultimately lost them a total of $1.2 million. “It ruined my career in the brokerage business, and it was a sad story for a lot of people,” said Bradley Amundson, one of those enlisted into Corsi’s bungled scheme. The FBI opened an investigation but never filed any charges.

Corsi had dabbled off-and-on the fringes of conservative backlash politics for nearly three decades. In his spare time, which he appeared to have lots of, Corsi busied himself at his computer, firing off opinions on the far-right website Free Republic, marked by their sexual and racial obsessions.

In a comment typical of the dozens he posted under the handle “jrlc,” Corsi wrote, “Anybody ask why HELLary couldn’t keep BJ Bill satisfied? Not lesbo or anything, is she?” In another, he ranted, “Isn’t the Democratic Party the official SODOMIZER PROTECTION ASSOCIATION of AMERICA — oh, I forgot, it was just an accident that Clintoon’s [sic] first act in office was to promote ‘gays in the military.’ RAGHEADS are Boy-Bumpers as clearly as they are Women-Haters — it all goes together.”

Then he composed Unfit For Command, suddenly vaulting into best-sellerdom. Surrounded by the media buzz of talk radio and Fox News, Corsi no longer plied the seamy troll-zones of the right-wing blogosphere. Overnight, he had become a conservative folk hero. But as Bush’s popularity waned during his second term, Corsi’s star dimmed. He tried to reignite it by co-authoring a book with “prophecy expert” Michael Evans, Showdown with Nuclear Iran, calling on the United States and Israel to attack Iran “before it’s too late,” and another, Black Gold Stranglehold, claiming to expose the Big Lie that will “enslave” Americans: “the belief that oil is a fossil fuel and a finite resource.” Corsi’s conspiracy theories consolidated his cult status, but he did not revive the brightness of his Swiftboating campaign. As another presidential election approached, however, Corsi followed his well-trod path back to renown.

In early 2007, Corsi huddled with an old friend, Howard Phillips, a veteran conservative operative who had attempted to organize the anti-government militia movement into a cohesive political bloc during the 1990s. Corsi emerged from their discussion convinced of his destiny. He would declare his campaign for the presidential nomination of the ultra-right Constitution Party, enthusiastically embrace the party’s call for a complete halt on immigration, banning abortion even in cases of rape and incest, and upholding its official platform that the “U.S. Constitution established a Republic under God, rather than a democracy.” With this momentous announcement, Corsi hoped to cast himself as the last, best hope to save America from the godless, globalist duocracy conspiring to merge the United States, Mexico and Canada into a “North American Union.” (His latest flop, published in 2007, was a screed entitled, The Late Great USA: The Coming Merger with Mexico and Canada.)

In July 2007, Corsi spoke before the Texas Constitution Party. At the time, he remained focused on foiling the ambitions of Hillary and Bill Clinton. “I don’t want Bill Clinton anywhere near the White House,” Corsi proclaimed. “We had enough serial rape going on when he was president.” But Corsi didn’t want a Republican in the White House either, especially not Senator John McCain. The war-scarred McCain, Corsi wrote in a column for the far-right webzine WorldNetDaily, is a possible jihadist dupe who “has enjoyed strong support from a lobbying group that backs … a Muslim terrorist group with ties to criminal drug networks and Al Qaeda.” Even George W. Bush was now treasonous. “Bush,” he told the Texas Constitution Party, “is post-America and post-God,” a figure so indebted to foreign interests that he had allowed “communist China” to “run its gunboats up the Mississippi.” In Corsi’s mind, both parties were fronts for the money-masters, the Trilateralists, the plotters of Bohemian Grove — the “elitists who want to destroy the nation-state.”

Continued . . .

See also: A Book Written to Defeat Obama

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This Time, the World Is Not Buying It

August 23, 2008

by Paul Craig Roberts

Global Research, August 22, 2008

Antiwar.com

The success of the Bush Regime’s propaganda, lies, and deception with gullible and inattentive Americans since 9/11 has made it difficult for intelligent, aware people to be optimistic about the future of the United States. For almost 8 years the US media has served as Ministry of Propaganda for a war criminal regime. Americans incapable of thinking for themselves, reading between the lines, or accessing foreign media on the Internet have been brainwashed.

As the Nazi propagandist, Joseph Goebbels, said, it is easy to deceive a people. You just tell them they have been attacked and wave the flag.

It certainly worked with Americans.

The gullibility and unconcern of the American people has had many victims. There are 1.25 million dead Iraqis. There are 4 million displaced Iraqis. No one knows how many are maimed and orphaned.

Iraq is in ruins, its infrastructure destroyed by American bombs, missiles, and helicopter gunships.

We do not know the death toll in Afghanistan, but even the American puppet regime protests the repeated killings of women and children by US and NATO troops.

We don’t know what the death toll would be in Iran if Darth Cheney and the neocons succeed in their plot with Israel to bomb Iran, perhaps with nuclear weapons.

What we do know is that all this murder and destruction has no justification and is evil. It is the work of evil men who have no qualms about lying and deceiving in order to kill innocent people to achieve their undeclared agenda.

That such evil people have control over the United States government and media damns the American public for eternity.

America will never recover from the shame and dishonor heaped upon her by the neoconned Bush Regime.

The success of the neocon propaganda has been so great that the opposition party has not lifted a finger to rein in the Bush Regime’s criminal actions. Even Obama, who promises “change” is too intimidated by the neocon’s success in brainwashing the American population to do what his supporters hoped he would do and lead us out of the shame in which the neoconned Bush Regime has imprisoned us.

This about sums up the pessimistic state in which I existed prior to the go-ahead given by the Bush Regime to its puppet in Georgia to ethnically cleanse South Ossetia of Russians in order to defuse the separatist movement. The American media, aka, the Ministry of Lies and Deceit, again accommodated the criminal Bush Regime and proclaimed “Russian invasion” to cover up the ethnic cleansing of Russians in South Ossetia by the Georgian military assault.

Only this time, the rest of the world didn’t buy it. The many years of lies – 9/11, Iraqi weapons of mass destruction, al Qaeda connections, yellowcake, anthrax attack, Iranian nukes, “the United States doesn’t torture,” the bombings of weddings, funerals, and children’s soccer games, Abu Ghraib, renditions, Guantanamo, various fabricated “terrorist plots,” the determined assault on civil liberties – have taken their toll on American credibility. No one outside America any longer believes the US media or the US government.

The rest of the world reported the facts – an assault on Russian civilians by American- and Israeli-trained and -equipped Georgian troops.

The Bush Regime, overcome by hubris, expected Russia to accept this act of American hegemony. But the Russians did not, and the Georgian military was sent fleeing for its life.

The neoconned Republican response to the Russian failure to follow the script and to be intimidated by the “unipower” was so imbecilic that it shattered the brainwashing to which Americans had succumbed.

McCain declared: “In the 21st century nations don’t invade other nations.” Imagine the laughs Jon Stewart will get out of this on the Daily Show. In the early years of the 21st century the United States has already invaded two countries and has been beating the drums for attacking a third. President Bush, the chief invader of the 21st century, echoed McCain’s claim that nations don’t invade other nations.

This dissonant claim shocked even brainwashed Americans, as readers’ emails reveal. If in the 21st century countries don’t invade other countries, what is Bush doing in Iraq and Afghanistan, and what are the naval armadas and propaganda arrayed against Iran about?

Have two of the worst warmongers of modern times – Bush and McCain – called off the US/Israeli attack on Iran? If McCain is elected president, is he going to pull US troops out of Iraq and Afghanistan as “nations don’t invade other nations,” or is President Bush going to beat him to it?

We all know the answer.

The two stooges are astonished that the Americans have taught hegemony to Russians, who were previously operating, naively perhaps, on the basis of good will.

Suddenly the Western Europeans have realized that being allied with the United States is like holding a tiger by the tail. No European country wants to be hurled into war with Russia. Germany, France, and Italy must be thanking God they blocked Georgia’s membership in NATO.

The Ukraine, where a sick nationalism has taken hold funded by the neocon National Endowment for Democracy, will be the next conflict between American pretensions and Russia. Russia is being taught by the neocons that freeing the constituent parts of its empire has not resulted in their independence but in their absorption into the American Empire.

Unless enough Americans can overcome their brainwashed state and the rigged Diebold voting machines, turn out the imbecilic Republicans and hold the neoconservatives accountable for their crimes against humanity, a crazed neocon US government will provoke nuclear war with Russia.

The neoconservatives represent the greatest danger ever faced by the United States and the world. Humanity has no greater enemy.


Paul Craig Roberts is a frequent contributor to Global Research. Global Research Articles by Paul Craig Roberts

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John McCain’s Party of Hate

August 18, 2008

Brent Budowsky | Consortiumnews.com, August 16, 2008

Editor’s Note: To many Americans who expected better from John McCain, the surprise of Campaign 2008 is that the Republicans are operating almost exactly the same as they have in previous presidential election cycles — relying on personal attacks, wedge issues, tough-guy talk, and media complacency.

In this essay, former Democratic congressional aide Brent Budowsky ponders this disturbing reality:

As Campaign 2008 unfolds, it is increasingly clear that the Republicans are a party with little left but hate, anger and the politics of slandering their opponent.

John McCain has become a candidate reduced to doing a Karl Rove imitation as a sleazy, divisive campaigner, while making bellicose pronouncements about war reminiscent of the childish Confederates at the beginning of “Gone With the Wind,” drinking their brandy and smoking their cigars with fantasies about the glorious war that they hunger to fight.

Now, right on cue, comes the latest Swift Boat attack book from one Jerome Corsi, the great white hope of modern Republicanism who has published a new book tearing down Barack Obama, much like he did four years ago in producing the thoroughly discredited Unfit for Command to demean John Kerry’s heroism in Vietnam.

In other writings, Corsi also called Pope Paul II “senile” and referred to Hillary Clinton as a “lesbo.” So enough of Corsi. He deserves no more camera, ink or bandwidth than noting his history of slanders.

There is a much larger issue than a punk like Corsi. It is that John McCain, who promised to run a civil campaign, has become an embarrassment to the notion of civil discourse in public life.

As the campaign has worn on, John McCain speaks less and less about himself and his policies and more and more about Obama, attacking his Democratic opponent in the most personal, derogatory and often slanderous ways.

For instance, McCain said Obama wanted to bring reporters on his proposed visit to wounded troops in Germany. A lie. He said Obama wanted to bring television cameras to the wounded troops visit. A lie. He said Obama wanted to bring political staff on the visit. A lie. McCain’s campaign accused Obama of refusing to see wounded troops in order to play basketball. A lie.

These are not philosophical differences or public relations spin. These are outright lies, spoken or approved by John McCain, incorporated into his television commercials, repeated endlessly by a compliant news media when the truth was immediately known to the journalists on Obama’s Germany trip who raised little objection in the first key days when the lies did their damage.

Indeed, much of the mainstream media continues to give aid, comfort and protection to McCain by repeating and perpetuating his phony image as an independent and a maverick. The mainstream media also reruns McCain’s attack ads ad nauseum, for free, only spreading the damage of the lies further.

When the news media isn’t recycling McCain false accusations, it often creates its own, reinforcing McCain’s negative campaign narratives about Obama.

The newspaper that used to be the Washington Post ran a derisive and demeaning attack on Obama by “reporter” Dana Milbank, who relied on a bogus quote by one unnamed source that no reporter at the Post, including Milbank, even talked to.

Without checking the accuracy of the quote or trying to ascertain its context, Milbank made it the centerpiece of a column portraying Obama as a megalomaniac claiming credit for the international reaction to his overseas trip, when he actually had said he could take no credit for the crowd in Berlin, that it was really about the world’s high regard for America.

So, a comment that represented modesty and patriotism was turned into its opposite, supposed proof of Obama’s arrogance and hubris.

Continued . . .

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Hope for audacity: Unless something happens, John McCain will win.

August 15, 2008

by Ted Rall | Smirking Chimp, August 15, 2008

NEW YORK–Unless something happens, John McCain will win.

Of course, “unless something happens” is the biggest qualifier in the world, more than adequate to CYA me should Obama prevail. It’s politics. There are almost three months. Odds are something will happen.

Still, it wasn’t supposed to be this way. Obama’s electoral handicaps–his racial identification and short resume–should have easily been eclipsed by Bush’s–er, McCain’s well-stocked aviary of albatrosses. McCain was and remains short of money. His campaign organization is a mess. Republican bosses are unenthusiastic, both about his prospects and about the direction he would take his party should he win. He has aligned himself with the most unpopular aspect of the wildly unpopular outgoing administration, the Iraq War. At a time when economically insecure voters are staring down the barrel of a recession-cum-depression, McCain promises more of the same–no help is on the way. And he’s old. Sooo painfully I-don’t-use-the-Internet old.

What is it that has the politerati betting on a McCain Administration? Historical precedent. During most presidential election years, Republicans tend to surge in the last few months of the campaign. For a Democrat to win in November, he must have a comfortable lead in the polls at this stage in the game.

The classic example is 1976, Jimmy Carter led incumbent Gerald Ford by 33 percentage points. Ford was hobbled by Watergate, a recession, and his pardon of Nixon, as well as his dismal performance in the debates, where he claimed that the Soviet Union wasn’t dominating eastern Europe. Nevertheless, Ford closed the lead, losing to Carter by just two points. This follows the pattern, albeit by a wider margin than in most elections.

In recent years, the countervailing example is the 1992 contest between Bill Clinton and George H.W. Bush, the incumbent. After the Democratic National Convention in August, Clinton was only ahead of Bush by a few points. Clinton won, but only because independent Ross Perot, a businessman with libertarian leanings, attracted so many votes from registered Republicans.

Perot ran again in 1996, but was less of a factor. So the old pattern reasserted itself. Clinton led Bob Dole by roughly 20 percent in mid-August, but won by eight. Republicans always close the gap.

It happened again in 2000. In mid-August, Al Gore had an eight-point lead ahead of George W. Bush. Gore won the popular vote by 0.6 percent.

If you’re a Democrat, being ahead isn’t enough. In 2004 John Kerry was ahead in mid-August–but by just two points. Bush was an incumbent with potentially grave weaknesses–he hadn’t found Osama or Iraq’s supposed WMDs, and he was already losing the war–yet the pattern reasserted itself. Bush gained four points, prevailing in the popular vote by 2.4 percent. (I won’t comment on the electoral vote, aside from mentioning that it was stolen in the key state of Ohio.)

If Barack Obama ends up beating John McCain, he will have done so with the smallest August lead for a Democrat in memory–three points, within the statistical margin of error for tracking polls. A columnist for the Chicago Sun-Times argues that’s good news: “Out of the gate,” writes Carol Marin, “the thoroughbred who leads too early and by too great a margin is more often than not the vulnerable one, the one in danger of losing it all to the horse who strategically holds back, waits, and then thunders in the final furlongs to finish first.” Nice metaphor, but presidential campaigns aren’t horse races. They’re boxing matches. The last man standing wins.

Unless Obama starts swinging soon, he’s done for. Insiders are tut-tutting over Ohio, an important swing state this year. Given the decade-long recession and voter anger there–not to mention a significant African-American population–Obama ought to be kicking McCain six ways to Sunday. But the two candidates are neck and neck in fundraising. “For McCain to even be competitive is surprising to me,” says Chris Duncan, chairman of the political science department at the University of Dayton. “I don’t think it’s that he’s doing better than expected. I think it’s that Obama is doing worse than he would expect.”

Vincent Hutchings of the University of Michigan wonders if the Obama campaign is counting too much on young voters. “Is he generating enough enthusiasm to excite people who lack a formal education and are disproportionately young, and not likely to vote?” he asks.

As I argued in my 2004 polemic “Wake Up! You’re Liberal: How We Can Take America Back From the Right,” American voters feel besieged. At home, they see prices rising while their salaries get gnawed away by inflation. From a foreign affairs standpoint, they see a world full of terrorists and hostile rivals–Iran, North Korea, Russia, China–out to get them. As a psychologist would say, the fact that there isn’t much truth to this perception doesn’t make it less real.

Americans want their presidents to be a National Daddy–an ornery cuss willing to err on the side of kicking some innocent schlub’s ass to protect them.

Last time around, in 2004, John Kerry repeatedly turned the other jowl as Bush and his proxies pounded him with the now-notorious Swift Boat ads. Of course, whether Kerry’s Vietnam service rose to the level of heroism was debatable. What wasn’t was that Bush weaseled out of going at all. But Kerry never responded. If the guy won’t fight for himself, voters asked themselves, how will he fight for me?

Obama has already traveled too far down the Path of the Kerry, repeatedly voting for funding a war his entire candidacy is predicated upon opposing, not to mention government spying on U.S. citizens and, most recently, the embarrassingly cheesy spectacle of endorsing offshore oil drilling. I mean, really: Do any right-wing conservatives believe he really means any of this stuff?

If he is to make history by salvaging his campaign from its current neck-and-neck status with McCain, Obama will have to rally the Democrats’ liberal base by throwing them some red meat: immediate withdrawal from Iraq and Afghanistan, socialized medicine and a sweeping credit crisis bailout plan (all interest rates legally reset to prime) would be a start. He’ll also need to beat up McCain (fairly) for agreeing with Bush about just about everything–and pledge to hold the Bushies responsible for their crimes.
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About author:
Ted Rall is the author of the new book “Silk Road to Ruin: Is Central Asia the New Middle East?,” an in-depth prose and graphic novel analysis of America’s next big foreign policy challenge.

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