Hot Potato Mash

The Real McCain

The "Straight Talk Express" in action!

Technorati Tags: John McCain

MUST WATCH: Glenn Greenwald On Democracy Now

Part 1 (9:53)

Part 2 (8:02)

Democracy Now mashup of ABC debate questions (3:09)

“Great American Hypocrites: Toppling the Big Myths of Republican Politics” (Glenn Greenwald)

Technorati Tags: amy goodman, democracy now, media, Glenn Greenwald

John 'Warmongering' McCain

Matt Taibbi has a must read about John McCain at Rolling Stone:

I want to choke the life out of both of them. But how do you communicate to someone the sheer insanity of voting to bomb the fuck out of some distant country while you sit safe and cozy in the Virginia suburbs, evaluating sweetbreads — just so the world can keep on feeling like the heroic war movies you rock yourself to sleep with on Sunday afternoons?

The answer is you can't. And that is one big reason why John McCain, defying the expectations of almost everyone who watched him last summer — myself included — has risen from the political dead to wrap up the GOP nomination. He's survived because Onward to Victory is the last great illusion the Republican Party has left to sell in this country, even to its own followers. They can't sell fiscal responsibility, they can't sell “values,” they can't sell competence, they can't sell small government, they can't even sell the economy. All they have left to offer is this sad, dwindling, knee-jerk patriotism, a promise to keep selling world politics as a McHale's Navy rerun to a Middle America that wants nothing to do with realizing the world has changed since 1946.

The lesson of the McCain campaign is that one should never underestimate America's capacity for self-delusion. Balls-deep in one of the biggest foreign-policy catastrophes of all time, an arrogant military misadventure destined to make us infamous for a generation across a dozen cultures, minivan-driving suburban America is still waiting for Bill Holden to make it right by blowing up the Bridge on the River Kwai — and returning, tanned and handsome, to get the girl with a mouth full of cool one-liners.

“Free Ride: John McCain and the Media” (David Brock, Paul Waldman)

Technorati Tags: John McCain

REPUBLICANS ARE THROWING JOHN MCCAIN UNDER THE BUS

Everyone is abuzz about the NY Times McCain philandering/ethics story but for the wrong reasons. The most troubling aspect of this story is its timing as the Times sat on the story since before the Iowa caucuses. Why run it now a day after the Wisconsin primary and once John McCain has all but wrapped up the GOP nomination?

The answer is what happened in the Wisconsin primary -- that Barack Obama creamed Hillary Clinton and all but assured himself the Democratic nomination for the general election. This was and is horrible news for John McCain and Republican hopes for recapturing the White House in November. As I blogged about here and here, Barack Obama matches up far better than Hillary Clinton against John McCain. This is why we recently found everyone from President Bush to Fox “News'” jumping on the Hillary bandwagon while simultaneously attacking Obama at every opportunity.

Once Obama essentially wrapped up the nomination last night, it became abundantly clear that Republicans needed a Plan D (Rudy Giuliani and Fred Thompson representing Plans A and B to the McCain Plan C). That Republicans are so willing to throw McCain under the bus is hardly surprising considering he fell into the nomination based more on his supposed opponent (Hillary) and the failure of the other Republican presidential hopefuls rather than based on anything he brought to the table. Once coroneted, McCain still failed to win the hearts of the hardcore CPAC haters or the evangelical base and he continues to struggle against Mike Huckabee despite a full-court press by the GOP establishment.

Clearly the Republican elite saw the Wisconsin results as the last straw. They know that McCain cannot beat Obama no matter how much they rely on the Southern Strategy and stealing elections (which need to be relatively close). The fact is that there is not one significant area where McCain is superior to Obama:

• Old vs. Young
• Old vs. New
• Old vs. Good looking
• Anti-hope vs. Hope
• Plain spoken vs. Articulate
• Uninspiring vs. Inspiring
• Another 100 years in Iraq vs. Against the war from the start
• Terrible fundraiser vs. Great fundraiser
• Lousy campaigner vs. Crazy good campaigner

So while we are going to hear conservative talk radio and Fox “News” rail against the bias of the New York Times in the coming days, it would be wise to withhold judgment until the newspaper clarifies why it held the story until now. Did a GOP insider or a former McCain underling finally corroborate parts of the story? If so, it's safe to assume that those orders came from Republican higher-ups since it would otherwise be career suicide.

And if that is the case, just what is Plan E? Jeb? Cheney? Romney? Newt? Perhaps only Bush's Brain knows...

“Bush's Brain: How Karl Rove Made George W. Bush Presidential” (James Moore, Wayne Slater)

Technorati Tags: Barack Obama, cheney, christianity, CPAC, democracy, Democrats, election, foxnews, Giuliani, Hillary Clinton, Huckabee, iraq, Jeb Bush, McCain, Mitt Romney, New York Review of Books, Newt Gingrich, nytimes, Politics, Wisconsin, religious_right, republican

YES WE CAN - Barack Obama & John.he.is McCain

Yes We Can - Barack Obama
 

UPDATE: John.he.is McCain below

President McCain

Ken sees President McCain in our future:

The Scenario

Well, I'm afraid to tell you, but the game looks pretty much cooked.  The
media meme has been sealed, and the media are lunging toward a
McCain-Clinton match up.  The salivation is palpable.  MSM has, as
expected, marginalized and excluded any candidate actually remonstrating
the status quo  -- both on the Republican and Democratic sides -- and have
essentially decided on the match up, something they had anticipated
sometime ago.  But some things began to happen that were not anticipated, but for which there was a general strategy.

Actual grassroots movements were happening.  Media reform, election
integrity, corporate accountability, impeachment; a vast spectrum of
public dissatisfaction was readily perceived.  But the corporate media had
decided that none of that mattered.  Any perceived threats to the
aforementioned status quo would be dealt with rather easily.  They would
be ignored.  Brilliant! Most of the American public would have no idea
about Ron Paul or Dennis Kucinich, even if they agreed with some of their
policies.  The radicals would be dismissed and rather easily.  Because
most Americans don't read political blogs.  That's where Britney Spears
comes in.

And so it has been.  John Edwards, easily the most electable Democratic
candidate, is slowly being turfed out of the scene.  He's a bit too
anti-corporate.  Can't have that.  That's also where Britney Spears comes
in.

If Clinton gets the nomination from the Democratic party, that will only
demonstrate one thing: the Democrats are as much a part of this scam as
the GOP.  Unless, of course, the Democrats do not realise the media shit
storm a Clinton nomination will inspire.  And if that is the case, and
they really don't see that coming, then they are stupid beyond belief.
Clinton will be crucified and McCain could wind up becoming president.

You may not want to admit this, but it will happen.

On the bright side, it sure beats President Giuliani.

Can Barack Obama Overcome Karl Rove, Republicans, Hillary, CNN, Wolf, ABC, George And The Mainstream Media?

Karl Rove is the ultimate partisan operative who guided a career underachiever with a checkered past to the White House. He is credited with keeping the 2000 election close enough, through dirty campaigning and still dirtier election engineering and fraud, to allow the Supreme Court to step in and gift wrap the presidency for his boss. Suffice to say no one uses dirty tricks more effectively or more often than Karl Rove. As such, many Americans who care about the Constitution, Democracy, the rule of law and plain decency, long ago concluded that Karl Rove sucks. 

But winning the White House was not enough for Rove who “dreamed of creating a 'permanent Republican majority'”. Such a partisan is Rove that he played a central role in the outing of CIA agent Valerie Plame and the firing of eight US Attorney's who refused to help him illegally create his permanent majority.

In part because of Rove's despicable tactics, the Republican party enjoyed years of success and Rove earned labels like...

 

  “Boy Genius: Karl Rove, The Architect Of George W. Bush's Remarkable Political Triumphs” (Carl M. Cannon, Lou Dubose, Jan Reid)

“Bush's Brain: How Karl Rove Made George W. Bush Presidential” (James Moore, Wayne Slater)

“The Architect” (James Moore, Wayne Slater)

Rove loved the praise bestowed upon him from his friends and foes alike. But then everything came crashing down around him and now his “genius” moniker is in serious need of repair. In an astonishing turn of events, Republicans lost both the House and the Senate in 2006 despite Rove's repeated assurances to the contrary:

“I’m looking at all of these [races] and adding them up. I add up to a Republican Senate and Republican House. You may end up with a different math but you are entitled to your math and I’m entitled to the math” - Karl Rove (10/24/06)

Meanwhile, George W. Bush's approval ratings have been on a steady decline and now rest at 30%, 1% above their all time low. 

 

It is hardly surprising that all of the GOP presidential candidates continue to distance themselves from Bush's body. Worse, Rove's permanent majority has been replaced by a public that favors the Democratic Party over the GOP by a whopping 50% to 35% margin. And independents favored Democrats in 2006 by an even larger 57% to 39% margin. It seems that the politics of hate, racism, division, war, war-mongering, propaganda, cheating, lying and stealing can only take a party so far. 

But Rove will not go down without a fight. And thankfully propaganda rags like the ridiculous Newsweek magazine have given Rove a platform to win back his genius (In Newsweek's defense, it is not Time magazine). Despite the new gig, Rove proved to be every bit the partisan with his first column: “How to Beat Hillary (Next) November”:

“And so the question to John McCain from a woman at a town hall in South Carolina last Monday was tasteless, but key: ”How do we beat the [rhymes with witch]?“ Right now, Republicans are focusing much of their fire on Senator Clinton. Criticizing her unites the party, stirs up the unsettled feelings many swing voters have toward her and allows each candidate to say why he is best able to beat her.

For now, that's enough. But when a GOP nominee emerges, he needs to remember no Republican is as well known as Hillary. The Republican has room to grow in the polls as voters get a better sense of who he is and what animates him. Here's what he needs to do.”

The truth is that Karl Rove and the entire Republican Party are salivating at the opportunity to face off against Hillary Clinton and her “high negatives”. And why not, in a Zogby Poll released last week, Hillary now loses in the general election to all five GOP frontrunners while Barack Obama handily defeats the same five:

With this backdrop it seems clear as day that one should take Rove's latest piece in the Financial Times, “Memo to Obama: win Iowa or lose the race”, with many grains of salt:

“Not that you have asked for advice, but here it is anyway: Iowa is your chance to best her. If you do not do it there, odds are you never will anywhere.”

And Rove's stellar advice:

First, stop acting like a vitamin-deficient Adlai Stevenson. Striking a pose of being high-minded and too pure will not work. Americans want to see you scrapping and fighting for the job, not in a mean or ugly way but in a forceful and straightforward way.   

Hillary may come over as calculating and shifty but she looks in control. You, on the other hand, often come over as weak and ineffectual. In some debates, you do not even look at her when disagreeing with her, making it look as if you are afraid of her. She offers you openings time and again but you do not take advantage of them. Sharpen your attacks and make them more precise.

Please! Could Rove give any worse advice than to turn the nice-guy, above the fray, uniter that is Obama into, well, Karl Rove? All can plainly see that Rove is rightfully scared of Obama whom he admits has “the buzz” and could very well win the nomination and upset Rove's plans to keep the White House in GOP hands. And as Frank Rich so ably points out, facing off against Obama would be a far more difficult task than defeating Hillary:

But much like the Clinton campaign itself, the Republicans have fallen into a trap by continuing to cling to the Hillary-is-inevitable trope. They have not allowed themselves to think the unthinkable — that they might need a Plan B to go up against a candidate who is not she. It’s far from clear that they would remotely know how to construct a Plan B to counter Mr. Obama. The repeated attempts to fan “rumors” that he is a madrassa-indoctrinated Muslim — whether on Fox News or in The Washington Post, where they resurfaced scurrilously on the front page on Thursday — are too demonstrably false to survive endless reruns even in the Swift-boating era.   

Part of the Republicans’ difficulty in countering Mr. Obama, should they have to, is their own cynical racial politics. For the most part, race has been the dog that hasn’t barked in this campaign despite the (largely) white press’s endless fretting about whether the Illinois senator is too white for black voters and too black for white voters. Most Americans aren’t racist, most Republicans included. (Those who are won’t vote for the Democratic presidential candidate even if it’s not Mr. Obama.) But the G.O.P., by its own doing, is nonetheless saddled with a history that most recently includes “macaca” and Katrina, Mr. Bush’s appearance at Bob Jones University in 2000 and the nonexistent black population of its Congressional delegation.   

As the Republican leadership knows, this record is an albatross, driving away not just black voters but crucial white swing voters, too. Ken Mehlman, the former G.O.P. chairman, and Mr. Rove, as recently as in that Newsweek column, have implored their party to reach out to minorities. So have Newt Gingrich and Jack Kemp. But not even conservative leaders of this stature could persuade their party’s top 2008 presidential contenders to show up for a September debate moderated by Tavis Smiley for PBS at the historically black Morgan State University.

So the polls emphatically prove that Hillary would be far easier prey for Republicans in the general election than Obama. And if statistics aren't your thing, commonsense clearly dictates the same. And finally, just about every political pundit from Karl Rove to Frank Rich have written as much. So what does Wolf Blitzer of the Clinton News Network wonder about Karl Rove's latest advice column?:

OMG! He is actually taking Rove's words at face value! LOL! Could Wolf really believe that Rove has forsaken his legacy as the greatest partisan political operative of the last 20 year in order to go legit and is now an uninterested, outsider, merely commenting on the political landscape? ROTFL! Yeah, that's the ticket, Rove couldn't possibly have ulterior motives. 

The way I see it, there are two possible explanations for Wolf's comments: 1) he is an imbecile, or 2) he wants Hillary to get the nomination. Either way, he should be laughed out of his job. Of course, this is nothing new from Wolf or the Clinton News Network which showed its true colors at the last democratic debate in Nevada:

To be fair to Wolf and CNN, avid Clintonites like George Stephanopoulos, who formerly helped Bill Clinton get elected President and served as his communications director before moving on to become Chief Washington Correspondent for ABC News and host of his own Sunday morning show, also spew the same nonsense:

All of which makes Barack Obama's campaign for the presidency all the more remarkable. He continues to rise in the polls and threatens to win Hillary's “inevitable” nomination despite having to fight against Karl Rove, the entire Republican Party, the Clinton machine, CNN, Wolf, ABC, George and most of the mainstream media.

If the Illinois Senator can overcome those long odds he certainly has what it takes to lead the country.

  “The Audacity of Hope: Thoughts on Reclaiming the American Dream” (Barack Obama)

“Dreams from My Father: A Story of Race and Inheritance” (Barack Obama)

 

“Barack Obama in His Own Words” (Barack Obama)