... of it all.

Love these open threads Gerry -- will read your links in awhile.

Good to have an open thread on the main page. Thanks Gerry

http://www.alternet.org/election08/92570/mccain_doesn%27t_need_a_fact-checker%3B_the_media_edit_his_mistakes_for_him/

John McCain, presumably advised by Karl Rove and definitely imitating the politics of George Bush, is now saying that Barack Obama would rather lose a war than lose an election.

This is a defamation; this is a slander; this is a lie. McCain should apologize to Obama.

This is the latest in a long list of cheap-shot, low-blow politics. McCain has learned nothing about why the American people are rejecting the Republicans and why the Republican brand has been compared to the appeal of defective dog food.

two points:

First, McCain repeatedly lowers the quality of discourse in American politics. The man who ran in 2000 has disappeared; the face of Bush 44 has taken his place with these Rove-like low blows. It is McCain who has always been the fair-haired boy of the press.

Second, John McCain has made a long series of substantial factual errors that will become a major issue. Whether the problem is age or sloppiness, partisanship or tiredness, on issue after issue McCain says things that are factually incorrect.

Couric protected McCain by editing out his latest and very substantial factual error, gaffe, falsehood or mistake (call it what you will).

Scarborough works to protect McCain by demeaning Olbermann, the messenger, who should be praised for doing real reporting (heaven forbid).

McCain's Rove-like attacks -- and his serious and repeated factual errors on major issues -- should be major topics in the election and staying silent about them does our political discourse no good.

http://www.feralscholar.org/blog/index.php/2008/07/21/on-commanding-in-chief/

Having military experience might afford that person some potential insight into the military; and having been involved in a war does provide the opportunity to learn something about war. I emphasize “potential,” because it is not frequently actualized.

John McCain flew airplanes and dropped bombs. The only thing he commanded was an instrument panel. He did that 23 times in combat, before he was shot down and captured by the same Vietnamese he had been bombing.  He had some harrowing (not synonymous with heroic) experiences, but there is no historical evidence that suffering automatically leads to increased intelligence or even empathy for others who suffer.

Ulysses Grant was a real commander of armed forces and a mediocre commander-in-chief who followed closely on the heels of Abraham Lincoln - a lawyer and career politician who had zero direct military experience… but who did win the bloodiest war in history at that time by directing Grant and others.

Franklin Roosevelt steered the US through the greatest military conflagration in history - with no military experience of his own - bobbing and weaving to let other nations take the brunt of the war, and positioning the US to climb onto the heap of 48 million bodies as the globe’s newly predominant nation… a position the US has held to this day.

Not making any moral points here. Lincoln and Roosevelt were as ruthless and cynical as any chief executive. They succeeded, is all I’m saying, as commanders-in-chief of the United States Armed Forces.

One of the better ideas embodied in the Constitution of the United States is the idea that civilian authority should be in firm control of the military. (”Civilian” is also supposed to imply a sovereign people, and in money-run elections reported by ruling class media, there is no sovereign people.)

The reason for that rule is that history taught past generations that military leaders who are successful in war are often brutal as well as stupid - a winning combination when the goal is simply to tear things up using a vast technological advantage.

It’s the machismo… a synonym for brutal stupidity.

The media focus also cops to the most dangerous accomplishment of the Bush administration: the publicly-accepted idea of a “global war on terror.”

There is no such thing, of course. There is a war to control Southwest Asia and its strategic resources. The “global war on terror” (GWOT) is a legal pretext that apparently slipped right past all those fine lawyers in Congress.

What GWOT does is consolidate US executive control over both domestic and foreign policy, by redefining the entire planet as a battlefield. This “global battlespace” justifies actions that are only sanctioned by international law on the battlefield.

“The whole world” cannot be shoehorned into any definition of a “battlefield” embodied in international law on the issue of war. That’s one of several reasons the US won’t sign onto the International Criminal Court.

The GWOT is simply rhetorical cover for a naked political power-grab. And this suits a Democratic executive just as nicely as it does a Republican one… as Congress has demonstrated in its perpetuation by word and deed of the GWOT myth.

http://www.opednews.com/articles/The-Democratic-Majority--E-by-Cheryl-Biren-Wrigh-080724-201.html

Lawless. Imperial. Rogue.

These labels have been attached to the Bush administration for the last three Take Back America (TBA) conferences. The annual conference hosted by the Campaign for America’s Future, does a bang up job each year highlighting the dark deeds of President Bush and Vice President Cheney. And, what better man for the job than House Judiciary Chair John Conyers. Turns out, the better man for the job may be the pre-House Judiciary Chair John Conyers.

"I have said it before and I will say it again: Impeachment is off the table."

When all efforts to effect checks and balances are thwarted and there is no other recourse to restore order in an administration gone wild, taking impeachment "off the table" really boils down to a matter of obstruction of justice. This begs the question why would the House Speaker obstruct justice?

Rarely discussed in the corporate media since initial reports is the fact that two of the most abhorrent impeachable offenses in the eyes of the American people were disclosed to Nancy Pelosi several years before they went public.

Conservative Bruce Fein, a constitutional lawyer who served as associate deputy attorney general under President Ronald Reagan had a message for the Democratic leadership in a radio interview with Rob Kall of OpEdNews.com.

"It is quite clear," Fein remarked, "that they will not move because they think collectively that it will not be advantageous politically for the Democratic Party. I have retorted, you have taken an oath to support and defend the Constitution of the United States which includes the impeachment clause."

His voice rising, he stressed "That’s the only oath that you have taken. You have taken not an oath to support the Democratic Party. You’ve not taken an oath to support your political ambitions. The only unflagging obligation that you have is to defend and protect the Constitution of the United States. You are violating your oath when the reason for not going forward is not because they are not impeachable offenses, but you make a political calculation that it wouldn’t be healthy for your party - even if it would be healthy for the government of the United States and for the American people."

Congressman Conyers might well be served, and the nation in turn, by recalling his 1974 article published in The Black Scholar entitled "Why Nixon Should Have Been Impeached."

The 45-year-old Conyers wrote, "In calling him to account, we also reestablish the proper parameters of presidential conduct. It is essential, therefore, that the record of our inquiry be complete so that no future president may infer that we have implicitly sanctioned what we have not explicitly condemned."

He closed by remarking, "Impeachment is difficult and it is painful, but the courage to do what must be done is the price of remaining free."

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2008/07/24/AR2008072403465.html?hpid=topnews

U.S. and NATO military officials in Afghanistan have launched investigations into three separate U.S.-led airstrikes that Afghan officials say killed at least 78 civilians this month.

More than half of those killed in the three recent U.S.-led airstrikes -- which occurred in a three-week span in three provinces in eastern and western Afghanistan -- were women and children, according to Afghan and Western officials. In one case, about 47 women and children in a wedding party were killed.

another QUAGMIRE

http://my.barackobama.com/berlinvideo

http://www.fivethirtyeight.com/2008/07/mccain-ups-ante.html#comments

http://www.cnn.com/live/

...

12:15 p.m. ET - Fri July 25

Sen. Barack Obama makes a statement after he meets with French president Nicolas Sarkozy.

...

http://www.wavy.com/Global/story.asp?S=8735299

Dean says troops in Iraq will always be in combat

http://www.c-span.org/watch/cs_cspan_wm.asp?Cat=TV&Code=CS

Morning Folks,

I like the idea of an open thread. It makes lots of sense because it is inclusive and lets the conversation range and focus at the same time.

Yes, rdorgan, I wondered about American response to Barack Obama's truimph overseas. There's a xenophobic characteristic about many Americans, and I suspect it's still there.

In Colorado, John McCain is leading by two points in the latest poll. Shortly before this poll, Obama was leading by 5 points. I've forgotten who the polling organization was, but I seem to remember it was associated with the market, maybe The Wall Street Journal? Fourteen hundred people were questioned.

We have to elect Obama, we must, or we are doomed. Yes, I echo Seashell's Shriek of Doom. Seriously, we must elect him. In Colorado, we will be meeting for strategy and assignments on the 30th in Estes Park.

Keith's program last night was excellent. The clip of Rush Limbaugh ranting away in his fatness, ignorance, prejudice made me shudder. Are we really that? The anger, simple mindedness, willingness to prejudge? Yes, I'm really afraid we are.

The free market (which is never free) is not enough to substitute for philosophy, spirituality, values, security, and love of our home and our fellow humans.

It scares me folks, because we could actually elect John McCain. It's possible.