The gloves have finally come off. In a recent campaign ad the Despicable John McCain has accused Barack Obama of being a pervert for wanting to protect your children from sexual predators. When I thought the lies from the right could sink no lower I found out about this on the Daily Kos.

I can’t do much more than draw your attention to the highlights and tell you that is important to go read it for yourself.

The latest barrel-scrapping effort from John McCain is an ad which states that Barack Obama wants to teach kindergartners about sex before they can read (see details and discussion here).

Barack Obama’s response: “It is shameful and downright perverse for the McCain campaign to use a bill that was written to protect young children from sexual predators as a recycled and discredited political attack against a father of two young girls – a position that his friend Mitt Romney also holds. Last week, John McCain told Time magazine he couldn’t define what honor was. Now we know why,” says Obama spokesman Bill Burton in an emailed statement.

There is simply no war wound or POW scar that matters now. McCain has shown himself unworthy of the term honor, much less the term man or father. What kind of man or father doesn’t want kids to be cautious of sexual predators, unless he himself is one. It no longer matters if Sarah Palin was the best mother in the world, or whether she would really make her ten year old daughter carry an incestuous baby to term. What matters now is the man heading the Republican ticket attacks those who would have told that girl it was wrong for her father to molest her. Sides have been chosen and John McCain has picked the wrong one.

I am beginning to wonder if John McCain shouldn’t have picked Mark Foley or Dan Crane as a running mate, they seem to be on the same page as far as this issue is concerned.

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Now that I have your attention, I certainly hope this doesn’t happen to Track Palin or anymore of our fine military men and women in Iraq or elsewhere.  The fact is it will and it is just as likely to happen to him as it is to anyone else.  At least I certainly hope he isn’t given any special treatment as a politicians son.

That being said if it happens I hope it hurts and opens Sarah Palin’s eyes to the world we live in.  This war is not a task from god, it is not a predestined war to claim the Holy Grail.  It is a war of politics that is now being fought with her son.  She claims to be this wonderful mother, something I have a hard time buying, with the way she handled Trig Palin’s birth, but that is another story.  The way our veterans are being treated by the current administration is atrocious, and I really hope it doesn’t take Track Palin coming home blind, missing body parts, unable to function with PTSD, or worse in a body bag for this politician to demand and help make changes possible.

For all that John McCain claims to have suffered with as  POW and Veteran, I shake my head every time I see the way he failed our military and veterans.  It is all well and good to show up and crack jokes at a VFW Hall, but when it comes to really supporting our troops, rather than supporting our war machine he as failed.  Ask any wounded, maimed, or disfigured soldier what he could do better for the troops, and you will get a variety of answers , but they will all boil down to pretty much the same thing ‘act like a human being rather than a politician’.  If we are going to fight a war, any war, we need to do better by our men and women who choose to serve.

These are the things I want to see done for our military personnel and families.

1) Paid enough so no military family has to ever apply for welfare.  They are willing to risk their lives in service, we should at least pay them enough to live.

2) Retirees shouldn’t be screwed out of their benefits with privatization.

3) No veteran should have to go through months of bureaucracy to get into the VA system only to have to go through months or years more to get benefits and treatment for conditions associated with their service.

4) Allow women into combat units.  How does this help our personnel and families? Easy, politicians can in great confidence walk up to the voting parents of a young man killed in combat and say “You’re son died an honorable death, here is your flag.”  They can’t so easily say “We are real sorry that your daughter is unable to walk and her face is burned beyond recognition thanks to that pesky roadside bomb.”  Simply put women in combat units mean politicians are going to be as quick to risk their lives.

5) Any new war or military action must be declared while standing in front of the Vietnam Memorial, and only after every name is read aloud for the Camera.  No cheating the president whoever they are has to stand and listen to the full recitation.

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If you ask anyone in the middle east what the Israeli Palestinian conflict is about, they will not tell you religion. This is a conflict, as all other middle east conflicts have been since the dawn of time, about land and resources first and foremost. Even the Crusades boiled down to a simple land war in Asia fought for economic superiority. This could all change if Sarah Palin ever gets to be in charge.

That’s right folks. According to Sarah Palin the Army in Iraq is on a mission from God. I bet that really tickles Dick Cheney, Don Rumsfeld, and Carl Rove. Of course they would all be very disappointed to know she means Jehovah, and doesn’t think any of that triumvirate is the deity in question. She wants us to fight these people because it is ordained by GOD, the same god these people believe in and claim to follow. This is the sort of insanity that breeds terrorists.

Below is the whole speech, or at least the first seven minutes of it. She talks about the army’s mission from god and her son Track who is about to be deployed in this crusade at about minute three.

If you want the Iraq War to end, then don’t elect Angry Old White Guy and Caribou Barbie who will turn a war for oil into a Holy Crusade.

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As we approach the seventh anniversary of 9/11 people still ask why. For many there will never be an acceptable answer. Not because there aren’t a lot of really good answers out there, but because their thinking is too confined to let them believe. When the next big attack on us comes, and believe me it will one day, these same people will be just as unable to believe they could be responsible for it.

I won’t say we deserved to be attacked in that manner. Those individuals who died had done nothing to deserve what they got or at least how they got it. We, as a political entity, had earned a big response. If you want to know why Muslim political entities be they the legitimate state, political faction, or terrorist group, then you need look no further than Yahoo.

FALLUJAH, Iraq — At the western entrance to the Iraqi city of Fallujah Tuesday, Muamar Anad handed his residence badge to the U.S. Marines guarding the city. They checked to be sure that he was a city resident, and when they were done, Anad said, a Marine slipped a coin out of his pocket and put it in his hand.
Out of fear, he accepted it, Anad said. When he was inside the city, the college student said, he looked at one side of the coin. “Where will you spend eternity?” it asked.
He flipped it over, and on the other side it read, “For God so loved the world, that He gave His only begotten Son, that whoever believes in Him shall not perish, but have eternal life. John 3:16.”
“They are trying to convert us to Christianity,” said Anad, a Sunni Muslim like most residents of this city in Anbar province. At home, he told his story, and his relatives echoed their disapproval: They’d been given the coins, too, he said.

When we pull shit like this it doesn’t win the hearts and minds of the people we conquered, it pisses them off. I know many of you are going to say it was the Marines duty as Christians. Well get it through your fucking heads, the people who flew airliners into skyscrapers or suicide bomb our people every day think that is their religious duty as well.

Now the military will tell you flat out that proselytizing of any kind of any religion is against the Uniform Code of Military Justice, but I doubt anything will be done to those responsible for this. The military simply is too pro-Christian to let anything horrible happen to them. Of course then again someone in the administration could decide to make them the sacrificial lamb as they have done any number of times to the average American.

It isn’t just our proselytizing of religion that makes their reactionaries angry, it is our culture. If we simply said here is your money please deliver the oil on time at this price we would seldom have a problem with them. We don’t however. We continually stick our noses into places they simply don’t belong and tell other people how they should act. That doesn’t promote change, that pisses people off, It pisses them off enough they will fly airliners into sky scrapers.

I have said it before there is a solution, but too few want to embrace it. We don’t change their culture by rushing in, changing the leadership, putting Starbucks on every corner, a Fredericks of Hollywood in every mall, and a church on every block. We affect change by opening our doors and laying out a welcome mat for these people. Hell we give them a ride home if they want it. Once they’re here every religion in the country can knock on the door and hand them what ever kind of crap they will take. They will become Americans soon enough, even learning to tell you where to stick your copy of the Watch Tower. Those changes will eventually make their way back to the countries of origin where change can happen from within just like it should. But alas too many people are afraid of being minorities, especially the more affluent white people of America, who always want to export American ideology.

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Well I would think after so long it would be obvious to anyone Condee is lying when words are coming out of her mouth. Right now she is spinning the the Scott McClellan slap to the face. Of course she is claiming it really isn’t a slap either more like an obscene mooning as he passes by in a fast moving car.

From Yahoo:

“The president was very clear about the reasons for going to war,” she (Condoleezza Rice)told reporters at a news conference with Swedish Prime Minister Fredrik Reinfeldt in Stockholm where she is attending an international conference on Iraq.

She is of course right in a way. The presidential message was so clear and forthright we knew even Colin Powell would get up and give a spot on performance for it at the UN. It was clear enough to him afterwards that the presidential message he had been duped into giving was a lie, and resigned over it. We hear the message loud and clear Condee, the president wanted this war so bad he was willing to soil the good name of a man respected by both parties and all over the world to get it.

The only smart thing Condee has said so far is something the rest of the political world especially John McCain could learn from.

“I am not going to comment on a book that I haven’t read,” she said, referring to McClellan’s scathing memoir

Imagine if you will a politician of her position admitting she hadn’t read something and had no comments on it. of course that could be a lie words were coming out of her mouth and she is just covering her ass.

“It was not the United States of America alone that believed that he had weapons of mass destruction that he was hiding,” Rice said, dismissing suggestions that the administration knew the intelligence was incorrect.

Of course others in the world believed this. We still had enough credibility with them that when we told them it was so they believed us. Now they, along with many Americans, are following the accepted rule of “fooled me once, shame on you. Fool me twice, shame on me!” Very few people are giving the American government the chance for a fool me thrice movement by believing nothing that they say. Most of the time if you listen to what they are saying it is probably for the best. They now want us to believe gas is nearly as cheap now as it was in relative 1992 dollars.

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Another sign that we should be bringing our troops home is reported in this mornings USA Today. Since 2003 we have deployed more than 43,000 military personnel who classified as medically unfit for deployment. This is either a sign of the military’s macho delusions, someone just not giving a shit, or our government being out of touch with reality. I have a hard time guessing which it is.

The military is what it is and no one is going to easily change their macho mindset. To some extent we shouldn’t try either, you need a certain amount of the nothing is going to hurt me even if I step in front of a bullet mindset. The belief that you are infallibly tough and should always follow orders from the infallible top also produces many negative effects from self destructive behavior, to playing with grenades and getting others killed to, to turning normally decent people into monsters. Somewhere along the line there needs to be some effective oversight.

I am more apt to believe the second probability than either of the other two. Our government, at least the current administration, has long been on the side of or part of the corporate culture that doesn’t value employees as people. They talk big about supporting our troops, but are quick to distance themselves from any problems they develop in service to this country. One fine example of was army policy which cut off medical support to a soldier forced out of service as the sole surviving son in a family. It took a huge amount of media attention and law makers getting involved to fix the situation.

We all know that administration is out of touch with reality when it comes to domestic issues, but this really applies across the board. We have not plan to win in Iraq. We have no plan to disengage. Worst of all is we are looking at an even bigger conflict with Iran possible. We don’t have the troops to sustain what we are doing or we wouldn’t be sending the ones the military’s own people aren’t fit to be sent.

Something has to change and it has to change soon.

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I am sick to death of being called a coward because I don’t think we should be fighting this war. A lot of good people don’t think we should be there either. A lot of real war heroes don’t think we should be there either. A lot of the top military minds don’t think this is winnable.

I do however think this is a winnable war, but only if we are willing to pay the price it requires. If you think we should be fighting it you need to ask yourself one question and answer truthfully and then step away and shut your mouth forever more. That question is are you willing to put the people in charge who know how to win and are you willing to let them do what ever it takes to win it? You don’t get to know what it will cost. You don’t get to know how long it will last. Lastly you don’t get to know how many people will die every day on either side ahead of time, even a rough estimate. The only answer you can give is yes we should stay and finish or no we should get the hell out right now.

This is what it will take to win this war:

· First, we have to commit to a very long term war, then a long term occupation. We are talking about decades if not generations. We have to commit to staying there as long as it takes to make the people just like Americans. Not only do we have to be willing to go it alone, we have to be willing to tell our allies to but the hell out of our business.

· The next thing it will take is an increase in taxes to off set some of the debt we rack up by tripling or quadrupling our military budget. That is if we don’t increase the size of our military which we will have to.

· We have roughly 2 million active duty personnel right now, to conquer and maintain order in Iraq we will need minimally 750,000 of them in Iraq

· In order to maintain that sort of force deployment we will need to reintroduce the draft and allow women into combat MOS’s. Denying women the opportunity to serve with as much distinction as men, or saying they are girls there are things girls shouldn’t be allowed to do will be detrimental in bringing sexual equality to a culture where women are already consider less than second class citizen.

· Last but not least we will have to accept a high rate of combat casualties for several years. We will also have to accept there will be a high rate of collateral damage among the Iraqi people.

· Finally in order to win and honestly be victorious Iraq will have to become as American as Ohio, and along the way we will have to offer any Iraqi who wants it the chance to move to the states and become a citizens.

That is what it will take, minimally. If you are still in favor of going forward with everything it takes, you need to make yourself and your desire to win at all costs known to your congressman. On the other hand keep this list handy, because I bet they don’t know what it will take. If you aren’t willing to do what it takes quit bitching at those of us who say it is time to pack it in. War has to be at all costs or nothing at all because halfway is bullshit that wastes money, material, lives and our credibility around the world.

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Dick Cheney is neither stupid nor naive. I can say a lot of things about the man, but neither of those really apply. However the rhetoric he is spouting about freedom while perusing the Middle East might lead one to that conclusion.

“You and I know what it means to be free…”

That is one of the most laughable things I think I have ever heard the man say. Americans have no idea what freedom is. If you think it is having an alternative between Coke and Pepsi or McDonalds and Burger King, you would be wrong. Freedom was having the choice of dozens of smaller locally owned businesses to choose from that Coke, Pepsi, McDonalds, and Burger King forced out of business in a war of corporate consumerism. America rolled over, because giving up freedom to choose was supposed to be the cool thing to do. Too much individualism would lead us down the dark and murky path to anarchy. Bullshit! Too many choices meant we were free to choose something other than the establishment.

We keep telling the troops that we are fighting to give the Iraqi and Afghan peoples freedom, but that is the last thing we want them to have. Do you know what happens when they have true freedom? They inevitably make choices that are not in our best interests. The Palestinians had the freedom to vote and what did they do? They chose Hamas. What is needed right now in Iraq and Afghanistan is not freedom, it is security.

“We’re helping them fight back because it’s the right thing to do and because it’s important to our own long-term security,” Cheney said. “As President Bush has said, the war on terror is an ideological struggle and as long as this part of the world remains a place where freedom does not flourish, it will remain a place of stagnation, resentment and violence ready for export.”

If these people wanted freedom, they would need us to fight back for them. When The World Trade Center was attack, we were told this was a financial attack on America. Oh how right they were. What has been the cost of it so far? I am not talking just about the deficit spending by the government either. How has the rise of prices and down turn in other areas affected your ability to function? How will the war affect your children’s economic well being? We were told this war would pay for itself? Will it fix the economy of the dead and dismembered?

Dick tells the troops we are doing this because it is the right thing to do. I scratch my head at this notion. These were people who didn’t yet want freedom, they weren’t willing to give up everything in the name of it. Janice Joplin got it right when she sang “Freedom is just another word for nothing left to lose…” When the pain of change is less than the pain of death for you and your family, then you are ready for freedom. Neither the Iraqi nor the the Afghani people were ready for that yet. What we did was give them anarchy in the name of our own national vanity.

Dick wants you to believe that their lack of freedom was a threat to our nation’s interest, he also thought that helping corporate giants squash middle class mom and pop businesses was good for your freedom. It is time to think for yourself and not be a Dick!

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Dick Cheney is neither stupid nor naive. I can say a lot of things about the man, but neither of those really apply. However the rhetoric he is spouting about freedom while perusing the Middle East might lead one to that conclusion.

“You and I know what it means to be free…”

That is one of the most laughable things I think I have ever heard the man say. Americans have no idea what freedom is. If you think it is having an alternative between Coke and Pepsi or McDonalds and Burger King, you would be wrong. Freedom was having the choice of dozens of smaller locally owned businesses to choose from that Coke, Pepsi, McDonalds, and Burger King forced out of business in a war of corporate consumerism. America rolled over, because giving up freedom to choose was supposed to be the cool thing to do. Too much individualism would lead us down the dark and murky path to anarchy. Bullshit! Too many choices meant we were free to choose something other than the establishment.

We keep telling the troops that we are fighting to give the Iraqi and Afghan peoples freedom, but that is the last thing we want them to have. Do you know what happens when they have true freedom? They inevitably make choices that are not in our best interests. The Palestinians had the freedom to vote and what did they do? They chose Hamas. What is needed right now in Iraq and Afghanistan is not freedom, it is security.

“We’re helping them fight back because it’s the right thing to do and because it’s important to our own long-term security,” Cheney said. “As President Bush has said, the war on terror is an ideological struggle and as long as this part of the world remains a place where freedom does not flourish, it will remain a place of stagnation, resentment and violence ready for export.”

If these people wanted freedom, they would need us to fight back for them. When The World Trade Center was attack, we were told this was a financial attack on America. Oh how right they were. What has been the cost of it so far? I am not talking just about the deficit spending by the government either. How has the rise of prices and down turn in other areas affected your ability to function? How will the war affect your children’s economic well being? We were told this war would pay for itself? Will it fix the economy of the dead and dismembered?

Dick tells the troops we are doing this because it is the right thing to do. I scratch my head at this notion. These were people who didn’t yet want freedom, they weren’t willing to give up everything in the name of it. Janice Joplin got it right when she sang “Freedom is just another word for nothing left to lose…” When the pain of change is less than the pain of death for you and your family, then you are ready for freedom. Neither the Iraqi nor the the Afghani people were ready for that yet. What we did was give them anarchy in the name of our own national vanity.

Dick wants you to believe that their lack of freedom was a threat to our nation’s interest, he also thought that helping corporate giants squash middle class mom and pop businesses was good for your freedom. It is time to think for yourself and not be a Dick!

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Dick Cheney is neither stupid nor naive. I can say a lot of things about the man, but neither of those really apply. However the rhetoric he is spouting about freedom while perusing the Middle East might lead one to that conclusion.

“You and I know what it means to be free…”

That is one of the most laughable things I think I have ever heard the man say. Americans have no idea what freedom is. If you think it is having an alternative between Coke and Pepsi or McDonalds and Burger King, you would be wrong. Freedom was having the choice of dozens of smaller locally owned businesses to choose from that Coke, Pepsi, McDonalds, and Burger King forced out of business in a war of corporate consumerism. America rolled over, because giving up freedom to choose was supposed to be the cool thing to do. Too much individualism would lead us down the dark and murky path to anarchy. Bullshit! Too many choices meant we were free to choose something other than the establishment.

We keep telling the troops that we are fighting to give the Iraqi and Afghan peoples freedom, but that is the last thing we want them to have. Do you know what happens when they have true freedom? They inevitably make choices that are not in our best interests. The Palestinians had the freedom to vote and what did they do? They chose Hamas. What is needed right now in Iraq and Afghanistan is not freedom, it is security.

“We’re helping them fight back because it’s the right thing to do and because it’s important to our own long-term security,” Cheney said. “As President Bush has said, the war on terror is an ideological struggle and as long as this part of the world remains a place where freedom does not flourish, it will remain a place of stagnation, resentment and violence ready for export.”

If these people wanted freedom, they would need us to fight back for them. When The World Trade Center was attack, we were told this was a financial attack on America. Oh how right they were. What has been the cost of it so far? I am not talking just about the deficit spending by the government either. How has the rise of prices and down turn in other areas affected your ability to function? How will the war affect your children’s economic well being? We were told this war would pay for itself? Will it fix the economy of the dead and dismembered?

Dick tells the troops we are doing this because it is the right thing to do. I scratch my head at this notion. These were people who didn’t yet want freedom, they weren’t willing to give up everything in the name of it. Janice Joplin got it right when she sang “Freedom is just another word for nothing left to lose…” When the pain of change is less than the pain of death for you and your family, then you are ready for freedom. Neither the Iraqi nor the the Afghani people were ready for that yet. What we did was give them anarchy in the name of our own national vanity.

Dick wants you to believe that their lack of freedom was a threat to our nation’s interest, he also thought that helping corporate giants squash middle class mom and pop businesses was good for your freedom. It is time to think for yourself and not be a Dick!

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