John McCain's best endorsement yet!

Wow, the man Satan wishes he could be endorses John McSame. I bet McCain was just thrilled.

h/t to Joe Sudbay at Americablog for this video
--the BB

WaPo does some digging

Michael Leahy has an article up in today's Washington Post. I commend it to you.

POWs kept their minds occupied.

Stratton would imagine meticulously assembling a large glider and flying it over the Alps. Another prisoner imagined himself fishing. But McCain had the most audacious dream of all, and he shared his vision one day with a group of fellow POWs. "He was talking about his father to us and then he said: 'I want to be president of the United States. Someday I'm going to be president,' " Stratton recalls. "If the cell wasn't so small, we'd have been rolling around laughing."

His friend, thought Stratton, ought to be concentrating far less on his fantasy and more on how to redirect a naval career that had been adrift before he was shot down over Hanoi. "We reminded him that he had dug himself a big hole with his demerits in the past and nearly being the bottom man of his class at the Naval Academy," Stratton recalls. "And now he was talking about being president? 'Come on, John. Get your career straightened out.' "

Not at all dissuaded, McCain offered his view on the meaning of real command, shaped in part by his father's perspective on genuine power. He wanted to be the one who made the decisions, McCain said, and his father had taught him that even such impressive-sounding jobs as chief of naval operations, the service's highest uniformed position, didn't always provide that opportunity. The only job that guaranteed it was that of president, McCain believed.

Great. Another "Decider."

More of the Same.

You can read it all here.
--the BB

Cheney Redux?

Avid pursuit of WMD - anthrax - links with terrorists - be very afraid!

Ah yes, Cheney's favorite fiction: the Mohammed Atta meeting in Prague that wasn't. The standard White House lines leading up to the invasion and occupation of Iraq. What White House stooge was uttering them on November 28, 2001?



Here's some background for y'all on the allegations that the lead hijacker of 9/11, Mohammed Atta, met with an Iraqi spy in Prague. First a clip of Darth Cheney denying what he'd said earlier:



And some follow-up:

The claim that terrorist leader Mohamed Atta met in Prague with an Iraqi spy a few months before 9/11 was never substantiated, but that didn’t stop the White House from trying to insert the allegation in presidential speeches, according to classified documents.

Cryptic references to the White House efforts are contained in a new Senate Intelligence Committee report released last Friday that debunked purported links between Saddam Hussein and Al Qaeda. However, attempts by committee Democrats to make public a more explicit account of White House interest in the anecdote were thwarted when the “intelligence community” refused to declassify a CIA cable that lays out the controversy, according to congressional sources. Democrats charged in a written statement that intelligence officials had failed to demonstrate “that disclosing the [cable] ... would reveal sources and methods or otherwise harm national security.” The Democrats also complained that officials' refusal to declassify the cable “represents an improper use of classification authority by the intelligence community to shield the White House.”

According to two sources familiar with the blacked-out portions of the Senate report that discuss the CIA cable's contents, the document indicates that White House officials had proposed mentioning the supposed Atta-Prague meeting in a Bush speech scheduled for March 14, 2003. Originated by Czech intelligence shortly after 9/11, the tendentious claim was that in April 2001, Atta, the 9/11 hijack leader, had met in Prague with the local station chief for Iraqi intelligence. The sources said that upon learning of the proposed White House speech, the CIA station in Prague sent back a cable explaining in detail why the agency believed the anecdote was ill-founded.

According to one of the sources familiar with the Senate report's censored portions, who asked for anonymity due to the sensitivity of the subject, the tone of the CIA cable was “strident” and expressed dismay that the White House was trying to shoehorn the Atta anecdote into the Bush speech to be delivered only days before the U.S. invasion of Iraq. The source said the cable also suggested that policymakers had tried to insert the same anecdote into other speeches by top administration officials.

--Newsweek
[Emphasis mine]

Cheney. McCain.

Wrong then. Wrong now.

Oh, and while we're all obsessing on economic woes, what might you suppose will be the effects of a 50% unemployment rate? That's the case in Iraq right now. Heckuva job, Dubya.

h/t to Juan Cole at Informed Comment
--the BB

Speaking of the economy

... which John McCain would rather not have to do....



h/t to Meteor Blades
--the BB

The honor was there but now it's gone

John McCain is, and I will say it in print if others are too damned polite to do so, a LIAR. And his campaign is replete with lies.

It took years for the American public to wake up to the fact that Bush lied to them repeatedly, and still does. How much time do we have to wake up to McCain?

UPDATE: If it won't play for you, here is the link.
--the BB

Captures a lot

Via bartcop by way of Padre Mickey
--the BB

A political advertisement

I am no political organizer, I have little time, and my feet don't survive pavement well, but I can share in Obama's campaign by helping make videos like this available:



And you know this site will be at McCain from now until election day. We cannot afford four more years of the Bush disaster.
--the BB

As you wrestle with your mortgage, property taxes, and insurance, ponder this

Josh Marshall asks this question over at Talking Points Memo:

When Mitt Romney says that it was "hard work" that got John McCain all those houses that he got for marrying Cindy Hensley, what does he mean exactly?

Can you imagine four more years of "hard work"? And we know, from Dubya, that it's hard work presidentin'.

Here's Pink singing here great song "Dear Mr. President":



Enjoy. Or weep. Or rage. In any case, fight for change.
--the BB

John McSame on the economy

A brilliant discussion of the economy. Brilliant.



Thanks to the jedreport for this iconic summary of what McSame is offering. If you click the link you can read the transcript.

--the BB

Oh, we never talk about that....

If you should happen to peruse the Wikipedia article on Jim Hensley, Cindy McCain's father, you may notice some familiar storylines - war, being shot down, a married man meeting another woman, divorce....

But there are things one does not discuss in dysfunctional families and it is important to shut these things out of one's consciousness. So, although Cindy Hensley had an older half-sister, she has described herself as an only child.

Now there is a book coming out in which half-siblings from an earlier marriage are also omitted. It is by John McSame's daughter Meghan.

I wonder if the next generation will replicate the patterns? Fascinating.

I have just summarized a fuller treatment by watertiger at Firedoglake.
--the BB

Now where did this "Obama is an elitist" crap get started?

From The Jed Report (via Daily Kos)
--the BB

Getting to know you, getting to know all about you....

Learning to loathe you, certain that you loathe me.
It seems you're a nut case, short-fused and rather creepy
Because of all the scary and true
Things I'm learning about you
Day by day.
--with apologies to Oscar Hammerstein II

h/t to Steven R at Daily Kos

Be informed!

--the BB

No third term!

Here is a little something to ponder.



h/t to JoeSudbay at Americablog

--the BB

Two words: Supreme Court

I have a 25 year record pro-life record in the Congress, in the Senate, and as President of the United States I will be a pro-life president, and this presidency will have pro-life policies. That's my commitment. That's my commitment to you.
--John McCain

As JedReport, who provides this clip for us, notes: "Too bad he isn't pro-life when it comes to war."

There are folks out there who think McCain is pro-choice. They need to know this.

As Frank Rich writes in the NYTimes:

So why isn’t Obama romping? The obvious answer — and both the excessively genteel Obama campaign and a too-compliant press bear responsibility for it — is that the public doesn’t know who on earth John McCain is.

[emphasis mine]

Let's help them find out who this walking disaster really is.
--the BB

John McOil

When not suggesting his wife take part in the sleazy Miss Buffalo Chip contest, Senator McSame was talking big about commitment to the energy issue:




--from the folks at MoveOn.org

We call him McSame for a reason

Arse ipse loquitur.
--the BB

McClueless (but then, there was no good answer to these pointed questions)

I hope the American electorate pays SOME attention to what is being offered.



h/t to Hoffmania (who, in turn, got if from Blah3) where this video is listed under "Doddering"

--the BB

The blind following the blind

A little something from Progressive Accountability:



h/t to SusanG at Daily Kos
--the BB

Une guerre sans fin

Yes, it's 9-1/2 minutes long but we all need to feel the cumulative effect of McCain's own words and position on the occupation of Iraq. Watch at least part of it, if you can.

From Jed, the master of these videos.

h/t to Joe Sudbay at AmericaBlog

--the BB