Random Stuff

This clown sent a letter to the IRS daring them to do anything to him. That is the same thing Wesley Snipes did, though the nature of the challenge is rather different. Now the feds are determining which correctional center they will slot Snipes into.

Martha Stewart tried lying to the feds about some stock sales she made and she also was treated to a stay at the gray bar hotel. Now she can't enter Britain because of her conviction. That's freaking hilarious!

Obama raised $21.9 million in May. McCain? Not so much. Is he really going to accept public financing for his campaign? It could be that the problem is because McCain hasn't been able to make up his mind as to what to do about our energy crisis. In fact, the Gropenfuhrer, Arnold Schwarzenegger, just dissed McCain's rationale for coastal drilling. The rejection of public funding will not hurt Obama.

McCain may name Minnesota Governor Tim Pawlenty (yeah, I know, who?) as his VP. But he isn't exactly going to energize the GOP base that is unhappy with the Republican top of the ticket.

Also, did McCain lie to either Hispanic leaders or Republican anti-immigration activists? Or both?

McCain can't finesse this number: 500 Californians dead in the Iraq War. Stay the course is not going to work there.

You might also be able to kiss another Republican blowhard off soon. Red Sox righthander Curt Schilling is going to have possible career ending shoulder surgery. Schilling was a major stud on the hill, but also a colossal asshole off of it. He once told Sports Illustrated that he hated it that pllayers were using steroids and then when a Congressional committee asked him about it, he ballessly demurred.

Some of you religious fucks are scary.

Republicans admit that new Orange County, CA sheriff is qualified for her job, but they are grousing about her selection anyway.

Firefox 3.0 tally to date: 14 million and counting.

You want something that will piss you off? You know that U.S. consumers are paying 3-4 times what the Japanese and the Koreans are for broadband access even though theirs is faster? That's what happens when you have a lack of competition ina given sector.

Pro Gay marriage folks in California are now pressing the courts there to head off a bigoted voter initiatve. I hope it succeeds.

Meanwhile, religious nuts refuse to do their taxpayer funded jobs when it comes to the same sex marriage issue.

Idiot of the day right here.

Also mentallly underpowered are those who got sucked into the "clean coal" hoax.

If you've ever seen the tv series Futurama, there was a joke in one of the episodes that went, "its some kind of hollow tube, devoid of human life. Gasp. The Los Angeles Subway." Well, that isn't true now with sky high gas prices. Check it out.

Two Republican sex predators (yes, their dad is connected to the party) just got out in the OC. So watch out for 'em.

I don't understand how you can use your employer's network and yet demand that they have to respect your privacy when you do. But a California court said that an employee has to give permission before your boss can see your correspondence on the job. This is absurd.

UCLA's hospital has been doing transplants on Japanese gangsters. I'm not kidding. This is fucking outrageous.

In the "It's About Time" file is this.

You may remember that Democratic congresswoman who had her home foreclosed recently. She was also in arrears of her property taxes. Now the state has taken the home away from the new buyer without compensation and given it back to her even though he had already begun renovating the place. Outrageous.

Will McCain Drop Out of Race? Don't Count on it

A piece in the Huffington Post by Steve Rosenbaum posits that GOP presidential nominee John McCain will bow out during or around the time of his party's convention, ostensibly for health reasons, in favor of a younger and arguably more electable candidate.

Aside from the fact that it is hard to imagine someone with the Senatorial ego and delusions of personal grandeur of McCain would shelve his ambitions to be the most powerful man in the world, Rosenbaum goes on to list a group of possible choices the yellow elephants may resort to. Here is my assessment of those named in the article:

Condoleeza Rice: The worst Secretary of State in American history and who conducted our diplomatic affairs with all the elan of a giggling high school cheerleader. There are also those rumors about her being either a lesbian or having been serving at the pleasure of Bush's "little W." if you know what I mean *nudge nudge, wink wink.*

If she were in over her head any more, she would be going out in public wearing a scuba outfit. FEMA would have launched a rescue operation. Blacks don't trust her. So a Rice run is a non-starter.

Colin Powell: The second worst Secretary of State of all time. Was part of Bush's propaganda effort. And in doing so, failed the country enormously. It is apparent now that Powell was an affirmative action hire by Scanner Bush and used as a handy tool by Turbo Bush. Look up dupe in the dictionary. Powell's face may be there. He will be destroyed.

Marilyn Musgrave (Colorado Congresswoman): Just another neocon asshole, the type that is being repudiated by the American public. Plus she has no name recognition. And there are Republicans who aren't going to vote for any woman no matter what. This is a joke.

Mitt Romney: Willard "Ratfucker" Romney has flip flopped more than a fish freshly hoisted out of the water and on to a boat. He would be Christmas and the Fourth of July for Democratic opposition researchers. And he's a Mormon, which will cause some of the evangelical wackos to stay home on election day. He will win Utah though. But that's about it.

Mike Huckabee: He not only looks like Deputy Dawg, he turned his primary campaign into a religious crusade, which scares not just those on the left, but independents, women and moderate Republicans. He will get shellacked. Plus some have accused him of having secret liberal social sympathies that are anathema to rank and file reactionaries.

Charlie Crist: He's a secret gay. In fact, he is in trouble among some Republicans in Florida for being kinda easygoing on the homosexual issue. To quote from an episode of Family Guy, he is so far in the closet he is finding Christmas presents. Bigwigs in the GOP establishment know about these rumors and I can't see them allowing a Crist candidacy to occur.

Tim Pawlenty (Minnesota Governor). Who? And that is his problem. At least Obama is the devil the public knows. Pawlenty has no foreign policy experience, which is something the Republicans have hit Obama on with McCain fronting the ticket. So they GOP will lose that meme and they don't have much else.

Bobby Jindal (Louisiana Governor): Tv ads with the theme to The Exorcist playing in the background. It will become a national joke. That is because Jindal has reportedly participated in exorcisms. Even most Catholics aren't prepared to go there. He would get destroyed.

Mark Sanford (Governor of South Carolina): The most likely McCain replacement, I think. But will have a lot of problems with hispanics over the immigration issue and is embroiled in a budget fight with his state's legislature, something the American public isn't going to want to see in D.C. It would be reminiscent of Bush. Would sweep the south, but he also voted against some Republican pork projects when he was in Congress and it would be another message that you can't trust his party on budget issues. Might be able to pull back in some of the disaffected Republicans backing Ron Paul, but that is a hail mary since Paul is almost a cult right now.

The biggest obstacle to overcome fo Sanford, though, would be the "bait and switch" meme the Democrats would throw out there. They would paint Sanford's nomination as undemocratic and emphasize that he hasn't been vetted through the primary process. That will probably sow enough suspicion to doom his candidacy.

John Thune: Rabidly hated by Democrats and not the kind of guy independents are going to vote for. Is an asshole and a half, dishonest to a fare thee well and would drive Democratic Party turnout through the roof.

Chuck Hagel (Nebraska Senator): The GOP rank and file are still smarting from Hagel ranging far off of the reservation vis a vis the Iraq war and, since they tend to be royalist in their thinking anyway, would not permit this kind of lese majeste to be rewarded. Would be very formidable as a national candidate, but with his criticisms of the conduct of the Iraq war, would be hard pressed to come up with a resolution to it and he may not have one. If he doesn't, there is basically no reason to vote for him over Obama. I also don't think that Hagel is willing to kiss enough ass to get back in the good graces of the party apparatchiks.

Dick Lugar (Indiana Senator). The problem is his name. I can only imagine the You Tube parodies and jokes on Leno that will arise out of that. Lugar is well regarded on both sides of the aisle, but he also isn't likely to bring anything new and again, he will get hung with the bait and switch tag. Plus the public at large just doesn't know that much about him.

Michael Bloomberg: No. He is basically a John Lindsay Republican (limousine liberal) and the party long ago swore those off. Plus crime has gone back up in NYC under his watch. Bloomberg's best bet for president is to either run as a Democrat or an independent.

Random Stuff

John McCain has been attempting to make himself the national security candidate. Missed it by THAT much.

What is it about intelligence and the British Commonwealth? I detailed earlier for you the problems that Canada's spooks have had and Britain's MI5 and MI6 have been penetrated more than a high street whore.

Well, here we go again. Apparently some kind soul in the U.K. intelligence community felt that there wasn't any interesting reading to be had on London trains, so he left some top secret documents to be perused by interested parties.

Then it happened AGAIN.

You wonder if the trains are being used as a document drop by a mole to his/her foreign intelligence service handler. Once I can see as just inattention, twice and a thorough review of the members of both MI5 and MI6 may be in order.

This reminds me of a story in Canada not too long ago about that nation's anti-terror plans being discarded in a dumpster.

How about Air Canada being spied on by Westjet? I'm not kidding.

Canada really is the Bullwinkle Moose of countries. amiable but also big, dumb and easy to scam.

There is a controversy bubbling up now about some congress critters, most of them Democrats, receiving special favors from the near bankrupt Countrywide Mortgage firm. Compared to the Abramoff investigation, the rather slight breaks are small potatoes, but it nonetheless undermines some of the party's moral authority vis a vis the Bush administration.

Unlike Republicans, however, who defend their kind no matter what they did (*cough Scooter Libby *cough John Doolittle *cough), I hope this matter is thoroughly investigated and if there is any corruption, and how can you not suspect there was, the guilty should be iced in maximum security for a dime (ten years). Corruption undermines democracy, no matter who is doing it.

In a roundabout connection, Pakistan Junta-crat Pervez Musharraf may be impeached in a country he grabbed off in a military coup. So let's look at the totals here: a leader of a military junta in a Muslim state can be impeached but in the reputed land of the free and home of the brave political predator Bush can't? What is wrong with THAT picture?

Jesus H. Fuck Me Christ! MSNBC spent all day Saturday memorializing dead Bush enabler Tim Russert even though there was a human and economic tragedy occurring in Iowa. It's all about priorities, that being able to, in effect, run a long ass infomercial for yourself by using a dead man as a proxy. In other words, by highlighting that "we had Russert, this great man," they were actually endeavoring to embellish the NBC brand. When you have a chance to do that, well, it's only Iowa, I guess.

Oh speaking of lame marketing ideas, I tried to watch a couple of episodes of Family Guy the other day on TBN (not to be confused with televangelist scam artists and alleged closeted homosexual Paul Crouch's Trinity Broadcasting Network) and they have come up with a really irritating way to promote their programs now. What they do is impose animations and blurbs about them during segments. That isn't bad in itself, but they were doing it every fucking two minutes! They even stopped the show a couple of times midway through scenes so that the star of this particular show, Bill Engvall, could utter the ad copy. It was so bad that after a few minutes, I got fed up and turned the tv off.

I mean, what the fuck? We need that shit hammered into our eyes and heads repeatedly to try to ensure that someone would watch that show? I'm not going to see Engvall's vehicle just because I feel so insulted by such overweening marketing. And I like the guy! But fuck him and his show. That is just pure lack of consideration for the viewing public. Whoever devised this shit needs to be castrated.

Separated at birth? Max Headroom and Republican bullshit slinger Tony Snow. Kinda eerie, isn't it?

The irony with bringing up Snow, who is one of the GOP's asses of evil, is that Russert farts off the earth all of a sudden while Snow survives two bouts of cancer. Russert was just a dupe. Snow was a cheerleader for a fascist takeover of the U.S.

Oh, I forgot to mention this: when Russert croaked Friday, Laura Ingraham was subbing for Blahblah O'Reilly on his show. Someone did a flattering summation of Russert's career and Ingraham didn't react much to it. Of course, Ingraham was originally brought to you by MSNBC during its days as a purveyor of reactionary cant.

But what struck me was how made up Ingraham was. Talk about putting makeup on a pig. As someone who has a thing for tomboys, who usually do have at least some kind of femininity, Ingraham is more like a mildly fay northern European male. She has to be a dyke. I know I'm hardly alone in thinking this, but c'mon.

It just cracks me up how many gay hating Republicans are in denial about how infiltrated by rightwing homosexuals the GOP is. Hell, Florida Governor Charlie Crist, who might be McCain's VP, is rumored to be of that ilk. Fox regularly has John Kasich on frequently, another alleged gay. California nitwit congressman David Dreier has denied his friendship with Dorothy, if you get my drift, which nobody, and I mean nobody, believes.

You know, "angry" is an adjective often used to describe Keith Olberman. In fact, it is an accusation you hear from the rightwing parrotheads and even from the New Yorker, of all outlets. The disingenuousness of that is pretty apparent, though. The whole rightwing radio format is predicated on sputtering displays of white trash male imaginary grievances, with its most ebullient, if you want to call it that, practitioner being onetime herbal medicine barker and San Francisco talk show host Michael "the human snotball" Savage. MSNBC had him on for a while before he got so excessive that even the Republicans at GE who run the station had to can him to preserve their image.

So the whole anger meme runs like this: seething at lefties in a ballistic fit is perfectly fine, but you turn it on members of the self-appointed chosen, i.e, the GOP, then you are psycho. It's called having it both ways.

Bad news for queer bashers: you're dinosaurs!

And your boy McCain may have a campaign manager with ties to the vicious Russian Mob.

For those of you still using Internet Explorer (what, are you still on AOL, too you chumps?), Tuesday would be the perfect time for you to join the cool kids and download the Firefox browser. It loads smoother than the Gates product and it also offers a neat array of widgets to make your net surfing more fun thanks to being open source. Seriously, IE is for McCain voters, people who are too stupid to know when something is OVER.

Poor Republicans! They have been burbling about what they termed recent successes in Afghanistan. Well, you can kiss that idea goodbye. Sadly, there is also this bit of news.

Meanwhile, there have been rumblings that Barack Obama may be able to peel off some of the evangelical vote from McCain. Here is one illustration why.

Unfortunately, as we creep closer to November, the GOP's kissin' cousins are gearing up to kill the Illinois Senator. That is no joke. Why do Republicans hate democracy so much?

They also hate science.

Random Stuff

Hey, you want to talk fatal attractions? There is a controversy ongoing in Canada right now with that nation's foreign minister, Maxime Bernier, taking as his girlfriend a former Hell's Angels moll, Julie Couillard.. Yes, this is true. She even accompanied Bernier to a meeting with President Bush. No word on whether the Secret Service knew of Couillard's past (or maybe even continuing?) associations.

Prime Minister Steven Harper has, incredibly, told the press to mind its own business. So wait, you have cabinet member dating someone who has an organized crime connection and you don't think it is worth public attention? And you're a Tory (conservative)? Is it me or is this Alice in Wonderland? Bernier, nonetheless, resigned.

The opposition Liberal Party has raised the spectre of government infiltration by the gang, something that was written off as "absurd" by the Tories.

Canada has had substantial security issues and one wonders about the competence of its version of the CIA, CSIS, covered up the fact that it knew an Indian airliner leaving from Toronto in 1985 was going to be bombed, but failed to alert anyone or take special measures. The result was a blown up plane with 329 people aboard. All died in the incident. More here.

These were just two times when that intelligence service dropped the ball and certainly, if I were a malefactor, I would see Canada as a weak link as more CSIS problems have come to light.
There has been nothing in the U.S. media as to how the Bush Administration views all this, if they are even paying attention. Well, if they aren't they had better do so right now and help our northern neighbors rectify their issues.

You may not have seen this, but perhaps a reflection of just how badly the Republicans are going right now is on display in Montana, of all places. Bob Kelleher, a 15 time loser as a former Democratic Party and Green Party candidate for office, is the Republican Senate nominee to try to unseat incumbent Max Baucus. He is also 85 years old.

But the kicker to this is that this guy is way to the left of any of the Democrat candidates running this election cycle. You have to read it to believe it. He got past two other candidates in the primary, one a former GOP state house speaker and the other a businesswoman who was backed by the White House.

Now the aforementioned ne0-Bush hopeful will now try to run as an independent ala Joe Lieberman. So count on an easy Baucus victory.

Then there was another embarrassment for John McCain. Details here.

The L.A. Times says that the NRA may be on the wane, but the fact there is that's it's due to their being successful.

How would you like to be subject to compulsory dieting at the behest of your government. Check out what is going on in Japan. The stupidity there is that it doesn't deal with the two biggest problems in the otherwise low fat heart safe diet in that country: smoking and salt intake due to the consumption of soups and shoyu (soy sauce).

Former NBC sports play by play man Charlie Jones died the other day, which was too bad. I remember Charlie from his days of working AFL and AFC football games and he always did a real solid job. I don't know anything about him personally, but my best to his family.

The GOP Sex Scandals Never Seem to End; Ku Klux Love for the OC

This one involves an appeals court judge appointed by Ronald Reagan who has a fondness for porno and it has gotten in the way of an obscenity case that is before him. Ugly details.

Now imagine this scenario: you are at a party. You are too boozed up to drive home. You crash at your hosts's place in the top bunk of a bunk bed. Also in a similarly inebriated condition and sleeping in the lower bunk is the national chairman of the Young Republicans. Then you suddenly are awakened in the middle of the night by said GOP bigwig blowing you. Yes, you read that correctly. You got to check this out.

Sex offender was Republican volunteer. I know, Republican and sex offender are redundant terms.

Nevada Governor Jim Gibbons, whose marriage is breaking up because he was "polling" (heh heh) where he wasn't supposed to, may be employing a "wag the dog" strategy in calling for a special session. Here be the report. And this story ain't going to go away.

More fun in the Catholic Church.

And Louisiana's GOP Governor, Bobby Jindal, is even wackier than THAT. Will he be McCain's VP nominee?

And are Southern Baptists about to go the way of the dodo bird? It sure looks that way. Halelluah!

GOP religious freaks object to HIV/AIDS prevention funding even though bill has bipartisan support. No doubt about it, that party loves misery.

Did you know that ultra-conservative Orange County (California) came to be thanks to a couple members of the Ku Klux Klan? Wouldn't surprise you? Well, it's true baby! Here's the straight dope.

Conservative parents beam with pride as daughters deal with gay rights advocate.

Republicans in Florida rush to sign up felons as new voters...but so do Democrats. Assholes.

Bush on 24, but I don't mean the tv show. Looky here.

Why do Utahns continue to vote Republican when they can't do anything right?

Helluva job there Mukasey: Feds allow convicted hedge fund exec to escape. Global manhunt now underway.

McCain pisses off party faithful in Texas. Will probably be abandoned by black conservatives.

Republican run Ford continues to betray America.

Red states continue to betray kid's health. And insurance companies will make you sick.

Media treating Obama like somebody from another planet. Remember Pat Buchanan's "exotic" remark? He isn't alone in thinking that.

AT&T continues to be the evil telecom company.

This is your local news media.

The Orange County (California) Weekly decided to satirically tweak the conservative Orange County Register, former home of GOP Rep Dana Rohrabacher, in a sexual way. Laughs here.

McCain sex tape surfaces and hilarity ensues (satire).

Conservative Correctness Rears Its Ugly Head in Calling Iraq a Civil War

Has anyone been scratching their heads over why the media has been so tentative about labeling the Iraq conflict a civil war? They shouldn't and there is a lesson in it.

The media is so full of cowards now that even stating what should be obvious to an eight year old is fraught with fears that the mighty rightwing Wurlitzer will bury them in an avalanche of criticism. So many of these media companies are seeded with Republicans in their executive ranks that reporters and headline writers are running scared that their necks are on the chopping block if the conservative echo chamber reverberates with the sound of grumbling.

Shit, look at Joe Thugborough accusing Danny DeVito of engaging in, and I quote, "political hate speech." First, it was on The View, who nobody above a room temperature I.Q. gives a tinker's cuss about. Thugborough also had some paint fall off of his macho facade by admitting that he cares about anything emanating from that yenta-fest.

Keep that in mind then you read today's headline about how a rightwinger is making a serious bid to buy the NY Times.

Republicans believe, much how the black community does, that it should be entitled to immunity from scrutiny from non-members of the populace by virtue of who they are because they each fraudulently claim that they have been victims of unfair portrayals in the media.

The actual truth is that in inner city America as well as in corporate boardrooms, criminality tends to be coddled and even, in certain circles, thought of as cool and they scream like stuck pigs when the police and prosecutors show up to interdict that and the media appears to capture it for its viewers, listeners and subscribers.

The media has, in fact, been way too timid in forthrightly dealing with both groups because they don't want to be accused of being racists on the one hand and being liberal stooges on the other.

Consequently, the time is more ripe than ever for the emergence of an American Hitler or Mussolini because the watchdog that is supposed to help prevent that from happening is either bought off by the problem party (NBC by GE, Sinclair, Disney, Fox, Clear Channel, etc) or have been scared into toeing the line (CBS, which is owned by Viacom). CNN is such a bore that it is hard to take seriously and it, too, has begun listing rightward.

So idiots like David Gregory, Chris Matthews, Tim Russert, Katie Couric, Charlie Gibson, John Gibson and Brit Hume aren't just cowards, they, in a very real way, end up being collaborators and should be reviled as such.

By the way, Thugborough, Barbara Walters is a horse's ass. She's about as venerable as a can of sardines.

Random Thoughts

Meet the new defense chief, same as the old boss.

L.A. Times calls it a civil war in Iraq.

A couple who fled to Canada in the wake of Bush winning a second term decides to stay put even with conservative tool (in both senses of the word) Stephen Harper becoming prime minister there and the Democrats taking Congress.

Here we go: the two idiots who were heckling Michael Richards now want a payday for the former Seinfeld star's tirade that was directed at them. And who is representing these two loudmouths? None other than judicial heldentwat Gloria Allred.

These hecklers are a couple of pussies. Look, Richards' career is over. Just because somebody calls you names doesn't mean they actually hurt you to the point that you suffered some kind of loss. If you can now claim monetary awards just for name calling, lawyers would be crawling all over elementary and junior high schools looking for students who want to sue their classmates after playground spats. So shut the fuck up and disappear, okay you fucking whiners?

Lawyers have also found a new way to manipulate jurors, so expect to see more histrionics from them in a courtroom near you.

Meanwhile, states will tell the Supreme Court that they want Turbo Bush and Congress to take action on global warming.

Republicans in Indiana are resisting a Democratic call to eliminate that state's six percent sales tax on gasoline. Why? So they can cut property taxes instead, which mostly benefits, as you would expect, apartment owners (who won't slash rents) and the wealthy with big ass land holdings. Moreover, just what the impact of the GOP plan will be on police services and schools hasn't been disclosed, but it won't be positive. That's the Republicans for you, always willing to sacrifice public safety and education for the sake of greed.

I have two uncles who are truckers. They are both owner-operators, one a long haul and the other a shorter haul (pretty much the south only) and they are getting killed on these high gas prices, the ones that the Indiana state government benefits from thanks to the continuing gouging by Big Oil. Of course, ultimately when transportation costs go up so do consumer prices. But again, the GOP doesn't care.

The Carlyle Group, an investment firm that is headed up by Scanner Bush and some of his cronies, has plans to buy one of the world's biggest microchip packaging firms. Hmmm..... Read about it here.

Rwanda has broken off relations with France amid allegations that the froggies are attempting to destabilize the African nation's government. Nice job Rwanda! French leaders should be brought up on war crimes charges for helping to stoke the genocide there, but there is no plan to do that, unfortunately.

French soccer fans also have some self-reflection to do following a match with an Israeli squad, as they showed that anti-semitism is still alive and well there.

It appears that cranky Venezuelan strongman Hugo Chavez is going to cruise to an easy victory in the upcoming elections in that country, but it could have an interesting side effect since Chavez may forbid Venezuelan players to go to the major leagues. Several MLB clubs have academies there. MLB thus brings millions of dollars to what is still a poor nation. Venezuelan baseball fans are reportedly not amused.

Comedians, though, are having a good time shredding the Bush Administration for the appointment of religious wacko Dr. Eric Keroack to oversee family planning policy, but average women are not because the GOP cannot mind its own business.

Also not right in the head is L.A.'s birdbrained Democrat mayor Antonio Villaraigosa, who says it's okay to inconvenience people attempting to go to and from work and to help generate more pollution in one of America's smoggiest cities for Hollywood's sake. Sorry, but I think it is the job of industry to stay out of the way of average people as much as possible. This country doesn't exist for the benefit of corporate America, but for the country's inhabitants. It's too bad that Villaraigosa hasn't learned that simple fact. Call him a Hollywood whore.

Is the campaign to recognize gay marriages setting gay rights back? Read this and make up your own mind.

In what might be the oddest headline of the day, though, a teachers pension fund in Ontario, Canada has bought interest in, get this, four shipping container terminals. You read that right.

John McCain the Phony

Professional former prisoner of war and Arizona Senator John McCain will now apparently make another run at nabbing the Republican presidential nomination. In his so doing, you will no doubt get the same old bullshit about what a maverick he is. The truth, though, is that McCain is just another rightwing hack.

Let's look at who the former pilot has in tow: Bruce Herschensohn, the failed GOP California Senate aspirant who decried the fact that the UN is filled with representatives of dictatorial regimes on the one hand then lamented that then President Jimmy Carter didn't crush the Islamic rebellion that toppled dictator Mohammad Reza Pahlavi, aka the Shah of Iran.

Yep, that is how you buy credibility in a Muslim region, by killing what may have been thousands of that religion's faithful and perhaps becoming bogged down in a perpetual guerrilla conflict after the U.S. had pulled out of Vietnam just a little over half a decade previous. That is not to also mention that the Soviet Union, which was barely hanging on at that point, felt that Iran was within its sphere of influence. A U.S. military action there could possibly have stoked tensions between the U.S. and the Soviets and given more spine to military and KGB hardliners, especially after what we had been doing in Afghanistan with the Mujahadeen.

So he obviously doesn't really believe in diplomacy, which has been Bush's big problem and he has no grasp of geopolitical realities. It doesn't say much for McCain that he would have this idiot as one of his advisers.

That is beside the fact that he doesn't agree that the federal government ought to aid victims of natural disasters. That falls right in line with Bush, who left everybody behind during Hurricane Katrina while he was on another vacation and only belatedly moved, albeit merely with a series of lame ass photo ops, when the criticism and outrage got to be crushing.

Moreover, Herschensohn is another echo from the Nixon White House days and if McCain is trying to set himself up as some kind of moral paragon, as his recent courting of wackjob religious fringies like Jerry Falwell showed, then his buddy Bruce, a Tricky Dick apologist, betrays that.

One also has to question how conservatives could vote for McCain anyway. Aside from the fact that he has the adultery thing going and his wife is part of the GOPP (Grand Old Pill Poppers), Bush and his campaign made insinuations during the 2000 primary campaign that McCain was a kind of Manchurian Candidate in the wake of the torture he endured whilst a prisoner in Vietnam. That leaves those conservatives now open to being charged with selling out the country by being willing to vote for somebody who may have been programmed by the Commies even if we all know that what was said about McCain in this connection is garbage.


Then there is John Weaver, his political strategist. Weaver also advised another wingnut, Phil Gramm, during his 1996 presidential bid.

McCain is also closely tied to advisers to Bush, as this list demonstrates, including the insufferable former Indiana Senator Dan Coates, who tried to help Bush get Harriet Miers to the Supreme Court and who is hardly a stalwart defender of the First Amendment.

It's the same old shit. Don't fall for it. McCain is about as independent of the GOP establishment as Ed Gillespie.