Liberal Democratic Politics, Discussion and Snark

Cliff Schecter drops a gem in his interview with Bob Cesca on the Huffington Post:

With the Obama/Hillary Thrilla in Manila still going on, it seems many have dug in and are more content to bash the other one than McCain. Which is a problem, as he is a scary guy, and people need to know it.

And basically, that’s the deal. Let’s just forget about Hillary and Barack for a moment and focus on why John McCain is a clear threat to America. He’s pro torture, and he’s a giant flip-flopper.

* McCain criticized TV preacher Jerry Falwell as “an agent of intolerance” in 2002, but has since decided to cozy up to the man who said Americans “deserved” the 9/11 attacks. (Indeed, McCain has now hired Falwell’s debate coach.)

* McCain used to oppose Bush’s tax cuts for the very wealthy, but he reversed course in February.

* In 2000, McCain accused Texas businessmen Sam and Charles Wyly of being corrupt, spending “dirty money” to help finance Bush’s presidential campaign. McCain not only filed a complaint against the Wylys for allegedly violating campaign finance law, he also lashed out at them publicly. In April, McCain reached out to the Wylys for support.

* McCain supported a major campaign-finance reform measure that bore his name. In June, he abandoned his own legislation.

* McCain used to think that Grover Norquist was a crook and a corrupt shill for dictators. Then McCain got serious about running for president and began to reconcile with Norquist.

* McCain took a firm line in opposition to torture, and then caved to White House demands.

* McCain gave up on his signature policy issue, campaign-finance reform, and won’t back the same provision he sponsored just a couple of years ago.

* McCain was against presidential candidates campaigning at Bob Jones University before he was for it.

* McCain was anti-ethanol. Now he’s pro-ethanol.

* McCain was both for and against state promotion of the Confederate flag.

* And now he’s both for and against overturning Roe v. Wade.

Nice. Real nice.

Hillary Clinton is at it again, this time making stuff up about health care. You know what this reminds me of? The current administration. Who’s to say she wouldn’t lie us into a war just like George W. Bush? I mean, she can’t even keep her campaign straight.

Here’s what the NY Times had to say about Hillary’s latest lie festival:

Over the last five weeks, Senator Hillary Rodham Clinton of New York has featured in her campaign stump speeches the story of a health care horror: an uninsured pregnant woman who lost her baby and died herself after being denied care by an Ohio hospital because she could not come up with a $100 fee.

The woman, Trina Bachtel, did die last August, two weeks after her baby boy was stillborn at O’Bleness Memorial Hospital in Athens, Ohio. But hospital administrators said Friday that Ms. Bachtel was under the care of an obstetrics practice affiliated with the hospital, that she was never refused treatment and that she was, in fact, insured.

“We implore the Clinton campaign to immediately desist from repeating this story,” said Rick Castrop, chief executive officer of the O’Bleness Health System.

How does Hillary expect superdelegates to believe her if she makes up little lies like this to burnish her image? She’s not as bad as Dubya, but it sure comes off like she’s trying. Pathetic.

Well, we already knew that the Bush Administration was a bunch of criminals, but here’s the proof that they knew it and tried to make it okay:

The Justice Department sent a legal memorandum to the Pentagon in 2003 asserting that federal laws prohibiting assault, maiming and other crimes did not apply to military interrogators who questioned al-Qaeda captives because the president’s ultimate authority as commander in chief overrode such statutes.

This particular memo was penned by John C. Yoo, then a deputy in the Justice Department’s Office of Legal Counsel. John C. Yoo is the Administration’s architect of torture. There is zero way to make this funny or lighthearted. John Yoo is unamerican and deserves to be held responsible for destroying our constitution, our national dignity and our standing in the world. Not to mention all of the crimes committed in Liberty’s name due to his vicious pen.

Glenn Greenwald puts some excellent perspective on the John McCain “centrism” fallacy. He writes:

At the very core of the media’s reverence for John McCain is the blatant, tired myth that he’s a “centrist.”

Like Lieberman, McCain may deviate from right-wing dogma on discrete issues when it comes to domestic policy questions. But on questions of foreign policy, national security and war, McCain — and Lieberman — are as extremist as it gets in the mainstream political spectrum. On those obviously central issues, there simply is nobody and nothing to the Right of McCain.

McCain marks the absolute outer ideological boundary of American militarism, imperialism and war-making, particularly (though not only) in the Middle East. That’s why he’s long been enthusiastically supported by the country’s most crazed warmongers — such as Bill Kristol, James Woolsey, most of the PNAC crowd, and Lieberman. In no meaningful sense are such individuals “centrists,” and neither is McCain.

Couldn’t have said it better myself. Honestly, anyone who votes against a ban on torture, or willingly subjects our troops to unnecessary violence in order to prolong a failed war is nothing more than a fundamentalist. A fundamentalist with sub-par singing and songwriting skills.