Digby has an amazing / scary piece about Lisa Schiffrin and her amazing ability to use reason and logic here. I swear I don't know whether to laugh or cry. I haven't for nearly fourteen years.
Comments welcome,
Pat McGovern
It's got electoral votes. It's what politicians crave.
Watching the conventions, it can be difficult to watch Jon Stewart and other shows. Apparently, I missed this last night, I strongly encourage you to set aside the 5 and a half minutes to watch this. A masterful showing of the hypocritical double standards of the right and the McCain campaign in the last week:
If you just watched Karl Rove, Dick Morris, Bill O'Reilly, Nancy Pfotenhauer, and, of course, Sarah Palin than you too are saying, "Wow." If you didn't, well, OK, be the sheep the Republican Party thinks you are.
Comments welcome,
Pat McGovern
I am not sure what to say. It's that shocking. Senator John McCain has selected Governor Sarah Palin, Republic(an) of Alaska, to be his running mate.
I think I'm shocked! Didn't think he would actually do it! Let's go to the blogs!
Powerline's Paul Mirengoff:
I'm very disappointed that John McCain would put someone as inexperienced and lacking in foreign policy and national security background as Sarah Palin a heartbeat away from the presidency.
The first criterion for a veep - and I'm simply repeating a truism here - is that they are ready to take over at a moment's notice. That's especially true when you have a candidate as old as McCain. That's more than especially true when we are at war, in an era of astonishingly difficult challenges, when the next president could be grappling with war in the Middle East or a catastrophic terror attack at home. Under those circumstances, we could have a former Miss Alaska with two terms years under her belt as governor. Now compare McCain's pick with Obama's: a man with solid foreign policy experience, six terms in Washington and real relationships with leaders across the globe.
One pick is by a man of judgment; the other is by a man of vanity.
She may be a fine person, but she's my age, she has zero Washington experience, and no foreign policy expertise whatsoever.
McCain has just told us how seriously he takes the war we are in. Not seriously at all.
Palin has no formal foreign-policy experience, which puts her at a disadvantage to Joe Biden. However, in nineteen months as governor, she certainly has had more practical experience in diplomacy than Biden or Obama have ever seen. She runs the only American state bordered only by two foreign countries, one of which has increasingly grown hostile to the US again, Russia.
Next, John McCain's central and best argument in this campaign is that Barack Obama simply lacks the experience to be President of the United States. And now John McCain, who is a cancer survivor who turns 72 years old today, is picking a vice presidential nominee who has been governor of a small state for less than two years and prior to that was mayor of a town with roughly one-twenty-seventh of the citizens that Barack Obama represented when he was a state senator in Illinois.
Whatever you think of Barack Obama's qualifications to be President, Palin is manifestly less qualified. And that undermines the central premise of McCain's campaign.
It's time to kick off the convention! What better way could there possibly be to kick off convention season than with a Jib-Jab production. I can't think of one. Therefore, I happily present "Time for Some Campaignin'":
Slowly, but surely, more and more stuff comes out in this whole Georgian invasion that just makes you wonder. It is now clear, to a great extent, why the Russians have not removed themselves from Georgian territory.
Why?
They don't think they have to! Indeed, they apparently don't have to according to the peace plan that U.S. Secretary of State Condoleeza Rice is now trying to get Georgian President Mikhail Saakashvili to sign.
The plan gives the Russians the right to patrol in Georgian territory. Not just South Ossetia, not just Abkhazia but in what is actual, undisputed Georgian territory.
Here is where I should make a politically incorrect joke about how it must have been a Frenchman who negotiated this deal. Unfortunately, this isn't a situation to which humor, in bad or good taste, should be applied.
Comparisons and analogies abound here folks.
The Russians are saying that they are doing nothing different that the United States and Europe did in Kosovo (which was, notably, done against Russian wishes.)
Saakashvili is making comparisons to the Munich Agreement in 1938.
Both sides are leveling charges of genocide.
Meanwhile civilians and reporters are being caught in the crossfire. The video above has footage of a reporter being hit by a sniper as she is going on the air.
I cannot imagine that President Saakashvili will sign the agreement as it is presently constructed. It does not even have any provision for outside oversight or any type of sanctions against Russia if it fails to abide by it's terms.
It is not clear who started this. It is clear who needs the protecting here. I do not say that Georgia is innocent in this. But they, being that their army is already all but destroyed, need to have someone defending their right to exist here. At the very least, the Bush administration seems to be doing their best to achieve that.
That said, their is a lot of blame to go around on why this is happening.
-You can start with Kosovo. But that was still what nearly all in the west would consider a justified action by the United States and Western Europe. Nevertheless, Russian President Dmitri Medvedev and his Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov are using that as their template here. Ironic really, since we cut into their sphere of influence with that action and this action is, and least partly, about reestablishing their sphere of influence.
-Iraq. To some extent, Afghanistan also. But mostly, Iraq. Unilateral action on a grand scale. This is what really cuts the Bush Administration off at the knees. No matter what they say, the Russians will come back at them with some excuse that they say makes this situation more justifiable that the United States violating Iraqi sovereignty.
I am sure the right wing in the country will have all sorts of arguments on this. The left does not.
Internationally, as we try to mend the burned bridges of said Iraqi campaign, the Bush administration will also find it hard to defend this attack as well.
-Our foreign policy in Eastern Europe in general for the last seven plus years. We have spent the last seven years building our foreign policy in Eastern Europe on a "great personal relationship" with former Russian President and current Prime Minister Vladimir Putin.
That said, Russia itself hasn't felt the relationship has been 'good' or even 'okay' for at least three years. We have done nothing but play nice with countries such as Georgia or Ukraine both of which the Russians consider thorns in their side. Meanwhile NATO and the EU creep ever closer to the Russian border.
Unfortunately, we also have given the Russians no reason to think that we would be reacting as we are right now to such an action as they have taken. They thought we would say something, sure, but they did not beleive we would be so righteous in our rhetoric.
(Take a step back, and think about our governments actions for the last seven years. Objectively, would you think we would have the balls to present such a loud protest about the violation of sovereignty of a country that the other country considered a 'threat to their national security'? That's a WOW in most of the world's eyes.)
All of this leads us to where we are. With a Secretary of State trying to convince the president of a small embattled republic to let the troops of a big, allegedly democratic republic, have free reign on his peoples territory.
Would you sign that agreement? Would you expect the democratically elected leader of another country to?
I wouldn't.
Comments welcome,
Pat McGovern
Over in the McCain camp, which has been flying under the radar, for the most part, they have decided to do something else besides be happy that they came up with the gas tax holiday, but are letting Hillary take Obama's broadsides. Here is what is, presumably, their new 'healthcare solutions' ad:
There may be many solutions to this problem John but your commercial is articulating stuff that doesn't seem like it will have much of an impact on Joe Smith who lost his job and can't get his family health insurance. I, personally, was not aware that millionaires getting prescription drug subsidies was a major problem with our healthcare system. Thanks for alerting me to this new crisis, John.
Importing drugs and reducing crappy lawsuits is going to help more Americans be covered by health insurance? I think not. It will mitigate the cost increases but do absolutely nothing to help people get coverage. Notice how I used the phrase 'mitigate the cost increases' and not 'reduce costs'. Do you know why? I think you do.
Boy are they lucky more people aren't paying attention! If this is the best they are going to be able to pull out in September and October, than McCain may have a lot more in common in his immediate predecessor in the senate, Barry Goldwater, than he does now, come the second week in November.
Comments welcome,
Pat McGovern
To show that he's a crusader against wasteful spending and congressional corruption, Sen. John McCain repeatedly brags about his leading role in stopping a scandal-plagued air tanker contract between the Air Force and Boeing in 2004.
read more | digg story
That seems to be the gist of Robert Novak's column today. It criticizes some of the moves that Minnesota's Republican Governor Tim Pawlenty has made recently in light of how many view him as an ideal choice for Senator John McCain (R-AZ) to make for his running mate.
What Novak really does in this column is demonstrate how far the powers that be have strayed from even much of their own base on environmental issues. Perhaps the Haley Barbours and Rick Perrys of the world have issues with clean, renewable energy as a threat to the economies of their states (which it really isn't BTW.) but most Republicans are on board on this issue, particularly in the mid-west and the mountain west.
Has Bob noticed that red state Montana has a Democrat as governor? That would be Gov. Brian Schweitzer. He is an extremely popular Democrat in what had been assumed is a solid red state. One big reason? His stance on the environment and clean, renewable energy. Just try to get the guy to stop talking about ways to convert and/or burn coal cleanly and to safely bury the resulting carbon dioxide.
I find the last paragraph of the column the most telling:
"We loved Ronald Reagan, but he made some compromises along the way," Pawlenty said, adding, "We don't have a big enough party to be throwing people overboard." Presumably, that also means coal and oil interests.
It is with great regret that I note the passing of William F. Buckley Jr. Upon reflection, this moderate to liberal democrat has more regret than he might have thought he would upon this news. I think I know why.
The founder of The National Review was, what I would consider, one of the last true conservative commentators of our time. He, along with Barry Goldwater, was instrumental in laying out the path of conservatism that needed to be followed to eventually enable a former actor and California governor to capture the White House in 1980.
He was the type of commentator with whom you could argue, who would listen to your argument and then present a cogent rebuttal in response. Even more astounding in today's world, whether he agreed with your position or not he would respect it. I have wracked my brain for nearly an entire day and, with a single exception, I cannot come up with any other living conservative commentator who can be described thusly. (George Will is the only one I can think of.)
He was not about talking points. He was all about deeply held beliefs intelligently argued against what he knew (or assumed) were the deeply held beliefs of others. That will be sorely missed.
There were, obviously, a great many subjects on which I disagreed with William F. Buckley Jr. over the years. Throughout all those disagreements I had with his views I never lost respect for either the man or his views he espoused. That is the greatest tribute I can pay to him and one which he well earned.
An era is passing, perhaps a new era can begin which will take some lessons from why this moderate-liberal democrat has such great respect for a man with such different views from his own. If a new era could learn from that, than that would, indeed, be Buckley's greatest legacy. Regardless, his loss is a great one. He will be missed.
Comments welcome,
Pat McGovern
There are a host of tributes at NRO, I recommend perusing them.
