John McCain decided to whine yesterday. Loud whine, partisan whine. The whine came just a day after the release of the Senate Armed Services Report on torture that he signed, a report that devastatingly details the abuses during the Bush Administration. that report has helped fuel the calls for investigations and possible prosecutions concerning the illegal use of torture presumably ordered by Bush Administration officials. So John McCain is partly responsibile for feeding the public’s interest in justice, but he’s whining about what would happen if such an investigation gets underway. He warns about a “witch hunt,” as reported by Politico:

The former GOP presidential nominee and POW supported Obama’s decision to end the use of waterboarding and other “enhanced interrogation” techniques but insisted that those who gave legal advice should not be prosecuted because they were “sworn to do their duty to the best of their ability.”

“Look, I didn’t agree, as you said, with the techniques — and I’d be glad to continue that debate with people. But to criminalize their legal counsel, unless you can prove that they intentionally violated existing laws or ethics, then this is going to turn into a witch hunt,” he said.

McCain compared the potential prosecutions with the actions of “banana republics” that “prosecute people for actions they didn’t agree with under previous administrations.”

“To go back on a witch hunt that could last for a year or so, frankly, is going to be bad for the country, bad for future presidents — precedents that may be set by this, and certainly nonproductive in trying to pursue the challenges we face,” he said.

First of all, John McCain, these lawyers on the Bush Administration team may indeed have been doing the best in their ability, but it is clear now that their abilities were just fine as far as legal skills are concerned, and about nil as far as understanding and valuing the constitution. But this is a side issue. What we are talking about when we want justice concerning the illegal actions of the Bush Administration doesn’t have to do so much with the tainted lawyers, but about the people who ordered the policies that caused torture int he first place. That ain’t a witch hunt, John, and it ain’t just about disagreements in policy. This is about illegal acts that your report claims has massively damaged US reputation around the world and consequently our abilities to combat terrorism. It’s about crime, John.

McCain buggy whips out phrases like “witch hunt” and “banana Republic” in order to inflame things politically, but his own people are doing even uglier things. If John McCain values his party, of which he was the leader mere months ago, then he needs to take the lead in calming the rhetoric about “socialism,” and other crackpot crap. If McCain wants bipartisanship that lets us look forward without healing the wounds made to our national soul by the Bush torture policies, then he ought to check a little about whether bipartisanship is possible on his side of the aisle. The “Just Say No” faction of the GOP, which appears to be all of them, isn’t going to reconcile whatsoever even if Obama is successful in making the inquiries into Bush Administration torture programs go forward calmly and deliberately.

Of course, John McCain knows there are more reports going to come out, including a release of pictures of the degrading treatment of prisoners conducted under the Bush Administration. Heck, today’s report about over 100,000 Iraqi civilian deaths isn’t going to help McCain, and he knows that the calls for a reconciliation commission, the calls for accountability, are going to ring louder before they quiet down. And John McCain knows that Americans are happy with Barack Obama as President, are for the first time in a long time Americans are believing that this country is going the right direction.

John McCain needs to get his own political house in order before he goes slinging words like “banana Republic” and “witch hunt” around. Let’s dismiss that “banana Republic” is a new talking point foisted on him by the RNC and look at realities here. John, we have illegalities that have almost certainly gone down in the Bush Administration. Those illegalities revolve around the use of torture, among other issues. The crimes that have taken place have severely harmed our national moral image, the one thing America could always be proud of. John, YOU were proud to serve because America was a moral beacon to the world, but while you were serving, John, another Republican President broke laws. With Watergate we took the miscreants to task and it did not harm our country. I would argue it made us better. I need, and we all need, for America to be better. Don’t stand in our way, John McCain, as we seek to heal. Don’t you dare.

Isn’t it sweet, that Sarah Palin and Nancy Pelosi are the bottom dwellers when it comes to trust about identifying and solving problems for our nation. Of course Obama still ranks high in the trust of the people in this Public Strategies poll, consistent with other polling over the last few months. But Pelosi and Palin together? Odd bedfellows, eh? From Politico:

In a new Public Strategies Inc./POLITICO national survey of 1,000 registered voters, Obama outdistances figures on both the left and the right in earning the public’s trust, with two-thirds of respondents saying they trust the president “to identify the right solutions to the problems we face as a nation.”

Of those who said they trust the president, 31 percent said they trust him “a great deal.” An additional 35 percent said they have “some” trust that Obama will find the correct solution. Thirty-one percent said they trust Obama either “not very much” or “not at all.”

Voters were asked the same question of House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.), Republican Gov. Sarah Palin of Alaska, former Massachusetts Republican Gov. Mitt Romney, conservative radio host Rush Limbaugh and the two major political parties. Among those choices, only the Democratic Party was trusted to find the right solutions by a majority of voters, 52 percent to 40 percent. Forty percent of those surveyed said they trusted the Republican Party, compared with 54 percent who did not trust the GOP.

Only 26 percent said they trust Pelosi, the lowest total in the group. Palin attracted the highest percentage of those who did not trust her at all to identify the right solutions, topping Pelosi 33 percent to 32 percent. Romney got a mixed reaction, with 38 percent of voters saying they trust him and 39 percent saying they don’t.

Sane people didn’t trust Palin anyway, but I’d say it is encouraging that more people are waking to their own sanity. Still, who are those numbnuts saying they trust the woman to run the economy? Man! Even John McCain won’t mention her name.

Hooray for John McCain. He has enlisted several folks to help him procure a pardon for Jack Johnson, the boxer. Johnson was charged with the Mann Act and served a year in Leavenworth a long, long time ago. The Mann Act? That’s for transporting women across state lines for immoral purposes. Peter King and a few others are joining McCain in sponsoring a bill to pardon Jaohnson, though why they don’t just send a petition I don’t know. Wouldn’t Barack Obama be receptive? Still, hoorah for John McCain working hard to posthumously pardon one of his childhood heroes. Childhood heroes? From Yahoo.com:

Sen. John McCain wants a presidential pardon for Jack Johnson, who became the nation’s first black heavyweight boxing champion 100 years before Barack Obama became its first black president.

McCain feels Johnson was wronged by a 1913 conviction of violating the Mann Act by having a consensual relationship with a white woman — a conviction widely seen as racially motivated.

“I’ve been a very big fight fan, I was a mediocre boxer myself,” McCain, R-Ariz., said in a telephone interview. “I had admired Jack Johnson’s prowess in the ring. And the more I found out about him, the more I thought a grave injustice was done.”

He had admired Johnson in the ring? Johnson last fought in 1938 while in his fifties, far past his prime and when John McCain was in his infancy. I mean, I know John McCain is older than dirt, but even he isn’t old enough to have admired Johnson’s fighting. Sure, Ken Burns did a documentary about Johnson that aired in 2005. Yeah, maybe that’s what McCain is talking about, but the context speaks otherwise to me.

In last fall’s election campaign the GOP used an ad in Ohio that ripped off the Jackson Browne golden oldie, “Running on Empty.” The point they were trying to get across was that the Obama campaign energy policy would leave us without gas, or something like that. Jackson Browne was offended by the ad, and has sued all of the above, John McCain, the RNC, and etc. Turns out John McCain’s defense is that he never approved the use of the song. The man helped write the campaign laws, for Christ’s sake, and he can’t take personal responsibility for this kind of bungling? Here’s his defense, from Wired.com:

I was not involved at all in any way in the writing, creation, production, distribution or dissemination of the video, nor do I have any knowledge whatsoever of how this video was written, created, produced or disseminated or who was involved in any aspect of the writing, creation, production, distribution or dissemination of the video. I was completely unaware that this video even existed until I was informed of it after this lawsuit was filed.

The judge didn’t buy it.

Despite McCain’s claims of being a hapless dupe for his party, U.S. District Judge R. Gary Klausner said (.pdf) the RNC and McCain were so intertwined — what the judge called an “agency relationship” — that McCain stays in the case. The judge wrote that, even if McCain’s statement were true, “once an agency relationship is established, the principal is liable for the acts of her agent, even if the principal does not expressly authorize or instruct her agent to take any action.”

The judge also did not agree with the Republicans and McCain that Browne’s lawsuit was bogus. Among other things, the judge kept the lawsuit alive to give the defendants a chance to demonstrate how using about 20 seconds of the song in the commercial was a fair use.

Yes, persons running for political office are responsible, just like we are, for using and paying for the artistic products they want to emply to back their own ambitions.

In the interest of full disclosure, my son goes to sleep quite well to Jackson Browne’s “Jamaica Say You Will.” I have not played “Rosie” for him.

I suppose someone might have seen this coming back in the fall, when Senator Kay Bailey Hutchinson was passed over the nomination as John McCain’s VP nominee in favor of Sarah Palin. Well they were both in TV news at one point, and they are both of huge value to the NRA, but it seems this cat fight is about abortion.

One thing is sure concerning the Palin nomination over Hutchinson — if Kay Bailey wasn’t pissed, she sure was channelling that feeling to at least one reporter. From NewsMax, the transcript of some candid comments on MSNBC last September:

Peggy Noonan: Yeah.

Mike Murphy: You know, because I come out of the blue swing state governor world: Engler, Whitman, Tommy Thompson, Mitt Romney, Jeb Bush. I mean, these guys — this is how you win a Texas race, just run it up. And it’s not gonna work. And…

Noonan: It’s over.

Murphy: Still McCain can give a version of the Lieberman speech to do himself some good.

Todd: I also think the Palin pick is insulting to Kay Bailey Hutchinson, too.

Noonan: Saw Kay this morning.

Todd: Yeah, she’s never looked comfortable about this.

Murphy: They’re all bummed out.

Todd: Yeah, I mean is she really the most qualified woman they could have turned to?

Noonan: The most qualified? No! I think they went for this — excuse me — political bullshit about narratives…

Todd: Yeah, they went to a narrative.

Murphy: I totally agree.

Noonan: Every time the Republicans do that, because that’s not where they live and it’s not what they’re good at, they blow it.

I’m thinking Noonan and Murphy were wrong. Hutchinson and Palin are alike in several hard core Republican issues, such as gun control, and they are both women. Good candidates, except, of course, that Hutchinson can put together a sentence and Palin needs some help with that difficult task. There’s too big differences between the two. Hutchinson is older by 20 years, and thus couldn’t have balanced out McCain’s age on the ticket, and the kicker. Hutchinson supports Roe v. Wade, with restrictions. Palin is banking on the virulent anti-abortion extremist Christian vote in four years. So what does Sarah Palin do the other day? Palin endorses Rick Perry, despite that he’s rumored to be gay, because Rick Perry is the darling of the extremist right wing Christian conservatives down there in Texas. (Reports on Palin’s endorsement of Perry can be found in both the Christian Science Monitor and the Wall Street Journal.) Here’s a few quips about Perry from Palin from the Monitor:

“He walks the walk of a true conservative,” she said of Perry. “And he sticks by his guns – and you know how I feel about guns.”

. . .

“Not every child is born into ideal circumstances, but every life is sacred,” Palin wrote. “Rick Perry knows this – it is at the core of his being.”

There’s the ticket. Sarah Palin is beginning her 2012 Presidential run in Texas appealing to the extremist right wing Christian crowd by backing Rick Perry over Kay Bailey Hutchinson in the Governor’s race. Texas has a lot of delegates, so it seems a smart political move for Palin, but time will tell on that, of course. One wonders, of course, if her backing of Perry also has to do with Hutchinson’s luke warm response to Palin’s Vice Presidential candidacy. Is this a form of payback? Now that’s old fashioned politics we all know and love, isn’t it?

Well, it cannot be denied that Hutchinson was luke warm to Palin last fall. An article in the Dallas Morning News on September 4, 2008 shows Hutchinson as a bit less than inspired by Palin, and lots of folks last fall were wondering why McCain picked Palin over Hutchinson (like here) if he wanted a woman on the ticket. But I’m thinking this is not Sarah Palin playing hardball and getting back at Hutchinson, who for the most part played the good GOP soldier after McCain picked Palin. This is simply a case of Sarah Palin snubbing the woman in a shrewd poltiical move to enegrize the extremist right wing Christians she will need if she decides to run for President.

And he’s a fool.

Rick Santorum starts today’s column with the following, which looks like it might be complimentary to someone, doesn’t it? From the Philadelphia Inquirer:

I have been to New York, Los Angeles, Philadelphia and Washington in recent weeks. In those cities, at least, you cannot watch the news, pass street vendors selling T-shirts, or browse magazine racks at the grocery store and not feel good about our next president, his family, and our nation’s future.

There is an air of something big, something grand, something electric about to explode upon us. Barack Obama’s visage is everywhere. His relaxed and reassuring - even beatific - smile is omnipresent. So are his irrepressibly cute girls and their together mom.

Pretty soon the undertone of a whine sneaks into Santorum’s column. This isn’t admiration anymore, or even respect, but blame for Obama’s popularity on cynical politics, or gullible media, anything but that the people like Obama and the policies that he’s advocated. Go read the article — Obama promised bipartisanship, and back when he did so Santorum said it would never happen. Now that Obama is planning to bring John McCain inside the tent, Santorum hates McCain. Make no mistake, the next excerpt from Rick Santorum’s column drips with the diseased disdain of sour grapes:

This unlikely ace can deliver not only the GOP moderates needed to break a filibuster, but also the stamp of bipartisanship: the 2008 GOP standard bearer, John McCain.

McCain was once the mainstream media darling, back when he joined Democrats on a host of issues. He prized his maverick moniker and used it to propel himself onto the national scene in the 2000 Republican presidential primary. Early in the Bush years, he shored up his status as the media’s favorite Republican by opposing Bush on taxes and the environment.

But this love fest came to a halt when McCain became the front-runner for the GOP nomination. First he began to sound more like a conservative by altering his stands on immigration, the environment and taxes. Then he named Sarah Palin his running mate. It was too much for a media that had fallen head over heels for Obama. The media had a new darling.

In McCain’s mind, however, losing the presidency will not be the final chapter of his life story. He knows the path to “Big Media” redemption. Working with the man who vanquished him in November will show them all the real McCain again.

Remember, it was this onetime prisoner of war who led the charge to open diplomatic relations with Vietnam. If that past is prologue, and McCain’s legislative record is any guide, he will not just join with Obama but lead the charge in Congress on global warming, immigration “reform,” the closing of Guantanamo, federal funding for embryonic-stem-cell research, and importation of prescription drugs.

But McCain won’t stop there in his effort to rehabilitate himself in the media’s - or maybe his own - eyes. He will forge common ground on a long list of initiatives that go far beyond where he has gone before, including the stimulus package.

Alas, the two White House rivals now stand positioned to help secure each other’s place in history.

History tells us Rick Santorum lost by historic margins by embracing the extreemist right wing of the GOP. History will tell us also that John McCain lost his election to the popularity of Barack Obama, but also bewcause he chose a Vice Presidential nominee in a move to appease the extremist right wing. Both bits spell the end of Rick Santorum’s brand of politics, and that’s what the sour grapes is about. Barack Obama is maintaining his popularity, and Rick Santorum, by embracing ugly extremism, lost his own approvavl of voters. That’s also what the sour grapes is about. Finally, Barack Obama is showing that he is bipartisan and intends to govern in a bipartisan fashion, something Rick Santorum’s bitter right wing extremism doesn’t allow him to do.

Rick Santorum hates everyone, except for those who agree with his extremist right wing Christian agenda. The Philadelphia Inquirer continues to publish this ugly and extremist misanthrope, to their shame.

No, it’s not Joe Lieberman. It’s Joe “the Plumber” Wurzelbacher. In an interview with that smooth talker Glenn Beck, Joe slammed John McCain, implying McCain was somehow dirty. Can you imagine that? Here’s some of the comments from Politico:

Recalling a conversation he had with McCain about the $700 billion financial industry bailout in September, Wurzelbacher said: “When I was on the bus with him, I asked him a lot of questions about the bailout because most Americans did not want that to happen.”

“I asked him some pretty direct questions,” he continued. “Some of the answers you guys are gonna receive — they appalled me, absolutely. I was angry. In fact, I wanted to get off the bus after I talked to him.”

Asked why he didn’t leave McCain’s campaign if he was “appalled” by the candidate, Wurzelbacher said, “honestly, because the thought of Barack Obama as president scares me even more.”

He’s appalled, but not as much as he is scared. Poor Joe, fake plumber, dodged his taxes, and he’s still scared of Barack Obama enough to stand by and campaign for a guy the thought was slimey. Of course, we can’t assume the guy has any good sense:

While Wurzelbacher was critical of McCain during the interview, he had nothing but praise for his running mate, Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin. “Sarah Palin is absolutely the real deal,” he said.

But Joe the Fake Plumber may be in fact be the real deal himself, the face of the new Republican Party so wrapped up in demonizing people like Barack Obama that he’ll settle for any Republican candidate. Perhaps this is a sign of just how low the GOP has fallen.

There’s an interesting article by Rick Horowitz, reading the tea leaves as to just why John McCain gave us Sarah Palin as his running mate on that dark day in September. The theory he puts forth is that the offering to the religious right in this country was more like a poison pill, that the Palin candidacy would show the extremists on the religious right how little their power can effect things. Here’s a bit of Horowitz’s speculation, from yesrick.com:

But from what John McCain did know, he had to realize that, eye-candy considerations aside, Sarah Palin was an embodiment — hell, a caricature! — of everything he couldn’t stand about the right-hand end of the Grand Old Party.

Put her on the ticket, and let her implode. Let her take the blame for scaring off the moderate Republicans and independents he’d have needed to have even a shot at winning. And if she should decide to spend the weeks after the coming debacle still blabbing away, so much the better. Every time she opens her mouth, she’ll make the Republican right look more and more wrong.

“They’ll be ruined for a generation!” he’s thinking. “That’s exactly what they deserve!”

Just a theory.

Would you rather believe he picked her because he actually thought she was qualified?

I’m not one to believe John McCain would denigrate his own ambitions in favor of teaching the extremists on the religious right a lesson. I think McCain and his team were ambitious and thought, informed by incompetence that rivals Bush, that Palin might energize the “base.” Be that as it may, Horowitz’s theory includes the notion that the religious right will fall because of Palin, and I’m not going to dispute that part of it.

Oh, sure, Palin may be able to help the GOP capture the Senate seat in Georgia for Saxby Chambliss by campaigning for him in Georgia, but her critics in alaska are already using her support of Chambliss the chickenhawk. Here’s a bit from Matt Zency of the Anchorage Daily News:

The man who couldn’t bring himself to serve in the military said a man who left three limbs behind in war was a weakling who would turn the country over to terrorists.

Chambliss was a congressman during the 9-11 attacks. Congressional Quarterly’s “Politics in America 2006” noted that Congressman Chambliss “quipped that one route to security would be for local sheriffs to ‘arrest every Muslim that comes across the state line.’”

So there you have the fine American that Palin is trying to re-elect to the U.S. Senate.

Gov. Palin’s eldest joined the Army and has been deployed to Iraq. As a justifiably proud military mom, she might ask herself why she is using her conservative star power to support such a reprehensible Republican chicken hawk.

Zency does well to point out that Palin is supporting a chickenhawk running against a man who actually defended his country, Jim Martin, and who ran the ugliest campaign possible against Max Cleland back in 2002. Perhaps he could have more fully noted Palin’s neglect of her own state in her time spent in Georgia, and her likely future visits to Iowa, but that will come, no doubt. At least one poll is showing that Georgia race close, but I fully expect, and am not all that disappointed in the notion, that Saxby Chambliss will turn out the victor there.

I am not worried that Sarah Palin may help Saxby Chambliss win because I think first of all that Martin was a severe underdog, and that Chambliss was likely to win anyway. Second, though, in order for Palin to completely destroy the extremist religious right they’ve all got to get behind her, and they will only do so if she shows to them she can help in at least one win. Georgia is a good place for her on that score, where they are suspicious of Democrats in the first place, and where there’s a stong evangelical movement. I’m not all that upset. Hey, this win by Chambliss could keep Palin in the running for 2012, and that’s all to the good for Obama and the Dems.

No, I do not believe Sarah Palin has a chance at swaying centrist voters in this country, and she needs those centrist voters if she is to have any chance in 2012. I’ll also hope, though I’m not sure there are many left, that the moderate Republicans, the sane ones, work actively against her candidacy. At this time that means they end up backing Guiliani or Romney, with Jindal, Huckabee and Palin duking it out for the extreemist support. Those five factions are going to make things uglier in the GOP over the next few years than they are even now. And if the GOP in the house and Senate cooperate with as much gridlock as they can muster, the set-up for Obama couldn’t be better. No, the gridlock won’t work against Obama, but we’ll all be here to chronicle their attempts.

What we’re going to see in 2012 is an economy on the mend, a military situation aimed int he right direction towards Osama and the real terrorists, allies who are again willing to deal with the US and our policies, and the steadiness of leadership we need. What we’ll see among the Republicans is the kind of infighting and dirty politics, against each other (Palin has shown she doesn’t shrink from such tactics) that will remind Americans of the Bush Administration. That’s all to the good.

Hey, he’s got Bill Frist and Lamar Alexander in his pocket, does Hank Williams, Jr., or so it is reported by Country Music Television. The word out there is that Hank Williams, Jr. is going to run for Senator Corker’s seat in Tennessee in 2010. No word on whether he will be using this picture for campaign material.

My goodness. Yeah, Williams is bound to appeal to the base there in Tennessee, but the Republicans sure are scraping the bottom of the barrell here. It isn’t just the hard partying image Williams has nurtured for 30 years that they might want to avoid at all costs. It isn’t even those pictures of Hank with naked women, or the videos that are bound to come out of extreme drunken fans at his concerts. The guy seems nuts to me! How could a party be so irresponsible as to run a nut for Senate? I mean, come on! The guy reworked his song that celebrates drug and alcohol abuse, as well as family, “Family Tradition,” into a song of praise for the McCain/Palin campaign — that isn’t what I’d call good political instincts.

To set the record straight, Real Clear Politics is reporting that there’s been no decision made as to whether Hank will actually run for the Senate in Tennessee:

It was reported recently that country music singer Hank Williams Jr. plans to run for a U.S. Senate seat in Tennessee in 2012 — the next time a Senate seat is up in the state. An intriguing notion to say the least, but no announcement has been made yet, according to Williams’s publicist.

When reached for comment by RealClearPolitics, a spokesman for Williams’s publicist, Kirt Webster, said Williams “has talked about it, but no announcement has been made.”

That this story actually made the light of day is a measure of the kind of desperate straights the Republicans are in. Very, very desperate.

Like we haven’t heard this before, but it’s all over Politico today, having happened at a conference they sponsored, so let’s look at it carefully. OK, it’s a whine, so maybe not so carefully.

First Halperin notes that the press coverage of this campaign was so biased that it is the worst job he’s seen the press do since the buildup to the Iraq War. Let that sink in a moment. Mark Halprein is acknowledging that the press coverage of the buildup to the Iraq War was some of the worst press work in recent memory. I’d say I agree. It led to the loss of thousands of US and coalition lives, to the loss of hundreds of thousands of Iraqi lives, to an upsurge in terroristic violence in the region, and to an enpenditure of hundreds of millions of dollars, leading to a deficit that has helped to cripple this country economically. Mark Halperin is comparing that ineptitude by the press, that laying down for Bush/Cheney, to the bias now? Seriously, Mark, even if it were a goal of Barack Obama he couldn’t fuck things up as bad as Bush has with Iraq. The comparison fails because of the magnitude of the press failings as regards to Iraq, and the magnitude of disaster those failings helped lead to.

But that ain’t all. Mark Halperin does have an example of the press coverage and how it was biased towards Obama. Get this — he cites bios of Cindy McCain and Michelle Obama. I kid you not. Here’s the relevant passage from the Politico article:

Halperin, who maintains Time’s political site “The Page,” cited two New York Times articles as examples of the divergent coverage of the two candidates.

“The example that I use, at the end of the campaign, was the two profiles that The New York Times ran of the potential first ladies,” Halperin said. “The story about Cindy McCain was vicious. It looked for every negative thing they could find about her and it case her in an extraordinarily negative light. It didn’t talk about her work, for instance, as a mother for her children, and they cherry-picked every negative thing that’s ever been written about her.”

The story about Michelle Obama, by contrast, was “like a front-page endorsement of what a great person Michelle Obama is,” according to Halperin.

So it wasn’t a bias about the candidates or the issues they espoused, but about the candidate’s wives? Give me a fucking break! Halperin thinks profiles about the candidates’ wives is a prime example of the bias in the press? Hey, maybe he can focus on the coverage of the wives’ shoes next, or on coverage about the children of the candidates.

What a fraud.