Clipmarks | dulios's 'mccain' clips

Was McCain Actually Tortured?

Thu, 21 Aug 2008 09:04:33 GMT

clipped by: dulios

Clip Source: andrewsullivan.theatlantic.com

Does Bush Believe McCain Was Tortured?

The torture that was deployed against McCain emerges in all the various accounts. It involved sleep deprivation, the withholding of medical treatment, stress positions, long-time standing, and beating. Sound familiar?

According to the Bush administration's definition of torture, McCain was therefore not tortured.

Cheney denies that McCain was tortured; as does Bush. So do John Yoo and David Addington and George Tenet.

No war crimes were committed against McCain. And the techniques used are, according to the president, tools to extract accurate information. And so the false confessions that McCain was forced to make were, according to the logic of the Bush administration, as accurate as the "intelligence" we have procured from "interrogating" terror suspects. Feel safer?

Now the kicker: in the Military Commissions Act, McCain acquiesced to the use of these techniques against terror suspects by the CIA. And so the tortured became the enabler of torture.

Tags: torture, war crimes

The Next American President is Soooo Dreamy!

Fri, 15 Aug 2008 23:57:57 GMT

clipped by: dulios
clipper's remarks: John McCain, please keep your shirt ON.

Clip Source: www.huffingtonpost.com

Another Shocking Obama Endorsement!

Thu, 14 Aug 2008 22:39:22 GMT

clipped by: dulios

Clip Source: www.wonkette.com

Good-For-Nothing Firefighters Endorse Obama

Socialist villain Barack Obama has been endorsed by another group of Blame America First gay sellouts, those lazy clowns known as “America’s Firefighters.” The International Association of Fire Fighters is endorsing Obama at some fire in Las Vegas today, because the Democratic candidate thinks lazy firemen deserve “collective bargaining,” which sounds pretty communist, so that’s why John McCain is bravely against firefighters getting paid a decent wage. [CNN Political Ticker]

Tags: obama, firefighters, union, endorsement, true, but total snark

Presumptuous Presidential Candidate Sends Own Team to Georgia

Thu, 14 Aug 2008 20:49:06 GMT

clipped by: dulios
clipper's remarks:

Clip Source: tpmelectioncentral.talkingpointsmemo.com

McCain Announces That Lieberman And Graham Are Going To Georgia

At a press conference just now, John McCain redoubled his efforts to thrust himself into a leadership role on the Russia-Georgia crisis front, announcing that two top campaign surrogates, Joe Lieberman and Lindsey Graham, are going on a visit to Georgia. McCain said:

"The situation in Georgia remains fluid and dangerous. As soon as possible my colleagues senators Lieberman and Graham will be traveling to Georgia. They're both members of the Senate Armed Services Committee. I hope that other members of the Armed Services Committee in the Senate will go together."

The idea is to showcase himself as a man of action during a time of international crisis and to remind people that the world is a dangerous place that's still filled with aggressive actors, something that the McCain camp presumably thinks will play in his favor.

Tags: mccain, lieberman, graham, georgia, russia, war, presidential campaign 2008

Top McCain Adviser was Lobbyist for Republic of Georgia

Sun, 10 Aug 2008 07:37:22 GMT

clipped by: dulios

Clip Source: www.dailykos.com

Top McCain adviser was lobbyist for Republic of Georgia

McCain's top foreign policy adviser, Randy Scheunemann, was until March a registered lobbyist for the Republic of Georgia. His firm continues to work on behalf of Georgia and other countries in the region. In 2006, lobbyist Scheunemann accompanied McCain on a trip to Georgia. And since Friday, McCain and Scheunemann have been issuing bellicose pronouncements on behalf of Georgia in its conflict with Russia over the breakaway enclave of South Ossetia. However neither of them mentioned that Scheunemann was a Georgian lobbyist.

McCain Doesn't Have a Prayer

Mon, 28 Jul 2008 23:38:22 GMT

clipped by: dulios
clipper's remarks: McCain is not an evangelical Christian. Is this the end of the alliance between the Christian right and neocons? Matt Taibbi at his best.

Clip Source: www.alternet.org

McCain Doesn't Have a Prayer

The marriage of fundamentalist Christianity and the conservative movement has been a powerful force in world affairs. It has been the best smoke screen the archpriests of supply-side economics could possibly have had, giving Wall Street a populist in with the very people victimized the most by their union-busting, deregulatory policies. It turned out, for decades, that Bible-thumping Americans didn't mind having their jobs shipped to China, so long as someone was worrying about the air supply to Terri Schiavo's brain lump. As political cons go, this was the ultimate gift that kept on giving.

Here's the thing about John McCain,

this is not a guy who can get up in front of a churchgoing crowd in Asscrack, Arkansas, and start weeping to Jesus. In fact, he appears to deeply resent the implication that he needs to genuflect to the baby savior at all. As in, "Hell, I already lived through five years of torture! You want me to do more?"

Tags: mccain, evangelicals, neocons, church, abortion, gay rights, taxes, war

Republican Humor

Sat, 12 Jul 2008 19:35:01 GMT

clipped by: dulios
clipper's remarks: McCain's latest joke: when informed by an AP reporter that Iran's biggest American import is cigarettes, he joked, "well, that's a way to kill them."

So funny, I forgot to laugh.

Republicans are a hoot!

Clip Source: www.dailykos.com

Republican Humor

Chances are, if you happen to catch a Republican talking about destruction and death, you’ve probably walked in on the punch-line of a "joke."

There was that hilarious performance George Bush gave at the 2004 White House Correspondents Dinner where he put on a slideshow about WMD that had:

...Bush looking under furniture in the Oval Office. Bush said "Nope. No weapons over there." Then another picture of Bush searching in his office. He said "Maybe under here."

But if Bush's joke about non-existent weapons of mass destruction didn't work for you, there's always his comical exit line from the G8 summit, about the destruction of the planet:

Goodbye from the world's biggest polluter.

Or how about the Republican club’s website with a banner that read:

Obama loves America like O.J. loved Nicole.

And then there’s that Bush-wannabe, John McCain, who happily sang about bomb, bomb, bomb, bombing Iran, and more recently, his clever idea for killing off Iranians.

Tags: republicans, humor, ha ha

Matt Taibbi: Full Metal McCain

Wed, 18 Jun 2008 19:16:21 GMT

clipped by: dulios
clipper's remarks: You'd never know it from listening to McCain, whose kickoff speech is the same election-year diatribe that Republicans have been giving for decades, one long broadside against those goddamned overgrown Sixties weenie liberals who hate the flag, love the bomb-tossing enemies of America and are bent on the twin goals of ending the system of free enterprise and placing every aspect of our lives under government control. McCain pegs Obama as a man who wants to take America "backward," to the failed ideas of the Sixties. "I'm surprised that a young man has bought into so many failed ideas!" he says, to furious applause. Then, spitting out a forced, ugly laugh that he must have practiced many (but not enough) times in the bathroom mirror of the Straight Talk Express, he adds, "That's not change we can believe in!"

Clip Source: www.rollingstone.com

Full Metal McCain

Haunted by the ghosts of Vietnam, the one-time maverick has transformed himself into just another liberal-bashing fearmonger

Evening, June 3rd, in a muggy, dragonfly-beswarmed place called the Pontchartrain Center, just outside New Orleans. Half a continent away, amid yet another legacy-smashing fusillade of unsolicited invective from Bill Clinton, the excruciating Obama-Hillary mess is finally wrapping up, in a pair of anticlimactic primaries somewhere over the darkened plains of Montana and South Dakota. But here in the Big Easy, John McCain has chosen this moment to mount his first general-election attack against the Great Satanic Liberal Enemy — who, as luck would have it, turns out to be a Negro intellectual from Harvard who's never served in the military. And this is supposed to be a bad year for Republicans?

Tags: mccain, obama, southern strategy

McCain Was For Talking to Hamas Before He Was Against It

Fri, 16 May 2008 05:13:13 GMT

clipped by: dulios
clipper's remarks: In a 2006 interview with Sky News, McCain expressed interest in negotiating with Hamas.

Clip Source: www.huffingtonpost.com

McCain Was For Talking To Hamas Before He Was Against It...

Two years ago, in an interview with James Rubin for Sky News, Sen. John McCain expressed a willingness to negotiate with the terrorist group Hamas -- the very group that McCain has been relentlessly using to smear Sen. Barack Obama over the last several weeks.

RUBIN: "Do you think that American diplomats should be operating the way they have in the past, working with the Palestinian government if Hamas is now in charge?"

McCAIN: "They're the government; sooner or later we are going to have to deal with them, one way or another, and I understand why this administration and previous administrations had such antipathy towards Hamas because of their dedication to violence and the things that they not only espouse but practice, so . . . but it's a new reality in the Middle East. I think the lesson is people want security and a decent life and decent future, that they want democracy. Fatah was not giving them that."

Tags: mccain, hamas, palestine, negotiations, obama

Gut Check Time for White Americans

Thu, 01 May 2008 05:58:31 GMT

clipped by: dulios
clipper's remarks:

The Wright affair has such resonance in this campaign because Wright has shown himself to be the kind of black person that white people don't like. He brings out our prejudices. Yes, I said "our" prejudices.

Part of it is Wright's ignorance and part of it is his arrogance and part of it is that he talks louder than white people would prefer and part of it is that he uses the sing-song cadence they associate with other black ministers they have grown to hate over the years such as Jesse Jackson.

Obama is none of those things (OK, maybe a little arrogant at times), so Wright has been brought to the forefront as a substitute punching bag.

Clip Source: www.suntimes.com

It's gut check time for white Americans

Obama's in trouble because Wright brings out our biases

A lot of whites freaked out by Wright

You can see the situation developing, and it doesn't look pretty from where I sit. Obama is likely going to lose the Indiana presidential primary, giving another huge lift to Hillary Clinton.

And then what?

Is the Democratic party going to take away the nomination that was almost in Obama's grasp, that remains almost in his grasp, mainly because a lot of white people are freaked out by Wright and what they have convinced themselves it means about Obama? That seems to be a growing possibility, which to my mind would be an even bigger disaster for Democrats than John McCain handing Obama his lunch in November.

So at the risk of repeating myself, let me repeat myself:

Barack Obama is not Jeremiah Wright.

We've never heard Obama say any of the things that got Wright in trouble because Obama doesn't believe those things.

Tags: obama, wright, racism

McCain on Lower 9th Ward in New Orleans: "Rebuild It, Tear it Down, You Know, Whatever"

Thu, 24 Apr 2008 18:44:10 GMT

clipped by: dulios
clipper's remarks: Whatever.

Clip Source: www.cbsnews.com

McCain to Tour Katrina-Damaged New Orleans Neighborhood

On day four of his “Time for Action” tour, John McCain will visit the lower 9th ward of New Orleans and the damage and progress since Hurricane Katrina.

New Orleans is a perfect storm of all the issues McCain says he is out to learn about on his week-long tour. It is a community largely of color and economically challenged with skyrocketing crime. The future of the region is still uncertain as progress to rebuild has not moved as fast as many have hoped.

He also told reporters he was not sure if he would rebuild the lower 9th ward as president.

"That is why we need to go back is to have a conversation about what to do -rebuild it, tear it down, you know, whatever it is,” he said.

Tags: mccain, katrina, new orleans, lower 9th ward

McCain Opposes Equal Pay Bill

Thu, 24 Apr 2008 18:33:09 GMT

clipped by: dulios
clipper's remarks: McCain says women need more "education and training". @#$!*&^%$*($%#@**&^$#@!

Clip Source: www.huffingtonpost.com

McCain opposes equal pay bill in Senate

NEW ORLEANS — Republican Sen. John McCain, campaigning through poverty-stricken cities and towns, said Wednesday he opposes a Senate bill that seeks equal pay for women because it would lead to more lawsuits.

McCain skipped the vote to campaign in New Orleans.

McCain stated his opposition to the bill as he campaigned in rural eastern Kentucky, where poverty is worse among women than men. The Arizona senator said he was familiar with the disparity but that there are better ways to help women find better paying jobs.

"They need the education and training, particularly since more and more women are heads of their households, as much or more than anybody else," McCain said. "And it's hard for them to leave their families when they don't have somebody to take care of them.

Tags: mccain, women, pay equity, sh*thead

White Radical Evangelicals Get a Pass

Thu, 28 Feb 2008 20:14:24 GMT

clipped by: dulios
clipper's remarks: "Thus, white evangelical Ministers are free to advocate American wars based on Biblical mandates, rant hatefully against Islam, and argue that natural disasters occur because God hates gay people...By contrast, black Muslim ministers like Farrakhan, or even black Christian ministers like Rev. Jeremiah Wright, are held with deep suspicion, even contempt. McCain is free to hug and praise the Rev. Hagees of the world, but Obama is required to prove over and over and over and over that he does not share the more extreme views of black Ministers."

Clip Source: www.salon.com

Some hateful, radical ministers -- white evangelicals -- are acceptable

Yesterday, though, the equally fringe, radical and hateful (at least) Rev. John Hagee -- a white evangelical who is the pastor of a sprawling "mega-church" in Texas -- enthusiastically endorsed John McCain.

Here is just a small sampling of the belief system of this welcomed McCain supporter:

* All Muslims are programmed to kill and we can thus never negotiate with any of them.

* God caused Hurricane Katrina to wipe out New Orleans because it had a gay pride parade the week before and was filled with sexual sin.

* The End Times -- Rapture -- is imminent and the U.S. Government must do what it can to hasten it, which at minimum requires: (a) a war with Iran and (b) undying, absolute support for a unified Israel, including all Occupied Territories

Tags: mccain, obama, farrakhan, hagee, black ministers, white ministers

The Grand Old White Party Confronts Obama

Mon, 18 Feb 2008 17:17:38 GMT

clipped by: dulios

Clip Source: www.nytimes.com

The Grand Old White Party Confronts Obama

THE curse continues. Regardless of party, it’s hara-kiri for a politician to step into the shadow of even a mediocre speech by Barack Obama.

For Mr. McCain, this albatross may be harder to shake than George W. Bush and Iraq, particularly in a faceoff with Mr. Obama. When Mr. McCain jokingly invoked the Obama slogan “I am fired up and ready to go” in his speech Tuesday night, it was as cringe-inducing as the white covers of R & B songs in the 1950s — or Mitt Romney’s stab at communing with his inner hip-hop on Martin Luther King’s birthday. Trapped in an archaic black-and-white newsreel, the G.O.P. looks more like a nostalgic relic than a national political party in contemporary America. A cultural sea change has passed it by.

Tags: obama, gop, race

"Yes We Can" Video: McCain Parody

Mon, 11 Feb 2008 20:23:20 GMT

clipped by: dulios
clipper's remarks: I can't clip the video, grrr.... Click on the link and watch the video. It's hysterical!

Clip Source: www.salon.com

"Yes, We Can," McCain edition

First there was "Yes, We Can," the music video supporting Barack Obama that stars the Black Eyed Peas' will.i.am and was directed by son-of-Bob Jesse Dylan. Then there was "Rock Around Barack," but we'd rather not talk about that.

Now there's a parody of the "Yes, We Can" video, directed at Republican front-runner John McCain, that's burning up the Internet. Watch it below.

Tags: mccain, obama, video, humor