On April 7, 2010 the people of Kyrgyzstan, a far-away country straining under an increasingly oppressive president, liberated themselves. In a revolution recalling those of 1989, protests unexpectedly toppled the authoritarian government. The opposition quickly took control, promising free and fair elections.
The United States government promptly asked if the new administration would allow America to keep its air base in the country.
The past decade, which allowed the Bush Administration, American corporations and the great financial giants to turn the country into a dispeptic ulcer, which was mostly Bush and some Obama administered, has left us in a slump. It has taken so much energy to try and turn things around that we wonder if we can summon up more just to keep going.
I was vacillating about whether or not to go to an anti-Bush demonstration today at 5 p.m., but I think this tipped me over the line:
Paul Rogers writes in opendemocracy.net that the Bush Administration is still considering a strike on Iran in the last months of its administration. The idea would be to bind the next administration into a war.
Not only is this scary, but it seems almost probable. What else would this bunch of psychos do? Like Jim Lobe, cited in the article, I've been skeptical of the prospects of war with Iran given how overstretched the U.S. military is and the disastrous political consequences it could potentially have, but as the time wanes in the presidency, the administration transforms even more from stationary bandits to roving bandits. So, Cheney et al. may actually make a calculation to plunge all of us even closer to a level of violence and warfare that I don't even want to imagine.
U.S. Rep. Steve King on Friday announced his bid for a fourth term in Congress -- and he raised some eyebrows with comments about National Security under a potential Barack Obama administration....
It was during a stop at the KICD studios in north Spencer that he also talked about the presidential campaign and his decision not to run for the U.S. Senate seat held by Tom Harkin.
Not running against Harkin. So, not totally stupid. But...
King said he would support presumptive GOP nominee John McCain in part because of alternatives coming from the Democratic Party.
"I don't want to disparage anyone because of their race, their ethnicity, their name - whatever their religion their father might have been," he said.
"I'll just say this: When you think about the optics of a Barack Obama potentially getting elected President of the United States -- I mean, what does this look like to the rest of the world? What does it look like to the world of Islam?"
He continued: "I will tell you that, if he is elected president, then the radical Islamists, the al-Qaida, the radical Islamists and their supporters, will be dancing in the streets in greater numbers than they did on September 11 because they will declare victory in this War on Terror."
King thinks radical Islamists will say the United States has capitulated because the Obama administration would be pulling troops out of any conflict associated with al-Qaida.
"Additionally, his middle name (Hussein) does matter," King said. "It matters because they read a meaning into that in the rest of the world. That has a special meaning to them. They will be dancing in the streets because of his middle name. They will be dancing in the streets because of who his father was and because of his posture that says: Pull out of the Middle East and pull out of this conflict."
He continued: "There are implications that have to do with who he is and the position that he's taken. If he were strong on national defense and said 'I'm going to go over there and we're going to fight and we're going to win, we'll come home with a victory,' that's different. But that's not what he said. They will be dancing in the streets if he's elected president. That has a chilling aspect on how difficult it will be to ever win this Global War on Terror."
Once again proving that racism makes you stupid. So stupid that it never occurs to him the folks who'll be really glad are the mainstream Muslim moderates. Because, of course, in King's world, there are no mainstream Muslim moderates.
Over at MyDD, Jonathan Singer has this gem from the Giuliani campaign:
If these are the process stories campaigns revert to in lieu of fundraising numbers, maybe I was wrong to complain about media coverage of fundraising yesterday. The last seven head to head polls between Clinton and Giuliani show Clinton winning by an average of 5%, and yet the Giuliani campaign thinks that it is heading to a 400-500 electoral vote landslide against Clinton. That is some interesting math. In fact, the latest polls from every state show Clinton already four points or more in states worth significantly more electoral votes than those where Giulaini leads by four points or more:
Clinton 250, Giuliani 182, Swing 106
(Note: the seeming four point incongruence comes from the new election law in North Carolina that would give at least four votes to the Democratic nominee.)
The Giuliani map seems to be a result of three factors. First, they suck at math. Second, they have no problem whatsoever with lying. Third, they are convinced that it is still September 12th, 2001. I am actually glad they released it, however, because something this utterly mega-stupid puts to rest any fears I had of Giuliani winning the Republican nomination. Surely, you can’t have a campaign this stupid and still win the Republican nomination, can you?
Oh, wait. Never mind. Perhaps a more accurate statement is that the world is just as flat for Giuliani as it is for other Republicans.
Update: I think the funniest thing about this map is that Giuliani doesn't even know what states he is ahead in. He lists Arizona as swing, for example, despite significant leads in the state.
STATE BLOGS
