McCain and Patriotism

John McCain is going apoplectic over Gen, Wesley Clark's comment that spending more than 5 years as a North Vietnamese prisoner of war does not necessarily qualify one to be commander-in-chief. Hence, McCain calls a press conference to denounce Obama, his surrogates and his supporters for questioning his patriotism. This from a dude who allowed himself to be punked by George Bush in 2000, yes, the same Bush who managed to sit out the Vietnam war with dubious service in the Air National Guard; but, with the able assistance of Karl Rove, put the genuine war hero on the defensive. But the truth is, McCain has calculatedly used his military service as a integral part of his public persona, as the critical experience that allows him to hit the ground running on day 1 as Commander-in-Chief. So it follows that McCain's service is fair game, and can be discussed without calling into the question his patriotism. Frankly, I agree with Gen. Clark: spending years in captivity does not mean one is prepared to assume the duties of the presidency. Just for the record, Gen, Clark's comments on CBS's Face the Nation:

Transcript

Bob Schieffer: Well you, you went so far as to say that you thought John McCain was, quote, and these are your words, “untested and untried,” And I must say I, I had to read that twice, because you’re talking about somebody who was a prisoner of war. He was a squadron commander of the largest squadron in the Navy. He’s been on the Senate Armed Services Committee for lo these many years. How can you say that John McCain is un- untested and untried? General?

GENERAL WESLEY CLARK: Because in the matters of national security policy making, it’s a matter of understanding risk. It’s a matter of gauging your opponents, and it’s a matter of being held accountable. John McCain’s never done any of that in his official positions. I certainly honor his service as a prisoner of war. He was a hero to me and to hundreds of thousands and millions of others in Armed Forces as a prisoner of war. He has been a voice on the Senate Armed Services Committee, and he has traveled all over the world. But he hasn’t held executive responsibility. That large squadron in Air- in the Navy that he commanded, it wasn’t a wartime squadron. He hasn’t been there and ordered the bombs to fall. He hasn’t seen what it’s like when diplomats come in and say, ‘I don’t know whether we’re going to be able to get this point through or not. Do you want to take the risk? What about your reputation? How do we handle it-’

Bob Schieffer: Well-

GENERAL WESLEY CLARK: ’ -it publicly.’ He hasn’t made those calls, Bob.

Bob Schieffer: Well, well, General, maybe-

GENERAL WESLEY CLARK: So-

Bob Schieffer: Could I just interrupt you. If-

GENERAL WESLEY CLARK: Sure.

Bob Schieffer: I have to say, Barack Obama has not had any of those experiences either, nor has he ridden in a fighter plane and gotten shot down. I mean-

GENERAL WESLEY CLARK: Well, I don’t think riding in a fighter plane and getting shot down is a qualification to be President.

Bob Schieffer: Really?!

Bill Clinton and Barack Obama

It had been widely reported that unlike Hillary Clinton, husband Bill isstill pissed at Obama for the manner in which his wife was treated -apparently he developed this heightened sensitivity after putting herthrough various embarrassments over the years, but I digress - and that he isn't ready to support Obama unless he, Obama, "kisses my ass." (One would have thought that Monica and the other bimbos he's known to have associated with would have serviced that area as well, since they spent so much time on the neighboring frontal regions of his anatomy) Of course, Bill's people are denying that he remains in a hissy fit over
Hillary coming up short, and, alas, CNN reports that Bill and Barack spoke in a telephone conversation earlier today and will let bygones be bygones all for the sake of party unity. No word yet on whether they will make a joint appearance and be color coordinated (as Barack and Hillary were), make nice, clasp hands while singing "We Shall Overcome" (or "Lift Every Voice", Bill knows all the verses) and share a stage in some cow pasture in a little town like the aptly named Unity, New Hampshire.

Don Imus

One of the great non-stories of the week was the reaction, or non-reaction, to Don Imus reverting to form in his racist comments about Dallas Cowboys cornerback Adam Pacman Jones, the troubled football player with a propensity for getting into trouble off the field - he has 6 arrests to support the claim. Well, except for the insufferable Rev. Al Sharpton, who is addicted to stomping out racial injustice both real and imagined, there has been no great hue and cry for this motherfucker to be taken off the air or banished to the radio equivalent of Siberia or otherwise castigated for taking shots at black folks. Don Imus simply does not matter. Even all the bullshit about him and the Rutgers University basketball team was a waste of time because nobody should have given a shit about Imus, much less what he had to say. So to paraphrase the late George Carlin, fuck Don Imus and the horse he rode in on.

Mandela Turns 90

A happy birthday to Nelson Mandela as he turns ninety. In a world with few genuine heroes, he remains just that despite character flaws and foibles that might disqualify him from the sainthood some so eagerly are bent on bestowing upon him.

Mugabe's "One Man, One Vote"

Not surprisingly, Zimbabwe president Robert Mugabe won a one candidate election by garnering 85% of the vote. According to the Zimbabwe Electoral Commission, voter turnout was 42.7% with Mugabe receiving 2,150,269 votes, Morgan Tsvangirai 233,000, and 131,481 spoiled ballots. The latter no doubt cast by those courageous enough to register their displeasure with Mugabe and his sham election.

Obama and Flip-Flopping

This is a response to a D.C. Examiner editorial criticizing Barack Obama for his reversal on public financing:

Re: "Obama as Saint Flip-Flop," editorial, June 24th.

You claim that Barack Obama's decision to forgo public financing despite his vow to sit down with the Republican nominee and reach an agreement "is just another brazen example" of "double-talking politicians in both major political parties." This is nonsense. Ralph Waldo Emerson famously wrote, "A foolish consistency is the hobgoblin of little minds, adored by little statesmen and philosophers and divines." When Obama made that promise about public financing, he obviously could not imagine that his campaign would prove to be remarkably adept at rasing millions not from well-heeled special interests, but from common, ordinary citizens. For him to adhere to his previous position in light of changed circumstances would be an exercise in foolish consistency that would no doubt be adored by your editorial board but would compromise the advantage he enjoys over the cash strapped McCain campaign. Obama would be ill-advised to fritter away an advantage that Democratic presidential nominees rarely enjoy. As for your ingenuous charge of flip-flopping, John McCain hardly has clean hands in this area, given his sundry reversals on tax cuts, off-shore drilling, the foreclosure crisis, just to name a few.

Craig Taylor
Alexandria, Virginia

Mugabe's God

According to the beleaguered Zimbabwe President Robert Mugabe, "Only God, who appointed me, will remove me - not the MDC, not the British. Only God will remove me." This is the all too familiar "With God on our side" trope, frequently played by religious charlatans, pandering politicians, and doddering dictators who find themselves in desperate straits with few viable options.

George Carlin

Comedian George Carlin died last night in Santa Monica, California from heart failure. He was 71 years old. Most obituaries and tributes mention his famous 7 Dirty Words, which he noted with perverse delight made him a legal footnote or that he was the comedian of the counter-culture movement, and as usual such facts do not do justice to the man's body of work. For me, Carlin was not only an extremely funny man but more important, a keen, trenchant observer of the human condition, with that special gift of making us laugh and think at the same time. He will be missed.

Michelle Obama and the Missing Feminists

Columnist Mary C. Curtis, in a Washington Post oped The Loud Silence of Feminists, muses on feminists remaining uncharacteristically silent as Michelle Obama has come under attack. Voices like Gloria Steinem and Geraldine Ferraro, who railed against what they perceived as the unfair and bias treatment of Hillary Clinton, haven't said a damn thing about what Michelle Obama has had to deal with. Perhaps there are limits to the depths of their moral outrage.

Congratulations KG

Special congratulations to Kevin Garnett for finally breaking through and winning an NBA Championship with the Boston Celtics, as they bested their blood rivals the Los Angles Lakers 4 games to 2, concluding with the most lopsided series ending game in history in Boston last Tuesday night. By so doing, he silenced the legion of fickled fans and commentators who too eagerly would readily assign him to the scrap heap of Hall-of-Fame players, like Charles Barkley and Elgin Baylor, whose misfortune it was to never have played on a championship team.

Huckabee's Warning

Former GOP presidential candidate Mike Huckabee warns his fellow Republicans that any attempt to demonize the presumptive Democratic presidential nominee Barack Obama would be "a fatal mistake." The former Arkansas governor noted that with Obama's candidacy the country was getting "to a point where we did not see his color but we truly saw his charisma, his message and what he brought to the campaign trail.When people are really hurting — and they are right now — they're not looking at a person's race." This is a remarkable statement by a member of a political party whose success over the last 40 years has been based primarily on exploiting racial divisions. For asking the Republican Party to refrain from demonizing the opposition is akin to them relinquishing one of the twin pillars - scaring the shit out of Americans over the next terrorist attack being the other - from its standard playbook, so fashioned by Karl Rove in engineering George W. Bush victories in 2000 and 2004.

Quixotism

Detroit Free Press columnist Rochelle Riley writes glowingly of Rep. Dennis Kucinich's quixotic attempt to impeach President George W. Bush for getting the nation into the misadventure more commonly known as the Iraq war. Riley views Kucnich as the solitary voice courageous enough to speak out on the behalf of Americans "sick of war, sick of revelations of ludicrous fact after ludicrous fact" and "tired of counting the bodies of thousands of dead American soldiers." No doubt this is nice stuff but it doesn't square with political realities. First, Bush has little more than 6 months left in what is admittedly one of the worst administrations in the history of the Republic. With the presumptive presidential nominees of Republican and Democratic parties selected, John McCain and Barack Obama respectively, exactly what is the point of moving forward with impeachment proceedings? Second, let's assume that Bush is impeached and removed from office, guess who ascends to the presidency? It's none other than Dick Cheney. In Kucinich's and Riley's view, is Cheney preferable to Bush? I think not.

Obama Combats the Smear

News that Barack Obama has set up a website, Fight the Smears, to counter rumors that have swirled throughout the Internet - that he is a Muslim, refuses to recite the Pledge of Allegiance, wife Michelle's hate whitey statements - was a necessary response in a time when false stories left unchecked simply won't go away and have the potential to do significant damage to a campaign. This is particularly true in Obama's case because, unlike his opponent John McCain, he has been on the national scene a much shorter time and therefore can ill-afford having his political enemies defining him.

R. Kelly Steps

A Chicago jury acquitted singer R. Kelly on fourteen counts of child pornography in a celebrated trial that took place ten years after the alleged offense. Attempting to decipher the thinking processes of any jury is a dicey proposition at best but it is safe to say that, in the case of the self-described Pied Piper of R and B, there was sufficient reasonable doubt about the prosecution's case, which didn't even have the benefit of the alleged victim's cooperation. Whether this experience tempers Kelly's somewhat disturbing and well-documented interest in underage girls, only time will tell. One thing is certain, it will hardly be surprising if his music sales show a significant spike. Such is the way it is.

Boston Comeback

The Boston Celtics' dramatic comeback against the Los Angeles Lakers - the Lakers led by as much as 24 points in the second quarter - reconfirms the bromide that, in the final analysis, it isn't how you start but how you finish that matters. That improbable victory places Boston in a control of the series, 3 games to 1, a deficit that no team has been able to overcome in the history of the NBA Championships.

Obama Misstep

From the gitgo Barack Obama's selection of consummate Washington insider Jim Johnson to head the vice presidential search committee was not exactly a good idea or exercise of sound judgment for a self-described post-partisan presidential candidate who has railed against Washington special interests and the old ways of doing business. For Johnson had a lengthy track record of past associations with the very special interests Obama finds so objectionable. Indeed, he reportedly received $7 million for mortgages with below interest market rates from Countrywide Financial Corp. So Johnson's decision to step down was somewhat inevitable and perhaps a reminder to Obama that one's actions should match one's rhetoric. Failure to do so gives the opposition ammunition to attack you.

Viva Viagra

The continuing story about Roger Clemens and performance enhancing drugs took an unexpectedly bizarre turn the other day when it was revealed that Rocket kept pills of Viagra, the erectile-dysfunction drug, in his locker. Clemens' interest in the drug was spurred not by performance between the sheets but between the white lines. Apparently, many athletes in a variety of sports "have turned to Viagra because they believe it helps dilate blood vessels and delivers oxygen, nutrients and steroids to various muscle groups more efficiently." However, Dr. Lewis Maharam, medical director of the New York Marathon, notes that the benefits might be overblown: "I don't think there is any evidence it's a performance enhancer, except in the bedroom."

Jr. Hits 600

Last night Ken Griffey, Jr. hit his 600th home run and became the only the sixth player in history of Major League Baseball to reach that milestone. Babe Ruth, Henry Aaron, Willie Mays, Sammy Sosa, and Barry Bonds being the others. Griffey has long been regarded as one of the most gifted players of his generation but his career has been marred by numerous injuries that caused him to miss a substantial numbers of games. As a consequence, baseball pundits and commentators immediately began the what if game. What if Griffey hadn't been sidelined with so many injuries? Would he, instead of Bonds, have been the first to break Aaron's career home run mark? Would he have established himself as the greatest player ever? Enough with the speculation because it ends nowhere. It is something of a cliche but injuries are necessarily a part of athletic competition and, as such, cannot be conveniently set aside when evaluating a player's body of work. One thing is certain the all-out effort that Griffey expended in playing centerfield and unfortunately caused the majority of his injuries was the same force that allowed him to fashion a Hall-of-Fame career and was no small factor in attaining the 600-home run plateau. Better to judge Jr. on the basis of what is, rather than what might have been.

Harriet Christian: Inadequate White Woman

Harriet Christian is the crazed white woman who lost it - in the process, calling Obama "an inadequate black man" - after the Democratic National Committee rules panel decided to seat Michigan and Florida delegates with a half vote each, thus effectively ending Clinton's chances at the nomination. In this appearance on what some correctly term the Fake News Network, Ms. Christian elaborates on her views. Among her more entertaining statements is that 99% of the blacks don't know why they're voting for Obama. Way to go, Harriet.

Hillary's Concession Speech

This had to be among the most difficult speeches Hillary Clinton ever delivered in all her years of public service. After an often bruising campaign of 17 months that ended with Barack Obama emerging as the presumptive Democratic presidential nominee, Clinton suspended her campaign, conceded her defeat, thanked her supporters, and called for party unity against Republican John McCain. Although some might quibble that the tone was insufficiently forceful or heartfelt, I think she sounded the right themes and said everything that needed to be said. It was a necessary, however belated, first step for Democrats to heal their divisions and close ranks for what promises to be a hotly contested and hard fought campaign over the next twenty-two weeks.

Death of a Monstrosity

One of the most delightful developments brought about by spiraling gas prices - and to be sure, there are precious few - is the demise of the gas guzzling automotive monstrosity known as the Hummer. Weighing 6,614 pounds and standing 6 feet 8 inches, the Hummer H2 is nothing more than the manifestation of excessive impracticality and conspicuous consumption. Those characterisitics are hard to reconcile with gas prices more than $4 a gallon.

Hillary as VP

The text of a published letter to the D. C. Examiner about Hillary Clinton as Obama's vice presidential running mate.

Obama would get not one, but two co-presidents

Re: “Agree? Disagree? Barack Obama will not choose Hillary Clinton to be his running mate,” June 4

Barack Obama should not choose Hillary Clinton as his vice presidential running mate because the office of the presidency is not a triumvirate. With Hillary ensconced in the vice presidency, Obama will automatically get husband Bill, and therefore would be saddled with both Clintons — who maniacally believe they are entitled to be president.

Craig Taylor
Alexandria, Virginia

Snyder's Media Empire

Washington Redskins owner Dan Snyder has expanded his media empire with the purchase of WTEM 980 sports talk radio. With this action, two things are certain: (1) The Redskins will get even more coverage, which will come at the expense of the Caps, Nationals, and Wizards; and (2) Those personalities who have been especially critical of the 'Skins should start looking for other career opportunities because Snyder is unlikely to tolerate strong opinions that fail to adhere to the company line. Steve Czaban, Andy Pollin, Brian Mitchell, and Doc Walker come immediately to mind because they are among Snyder's most vocal critics.

Finally

Hillary Clinton is set to announce on Friday that she has brought her 17 month campaign for the Democratic presidential nomination to an end and will endorse Barack Obama.

This Historic Moment

Barack Obama's victory in winning enough delegates to secure the Democratic presidential nomination against Hillary Clinton is undeniably a watershed moment in the history of the United States of America. As a schoolboy, I grew up hearing that the promise of America was that it was the land of opportunity, that through hard work and dedication one's dreams could be realized, and that, yes, one could even aspire to become president of these United States. Of course, I soon realized as a black child growing up in Virginia in the fifties and sixties, those sentiments, while noble and idealistic, did not necessarily apply to me. And that makes Obama's seemingly improbable victory all the more special for it goes without saying that I never thought I would live to see the day that an individual whose skin color resembles my own would represent one of the major political parties in an election to determine the presidency of this nation.

"The Deranged Narcissism of the Clintons"

Yesterday the Associated Press reported that Hillary Clinton was ready to deliver a concession speech in New York on Obama clinching the Democratic presidential nomination. Then Clinton operative Terry McAuliffe rushed to CNN to clarify the situation, saying that she would do no such thing. Later there was some talk that she would acknowledge but not concede Obama's victory. So given Hillary's unwillingness or inability to acknowledge for weeks that it was all over but the shouting, last night's speech by Hillary in which she neither acknowledged nor conceded anything was not surprising. CNN commentator Jeffrey Toobin put it best when he described Hillary's performance as yet another example of "the deranged narcissism of the Clintons."

Cheney's Funny Side

Vice president Dick Cheney finds himself having to apologize for remarks about the incestuous leanings of the people of West Virginia: “So we had Cheneys on both sides of the family — and we don’t even live in West Virginia. […] You can say these things when you’re not running for re-election.” Quite predictably, various West Virginia politicians, including the state's governor and its venerable senior U.S. Sen. Robert Byrd, blasted the vice president for his attempt at humor. Now racial and ethnic stereotypes are, on their face, grossly unfair to members of the group in question and should be condemned. However, my reaction to Cheney's joke is necessarily tempered by the West Virginia voters in the recent Democratic presidential primary who threw their support overwhelmingly to Hillary Clinton, and many of whom in exit polls openly admitted that they did so because they could not vote for Obama on the basis of skin color. Funny, West Virginia's political establishment did not seem to get all worked up over those statements.

What Kristol Left Out

In a New York Times oped, What Obama Left Out, neoconservative William Kristol chides Barack Obama for failure to mention military service as an option for college graduates in a commencement speech at Wesleyan University. Kristol has a lot of chutzpah for lecturing Obama about military service because like many of his crowd who beat the drum unremittingly for the invasion of Iraq, he was and is certifiably a chicken hawk who studiously avoided going into the military. I guess you might say he prefers the power of the pen over the power of the sword.

Quotable

Appearing on this morning's Tom Joyner Morning Show and taking a page from the movie Sex in the City, comedienne Sheryl Underwood said Hillary Clinton's girlfriends need to sit her down and tell her "the country just ain't into you like that."

Clinton Supporter Labels Obama "Inadequate"

This is a Clinton supporter who obviously has lost her mind (of course, that assumes she had one to lose in the first place), calling Barack Obama "an inadequate black man" in the wake of the Democratic National Committee rules panel's decision to seat the Michigan and Florida delegates with a half vote each - a stunning blow to Hillary's slim chance to win the Democratic presidential nomination. It goes without saying that this does little to promote Democratic party unity necessary for the general election campaign against Republican John McCain.