Hypocrite McCain Straddles the Hagee Fence

John McCain wants John Hagee’s supporters and John Hagee’s money, but he doesn’t want to be tarred with the brush of John Hagee’s insane and hateful beliefs. While Barack Obama has denounced not only the insane statements of Jeremiah Wright, but Jeremiah Wright himself, John McCain continues to gutlessly straddle the fence on Hagee’s outrageous mouth.

First, it was Hagee calling the Roman Catholic Church “the Great Whore.” Then he blamed the demise of New Orleans in Hurricane Katrina on homosexuals. He has since apologized for both statements, but then recanted the apology about the New Orleans statement. Should anyone accept his apology about Catholicism or it’s sincerity? Would anyone accept the apology of someone who claims the Jews killed Christ, or that poor people are poor because they are sinners? Just how outrageous does “Pastor” Hagee have to get before John McCain quits kissing his behind?

Well, perhaps this is it, though I doubt it. Hagee now claims that Adolph Hitler was carrying out God’s will with the Holocaust, and he even quotes the Bible to prove it! What’s next?

Republicans gleefully see a trickle of Black Liberation Theology quotes coming out over the next six months to supposedly doom the Obama candidacy, but if such quotes do come, even though Obama rejects this sort of thing, can they be worse that the torrent of insanity that will be coming from Hagee and his crazy cohorts? When will John McCain discover he has a spine and denounce not just a few “foolish and absurd” statements, but the man who vomits up this bile, this hatred, and this insanity?

Religion and Mobs

Here’s a perfect example of religion run amok, when mobs are incited by religious fantasies to commit horrendous acts.

Kenya Mob Burns 15 Women to Death Over Witchcraft

In America, people cite the Bible in justifying their beating to death gay people. In Saudi Arabia, people quote the Koran in forcing women without the proper veils to remain inside a burning building rather than escape to safety. In Israel, people quote the Talmud to justify their belief that they and they alone are God’s chosen people. When superstition rules a society, how much further is it to burning “witches?”

Is It Diplomacy or Appeasement?

A story in The Jerusalem Post (linked in the Dredge Report) quotes Army Radio as reporting that the Bush Administration plans a military strike against Iran before the end of Bush’s Presidency. This is hardly news. Anyone who has been even partially conscious during the past couple of years knows that Bush has every intention of attacking Iran while he has the chance. What IS news, however, is that the White House denies that it is planning an attack, (despite reports from the Pentagon of preparations to do just that). Spokespeople for the President insist, according to the Jerusalem Post, that the United States continues to rely on diplomacy to resolve the situation.

Wait. George W. Bush is relying on diplomacy with Iran. Now, isn’t that appeasement? When Barack Obama suggests diplomacy, the President goes before foreign legislative bodies and declares it appeasement. But, when George Bush does it, it’s diplomacy.

I am wondering, however, if it was appeasement when the Bush Administration negotiated with North Korea over it’s nuclear program, or when Oliver North illegally sold weapons to the very same Iranian regime he now advocates on Fox News that we attack? Was it appeasement when Bush’s father negotiated with Saddam Hussein? Was it appeasement when that noted Communist Ronald Reagan negotiated with Mikhail Gorbachev, or when Gerald Ford negotiated the Helsinki accord with Leonid Brezhnev, or when Nixon went to China or Kennedy achieved the Nuclear Test Ban Treaty with Khrushchev?

Blanket statements such as Mr. Bush’s are naive and simple-minded and when John McCain calls Barack Obama naive and appeasing, he’s either ignoring or has forgotten his own party’s long history of using diplomacy to achieve peace without war.

Britain Removes Another Brick from the Wall of Privacy

The people of the UK must throw out the Labour Government soon before the petty tyrants of the Home Office turn Great Britain into Vladimir Putin’s Russia (and before they give any more ideas on shredding civil liberties to the Republicans in the United States). The BBC reports that the Home Office wants to create a database of EVERY telephone call and email message in the UK. The justification for this is to fight terrorism and crime.

Are they insane?

The British have just as poor a record of preserving privacy as the American government has. I cannot imagine the danger of incompetence in security with that much information available to be stolen. Nor can I imagine the threat to civil liberties. At least the United States has a definite, written Bill of Rights. Our President and the Departments of Justice and Homeland Insecurity may not pay much attention to it, but at least we give it a nodding respect. But, even so, this proposal seems far beyond what even the wild-eyed Putin Wannabees of the Bush Administration have proposed, (though I am certain the McCain Administration will be eager to emulate the Mother Country).

Chris Huhne of the Liberal Democrats was quoted by the BBC as calling the proposal “an Orwellian step too far.” Gee, you think?

He said ministers had “taken leave of their senses if they think that this proposal is compatible with a free country and a free people”.

Would that America had a Chris Huhne to stand up to our own security freaks. A nation that places security before freedom, deserves neither, and usually gets neither.

Buckley: A Giant Among the Ants of the Right

It may be a little late to write a tribute to William F. Buckley, Jr., but I was reading his Newsweek obituary by Evan Thomas this morning and was struck by the glaring differences between the intelligent and erudite conservatives of my youth and the troglodytes who pollute the airwaves and the blogosphere of today.

I grew up as a conservative Republican before George W. Bush and his supporters turned me into a center-left Democrat. I was ten years old when I saw the comedian David Frye perform an impression of someone named Buckley on the Ed Sullivan show. I thought his darting eyes and reptilian tongue were hilarious. My grandmother told me that William F. Buckley, Jr was a writer and that I could read his column in the newspaper three times a week if I wanted to. I did and it was an education.

William F. Buckley was a man who loved life, who loved ideas, and who loved the debate. He was never cruel or rude when he skewered someone else’s argument and those with whom he disagreed were often guests at his dinner table. He created the modern conservative movement, taking it away from the anti-Semites, the Neanderthals, and conspiracy-theorist nutcases who had dominated it before he made it respectable. It’s a shame that those who had discredited conservatism before Buckley have taken it back over, even as they praise Buckley as their leader and teacher.

I wanted to throw up as I watched the tributes on Fox News to Buckley. There is no one on Fox who can hold a candle to the intelligence and good manners of William F. Buckley. There is no one among the grunting cavemen of AM talk radio who deserves to be mentioned in the same breath with William F. Buckley. I was pleased to note that, though he seldom sank to personal insults, he loathed Ann Coulter. Buckley and I had something in common.

America lost a happy warrior and a giant with the passing of William F. Buckley, Jr. and though I grew to disagree with some of his politics, I never lost my respect for his love of language, logic, and ideas. I wish there was another Buckley to guide the right. Unfortunately, Headrush, Annorexia, O’Liery, and the Savage Wiener seem to be all they have left. Somehow, Rush Limbaugh’s cheesy third-grade impressions of those whom he hates just don’t compare to the wit and wisdom of William F. Buckley.

McCain’s Wright is Wrong

Recently, I was eating dinner at a fast-food restaurant with a friend and discussing the campaign between Senators McCain and Obama. I was describing to my friend some of the outrageous things said by one of McCain’s most prominent supporters, the Rev. John Hagee, one of which was that New Orleans was destroyed because God was angry with the city over it’s sinful behavior, when a man sitting at one of the other tables stood up to leave. As he was passing our table, he angrily declared, “Yeah, but McCain wasn’t a member of his church for twenty years, you moron!”

Storming out the door with his wife, this rural Southerner continued to make hateful and furious remarks about Obama and my own stupidity in supporting him, while my friend and I simply stared at each other, not accustomed to such public displays of anger. And, his aren’t the only remarks I’ve heard from people around me who I assume are Christian, Republican, Southern, and not-very-well-educated. A report on one of the cable news channels showed an interview with a woman from West Virginia who defended her vote for Hillary Clinton in the Democratic primary by declaring that Obama is a Muslim, that his middle name is Hussein, and that she had had enough of Husseins.

Well, I’ve had enough of ignorance.

First, Senator Obama is NOT a Muslim and never has been. His father, who abandoned Barack and his mother when the boy was quite young, had been a Muslim at one time, but abandoned that religion, as well. Second, despite what Fox News claims, (and has never retracted), Obama did NOT attend a Muslim school, or madras, when he lived in Indonesia. The school has been shown by many reputable journalists and news organizations to be a multi-cultural school that did not teach religion, but which enrolled students from a variety of faiths and social groups.

Just because there are viral emails slithering around the Internet, (or, as our President says, “the Internets”), claiming that Obama is part of some Muslim conspiracy to destroy our Christian society, doesn’t mean this is reality. After all, there are still Southern Fundamentalists who believe Proctor and Gamble is run by Satan because their logo contains symbols that they claim are Satanic.

It is true that John McCain was not a member of John Hagee’s congregation for twenty years as Hagee was declaring the Roman Catholic Church to be the “Great Whore.” Nor was he a member when Hagee blamed homosexuals for the demise of New Orleans in Hurricane Katrina, or when Hagee, like Jerry Falwell and Pat Robertson, blamed the destruction of the World Trade Center on liberals, homosexuals, and abortion supporters. But, even though he dismissed as outlandish some of Hagee’s pronouncements, (in language not nearly as strong as Barack Obama’s criticism and rejection of Jeremiah Wright’s hate-filled nonsense), John McCain has actively pursued the endorsement, support, and, most importantly, the money of John Hagee and others of his ilk. During his previous campaign for President, McCain was highly critical of Pat Robertson and Jerry Falwell as “agents of intolerance.” Today, he courts their support as sycophantically as any fundamentalist.

John McCain actively pursues the support of intolerant bigots and encourages the lies being told in his name by only weakly complaining that they don’t represent his views. In 2000, when George W. Bush’s supporters in South Carolina were falsely accusing John McCain of fathering a black child and of selling out his fellow POW’s while in captivity in North Vietnam, McCain angrily accused Bush of hypocrisy and cowardice for not ending the outrages being committed by his supporters. Today, he shakes hands with these same people, praises them, and happily brags of their support. Read Frank Rich’s column from the New York Times of May 4, 2008 for more on this.

The American people aren’t stupid. They know hypocrisy when they see it and that is why John McCain will lose in November and why the Republicans will suffer their worst Congressional loses since 1974. I only wish that on November 4, I could see the face of that angry man who called me a moron. I suspect he will be even angrier.

Supporting the Troops

Republican backers of the quagmire in Iraq, including the party’s apparent nominee to succeed George W. Bush, have a reprehensible habit of equating support for the President’s policy with support for the troops and brand anyone who disagrees with the war, the conduct of the war, or the premise underlying the war as “not supporting the troops.” Yet, those who most wave the flag, who make the most bombastic speeches in support of soldiers and their families, and who are most critical of those who question George W. Bush and Dick Cheney have actually done the least to support the soldiers, from placing roadblocks in the procurement process for adequate body armor and protective vehicle armor, to denying promised educational benefits to volunteers after they have returned home, to extending their stays months beyond their promised times, to forced reenlistments, to refusing to alleviate disgusting and inexcusable sanitary conditions at military facilities both in Iraq and in America, and to denying or limiting medical care needed for injuries suffered while carrying out the President’s policy.

Now, Daniel Zwerdling reports on NPR’s All Things Considered, on May 15, that military officials are doing all they can to avoid treating the psychological and emotional injuries suffered by the men and women who have been courageous and dedicated enough to carry out the policies of the nation’s two most powerful draft dodgers. He recounts the story of Tammy LeCompte, wife of Army Spc. Ryan LeCompte, who has fought for treatment of her husband after his return from two tours of duty with a severe case ofpost-traumatic stress disorder. Ryan LeCompte has been reduced to a near catatonic state, yet his “superiors” at Fort Carson, Colorado accuse him of faking his symptons and punish him by making him stand at attention for hours at a time and cleaning latrines. Only when Congressional aides to Sen. Christopher Bond, one of the few Republicans independent enough of the President to actually support the troops, and Sen. Timothy Johnson, a Democrat, pressed the issue was Spc. Lecompte allowed treatment at Walter Reed. Many thousands of other troops have faced and failed to overcome the obstacles deliberately put in place to prevent them from receiving the medical and psychiatric help they need as a result of carrying out the policies of this President.

Republican leaders, as well as Rush Limbaugh and the dozens of brainless, fascist Rush-wannabe’s on AM talk radio who bloviate about supporting the troops (when they really mean supporting George W. Bush’s failed policy), should realize that the thousands of soldiers whom they have abused, as well as the hundreds of thousands of family members and friends of the brave men and women whom Bush and Cheney have betrayed by their callous indifference, will remember them at the polls and in their hearts for decades. George W. Bush says that history will understand. I doubt that. I doubt the he understands. Let’s support the troops by giving them the medical and psychological care they have earned and deserved.