Tuesday, July 10, 2007

McCain, R.I.P.?


Is it over for John McCain? His campaign just sent out a press release containing statements from his two chief campaign aides:

"This morning I informed Senator McCain that I would be resigning from his presidential campaign, effective immediately. It has been a tremendous honor to serve Senator McCain and work on his campaign. I believe John McCain is the most experienced and prepared candidate to represent the Republican Party and defeat the Democratic nominee next year." - Terry Nelson, Campaign Manager

"As of today, I have resigned my position as chief strategist to John McCain's presidential campaign. It has been my honor and a distinct privilege to serve someone who has always put our country first. I believe that most Americans will come to the conclusion that I have long known there is only one person equipped to serve as our nation's chief executive and deal with the challenges we face, and that person is John McCain." - John Weaver, Chief Strategist


Nelson hailed from the George W. Bush crowd and failed to use those connections to raise big bucks for McCain. His departure makes sense. (The market works!) Campaign managers do come and go. But Weaver is McCain's Rove. And note that Weaver, who has been at McCain's side for years, was not reshuffled into another position. He's totally out of the campaign. If he's gone, there's not much left--besides the candidate. It's hard not read this as the death knell for the McCain campaign.

Posted by David Corn at July 10, 2007 11:49 AM

25 comments:

capt said...

Mr. David Corn,

"there's not much left--besides the candidate"


The remaining candidate is not much. Like Powell - one can only lose their reputation once. McCain should retire.



Kirk

capt said...

The first time it was reported that our friends were being butchered there was a cry of horror. Then a hundred were butchered. But when a thousand were butchered and there was no end to the butchery, a blanket of silence spread. When evil doing comes like falling rain, nobody calls out 'stop!'

When crimes begin to pile up they become invisible. When sufferings become unendurable, the cries are no longer heard. The cries, too, fall like rain in summer. - Bertolt Brecht

=
How many does it take to metamorphose wickedness into righteousness? One man must not kill. If he does, it is murder.... But a state or nation may kill as many as they please, and it is not murder. It is just, necessary, commendable, and right. Only get people enough to agree to it, and the butchery of myriads of human beings is perfectly innocent. But how many does it take?: Adin Ballou, The Non-Resistant, 5 February 1845

=
There have been periods of history in which episodes of terrible violence occurred but for which the word violence was never used.... Violence is shrouded in justifying myths that lend it moral legitimacy, and these myths for the most part kept people from recognizing the violence for what it was. The people who burned witches at the stake never for one moment thought of their act as violence; rather they thought of it as an act of divinely mandated righteousness. The same can be said of most of the violence we humans have ever committed: - Gil Bailie


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Thanks ICH Newsletter!

Gerald said...

Since 2004 I have stated that I do not like McCain. There is something about him that reminded me of why I do not trust Bush. Maybe I believe that McCain is a kiss ass and Bush is brain dead.

I will share with you some articles but first I want to say some words about the article, "Dialogue." Or, as I have worded it, "The greatest stumbling blocs for Catholicism are Catholics." We have Catholic theologians debating whether or not God is conservative, moderate, or liberal. God is God!!! God sent His Son to us and we have the New Testament. I believe one of the reasons for Jesus coming to us is He was to update the Old Testament that was confusing people. People have viewed the Old Teastament with a punishing God. God is a loving God!!! There should be no debating, "Love one another as I have loved you" or "When you do it for the least of my brethren, you do it for me." Catholics are confused because Catholic clerics as well as Catholic theologians have lost their moral compasses. Unless these learned people locate their moral compasses there will be fewer and fewer practicing Catholics.

Gerald said...

Offer No Violent Resistance

Fr. John Dear is one of my favorite writers. He is in my perceptual opinion a cleric's cleric.

Gerald said...

Today, millions of people around the globe engage in nonviolent resistance to oppression, war and empire, from Palestine to Iraq, Colombia to Haiti. Here in the United States, we obey Jesus' teachings whenever we nonviolently resist the Bush administration's war on Iraq and all its injustices. Next month, hundreds of us will gather at Los Alamos, the birthplace of the bomb, to creatively resist the culture of nuclear weapons and pursue our liberation from this imperial domination. The key is to put these teachings into practice. That's when they finally come alive and make sense. That's when we become, like Jesus, nonviolent resisters to the culture of violence and war.

Gerald said...

Should the Eagle Be.....

Gerald said...

Should American Christians embrace the eagle as a national symbol? The answer depends on whether these Christians want to be American first or Christian first.

Gerald said...

We must come to grips with the fact that Nazi America will always be at war!

Gerald said...

Recognizing the strategic value of oil for their national interests, superpowers will not hesitate to unleash their economic and military power to ensure secure access to oil resources, triggering worldwide tension, if not armed conflict. And while superpowers like the United States maintain superior conventional military power, in addition to their nuclear power, some weaker states are already nuclearly armed, others are seeking nuclear weapons. In an anarchic world with many nuclear-weapon states feeling insecure, and a global economy in downward spiral, the chances of using nuclear weapons in pursues of national interests are high.


What all of this means is that when reserves are exhausted oil will turn from a blessing to curse. When the curse strikes a new world order will emerge, in which today’s ways of life, politics, and conflicts will be not the same. The rising oil prices and current international tension over nuclear capabilities are telling signs about the kind of future awaiting humanity ahead of the road. Alas, we are all waiting for the final drop of oil to trickle before reaching the zenith of a disaster which is already in the making.

capt said...

Peace is not an absence of war, it is a virtue, a state of mind, a disposition for benevolence, confidence, justice.
~ Baruch Spinoza (1632 - 1677)


Peace has never come from dropping bombs. Real peace comes from enlightenment and educating people to behave more in a divine manner.
~ Carlos Santana, Associated Press interview, September 1, 2004

Peace is not a relationship of nations. It is a condition of mind brought about by a serenity of soul. Peace is not merely the absence of war. It is also a state of mind. Lasting peace can come only to peaceful people.
~ Jawaharlal Nehru (1889 - 1964)

The only alternative to coexistence is codestruction.
~ Jawaharlal Nehru (1889 - 1964)

Gerald said...

Iraq Comes Home

Gerald said...

Here are some of Sue Randolph's words.

I think we are going to end up like after Vietnam if we're not careful. The Vietnam guys were treated really horribly, and whether they came back and quietly went back to their lives or not, they were all stereotyped in a criminal negative. And I'm afraid if we as a society don't learn what we didn't do for those guys, we're going to have that in spades. We don't have low-end kind of industry jobs for them like working in the auto plant, so they're not going to be supporting their families. And they're going to be angry. They're going to feel like they're owed. Do we get everybody counseling as soon as they get out, mandatory 90-day counseling? I don't know how. But there isn't enough money in this country right now to make some of these guys feel like what they went through was worthwhile.

We have no comprehension of the psychological cost of this war. I know kids in Iraq who killed themselves. I know kids that got killed. OK, that's apparently the price of doing business. But multiply me by 2 million. If I'm fairly high-functioning, what about the ones that aren't? They're going back to small-town America, and their families aren't going to know what to do with them. It's like, what do we do with Johnny now?

Gerald said...

MY GOD, MY GOD, WHY HAS NAZI AMERICA FORSAKEN HUMANITY?????

Gerald said...

Beware of this screwball

Gerald said...

A dangerous freedom

Mr Bush's action serves to remind people of three of his weaknesses. One of them is his tendency towards cronyism, which led him to appoint a wholly unqualified friend to run the government's disaster-relief agency. The consequences were disastrously manifest during the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina. Other examples include his failed attempt to appoint his own lawyer, Harriet Miers, to the Supreme Court. A second flaw is the hold that Mr Cheney appears to have over the man who is nominally his boss. The past few days have seen a series of articles in the Washington Post detailing the extent to which Mr Cheney has talked Mr Bush into bypassing all normal channels of debate to take questionable decisions.

A third effect of the decision, and perhaps the most serious, is that it reinforces the perception that Mr Bush sees himself and his cronies as above the law. Sometimes he has made this explicit, attaching “signing statements” to hundreds of bills sent to him by Congress asserting his right to interpret those bills as he deems fit. Sometimes he has done so covertly, wire-tapping Americans with no authorisation or permitting the use of torture with consequences felt at Abu Ghraib and in secret CIA prisons in black holes like Uzbekistan.

Perhaps, in the end, Mr Bush's decision came down to a simple calculation that he has little left to lose. He is not seeking re-election, his approval ratings can barely go any lower, and any hopes for legacy-polishing bipartisan co-operation with Congress seem to have evaporated. So why should Mr Bush not please his few remaining friends and placate his vice-president by springing the loyal Mr Libby? It makes a kind of sense, but a deeply troubling one. What else, one wonders, might so isolated a president do before he goes?

Gerald said...

Blood on Their Hands

Gerald said...

Another Year of Denial

Gerald said...

Conditions in Iraq continue to grow worse. Foreign Policy magazine's 2007 Failed States Index found that Iraq deteriorated for the third year in a row in "a range of social, economic, political and military indicators." In April, Amnesty International warned of a new humanitarian crisis due to the 3 million Iraqis displaced by the war. In May, Chatham House, a British foreign policy think tank, found the Iraqi government "largely powerless and irrelevant" and facing the "distinct possibility of collapse and fragmentation." The former "coalition of the willing" appears to agree with these assessments, for in the past year foreign troops helping the U.S. occupy Iraq have declined from 20,000 to 12,000, almost half what it was in 2003 and 40 percent fewer than last year.

The once-lofty goal of training the Iraqi Security Forces, which increased from 266,000 to 349,000 in the past year, hasn't helped U.S. troops, who continue to bear 90 percent of the burden of combating terrorists. Monthly attacks surged from 3,500 in 2006 to 4,200 in 2007. Civilian deaths declined slightly from a year ago but Iraqi lives didn't improve. Oil production remained static, electricity production fell slightly, unemployment remained at 33 percent and the annual GNP growth rate hasn't budged over the past three years.

Even Retired Army Lieutenant General Ricardo Sanchez, the commander of the U.S. invasion force during it's first year of occupying Iraq, recently said the U.S. can forget about "winning the war," and can now only hope to salvage a stalemate to "starve off defeat."

Only Bush, Cheney and hardcore Republicans now believe the U.S. can salvage anything from Iraq. The vast majority recognizes that it will take years for the U.S. to dig out of the hole Bush has dug. Can the U.S. afford another year of false promises? Or is it time for Congress to get serious about impeachment?

Gerald said...

Hitler Bush MUST PAY THE CONSEQUENCES for being the worst president in U.S. History because he let Hitler Cheney run the country.

Gerald said...

A Must Read Article

Gerald said...

War with Iran is around the corner!!!!! The Iranian people will be slaughtered because Nazi Americans are glorified by wars and the vaporization of human flesh!!!!!!!!!!

US Sends 3rd Aircraft Carrier to Gulf
RTE Ireland

Tuesday 10 July 2007

The US aircraft carrier Enterprise has been deployed to a strategic area that includes waters close to Iran.

The warship joins two carriers already in the Fifth Fleet area of operations and strengthens the US Navy's biggest presence in the Gulf since the first Iraq invasion.

'Enterprise provides navy power to counter the assertive, disruptive and coercive behaviour of some countries, as well as support our soldiers and marines in Iraq and Afghanistan,' a US Navy statement said.

In May, a flotilla of US warships sailed through the narrowest point in the Gulf to hold exercises off Iran's coast in a major show of force.

Tension over Tehran's nuclear ambitions has raised regional fears of a military confrontation, although one Navy spokeswoman insists Iran is not a specific target.

'These operations are not specifically aimed at Iran. We consider this time unprecedented in terms of the amount on insecurity and instability in the region," Navy spokeswoman Denise Garcia said, citing Somalia, Lebanon, Iraq and Afghanistan.

The Fifth Fleet's area of operations includes the Gulf, the Arabian Sea, the Red Sea, the Gulf of Aden, the Gulf of Oman and parts of the Indian Ocean.

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Gerald said...

Cheney's madness and Bush's insanity takes hold of American foreign policies.

capt said...

Panel Moves to Cut Off Funds to Cheney



Senate Democrats moved Tuesday to cut off funding for Vice President Dick Cheney's office in a continuing battle over whether he must comply with national security disclosure rules.


A Senate appropriations panel chaired by Sen. Richard Durbin, D-Ill., refused to fund $4.8 million in the vice president's budget until Cheney's office complies with parts of an executive order governing its handling of classified information.


At issue is a requirement that executive branch offices provide data on how much material they classify and declassify. That information is to be provided to the Information Security Oversight Office at The National Archives.


More HERE

*****end of clip*****

I like the idea but Cheney would love to privatize the VP and as evidenced by the delusional Libby lobby financing isn’t the issue.

A paltry sum under $5 million is not even a speed bump on the road to the unitary Veep.




capt

Gerald said...

Coming soon to a church near you

David B. Benson said...

Unitary Veep?

I am sure the Unitarians don't want him...