Chillin' with the AG

The three caballeros, McCain, Lieberman and Graham have sent a love note to President O, asking him to follow his own advice in "looking forward to solutions, not backward to recriminations."

It seems they don't want anyone prosecuted as a torturer, even torturers.

Shame on McCain, who for good reason, has come out against torture in the past. Lieberman, who might consider it torture if he had to walk twenty paces with a pebble in his shoe, or miss a meal, doesn't have the perspective that McCain has. Graham, he's from South Carolina.

Seems the unholy trio is afraid of "a deeply chilling effect on the ability of lawyers in any administration to provide their client -- the U.S. Government -- with their best legal advice."

In other words, it would scare lawyers shitless to tell their government bosses that it was okay to commit a crime.

Now that's a chill worth savoring.

Talking Zbig, thinking Zbig

It's worried me, since he's begun saying it, when Barack Obama talks about escalating the war in Afghanistan. On the one hand, we all can agree that the Bush administration took its eye off the ball when it turned from partial victory in Afghanistan (where, regrettably it rounded up a lot of non-terrorist, terrorists and gave them a one-way to Guantanamo), and invaded Iraq.

On the other hand, no matter how horrible Iraq has been, I'm frightened that Obama's sabre rattling about chasing al Qaeda into the mountains of Afghanistan, is a recipe for disaster not unlike that which pulled down the Soviet Union.

And now, Zbigniew Brezinski, seems to be saying exactly the same thing.

While his thoughts on Afghanistan serve as a counsel to Barack Obama, his words of warning on a John McCain president are far more stark. He says: "Well, if McCain is president and if his Secretary of State is Joe Lieberman and his Secretary of Defense is [Rudolph] Giuliani, we will be moving towards the World War IV that they have been both favoring and predicting,"

The Enron loophole

The facts about how lack of regulation has allowed oil speculation to drive up prices at the pump. And who bears responsibility? Hint: he running for president as a Republican.

The weather in November

The Hartford Courant is at it again. Front page banner headline above the fold:

McCain-Clinton a Tossup.

Two things wrong with this article.

After editorially excoriating media who used polls as news in New Hampshire, and getting it fiercely wrong, The Hartford Courant once again presents polls as news, polls as fact. This headline will sit on coffee tables, and in honor boxes across the state all day long, creating an impression that is wrong and speculative. They may as well be trying to predict the weather on election day in November.

Another thing, the headline reveals a secondary facet of the story. The real story is that if Barack Obama is the candidate, which evermore so, it appears he will be, then, according to the polls, he is predicted to beat McCain by a whopping 17 points.

Shame on the Courant for once again misusing polls as news. If I never hear "Quinnipiac" for the next seven months, it will be too soon.

NOTE: Had the gall bladder removed today, so liklihood of additional posts is slim.

She stoops to conquer

(Blogspot was down for a period yesterday, March 8. This was written then, but could not be posted.)

So, as an English major who truly loved the literature 18th century England, it's interesting to read again and again the editorial judgment that Hillary Clinton has stooped to low behavior in order to achieve the goal of being the presidential candidate.

It is neither as funny, now will end as neatly and satisfactorily, as Oliver Goldsmith's comedy to which the journalists allude, knowingly or not.

I've already come to terms that if Clinton is the candidate against the hotheaded chimera John McCain, I will be forced to vote for Clinton. In doing so, I doubt that much in the world will change. I don't support her in her run against Barack Obama because she is a hawk - voting for and supporting George Bush in his war in Iraq, and again voting with Joe Lieberman to allow an invasion of Iran. And now, it has become clear, if it wasn't already, that she will do or say anything to gain the most important seat of power in the world.

She will claim experience she doesn't possess.

She will praise a conservative Republican opponent over her moderate Democratic opponent.

She will allow her aides to make outrageous claims and shrug off their inferences of Obama's alleged "corruption."

She will play the fear card to a cowed and stupid populace.

She will bend the rules of fairplay, in a way the Republicans and the Bush administration have doen for eight years, so that she may gain a technical advantage.

Long before Keith Olbermann made the open suggestion that she was this year's model of Creepy Joe ™ Joe Lieberman, I was having the same visceral reaction to seeing her image in the news. When I see Lieberman, or Bush, my skin crawls in revulsion. And so it is now when I see the rictus political trail smile of Hillary Clinton.

And, if she is the candidate, I will have to stifle my retching to vote for her.