Fidel just won't go away and, like Bush's Brain in Newsweek, he has to give us his expertise on '08.
“I enjoyed observing the embarrassing position of all the presidential candidates in the United States,” Castro wrote this week about reaction to his stepping down in a column for Cuba's state-run newspaper. “One by one, they found themselves forced to proclaim their immediate demands to Cuba, so as not to alienate a single voter.”
Castro also had a few words about theme of change that has dominated the campaign: "Half a century of blockade was not enough for the chosen few. 'Change, change, change!' they shouted in unison. I agree. Change!--but in the United States."
After noting the first President Bush's endorsement of John McCain, Castro remarked on the current President's visit to Africa, "I don't know what he's doing there."
Karl Rove could tell him. Now that they both have time on their hands, the Western Hemisphere's two leading political manipulators might want to get together and exchange secrets of the trade.
If Fidel wants to learn a thing or two, he might watch 60 Minutes Sunday night, for an interview with a Rove operative explaining how the Master ordered her to take sexually compromising pictures of a Democratic governor. That's Rove's definition of an "embarrassing position."
Showing posts with label '08 candidates. Show all posts
Showing posts with label '08 candidates. Show all posts
Friday, February 22, 2008
Wednesday, December 19, 2007
Happy Holidays, Senators
Before leaving for Thanksgiving, Congressional Democrats promised not to give President Bush more money for Iraq without deadlines for withdrawal.
Now they are slinking out of Washington for Christmas after providing $70 billion in unrestricted funds for Iraq and Afghanistan.
"When is enough enough?" asked Ted Kennedy, who supported an amendment to require troop withdrawal from Iraq and a cutoff of combat funds within nine months. "I urge my colleagues to vote against this gigantic blank check." By a vote of 76-17, they didn't.
Russ Feingold's troop-withdrawal amendment failed by 74-21. None of the Democratic Presidential candidates was there to support it.
On his way out the door, Trent Lott, the Republican whip, insisted "we're doing the right thing here for our men and women in uniform," handing in his resignation to do the right thing for Trent Lott before lobbying restrictions on former Senators get tougher.
For the American people who voted last November to end the war, they leave behind stockings stuffed with lumps of coal. If we're really good next year, maybe we can get our own President for Christmas.
Now they are slinking out of Washington for Christmas after providing $70 billion in unrestricted funds for Iraq and Afghanistan.
"When is enough enough?" asked Ted Kennedy, who supported an amendment to require troop withdrawal from Iraq and a cutoff of combat funds within nine months. "I urge my colleagues to vote against this gigantic blank check." By a vote of 76-17, they didn't.
Russ Feingold's troop-withdrawal amendment failed by 74-21. None of the Democratic Presidential candidates was there to support it.
On his way out the door, Trent Lott, the Republican whip, insisted "we're doing the right thing here for our men and women in uniform," handing in his resignation to do the right thing for Trent Lott before lobbying restrictions on former Senators get tougher.
For the American people who voted last November to end the war, they leave behind stockings stuffed with lumps of coal. If we're really good next year, maybe we can get our own President for Christmas.
Wednesday, December 05, 2007
Brain Checks for the Candidates
In the 1960s, a New York Times ad headlined "1,189 Psychiatrists Say Goldwater Is Psychologically Unfit to Be President" led to a $75,000 court judgment against a magazine by Sen. Barry Goldwater.
It now turns out that the publisher was prescient in making the mental health of candidates an election issue but lacked the technology to do it properly.
In today's Los Angeles Times, neuropsychiatrist Daniel Amen proposes a brain scan for potential presidents, arguing that a "national leader with brain problems can potentially cost millions of people their lives."
Dr. Amen's diagnosis: "Three of the last four presidents have shown clear brain pathology. President Reagan's Alzheimer's disease was evident during his second term in office...President Clinton's moral lapses and problems with bad judgment and excitement-seeking behavior--indicative of problems in the prefrontal cortex--eventually led to his impeachment."
As for George W. Bush, it looks dire. Dr. Amen, lacking Single Photon Emission Computed Tomography for the patient, nevertheless suspects "our current president's struggles with language and emotional rigidity are symptoms of temporal lobe pathology."
Dr. Amen, drawing on his long-distance diagnoses of Slobodan Milosevic and Saddam Hussein, is worried about "Rudy Giuliani's messy personal life, John McCain's temper and Hillary Clinton's inability to seem authentic."
He wants to check them out in one of his four conveniently located clinics or, failing that, they can at least answer 101 questions for the online interactive self-test on his web site. The future of mankind may be at stake.
It now turns out that the publisher was prescient in making the mental health of candidates an election issue but lacked the technology to do it properly.
In today's Los Angeles Times, neuropsychiatrist Daniel Amen proposes a brain scan for potential presidents, arguing that a "national leader with brain problems can potentially cost millions of people their lives."
Dr. Amen's diagnosis: "Three of the last four presidents have shown clear brain pathology. President Reagan's Alzheimer's disease was evident during his second term in office...President Clinton's moral lapses and problems with bad judgment and excitement-seeking behavior--indicative of problems in the prefrontal cortex--eventually led to his impeachment."
As for George W. Bush, it looks dire. Dr. Amen, lacking Single Photon Emission Computed Tomography for the patient, nevertheless suspects "our current president's struggles with language and emotional rigidity are symptoms of temporal lobe pathology."
Dr. Amen, drawing on his long-distance diagnoses of Slobodan Milosevic and Saddam Hussein, is worried about "Rudy Giuliani's messy personal life, John McCain's temper and Hillary Clinton's inability to seem authentic."
He wants to check them out in one of his four conveniently located clinics or, failing that, they can at least answer 101 questions for the online interactive self-test on his web site. The future of mankind may be at stake.
Sunday, September 30, 2007
Cuomo Calls Out the Democrats
The man who should have run in 1988 and spared us both Bushes is now telling Democrats to keep the mutant son from illegally getting us into a war with Iran as he did in Iraq.
Mario Cuomo broke his political silence Friday night after the Lieberman/Kyl vote with an impassioned reminder that the Constitution gave war-making power to Congress to avoid having it exercised by one man who “may be mad, an egotist, misguided or stupid.”
“That power cannot be delegated,” he said on MSNBC’s Hardball. “You can’t adopt a resolution and say well, the Founding Fathers wanted us to do it, but it’s too heavy a lift for us, so we empower you, Mr. President, if you feel like doing it, to do it.”
He enjoined Democrats not to repeat their 2002 mistake of abdicating their will to a President who misjudged everything about going to war in Iraq:
“(H)e was wrong about the reason for it, he was wrong about complicity, he was wrong about how many troops we needed, he was wrong about how we would be greeted when we got there, he was wrong about the civil war, wrong about how much it would cost, wrong about how long it would last and now you’re saying maybe he can start another war.”
A new generation may not remember the former Governor of New York who dropped out of public life after electrifying the 1984 Democratic convention with his “shining city on a hill” keynote speech and in 1992 going as far as keeping a plane waiting to fly to New Hampshire to run against the reelection of the first President Bush.
Cuomo changed his mind at the last minute and, after Bill Clinton’s election, declined a likely nomination to the Supreme Court.
When a man of that caliber reminds this year’s Presidential hopefuls to go to the mat with Bush about Iran, they would do well to listen.
Mario Cuomo broke his political silence Friday night after the Lieberman/Kyl vote with an impassioned reminder that the Constitution gave war-making power to Congress to avoid having it exercised by one man who “may be mad, an egotist, misguided or stupid.”
“That power cannot be delegated,” he said on MSNBC’s Hardball. “You can’t adopt a resolution and say well, the Founding Fathers wanted us to do it, but it’s too heavy a lift for us, so we empower you, Mr. President, if you feel like doing it, to do it.”
He enjoined Democrats not to repeat their 2002 mistake of abdicating their will to a President who misjudged everything about going to war in Iraq:
“(H)e was wrong about the reason for it, he was wrong about complicity, he was wrong about how many troops we needed, he was wrong about how we would be greeted when we got there, he was wrong about the civil war, wrong about how much it would cost, wrong about how long it would last and now you’re saying maybe he can start another war.”
A new generation may not remember the former Governor of New York who dropped out of public life after electrifying the 1984 Democratic convention with his “shining city on a hill” keynote speech and in 1992 going as far as keeping a plane waiting to fly to New Hampshire to run against the reelection of the first President Bush.
Cuomo changed his mind at the last minute and, after Bill Clinton’s election, declined a likely nomination to the Supreme Court.
When a man of that caliber reminds this year’s Presidential hopefuls to go to the mat with Bush about Iran, they would do well to listen.
Tuesday, August 14, 2007
Rove Legacy: Defining Deviancy Down
Trying to find meaning in Karl Rove’s political career, as so many observers are now doing, is like, to borrow Gen. David Petraeus’ expression about Iraq, “putting lipstick on a pig.”
Today the Washington Post asks: “(A)s Karl Rove resigns from the administration, a question lingers over his legacy: What, exactly, did the architect build?”
The answer is nothing. There is no Rove philosophy, doctrine, strategy. The man is the sum of his ugly tactics, a college dropout who spent a working lifetime winning, buying or stealing votes by all possible means--a porcine rooter in the garbage of American politics. His sole accomplishment has been, in Daniel Patrick Moynihan’s phrase, to “define deviancy down” in the White House.
Ask John Kerry, John McCain and Max Cleland about his legacy.
Rove’s departure, along with that of his creature, George W. Bush, has meaning only in the question of how much of their fake piety and total disdain for political morality will persist in American life.
The answer to that won’t be long in coming. On the Democrats’ part, the jury is still out. Hillary Clinton, Barack Obama and John Edwards are still staying within the bounds of civilized contention and serious discourse.
The Republicans, who have to climb out of the Bush wreckage, seem confused. Rudy Giuliani is showing symptoms of Rove Disease, but the others are still in doubt. Much will depend of what Thompson and Romney do when push comes to bare knuckles. How far Mike Huckabee gets will be a clue.
For the moment, it would help if the MSM and blogosphere stopped arguing about the biggest bottom feeder of our time and looked ahead to putting back some semblance of decency into American politics.
Today the Washington Post asks: “(A)s Karl Rove resigns from the administration, a question lingers over his legacy: What, exactly, did the architect build?”
The answer is nothing. There is no Rove philosophy, doctrine, strategy. The man is the sum of his ugly tactics, a college dropout who spent a working lifetime winning, buying or stealing votes by all possible means--a porcine rooter in the garbage of American politics. His sole accomplishment has been, in Daniel Patrick Moynihan’s phrase, to “define deviancy down” in the White House.
Ask John Kerry, John McCain and Max Cleland about his legacy.
Rove’s departure, along with that of his creature, George W. Bush, has meaning only in the question of how much of their fake piety and total disdain for political morality will persist in American life.
The answer to that won’t be long in coming. On the Democrats’ part, the jury is still out. Hillary Clinton, Barack Obama and John Edwards are still staying within the bounds of civilized contention and serious discourse.
The Republicans, who have to climb out of the Bush wreckage, seem confused. Rudy Giuliani is showing symptoms of Rove Disease, but the others are still in doubt. Much will depend of what Thompson and Romney do when push comes to bare knuckles. How far Mike Huckabee gets will be a clue.
For the moment, it would help if the MSM and blogosphere stopped arguing about the biggest bottom feeder of our time and looked ahead to putting back some semblance of decency into American politics.
Thursday, August 09, 2007
Google's Man-Bites-Dog-Bites-Back Move
If the job of news is, in the words of the old saw, to comfort the afflicted and afflict the comfortable, the well-off will soon be able to hit back, thanks to Google.
Starting this week, anyone mentioned on its Google News web site will have a chance to respond. Shrewd move. That should keep Alberto Gonzales too busy to fire more prosecutors, Dick Cheney’s gang too occupied to start new wars and all the ’08 candidates writing e-mails instead of debating.
Interactive news may be our salvation.
Starting this week, anyone mentioned on its Google News web site will have a chance to respond. Shrewd move. That should keep Alberto Gonzales too busy to fire more prosecutors, Dick Cheney’s gang too occupied to start new wars and all the ’08 candidates writing e-mails instead of debating.
Interactive news may be our salvation.
Friday, August 03, 2007
The Sexy Vegan Vote
If Denis Kucinich has any hope of climbing out of single digitdom in the Presidential race, it may be enhanced by a new study that suggests certain voters may find him irresistible.
The research shows that vegans, who don’t eat meat or animal byproducts, are sexually repulsed by people who do. Of all the ’08 candidates, Kucinich is the only vegan, along with his beautiful wife who is half his age.
They may not be a huge voting bloc, but vegetarians, estimated to be 2.5 percent of the U.S. population, are viewed as strong-minded and vocal in their views.
In rejecting meat eaters as sexual partners in the new study, they see their “bodies as being composed of the lives of others" and don’t want to be intimate with them “because of the smells and tastes of their body fluids."
According to a spokesperson for PETA, People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals, "Sex is a very effective form of outreach and activism.”
The research shows that vegans, who don’t eat meat or animal byproducts, are sexually repulsed by people who do. Of all the ’08 candidates, Kucinich is the only vegan, along with his beautiful wife who is half his age.
They may not be a huge voting bloc, but vegetarians, estimated to be 2.5 percent of the U.S. population, are viewed as strong-minded and vocal in their views.
In rejecting meat eaters as sexual partners in the new study, they see their “bodies as being composed of the lives of others" and don’t want to be intimate with them “because of the smells and tastes of their body fluids."
According to a spokesperson for PETA, People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals, "Sex is a very effective form of outreach and activism.”
Tuesday, July 31, 2007
Health Care Slum: Tear It Down!
If Boeing, Lockheed Martin and Raytheon were deciding who dies and who gets maimed in Iraq, there would be a public outcry. Why, then, is it acceptable for HMOs and insurance companies to make those decisions for Americans at home?
In all the talk about health care, none of the ’08 White House aspirants has been willing so far to take a wrecking ball to the termite-infested structure that has been deteriorating for half a century.
The slum lords, who take one out of every three dollars collected from the victims, are interested only in profits, some of which they use to lobby against any attempt to provide decent public housing instead,
As Clinton, Obama and Edwards duel over their palliative remedies and the Republicans snarl about “socialized medicine,” there is no serious debate about extending the Medicare model, which works well for older Americans, into a single-payer system that would provide better care at far less cost.
If all the moviegoers who are enjoying their righteous outrage after seeing “Sicko” would demand it, we could have a serious discussion instead of sound bites.
Will any network will step up and offer the time for it? From the sampling of YouTube videos so far, there would be no shortage of good questions.
In all the talk about health care, none of the ’08 White House aspirants has been willing so far to take a wrecking ball to the termite-infested structure that has been deteriorating for half a century.
The slum lords, who take one out of every three dollars collected from the victims, are interested only in profits, some of which they use to lobby against any attempt to provide decent public housing instead,
As Clinton, Obama and Edwards duel over their palliative remedies and the Republicans snarl about “socialized medicine,” there is no serious debate about extending the Medicare model, which works well for older Americans, into a single-payer system that would provide better care at far less cost.
If all the moviegoers who are enjoying their righteous outrage after seeing “Sicko” would demand it, we could have a serious discussion instead of sound bites.
Will any network will step up and offer the time for it? From the sampling of YouTube videos so far, there would be no shortage of good questions.
Thursday, July 05, 2007
Busy Year Ahead for Secret Service
When a President’s daughter, Lynda Bird Johnson, was working for me, I got to know her Secret Service agents quite well. One of them almost shot me at Trader Vic’s in Manhattan.
An agent new to her detail saw me put my arms around her when we unexpectedly met and, as I later learned, was “ready to react.”
As we know from endless movies, protecting presidents is a job that calls for an unusual combination of courage, judgment and quick reflexes. In the coming year, the Secret Service will be hard-pressed to provide enough of them.
After 9/11, the Bush administration doubled the number of top officials for protection, from 26 to 54.
The agency will need 103 new agents for President Bush and his family when he leaves office in January and, for all those who want to replace him, is proposing to spend more than $100 million on campaign protection in 2008, roughly $35 million more than in 2004.
Because of undisclosed threats, the Service is already spending $44,000 a day on around-the-clock security for Barack Obama in addition to the protection provided for Hillary Clinton as a former First Lady. At some point, they will be assigned to other candidates as well.
This burden will draw some agents away from other investigations, of financial crimes and Homeland Security matters.
All in all, we are in an era when protection is a growth industry.
An agent new to her detail saw me put my arms around her when we unexpectedly met and, as I later learned, was “ready to react.”
As we know from endless movies, protecting presidents is a job that calls for an unusual combination of courage, judgment and quick reflexes. In the coming year, the Secret Service will be hard-pressed to provide enough of them.
After 9/11, the Bush administration doubled the number of top officials for protection, from 26 to 54.
The agency will need 103 new agents for President Bush and his family when he leaves office in January and, for all those who want to replace him, is proposing to spend more than $100 million on campaign protection in 2008, roughly $35 million more than in 2004.
Because of undisclosed threats, the Service is already spending $44,000 a day on around-the-clock security for Barack Obama in addition to the protection provided for Hillary Clinton as a former First Lady. At some point, they will be assigned to other candidates as well.
This burden will draw some agents away from other investigations, of financial crimes and Homeland Security matters.
All in all, we are in an era when protection is a growth industry.
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