One Utah

At some point, the lies and ridiculousness of the McCain campaign transition from being scary, to being laughable, before receding back to being downright scary. Recognizing a new level of ridiculousness in McCain’s assertions, Obama correctly calls the pig a pig this time, noting that McCain’s idea of taking on the “old boy’s network” [...]

Here are the Republican talking points on what to do about an economic crisis:

Tell everyone that the fundamentals of the economy are sound
Blame the downturn on pessimists and whiners
Refuse to acknowledge bad economic statistics
Advocate more restrictions on immigration
Demand additional cuts in the capital gains tax

Does this speech sound familiar? “The fundamental business of the [...]

Mother Jones magazine reports:
As the news broke of the Lehman Brothers meltdown and the rest of the latest financial crisis, John McCain, speaking at a campaign rally in Florida on Monday, angrily declared,
We will never put America in this position again. We will clean up Wall Street. This is a failure.
And [...]

Want a draft? More wars of aggression? Vote McCain!
The Bush Doctrine, which Gov. Sarah Palin just found out about and Senator McCain has refused to condemn, isn’t about pre-emptive war. It’s a doctrine of preventive war, which is totally unacceptable in the civilized world. The Bush Doctrine is why the USA [...]

As I continue my desultory series on the four freedoms, I find myself, in the face of the seemingly endless sludge of bad economic news pondering the idea of freedom from want.
FDR’s original line was:
The third is freedom from want–which, translated into universal terms, means economic understandings which will secure to every nation a healthy [...]

This is basically a re-post from Think Progress, for which I apologize. However, the message is important: Senator John McCain hasn’t got a clue about Iraq strategy. I can cite specifics, but why take it from me? Listen to CNN’s Baghdad correspondent Michael Ware, who has been closely following developments in Iraq [...]

While the Presidential campaigners make their rounds talking about victory in “eye-rack,” they are careful to say nothing whatsoever about Afghanistan. Unlike the unbelievably costly and pointless Iraq fiasco, the Afghanistan/Pakistan war matters greatly to U.S. national security.

Fraidoon Pooyaa/Associated Press
In Azizabad, an Afghan boy carried his belongings amid the ruins of his home, which [...]

If you missed “60 Minutes,” then you ought to watch this now. Scott Pelley interviewed Bob Woodward about his new book on the so-called “surge” in Iraq.
Now, normally I wouldn’t hit the keyboard to run the risk of helping Woodward– he’s a smug s.o.b. who wrote adulatory books about President Bush until [...]

Flag of Iraqi Kurdistan
While the U.S. presidential election is about to go into full swing, few Americans know that the Iraqi elections originally scheduled for this October have been postponed indefinitely. They may have a war instead.
Jonathan Steele of The Guardian reports that growing tensions between Nouri al-Maliki’s Green Zone Government [...]

Hurricane Gustav is barreling toward the Gulf Coast. Today it was forecasted to hit New Orleans on Monday, the first day of the Republican National Convention. By then it could be a Category 3 storm, which triggers mandatory evacuations. President George W. Bush will be the featured speaker at the convention in [...]

Via Think Progress– Senator John McCain is running a campaign of the rich, by the rich, and for the rich:

Asked to “define rich” recently, McCain joked, “How about $5 million.” Asked to refine that answer, McCain later said that some people “are poor if they’re billionaires.”
McCain’s is proposing a tax policy that primarily benefits the [...]

Condi Rice has agreed to a troop withdrawal timetable to end the occupation of Iraq.
The cowardly defeatocrats and cut ‘n’ runners have kicked ass. Declaring that the deal means “the left won the Iraq debate,” Spencer Ackerman notes that the withdrawal plan is nearly identical to the plan offered by the Center for [...]