Dear John:
Amid the misinformation on Senator Obama's positions throughout your speeches you intersperse the occasional plank from your own platform. One point that your supporters seem to love is the promise to cut government. Spending, people, programs all get demonized.
Since the various bipartisan attempts to minimize the damage wrought by financial collapse you have come up with the idea of buying up all those failing mortgages. I won't argue the merits of your plan - because a one-line plan is merely an idea and an idea can not be discounted without analysis.
I will however suggest that in following throught on that idea, you have only two choices:
Most people, even Republicans, would probably agree the first choice is unwise. That leaves the second. Basically do what the banks are doing or should have done. That requires people. People cost money. Your mortgage plan would increase the size and cost of government. It would be a new additional program.
I'm not even going to make you admit it is, at the very least, liberalism in banking, even though I believe it is more like socialism in banking.
But it definitely is opposite to your "less government" pledge.
C'mon, Senator. The path goes left or right. Make up your mind and let us know who you are. Is the real John McCain a laissez-faire conservative or a closet liberal?
The framers of the Constitution set the role of Commander-in-Chief in the Office of the President to guarantee civilian control of the military. Aware of the world of their time, they understood the danger an unfettered military posed to civil society. Civilian control was a brilliant initiative, its wisdom confirmed more than 170 years later when President Eisenhower cautioned against the increasing power of the "military-industrial complex".
Republicans, and conservatives in general, imagine the need of military experience for the Commander-in-Chief role played by the President. Yet, since the creation of the Union some 232 years ago only two people have held the Office who could be considered militarily qualified to be Command-in-Chief: General Washington, commander of the Continental Army and General Eisenhower, Supreme Allied Commander in WWII. President Washington chose not to wage war; President Eisenhower chose to successfully end the one he inherited. As qualified Commanders-in-Chief they understood military force is the option of last resort.
Other Presidents have served in the military, many as officers, however, only the first and thirty-fourth were military strategists. Both were 'big-picture' thinkers, concerned not with the imagined insult or perceived injustice of the moment, but with the well-being and future of the Nation as a whole.
A Commander-in-Chief must be a strategic thinker, understanding the world, it's cultures and nuances, and appreciating America's position of power and responsibility as a leader. A Commander-in-Chief must also be aware of America's limitations, financially, militarily and politically.
Those preferring the role of 'maverick' best remain in the more contained tactical arenas where their nature enables them to excel. Mavericks are knee-jerk, narrow focus thinkers. Occasionally heroes of the moment; but unsuited for larger roles where their presence constitutes enormous risk.
To understand the Republican pick for Vice President - and it is clearly a party pick not a McCain pick - one must understand Republican 'family values'. Values that completely ignore women as thinking human beings.
The McCain campaign, and the Senator himself is completely controlled by Rove & Company, the same people who put 'W' in the White House and Dick Cheney in Rasputin's place in Washington. And why not? They have proven themselves able to insert people in the Oval Office regardless of the trivial details involved in elections.
Rove & Company knows what most Americans should realize: The only chance John McCain has of surviving the next four years is an Obama Presidency. Even 'W', completely disconnected from the average American, unconcerned and with more days off than any previous President has aged twenty years in the last eight. Anyone who thinks the Office won't kill John McCain is dreaming.
Should McCain become President, when Governor Palin becomes President Palin, Rove & Company think they will be in complete control of the country. Simply because they believe a woman must do what a man tells her to do.
It's clear from their disdain for Hillary's supporters - the neo-cons are certain Hillary's only connection to the electorate is gender. Republican's find Palin 'cute', perhaps even 'feisty'. They do not consider it possible she thinks. After all she is a girl.
In a column for the British newspaper, The Guardian, Jonathan Steele offers a starkly different view of the conflict between Russia and Georgia than the filtered one we get in North America. Of course, his opinions are coloured by the fact that he is in the vicinity and has been since 2001.
Steele notes that Georgian President Mikheil Saakashvili has been waging an interesting campaign of lies, his biggest in this case being: "...his attempt to airbrush the fact that he created the crisis by launching an artillery barrage on the South Ossetian capital, which killed scores of civilians and 15 Russian peacekeepers."
Steele compares the Russian response to Georgia's opening to NATO's response to problems in Kosovo. He notes: "Instead of confining itself to Kosovo in seeking to protect Albanian civilians from ethnic cleansing, NATO bombed deep into Serbia proper. What Russia did to Georgia was disproportionate, but less so than NATO on Serbia a decade ago."
There is also a good analysis of John McCain's "judgment". "One of the grimmest aspects of this crisis was the degree to which John McCain emerged as an undiplomatic hawk. Before the crisis he was on record as calling Putin "a totalitarian dictator" and saying Russia should be expelled from the G8. As Russia came in to defend South Ossetia, he demanded it pay a "serious negative" price." Clearly McCain is a man with a single approach to foreign relations. War.
Referring to his own government as 'poodles', Steele asks can they not see "...the next potential US president, Barack Obama, is more nuanced? He called on Georgia, as well as Russia, to show restraint."
Wow! Restraint. Asking for sanity from both sides. Now who should be answering 3:00 am phone calls?
The whole article is well worth reading and is at: http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2008/aug/25/georgia.russia.
It might be funny to boycott McCain's, the Canadian food company, as some up here have mentioned. It would be more relevant to stop drinking Bud.
As for our Maple Leaf Foods issue and Tony Clement, Canada's Minister of Health, being at the DNC Convention...
Why would the Democrats, people who want to build a health care system for their citizens invite a fascist from Harper's government - a group that wants to destroy an existing one, to their convention?
Why would Canada's Minister of Health not care enough to return during a crisis? Well, apart from the fact that he's a useless twit, he is ideologically opposed to any form of public health. His government has lowered the degree of federal inspection in food processing facilities (at the request of "industry" and the likes of Maple Leaf management) and is working to eliminate inspection entirely.
With all due respect to our friends south of the border, the USDA is driven by trans-national industry, not farmers and certainly not the public good. Were it not for the war in Iraq, the USDA might well be the poster child for the kind of politics and special interest control Senator Obama is trying to stop. Here at home, Mr. Harper is doing his level best to make sure our politics are as corporate-centric as Washington's.
We may soon have our own election to worry about and while we won't likely have a leader with Barack's charisma, we DO have one with the same values and honest enough to change (shift?) things or die trying. If we can look beyond the attack ads and outright lies Harper and company are putting out, and do the kind of thinking Democrats have been doing, he just might get elected.
The similarities in approach, callousness, tactics and greed between Bush-McCain-Harper-Cheney-McKay are stunning. But, I guess the devil's disciples all read from the same song-sheet.
The McCain campaign is running an ad with a Hillary supporter demonstrating sour grapes over the primary results. To her I pose these questions:
You and those sharing your rancor stand a good chance of turning America away from a potentially great future. And destroying the advances your previous choice worked so many years to make.
There will be no health care in a McCain administration. There will be neither peace nor safety for Americans in a McCain administration. There will be no energy security nor conservation. There will just be continued callousness, disrespect for the constitution and the rights it guarantees ALL Americans, on-going military conflict and death.
You might want to reconsider your brief moment in the spotlight.
There is a huge amount of discussion in this campaign on the topic of foreign relations and military experience. Much of it comes from the McCain camp in an attempt to equate age with ability and existence with judgment. The discussion is what it is - an attempt to make points from nothing.
Foreign Relations
Aside from early exposure to the existence of other nations, peoples and cultures, Barack has a degree from Columbia University with a major in international relations. Some pretty sound knowledge on which to base any future decisions. Senator McCain's foreign relations experience was gained from an in-depth understanding of how low people can sink in times of war.
When choosing who might best deal with the world outside America - and a large world it is - voters must decide whether they feel America's interests will be better served by educated reason, or by instant violence.
Should Hillary's famous 3:00 am phone call ring at the White House, does America want to be forcefully persuasive as Barack clearly is or does America want to kill off another few thousand young people in a protracted war with no apparent criteria for success?
Military Experience
Senator McCain's military experience is lengthy time-wise, and, yes, he proved himself a better man than most under the worst of conditions. But when examined in the context of a potential President, McCain has little more depth of experience than George W. Bush. Graduating in the bottom 1% of his class, McCain's command experience was limited to a training squadron.
A Commander-in-Chief must consider more than the immediate, must lead more than a small tactical group, and must seek advice from many. In this context Senator McCain's experience is less applicable; a "maverick" style perilous.
Threats to America
The only outside military threat to America comes from waging all-out war with a fellow nuclear power. Only Russia and China are capable, and neither has any desire to do so, despite George W. Bush's adolescent Russia-baiting and Senator McCain's labeling China as an enemy. Real physical threats to America are limited to violent acts by small terrorist organizations such as al-Qaeda.
While George W. Bush wastes money, lives and time in Iraq, al-Qaeda's leader is free to plot again. John McCain implies his big change will be to focus on Iran. For some odd reason, no Republican seems to make bringing the architect of the World Trade Center attacks to justice a priority.
America is safest with a leader who thinks first.
When a political party completely loses the support of the people, including significant amounts of its own members, the road to renewal usually involves a sacrificial lamb. Someone to make the first apparent cuts from those who screwed up. Someone who has little hope of political success and is willing to give up any political future and take one for the team.
Such a man is John McCain.
With disapproval at an all-time high, mired in an incomprehensibly expensive war and overseeing a tanking economy, there is little reason to expect a Republican administration next year. The savviest Republicans have realized that for more than a year.
To regain power in the future, Republicans must distance themselves from themselves (let's be practical, Bush & Cheney didn't cause this disaster on their own) and that requires a buffer. Enter the 2008 Republican nominee.
One can only hope Senator McCain knew this and stepped up willingly. It would be a cruel, but typically Republican move if he really thought he was running.
If Senator McCain had a clue what the office of President means he would accept that, as Head of State, it is part of the job to meet with foreign Heads of State, even from unfriendly and irresponsible nations.
Instead, he and his campaign people think the U.S. President should be spending time with, and accepting contributions from, the heads of Big Oil, Big Drugs and Big Banking - groups interested only in gouging the last pennies from the American working family.
If McCain thinks meeting with the President of Iran gives Ahmadinejad greater legitimacy than he already earned through elections, what kind of legitimacy does he want to give the president of Exxon/Mobil?
President Bush calls Senator Obama's intention for face-to-face meetings with leaders Bush doesn't like "appeasement". Clearly the President is blessed with the ability to produce Texas-sized piles of mental manure!
Where does a man whose family businesses offered material support to Hitler (note 1) get the brass to call the Senator's policies "appeasement"?
It's bad enough that Bush went to war against Rumsfeld's former friend in a completely botched attempt to find remnants of weapons of mass destruction the Reagan administration had supplied, then hanged Hussein before he could write a book on the perils of befriending Republicans. Bad enough Bush rants on about Iran's nuclear energy program that was begun by the Shah (note 2) when Iran was Republican America's good buddy. (Note 3) But to suggest diplomacy would weaken America, or make it less secure, and worse, expect people with actual IQ's to believe him is truly beyond surreal.
And to think, Republicans are the guys who want voter tests.
- Note 1: http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2004/sep/25/usa.secondworldwar- Note 2: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nuclear_program_of_Iran- Note 3: "In 1953 the United States played a significant role in orchestrating the overthrow of Iran's popular Prime Minister, Mohammed Massadegh. The Eisenhower Administration believed its actions were justified for strategic reasons; but the coup was clearly a setback for Iran's political development. And it is easy to see now why many Iranians continue to resent this intervention by America in their internal affairs." U.S. Secretary of State Albright.
Senator Obama has said he will meet with President Ahmadinejad. Senator McCain says this is foolish.
But how can Senator Obama's message, "...it's time to deliver a direct message to Tehran. America is a part of a community of nations. America wants peace in the region." get delivered without speaking? Hope Iranians are watching CNN? Ads on Al Jazeera? Only direct discussion can make the point. Only direct discussion can deliver the realization it is not political rhetoric for the folks at home, but America's voice speaking directly.
As a warrior, Senator McCain should understand Sun-tzu's "Keep your friends close, and your enemies closer." As a Senator, he should learn and appreciate Sun-tzu's "Appraise war in terms of the fundamental factors. The first of these factors is moral influence."
Moral influence does not come from sabre rattling or the posturing of bullies. And you can't keep your enemies close if you refuse to acknowledge them as people.
The rapid - or might I say 'rabid' - response to Senator Obama's 'lost bearings' comment in the Wolf Blitzer interview pretty much sums up the concerns of Republicans, or at least the concerns of those closely involved with the McCain campaign.
Watching the interview, the meaning I got from 'lost bearings' was that John McCain is out of touch with the common man. His age never entered my head. But maybe that's because I'm old.
Did the McCain campaign misinterpret because they are deeply concerned about the Senator's age, or because they have all lost their bearings and are completely out of touch with those of us making less than a million a year?
I guess age must be more of a weak spot that I had believed.
With so much hype about "experience", voters might do well to step back and look at the experience that really counts - their own.
The people's experience with Hillary Clinton, and very directly with Clinton health care, is, to be blunt, failure. Ms. Clinton tagged along behind President Bill into the White House and gained what she claims to be senior level experience in a U.S. administration. The task of implementing universal health care for Americans remains undone in spite of the Senator's 8-years of "experience".
Americans' experience with Senator McCain is more recent and considerable less friendly than a failure to accomplish. Senator McCain proposes change while suggesting a continued American military presence in Iraq for a century. Even with his mother's genes, it is unlikely John McCain will be alive to see the withdrawal under his kind of policy.
Economically, Senator McCain has always favoured the wealthy and continues to do so. Maintaining the tax cuts, unwilling to support full assistance for returning troops (although we must admit he will be kinder to officers) and ignoring the economic impacts of the war with Iraq the people's experience with John McCain is hardly different from their experience with President G. W. Bush.
