Would President John McCain forget who made that 3 a.m. call to the special White House phone? I suspect that his aides would not just let him nod off back to sleep, even if they were intimidated by the prospect of one of his alleged intemperate outbursts, but might our septuagenarian president be less than fully focused?
Most likely he would be, although as someone born in the same year as the senator, I too bristle at suggestions that age has made me less perfect than I once was. But it has. Sadly, those brain cells do go, and “senior moments” of befuddlement are more than a joke. But that shouldn’t automatically disqualify one of us still-agile silver foxes from the White House, as few of my contemporaries are likely to turn in a worse performance than the much younger current occupant. However, looking at the top two men in the present administration, the age question does make a compelling case for very carefully evaluating McCain’s vice-presidential choice.
That was my point when I raised the age issue on a Los Angeles Times Book Festival panel last Sunday, and my sparring partner, right-wing radio pundit Hugh Hewitt, wanted me instantly voted off the island of constant noise. He compared my “ageist” comment to someone making a racist charge against Barack Obama.
I take his point, as absurd as it first appeared. Absurd because it is obviously true that aging, as opposed to skin color or gender, does have a deleterious effect on one’s physical and mental functioning, and to deny this evident biological reality is as nonsensical as denying evolution itself. The species survives when each generation burns out and is replaced by a hopefully superior one, and while it is natural to want to linger on the scene as long as possible, we cannot insist on our personal indispensability to the continuation of the human experience.
Of course Hewitt was not doing anything of the sort, any more than he would genuinely embrace creationism, summarily dismiss fears of global warming or otherwise honestly endorse the tenet of the sort of phony science that right-wing pundits must from time to time condone. They do so for opportunistic reasons, and that is why the significance of McCain’s age must be denied by those eager to maintain the GOP’s hold on the presidency. They will hold their noses and vote for him despite the sensible positions he has at times had the temerity to advance, impervious to their blackmail. Impervious, that is, until he decided to make a second run for the presidency, leading him to sharply reverse his past principled stances and accommodate torture, tax cuts for the rich, Pat Robertson and other favored fetishes of the Republican base. The right-wing talk show bully boys still don’t trust him, but he’s the only horse left to ride.
While they continue to loathe him for his fatal flaw of occasionally embracing a moderate thought, they are dependent upon his electoral victory to extend their vastly disproportionate political power. They fully expect McCain to betray key points of their cryogenic agenda; on Sunday, Hewitt condemned most of McCain’s Senate performance and in particular his reasonable stance on immigration.
Their hope of retaining influence rests on saddling McCain with a proven rightist as his vice-presidential choice. The hunt is now on for the new Cheney, but such a candidate has to be brought in under the radar because the public is for the first time in modern history keenly aware that the vice president can play an enormously destructive role. That is particularly true if the potential president himself is, actuarially speaking, more likely to kick the bucket. Or, less dramatically, simply underperforms.
Let’s not kid any longer. Age is a factor in this race and nowhere is it so important as in McCain’s vice-presidential choice. If he picks from the very thin ranks of reasonable Republicans, it will be reassuring to more moderate voters attracted to McCain for his independence of thought as reflected in support of campaign finance reform and his opposition to some outrageously bloated military weapons expenditures that he has on occasion done much to expose. But if he turns to the loony wing for a running mate, we must become very concerned about the ability of a man in his 70s to fully perform in the world’s most important office. Is there another Cheney lurking in the wings?
Robert Scheer’s new book is “The Pornography of Power: How Defense Hawks Hijacked 9/11 and Weakened America.”
Copyright © 2008 Truthdig, L.L.C.
It is not McCains age that concerns me so much but his temper and having been tortured. Ron Paul is about the same age but he is very evenminded and always seems under control ( maybe because of his having been a doctor).I think McCain would be a disaster, not because of his age, but because of his demeanor.
Right on Paul Revere. It IS his temper and having been tortured. We know that human beings suffer post traumatic stress following catastrophic events whether political or personal. Being held captive and tortured qualify as such a series of events. McCain is a genuine hero for what he has given. Unfortunately, his life experiences have depleted his ability to provide the leadership the US needs in a president.
After the current disaster, we simply cannot afford another!
Here are some choices for Cheney’s vice president.
Mr. Lieberman to the rescue as vice presidential choice. Or Hillary. or Obama.
After all, they all have similar voting records on the most important issues. Fund the Iraq War; too expensive to have universal health care; don’t impeach a known criminal president; accept corporate dollars and only have to throw them a few millions dollars in payback (after all, its not their money, it’s our tax dollars).
Support the Green Party, third party, Nader if you really want to support a fundamental change.
This election is not going to change anything on a fundamental level, no matter who gets elected.
The republicans will hold you a foot under the water, the democrats only six inches under water. You may think it makes a difference, but both will choke you to death as they take your last dime, your last sense of justice, the last breath of hope from your soul.
so it goes
Being 71 or so is the least of McCain’s problems. Sure he may snooze through briefings but so does George Bush, the younger.
McCain also has a “pastor”–aka skeleton in the closet -problem, Reverend Hagee (as does Obama and Clinton (that would be Bill).
Plus, he speaks most often with forked tongue (not a straight-talker at all). He’s lobbyist controlled, lives off his wife’s, a beer heiress trophy wife, money. (she’s stolen drugs which she is addicted to.) plus Keating Five, plus he’s for torture, he’s against torture. Plus he’s the ne’er-do-well son and grandson of 2 four star admirals.
Finally, he like George bush, is a dim bulb.
His one ace in the hole is as a captured, tortured Vietnam war pilot. This has catapulted the man. This is pretty shaky as the totality of his resume
McCain and his family were hyperslimed by BushCo in 2000. They were all personally dishonored. Now, McCain tries to pass himself off as a Man of Honor; yet he has shamelessly brown-nosed this same Bush, all but taking off Bush’s shoes and washing his feet. You can forget everything else - the age, the temper, the melanoma, the average or below average intelligence, the total lack of knowledge of economic matters, the voting record - the post-slime brown-nosing and shit eating, in and of themselves, disqualify him from any serious consideration. In the end, the man is nothing but a dishonorable coward and so obviously hellbent on acquiring power that everyone should be running away from him as fast as their feet can propel them.
Mordechai is correct…by not standing up to Rove when Rove dishonored the McCain family in 2000, McCain became McClone…a man who will do whatever Rove and Cheney tell him to do.
Songbird McCain already established his persona of dishonorable coward in Viet Nam. He established his persona as lying flip-flopper when he kissed up to Jerry Falwell. He established his persona of a man with below-average intelligence by graduating fifth from the bottom of his West Point class and has reinforced it with virtually every speech he’s given. The fact that he’s tied with the Dems at this point is a tribute to the stupidity of the American voter and the utter failure of the two-party system.
http://www.wcltam.com/news/special/articledetail.cfm?articleid=23261
It’s too bad that political courage is a death knell for a candidate. I.E. Ron Paul, Dennis Kucinich. Obama has taken some politically courageous stands, such as opposing the gas tax holiday, and he is being whomped for them. Voters can be so shortsighted, so easily diverted from their own self interest into the hands of corporate pickpockets. Amazing. And, this being a “democracy”, the rest of us get dragged to ruin with them.
kathyodat
We are being set up for a rerun of the Reagan administration, where Reagan was figurehead and HGW Bush was running things behind the scenes.
Oh wait, we’re already in a rerun of the Reagan administration, where Dubya is figurehead and Darth Cheney is running things behind the scenes.
How can anyone think that McCain will be allowed to pick his own running mate ?
Remember, Cheney was supposed to be the one to pick Dubya’s running mate. Only coincidence of course that he picked himself.
The truly powerful stay behind the scenes and put their puppets on stage. Get ready for more of the same.
I asked the question somewhere if there’s a limit to a vice president’s term of office. For some reason, the post was deleted. Anyone here know the answer?
Not that I think Cheney will go for it again. He’s managed to get more done than if he’d been president, so I’m sure he’ll be content to go back to working behind the scenes in the shadow government. I’m also sure there’s a younger version waiting in the wings for McCain’s presidency.
“McCain would be a disaster, not because of his age, but because of his demeanor?…”
The fact is McSame suffers with advanced endological Post Traumatic Stress Disorder predominantly untreated [i.e.severe mental illness]…This guy would be considerably more dangerous than Bu$h the Lessor….
and still….McCain is more qualified than Hillary and even moreso than Obama - who has no business being in the race.
Songbird McCain already established his persona of dishonorable coward in Viet Nam.
WC - its people like you that give me pause when it comes to respecting free speech. That comment is utterly disgusting and I hope you’re kept up at night, haunted by nightmares.
No matter how horrific McCain is as a candidate, he will almost certainly be the next president. The corporate media recently confirmed this by proving, for the umpteenth time, it has absolutely no shame and no self-respect and will flood us with irrelevant tripe throughout the fall campaign. If Obama is the nominee, there will be non-stop innuendo based on any level of connection or association, no matter how tenuous, and of course full use of the race card. And with Hillary, my gosh, there will be 24/7 corporate media gossip about alleged relationships she and Bill have had with others, as well as obsession with every possible act of dishonesty or financial impropriety either one may have committed. By the time the right-wing echo chamber and corporate media are finished with her, if she is the nominee, there will be unremitting calls for her resignation as senator and the prosecution of both her and her husband. Not only that, she would lose by such a landslide that Republicans would likely retake Congress.
A catastrophe is in the works, and we will likely find little comfort in the comedy provided by the corporate media in attempting to blame all the upcoming tragedies on liberals, progressives, Muslims, and foreigners of one nationality or another.
None of the three candidates will get us out of Iraq, nor change the military-industrial-congressional think-tank complex — period. Look at their voting records — all of them, folks. NOTHING WILL CHANGE!!! Obama and Hillary talk about ending the war, but they both continue to vote to fund it. Obama talks about his grassroots money raising, but he is awash with all matters of corporate cash from oil, banking, corporations to keep things just as they are. Hillary same thing. And we all know where McCain stands. Where is the change folks??? Where???
For the first time in my life, I’m struggling with the whole idea of even making the effort to cast a ballot. Ordinarily, for me to entertain such a notion would be akin to heresy - like a devout Catholic saying the Hail Mary backwards or tattooing an inverted pentagram over my heart.
I do not subscribe to organized religion and although I have always been opposed to Marxism, I’ve always identified with the sole tenet that religion is an ‘Opium of the People.’ It is with this distrust for the fallibility of faith, that I justify my love of country and feelings of pride for what the Flag represents. I substitute patriotism for religion and take political discussions as deadly serious as a Theology student might take the Gospel.
Because of this, its been with great difficulty over the last two years that I’ve watched the race for the Oval Office take shape and narrow the selection to the inevitability of two candidates from the two traditional parties.
The atmosphere of divisiveness and hatred somehow mixed with our nearly masochist obsession for Reality Television. We’re cheering candidates on as if they were rival players starring in a presidential version of The Apprentice. Voters have come to equate Democrat as synonymous with cowardice and Republican as equal to hatred and fanaticism.
Its almost as if the election, as if all elections in recent memory have regressed into this macabre sort of live-action theatre. There is no structure, but the plot is intricate. There are no heroes, but there exists no shortage of antagonists either. Before the last exit poll is conducted however, it is clear that the prize is little more than an empty coronation to what can only be described as American royalty - a unifying symbol reflecting the collective heartburn of the country, bound together by a crown of wet cardboard and shredded bond reciepts.
My respect for the Office diminished because its clear that power does not reside in any of the rooms on 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue. Power isn’t in the mostly empty seats of our legislature, instead, it rides in Lear jets above the Beltway and sits in the boardrooms of CNN and KBR. Just as in the days of the smoke filled campaign chambers, we as a nation are too distracted by our own sideshows of division and cheerleading to acknowledge that power has been taken directly from the ballot box and handed to the shareholder.
The show has become so successful that since the end of World War II, the directors, the top one percent of the nation, have adopted it as the crown jewel of a strategy based on the acquisition and maintenance of power. This tactic is fueled by cash and held together by the bounds of ignorance and fear.
Although we are a proud nation, Americans are at times a fearful people. We fear taxes, we fear religious terrorism, guns and homosexuals. Suburban Whites fear urban Blacks and the poor fear the rich. It is this fear that has allowed the theatrics of the political landscape to thrive and justify the division and polarization of the voting populace.
And despite possessing unprecedented access to candidates and information, our participation in the show is dictated not by ideaology but by which candidate can first spike into the veins of our collective anxiety; quelling us with the deceptive euphoria of hope and change.
But when the high wears off and the house lights suddenly brighten, we are reminded, brutally, that politics is little more than corporate theatre. Its stage is the nationally televised debates and its players are the bloodless marionetes whose strings are tugged by special interest groups, PACs and cash backed media conglomerates.
The rules are made back at that board meeting we weren’t invited to and up in the Lear jet that never seems to taxi near our terminal.
This is why it seems as if nothing gets done in Washington. Its why politicians are reviled on the level of a cancer spread by the effects of secondhand soundbytes.
In the end, my vote will be motivated by a largely pre-programed sense of duty as opposed to any hope of electing a true agent of change or ideaology I can be proud of.
After all, I’m an American voter. I’ll forget all about it by the next commercial break.
The only thing that will bring about change is the American people (don’t hold your breath)coming together in grassroots organizations and bringing their fight enmasse, loudly and publicly, on the issues affecting us. That means we must educate ourselves on the awful brutal history, especially in the last 50 years, of U.S. government involvement in bombings, electoral interference, support for brutal dictatorships and multi-national corporations over the well-being of people, that have killed millions of innocent civilians in two-dozen countries. That needs to be exposed and discussed openly and honestly before any change will happen with respect to American foreign policy that brutalizes people around the world, while it talks up freedom and democracy and bogeyman fears of Communism, this, that, and the other, to the blindly patriotic religiously fanatic minions here at home who are completely oblivious to any facts concerning the U.S. government and its policies around the world (IMF, WORLD BANK, MONSANTO-DOW, UNION CARBIDE, THE BANANA WARS,INDONESIA, SOUTH AMERICA, CENTRAL AMERICA, THE RAPING OF OTHER COUNTRIES RESOURCES REGARDLESS OF THE COST TO CIVILINS OF THOSE COUNTRIES, SUPPORT OF DICTATORS THROUGHOUT THESE YEARS RIGHT THROUGH TO THE PRESENT, ON AND ON AND ON!!)
“Is there another Cheney lurking in the wings?”
If there isn’t, RAND can have one cloned, readily-enough…
Vote if you feel you must, if only to stay active on the rolls. This election is over. The McMedia and the GOP Voting Machine Inc. are taking steps to make it so.
It’s past time for the people to reclaim their party. It will take years of grass roots infiltration into the Democratic Party to begin turning it around. The Right did it to the Republican Party.
If the loss of democracy will not motivate someone, then what possibly will?
Only the mass influx of real progressives into the Democratic Party can make a difference, if it’s not too late already.
Coherent enough to read from the teleprompter? That’s all that’s needed, each candidate has that ability. Otherwise, there aren’t many differences. Voting for the next Uniparty candidate is an exercise that if you really must insist, may have a symbolic, emotional benefit that is probably healthy. Also, McCain gladly took it for the team, any of the running narcissists has long been in the game because they’ll do whatever is necessary and what they’re told. The concept, design and *your* idea of a Chief Executive is aged and outdated, irrelevant in any system of Government that actually hopes to be a Democracy.
The only monkey wrench that can be thrown into the mix at this point is vote third party.
Don’t support the system. Yes, voting third party will have as much effect as a cream pie dropped from a step ladder (to quote Kurt Vonnegut), but it will be no less that voting for Obama or Hillary. Things will continue to be the same this election.
While there are distinctions among the mainstream candiates (the ones who get reported in mainstream media), there is little fundamental difference in their voting record.
And if things aren’t bad enough for the people to ask for a fundamental change at this time and place, you have to wonder how much worse does it have to get before people will act. But be aware, if it gets any worse, we may not be in a position to act.
And the aboce comments by AngstOfThePeople was very appropriate. It’s the elections, mainstream media, most corporations that are all leading us to a race to the bottom.
so it goes…
Surprised a blatant smear piece like this even warrants any comments.
—————
On who to vote for, here’s an easy rule. If you see the candidate on TV, especially if you see them often, then don’t vote for them.
If you see them on TV, that means two things. They have the corporate money behind them to buy TV time. And they have the corporate media behind them. Both are clear signs that this is a candidate of the corporations, not of the people. As long as we keep voting for the candidates of the corporations, why are we surprised if their policies favor the same corporations time after time?
McCain will in all likelihood be the next pres. Look for Jeb to be the running mate; McCain will do as he’s told and like it. Then look for McCain to have the shortest administration since ol Tippecanoe, if he even makes it to Jan 20, i.e. look for the bushies to keep it in the family.
I won’t vote for McCain, but Mr. Scheer is wrong; we do not lose brain cells (neurons) as we age, unless were are otherwise ill. Indeed, we continue to grow neurons as long as we live. If you wish to make an issue of age,what is true is that the aging body is more subject to physical illness and weariness, which could impair one’s ability.
McWar Monger’s age is a big negative against him. So is the fact that he has shown over many years that he is mean and vindictive. He admits to being a bully while in school when he did poorly academically. While Obama was always tops in his classes. I would never consider McWrong because he has shown how he has not stood on principles but has thrown himself to the worst of the republican party - voting 95% with Bush, kissing up to the neocons, kissing up to the religious right of hate. He, of course, had to flip flop to now stand with them and to take on their policies.
Trang (way above) says, as many do “McCain is a genuine hero”. Oh, what did he do to become known as a hero may I ask. Was it the bombing of innocent people in N. Viet Nam or was it for being a prisoner for his WAR CRIMES that made him into a “genuine hero”? I’m puzzled by this hero shit people keep slinging around about this nasty, mean old rich bastard. Get over it folks. If he’s a hero what are the 300-400 people being held at GB? Wouldn’t they also earn the title?
Saul friedman. We grow glial cells and maybe some neurons but we don’t do this easily. We lose neurons as we age. Neurons used to be thought as irreplaceable but new evidence suggests this is not absolutely so. Still, the path is downward.
Angst of the people: You are very articulate and wrote a very good post. So why not refute the statement instead of being all disgusted? McCain bombed people, got shot down and was put in prison where he was treated poorly and you could say tortured. Still, it isn’t heroic to go through torture, it’s a calamity. Living through a calamity does not make one a hero. He risked his life to save someone else is a hero. Who did McCain save by bombing the Vietnamese? None of his people were in danger, except for his invader friends. Did he risk his life for a fellow soldier at least? Risking your life while bombing people would be heroic if you were defending your country (yes, country, not HOMELAND), but Vietnam has nothing to do with this kind of action. I got it! He risked his life to support imperialism so that Americans could become wealthier at the expense of poor nations and eat ever more hamburgers. It’s true, McCain is a hero (sandwich)!
It is not cowardly to blow yourself up, or purposely crash your plane into a target. This is many things but not cowardly. Dropping bombs on people who don’t even have air defenses like in Iraq could be considered cowardly in the extreme. What pride can one have in being a member of the air force when you aren’t in danger at all and you are always killing innocent humans along with your target? What pride can one have sitting in the US while killing people by the use of a remote controlled drone in a far away country? Shame, yes, pride, no. Is this cowardly? I don’t know, but it certainly is not a good example of bravery.
For CounterPunch, Doug Valentine has written an article describing how McCain actively collaborated with the Vietnamese communists while he was a prisoner.
Its in the print version of the Counterpunch newsletter, and not on the website yet. So I can’t give a link. If you go to www.counterpunch.org, you’d see this blurb at the top of the page …
“The New Print Edition of CounterPunch, Only for Our Newsletter Subscribers!
Meet the Real John McCain:
North Vietnam’s Go-To Collaborator
Read how the Vietnamese protected and promoted McCain and how in return he danced to their tune. McCain was on Vietnamese radio so often he was tagged as “the PW Songbird”.
I still view this entire article as nothing but a smear piece against McCain. I’m not a McCain supporter. Heck, I’m far enough to the left that I’m a pretty regular critic of the Democrats, so about the last thing I am is a McCain supporter.
But, I still don’t like to see these sorts of pure smear jobs. Even when aimed at other people I don’t like. Its full of conjecture and hyperbole, but little or no facts. The author didn’t even do the usual smear job technique of finding someone who can vaguely be cited as an authority on aging and how McCain is showing signs. He just sat down and started typing a smear against him.
I’d be annoyed if this was aimed at a candidate I like, so fair is fair. This is just wrong. If you want to argue against his policies great. If you want to cite facts and examples of how aging is impairing the man, even that’s closer to ok. But to just start slinging a smear around like this is just plain wrong.
Speaking of “old men” and those who have military backgrounds such as McCain, it might be useful to also take another look at Jeremiah Wright in this regard.
Not so much his age, but rather his background in the Marines during the early ’60s.
Also of possible interest, comparing Wright’s blunt-speaking manner with the similar style and viewpoints of former Navy SEAL and Minnesota governor Jesse Ventura.
Food for thought in …
“Marine Jeremiah Wright, SEAL Jesse Ventura speak bluntly”
Joint Recon Study Group blog
April 30, 2008
http://jointreconstudygroup.blogspot.com
Dave, your resignation comes as a shock. Where is that frontier spirit that helped white Europeans to wipe out the Red Indians, to kill all the buffalo, to make the film High Noon?
Surely that spirit is still there, well hidden perhaps. What has caused the despondency and apathy that grips America? Don’t the American people realize that they could take back their country in a matter of weeks if they united together?
Surely no one is frightened of George? He’d run for his life is someone said ‘Boo’. And what would the authorities do against 300 million angry, marching people? They can’t put them all in gaol!
Get them going, Dave!
www.dangerouscreation.com
Angst - “Songbird” is not my name - McCain’s co-residents of the Hanoi Hilton gave it to him after he used his family connections to get better treatment from his captors, including medical treatment. Take the flag out of your eyes and wake up to the truth. Ignoring the truth of McCain’s past because he was a POW is foolish.
How is McCain “more qualified” than Clinton or Obama - because his (current) right-wing attitudes coincide with yours? Your beloved flag now represents pre-emptive war, illegal occupation, torture, lies, cover-ups, and disdain for the Constitution, which is the piece of material you actually SHOULD be worshipping, not the flag.
Your long follow-up post indicates that you realize this country is being run by the rich for the rich, and that our presidential elections are all but a sham. But now it’s past time for you to own up to your complicity in it. You voted for GW Bush twice, the second time after he had more than proven his inadequacy for the office. It is voters like you who have dragged our country down, suckering for the self-centered Republican tax-cut small government lies ever since Reagan. YOU are the one who should be haunted by sleepless nights for what your vote has cost our country over the past 40 years.
It’s time to stop electing presidents with serious psychological issues. Bill Clinton with his self-destructive bent for flaunting his womanizing, George Bush the recovered alcoholic, John McCain the psychologically damaged prisoner of war.
To those so concerned that this is a smear piece, yeah, it is. So is virtually every article on presidential candidates on this site and every dialog that ensues about the articles. Get used to it. The Republicans made candidates’s private and past lives part of the equation; now it’s SOP for all. McCain, like Bush, has a lot to answer for in his past that he hasn’t. In the presidential debates I wonder if anyone will have the courage to ask him if he wet-started his Skyhawk the day of the Forrestal fire. I wonder if he’ll have the courage to answer honestly. But I’m just day-dreaming…
although i would sooner plunge from a precipice than vote republican, i must take issue with the first two posts on this forum. being tortured or suffering some other calamity does not predispose you to irrational, psychotic behavior.
some people react badly to it and are left with scars that impede sound judgment, but others learn and grow from such experiences. in fact, in some cases such people may have developed enhanced mental and psychological acuteness and awareness.
should nelson mandela have been kept from office due to his years in captivity?
not to worry about mccain being too old to think later when in offic.
lieberman already started the job of being mccain’s brain. when mccain showed he doesn’t know the difference between sunnis and shia and whom iran is allegedly arming lieberman was right there to whisper corrections in his ear.
so mccain’s brain is already firmly in charge of mccain.
mccain’s brain and his sheepdog. i loved watching lieberman shepherding mccain around from one israeli leader to the next when mccain was making his fealty trip to israel
I’m 79 so I do know of what the author of this article speaks, some old people still have all their faculties but I don’t think McCain is one of them. As to the torture bit in Vietnam, is their any proof or is it just another American tall story.
Of course the Repugs will soon have McCain out of the way and a more right wing VICE president take over for a few years, that I guarentee if they manage to steal this next election.
Before the LAST election, I went to a ‘liberal’ meeting - mostly progressives, most left-leaning. They all agreed that Kucinich was their best choice - but since he couldn’t win, they’d vote for someone else. So it’s all about voting for a ‘winner’ - not your best choice, huh? How’d that work for you in that election?
I might vote for Nader again - or maybe Cynthia McKinney (if they’re on the ballot in my state) - but I’m NEVER going to pick between the lessor of 3 evils. You all might think about that - and why you’re voting for anyone, if you’re not voting your conscience.
I wish there was a great traditional conservative running out there - but there isn’t. So my only alternative is to vote AGAINST EVIL. Maybe some of you should consider that - since we’re only a very tiney percentage anyway. Maybe all our votes would give a third party a chance to build a little momentum, and our grandchildren WILL be able to live in a free country. (I remember what that was like - I grew up under Eisenhower.)
Stop worrying about THIS election - it’s already lost. We need to look to the future, or we’re going to be repeating this nonsense until the day we die. (poor, starving, and without any hope)
armybrat,
You’re getting better and better! Great post.
I’ll be voting for McKinney or Nader myself. If average people voted for candidates best suited to represent them, it woul be Nader, McKinney, Kucinich, or Gravel in the White House. They let MSM manipulate their thinking.
Tonight…Orielly interviews Hillary…PartII
Fox news at 8PM
Be informed for once
your friend banjoman
…let’s not forget the cover up of treasonous Ronald Regan’s Alzheimer’s…instead of playing the grieving widow in public, Queen Nancy and his entire White House staff should be behind bars. We The People don’t need another fascist terrorist with one foot in the grave stealing the White House again!!!
As an outsider looking in at this election process, two of the candidates scare me - Hilary Clinton and John McCain. Only Barak Obama strikes me as level headed, someone capable of diplomacy and strength. By strength, I don’t mean macho posturing, and speeches fuelled with hate and rhetoric, but the ability to confront other heads of state, and calmly present your point of view, without shirking from what you believe in.
I want to see a US president talking directly to countries like Iran and Syria, not sending some low ranking civil servant, to insult and humiliate. The only way for the US to be respected in the World, is for them to elect someone with tact, intelligence and honesty - three things which I do not see in McCain and Clinton.
Baloney, Robert, you know nothing about “biological reality.” I’m nearly McCain’s age (71) and I’m fit as a fiddle. Everything works, if you get my drift.
I’m a backpacker, carrying forty pounds up and over hills. I swim twenty laps every day that I can and my mind is as sharp as a tack. I have the blood pressure of a twenty-year-old, take no medication and haven’t been sick in years.
So much for your biological reality. I agree with Hugh — your comments are pure discrimination. You’re an “age Oreo.”
Stock market
A new book written by a leading globalist luminary provides a blueprint for how 6,000 elitists plan to completely end national sovereignty, impose a system of global governance, and how they will deal with an international network of people that resist their agenda.
Superclass: The Global Power Elite and the World They Are Making is a manifesto for how the elite plan to shape the course of the planet and impose a new world order while combating the inevitable “global network of antiglobalists” who will rise up against it.
The author of the book, David J. Rothkopf, is a visiting scholar at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace and has previously served as the Deputy Undersecretary of Commerce for International Trade during the administration of Bill Clinton before he became managing director of Kissinger and Associates in January 1996.
A Salon.com review alarmingly details the brazen premise of Rothkopf’s book - a global elite now run the planet and have usurped the power of national governments while ensuring laws constrained by borders are all but obsolete.
“Each one of them is one in a million. They number six thousand on a planet of six billion. They run our governments, our largest corporations, the powerhouses of international finance, the media, world religions, and, from the shadows, the world’s most dangerous criminal and terrorist organizations. They are the global superclass, and they are shaping the history of our time,” states the promo for the book.
The threadbare notion that Rothkopf’s book is a critical and impartial investigation of the global elite can be rejected out of hand just by looking at the author’s biography - in reality he is a cherished insider.
Throughout the book Rothkopf fawns over the global elite of which he too is a member. The Salon review notes his “palpable thrill” at “recognizing CEOs, oil company executives and Harvard professors on his way to a fondue restaurant,” in the globalist enclave of Davos, Switzerland and his obsession with listing every banal “achievement” of each elitist he speaks with.
According to the article, the kind of elitist celebrated in Rothkopf’s book “have little need for national loyalty, view national boundaries as obstacles that thankfully are vanishing, and see national governments as residues from the past whose only useful function is to facilitate the elite’s global operations.”
Rothkopf himself concurs that laws and regulations defined by borders and nation states are obsolete and need to be replaced not by a global government but by “global governance”. The fact that the ultimate goals of the two - the total elimination of national sovereignty - are essentially identical is not lost on globalists who know that a more subtle imposition of centralized control needs to be enacted in order to con the serfs into sacrificing their identity. A sharply defined “world government” is too visceral a concept and would attract fierce opposition, therefore a method of forcing countries to adopt harmonized policies of “global governance” is the new approach that globalists have embarked on.
Rothkopf ominously expresses the plan to mandate the “Registration and management of Internet domain names (via a collection of organizations)” under a global umbrella, which the informed will recognize as a bastardized version of Internet 2, where individuals require government permits to operate a website under tight regulation.
The article concedes that, “Rational as it may sound to set up such systems, they just aren’t directly answerable to the populace at large — they’re undemocratic,” which Rothkopf admits will give rise to rebellions and pave the way for more people like Venezuela’s Hugo Chavez, who he labels as being part of “the global network of antiglobalists,” and a man who has “made political theater out of taunting and thwarting the global elite.”
Rothkopf’s answer to the inevitable antagonism that will be directed towards the globalists as their agenda unfolds is to hoodwink the commoners into thinking they have influence in the new world order that is being built around them - a method otherwise known as the Delphi Technique, which is universally recognized as an underhanded and unethical ploy of achieving consensus through deception.
According to Rothkopf the, “Superclass ought to be smart enough to foresee any such crisis and head it off by doing more to make the currently disenfranchised feel like “stakeholders” in the new global order.”
The fact that the same elitists Rothkopf affords such sycophantic adulation are also personally responsible for the policies that result in the slaughter of untold millions and the misery of countless others across the globe matters little to Rothkopf, who also has no qualms about including Osama Bin Laden in a group of 6,000 “global elite” who now control the world and “whose connections to each other have become more significant than their ties to their home nations and governments.”
Superclass maintains that the elite, who mainly comprise “older males of European descent who graduated from prestigious Western colleges,” are “an improvement on those of the past,” but this rings hollow when we consider the state of the planet that they have crafted.
A million-plus dead Iraqis since 2003, a global economy in chaos and individual freedom under attack in every corner of the world suggests the much-vaunted global elite - worshipped in Rothkopf’s book as saviors of the Earth - are more accurately parasites and a cancer upon humanity.
Watch Rothkopf give a lecture on the power of the global elite. He identifies Bohemian Grove as a key meeting venue for the globalists. Decide for yourself whether he is a fawning sycophant or an objective critic.
Rothkopf’s approach is to blame the world’s problems on free-market capitalism and and imply that global elitists are a new phenomenon and therefore part of the solution, when in reality the elite created monopoly capitalism and have been a hidden-hand manipulating world events and offering solutions to problems they created for centuries.
Reagan had the onset of Alzheimer’s in office. He wasn’t fit to govern the country the last few years of his Presidency. Even though I am only a few years younger than McCain. I would hate to deal with the stress of world problems at my age. I really don’t think McCain is suited to the job. Not only age wise but due to temperament too! We already have one lose cannon in the White House rolling around smashing everything in his path. I think it would be a tragic mistake to put another in. McCain is much the same kind of lose cannon we have had for 7 years now.
Hello Mr. Scheer. I was in the audience Sunday at the Book Festival when you and that right wing radio nobody were on the stage. Your performance tended to belie your own comments about the intellectual capacity of a 71 year old.
In McCain’s case I suspect it is like “W” - he didn’t have much of a brain at 30 either - or even before the torture which left him with his dangerous level of repressed anger.
****
I quote below a list of American crimes a previous poster argues must be openly discussed.
I would add that 9/11 had to be some sort of complex interaction between insiders and the Al Qaeda patsies, if there were any, on those planes. The Twin Towers and Building 7 were brought down with explosives. Please just review the video and see for yourself. Here is a link to a web site that does a nice job of presenting evidence supporting the contention that there had to be more to the events of 9/11 that what is in the official explanation.
http://www.truememes.com/911_physics.html
The exposure of 9/11 as an inside job will create the sort of universal outrage that will bring about the citizen involvement we need to enable a non violent revolution to remove the corrupt corporate cabal from power and permit a transition to a green, people centered future so America can once again be a leader and not a pariah to the world.
The quote from the post above starts here:
“That needs to be exposed and discussed openly and honestly before any change will happen with respect to American foreign policy that brutalizes people around the world, while it talks up freedom and democracy and bogeyman fears of Communism, this, that, and the other, to the blindly patriotic religiously fanatic minions here at home who are completely oblivious to any facts concerning the U.S. government and its policies around the world (IMF, WORLD BANK, MONSANTO-DOW, UNION CARBIDE, THE BANANA WARS,INDONESIA, SOUTH AMERICA, CENTRAL AMERICA, THE RAPING OF OTHER COUNTRIES RESOURCES REGARDLESS OF THE COST TO CIVILINS OF THOSE COUNTRIES, SUPPORT OF DICTATORS THROUGHOUT THESE YEARS RIGHT THROUGH TO THE PRESENT, ON AND ON AND ON!!)”
When you consider the crimes listed above, would it really be such a reach to stage a Reichstag Fire to enable further criminal activity?
ANDY UK: I feel the same way!
MBRUTON: Very interesting posting. Although I think David Icke has a few loose screws, what he does relate about Bilderberg and the global elite’s plans dovetails with much that you’ve here shared. The astrological implications also point towards a very STERN authoritarian elite seeking to control the masses/resources, yet quite a bit (all that the cosmos has to aim at it in retaliation in the form of justice, independent people’s movements, weather events) is aimed against this succeeding. I do believe the struggle will last until 2020 A.D. This is not a uniform singular power easy to overthrow, it’s a massive system of interlocing powerbrokers who all worship at the altars of Mars (war) and Mammon (gross materialism when THEY already have more than enough, and their fellow citizens are struggling or starving in many instances).
McCain and Clinton simply an extension of the Bush policy of the last seven years and a hope to continue the same policy. The Fox network and these two politicians and power brokers of the Rupert Murdoch style of revisionism move to bring the world to extinction.
Clinton once again show her irresponsible thinking at any price to gain the American nomination to continue to lead the world to oblivion. I read with interest the comments of Americans. I consider myself a humanist and not one that has the USA tattooed to my backside although I gave three years to the military and so have a right to speak. Nationalism, is always based in me-firstism, let the rest of the world be damned mentality. Clinton is the new spokesperson for that idea and has now teamed up with the Fox network and the rabid so-called journalists who have helped diminish the America I once knew and fought to maintain. The way the rest of the world looks at the USA is colored by people like these at the highest levels of power.
The economic system that determines all peoples survival regardless of where they exist, also determines what a country will become, much of it the result of chance. In that regard the USA has been lucky, with well-worn imperialist ideas brought over with the Pilgrims. America has taken this country from the people who were here, the European model, without paying them. Some of us here know the story. The so called, “free market market system”, formerly American capitalism, and now globalization into which it has now morphed. the US with its European allies has created the current means of controlling everything for the few. The G 8 has developed ever-greater means to develop these ideas and to take what it wants from the rest of the world and its own population.
The African Americans, the Africans, the Hispanics, Asians and Indians have been the slave classes that have built the white European and American wealth. The historic exploitation of the working classes of America brought from the world into its “melting pot” with the so-called freedoms and democratic ideals built from the blood spilled to form, compared to the European monarchies and divine kingship, so called Democracy unique in the world. The freedoms bought so dearly, were the first “Divine Kingship” of the “Robber Baron” and now, corporate power elitism.
To keep the masses quiet and to build the lives of Americans, consumer ideology supplanted education, the study human purpose, as a goal in itself. The economic forces, which have built their power, care little for human development and survival. They care largely for their continued power as an end in itself and for the few who have the most based on its protection with a huge military force, hence the oil wars in Iraq, this to support an auto centered disposable consumer society.
The expense of privilege in the community of nations may become the death of the globe and its entire people as a result of the American and European economic system, now out of control. Many American economists, Jeffrey Sachs, Joe Stiglitz, and others view these historical developments as a threat to global harmony and survival.
American wealth once had an altruistic quality about it. The post-World War II USA, developed the Marshal Plan and cared about the condition of the world. Now the top one percent, those who have taken so much, continue to be supported by the thirty percent of Americans who still believe George Bush, and his myth of global superiority at the expense of the rest of the world. It is clare that to many of Clinton’s opinions continue the Bush doctrine, of unilateralism.
We sit on the edge of an environmental and economic disaster. This American system is out of control and the economic meltdown will continue regardless of who occupies the Oval office. The only difference is that Obama is intelligent enough to know that there are fundamental change needed in the way America and the so-called “free world” do business.
Rev Wright, simply addresses continued black slavery in a world of exploitation of all people led by the US and now the power elite in collusion with the government to continue the “American Dream” mentality, represented now by corporate multilateralism and their wealth and power. Corporate elitism cares for itself alone at the expense of all people, the environment, the human experiment, its freedoms, and so called democratic ideals which has become nothing more than an oligarchy.
We should not be too pejorative about Rev Wright who simply rails against the exploitive aspects of the Western mentality and points out the deficiency in the USA of evolved thinking toward the slave classes and the human species. He, having been able to experience directly because of his skin color these abuses is perhaps too angry which limits his effectiveness. His experience in seeing the wreckage of black America and his intelligence, has caused him to take up the defense of the disenfranchised.
America has a history of caring about others, once a genuine American direction, led by people, despite their failings like: The Kennedy’s, Martin Luther King, Malcolm X and so many others who died for their belief in a better America and a better world, caring about humanity.
The media who carries their continued assault against those, who would in any way, attempt to include different thinking to bear on the so called “American Dream” which has become the world’s nightmare must be seen by the masses for what it has become. The media must begin to understand its roll as an objective commentator to the necessary changes that must be made to the USA and the world if humanity is to survive.
The media above all must be changed once again to give democratic exposure to all important ideas. It must present an understanding of the complex thought needed to be brought to bear on global complex issues of survival. A departure from the simplistic superficial treatment ad-nauseam we witness each day which passes for news presented by the Barby-Doll class of newsreader called journalist.
Banjoman signs “your friend ” because he is full of bitterness. His posts are entertaining and I hope to see them again in the future. They are not worth responding to, however. They lack intelligence and understanding, and his mind is closed. We need him because he is closer to most Americans than most CD posters. It is important to see what Americans are really like.
mairs - You, among many others, refer to George Bush Jr. as “the recovered alcoholic”. Where’s the evidence?
Where’s the evidence? He has said it himself many times, says Laura saved him. Where have you been?