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Every once in a while it's good to remember that other nations also have air assets which they regularly deploy for the same purposes we deploy ours.
But, before we take a peek at the latest news from afar, let's catch up with what happened here at home while most of the country was oggling Sarah or focusing on Ike.
In the process of tracking down some shady characters from our political past (Charles Black and Roger Stone, the original dirty tricksters and mentors of Karl Rove), I ran across a couple of operatives who have graced New Hampshire with their skills and who seem to share a particular talent to have their work histories disappear.
Or, as Alexander Cockburn describes it in The Nation:
Take the Associated Press. On February 24 the news agency runs a story by Nedra Pickler under the headline Conservatives Say Obama Lacks Patriotism. Pickler's fourth sentence cites, as her story's lead source, Roger Stone, chastely described as a "Republican consultant."
This is the same Roger Stone who appeared with Tucker Carlson on MSNBC a few days earlier to promote an anti-Clinton 527 group, Citizens United Not Timid, or CUNT. "The more people go to the site," Stone had smirked to The Weekly Standard in January, "the more people buy the T-shirts.... The more people wear the T-shirts, the more people are educated. Consequently, our mission has been achieved."
There's a good reason why legislators aren't usually promoted into the executive. When people do nothing but write laws and review how they work, they get used to doing things over.
But, when the commander-in-chief sends our sons and daughters off to be killed in a foreign land, there's no undoing that. There's no do-over in Iraq, John McCain.
When one of our cities is allowed to drown and the residents have to flee for their lives, there's no do-over in New Orleans, either, George Bush.
When our children die at an early age from vaccines that aren't properly made, there's no do-over, FDA.
When our foods are infected with salmonella, there's not a do-over there, either.
As UNH students return for the fall semester, the Durham Police Department is implementing a strategy that will ensure it can respond to emergencies, provide a safe environment, and prevent widespread misbehavior, particularly in the late evening/early morning hours. In essence the police department is challenged with creating a safe environment where the UNH students and friends who visit them have some flexibility to gain life experiences while ensuring that the peace and tranquility demanded by Durham's permanent residents remains the primary goal.
It's been evident for quite some time that the American antagonism towards the Soviet Union's communist regime was largely fueled by envy. But, it wasn't just the totalitarian nature of the state that was the envy of U.S. corporate interests; it was also the apparent ability to plan long term and promote enterprise without having to contend with popular objections.
What's a bit puzzling is that the failure of the Soviet system hasn't served as a caution to U.S. corporate interests. It's almost as if the collapse of the Soviets gave a green light to rapacious industrialists and planned destructionists to try to do it better. Planning is central. It was central to "urban renewal" and it's central to energy development. And, it seems, Palin has long been part of the plan.
There you have it. Proof positive. I've been opining for several months that the McCain campaign is entirely fixated on itself and that, when it goes on the attack, it's actually trying to cover up a deficit it recognizes in its own candidate.
For example, when the issue du jour was "executive experience" and the supposed lack thereof on the part of a candidate who'd organized more than two million voter/donors on the ground, that was clearly an effort to distract us from the fact that John McCain can't even keep track of how many houses he has--because he never pays the bills!
Careless. Reckless. Irresponsible. No doubt, the Air Force would reject such a characterization of the latest massacre of people in Afghanistan--and has. The "complete" report on the incident at Shindand has been issued. Never mind that any agency investigating itself is an invitation for a cover-up or, at best, an occasion to plead ignorance.
The massacre was first report as located in Azizabad, a village in Shindand district in Herat province in Western Afghanistan--i.e. not next to the badlands of Pakistan, where the really bad guys are supposedly hiding.
Before we consider the particulars, let's remind ourselves that weapons, that were designed to "kill" tanks and other military hardware and installations, being used to go after individual people and small groups, which caused outrage during the Vietnam invasion, has now become an accepted routine.
Since I have been arguing for several years, for several reasons in addition to the fact that it's literally correct, that the election of a President of the United States is not a candidate but a voter action--not to mention that the myth that it is about the candidate leads us to take our eye off the ball--I was, of course, personally gratified to have Barack Obama assert that the election is not about him.
Some people may interpret this as false modesty on Obama's part. I don't. It's just a statement of fact. The people vote. The people select delegates to a national convention and, in the second stage, to the electoral college. And the members of the electoral college, despite their short term of office and little preparation, do the hiring. That's how the process has been set up. It's flawed. We know that, but it hasn't been fixed.
John McCain flatters and deceives himself if he thinks Barack Obama is his opponent. An election is not a cock-fight. It's a selection process and the selecting is being done by the American people. So, when one candidate trashes the others, only the people itching for a contest are going to be turned on. And those same people aren't likely voters anyway.
It's been apparent to me for some time that the war on terror is a smoke screen for the effort to roll back the civil and human rights protections achieved by the American people in the 1960s and "secure" the population from enforcing their own laws.
There's an interesting historical review of the Swifties that anyone who's inclined to keep up with the ancestors and progeny of the likes of Jim Tobin might look into. It strikes me as quite thorough.
Although Johnson's narrative ends in 2006 and Wikipedia says the outfit is defunct as of 2008, their strategies are evident in the Club for Growth and one of the "stars" of the 2004 edition, Col. George E. Day, has recently re-surfaced as a defender of John McCain.
One has to ask when a Senator of the United States has to admit that he's not permitted access to the mortuary on an Air Force base in his home state.
On CBS News's "Face the Nation" yesterday, (June 19, 2005) Senator Joseph Biden (D-Del.) told Bob Schieffer that the Defense Department policy forbids him from paying his respects to fallen soldiers as their coffins return to the US through the Dover Air Force Base in Delaware. Though no cameras and no press would accompany him, Biden said he had to receive express permission from the Pentagon to join a grieving family that had requested his presence as they met their deceased son who died in a car bomb in Iraq.
"I'm allowed in the military base. I'm not allowed to go to the mortuary," he said.
It's clear that it's way past time for dreaming. It's time for a prayer and then ACTION .Welcome Joe Biden, the Democratic Vice Presidential candidate-designate.
Why does it seem to be resonating with the American public? It's probably not just because he couldn't say, off hand, how many houses he's actually got. Though, the pattern of not answering questions he's not been prepared for has, by now, become familiar, and irritating, to quite a lot of people. Irritating because they've also noticed that the information from the staff, if it comes, is often inadequate and misleading--just like the four houses, this time.
One of the most gratifying aspects of the Obama candidacy has been the extent to which ordinary people from every corner of the country and every age bracket have been inspired to contribute their talents.
This effort is well chronicled on KOS, in a diary that has been rescued. It should not be missed.
Scott Lehigh has a good op-ed in the Globe about the Corsi smear job and one of the diarists on KOS does a good job of running down where else the hit job is being decried.
In addition, the Globe has done a bit of journalism and brought some of Corsi's earlier endeavors to light.
We already know from his own admission that, instead of remaining silent, he lied to his Vietnamese captors in giving them the names of football players, instead of the names of his fellow pilots. We also know that, subsequently, in the retelling of the story, he changed the identity of the teams, depending on where he was telling it.
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