thoughts from a brokenSoldier

Reading through an article about McCain’s campaign and their Paris/ Britney smear ad against Obama, I was again reminded of a truism that reflects the Republican Party’s true motivations.  This could hold true for any party, but in recent years the GOP has been the party most at odds with the American public when it comes to judging the success of policy.  The article was from the Huffington Post:

Paris Hilton Ad Helped Internet Fundraising, McCain Campaign Manager Says

In the article, McCain Campaign Manager Rick Davis outlines why he thinks the overtly negative and disrespectful ad was a success for his candidate:

"Many of you all know the [Hilton] advertisement got more hits on YouTube than any other YouTube video," he adding [sic], noting that that was a "first" for the McCain campaign. "We definitely saw an uptick in internet receipts" as the "Celeb" ad reached one million hits, Davis revealed.

Their view on this reflects their larger view on policy and its criteria for success or failure.  Simply put, the only criteria they judge to be relevant is whether or not it puts money in their pockets.  This goes for campaign ads as well as policy matters concerning energy, foreign policy, and any number of other issues facing our nation.  A lot of their policies are advanced in lockstep with the religious right, who enjoy an disproportionate amount of monetary and political influence.  For example:

The US Supreme Court’s Abortion decision on 18 August 2008:

John McCain:

"Today’s Supreme Court ruling is a victory for those who cherish the sanctity of life and integrity of the judiciary."

Mitt Romney:

"Today, our nation’s highest court reaffirmed the value of life in America by upholding a ban on a practice that offends basic human decency."

You’d think that people who pontificate so profusely about the "sanctity of life" and "basic human decency" would not go around making statements like this:

John McCain:

Responding to a question about a survey that shows increased exports to Iran, mainly from cigarettes, McCain said, "Maybe that’s a way of killing them."

Or, concerning a place that has been documented thoroughly as a site rife with human rights abuses, this:

Mitt Romney:

"I am glad [detainees] are at Guantanamo. I don’t want them on our soil. I want them on Guantanamo, where they don’t get the access to lawyers they get when they’re on our soil. I don’t want them in our prisons, I want them there. Some people have said we ought to close Guantanamo. My view is we ought to double Guantanamo."

The answer, of course, is that these positions - as contradictory as they are - are parrots of the positions of the religious right, which are major contibutors to the Republican cause.  It doesn’t matter that their "sanctity of life" and "basic human decency" arguments are not consistent with their other positions, because the people who dole out money to them don’t care that they don’t add up - they just care about their agenda being advanced by those they fund.

Many Americans see the Bush administration’s policies as failures, and can’t understand why more Republicans don’t see the situation the same way.  It is - at its core - because their criteria for success includes only how much said policies benefit them, regardless of their effects on the country.  Do you wonder why McCain and Bush are trying to force the expansion of domestic drilling down our collective throats?  Do you wonder why so few Republicans stood up to say that Bush’s methods in his handling of the Iraq war needed to stop?  Do you wonder why McCain has prostituted his convictions - especially on things as heavy and personal to him as torture - in his bid for the Presidency? The reason is simply that these policies - while faulty in most of our eyes - has put an inordinate amount of money in their pockets.  Thus, these policies were a hit for them, and they see no reason to change course.  The only reason some of them are doing so now is because they’re facing the spectre of an election in the coming months. 

All of this talk about Bush’s "failed policies" among the GOP members was largely muted until we entered an election year.  McCain, as has been pointed out many times before, has jumped the fence numerous times on issues that had previously made him the "maverick" that he fraudulently still claims to be. (See my "Paging Dr. Freud Post, with this link, to see how McCain’s own stances have radically changed in response to his chances of winning the White House.) It is ironic that the GOP can still tag the Democrats with the label of "flip-flopper," considering how many times their presumptive nominee has switched his positions in this year alone.

When it is all said and done, it comes down to the fact that policies that adversely affect the people of America are still being pushed by the Republicans, and the only reason for that is that they do not consider them to be failures.  They could give a damn if their policies harm us as citizens, as long as their coffers and pocketbooks remain filled.  Even though many people have pointed out that McCain’s Celebrity ad is both lacking in substance and seriously disrespectful to a family that donated the maximum amount to McCain’s own campaign, this ad is considered by that campaign to be a success, simply because it brought in the dough.

Imagine what McCain will consider a success if he attains the highest office in the nation…  As long as it keeps him and his henchmen in the upper strata of our economy, it will be fine by him.  As long as he can maintain his 10 family homes, his family’s jet-setting lifestyle (excluding half-siblings that reside in the lower classes, of course), and his exorbitant personal expenditures like his $500+ imported Italian loafers, then he’ll be all for it. 

This is how they gauge success, and this is how they would run our country.  It does not bode well for us as a nation, but then again, they just don’t seem to care.  What a strange way to put "Country First."

I know this is a bit dated, but this article is one that I have been saving to write about, for reasons that will soon be obvious.  At the end of last month, I ran across a column written by neo-con and partisan hack Bill Kristol that betrayed the true desires of the neoconservative movement in this election cycle, though I am sure that was not his intent.  This op-ed was in the New York Times on July 28th, and was an attempt at humor - which failed - mixed with his commentary on the prospects of the upcoming Presidential election.

Bill Kristol - Be Afraid. Please.

In this op-ed, Kristol begins with an attempt to be funny, but the joke is quite nonsensical.

Early Friday, I went to the Real Clear Politics Web site, as I do every morning, for my fix of political news and commentary. I perked up when I saw the third entry on the list of that day’s notable articles — “No. 44 Has Spoken.”

“Hank Aaron has spoken? Wow,” I thought as I clicked through.

He goes on to explain that it was instead an article by a German Magazine, Der Spiegel, that was a commentary hailing Barack Obama as the likely 44th President of the United States.  After he finishes his petulant attempt at being funny, he goes on to explain why this should be utterly frightening to Americans, and how the article was somehow an affront to all Americans in that it assumed to predict the outcome of the election before one vote has even been cast.

First, let’s look at his try at humor.  He somehow thought that his daily stop for news, Real Clear Politics, had written an article about Hank Aaron.  Sidestepping the "no shit" reaction I had at Kristol revealing that he gets his news from RCP, I decided to look on RCP and see how many times Hank Aaron, and even baseball, had been written about on that site.  The links below are what I found, with baseball listed first, and Jackie Robinson second.  Upon searching for baseball, I found four pages worth of results, most of which only mentioned the word baseball in the context of political commentary. A few actually centered around baseball, but only to deal with steroids, the Mitchell Report, the use of instant replay, and commentary on how the sport is changing.  When I searched for Hank Aaron, I found - squat.  There was not one profile, interview or bio that would sugest RCP had ever broached the subject of the man who broke the most storied record in baseball.

Real Clear Politics search - baseball

Real Clear Politics search - Hank Aaron

What really happened, I surmise, is that Kristol read this article, thought about it for a minute, and found a way to try to lampoon the title of the German article.  Because if he actually thought RCP was hosting an article - which he himself describes as being third billing on their home page - about the words of Mr. Aaron, he is even more deluded that I originally thought him to be.  And as for his feigned indignance towards anyone being presumptuous enough to predict the outcome of an election prior to voting, Kristol is most definitely the proverbial pot calling the kettle black - as can be seen here, where he, in 2006, predicts that Obama will not best Hilary Clinton in a single primary contest.

Barack Obama is not going to beat Hillary Clinton in a single democratic primary. I’ll predict that right now.

It seems that Mr. Kristol is just as helpless in predicting future events as our own current administration - and John McCain, for that matter.

From 3/18/03, Fox, "O’Reilly Factor"

O’Reilly: "All right, Senator, if you were president, what would you have done differently in the run-up to this war?"

McCain: "Nothing."

O’Reilly: "Nothing?"

McCain: "The president has handled this, in my view, skillfully."

From 3/24/03, MSNBC, "Hardball"

"There’s no doubt in my mind that once these people are gone that we will be welcomed as liberators."

Kristol goes on to say that the propsect of an Obama presidency should scare us, because along with his election, the Democrats are trying to attain a veto-proof majority in Congress, which to Kristol - someone that has profited obscenely from the neo-con manipulation of our national government for the better part of the last decade - is instead an "unchecked Democratic majority."  He ignores the fact that Bush II has wielded the veto pen and his executive order abilities to unabashedly further his and his party’s narrow partisan agendas during his two terms, and somehow comes to the conclusion that - even in the face of the damage that has already been done by the Bush administration to our military, our Constitution, our Department of Justice, and countless other facets of our national government and identity - somehow a change to the rival party will be disastrous.  Someone needs to remind Bill that his guys had their shot at power, and they have royally fucked things up.

He then goes on to point out that voters should not choose Obama, because he has been a member of the majority party in the Congress that has caused all the problems of the years recently passed:

"And McCain will then assert that if you don’t like the Congress in which Senator Obama serves in the majority right now, you really should be alarmed about a President Obama rubber-stamping the deeds of a Democratic Congress next year. A President McCain, on the other hand, could check Congressional appetites — as well as work across the aisle with a Democratic Congress in a bipartisan spirit where appropriate."

What he misses is that while Obama has been in the majority party for two whole years, McCain has been a member of that same Congress for the last quarter of a century, including more than a few years in which he has been a member of the majority party.  How he deduces that McCain is less of an entrenched member of the establishment than Obama is beyond me.  And his statement that McCain should be President simply because the Congress has a Democratic majority is a thinly-veiled plea for mercy from the electorate.  He doesn’t want his beloved party to lose everything come November, and he’s resorting to vacuous logic to try and keep some of the influence he has wielded over the past eight years.

And that gets back to the title of this post concerning the Freudian slip that was his article’s title.  He wants us to be afraid.  He says we should be afraid of an Obama Presidency, but all it comes across to me as is a whining plea for we voters to let fear motivate our electoral decision.  And what else has his neo-con movement been so good at in the past eight years besides using fear as leverage over the population?  He must think he is talking to a voting population that is still in the dark as to the motivations and methods of his cronies. (Admittedly a lot of voters still are, but I’d put money on the fact that a great deal of NYT readers do not fall into that category these days.

To Bill Kristol - We are not afraid.  And even if we were, if the past two terms have shown us anything, it is that you and your ilk are definitely not the ones we should be taking cues from when it comes to what we should be wary of when considering our choices for President.  Isn’t it about time for the NY Times to fire this idiot?