The Howls of a Fading Species, by Bob Herbert

The Howls of a Fading Species
By BOB HERBERT
Published: June 1, 2009

One can only hope that the hysterical howling of right-wingers against the nomination of Sonia Sotomayor to the Supreme Court is something approaching a death rattle for this profoundly destructive force in American life.

It’s hard to fathom the heights of hypocrisy currently being scaled by the foaming-in-the-mouth crazies who are leading the charge against the nomination. Newt Gingrich, who never needed a factual basis for his ravings, rants on Twitter that Judge Sotomayor is a “Latina woman racist,” apparently unaware of his incoherence in the “Latina-woman” redundancy in this defamatory characterization.

Karl Rove sneered that Ms. Sotomayor was “not necessarily” smart, thus managing to get the toxic issue of intelligence into play in the case of a woman who graduated summa cum laude from Princeton, went on to get a law degree from Yale and has more experience as a judge than any of the current justices had at the time of their nominations to the court.

It turns the stomach. There is no level of achievement sufficient to escape the stultifying bonds of bigotry. It is impossible to be smart enough or accomplished enough.

The amount of disrespect that has spattered the nomination of Judge Sotomayor is disgusting. She is spoken of, in some circles, as if she were the lowest of the low. Rush Limbaugh — now there’s a genius! — has compared her nomination to a hypothetical nomination of David Duke, a former head of the Ku Klux Klan. “How can a president nominate such a candidate?” Limbaugh asked.

Ms. Sotomayor is a member of the National Council of La Raza, the Hispanic civil rights organization. In the crazy perspective of some right-wingers, the mere existence of La Raza should make decent people run for cover. La Raza is “a Latino K.K.K. without the hoods and the nooses,” said Tom Tancredo, a Republican former congressman from Colorado.

Here’s the thing. Suddenly these hideously pompous and self-righteous white males of the right are all concerned about racism. They’re so concerned that they’re fully capable of finding it in places where it doesn’t for a moment exist. Not just finding it, but being outraged by it to the point of apoplexy. Oh, they tell us, this racism is a bad thing!

Are we supposed to not notice that these are the tribunes of a party that rose to power on the filthy waves of racial demagoguery. I don’t remember hearing their voices or the voices of their intellectual heroes when the Republican Party, as part of its Southern strategy, aggressively courted the bigots who fled the Democratic Party because the Democrats had become insufficiently hostile to blacks.

Where were the howls of outrage at this strategy that was articulated by Lee Atwater as follows: “By 1968, you can’t say ‘nigger’ — that hurts you. Backfires. So you say stuff like forced busing, states’ rights, and all that stuff.”

Never a peep did you hear.

Where were the right-wing protests when Ronald Reagan went out of his way to kick off his general election campaign in 1980 with a salute to states’ rights in, of all places, Philadelphia, Miss., not far from the site where three young civil rights workers had been snatched and murdered by real-life, rabid, blood-thirsty racists?

We’ve heard ad nauseam Ms. Sotomayor’s comments — awkwardly stated but hardly racist — about what she brings to the bench as a Latina. But how often have we ever heard the awful, hateful position on race offered up by William F. Buckley, the right’s ultimate intellectual champion? He felt comfortable declaring, in the wake of the Brown v. Board of Education decision ordering the desegregation of public schools, that whites had every right to discriminate against blacks because whites belonged to “the advanced race.”

Right-wing howls of protest? I think not.

Ms. Sotomayor’s nomination is a big deal because never before in the history of the United States has any president nominated a Latina to the highest court. Only two blacks have ever been on the court, and the one selected by a Republican has been like a thumb in the eye to most African-Americans.

The court is a living monument to America’s long history of exclusion based on race, ethnic background and gender. Where is the right-wing protest against that?

It was always silly to pretend that the election of Barack Obama was evidence that the U.S. was moving into some sort of post-racial, post-ethnic, post-gender nirvana. But it did offer a basis for optimism. There is every reason to hope that we’ve improved as a society to the point where the racial and ethnic craziness of the Gingriches and Limbaughs will finally have a tough time finding any sort of foothold.

Those types can still cause a lot of trouble, but the ridiculousness of their posture is pretty widely recognized. Thus the desperate howling.

http://www.nytimes.com/2009/06/02/opinion/02herbert.html?scp=9&sq=&st=nyt

swine flu is flu revisited from 1918??

Just finished watching a repeat of a documentary on PBS that aired about 2 years
ago, talking about the flu epidemic of Spain in 1918. They seem to have
narrowed the place it originated down to a military camp in 1915 in a small town
in France. There it had all of the elements one of the virologists said it
needed that would work together to create the virus: the presence of swine, the
presence of birds (chickens), and horribly cramped quarters full of humans.

One of the scientists talked about the records of doctors who studied and
documented the epidemic. Towards the end of the program, one of the scientists
said he felt compelled to "bring the virus back to life" and do animal studies
to try and understand it better. And then he proceeded to it if I got it
straight. My mind began to wander at that point.

As I was listening, like a jack hammer pounding on the back of my brain, was
uncomfortable fear thinking about a book I read 20-some years ago, by Richard
Addams, called, _The Plague Dogs_, which was about two dogs in an experimental
research lab that have been injected with a horrible plague virus and end up
escaping out into the countryside. I also remember vividly a scene in _12
Monkeys_ where a mad scientist willingly turns a lethal virus loose upon the
planet.

Call me paranoid, but this swine flu thing sounds a helluva lot like the
"purulent pneumonia" that struck France in 1918.

rgds,
lisa


From stanford u website:
The Influenza Pandemic of 1918

The influenza pandemic of 1918-1919 killed more people than the Great War, known today as World War I (WWI), at somewhere between 20 and 40 million people. It has been cited as the most devastating epidemic in recorded world history. More people died of influenza in a single year than in four-years of the Black Death Bubonic Plague from 1347 to 1351. Known as "Spanish Flu" or "La Grippe" the influenza of 1918-1919 was a global disaster.

(click on link to take you to the stanford u site)

Speech from MI U.S. Senator Carl Levin, on AIG Bonuses

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
March 18, 2009

Contact: Senator Levin's Office
Phone: 202.224.6221
Senate Floor Speech: A.I.G. Executives Should Follow Autoworkers Example

Mr. President, much has already been made of the recent action by A.I.G. to distribute $165 million in bonuses for some of the very employees that contributed to the company’s near collapse, the loss to our treasury of tens of billions of dollars, and the severe damage to our economy. I joined with 43 of my colleagues yesterday in signing a letter to the chief executive officer of A.I.G. to express our outrage that this kind of money could go out the door when the only reason the company survives today is the $170 billion in U.S. taxpayer dollars that have been pumped into A.I.G. over the past 6 months.

I recognize that my disgust with this situation is not unique. But I want to briefly discuss the appalling double standard that has been revealed by the treatment of hundreds of thousands of honest autoworkers who are victims of the current financial crisis, compared to the treatment a few hundred over-paid financial executives whose poor judgment and greed helped cause A.I.G.’s and our nation’s financial crisis.

Right now, in large part because of the mortgage fraud, sleazy lending practices, outrageous financial engineering, and inadequate regulatory oversight that caused the financial crisis, we are in a deep recession. The recession means that people aren’t buying cars, and many of those who want to buy a car can’t get a loan because credit is so tight. No one foresaw those circumstances back in 2007, when the U.A.W. last negotiated a labor contract for this country’s autoworkers. That four-year contract was supposed to last through 2011. When the bottom fell out on the economy, the future of the Big Three auto companies was called into question. The auto industry came to the federal government for help, and we offered assistance in the form of bridge loans with the understanding that all the stakeholders would have to sacrifice to make this a fair deal for taxpayers.

The autoworkers response was not, “We signed a four year contract, and we aren’t changing a word.” They could have taken that position, but they didn’t. Instead, the workers renegotiated their contract. They agreed to significant reductions in their pay and benefits. They are doing what they can to help their companies survive and help get our nation out of this economic ditch.

Contrast those autoworkers with A.I.G. executives. When the economy began tanking, A.I.G.’s stock nosedived, its assets plummeted in value, and the company lost its AAA credit rating. Due to hundreds of billions of dollars in commitments which A.I.G. had issued, called credit default swaps, but which they failed to support with reserves, A.I.G.’s executives came hat in hand to the government. The government responded with billions of dollars in aid, not to protect A.I.G., but to safeguard the U.S. economy from the threat posed by an A.I.G. collapse.

A.I.G.’s executives, including the Financial Products Division that helped bring A.I.G. down, were saved from bankruptcy. To recover from A.I.G.’s financial fiasco and repay the government loans, it should have been clear that everyone at A.I.G. would have to make sacrifices to sustain the company and rebuild the U.S. economy. Unlike the autoworkers, however, A.I.G.’s executives didn’t step up to the plate. The 400 or so A.I.G. employees at the Financial Products Division signed employment contracts in the spring of 2008 that promised millions of dollars in bonuses and retention payments. When A.I.G. attempted to renegotiate those employment contracts, the Financial Products executives refused. They demanded their millions, and A.I.G. complied at the same time the company is borrowing tens of billions from American taxpayers.

This week, according to information obtained by New York Attorney General Andrew Cuomo, 73 A.I.G. executives received so-called “retention” bonuses of $1 million or more. That’s 73 millionaires out of the A.I.G. fiasco that is taking billions of taxpayer dollars to fix. 11 of those millionaires took the money and left – they don’t even work at A.I.G. anymore.

Wall Street has been out of control for years now, with high-risk financial concoctions and with excessive compensation that is too often unrelated to performance or shareholder value. But the contrast between assembly line workers in the auto industry giving up their bonuses and benefits to keep the Big Three in business, while executives who drove A.I.G. over a cliff thumb their noses at the very taxpayers bailing them out is too much to go unnoticed.

The greed and chutzpah shown by these executives is reprehensible – unacceptable to me, unacceptable to my constituents, and unacceptable to every American who believes, as I do, that our nation perseveres through hard times by working towards our common interests and making shared sacrifice. American taxpayers are pouring billions into A.I.G., even as millions of Americans have lost their jobs. Many more have made sacrifices like the autoworkers to help their employers and their families survive.

A.I.G. employees need to be clear: without the U.S. government, there would be no A.I.G., and they would have no job and no salary, let alone a bonus, let alone a million-dollar bonus. In these exceedingly difficult times, A.I.G. executives should follow the example set by American autoworkers: renegotiate their employment contracts and accept compensation that doesn’t shock and offend the American taxpayers who are keeping their company and this economy afloat.

Pennsylvania Avenue: Profiles in Backroom Power

John Harwood was on The Daily Show with Jon Stewart this week, talking about this book. It sounds pretty interesting and informative, and with Jon's endorsement it may just be worth a read. Anyone who wants to make any kind of impact upon the monolith that is our government needs all the help they can get.

The following is lifted directly off of amazon.com

Editorial Reviews

Product Description
Prizewinning journalists John Harwood and Gerald F. Seib show how today’s Washington power game really works, through stories of people who are making a difference on Pennsylvania Avenue, America’s power street. These new power brokers, some of whom are rarely seen and are largley unknown, have figured out how to make their voices heard, and how to get things done, amid the complexities of today’s gridlocked Washington. With unprecedented access to Washington insiders, and with deep insight into the unspoken rules of the road in the capital, Harwood and Seib explain why progress is so difficult and illuminate what it takes to succeed in the high stakes game of politics.

Pennsylvania Avenue, the 1.2-mile stretch between the White House and the Capitol, is where the influential and ambitious congregate. Through stories of party strategists, money men, policy-makers, fixers, socialites, lobbyists, spinners, deal-makers, and more, Harwood and Seib explore the great political transformations that have altered in a fundamental way the relationship between Americans and their government. A new class of politician and radically different ways of conducting business now exist in Washington. Harwood and Seib showcase such master players as Ken Duberstein (the Fixer), a onetime aide to President Ronald Reagan turned superlobbyist, whose contacts and insider knowledge help clients sidestep Avenue jam-ups; Carlyle Group co-founder David Rubenstein (the Businessman), a new breed of power broker who pioneered the age of “big money” in Washington; Rahm Emanuel
(the Democratic Strategist), whose aggressive fundraising and crisis-room campaign enabled the Democrats to retake Congress in 2006; Debbie Wasserman Schultz (the Rising Star), a first-term Democratic representative from Florida whose meteoric ascent in the House has earned her influential allies as well as critics; Hilary Rosen (the Advocate), a former entertainment industry lobbyist who skillfully reframed the debate about same-sex marriage; and more.

Inspiring and wonderfully written, Pennsylvania Avenue takes us inside America’s center of influence to show how our government really functions, and the insiders who make things happen.

About the Author
John Harwood is the chief Washington correspondent for CNBC and a political writer for The New York Times. Harwood began his career in 1978 at the St. Petersburg Times, where he served as state capital correspondent, Washington correspondent, and political editor. In 1989 Harwood was awarded a Nieman fellowship at Harvard University. He subsequently spent sixteen years at The Wall Street Journal beginning in 1991, covering the White House, Congress, and national politics. In addition to CNBC, Harwood offers political analysis on MSNBC, NBC Nightly News, Meet the Press, and PBS’ Washington Week. He lives in Silver Spring, Maryland, with his wife and their three daughters.

Gerald F. Seib is an assistant managing editor and the executive Washington editor of The Wall Street Journal. He writes the paper’s “Capital Journal” column and is a regular commentator on Washington affairs for CNBC and Fox Business Network. Seib is the recipient of numerous honors, including the Merriman Smith Award, the Aldo Beckman Award, the Gerald R. Ford Journalism Prize, Georgetown University’s Edward Weintal Prize for his coverage of the Gulf War, and the William Allen White Award of the University of Kansas. Along with Harwood, Seib was part of the Wall Street Journal team that won the 2002 Pulitzer Prize in the breaking news category for its coverage of the September 11 terrorist attacks. He lives in Chevy Chase, Maryland, with his wife and three sons.

---

Product Details

• Hardcover: 272 pages
• Publisher: Random House (May 13, 2008)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 1400065542
• ISBN-13: 978-1400065547
• Product Dimensions: 9.5 x 6.4 x 1 inches

A Peace of Gold

By Veronica Hendrix | TheRoot.com

April 21, 2008-- What do we think about this once-subversive symbol of righteousness now that it's turned 50?

A lot of things recently turned 50. You might recall them.

Madonna – yawn. The Dodgers – thank God they haven't abandoned Los Angeles like another professional team, which shall remain nameless. The Grammy Awards – the crystal ball simply didn't see rap and hip-hop coming and staying. Dr. Seuss' The Cat in the Hat book – my personal favorite. The Ebony Fashion Fair Glam Odyssey Fashion Show that was – by the way – glamorous, spectacular, and absolutely fabulous.

Oh and moi – enough said. However, there is another 50-year observance that trumps some of the most celebrated milestones I've noted. This one is as insipid as it is indomitable. That golden anniversary is none other than that of the "peace symbol." Yes, the universal emblem of peace turned 50 this month.

I never understood how the three simple lines enclosed in a circle were symbolic of peace. It always reminded me of a foot of a fowl, well, a chicken to be exact. The symbol's creator, Gerald Holtom, said the symbol is actually a depiction of himself as a "man in despair," and he put a circle around the lines to represent the world.

That's a bit gestalt and a real stretch for me, but ok. I recall a time in our recent history, well at least my history, when the peace symbol was ubiquitously conspicuous during a period when the human struggle for dignity, unity, and egalitarianism held the promise of ameliorating the past, defining the present and shifting the future.

The symbol was a visual marker of solidarity in marches for civil rights, women's rights, human rights, gay rights and movements to stop wars abroad. Those who marched and protested for peace were often the victims of violence. Some even lost their lives. The peace symbol has had a tumultuous tenure and paradoxical past.

Now it is celebrating a bittersweet birthday, a golden anniversary no less.

I've noticed its resurgence of late. A Southern California beach side vendor had a collection of peace symbol jewelry and trinkets in every possible color and shape. I had to pick up a pin or two and a pair of peace symbol hoop earrings reminiscent of those I wore with my favorite dashiki back in the day. I was feeling so cool and not just "with it" but with what matters – peace.

While in Atlanta I saw an assortment of tie-dyed peace symbol T-shirts and baseball caps in an airport boutique. I bought one of each of the pricey items and lamented because they didn't have the peace symbol headbands made wildly famous by master guitarist Jimi Hendrix. He was the man, unifying symbol of cross culturalism in my mind.

I recently received a catalog of stationery and novelty items in the mail. The collection of peace symbol cards and stickers were hard to resist. I ordered them and when they arrived I affixed stickers to every bill or letter I mailed out. This was so groovy – sending a little peace in the mail. Ah….if only spreading peace was really that easy.

After 50 years of the peace symbol, peace in our streets, city, nation and world continues to be as whimsical as the madcap cat in The Cat in the Hat book. But then again - maybe not. If I remember the story correctly, that cat brought a whirlwind of unrest to a seemingly peaceful home in a quiet neighborhood. But we can dream of a more peaceful world, and labor in the fields of our neighborhoods and cities to cultivate it. We should and be darn right relentless and vigilant about it.

I think I will wear my peace symbol T-shirt, hat, pin, earrings or that elusive headband (if I ever find it) as a visual marker of my solidarity to peace. Besides, it looks good too. Peace (and hair grease if you need it).

Veronica Hendrix is a journalist and television producer based in her native of Southern California.

jpg located at http://www-personal.umich.edu/~bgoodsel/post911/HumanPeaceSign.jpg

Welcome to the Machine

From an email I sent to a buddy today:

What I'm seeing more and more is that most of us are enslaved to the system in one way or another and usually in many ways. For example, I work for the government, but at the same time I'm taxed in various ways to the extent that most of the money I make goes back to the government, so... If you don't work for the government directly, your business or your employer is taxed and "fee"-ed exorbitantly. If you work for a non-profit agency, your operating expenses to a huge degree come from government grants that have all kinds of controlling conditions attached to them. If you are a 'non-producer' who collects government assistance, you are paid a pittance that is enough to keep you alive but so little that it is totally demoralizing. That too has a million controlling conditions attached to it. The people that are policy-setters and in the administration part of government must sell their souls in order to have such a privilege, so they too pay a heavy price.

Let me ask you, do you see anything about our current way of doing things that advocates for its continuance? Where do you lean politically? I probably already sent you this link and it's a little dated now as many of these candidates have quit running, but it does a good job of matching you up with various candidates' forums and breaks it down as to which things match and which dont:
http://www.dehp.net/candidate/index.php

The link to the site where the graphic was found is at:
http://www.filterforge.com/filters/3876.jpg

McCain Republican Candidate?????

VoteVets.org is an organization that helps make Iraq and Afghanistan veterans' voices heard. Please consider donating to help their work here:
http://www.moveon.org/r?r=3401&id=12094-8018151-OlMddK&t=191 The following memo is posted on their site:
http://www.votevets.org
Here's the memo:

---

TO:	Interested Parties
FROM:	VoteVets.org
RE:	Senator McCain's Real Record on the War in Iraq
DATE:	February 8, 2008

---

Senator John McCain presents himself as a maverick and a critic of the Iraq war. But a close read of his record indicates that his position on the Iraq war has consistently matched President George W. Bush's.
Before The War:
McCain used many of the same arguments as Donald Rumsfeld, Vice President Cheney and President Bush when advocating going to war with Iraq.

• McCain co-sponsored the Use of Force Authorization that gave President George W. Bush the green light—and a blank check—for going to war with Iraq. [SJ Res 46, 10/3/02]

• McCain argued Saddam was "a threat of the first order." Senator McCain said that a policy of containing Iraq to blunt its weapons of mass destruction program is "unsustainable, ineffective, unworkable and dangerous." McCain: "I believe Iraq is a threat of the first order, and only a change of regime will make Iraq a state that does not threaten us and others, and where liberated people assume the rights and responsibilities of freedom." [Speech to the Center for Strategic & International Studies, 2/13/03]

• McCain echoed Bush and Cheney's rationale for going to war. McCain: "It's going to send the message throughout the Middle East that democracy can take hold in the Middle East." [Fox, Hannity & Colmes, 2/21/03]

• McCain echoed Bush and Cheney's talking points that the U.S. would only be in Iraq for a short time. McCain: "It's clear that the end is very much in sight. ... It won't be long...it'll be a fairly short period of time." [ABC, 4/9/03]

• McCain said winning the war would be "easy." "I know that as successful as I believe we will be, and I believe that the success will be fairly easy, we will still lose some American young men or women." [CNN, 9/24/02]

During The War:
Senator McCain praised Donald Rumsfeld as late as May 12, 2004, after the Abu Ghraib scandal.

• Asked if Donald Rumsfeld can continue to be an effective secretary of defense, McCain: "Yes, today I do and I believe he's done a fine job. He's an honorable man." [Hannity and Colmes, 5/12/04]

Senator McCain repeatedly supported President Bush on the Iraq War—voting with him in the Senate, defending his actions and publicly praising his leadership.

• McCain maintains the war was a good idea.

At the 2004 Republican National Convention, McCain, focusing on the war in Iraq, said that while weapons of mass destruction were not found, Saddam once had them and "he would have acquired them again." McCain said the mission in Iraq "gave hope to people long oppressed" and it was "necessary, achievable and noble." McCain: "For his determination to undertake it, and for his unflagging resolve to see it through to a just end, President Bush
Senator McCain: "The war, the invasion was not a mistake. [Meet the Press, 1/6/08]
Asked if the war was a good idea worth the price in blood and treasure, McCain: "It was worth getting rid of Saddam Hussein. He had used weapons of mass destruction, and it's clear that he was hell-bent on acquiring them." [Republican Debate, 1/24/08]

• McCain defended Bush's rationale for war. Asked if he thought the president exaggerated the case for war, McCain said, "I don't think so." [Fox News, 7/31/03]

• McCain has been President Bush's most ardent Senate supporter on Iraq. According to Michael Shank of the Foreign Policy in Focus think tank, McCain was at times Bush's "most solid support in the Senate" on Iraq. [Foreign Policy in Focus, 1/15/08]

• McCain voted against holding Bush accountable for his actions in the war. McCain opposed the creation of an independent commission to investigate the development and use of intelligence leading up to the war in Iraq. [S. Amdt. 1275 to H.R. 2658, Vote # 284, 7/16/03]

• McCain praised Bush's leadership on the war. McCain: "I think the president has led with great clarity and I think he's done a great job leading the country..." [MSNBC, Hardball, 4/23/03]

Senator McCain has constantly moved the goal posts of progress for the war—repeatedly saying it would be over soon.

• January 2003: "But the point is that, one, we will win this conflict. We will win it easily." [MSNBC, 1/22/03]

• March 2003: "I believe that this conflict is still going to be relatively short." [NBC, Meet the Press, 3/30/03]

• June 2004: "The terrorists know that this is a very critical time." [CNN, 6/23/04]

• December 2005: "Overall, I think a year from now, we will have a fair amount of progress [in Iraq] if we stay the course." [The Hill, 12/8/05]

• November 2006: "We're either going to lose this thing or win this thing within the next several months." [NBC, Meet the Press, 11/12/06]

Senator McCain opposed efforts to end the overextension of the military that is having a devastating impact on our troops.

• McCain voted against requiring mandatory minimum downtime between tours of duty for troops serving in Iraq. [S. Amdt.. 2909 to S Amdt. 2011 to HR 1585, Vote 341, 9/19/07; S Amdt. 2012 to S Amdt. 2011 to HR 1585, Vote #241, 7/11/07]

• McCain was one of only 13 senators to vote against adding $430 million for inpatient and outpatient care for veterans. [S Amdt. 3642 to HR 4939, Vote 98, 4/26/06]

• Senator McCain has consistently opposed any plan to withdraw troops from Iraq

• Senator McCain repeatedly voted against a timetable for withdrawing troops from Iraq. [S. Amdt. 3876 to S.Amdt. 3874 to H.R. 2764, Vote #438, 12/18/07; S.Amdt.. 3875 to S.Amdt.. 3874 to H.R. 2764, Vote # 437, 12/18/07; S.Amdt.3164 to H.R. 3222, Vote # 362, 10/3/07; S.Amdt. 2898 to S.Amdt. 2011 to H.R. 1585, Vote #346, 9/21/07; S.Amdt. 2924 to S.Amdt.. 2011 to H.R.1585, Vote #345, 9/21/07; S.Amdt.2 087 to S.Amdt. 2011 to H.R. 1585, Vote #252, 7/18/07; S.Amdt. 643 to H.R. 1591, Vote #116, 3/27/07; S.Amdt. 4320 to S. 2766, Vote #182, 6/22/06; S.Amdt. 4442 to S. 2766, Vote #181, 6/22/06; S.Amdt.. 2519 to S.1042, Vote # 322, 11/15/05]

Senator McCain has consistently demonized Americans who want to find a responsible way to remove troops from Iraq so that we can take the fight to al Qaeda.

• McCain: "I believe to set a date for withdrawal is to set a date for surrender." [Charlotte Observer, 9/16/07]

• McCain called proponents of a congressional resolution opposing the troop surge in Iraq intellectually dishonest. [Associated Press. 2/4/07]

The Future:
Senator McCain now says he sees no end to the presence of U.S. troops in Iraq.

• McCain: "[M]ake it a hundred" years in Iraq and "that would be fine with me." [Derry, New Hampshire Town Hall meeting, 1/3/08]

• McCain on how long troops may remain in Iraq: "A thousand years. A million years. Ten million years. It depends on the arrangement we have with the Iraqi government." [Associated Press, 1/04/08]

PAID FOR BY MOVEON.ORG POLITICAL ACTION, http://pol.moveon.org/
Not authorized by any candidate or candidate's committee.

What is this blog all about? Guess!

I tried different names to use as the title, but they were all taken. Ones I tried included "Of Thee I Sing", "Polly Sigh", "Polly Ticks". I'm kind of glad none of them were available since the one that was available seems to fit well. It's politics folks. Pol for the pol- part of politics, E for the electronic medium, and Ticks for parasitic, blood-sucking insects that burrow themselves into flesh and drain energy and cause disease to their host organisms. Does it fit? I think so.

With the election year upon us, we are again forced to choose from which is the least evil among the candidates. I wanted to have a separate blog for such matters, even though the entity that is eventually crowned with have rippling effects upon every other aspect of our beings. Please, if you have material to add to the blog, don't hesitate to do so.

I see blogger has the capacity to add videos now. I hope to use this blog for experimenting with blogging video clips or at least links to them.