What you said.

Morning Jane,
not surprised, alas, Free Ride McCain

Great photo, Jane. Could someone please wake Mr. McCain? It’s time for his prune juice.

It looks like Seantor McCain now has his own private State Department (this one has closet cases in it too). Read more. http://www.tagg-lines.com/2008…..jesus.html

Aravosis has a stinging video up on McSame. The press would love and lavish one done like it on Obama (wait—there will certainly be some) and eviscerate this one if they acknowledge it at all. No double standard here. None at all.

I wonder if the Russian will turn up something in the locale. The whole thing stinks to high heaven and it’s got neo-con fingerprints all over the place.

Just another case of double standards and IOKIYAR. Some call Lieberman “Free Ride” but the ultimate “Free Ride” is John McCain and how the media cover him.

It’s worse than the failings of MSM. Supposedly Bush is sending warships to Georgian ports with “humanitarian” assistance. Clearly Russia does not want an American presence so close any more than we would tolerate a Russian presence in Cuba.

Many Americans think nothing we do is wrong because we do it. We’re Number One and the world had better not forget it. Just as Bush wraps himself in the flag, so does McCain. Counsel moderation or restraint and you’re a wimp. America is no wimp, but it will be if Obama is elected. It’s a nasty box, which, when coupled with race presents a serious problem for our side.

Morning Jane. Another terrific post. Thank you!

So, we’re down to the netroots and Bill Schneider as our only hope of bringing the great unwashed masses into the light of knowledge and reason?

goodgawd, C’monnnnnnnnnnnn January 20!!!!!!!!!!!!

possible/probable illegality aside, the thot of mccaint, liarman & gray ham leading whatever tattered remnants remain of our foreign policy is terrifying.

It’s easy to say that we are not helpless but when you have MSM spewing McCain’s strength, it’s difficult to keep the faith. The media allowed the swiftboaters to paint Kerry as an idiot.

Right now we are helpless. That’s the problem. The question is whether we can do anything about it. Unfortunately we can’t by November. The internet is fast, but it’s not that fast.

remnants remain remind remote remiss me-whoops. more coffee please in aisle 11 …….

12 dammit

OT OMG the brown people are coming! I can hear the nativists already gnahing their teeth.

The census calculates that by 2042, Americans who identify themselves as Hispanic, black, Asian, American Indian, Native Hawaiian and Pacific Islander will together outnumber non-Hispanic whites.

http://www.nytimes.com/2008/08…..us.html?hp

What will we lose next? Our precious bodily fluids?

The truth is our identity as a people and at our best our strength comes from our diversity. We recognized this early on in the motto: E pluribus unum. From many one.

“in the 21st century nations don’t invade other nations.” ~ John McCain

Hello? Grasp of recent history tenuous at best? Can you say “Iraq”???

Obama should give a press conference, imo, and say right now we have one President. For McCain to send Lieberman and Graham is not only arrogant, it’s dangerous.

What say we hammer MSM, in detail, for its tendency to swift-boat lop-sidedly? Would that do any good, or would it just muddy the message Obama is trying to build on?

We’re stuck in cement with these goons running the information “machine”.

kudos, dear fella. luv u for that. ;->

So who exactly is McSame to be “sending” Liarman and Lindsay anyway?

mebbe he’d argue, if he were honest, that those plans were 1st hatched in the 20th century, thus making him more-or-less correct on a technicality, although no less an idiot.

McCain just said on CNN, “In the 21st century, nations don’t invade other nations.”

I wonder if McCain, like Pope Julian, is intending to make a revision of the Calendar to make the century begin sometime after March 2002?

Seems he’s forgotten about Iraq, Afghanistan, Israel’s invasion into Lebanon, Turkey’s invasion of Kurdistan, Thailand’s incursion into Cambodia, etc. All that must have happened in the “20th century” when it was forgiveable, I guess.

This from the guy who is airing ads about Obama being Dr. No, and referencing Mike Myers’ sthick as Garth on Saturday Night Live in a bid to sound hip and relevant? Yeah, that stuff is really digging into Obama’s youth voters ;-)

Thanks Jane.

I think you nailed the most important talking point, McSane’s foreign policy is up for the highest bidder.

I also think McSane has left the door wide open for Obama to run with Ronnie Raygun’s “no – nationbuilding” schtick.

My preference would be for Obama to talk butter versus guns, how are Americans going to heat their homes this winter?

My preference would be for Obama to talk about America investing in America.

McCain is sending stooges to GA so he can look like a war monger to the rest of the world.

he’s campaigning, and illegal. mebbe he’s testing the legal system. blergh.

Thanks. We need to keep hammering of this stuff.

http://cliffschecter.firedogla…..heunemann/

one of my many bookmarks about scheunemann—-here’s cliff schecter about scheunemann–back in may….quick read.

and i keep saying, stephen payne is in this as deep as scheunemann.

orion strategies is only one of the many links they have.

and i have lost count of links that have been ’scrubbed’ since last weekend.

Obama: I’ll see your Lieberman and Lindsay, and raise you Powell, Hagel and Wes Clark.

This is ludicrous.

The effing legacy media, except for Olbermann, is an effing joke.

They are just a large slow target for FDL, please keep hammering away.

So why doesn’t anyone question this “15 year history” of friendship between McCain and Saakashvilli?
That would put McCain as close friends with a 26 year old at the Columbia Law School? Is that typical?

Mornin’ All,

NYT reporting Scheunemann was hired by Greenberg Traurig in the wake of the Abramoff scandal. He was to consult with the firm as to how best cooperate with Senate Investigation, Chaired by some guy named McCain

NYT

The media was asleep at the wheel while George Bush duped the country into the Iraq war.

…but I don’t think they were *asleep* at all…they were willing partners in promoting the war…as the Pentagon PR campaign testifies.

McCain is allowed to do what he’s doing because the President is in the same party, dontcha know? “August Surprise”, indeed.

This is scaring me.

i’m sitting here, trying to imagine what the addled mecaint might have done if he were in charge of determining the border tw’ OOO ESSS AAAAye & hexico.
You suppose it might be somewhere down around Peroo?

In the 21st Century we refuse to elect any more senility into the gummint on purpose. One of the candidacies here is absolutely insane, immoral, idiotic on its face.

amen.

Omerta Media will participate in the coverup of the politization of the Georgia Conflict by the qMcCainiacs.

Hey. Mebbe some kind soul will simply punch their tickets on to Atlanta, and send their luggage to Athens. heh.

agree. it appears all of a piece. the puzzle parts reveal horror show, as they fall into place.

McCain then sends twin sycophants Lieberman and Graham to the region

Excuse me *cough* *cough*. I must need more coffee.

I think China invaded India for about a day, just to show they could.

Check this out, courtesy of Robert Scheer:

Previously, [Randy Scheunemann, McCain’s senior foreign policy advisor] was best known as one of the neoconservatives who engineered the war in Iraq when he was a director of the Project for a New American Century. It was Scheunemann who, after working on the McCain 2000 presidential campaign, headed the Committee for the Liberation of Iraq, which championed the U.S. invasion of Iraq.

There are telltale signs that he played a similar role in the recent Georgia flare-up. How else to explain the folly of his close friend and former employer, Georgian President Mikheil Saakashvili, in ordering an invasion of the breakaway region of South Ossetia, an invasion that clearly was expected to produce a Russian counterreaction? It is inconceivable that Saakashvili would have triggered this dangerous escalation without some assurance from influential Americans he trusted, like Scheunemann, that the United States would have his back. Scheunemann long guided McCain in these matters, even before he was officially running foreign policy for McCain’s presidential campaign.

In 2005, while registered as a paid lobbyist for Georgia, Scheunemann worked with McCain to draft a congressional resolution pushing for Georgia’s membership in NATO. A year later, while still on the Georgian payroll, Scheunemann accompanied McCain on a trip to that country, where they met with Saakashvili and supported his bellicose views toward Russia’s Vladimir Putin.

Scheunemann is at the center of the neoconservative cabal that has come to dominate the Republican candidate’s foreign policy stance in a replay of the run-up to the war against Iraq. These folks are always looking for a foreign enemy on which to base a new Cold War, and with the collapse of Saddam Hussein’s regime, it was Putin’s Russia that came increasingly to fit the bill.

Canada already recognizes it as that way. A good portion of their smaller population are minorities, which is growing as fast as ours is. Particularly with immigration in their case.

And yes, this media mancrush as got to end. Egads! >_

#28 & 29 & [what Jane said] are good solid, useful building blocks.

ready, set GO! letters to the editor, op-eds if you can snag one, write yer Congresscritters, especially the ones who really really want your vote this fall…

a true sideshow, those two. And McCain home alone without his factsminders.

Do NOT send them down here!

1st, remove all heavy objects from the vicinity of yer tv.

You’re gonna need it. and the toobz. ESPECIALLY the toobz.

heh heh. Well! You’re a NIMBY too. Nice to meet ya. ;->

OK.

We have John “Free Ride” McCain.

We have Joe “Short Ride” Lieberman.

Any suggestions as what kind of ride Lindsey Graham is?

under what banner are those two idiots going to Georgia ?

as US Senators ? – that’s Chimpigula’s j-o-b and our dime

as Campaign surrogates ? – McQuaint has a problem there as well as they front some group and this would violate FEC rules

yeah I know, Wertheimer and Corp Media are all over it

No Executive has challenged any legislator going abroad for discussions with any foreign government. For one thing it’s almost impossible to argue that they are negotiating treaties when that activity is clearly the domain of the executive branch.

Ironically, the actual wording of the Logan Act would prevent individuals from communicating to a foreign government to RETREAT from policies that are creating a conflict with the United States. I would think that such communications would be a GOOD thing.

The Logan Act makes it a felony and provides for a prison sentence of up to three years for any American, “without authority of the United States,” to communicate with a foreign government in an effort to influence that government’s behavior on any “disputes or controversies with the United States.”

Lindsey “Along for the ride” Graham

Back seat?

Any suggestions as what kind of ride Lindsey Graham is?

That’s a question for Mitch McConnell.

Maybe another shopping trip? Like maybe huckleberry is buying nice carpets real cheap?

Y’know, it’s true that the media is giving McCain a free ride here, but it is incumbent upon Obama and the Democrats to raise this issue, forcefully, in speeches and in press releases. Obama can attack over this – anti-Iraq War Democrats have the high ground here. He should do so.

Any suggestions as what kind of ride Lindsey Graham is?

How ’bout that lion on the carousel rides??

Those folks who join me in honestly professing to be terrified at these shenanigans. I presume it wouldn’t help your mood to review the pix all over the net of junior -um- putting on a show at the Olympics. [Hint: hic!].

I shall hazard a wild guess that dumbya has already turned in his marbles and is currently most definitely not operating as preznit, not that he ever really was. He has retired, thrown in the towel, mentally. Revisit on yootoob if u doubt me.

http://gawker.com/5035885/bush…..e-olympics

HEY! Where’s shooter? I want him in public, hands visible on the table at all times. no snark.

a tiny tricycle comes to mind.

If I read the history correctly Saakashvili first came to the US 14 years ago on an Edmund Muskie Fellowship. He would have been about 27. He was, at that time, pretty much of a cohort of Schevardnadzhe’s efforts to train Georgians in Western law, business, and industry.

I imagine it was possible that McCain met him at some “meet and greet” functions…but to claim a “friendship” between them at that point would seem really odd.

I imagine it was possible that McCain met him at some “meet and greet” functions…but to claim a “friendship” between them at that point would seem really odd.

McCain & Saakashvilli are so close that “McCain mispronounced his name three times.”
think progress

The more pertinent question is how often they’ve been talking on the phone this summer, and about what.

thanks for posting.

Don’t know why there aren’t quid pro quo headlines about this.

Randy S inked a 200k deal immediately after he put McCain on the phone with Misha S.
Randy prepped McCain on what to say in the phone call. Did he promise Saakashvili military action
if Georgia bombed Ossettia?

Captain Quueg McCain was the only bellicose reaction to Russian aggression

Did Mcinsane and his Georgian lobbyist stage this predicate for a world war to elect
John McCain? CNN’s covrage of his speech yesterday was perfect presidential framing.

oh did i mention,I”m not a Georgian.

Maybe another shopping trip? Like maybe huckleberry is buying nice carpets real cheap?

no doubt he’s up on the finer details:
” To truly appreciate Caucasian carpets, it is necessary to know something about the region itself. …
Georgian: (Kazak group)
Georgian Carpets borrow designs from the various Kazak groups. One can sometimes find an old prayer carpet, with a Georgian cross in the niche! Warps are undyed light wool weft threads light brown and are 2 to 4 in number. Double or triple selvages, and the fringes are sometimes plaited.”

I was trying to look for footage of that stupid shopping trip in Iraq that some of our congresscritters took and ended up looking at more Hagee/Lieberman footage.

there’s a lot more–here’s a few. hard to pick which ones to post.
riga conference attendees- late 2006
http://64.233.167.104/custom?q…..#038;gl=us

here’s a portuguese blogger outlining it a little.
http://translate.google.com/tr…..26hs%3DFyi

http://www.jbanc.com
http://www.usbaltic.org/bod.php#inline_stephen
scroll down and click on stephen payne’s bio, really, do it.
stephen payne was on the board until he got caught taking bribes for bush’s library from a baltic plant.

http://209.85.165.104/search?q…..#038;gl=us
sample articles from jbanc site.

picture of randy scheunemann with jbanc reps, georgian rep woman at right back row…mccain foreign advisors met with them, was an article about it, and photo front and center on the jbanc site a few days ago…scrubbed. cbl2 found the photo for me.

http://www.alausa.org/gg/March…..n_Reps.jpg

months ago, everywhere i went, their names popped up.

Excellant. Hope the Georgian carpet sellers cheat Huckleberry.

Obama has failed utterly here. I just don’t think he and his campaign are up to speed on this and don’t realize how they’ve been played. When they meekly tried to point out Scheunemann’s ties they were smacked down by McCain and allies in the press like “Politico”, who said that that line of criticism sounds an awful lot like the Kremlin’s.

Now Obama has endorsed the NATO aspirations of a country led by a professional provocateur (he’s endorsed a “Membership Action Plan” — hopefully there is some kind of out for that). Did Saakashvili’s “this is a Pentagon operation” ring funny in anyone else’s ears? He’s on awfully familiar terms with us, isn’t he?

I didn’t think I could be shocked any more, but I am: we’ve started a hot war with Russia and this isn’t a problem for anyone.

I don’t have high hopes for Obama at this point, but what a terrific opportunity there is to blast McCain off the media pedestal at this particular moment, a target the size of a barn.

This itself is a kind of trap: Bush and the State Department are merely “good cops” to McCain’s bad one. And by expressing deference to Bush Obama papers over the fact that this administration started the war in the first place. It’s too late for anything. He’s chosen the path of least resistance on this and thus been hustled into a posture little less bellicose than the admistration’s.

Gosh golly, Gee whiz,
what a jolly crew you-all is.

Lieberman will KISS the President (of Georgia) and the implications of that smootch will resonate for generations.

Graham will tell somebody to stop whining, that’s it’s all in their widdle heads.

While back here, in the ‘Homeland’, the ‘pragmatists’ are making certain that ‘expectations’ are tamped-down sufficiently that a McCain ‘defeat’ will go virtually unnoticed …

But, … saved the ‘good’ news for last: No matter how f*cked we appear to be, Nancy Pelosi will be on ‘our’ side, getting ‘very important’ things done.

You will, no doubt, note that NO mention has been made of Obama …

Remember; Cheer up! Things could be worse, just wait ’til next week.

here’s the Membership Action Plan per NATO

do you have a linky for Obama’s endorsement?

sorry that was in response to your # 64

Now Obama has endorsed the NATO aspirations of a country led by a professional provocateur (he’s endorsed a “Membership Action Plan” — hopefully there is some kind of out for that). Did Saakashvili’s “this is a Pentagon operation” ring funny in anyone else’s ears? He’s on awfully familiar terms with us, isn’t he?

http://www.realclearpolitics.c…..orgia.html

thanks!

yesterday the neocons showed their underwear on cspan during a panel discussion at aei about russia/georgia…

frederick kagan toward the beginning pulls the first thread on the sweater.i love that it was he who opened the door.
i said last night, they like hearing themselves talk uninterrupted and always spill something in this type of venue, then more trying to clean it up….toward the end, the 1930’s are brought up repeatedly as a scare tactic.

must see tv, is their plan in a nutshell, and pay attention to what they leave out.

runs around 1:41

http://inside.c-spanarchives.o…..=566908072

Hey Jane!!!

OT but worthy material: mini-headline at NBC olympics coverage

Slide show: Where’s Kobe? He’s everywhere!

http://www.nbcolympics.com/bas…..08882.html

The “Media” will never hold McCain to account, because the Media is part of the Corporate Right just as he is, and the Corporate Right wants McCain as president. Stop expecting fairness or professional impartiality from the media.

Where ~is~ Obama?

If it doesn’t fit the McCain/Bush/MSM spin, CNN just changes it:

http://snipurl.com/3g1e4 [www_prisonplanet_com]

At times it this it’s actually useful to read Charles Krauthammer. He’s awfully brave with other people’s blood:

The most crucial and unconditional measure, however, is this: Reaffirm support for the Saakashvili government and declare that its removal by the Russians would lead to recognition of a government-in-exile. This would instantly be understood as providing us the legal basis for supplying and supporting a Georgian resistance to any Russian-installed regime.

President Bush could cash in on his close personal relationship with Putin by sending him a copy of the highly entertaining (and highly fictionalized) film “Charlie Wilson’s War” to remind Vlad of our capacity to make Russia bleed. Putin would need no reminders of the Georgians’ capacity and long history of doing likewise to invaders.

This is truly maniacally evil.

Jane, it’s no longer, in my humble opinion, a matter of the media being asleep at the wheel. Their attitude at this point is probably intentionally obtuse and deliberately biased, or at the very least lazy and reckless. Saying they’re sleep at the wheel suggests they might wake up and realize the errors of their ways. Not likely.

I’m not so sure. Obama got blind-sided by the conflict, but so did the Bush administration. I think it would have been better had he not opened his mouth with respect to the expansion of NATO, but since then he’s played the story correctly. There is just too much uncertainty out there to go shooting off your mouth like McStain, whose mouth could, as it has on other occasions, come back to bite him. What Obama should be doing is preparing to lay the blame on Bush/McCain if and when (as is almost certain) things go terribly wrong over there. There’s nothing he can do or say at the moment to help himself. People are too fired up. Give it another five days, and he can make a measured statement, one people can understand, unlike Kerry’s efforts.

This is corporate expansion as in the 70’s in Russia. Takeover and privatise expunging socialist welfare states and replacing it with “Free Market” Corporations. Visualize the Baltic Beaches with our Hotel Chains. It’s always about using American tax dollars to fund military ops as point to Clobal Development. To bad the worlds resources are insufficient we just will have to live with inflation.

There’s nothing he can do or say at the moment to help himself.

I agree with this, and until he opened his mouth I thought his course of inaction was just as good as any other action.

Obama got blind-sided by the conflict, but so did the Bush administration.

The administration didn’t get blind-sided by anything other than the scale of the response, if even that. They provoked this, “greenlighted” it, as they say. Saakashvili is reading from a script prepared in advance. Take a look at emptywheel’s post on Rove/Saakashvili from yesterday.

Carpet Ride!