McCain: Blazing Saddles
Submitted by early-bird on April 18, 2008 - 11:56am.
Iraq | Leaque of Democracies | McCain | Middle East | unilateralism
Blazing Saddle Diplomacy
http://news.yahoo.com/s/huffpost/20080327/cm_huffpost/093643
Excerpt
Mar 27 2008
John McCain went before the Los Angeles World Affairs Council yesterday morning to showcase his foreign policy credentials and convince Americans that he is the only candidate experienced enough to take that 3am telephone call. While Clinton and Obama are distracted by a pre-Pennsylvania primary food fight, McCain's address constituted a dress rehearsal for a future national security agenda that, at its very core, resembles nothing more than discredited cowboy diplomacy. It is essentially fermented old failed warrior wine in new bottles...camouflaged unilateralism gussied up in a Potemkin village of storefront global engagement.
Democrats should not ignore the content of McCain's speech while our internal bout continues, or remain passive at the free ride McCain will enjoy from a fawning media lauding the speech's "presidential" character and its perceived break with Bush/Cheney/Rice foreign policy catastrophes. To remain impervious to McCain's attempted act at presidential statesmanship risks cementing in the minds of voters a dangerous perception that McCain will chart a new, more responsible and appealing foreign policy course that represents a break with neoconservatism orthodoxy.
Caveat Emptor: read between the lines!
First and foremost, McCain reasserts his ominous commitment to an endless engagement in Iraq. He justifies his bottomless pit commitment by arguing that a "premature" withdrawal will lead to a wider Middle East war because Al Qaeda will be able to turn Iraq into a cauldron of sectarian strife. This, he argues, will ultimately embolden Iran to confront Sunni Arab states and Israel, and lead to a regional war that will surely force the United States back into a wider conflict that it will have to wage against adversaries far stronger than they are today. In other words, the domino theory of Middle East extremism lies at the core of McCain's endless summer in Iraq.
McCain would like to convince voters they face the choice of accepting his Churchillian "never surrender" approach, or a dangerous Democratic "cut and run" alternative. In other words, leave Iraq and America will be in more danger and have to fight a more bloody and costly war later on many Middle East fronts, or stay the course in Iraq (courtesy of McCain's surge policy) and vanquish Al Qaeda and quell the sectarian tensions between Sunni and Shiites and we will be marginalize the threats arrayed against us throughout the region.
The trouble with this set up is that McCain's core premise is dead wrong. By our own senior commanders' accounts, Al Qaeda is but a minor player in Iraq, and there is no way the U.S. presence, surge or not, that will keep a lid on sectarian tensions. Just look at what is going on in Iraq at the very tragic milestone of 4,000 Americans killed: the worst sectarian violence in months has broken out with hundreds of lives lost despite a McCain's surge that he continues to tout as the fire extinguisher that will stop sectarian strife from igniting once again.
How inconvenient timing just when McCain keeps claiming that the surge has succeeded.
McCain's black and white version of the Middle East is what I find so troublesome. There is absolutely no redemption possible for adversaries such as Iran and Syria and no room for creative diplomacy other than his beloved surge strategy. In a nutshell, we must stay in Iraq to contain regional threats or risk engaging in a fool's errand by resorting to defeatist diplomacy.
I just don't buy that equation, and neither should the American people.
Moreover, McCain claims that an unending presence in Iraq can be legitimated by a new "League of Democracies" (a.k.a. a new Coalition of the Willing) that would conveniently marginalize those pesky international institutions such as the United Nations that seem to always stand in the way of American unilateralism or the McCain version "semi-unilateralism."
Creating parallel international organizations composed solely of "acceptable" democratic states would create a 21st century version of a new bi-polar world: A U.S./European Union plus India, Israel, Japan and other democracies lined up against Russia and other authoritarian governments. Democracies banding together to set a new global course has that soft, sweet appeal to our patriotic virtuosity, with every other undemocratic nation outside the McCain's democratic tent left to create their own mischief from the stage of the UN General Assembly, or create their own "anti-democratic" alliances and competing anti-democratic groupings.
What is so strikingly and inherently wrong with McCain's world vision is that America's global leadership will not be restored by ignoring adversaries that, left to their own devices, may further challenge and undermine America's national security.
Democrats should not permit McCain to gain further traction by falsely asserting he is charting a new foreign policy course that will restore America's image, global leadership, and reduce the threat posed by Al Qaeda and its spinoff terror groups. Despite McCain's assertion that he no warrior at heart, he is no prince of peace either. Any national security policy that, at its core, leaves America stranded in Iraq with hundreds of thousands of troops fighting whatever enemy we can conveniently label is a calling card for extremists and ultimately risks creating stronger adversaries. It is nothing more than a continuation of the failed Bush/Cheney/Rice status quo. The surge that McCain is so proud of will, by most impartial assessments, fail to stop the very civil strife that it is designed to prevent.
McCain is offering America nothing more than more of the same, and more of the same is what got America into this mess in the first place.
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His non-communal taxable income for the last two years is:
2006 2007
Senate Salary: $161,675 $161,708Book Royalty Income: $80,390 $176,508
Social Security Income: $22,104 $23,157
US Navy Pension: $56,496 $58,358
For 2006, Senator McCain paid $72,771 in federal income, alternative minimum, and self-employment taxes on taxable income of $215,304, which is a 33.8% tax rate.
For 2007, Senator McCain paid $84,460 in federal income, alternative minimum, and self-employment taxes on taxable income of $258,800, which is a 32.6% tax rate.
McCain released his tax returns but not his wife's returns:
http://firstread.msnbc.msn.com/archive/2008/04/18/916355.aspx
http://www.johnmccain.com/mccainfinancial/
http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/23788751/
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Keating_Five
http://www.cnn.com/2008/POLITICS/04/03/mccains.money.politics.ap/
http://www.bloomberg.com/apps/news?pid=20601070&sid=aFSl0vU5t7J8&refer=home
EXCERPT
McCain Plans for $3.3 Trillion Tax Cut, Balanced Budget at Odds
You can't take out a credit card from the Bank of China in the name of our children & our grandchildren then say that you're cutting taxes, which is what John McCain has been talking about. - Obama
http://www.pensitoreview.com/2008/04/16/mccains-economic-cure-is-the-worst-idea-weve-heard-so-far/Excerpt McCain’s Economic Cure is the Worst Idea We’ve Heard So Far <!-- title -->Trish | Apr. 16, 2008 <!-- byline -->
Just when you thought Republicans couldn’t come up with anything worse to do to this country, along comes proof they always, always can. Did you think George Bush’s tax rebate, which will plunge our government even deeper into debt, was awful? Well John McCain has a plan to postpone impending economic disaster that will not only do nothing to help in the long run, but which will hasten global warming to boot.
John McCain wants us to burn more gasoline. Yes, he wants us to take to the roads this summer and burn, baby, burn. Our incentive? Artificially cheaper gas prices that come, not at the expense of oil company profits, but at the price of our crumbling infrastructure and ballooning deficit.
Yes, you guessed it. He wants to cut taxes on gasoline.
McCain wants to have artificially cheaper gas prices that come, not at the expense of oil company profits, but at the price of our crumbling infrastructure and ballooning deficit.
It also was unclear how McCain would pay for his proposed gas-tax holiday, which would run from Memorial Day to Labor Day. The federal gas tax is 18.4 cents per gallon; 24.4 cents for diesel. The idea would cost the federal Highway Trust Fund, already at risk of going broke next year, billions of dollars…
“That takes $11 billion away from infrastructure spending on roads and bridges, which are badly in need of help as we saw with last summer’s bridge collapse,” said James Kvaal, domestic policy adviser for the liberal Center for American Progress Action Fund, a Washington research group.
So how do we deal with the problems caused by our national carefree summer road trip? Dunno.
“The senator is not planning to raise taxes,” [McCain’s chief economic policy adviser, Douglas Holtz-Eakin] said repeatedly…
Of course not. Republicans don’t tax and spend, they borrow and spend.
Holtz-Eakin said money would be taken from general funds to ensure that the Highway Trust Fund didn’t run short. But the budget deficit already is projected at $500 billion.
And according to some economists, we are too far gone now to ever get back to the balanced budget Bill Clinton achieved and left in the care of George W. Bush.
[Rudy Penner, a senior fellow at the Urban Institute], a former director of the Congressional Budget Office, said…”Those deficits are going to look awfully big as the new president takes office, and it will be very hard to do what President Bush did — claim the budget balances in 2012, or maybe ever again if you do honest projections.”
You can't take out a credit card from the Bank of China in the name of our children & our grandchildren then say that you're cutting taxes, which is what John McCain has been talking about. - Obama
Excerpt:
Go down to line 25 on the first page(Health Savings Account Deduction) next to the box called Adjusted Gross Income. What do you see? NOTHING--it's blank. There should be a number at line 25, this is where McSame should put the amount he is permitted to deduct for his HSA.
<!-- polls come after this -->
- nyceve's diary :: ::
But it's blank because McHypocrite doesn't believe in High Deductible Junk Insurance for himself or his family, despite the fact that it's a centerpiece of his healthcare "plan".
If all you're able to afford is High Deductible Junk Insurance which McBush is pushing as a solution to our healthcare catastrophe, then you don't to go to a doctor "fairly frequently" as McCain does. You don't attend to routine health problems because you can't afford to. High deductible health insurance offers bare bones coverage and is insurance in name only.
So what do you do if you have junk insurance? You wait and hope and pray that you recover. Some Americans even procure medicine from pet stores which often sell a variety of antibotics at low prices.
When the McBush returns were released I wanted to see whether the McHypocrite Family avails itself of the deduction for an HSA Health Savings Account. The crap coverage which around here we call High Deductible Junk Insurance. This is what he wants you and me to accept. So naturally I thought as a good conservative Republican, he would be eager to have junk insurance for himself and his family.
Guess what? I was wrong. McHypocrite is a cancer surviver, he needs to see his doctor fairly frequently, he wouldn't want junk insurance. Junk insurance is only for the American people.
And Americans with High Deductible junk insurance don't go the doctor fairly frequently--they can't afford to.
Here's the truth, McIdiot.
More going without health care:
Americans are paying more for medical insurance than they did a year ago, and many are avoiding important doctor visits simply because of the cost, an MSN-Zogby poll reports.More than a quarter of Americans have skipped or postponed an essential visit to a doctor because it was too expensive, a new MSN-Zogby poll says.
Nearly half (48%) say they pay more in health-insurance premiums than a year ago, and 37% say they pay more out of pocket for medical services or prescriptions.
The results of the poll of 9,765 adults suggest that medical expenses are becoming a heavier burden on household finances, even for middle-income Americans. They underscore the findings of other recent studies that the cost of health care is becoming a more widespread problem.
. . .More families are struggling in the aftermath of a serious medical problem, and many try to repay debts by taking out second mortgages or cashing in their retirement accounts, says Elizabeth Warren, a Harvard law professor. "Many will still end up in bankruptcy, but only after they have run up even more debt and their last meager resources have been exhausted," she told Bankrate.com.
McCain's spontaneous comment should scare you because it's so ill-informed. It demonstrates an utter lack of understanding for the health plight of virtually every American other than the affluent. And yes, of course,his Senate and Congressional colleagues, who as you know, receive taxpayer subsidized Cadillac healthcare.
This man believes that most Americans have "fairly frequent" access to the doctor. He sees nothing wrong with his health proposal, a scheme under which even he and Elizabeth Edwards, both cancer patients would be uninsurable.
Listen to what Sean Kent, another cancer survivor has to say about getting insurance after a cancer diagnosis.
High Deductible health insurance is insurance in name only. It's bare bones crap insurance, it's what's being foisted on many in Massachusetts. Most important, it's the centerpiece, I kid you not, of the McBush Health care Plan.
This is from the McHypocrite campaign web site.
American families know quality when they see it, so their dollars should be in their hands. When families are informed about medical choices, they are more capable of making their own decisions, less likely to choose the most expensive and often unnecessary options, and are more satisfied with their choices. Health Savings Accounts are tax-preferred accounts used to pay insurance premiums and other health costs. They put the family in charge of what they pay for, and should be expanded and encouraged.
Here's the truth about John McStraighttalk McCain and Health Savings Accounts. John McCain wouldn't take one, and doesn't have one, just look at his tax returns.
But John McSame wants you to know he has his finger on the pulse of America, and he's just one of us. He wants you to know that just like most Americans he goes to the doctor fairly frequently.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IL_HWVG5Ajo&eurl=http://www.dailykos.com/story/2008/4/18/154925/594/832/498509
Re: SiCKO Movie -- Sean Kent - Cancer Survivor
You can't take out a credit card from the Bank of China in the name of our children & our grandchildren then say that you're cutting taxes, which is what John McCain has been talking about. - Obama
You can't take out a credit card from the Bank of China in the name of our children & our grandchildren then say that you're cutting taxes, which is what John McCain has been talking about. - Obama
http://pol.moveon.org/sixmonths/?campaign_id=90&rc=homepage
Endless War On Installment Plan
This video makes it clear: No matter what happens in Iraq, the Bush Administration and John McCain always have the same answer: 6 more months.
You can't take out a credit card from the Bank of China in the name of our children & our grandchildren then say that you're cutting taxes, which is what John McCain has been talking about. - Obama