Rob Shvern on Politics

Former Senator John Edwards has endorsed Republican frontrunner Senator John McCain and explained ending his campaign for the Democratic nomination.

“As the presidential field narrows,” Sen. Edwards said at an afternoon news conference, “I just didn’t feel there would be room in the race for two white males who favor leniency for illegal aliens, who opposed Bush’s tax cuts for the rich, who fight man-made global warming, who support limits on so-called free speech in political campaigns, who have worked to hinder approval of conservative judicial nominees, and who stand against the Bush administration’s desire to torture terror suspects with waterboarding.”

Mr. Edwards added that, while he’s young enough to run for president 10 more times, the septuagenarian Sen. McCain “may have only five or six more shots at it.”

While Mr. Edwards played down speculation that he might bring balance to the ticket as Sen. McCain’s running mate, he noted that it would be “a once-in-a-lifetime thrill to team up with an actual Vietnam war hero.”

MSNBC is a proud subsidiary of GE, a bomb maker. Only pro-war politicians are permitted to discuss their views and argue about the vastness of their war support. All other views, such as opposition to war, are called “extreme” and cannot be considered.

John McCain has clarified his platform. He says jobs are never coming back, illegals are never going home, and we are doing to start a lot more wars.

You might remember a few weeks ago when McCain said he would like to stay in Iraq for 100 more years. He is now open to staying in Iraq for 10,000 years.

Hillary Clinton has promised to keep troops in Iraq until at least 2013 with at an estimated deployment of at least 75,000.These forces will be used to “fight Al Qaeda, deter Iranian aggression, protect the Kurds and possibly support the Iraqi military.” Clinton’s policy is estimated to cost almost 5 trillion dollars.

You might remember that in the months before the March 2003 Iraq invasion, the Bush administration estimated the Iraq war would cost no more than $50 billion, but a recent Congressional Budget Office estimate warned that the cost of the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan could total $2.4 trillion through the next decade, or nearly $8,000 per man, woman and child in the country.

  As chairperson and ranking member of the Military Construction Appropriations subcommittee (MILCON) from 2001 through the end of 2005, Feinstein supervised the appropriation of billions of dollars a year for specific military construction projects. Two defense contractors whose interests were largely controlled by her husband, financier Richard C. Blum, benefited from decisions made by Feinstein as leader of this powerful subcommittee.

In 2005, Roll Call calculated Feinstein’s wealth, including Blum’s assets, at $40 million, up 25 percent from the year before. That made her the ninth wealthiest member of Congress. Feinstein’s latest Public Financial Disclosure Report shows that in 2005 her family earned income of between $500,000 and $5 million from capital gains on URS and Perini stock combined. From CB Richard Ellis, Blum earned between $1.3 million to $4 million.

http://www.bohemian.com/metro/01.24.07/dianne-feinstein-0704.html

This is the $16,500,000 mansion the war bought:

And that’s exactly why the Bush administration is so darn bullet-proof. The Democratic leadership in Washington is just as crooked and just as callous.

http://www.counterpunch.org/frank02282006.html

Rep. Dennis Kucinich (D. Ohio) suggested today that President Bush’s comment about a nuclear Iran precipitating “World War III” is a sign of mental instability.

“I seriously believe we have to start asking questions about his mental health,” Kucinich, a back-of-the-pack candidate for president, said in an interview with The Inquirer’s editorial board. “There’s something wrong. He does not seem to understand his words have real impact.”

“You cannot be a president of the United States who’s wanton in his expression of violence,” Kucinich said. “There’s a lot of people who need care. He might be one of them. If there isn’t something wrong with him, then there’s something wrong with us. This, to me, is a very serious question.”

Kucinich: “If Congress doesn’t impeach President Bush for intentionally misleading the public, the next president should hand over Bush and his administration to law enforcement officials”

“The way to end the war is this: The leaders of Congress must go to the president and say, ‘Mr. President, we are not going to give you another dime. Use the money you have to bring the troops home,”‘ the Ohio congressman said.

“Somehow war and strength became equated, but now war and stupidity are being equated,” he said. “We cannot buy into this mentality that the war is going to be with us for a long time.”

www.newsandpolicy.com

David Sarota reports on a new poll showing that Ned Lamont would easily defeat Joe Lieberman if the election was held today.

I noted that Lieberman’s entire general election strategy was about pretending that, if reelected, he would lead the fight to end the Iraq War. The man literally portrayed himself as the leader of the antiwar movement after he lost the primary. His very first ad in the general election was him looking to camera saying “I want to help end the war in Iraq.” During debates he said “No one wants to end the war in Iraq more than I do.” It was, as this well-known YouTube video showed, a positively Nixonian enterprise by Lieberman - and it was a deliberate effort to confuse precisely the same Democratic and Independent voters who now say they would vote for Lamont.

But now this key group of Democrats and Independents isn’t confused anymore because, since the election (and, as predicted) Lieberman has become even more supportive of the Iraq War, and is actually publicly pushing a war with Iran. You can’t turn on a television and see a story about the political debate over war without seeing/hearing/reading about Lieberman ratcheting up the saber rattling.

Had Connecticut voters had more information about exactly how Lieberman’s campaign to reinvent himself as an antiwar leader was a complete sham, that key segment of the Democratic and Independent voters might not have been confused, and the election - as the poll now confirms - would have gone the other way.

http://www.openleft.com/showDiary.do?diaryId=1337

BONUS: Jon Stewart shows highlights of the insanity.