July 01, 2008

IMPEACH BUSH

IMPEACH CHENEY

OH THE OUTRAGE!

On a Sunday talk show General Wesley Clark said that John McCain riding in a fighter jet didn't necessarily qualify McCain to be commander-in-chief. You would think Clark had burned the flag on national TV. McCain likes to make a big deal of his military record, which frankly isn't that distinguished. I'm sorry he was a POW and I'm definitely sorry he was tortured. No human being should be tortured. But the people displaying such outrage at General Clark's remarks seem to conveniently forget the "swift boating" of John Kerry in 2004. Attacks against Kerry were smears; General Clark's comments about McCain were simply the truth. This commentary by Zachary Roth is from the Columbia Journalism Review at http://www.cjr.org/:

So: The latest round of mock outrage—in a presidential race that has turned the tactic into an art form—now comes in response to comments made by General Wesley Clark. Appearing as a surrogate for Barack Obama on CBS’s "Face the Nation", Clark, in reference to John McCain, said

I certainly honor his service as a prisoner of war…But he hasn’t held executive responsibility. That large squadron in the Navy that he commanded—that wasn’t a wartime squadron. He hasn’t been there and ordered the bombs to fall.
When moderator Bob Schieffer interjected that "Barack Obama has not had any of those experiences, either, nor has he ridden in a fighter plane and gotten shot down", Clark responded: "Well, I don’t think riding in a fighter plane and getting shot down is a qualification to be president."

The McCain camp, sensing an opportunity, complained that Clark had "attacked John McCain’s military service record." Of course, Clark had done nothing of the kind. He had questioned the relevance of McCain’s combat experience as a qualification to be president of the United States. This is a distinction that you’d expect any reasonably intelligent nine-year old to be able to grasp.

REPUBLICAN ROLE IN HIGH GAS PRICES

The right-wing bluster these days is that Democrats and environmentalists are responsible for record high gas prices. Those Democrats and pesky environmentalists just won't allow drilling, we're told. The fact is that offshore drilling or drilling in ANWR would do little to alleviate our problem. Oil companies already have federal land leases they are not using. Even if we drilled all our offshore oil and all the oil in ANWR it would take years, and the supply would be exhausted pretty quickly. When Jimmy Carter was president we had our first oil shock and President Carter talked about conservation. People didn't want to hear it. Ronald Reagan said we didn't have to worry. If we had taken steps back then to improve fuel efficiency and break our dependence on oil, we would be in a far better position today. This commentary is from Richard H. Serlin at richardserlin.blogspot.com:

For decades Republicans have constantly blocked Democratic attempts to increase fuel mileage and many other efficiency and conservation measures. They've also constantly blocked or cut spending on alternative energy, all the while mindlessly chanting "Free market". The economics community had proven long ago that there are many situations and ways where a government role can add greatly to efficiency, wealth, and welfare, but this is a party that long ago refused to think beyond slogans. They acted as though not being simple-minded was a vice, liberal and un-American, when in fact, thinking, and believing in science, evidence, and logic is one of the things that made this country great, and the richest and strongest in the world.

Now we're paying a big price for Republican ideology in energy and so many other things. Had the Democrats not been outvoted, filibustered, and vetoed from enacting their "big government" mileage, conservation, research, and other energy measures over the last almost three decades, gasoline might be less than half its price today, and mileage more than twice as high, making the gas cost per mile less than a quarter of what it is now.