April 13, 2008

IMPEACH BUSH

IMPEACH CHENEY

THE FLIP-FLOP EXPRESS

John McCain has repeatedly demonstrated that the pursuit and grasp of power is more important than principle. McCain calls himself a "straight talker," but his record shows he's very willing to change position when it's expedient. During the 2000 presidential campaign George W. Bush's campaign smeared McCain and McCain's family. Bush did "push polling" that suggested McCain had fathered an illegitmate black child. But that hasn't stopped McCain from clinging to Bush like a barnacle on a ship. This editorial is from boston.com:

In 2001, McCain criticized President Bush's tax cuts with their lopsided tilt to the rich. More recently, he has called for extending them. The author of an amendment in 2006 banning torture by US officials, this year he backed Bush's veto of legislation banning torture by US intelligence agencies. The onetime proponent of comprehensive immigration reform now goes along with strictly punitive approaches. In 1998, McCain called for a $1.10 increase in the tax on cigarettes. Last year, he opposed a 61-cent increase in that tax.

The flip-flop on the tobacco tax is typical of the Arizona senator's willingness to trim his sails. In 1998, McCain was such a supporter of raising the tobacco tax to fund a campaign to reduce smoking by youths that industry advertisements blasted the measure as the "McCain Tobacco Tax Bill." McCain accused the tobacco companies of having "sacrificed the truth and our children to their greed." The industry managed eventually to kill the bill when backers failed to get enough Senate support to block a filibuster.

IF ELITISM IS THE ISSUE

I checked out the FOX gabfest that features Chris Wallace and company this morning. There we have major league elitists like Brit Hume and William Kristol criticizing Barack Obama for being elitist. They try to spin Obama's recent remarks about people being "bitter" as elitist because Obama suggested that people get diverted into issues like guns and religion instead of focusing on what government should be doing about wages and health care and the environment. The government shouldn't be focused on flag burning or banning gay marriage or school prayer or forcing creationism into school science classes. It shouldn't be in the business of bashing immigrants, while looking the other way when big employers use illegal immigrants. But that's where right-wingers have taken us. This commentary by Katrina Vanden Heuvel is at www.thenation.com:

Right-wing ABC radio talkshow host John Batchelor has filled my in box in these last 18 hours with e-mails dissecting and skewering what Obama meant when he said at a private April 6 fundraiser that small-town voters in economically distressed areas of Pennsylvania are "bitter." Batchelor and Laura Ingraham and Monica Crowley and Sean Hannity and Rush and O'Reilly are ready and rearing to go, quick to their guns to paint Obama as an elitist. {Read the excerpt from Nation columnist Eric Alterman's "Why We're Liberals" in the April 14th issue of The Nation to understand the cynicism and hypocrisy at the root of the conservative cabal's forty-year campaign.}