Black and White Cincinnati wallpaper. Not a pure black and white. There is a very pale silver blue tint.
No big surprise really that John McBush sometimes thinks the presidency of the United States should be conducted more like that of former Russian Empress Catherine the Great ala Bush and Company then the co-equal branch of government that our Founding Fathers had in mind, Adviser Says McCain Backs Bush Wiretaps
A top adviser to Senator John McCain says Mr. McCain believes that President Bush’s program of wiretapping without warrants was lawful, a position that appears to bring him into closer alignment with the sweeping theories of executive authority pushed by the Bush administration legal team.
In a letter posted online by National Review this week, the adviser, Douglas Holtz-Eakin, said Mr. McCain believed that the Constitution gave Mr. Bush the power to authorize the National Security Agency to monitor Americans’ international phone calls and e-mail without warrants, despite a 1978 federal statute that required court oversight of surveillance.
[ ]…Following up, the interviewer asked whether Mr. McCain was saying a statute trumped a president’s powers as commander in chief when it came to a surveillance law. “I don’t think the president has the right to disobey any law,” Mr. McCain replied.David Golove, a New York University law professor who specializes in executive power issues, said that while the language used by Mr. McCain in his answers six months ago was imprecise, the recent statement by Mr. Holtz-Eakin “seems to contradict precisely what he said earlier.”
OK, sometimes he feels like an Empress and sometimes not. So voting for him will be a spin of the roulette wheel. Which McCain will show up for the actual governing of the country.
Lies, damned lies and John McCain
Sometimes he lies about more important matters. Responding to Democratic attacks that he voted with his Republican colleagues to block an investigation into the Bush administration’s handling of Hurricane Katrina, McCain angrily replied that he’d voted in favor of every such investigation even though he didn’t.
Whether Obama or any one presidential term can turn around the status quo in Washington is debatable. At least Senator Obama has ideals while over and over again McCain proves that he is for the status quo – corruption, pandering to special interests and working against rather then for the rule of law will be the hallmarks of a McCain presidency just as they have been of his Senate career.
Al Franken got off to a rocky start, but seems to be recovering, Dispatch from Minnesota: Al Franken v. Norm Coleman
With every national and state political wind at his back, this race should be Al Franken’s to lose. Minnesota is a blue state where Barack Obama currently leads John McCain by 18 percent. Coleman’s recent efforts to distance himself from the President and reposition himself as an moderate Republican will have to contend with the fact that he has voted with the President nearly 90 percent of the time over the course of his term. As recently as last month, Coleman attended a fundraiser with and publicly embraced the President he once called “part of God’s answer.” According to Hannah August of the Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee, Norm Coleman is “one of the most vulnerable incumbents in the country.”
The contrast is remarkable. I didn’t always agree with the late Senator Wellstone, but he always promoted with those old fashioned ideals about the “common good”. While Coleman has been nothing, but a lap dog opportunist.
Just another chapter in this era of the Conservative Culture of Corruption, but Paron’s explanation was funny, U.S. Says Contractor Made Little Progress on Iraq Projects
Parsons said in a written statement yesterday that it had “some serious reservations about the conclusions” in the audits, saying the company was hindered by the violent and unstable security situation in Iraq. One of Parsons’s subcontractors was shot and killed at close range while in his office, the company said.
ad_iconParsons’s work is emblematic of other troubles in the $50 billion U.S. reconstruction effort, in which there have been widespread problems of contractors doing poor work, being late and overspending on projects.
Jon McCain and the Right keep claiming that you can’t tell the difference between Iraq and a luxury resort so violence can’t be the reason for shoddy work.
The Long Goodbye 