Category Archives: Current Events

Fred Kaplan compares the speeches of Barack Obama and John McCain with regard to Iraq and Afghanistan. Both want to send troops to the latter but McCain wants to send troops we don't have. This is apparently a minor detail. But Obama's ain't perfect, either.

Jack Shafer on anonymous sources in newspapers. One thing these articles never touch on is whether the anonymous source is being misquoted. I've been a quoted source for news articles — not about important stuff but stuff — and I've been misquoted or misrepresented on occasion. So I think it's safe to say that an anonymous source is misquoted as often, if not more often…and what can they do? It's not like they can write an anonymous letter to the paper to amend or clarify the record.

Barack Obama lays out his position on Iraq in pretty simple "straight talk." Someone let me know if you see a similar piece by Senator McCain so I can link to the other side.

Michael Winship on the benefits of being in tight with The Muppets and Sesame Street.

Fred Kaplan Time again, newsfromme readers! If you don't have time to read it now, I'll give you a quick summary: One of the key issues on which Obama and McCain disagree is that Obama wants a timetable for U.S. withdrawal from Iraq and McCain says that's unthinkable. Trouble (for McCain) is that Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki wants one, too.

This article by Robert Gordon and James Kvaal is one of many out there that itemize how McCain's flip-flopping from speech to speech. I don't intend to spend a lot of time on this blog explaining why I think John McCain would make a terrible president. I'll just say that I know a lot of people who voted for George W. Bush twice with great enthusiasm, now regret both votes and seem to be about to make the same mistake again…and for most of the same reasons.

I still think Wesley Clark was wrong and clumsy with his remarks the other day about John McCain's military service…but Joe Conason reminds us of something relevant.

Back in '92, Ross Perot picked as his running mate, a man named James Stockdale who was as much a "war hero" as anyone who ever had his name on a ballot. Despite this, Admiral Stockdale became something of a laughingstock in this country, derided by Liberals and Conservatives alike. Many of the folks who are selling McCain's past heroism as an argument for him as Prez had no trouble deriding Stockdale as unqualified or even senile. And of course, a lot of them had no trouble pissing all over John Kerry's medals.

Michael Kinsley makes an odd kind of case for Al Franken's Senate bid in Minnesota, that state from which I've just returned.

Joe Conason on the lessons John McCain learned — and more importantly, did not learn — from his experiences in Vietnam.

Over on Slate, David Greenberg has a couple of interesting essays (here and here) about "patriotism" as a campaign weapon…one that's being deployed in the current match-up and which we're likely to see, ad nauseam, in the months ahead.

My particular problem with that is that this kind of debate always revolves around a particularly shallow kind of patriotism — waving the flag, reciting the pledge, standing for the anthem, etc. After 9/11, patriots of that depth all bought those $3.95 plastic flags (Made in Taiwan), put them on their cars and were satisfied that they had done their part as Americans fighting The War on Terror. Bill Maher described that as "pretty much the dictionary definition of 'the least you could do,'" and I think he was right. There's nothing wrong with singing of the rocket's red glare…and you can certainly be a Patriot without spilling blood or making some serious sacrifice. I just don't think you're a better American because you say so in a louder voice.

Hey, I'm linking to a Fred Kaplan article! There's a novelty. This one was about Wesley Clark's comments the other day about John McCain's military service. It sounded to me like the kind of argument that, while perhaps technically accurate, was a blunder as campaign fodder. Clark didn't make one person in America less likely to vote for McCain. All he did was to force Obama to disavow him and praise his opponent's service record.

Gosh, I hope Matt Taibbi is wrong about the message the John McCain campaign will be spreading and counting on between now and November. But I'm afraid Taibbi's right…indelicate but right.

So the big question is: Will George W. Bush get us into a war in Iran before he leaves office? There are those fretting that he will — or worrying that he won't — especially if it looks like his chair is not going to John McCain. I dunno…but it's interesting to see what Seymour Hersh has to say about how we're sneaking up on it.

George W. Bush — a hero to those who believe we should get tough with terrorists and never sit down and negotiate with them — sat down and negotiated with North Korea. Fred Kaplan tells us what it's all about.

Here's another back-and-forth exchange that I find interesting. It's about the issue of telecom immunity in the new FISA bill, and about the seeming capitulation of most Democrats (Barack Obama, among them) on this matter. Arguing that it ain't so bad, and isn't a serious reversal on previous stances, we have Keith Olbermann. Arguing that it's just that is Glenn Greenwald over at Salon.

If you'd like to follow this exchange, start by reading Greenwald, then go read Olbermann, then go read Greenwald, then read the observations of Jane Hamsher.

As I score this one, Greenwald's ahead on points, especially in noting the following; that it may not matter if the telecoms are still open to criminal prosecution by a President Obama because an outgoing President Bush can (and I'm guessing, will) pardon them. In fact, I suspect that if Bush is to be succeeded by a Democrat, and maybe even by John McCain, he will spend his last few days in office pardoning everyone who's ever worked for him for everything they've ever done, including stuff we don't yet know about.

The argument for the bill seems to be that it will help Obama in the election not to be attacked as being "soft on terrorism" for opposing any part of FISA. There's some merit to that, though I think Obama could go out and single-handedly arrest and drag Bin Laden in for trial, and Republicans would still be attacking him on that basis. But I sure don't think this new bill is a "compromise." In a compromise, both sides regret losing something. Has anyone seen a single Republican who's unhappy with any aspect of this "bi-partisan compromise?"