Incredible!

7 comments July 18th, 2008

The timing of Barack Obama’s forthcoming visit to Iraq has been kept obscure partly for security reasons — a standard practice for prominent American officials.

But John McCain, the self-styled expert on national security matters, just hours ago SAID that he expects Obama to land in Iraq “either today or tomorrow.”

Amazing! Truly amazing!

Dude’s having a bad summer — with two months to go

3 comments July 18th, 2008

Regular readers of Applesauce might recall a couple of recent posts (THIS ONE covers both of them) in which we dissed conservative scribbler Jonah Goldberg for his laughable pinheadedness.

Well, golly, young Jonah has gone and done it again. This time he excitedly reports on his blog that a reputable scientific organization has renounced its previous claim that human activities are contributing to global warming.

Yeah, that’ll put that Al Gore guy in his place, right?

But notice, please, that Jonah boy has had to APPEND a correction to his post.  Turns out he was wrong about that scientific organization. The group stands by its earlier declaration concerning global warming.

I’ll bet that Jonah’s mom, Lucianne Goldberg of Clinton-Lewinsky FAME, is not exactly beaming with pride these days.

POSTSCRIPT: If the Goldberg post to which I’ve linked is gone by the time you read this, I’m sure you’ll understand Jonah’s eagerness to put this episode behind him.

Is this pathetic or what?

4 comments July 18th, 2008

From the Washington state branch of the party that invented patriotism and remains its staunchest champion, we get this stirring message:

Illinois Republican state senator dissed for saying nice things about Obama

Add comment July 18th, 2008

Illinois State Sen. Kirk Dillard (left) served in the state legislature with Barack Obama and has said some nice things about the Democratic presidential nominee.

Consequently, Dillard, who’s also a John McCain delegate to the Republican National Convention, is getting some BLOWBACK from his fellow GOPers.

Jukebox John does it again!

4 comments July 18th, 2008

Steve Benen, who labors on several prominent blogs, cleverly suggests that the nickname Mr. Straight Talk, with which fawning reporters have tagged John McCain, is far less appropriate than Jukebox John, a guy who changes his tune every few minutes.

The latest evidence supporting the jukebox pseudonym arises from McCain’s awkward FLIP-FLOP on the issue of gay adoptions, which has miffed the Religious Right.

But then, this is hardly the first time that McCain has dramatically flipped on gay issues, as we see here:

Why is Michael Chertoff trying to scare us?

7 comments July 18th, 2008

I don’t get it. Or maybe I do.

Homeland Security Secretary Michael Chertoff TOLD a congressional committee Thursday:

 1) That European terrorists are trying to get into the United States;

2) That he has “a good degree of confidence we can catch people coming in”;

3) But that “there’s no guarantee” the government will catch them.

Chertoff has said stuff like this before, and he offered no new evidence this time of specific threats or an imminent attack.

So what’s the big deal? Is he trying to frighten the American people in the belief that it will benefit the incumbent party — the party to which he owes his appointment — in the November elections?

Anybody who really thinks about it figures, or at least hopes, that Chertoff and the other security people in the government are doing their best to guard against terrorism.  But we don’t expect — at least I don’t — that every little matter of vague concern that comes down the intelligence pipeline is going to be shared with the American people. Such a practice would have us all in a constant state of paranoid frenzy.

Consider this:

Just weeks before the horrible events of Sept. 11, 2001, President Bush received an intelligence briefing memo entitled “Bin Laden Determined to Attack Inside the United States.” The fact that the contents of that memo were not forthwith shared with the American people or made known to Congress is not a mark against the Bush administration.

Rather, the real failure, as we learned from the Sept. 11 Commission,  is that the memo didn’t prompt any urgent follow-up by the administration. There were no high-level meetings to deal with the matter, no warnings to FBI agents out in the field.

The matters of concern raised yesterday by Chertoff seemingly fall far short of the Bin Laden memo in terms of urgency.  They do not suggest a need for any heightened public vigilance. They should be of immediate importance only to the people professionally charged with keeping our nation safe and secure.

So, the question arises: Why is Chertoff crying wolf?

I can only surmise that his motives are political.