Wednesday, October 8, 2008

MUDRAKE WROTE TODAY:

Poor Cindy McCain- now she's been dragged into this ugly mess called the McCain Campaign. Reading each word slowly form the teleprompter, without much emotion, she said, "
"I'm proud of my sons, but let me tell you, the day that Senator Obama decided to cast a vote to not fund my son when he was serving sent a cold chill through my body," she said, drawing a chorus of boos."Let me tell you: I would suggest that Senator Obama change shoes with me for just one day, and see what it means, and see what it means to have a loved one serving in the armed forces, and more importantly, serving in harm's way."Sadly for Mrs. McCain, she stopped there. Had she continued with the rest of the facts, she may have exhonorated herself. Yet, not surprisingly, she didn't say the rest.The rest is that her husband, John McCain, also "decided to cast a vote to not fund my son when he was serving." Foolish woman- as if nobody in America knew that fact. How despirate the McCain Campaign has become.
posted by mud_rake at 9:36 PM on Oct 8, 2008


Barb said...
You are such a prevaricator --or stupid --surely not that--yes, mcCain voted against the aid --ONLY BECAUSE YOU DEMS TIED IN A WITHDRAWAL TIMETABLE. He favored the aid --but not the timetable, so he couldn't vote for the aid until the timetable was taken off the table --which it eventually was because the public was getting disgusted with the attempted manipulation of military strategy by the democrats in Congress.

but surely you knew this?

Announcing a military departure in Iraq is guaranteeing collapse in Iraq after we leave. We need to stay there like we did in Germany.

October 8, 2008 9:55 PM



"God is not willing that any should perish, but that all should come to repentance and have eternal life."--the Bible

25 comments:

Antipelagian said...

Bills are always loaded with unsavory items...someone may think supplying circus midgets with a never ending supply of pork rinds is a careless use of our tax dollars...but sure enough, that will be tacked onto a bill for education, or protecting children from rabid dogs...of course, when an individual votes "no" the other party will say it's because he hates children and also kicks puppies.

Biden pointed this out in the "debate" with Sarah Palin...I don't know if it's that I'm older, but the GOP seems to be incredibly dishonest in this campaign.

Barb said...

HUH? Seems to me the dishonesty on the military issue was on the Dems side.

What issue are you speaking of?

It is dishonest to say McCain opposed aid to the military--but the dems really DID oppose aid to the military. They wouldn't vote for the aid because they wanted them brought home instead. they didn't want the aid sent--but had to kowtow to public pressure. It was a low point for the Dems that year --and part of the reason their approval rating is so low at the congressional level.

matthew said...

Barb,

Craig is right. Both parties are incredibly dishonest on this issue.

It's indisputable: both McCain and Obama voted against funding for the troops.

They both did it for principled reasons, no less, so they should both drop it. Their disagreement wasn't over funding for the troops but rather over withdrawing from Iraq.

It is incredibly dishonest for either of them to use this against the other. Then, on top of that, they are outraged when the other does the exact same thing. Both pairs of pants are on fire.

steve said...

The best way to "support the troops" is to bring them home. Rome realized they couldn't control the world with their legions, but it was too late for them. Is the US going to make the same mistake?

kateb said...

There is indeed alot of dishonesty. To take this quote and work on it this way is to try to cover up the fact that Obama is committed to the defeat of the U.S. war in Iraq.

You can't take one sentence out of context - the man himself says he doesn't support the war. And he didn't want to fund it.

That's what Cindy McCain was addressing. Nice try at a white wash though.

Anonymous said...
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steve said...

Timothy Garten Ash, The Guardian:

"As if there were not enough real enemies to fight, the United States has been at war with itself in recent years. They call it the culture war. It has generated more hot air than most real wars in history. John McCain has now turned to its red army tactics to rescue himself from impending defeat - and Sarah Palin is his Katyusha.

"There is a religious war going on in our country for the soul of America," declared the conservative nationalist Pat Buchanan at the Republican national convention in 1992. "It is a cultural war, as critical to the kind of nation we will one day be as was the cold war itself." Later that year he explained that "the Bosnia of the cultural war is abortion". As Buchanan foresaw, this has been a war for power: not military power, but the kind that comes from shaping the norms, beliefs and values by which people live, and the meanings attached to words like liberalism, patriotism or, indeed, culture. The two sides in this war came to be labelled red and blue, after the colouring of Republican and Democratic states on electoral maps.

No one has generated more hot air in this cause than Fox News anchor Bill O'Reilly, who in 2006 published a book proudly called Culture Warrior. He describes the culture war as a battle between traditionalists ("T-Warriors") like himself and "the committed forces of the secular-progressive movement that want to change America dramatically: mold it in the image of western Europe". Like Europe! God, how horrible.

O'Reilly labels these secular-progressive forces "S-P", and identifies George Soros as "El Jefe of the S-P forces". In a fashion disturbingly familiar to any student of the 20th century, he illustrates this passage with an unflattering photo of the financier-philanthropist, captioned "George Soros, S-P Jefe, puppet master, and moneyman". "Born George Schwartz to a Jewish family in Hungary in 1930," he explains, "Soros assumed the identity of a gentile boy when the Nazis invaded at the start of world war II." This is what they call a Fox Fact. (It was Soros's father who changed the family name in 1936 and the Nazis did not invade Hungary until 1944: three errors in the space of one innuendo.) Anyway, what should that personal history have to do with an argument about cultural and social policies in 21st-century America?

Excoriating "leftwing outfits like the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation and the British Broadcasting Company" (Foxy Fact-checking again: it's the British Broadcasting Corporation), O'Reilly pounds the hot buttons of the culture war with a ham fist: abortion, drugs, gay marriage, not celebrating Christmas, atheism, the liberal or - as he prefers - "S-P" media and elites. The New York Times, he says in an afterword to the paperback edition, has "morphed into a brochure for secular-progressive causes". And so it goes on. And on.

Does this matter? Over the past decade it has mattered a lot. The framing of the political debate in cultural conservative terms - a counter-revolution against the cultural revolution of 1968 - contributed significantly to George Bush's election victories in 2000 and 2004. And one way of understanding the direction taken by the McCain campaign over the past few weeks is this: only the culture war can win it for us now. On Iraq, we lose. On the economy, we lose. But by caricaturing the liberal otherness of a candidate called Barack Obama, perhaps we can snatch victory from the jaws of defeat.

Enter Sarah Palin, the Katyusha rocket of red America. (I trust she won't mind a Russian analogy since, as she has informed us, you - or at least she - can see Russia from Alaska.) The selection of such an obviously under-qualified candidate for vice-president can only be explained by electoral calculation, and that calculation has everything to do with the politics of the country's cultural civil war. Her kind of down-home populist inveighing against Washington elites (add "liberal" or "S-P" according to taste) is part of the well-tried semantic armoury of the red army.

Katyusha Palin now leads the attacks on Obama. This week she has repeatedly tried to tar-and-feather him by association with former terrorist William Ayers. The not-even-subliminal message is: he's not like us, he's like them. The others: elites, liberals, subversives, immigrants and infidels, closet Europeans! Chapter one of O'Reilly's Culture Warrior begins with an imagined 2020 state of the union speech by a president of the United States called Gloria Hernandez: hispanic, and a woman to boot. Worse still, she celebrates the United States as "a diversified nation striving to be at peace with the world". How terrifying. How blood-curdling. Give us President Palin any day.

For Gloria Hernandez read Barack Obama. Or "that one", as McCain disrespectfully referred to him in Tuesday night's presidential debate. At the moment, the tactic isn't working. This election is about the economy, stupid. The pocketbook trumps the prayer book. However much McCain lauds himself as a "maverick", he can't disassociate himself from eight years of Republican rule that are ending in the biggest financial crisis since 1929 and a near-doubling of the national debt. And Obama is better on the economy: clearer, more specific, always bringing it back to the everyday struggles of ordinary Americans. In the instant-reaction polls, a clear majority thought Obama won that debate, as he is winning in most of the polls both nationwide and in key battleground states.

Even if the red-clawed tactics of culture war don't pull Obama down at the last minute, an Obama victory won't spell the end of this war. But perhaps it may spell the beginning of the end. Let's be clear: this war will not finish with a victory of blue over red, or vice versa. It will finish with the accepted, peaceful coexistence in one society of different faiths, value systems and lifestyles - along the lines laid down centuries ago by the classical liberalism of John Locke and others, which so much influenced this country's Founding Fathers. It won't be "liberals" (in the perverted sense in which that word is now used in the United States) trouncing conservatives, but classical liberalism re-made for the 21st century. It won't be blue obliterating red, but red, white and blue - as in Obama's healing promise earlier in this campaign, that there are not red states and blue states, just the United States.

The world needs the United States to get over its cultural civil war, and get over it fast. Not that these moral, cultural and social issues are unimportant. They are among the most important things. But they are also among the most private things. The business of government and the law should be confined to providing a liberal (in the classical sense) framework in which men and women can make personal choices about private goods. That should be only a small part of what government does. By contrast, the central business of government is to provide public goods such as national and personal security, the regulation of markets in which private enterprise can flourish, the international development that is in all our national interests, and a clean environment using diversified, sustainable energy supplies. That's what the United States needs from its new president, and that's what the world needs from the United States."

Barb said...

Rome's legions couldn't control the world --and I believe that's why we are not going into African areas re: genocide --we haven't the manpower --and we know it will be an even bigger mess for our side and the tyrannized there before it is cleaned up there. As War always seems to make things worse before things get better. In cases of civil war (as in Iraq) I always wonder how our guys can figure out who's who --when nobody wears uniforms.

We aborted many of the soldiers we could have had and thus, don't have the numbers to wage war for every cause everywhere. (Though Osama is willing to go.)

The UN should stop the genocide if it's possible --working for regime change in Darfur --while we continue to work on the nuclear and terrorist threats. Stability in Iraq is part of the strategy to contain Iran. Iran would like to control Iraq's oil against the world.

The middle east is the one that can choke off our oil in time of war, crippling our national defense and our infrastructure here at home. this is the area of the world harboring and cultivating the terrorists who attacked us and threaten to do so again. We can't help ANYone if we don't remain strong militarily--and the pathways to middle east oil are still critical because the dems didn't let us develop any new oil sources on our own lands and our vehicle makers didn't come up with efficient vehicles yet.

We should have been competing to make a U.S.-style Prius long ago --when Japan was. But Gov't can't, overnight, force innovation and force the American public to get rid of the old and buy new small cars. The price of gas is doing that. It's amazing to my husband how we continued to manufacture the popular, stylish SUV's and the big trucks -all gas guzzlers --through this year.

Back to iraq: We couldn't let Sadam, Taliban and al quaeda continue their diabolical plans unchecked, terrorizing our allies in the region, terrorizing their own fellow Muslims and blaming the US for their self-imposed misery while the band plays on here at home and the enemy plots more 9/11's.

Bush had a long range vision of this region's danger to the world, Israel and us. We believed in the WMD in Iraq and Iraqis say they DID exist as did intelligence forces here and abroad --at least as programs. And they WERE used on the Kurds (in the 90's I believe. I'm always willing to stand corrected by those who are sure of the facts like dates --no time to google today.)

And the Iraqi Shia staged a revolt against Sadam and wanted us to help them right after the end of the first Gulf War --and Bush, Sr. didn't do it then --so Bush, Jr. went to finish the business concerning WMD, (Iraq wouldn't allow inspections) knowing a majority of Iraqis would dance in the streets when Sadam was deposed. Sadam, after all, was the ultimate killer of Muslim babies and anyone who opposed him --as evidenced by the huge burial grounds we uncovered there--which may be why Sadam didn't allow the UN unfettered inspections for WMD. the world would know he was a Hitler.

It's odd to me, that those who want us in Darfur, think we had no business in Iraq --like Obama.

Barb said...

About The Guardian:

Ash says the Culture wars are about important things --private things. And he's one of those on the left who wants the right to shut up --and keep their views to themselves --private.

The left steadily erodes our American traditions which are Judeo-Christian and Biblically influenced. Our human rights compassion; our generosity; spring from our faith foundation.

You want Western Europe? Go there. Where people are agnostic and atheistic, and also rude, curt, self-centered. They aren't charitable --they have socialism --and they don't make babies unless you pay them. They are different than us --and Ash can cherish that difference if he wants, but I don't want it.

Look at a Kinkaid painting --of a house prepared for the holidays years ago. There was a time when people left their doors unlocked, most people went to church --or at least the citizens who ran things did --and they listened to sermons on character, integrity, the Golden rule, loving God, family, neighbor and enemy --and rejecting evil. They were challenged to be honest, compassionate and charitable --and "do-gooders" gathered goods and gifts for needy families.

School children could sing Silent Night without fear of the ACLU --and even act out a Christmas pageant. Thanksgiving was taught as a feast for thanking God for the Harvest. And our president told us to do that.

A warm memory for me was going down town with my father to see the Christmas lights strung across the street in boughs of evergreen --with the Christmas star in the center --alternating with Bells that lit up --all the way down Jefferson Avenue in Huntington, In. This occured the first Saturday after Thanksgiving.

My husband remembers how his elem. school would gather in the hallway and on the stairs around a huge Christmas tree and sing carols on the last day before Christmas break.

Kids weren't hauled to the principal's office for drawing pictures of nativity scenes --or EAster art featuring crosses.

That's one reason why we want vouchers --to give school choice to all people --and to preserve the traditions of our Judeo-Christian culture for our children in schools of our choice.

As more and more, secular ideology is the public school emphasis with promotion of gay marriage and condom demonstrations and the teaching of moral relativism --"what's right depends on you--your choice."

We don't want to be Western Europe with their blatant porn on tv, their cavalier attitude toward sexual relations --we have those things too, but a good half of us, at least, still have the good sense to know it's not good. We still recognize evil, in disquise, or not.

Barb said...

Thanks, Mudrake.

Truth Project guests, however, should know that this is not evangelistic as much as it is for Christians --a presentation on Christian worldview.

I've not seen the DVD's myself.

Rob, Aaron, the pastor and a couple of mothers who were concerned about cultural concerns attended the all day preparation for leaders from our church.

I dare you to come, Mudly. Unarmed of course --unless you want to bring your Bible, the Sword of the Lord.

Barb said...

I didn't think the GOP side was dishonest on that issue.

Everyone knew the GOP wanted the aid and the Dems wanted the pull-out.

The Dems' action amounted to blackmail--no aid for the troops if you don't end the war, bring them home and announce it to the world. If you leave them there, no aid from us.

That's cold.

It was only the citizen uproar and the good impression Gen. Petraes made about the surge the Dems opposed and about the timetable he opposed--that got the aid passed without the timetable.

Dems delayed this aid to the troops by their game.

Barb said...

My previous comment was to Matt's comment that both sides were dishonest in saying the other candidate opposed aid.

matthew said...

But Barb, McCain did the same thing. That's my only point.

He voted against funding the troops, too.

They BOTH voted against funding the troops when it was tied to something they were against. Both parties do this all the time because, as Craig explained, they are constantly tacking extras onto bills.

It's dishonest for either candidate to imply the other doesn't want to fund the troops, particularly when he did the same thing himself.

Are evangelicals really going to blindly support this guy and this war without insisting on some minimal degree of honesty?

kateb said...

Take heart Barb. The Christian schools are growing even as the public school indoctrination system shrinks and begins to gasp it's last.

The children are taught American history and government classes - they are not being dumbed down with regard to issues of government. Particularly freedom of religion. They are taught that this country was founded by Godly men, most of them Christian.

At these schools the days begin with prayer, the Pledge of Allegiance and the Christmas pageants are something to behold!!

Barb said...

Schooling --That's why we should vote for the GOP no matter what --besides the greater opposition to abortion. VOUCHERS. Dems won't give them because of the powerful teachers' unions which support the dems.

We have some vouchers in Ohio --but I don't think the Christian schools are yet making a huge dent in public schools --until a universal voucher system really forces competition.

Of course, that's another subject --private schools need to maintain their standards --and not rely on voucher money such that they can't afford to expel. Or the private schools will be like the public with disruptive, truant students.

Parenting is still the key to a good education--but teachers make a difference too. And parents and administrations who back up the teachers --that's a rarity.

we need school choice through vouchers.

Barb said...

Matt: But everyone knew McCain's motive in voting against a bill that included a time table-he wanted aid for the troops.

I'm not sure you can prove Obama ever did want aid for the troops --he didn't want to spend any more money on the war --not on the surge --not on supplies, etc.-- NO MORE IRAQ was his motto, in effect. So he voted against the aid, the surge, --until squeezed by the publicity.

I think it's honest to say Obama voted against everything pertaining to Iraq because he WAS AGAINST everything pertaining to Iraq.

matthew said...

I'm not here to defend the integrity of Obama. He's a wicked man.

Just look at the facts, though, without getting into an analysis of character.

McCain voted against funding the troops while blasting Obama for voting against funding the troops.

Obama voted against funding the troops while blasint McCain for voting against funding the troops.

They're both liars and it boggles my mind that evangelicals are only willing to hold it against one of them. Just like their blind allegiance to George W. Bush, the first president to bow before a Shinto shrine and the first president to celebrate Ramadan in the White House.

I'm glad Bush only fooled me once and I didn't vote for him in 2004. I'll probably live to regret voting for McCain in 2008 but the stakes are so high that I'll probably go for it. I feel like Charlie Brown with Lucy, though.

I wonder if I'm a coward. Maybe the best way to walk by faith is to sit this one out and not support either of these guys.

steve said...

I was a "troop" once. Boy was I stupid!

Barb said...

What, Steve, a Boy Scout??

I still say, Matt, that technically, neither "lied" --but Obama's inference that McCain voted against the aid for troops is that he voted against the troops. But McCain was consistently for the troops, the aid, the surge and fortunately, McCain supporters know this.

Obama, however, really has never been supportive of the surge, the aid, the troops, the efforts in Iraq--at any point. He would only vote for the troops due to political pressure. He focuses on the negative, left-leaning and no doubt the radical Islamic version of events.

Had we left Iraq with announced departure, the insurgents would have laid low until we were gone--and then all our efforts would've been for nought and the Dems would've had another "We told you so!" against Bush and GOP-- and Dems would've used that for a campaign issue --that all our money and loss of life in Iraq was for nought, a total waste.

The Dems, sad to say, had no faith that we could win the peace in Iraq. The surge made a big improvement. My nephew's army team made great strides with opposing tribal leaders in one region. He says media here has totally misrepresented our work, our relationship to the Iraqis and our success. Liberal media focuses on the Muslim bombings. That's like international media focusing on our school violence --or our murder rate in our cities.

We are given skewed view of Iraq's political and military progress. They quote people who don't like the US --missing the fact that many appreciate being free of Sadam and having us spend billions on re-building their infrastructure better than it was before --and on building their military and security forces.

(I do think we should help them with their oil money --instead of our borrowed money.)

the violence was happening at night --intimidation of the people to terrorize them, murders, etc.

So Petraeus took our troops out of the safety of the Green Zone and embedded them in the troubled neighborhoods, in the security stations with the Iraqis --and that's when things turned around for a more peaceful Iraq.

We need to pray that the middle east will come to value peace more than their ethnic differences --living by constitutional law and democratically elected leaders. They need to develop tolerance for diversity of religions --and freedom of religion.

Some of our Christians have been endangered in Baghdad lately --but imagine a Free Methodist Church receiving property from Kurdish government officials. Amazing grace.

steve said...

No, Sgt. USMC Persian Gulf veteran, 1986 - 1992.

steve said...

.. and I think I have Gulf war syndrome, I have all the symptoms, but unfortunately I don't think my crappy employer sponsered insurance covers that (of which they are doing away with next year and going with the next to useless "health care savings plans")

Barb said...

Now, now, Mudrake --You better take your meds. You're posting my address over and over and over again--that's sort of like OCD, you know.

"Come now, let us reason together." My address is on my church invite --so you can stop posting it for me. Thank you, though. It was sweet of you to want to help the bloggers find my house.

Barb said...

Thing is, Mudly, many of these commenters have been to my house at some time or another. So you don't have to help THEM.

Only SS and Valerie and kateb and Steve and Candyly have not been to my house --but kateb's daughter has been, if I'm right about who she is.

I think it would be nice if Steve and Candyly would come by to the Truth Project--about Christian worldview. We support the same charities, after all -including World Vision. How about Voice of the Martyrs? NOw there's a worthy group.

So you can quit posting my address now, Mudrake, and go to bed. Night night.

Barb said...

Are you not elegible, Steve, for any veterans health benefit for Gulf War Syndrome?? What are your symptoms --just tell dr. barb....

Seriously, I hope you get better and good care --maybe under the Obama plan, huh? like VA medicine.

steve said...

haha, I doubt I have gulf war syndrome, I'm a nursing student so I only sleep about 4 hours a night. Ask my wife, I've fallen asleep at my desk studying medical terms and doing drug calculations 2wice in the last week.