Category: US Politics

The BBC, ever ready to publish something anti-Republican, have dug up the Head Jailer at the Hanoi Hilton during the Vietnam War where John McCain was incarcerated after having to eject from his jet. It now appears that after all this time they were actually the best of mates and the North Vietnamese were nice chaps.

“McCain is my friend,” said 75-year-old Mr Duyet as he feeds the caged birds he now keeps in his garden in this coastal city. “If I was American, I would vote for him.”

but;

“…. I can confirm to you that we never tortured him. We never tortured any prisoners.”

Besides lying about being tortured then, McCain is still lying;

“But I can somehow sympathise with him. He lies to American voters in order to get their support for his presidential election.”

You have to give it to the BBC; they start the article with ‘I would vote for him’ and from that point on ‘McCain’s a lying hound’ Didn’t torture prisoners….yeah right.

On the US political front a new Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health study of Iraq has said 600,000 died post invasion and Barbara Striesand screams “shut the f***k up to a heckler complaining about a skit during her show that depicted Bush as a bumbling idiot. Maybe if she had stated at the start “This is a free Democrat Party election advertisement” then the heckler would’ve had nothing to complain about. She added “Shut up if you can’t take a joke!” It’s not funny Barbara and you’re not a commedienne, or a believable political commentator for that matter, so just stick to singing. The Iraq deaths, a statistical extrapolation from approximately 40,000 known dead has been gleefully reported by the Tehran Times and is so blatantly released in time for the 7 Nov elections that I’m surprised it gets any oxygen from the general media. Our ABC, of course, are all over it.

Sex scandal threatens to sink Republicans The Times reports

THE iron grip with which Republicans have held the House of Representatives for the past 12 years appears looser by the day with each fresh disclosure in the sex scandal involving Congressman Mark Foley and teenage boys working on Capitol Hill.

and quotes a pollster.

Frank Luntz, a Republican pollster, predicted yesterday that the mid-terms are set to mirror those of 1994 when Democrats were swept from power by a wave of voter anger. He said: “I watched something similar happen in 1997 when Tony Blair’s Labour Party won its landslide against the Conservatives. The Republicans are sinking fast.”

I’m not convinced. When the story first broke I surfed around to get some idea of the severity of Foley’s crimes and stumbled across Tim Dunlops “Road to Surfdom Hysteria” I followed a link from this line “The emails are stomach-turning: you can see them here. I followed the link anticipating hot flushes, nausea and the development of a burning desire to kill the nearest paedophile. I was dissapointed. I read them again…well, they are creepy in a “send me a picture of yourself” and “what would you like for a birthday present” sort of way but the hysteria eluded me. Tim Blair quotes Kerry Howley at Reason on Line who says

The Mark Foley pedophilia sex scandal lacks two things: pedophilia and sex.

I would hope that Foley’s’ public office’ days are over, he apparently has a track record of bothering Pages and comes across as creepy and immature, but if it reflects significantly on the Republican vote I’ll be surprised. The “holier than thou” hypocritical reaction of the Democrats lacks substance in the light of actualy having sex with an intern (Clinton); get drunk, crash a car into the water and leave the passenger to drown (Kennedy); and actually having sex with a 17 yr old male page (Studds) to name just a few transgressions. Casualties so far;

Foley’s has resigned,

The chief of staff for Republican Congressman Tom Reynolds, Kirk Fordham, has resigned after questions were raised about his role in the handling of the congressional page scandal, and Speaker of the House Hastert is under pressure but will most probably survive.

One for being stupid and weird and two for keeping the fact under wraps. That should be it and if pundits are predictng the collapse of the Republican Party over one bad apple then they need some history lessons.  People in glass houses…….etc

The daughter of the former FBI agent who was revealed this week as Deep Throat has acknowledged that money played a role in the family’s decision to go public. Grandson Nick, heads for similar career based on honour and honesty.

“My son, Nick, is in law school and he’ll owe $US100,000 ($A132,500) by the time he graduates,” she said. “I am still a single mum, still supporting them to one degree or another, and I am not ashamed of this.”

Dad’s weak at the moment, let’s go talk to him.

Joan Felt said her father suffered a stroke in 2001 and has undergone surgery for heart problems and a broken hip but is still lucid.

Daughter gets him in a weak moment and now he believes that he was a hero.

“We had to help him see that most of the world now considers what he did heroic,” she said. “At the time it was happening, he wouldn’t have gotten that percentage of support, but history has shown it was so important what he did.”

I’m no fan of Tricky Dicky but I am of institutions, Official Secrets Acts and outwardly (at least) apolitical Public Servants and holders of high office. Doubtful motivation to the end.

As reported in this post President Bush was scheduled to addresses the graduating class at Calvin College at Grand Rapids, Michegan. Yesterday he did the deed and in doing so, failed miserable in politicising the event as forecast be the MSM and certain left-wing pundits He urged the graduates to consider service to the community in their post-grad lives, saying;

This isn’t a Democratic idea. This isn’t a Republican idea. This is an American idea,”

and

“As your generation takes its place in the world, all of you must make this decision: Will you be a spectator or a citizen?”

He received warm applause but some Democrat voters protested;

Several dozen people (from a student body of over 4,000) protesting outside the event and a few graduates at the ceremony wore stickers that said: “God is not a Republican or Democrat.”

Meanwhile George shows he has a sense of humour with this closing line;

“Some day you will appreciate the grammar and verbal skills you learned here,” quipped the president who is not known for his eloquence. “If any of you wonder how far a mastery of the English language can take you, just look what it did for me.”

On the face of it, the speach sounded like any other graduating day speach. MSM and the left must be so dissappointed.

Along the lines of Ripley’s Believe it or Not Tim Dunlop has found a liberal arts educational institution with some staff and students who don’t like Bush!

George Bush, also known as the President, is giving a speech there soon, so you’d expect the usual sort of pro-God, pro-Republican tautological sucking up, right? Well, to the eternal (and I do mean eternal) credit of their faculty and students, not so much:

Calvin College in Grand Rapids, Missouri describes themselves as;

…distinctively Christian, academically excellent liberal arts college that shapes minds for intentional participation in the renewal of all things.

Running Scared posts that one third of the faculty members have signed a political add that will appear in the local rag on the day Bush visits at a cost of $2600 and more than 800 students, faculty and alumni have also placed a political add in the local rag on the same day to the tune of $9,600. Calvin College has 4,300 students so roughly a fifth have been convinced to back some of their teachers in this political exercise. The other 80% might like to ask where the $12,000 is coming from. In this startling, revelationary post Tim has so far established that a percentage of staff and students in a college in the US vote Democrat. As that would be the case on every campus in the country it’s hardly a scoop. I Googled Calvin College+Grand Rapids and studied the College’s website looking for Anti-Bush sentiment. Mmmm…a bit sparse. If Tim and Running Scared are to be believed you would think that if Students, faculty and alumni are forking out over $12,000 it would be all over the website. I did find some negative vibes but hardly a groundswell The front page of the students newsletter, the normal source of campus radical thought, offers little in the way of providing another source for the story. The College President says;

… that the response of alumni to news of the president’s coming has been overwhelmingly positive, although he has had a few alumni who object.

Provost Carpenter says;

In response to rumors of possible protests, [he]… responds that although the event will unavoidably have political dimensions to it, it is “important to be good hosts and to show the personal and institutional maturity of being able to extend hospitality and a civil audience to someone whom we may disagree with.�?

No, I don’t know what the appointment ‘Provost’ is either but at least he hints at some political dimension to the visit. It all looks like a couple of bloggers have sat down and thought ‘ How can I put down on Bush today? They should have picked a better example, if there is one. 20% of the student body and one third of the staff disagreeing with Bush’s visit is hardly an election winner.