Biden Predicts a Crisis – WTF?!

This weekend, Joe Biden predicted Obama will be tested by an international, generated crisis within first six months of his presidency to determine his mettle.

Now, Joe Lieberman said last June that the U.S. will be attacked next year because “Our enemies will test the new president early.”

What intelligence are these senators receiving that they are both predicting an attack and can they give us any more details? Otherwise, this is irresponsible fear-mongering and I said so right after Lieberman made his comments. I do not see the benefit of such comments unless these men have more information to share with us.

Stop scaring the American electorate, douchebags!!

McCain Failed Vietnam POWs Left Behind

The Nation again raises questions about John McCain’s participation in efforts to keep hidden information regarding American POWs left behind after the Vietnam War. McCain has helped pass legislation that prevents families of Vietnam POWs from obtaining answers as to the fates of their loved ones. Such actions seem subhuman, but are failing to gain any attention in the mainstream media during this most important election of our times.

An early and critical attempt by McCain to conceal evidence involved 1990 legislation called the Truth bill, which started in the House. A brief and simple document, the bill would have compelled complete transparency about prisoners and missing men.

Bitterly opposed by the Pentagon (and thus by McCain), the bill went nowhere. Reintroduced the following year, it again disappeared. But a few months later a new measure, the McCain bill, suddenly appeared. It created a bureaucratic maze from which only a fraction of the documents could emerge–only the records that revealed no POW secrets. The McCain bill became law in 1991 and remains so today.

McCain was also instrumental in amending the Missing Service Personnel Act, which was strengthened in 1995 by POW advocates to include criminal penalties against “any government official who knowingly and willfully withholds from the file of a missing person any information relating to the disappearance or whereabouts and status of a missing person.” A year later, in a closed House-Senate conference on an unrelated military bill, McCain, at the behest of the Pentagon, attached a crippling amendment to the act, stripping out its only enforcement teeth, the criminal penalties, and reducing the obligations of commanders in the field to speedily search for missing men and report the incidents to the Pentagon.

McCain’s lack of character in other areas makes it very plausible the Republican presidential candidate would hinder efforts to find these hundreds of missing POWs. What isn’t plausible is the fact that he’s getting away without answering question 1 on this topic. There is a signicant double standard in the treatment of the presidential candidate. And while the Republicans continue to cry wolf, it is inherently clear that if McCain were held to the same standards as Obama by the media, he wouldn’t stand a snowball’s chance in hell of being elected.

Executive Branch Continues Trend Toward Authoritarianism

You know that whole “Give Me Liberty or Give Me Death!” philosophy for which we Americans are so famous? And you know how the Bush administration has been squashing it one civil liberty at a time? Well, the George W. Bush band plays on into the very twilight of his term.

Reuters reported Friday that the Justice Department new rules for the FBI, which will kick in Oct. 1,

Justice Department and FBI officials told a news briefing the changes would allow agents in some terrorism cases to use informants, do physical surveillance and conduct interviews without identifying themselves or their true purpose.

They said such techniques currently could be used in ordinary criminal cases, but not for those involving national security, before an investigation has begun.

Not a big deal? Remember, that these laws the government erects to “protect us” and “keep us secure” can easily be misused to inappropriately prey on U.S. citizens. Of course, red flags at the ACLU went up,

The American Civil Liberties Union expressed concern the rewritten rules had been drafted in a way to allow the FBI to begin surveillance without factual evidence to back it up.

It said that under the new guidelines, a person’s race or ethnic background could be used as a factor in opening an investigation, a move the ACLU believes will institute racial profiling as a matter of policy.

Would a McCain administration continue this town spiral toward authoritianism? You bet your ass.

In Feel Good News: Medvedev Says He Would Attack Georgia

even if it was on its way to becoming a NATO member. As Reuters reports, the Russian (cough, cough) leader was speaking to the Valdai Club, which is essentially a gathering of Russian experts to discuss Russia’s positions.

Crazily enough, Medvedev also said, according the the report, “Georgia’s August 8 attack on the pro-Russian breakaway region of South Ossetia was Russia’s equivalent of the September 11 attacks on the United States.”

Wow. A military operation in a completely separate country was Russia’s 9/11… That Slavic sense of humor! Stop it, you silly arsehole!

Think Progress Reports on McCain’s Silence on Iraq

McCain has been curiously silent on his policy regarding Iraq other than claims of the surge’s success. He only mentioned Iraq twice during his convention speech, despite the fact that it rates second as the biggest issue on voters’ minds. According to TP, CNN’s Dana Bash says,

Why? A McCain adviser I talked to tonight admitted that talking about anything related to Bush especially policy, especially Iraq policy, is basically a political death knell especially for John McCain right now. So he didn’t mention it at all.

Not surprising seeing as how, as TP reported, another CNN reporter who has been as embedded as you can get in Iraq, Michael Ware spoke to Campbell Brown,

WARE: Well, at this point, a win may just be getting out while minimizing the damage.

Now, to what degree has the surge played into this? Again, that’s a matter of definition. What exactly is the surge? I would love to hear Senator McCain explain that — 30,000 troops…

BROWN: The increase in troops, the 30,000 troops. That’s what he means, though, when he says it, right?

(CROSSTALK)

WARE: Yes. Well, if that’s what he means, then he has no idea what is going on in Iraq, because what has delivered the successes we’re seeing now, as drops of 80 to 90 percent in violence, and who doesn’t welcome that, began two years ago or more, when the U.S. began engaging with its enemy, the Sunni insurgency when it started bringing in al Qaeda, and putting them on the U.S. government payroll, setting them loose on hard-core al Qaeda elements, and setting them loose on Shia militias.

BROWN: So, strategy, rather than the 30,000 troops?

WARE: Yes, the 30,000 troops was sort of like the icing on the cake.

McCain knows what’s going on. But he lies for his political ambitions. Those who trust his military instincts should be careful to remember that Bush’s lies about the war are almost treasonous. McCain is lying as well and, so far, lies have gotten thousands killed.

I’ve written a number of blogs trying to shed light on what is really going on in Iraq:

Decreased Violence in Iraq

Finally, Honesty about the Surge

and Leiberman’s politicization of the surge:

Lieberman Using Surge Resolution for Shady Politics

Mother Jones Address 9/11 Truthers

In a light-on-substance article on Mother Jones, David Gibson reviews a few of the 9/11 Truth Movements’ films, Loose Change, Able Danger and The Reflecting Pool. What drew me in, however, was the chuckle-worthy caption: In search of intelligent life among the 9/11 tinfoil-hatters. As a Skeptic Society member, I’ve already read quite a few rebuttals of the 9/11 Truth dogma, but I decided to give Gibson’s a quick read because the caption was so deserving. After skipping over the boring movie reviews, I located the relevant opinion I share:

But the most annoying thing about the movies—and the Truthers—is that the actual truth, in all its awful complexity, isn’t enough for them. No matter that 3,000 Americans died because of bungling and blowback, or that the Bush administration twisted their deaths into pretexts for unnecessary war and executive power run amok. The Truthers want more. They’ve missed the real lesson of the Bush administration, which is not that a secretive cabal runs the White House, but that its diabolic intent has been trumped by its staggering incompetence. Seven years on, the neocon notion that imperial power can reshape reality has been fully exposed as a fantasy. Yet the Truthers cling to the myth of official omnipotence, making them some of the last Americans who still believe that this administration could successfully pull off anything bigger than T-ball on the South Lawn.

To be sure, the Bush administration has made it all too easy to succumb to conspiratorial thinking. Due to official stalling and stonewalling, the full story of September 11 remains a work in progress. The 9/11 Commission’s official account glossed over uncomfortable questions but read like a page-turner. Fittingly, a nation hungry for answers gobbled it up; nearly 9 million copies of the report were sold or downloaded, and it enjoyed a second life in comic-book form. The 9/11 skeptics have tapped into this desire for answers—a common Truther refrain is that they’re “just asking questions.” But that’s like proponents of intelligent design saying they don’t know how the universe was created. The Truthers aren’t filling in the gaps in our reality; they’re already living in an alternate one.

We ignore the 9/11 Truthers because they seem so silly and have no answers – only questions. But opposing quackery wherever it may hide is especially important in this world where misinformation proliferates freely and rapidly.