Posted by Len on Friday, March 28th, 2008 at 1:37 am CT in Humor,Politics
The Friday Night Cartoons arrived a bit early this week. In fact, some may say that it is still Thursday night right now, or possibly early Friday morning. So, they’re early. As Hillary would say, “I’m only human.” (You may want to fact check that.)
Here are the political and editorial cartoons that have been deemed worthy to appear in our collection of the best of the week just passed. Click on the thumbnails to view them full sized and, if you pay attention to the line that will appear at the bottom of your browser screen, you can even enjoy a slide show. Hope you have fun with them!
As always, our thanks to the talented and observant cartoonists who help us smile through the pain. We’ll do it again next week.
WASHINGTON (AP) – The State Department has instructed all personnel at the U.S. Embassy in Baghdad not to leave reinforced structures due to incoming insurgent rocket fire that has killed two American government workers this week.
In a memo sent Thursday to embassy staff and obtained by The Associated Press, the department says employees are required to wear helmets, body armor and other protective gear if they must venture outside and strongly advises them to sleep in blast-resistant locations instead of the less secure trailers that most occupy.
“Due to the continuing threat of indirect fire in the International Zone, all personnel are advised to remain under hard cover at all times,” it says. “Personnel should only move outside of hard cover for essential reasons.”
“Essential outdoor movements should be sharply limited in duration,” the memo says, adding that personal protective equipment “is mandatory for all outside movements.”
“We strongly recommend personnel do not sleep in their trailers,” it goes on to say, offering space inside the Saddam Hussein-era palace that is the embassy’s temporary home as well as room at an as-yet uncompleted new embassy compound and a limited supply of cots.
In a separate public notice to American citizens in Iraq, the embassy said the restrictions would remain in place “until further notice.”
The staff memo says all personnel under the authority of the chief of mission “are required to wear body armor, helmet and protective eyewear any time they are outside of building structures in the International Zone. In addition, chief of mission personnel in the International Zone have been advised to remain inside of hardened structures at all times, except for mission essential movements.”
We really have a lot to show for five years, don’t we?
WASHINGTON (Reuters) – Somebody forgot to tell Hillary Clinton the Democratic presidential race is over and Barack Obama won.
Obama has captured more state contests, more votes and more of the pledged convention delegates who will help decide which Democrat faces Republican Sen. John McCain in November’s presidential election.
But Clinton, a New York senator who has flirted with disaster before in the back-and-forth nominating battle with Obama, shrugs off growing predictions of doom and still sees at least a narrow path to victory.
“I hear it in the atmosphere,” Clinton said of the increasingly loud chatter about whether she should drop out and let Democrats focus on the general election campaign.
“But the most common thing that people say to me … is ‘Don’t give up, keep going. We’re with you.’ And I feel really good about that because that’s what I intend to do,” she told reporters on Tuesday.
Clinton has not been hearing those words of encouragement from a chorus of media commentators and Obama supporters who have questioned why she is pursuing her uphill fight to catch the Illinois senator.
It’s time to hang it up, Hill. You fought the good fight, but now it’s time to let your party get on with the business at hand: ensuring that George W. Bush does not get a third term.
A sizable number of Hillary Clinton supporters may break ranks to back John McCain in November should Barack Obama capture the Democratic nomination, a new Gallup poll suggests.
According to the just-released poll, 28 percent of Clinton’s supporters would back McCain should the New York senator lose her quest for the Democratic nomination. That compares to the 19 percent of Obama supporters who say they will favor McCain should Clinton be the party’s nominee.
“[The results] suggest that some Clinton supporters are so strongly opposed to Obama (or so loyal to Clinton) that they would go so far as to vote the “other” party’s candidate next November if Obama is the Democratic nominee,” Frank Newport of Gallup said of the survey’s findings.
Democrats just suffered through seven years of the Republicans and George W. Bush and now you’re telling me that up to a quarter of them are petulant enough to vote for another four years (at least) of the same if their favored candidate does not win the Democratic nomination?
Nope, not believing it. Not for an instant.
This is politics, kids. There are a lot of people out there who feel rather strongly about Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama, whether it be for or against. I, for example, am not terribly fond of Hillary Clinton. But, come November, you can bet your butt I’m voting for her if she is the Democratic nominee.
Once we finally settle on a nominee, I strongly believe you will see the Democrats coming together in support of that nominee. Despite what some hot-heads may be saying now, there is no way we are going to let our family squabbles result in another Republican administration.
GREENSBURG, Pa. (AP) – Hillary Rodham Clinton said Tuesday she made a mistake in claiming that she came under hostile fire in Bosnia 12 years ago, as rival Barack Obama’s campaign continued to challenge her credibility.
In a recent speech and interviews, the New York senator described a harrowing scene in Tuzla, Bosnia, in which she and her daughter, Chelsea, had to run for cover as soon as they landed for a visit in 1996. But video footage of the day showed a peaceful reception in which a young girl greeted the first lady on the tarmac.
Clinton told reporters in Pennsylvania on Tuesday that she erred in describing the scene, which she now realizes after talking with aides and others.
“So I made a mistake,” she said. “That happens. It proves I’m human, which you know, for some people, is a revelation.”
She didn’t err, she lied. Watch:
If her last name were not Clinton, her campaign would now be over. She has proven beyond doubt that she, like her best friend John McCain, cannot be trusted to tell the truth.
Now, adding salt to the wound, she is desperately trying to divert attention away from her lie…
GREENSBURG, Pa. (AP) – Hillary Rodham Clinton said Tuesday she would have left the church that Barack Obama attends if her minister had talked about America the way Obama’s pastor has.
Clinton’s comments to reporters marked a clear shift in her handling of the Obama church controversy, which she had generally avoided until now. Some Democrats see Obama’s refusal to dissociate himself from the Chicago church and its recently retired minister, Jeremiah Wright, as his stickiest campaign challenge so far.
“I think that given all we have heard and seen, he would not have been my pastor,” Clinton said at a news conference in Greensburg, Pa., after being asked if Obama should have left the church. She declined to say what Obama should have done, or whether the subject is now a legitimate topic for her appeals to Democratic superdelegates, the party leaders who will decide whether she or Obama will be the presidential nominee.
She’s even going so far as to try to convince pledged delegates to the National Convention that they aren’t really pledged after all..
WASHINGTON (AP) – Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton won’t catch Sen. Barack Obama in pledged delegates won in primaries and caucuses, but she’s recently said those delegates aren’t really bound to Obama.
True, but she omits a key safeguard against delegate switches: The people who serve as pledged delegates are selected by the campaigns who won them and loyalty is a key qualification.
Clinton, in an interview Monday with the editorial board of the Philadelphia Daily News, said pledged delegates are no different from superdelegates, the party and elected officials who can support whomever they choose at the convention, regardless of the outcome of the primaries.
“Pledged delegates in most states are not pledged,” Clinton told the board, according the newspaper’s Web site. “You know, there is no requirement that anybody vote for anybody. They’re just like superdelegates.”
You gotta give her an ‘A’ for effort. However, she gets an ‘F’ for execution.
If, by some fluke, Hillary Clinton wins the Democratic nomination, I will be voting for her in November. It will definitely be one of those “lesser of two evils” votes, though. I sure am tired of casting those.
Posted by Len on Monday, March 24th, 2008 at 4:17 pm CT in Iraq,Politics
You can forget about the 4,000 American soldiers who have given their lives for George W. Bush’s war in Iraq. Never mind the thousands of others who are crippled or maimed for life. Their families and loved ones count for nothing. According to Dick Cheney, the biggest burden in Iraq belongs to George W. Bush. All those other people volunteered, after all. Poor George just happened to be in the wrong place at the wrong time.
In an exclusive interview with ABC News, Vice President Dick Cheney was asked what effect the grim milestone of at least 4,000 U.S. deaths in the five-year Iraq war might have on the nation.
Noting the burden placed on military families, the vice president said the biggest burden is carried by President George W. Bush, who made the decision to commit US troops to war, and reminded the public that U.S. troops in Iraq and Afghanistan volunteered for duty.
“I want to start with the milestone today of 4,000 dead in Iraq. Americans. And just what effect do you think it has on the country?” asked ABC News’ White House correspondent, Martha Raddatz, who traveled with the vice president on a nine-day overseas trip to Iraq and other countries in the Middle East.
“It obviously brings home I think for a lot of people the cost that’s involved in the global war on terror in Iraq and Afghanistan,” Cheney said in the interview, conducted in Turkey. “It places a special burden obviously on the families, and we recognize, I think — it’s a reminder of the extent to which we are blessed with families who’ve sacrificed as they have.”
“The president carries the biggest burden, obviously,” Cheney said. “He’s the one who has to make the decision to commit young Americans, but we are fortunate to have a group of men and women, the all-volunteer force, who voluntarily put on the uniform and go in harm’s way for the rest of us.”
In stark contrast, here are the statements from the Democratic presidential candidates…
It is with great sadness that we have reached another grim milestone in Iraq, with at least 4,000 of our finest Americans having been killed. Each death is a tragedy, and we honor every fallen American and send our thoughts and prayers to their families. It is past time to end this war that should never have been waged by bringing our troops home, and finally pushing Iraq’s leaders to take responsibility for their future. As we do, we must serve the memory of all who have died as well as they served our country, by providing support for their families, caring for our troops and veterans, and upholding the American values which our fallen heroes exemplified through their service.
Five years after the start of the war in Iraq, there have now been 4,000 U.S. military deaths in Iraq. On this solemn day, we remember the sacrifice of our brave men and women in uniform. We honor the tens of thousands more who have suffered wounds both visible and invisible, wounds that scar bodies and minds, and hearts as well. We honor the sacrifices of their families, a price paid in empty places at the dinner table, in the struggle to raise children alone, in the wrenching reversal of parents burying children.
In the last five years, our soldiers have done everything we asked of them and more. They were asked to remove Saddam Hussein from power and bring him to justice and they did. They were asked to give the Iraqi people the opportunity for free and fair elections and they did. They were asked to give the Iraqi government the space and time for political reconciliation, and they did. So for every American soldier who has made the ultimate sacrifice for this mission, we should imagine carved in stone: “They gave their life for the greatest gift one can give to a fellow human being, the gift of freedom.”
I recall the great honor of meeting many of our brave men and women who have served our country. In meeting them, I am always struck by how, no matter how great their suffering, no matter how grave their own injuries, they always say the same thing to me: “Promise that you’ll take care of my buddies. They’re still over there. Promise you’ll keep them safe.”
I have looked those men and women in the eye. I have made that promise. And I intend to honor it by bringing a responsible end to this war, and bringing our troops home safely.
There are those who believe there is no great difference between Republican and Democrat. They need to think again.
Senator John McCain never fails to call himself a conservative Republican as he campaigns as his party’s presumptive presidential nominee. He often adds that he was a “foot soldier” in the Reagan revolution and that he believes in the bedrock conservative principles of small government, low taxes and the rights of the unborn.
What Mr. McCain almost never mentions are two extraordinary moments in his political past that are at odds with the candidate of the present: His discussions in 2001 with Democrats about leaving the Republican Party, and his conversations in 2004 with Senator John Kerry about becoming Mr. Kerry’s running mate on the Democratic presidential ticket.
There are wildly divergent versions of both episodes, depending on whether Democrats or Mr. McCain and his advisers are telling the story. The Democrats, including Mr. Kerry, say that not only did Mr. McCain express interest but that it was his camp that initially reached out to them. Mr. McCain and his aides counter that in both cases the Democrats were the suitors and Mr. McCain the unwilling bride.
Either way, the episodes shed light on a bitter period in Mr. McCain’s life after the 2000 presidential election, when he was, at least in policy terms, drifting away from his own party. They also offer a glimpse into his psychological makeup and the difficulties in putting a label on his political ideology over many years in the Senate.[..]
In the spring of 2001, Mr. McCain was by most accounts still angry about the smear campaign that had been run against him when he was campaigning for the Republican presidential nomination in the South Carolina primary the previous year. He had long blamed the Bush campaign for spreading rumors in the state that he had fathered a black child out of wedlock, which Bush aides denied. Mr. McCain was also upset that the new White House had shut the door on hiring so many of his aides.
“Very few, if any, of John’s people made it into the administration,” Mr. Daschle later wrote in his book “Like No Other Time.” “John didn’t think that was right, that his staff should be penalized like that.”
Mr. McCain had begun to ally himself with the Democrats on a number of issues, and had told Mr. Daschle that he planned to vote against the Bush tax cuts, a centerpiece of the new president’s domestic agenda. Mr. McCain often made “disparaging comments” about Mr. Bush on the floor of the Senate, Mr. Daschle recalled.[..]
But less than three years later, Mr. McCain was once again in talks with the Democrats, this time over whether he would be Mr. Kerry’s running mate. In an interview with a blog last year, Mr. Kerry said that the initial idea had come from Mr. McCain’s side, as had happened in 2001.
Mr. Kerry, reacting to reports in The Hill newspaper last year about Mr. Weaver’s 2001 approach to Mr. Downey, said he saw a pattern. “It doesn’t surprise me completely because his people similarly approached me to engage in a discussion about his potentially being on the ticket as vice president,” Mr. Kerry told Jonathan Singer of MyDD.com, a prominent liberal blog, in remarks that are available in an audio version online and that Mr. Kerry’s staff said last week were accurate. “So his people were active — let’s put it that way.”
Two former Kerry strategists said last week that Mr. Weaver went to Mr. Kerry’s house in Georgetown a short time after Mr. Kerry won the Democratic nomination in March and asked that Mr. Kerry consider Mr. McCain as his running mate.
Then Mr. McCain was promised the 2008 Republican presidential nomination (which, miraculously, he now has) and all was well again.
What amazes me is that there are still so many people who cannot see through this man. He’s so transparent that he’s hardly even visible. It is now his “turn” to be the president and he is willing to say or do anything, right down to abandoning his own core beliefs and principles, to make it so.
It seems that we don’t hear much about these days, given all else that is going on (like Obama’s preacher and what not), but George W. Bush’s and John McCain’s war of choice in Iraq wages on…
BAGHDAD – Rockets and mortars pounded Baghdad’s U.S.-protected Green Zone Sunday and a suicide car bomber struck an Iraqi army post in the northern city of Mosul in a surge of attacks that killed at least 57 people nationwide.
The latest violence underscored the fragile security situation and the resilience of both Sunni and Shiite extremist groups as the war enters its sixth year and the U.S. death toll in the conflict approaches 4,000.
Attacks in Baghdad probably stemmed from rising tensions between rival Shiite groups — some of whom may have been behind the Green Zone blasts. It was the most sustained assault in months against the nerve center of the U.S. mission.
Spare a thought today for our brave men and women who are caught up in this fiasco, won’t you? Perhaps soon we can start bringing them home to their families where they belong.
Casey Knowles was the young girl in bed in the stock footage purchased by the Clinton campaign for use in their now infamous 3 a.m. ad. She wants everybody to know that she did not approve that message…
Pretty gutsy stuff for a young lady who is only 17 years old. Something tells me we’ll be hearing more about young Casey Knowles in the future.
