On the 27th of February, in the year 1860, a tall, gangly man with a nasally voice and bizarre features spoke at Cooper Union in New York for an hour and thirty minutes on the subjects of slavery and the Constitution. In all, fifteen hundred people, mostly New Yorkers, were in attendance. Despite the fact that the man giving the speech was little known, it was widely covered by New York newspapers which had significant influence over other daily’s printed elsewhere. In the days that followed it was reprinted in full by numerous papers, snowballing across the northern States.

That speech is now known to as The Cooper Union Address and would become one of the most crucial factors in making that tall, gangly unknown man from Illinois the first Republican President of the United States.

Despite the fact that he wasn’t met upon his arrival in New York, he would do two crucial things in hopes of ensuring that his appearance received publicity.

First, he checked into the Astor House Hotel, New York’s premier hotel at the time, and a place routinely watched by members of the media given the celebrity of much of its clientele. This first step succeeded in creating enough talk around town to ensure that Cooper Union was filled to capacity.

Second, he went to Mathew Brady’s photography studio where he sat for a portrait, one that would ultimately be run along side the reprinting of the speech that he would give.

These two factors, though not as important as the content of the speech itself, played a crucial role in ensuring that it, and he, ultimately reached millions of Americans.

I mention this as I look quietly at a photograph of Sarah Palin speaking in Nashville last Saturday. I wonder, as I reflect on the life of the only man in history to win a democratic election whilst in the middle of a civil war, what Sarah Palin has to offer those that view her as some saving grace. I sit and wonder what Mr. Lincoln might think of Mrs. Palin claiming herself a Republican, her views, and the fact that millions of Americans actually take her seriously. I wonder these things and am disillusioned. For how, in the course of American events, has it come to this?

February 9, 2010

Another day in paradise. The rivers are flowing backwards, the rain falling upwards, and the North Koreans have, for the second time, been removed from the auspicious Axis Of Evil.

Meanwhile, John McCain, to his credit, found himself defending Barack Obama at a recent Republican Party rally. One woman in the audience actually claimed that she didn’t trust Obama because “he’s an Arab”, after which Senator McCain quickly took the microphone away from her.

Of course, what would it matter if anyone running for the Presidency were an Arab American? It wouldn’t. Unless, that is, you’re the sort of bigot that believes that race somehow automatically infers that someone is, for example, a terrorist or terrorist sympathizer.

If McCain is to be given credit for anything said at that rally it’s certainly the following…

“…but I have to tell you…I have to tell you…he is a decent person that you do not have to be scared as President of the United States.”

Boos and jeering followed as McCain continued talking.

October 11, 2008 34 Comments

As the folks over at Crooks And Liars have been pointing out, Chris Matthews, like him or dislike him, has been rightly admonishing Republicans supporting Mr. McCain for distancing themselves from the responsibilities of the current administration, and the Republican party itself, regarding the current economic crisis. In a recent interview with Congressman Eric Cantor, Matthews said…

“The way we keep score in American politics is the party that’s in power for eight years and runs the White House — and 3/4 of the time runs the Congress and the White House — takes the heat when things go bad. Congressman Cantor, you’re trying to change the rules now and saying, ‘oh, if we take off our uniforms and don’t say we’re Republicans this week, the people will be fooled.’ I’ve never heard of that happening in politics.”

Matthews did the same thing in another recent interview with McCain Senior Policy Advisor Nancy Pfotenhauer…

“Matthews: But I don’t understand – John McCain is the nominee of the Republican Party.

Pfotenhauer: Yes.

Matthews: He’s going to stand in that debate next Friday night on the 26th, because he is the nominee of the Republican Party. That’s why he has a 50/50 chance of winning this election. Because he is the nominee of the Republican Party and the other guy is the nominee-Barack Obama-of the Democratic Party. How can you run away from the party whose platform you’re running on? I don’t understand how you can deny that you’re the in party, you’re the incumbent party.”

September 17, 2008 8 Comments

John McCain’s campaign can attack Barack Obama’s lack of foreign policy experience until they’re blue in the face and Sarah Palin’s lack of experience can be equally attacked until the sun implodes. The truth is that when President George W. Bush took office in January of 2001 he had absolutely no foreign policy experience – unless you count dealing with foreign Major League Baseball players. True, his running mate was Secretary of Defense under George Bush Senior, but that doesn’t alter the fact that Bush himself had none. When the shit hit the fan on the morning of September 11th the nation would be introduced to a cabal of foreign policy experts that had assumed positions within the Bush Administration, among them noted lunatics such as Paul Wolfowitz, whose Defense Planning Guidance penned during Cheney’s reign at the DOD would be transformed into one of the most reckless foreign policy doctrines in US history.

The truth is that President Bush had nothing to do with the foreign policy doctrine that now bears his name. It was promoted by a group of hardliners prior to his election, implemented after 9/11, and would, at an unprecedented rate, irrevocably harm America’s reputation abroad.

So what do I care that some conservative moose hunting fanatic from Alaska has no foreign policy experience? In truth, there hasn’t been a President since Dwight Eisenhower that has had substantial first hand foreign policy experience – and even he, in his finest hour, admonished the very real threat of US militarism as it pertained to the nation’s soul. If we’re to cut the shit, an actor turned politician is widely hailed in the United States for ending the Cold War. That alone should say something.

Yesterday during Palin’s speech she claimed that John McCain has first hand experience with regards to how “tough fights are won”. Sorry to disappoint, Sarah, but Mr. McCain was a prisoner of war in a conflict that was lost by the United States. John McCain did indeed survive, and his personal fortitude under the circumstances should be applauded. I’ll not deny his heroics with regards to the fire on the USS Forrestal in 1967, nor the fact that following that incident, and the injuries he sustained, he volunteered to serve on the USS Oriskany and continue to fly missions. I will also no deny that after being shot down he was attacked by locals, stabbed, beaten, and then initially refused medical treatment by the North Vietnamese, who beat and interrogated him for information until they learned that his father was an Admiral. In fact, McCain’s father and Grandfather were Admirals.

John McCain’s ordeal was indeed severe, and questioning his service isn’t the issue. What is the issue is the context in which it is used. Despite the fact that his internment by the North Vietnamese elevated him to the level of an American hero, the reality is that there is a rather large stone monument in Washington on which the names of those who did not return from that war stands as testament to its utter folly. Marines lost at Khe Sanh, boys too young to even legally drink a beer in their home towns disappeared in jungles never to be seen again. The dregs of US society largely fought that war, and the recognition of their sacrifice actually had to be fought for after the fact.

John McCain is a war hero. A hero of a war that was lost, that should have never been fought, and that took the lives of over 58,000 Americans and injured a further 304,000. In its aftermath, more Vietnam veterans would commit suicide than were lost in the war itself. In a study conducted in the late 1980’s it was revealed that, at the time, 29,000 Vietnam vets were serving time in federal prisons, a further 37,000 had been paroled, 250,000 were under probationary supervision, and 87,000 were awaiting trial for crimes committed. Those statistics come from information provided by the Veterans Outreach Center regarding the affects of Post Traumatic Stress Disorder.

In the end, the names of the boys on the wall in Washington perhaps represent the lucky ones.

The conflicts in Iraq and Afghanistan are not comparable to the world’s most devastating wars. There has been no Bastogne in Iraq, no Iwo Jima in Afghanistan. The conditions faced by those serving in those conflicts are unique to them, just as Vietnam was, and to not take that into consideration is folly.

That folly has dug graves over the last seven years while the oligarchs in Washington, their faces painted with concern and resolve for affect, have attempted time and again to ennoble wars that cannot be. They have overblown the significance of a ‘global enemy’ to the point that the war in Iraq was transformed into one against al-Qaeda, even though it didn’t exist in Iraq prior to the invasion of the country and only represented a mere 5% of the insurgency at its height. Meanwhile, kids from small towns in Texas and Indiana are returning home and suffering the affects of PTSD, some of them committing criminal acts, the notions of which they would have never even entertained prior to their deployments. For many of them, given the state of the US Armed Forces, they are made to go back.

Sarah Palin is the Republican Vice Presidential candidate. Her son is due to deploy to Iraq on September 11th (something that was, of course, mentioned in her recent speech).

The rich and influential very rarely pay for ground. They commonly just walk over it after it has been soaked with blood and, like Robert Duvall in Apocalypse Now, breathe in the fumes of the price paid for it. There are exceptions, of course, such as John McCain’s son.

In the end, the lot of them can go straight to hell as far as I’m concerned. Because this election isn’t about politics, pandering to patriotic fervor or special interest groups – it’s about wars and the futures of those that have been made to fight them under false pretenses. Politicians lie, no matter which side of the political fence they happen to be on. What they do not do is die as a result of their policies, and it’s about time that people woke up to that fact.

September 4, 2008 42 Comments

I’ve decided to make this an open thread because it’s really interesting to see who people think will comprise the Republican and Democratic tickets in this year’s US Presidential election. Rather than my speculations – or, more the point, my desire to see an extremely historic occurrence (Obama/Clinton) – let your speculations fly!

(We should start a pool).

February 4, 2008 95 Comments