Andrew Sullivan has taken note of an ongoing discussion as to why America has not been attacked in the past seven years. He posits that there are two possibilities that may provide the answer: the terrorist threat is overrated, or our defense is getting better.

One of Sullivan’s readers responded with the correct answer from my perspective, but Sullivan has characterized that answer in such a way as to make it seem that the Bush doctrine is working. Here is that exchange.

Reader: Why bother coming here (getting a visa, the travel, feeling out-of-place) to attack Americans, when one frustrated youth with jihadist tendencies from wherever can simply wander into Iraq or Afghanistan and do his best to take out US military personnel in uniform? There, you can at least blend into the local population, target not unarmed US civilians in shopping malls, -but uniformed, patriotic, heavily-armed Americans (who are light-years away from home and family, and all that’s familiar) - and be regarded as a hero to millions … all at the same time.

Sullivan: The flypaper theory works, in other words.

In fact, President Bush is fond of framing the flypaper theory with the following flawed logic: “We are fighting them there so we don’t have to fight them here.” So let me detail why the reader’s response to Sullivan is correct but the flypaper, fighting them over there, logic is patently wrong headed. (more…)

I just learned that as of April 30 my office will be closing.  I work for a major fortune 500 company at an inbound call center.  The customer service side of this company was sold to a (notorious) hedge fund over a year ago.  About that same time my company opened a call center in the Philippines, and we have not hired new employees at my location for over 9 months…  so we saw the signs and I can’t claim that this news is a huge surprise to be honest.

 I hate to sound too jingoistic about this, but the company I work for (which shall remain anonymous for the time being in the interest of me staying on board and qualified for the severance package) is renowned for American products and services.   Once the Philippines center opened we heard more than a few customer complaints regarding people not being able to understand the agents who answered our phones.   Our customers bought our products expecting to support American enterprise and services.   In fact we have a whole subset of customers who refuse to talk to agents who are not based in the U.S.

The company is providing us with a pretty generous severance package, and on a personal level this  can only lead to better things with my career.  The position I held was hardly top of the line and my years of working here have armed me with skills which should be very desirable for employers who need premium customer service. 

Despite my sanguine outlook on this,  it feels weird and dissapointing to have lost my job to overseas outsourcing.  For me this is one example of large scale politics having a very real and powerful effect on my life.  In the meantime, if you are a business who needs front line customer service reps in the state of Oregon starting in early May,  me and about 250 other people will be looking for work…

Personally, I’d suggest taking the time to register to vote or any other of a whole host of responsible and helpful things that need doing.

Man, did House Speaker Nancy “Impeachment is not and never will be on the table” Pelosi grow at least a small set of cojones in saying she wants a grand jury to investigate former Bushies Harriet Miers and Joshua Bolten for contempt of Congress for deliberately ignoring demands to testify on Capitol Hill?

It’s sure making the White House scream. Good.

Gee, 100-200 MORE banks are expected to go belly-up soon. Makes you want to maintain that really great Republican “compassionate conservative” financial wizardry that the Bushies brought us with as many as 1 in 10 American homes now in foreclosure, default, or in serious danger of going into default right now which doesn’t count the tens of thousands of homes already seized.

Yet Bush is threatening to veto any effort by Congress to put a moratorium on foreclosure actions. As Keith Olbermann put it Wednesday night, Bush’s kind, compassionate message to scared American home owners is, “Screw you!” Doesn’t matter that the foreclosure crisis is very likely, many economists say, to result in a full-scale U.S. economic depression (recession’s much nastier stepmother).

(But, hey, at least the banks are willing to WORK with Michael Jackson whose California “Neverland” estate is due to be sold at sheriff’s auction in mid-March. Whew! Wouldn’t want him to curtail those half million dollar afternoon shopping sprees! What? His buddy, the Sultan of Brunei can’t bail him out as often as the Saudis have bailed out President George W. Bush long before he hit office?)

Senator McCain has begun acting as if he will be running against Senator Obama in the general election. I believe the exchange between the two over Iraq gives Obama an advantage on another issue which the McCain campaign believes is the core strength of their candidate:  McCain’s experience versus Obama’s inexperience.

Obama has managed to bring McCain to tell the nation that the decision to go to war in Iraq is not important to the current debate because it is the past and we should be considering the leadership of the future. If we are to simply disregard the import of that decision how can McCain then turn around and argue, in general, that his experience is the reason he is running?  By McCain’s own logic in the recent Iraq debate with Obama, all of McCain’s experience is “the past” which Americans can disregard because we  are choosing the leadership of the future. (more…)

Rest assured, this clip is from the Onion News Network:

Diebold Accidentally Leaks Results Of 2008 Election Early

I couldn’t decide, so I thought I’d include both.

Hagee, Religious Nut, Backs McCain

As I regularly listen and/or view those right-wing nuts with whom I am in complete disagreement, I am very aware of Pastor John Hagee and some of his nuttier ideas. As Think Progress reports, the quack is supporting McCain and Johnny is “very honored” to have his support. Why is Hagee a flake? How about a quote:

The United States must join Israel in a pre-emptive military strike against Iran to fulfill God’s plan for both Israel and the West… a biblically prophesied end-time confrontation with Iran, which will lead to the Rapture, Tribulation, and Second Coming of Christ.

Yes, he’s one of those Christians. Two Johns, holding hands as they skip away to Armegeddon.

Natural Born McCain?

After all the kicking and screaming about patriotism and what it means to be an American that can be accessed on the AM dial any day of the week (or Sirius Radio if you got a fabulous present from Mrs. Shambles for your birthday), it’s starting to look like John McCain is the most Un-American of all. New York Times reports:

Mr. McCain’s likely nomination as the Republican candidate for president and the happenstance of his birth in the Panama Canal Zone in 1936 are reviving a musty debate that has surfaced periodically since the founders first set quill to parchment and declared that only a “natural-born citizen” can hold the nation’s highest office.

His parents were there at the time because they were stationed by the military, so the chances of disqualification are slim, but how absurd would it be if the only viable candidate the Republicans have left was not allowed to run because he was not born in the USA? I am giddy at the thought of it.

“I like Ralph Nader. He looks like a guy who comes into town once a year for supplies. … He looks like a guy you would see sitting on his front porch watching for out-of-state plates. … Ralph Nader looks like a postal worker who doesn’t know whether to retire or start shooting.” –David Letterman

“As you know, last week the big rumor, according to the New York Times, is John McCain was allegedly sleeping with a a young, attractive lobbyist. Well, that story has pretty much gone away. In fact, the only one trying to keep it alive now? John McCain.” –Jay Leno

“And God bless him, Ralph Nader running for president again. Yeah, yeah! Nader says he’s running for president again because the Democrats did not stop President Bush on the war in Iraq and on the tax cuts. Stop him? If Nader hadn’t run, there wouldn’t have been a President Bush.” –Jay Leno

“And speaking of that, President Bush said today that he is very concerned about the acceleration of hostilities in the former Yugoslavia. See, again, I don’t think President Bush is really familiar with this region of the world. Like, he said today that violence in Serbia could spread to Suburbia and claim the lives of millions of Suburbanites.” –Jay Leno

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Is it just me, or do others actually feel a rush seeing a biracial man and a white female running for president at this time?

When I was a kid, we heard this should happen. But it’s taken so long to deliver.

But each time I see them together, I still feel a rush. It’s called progress, and the realization of at least a few dreams.

Frankly, I’d like to think this race will no more certainly be decided next Tuesday (when bigger states like Texas and Ohio join smaller ones like my home state of Vermont and neighbor Rhode Island) than it was when we heard the “predicted” end of the race back on February’s Super Tuesday.

Sometimes, I think only the media - and the Republicans - are really behind a demand that we decide the candidates so very soon. I mean, not since 1968 has their been any big question about the candidates going into the party conventions, before the lifetimes, in fact, of many American voters today… and farther back still before the races really got decided at the convention level.

What’s wrong with waiting? I mean, the longer Obama and Clinton have to depend on us to get elected, aren’t they more apt to listen to us and to make promises we’ll obligate them to keep?

I’m rather tired of it at this point.

Rachel Maddow said, after the conclusion of the debate, that “John McCain wins the debate tonight” and described the whole event as the “Democratic Voter Enthusiasm Suppression Act of 2008.” That about sums it up.

And on The Whitest Kids U’Know the other day, Weird the stripper said “For seven dollars? I’ll drink a whole pail of milk with my butt.”

No, that doesn’t really have anything to do with it, but I thought you might need a chuckle before the bullets after the break.
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After Senator John McCain denounced and rejected the rhetoric used by radio host Bill Cunningham at one of his rallies, Cunningham went to Fox and denounced Senator McCain.  In fact Cunningham went further than denouncing,  to full on McCain rejection mode by announcing his endorsement of Senator Hillary Clinton.

In light of Senator Clinton’s insistence that Senator Obama was not strong enough in simply denouncing Louis Farrakhan, but should also reject him and if possible toss in some Farrakhan folding and mutilation as well, it occurs to me that this should be a two way street. Conservative hate monger Bill Cunningham is using rhetoric which even Senator McCain has rejected, and denounced, so Cunningham has now endorsed Senator Clinton… but I do not hear the same questions being raised about Clinton’s attitude on Cunningham as we recently heard regarding Senator Obama and Farrakhan.

Obviously this is yet another example of the media’s extremely prejudicial attitude against Obama, in favor of Clinton. *snark* This denounce versus reject Farrakhan silliness is yet another example of Barack Obama having higher standards he has to live up to.  Have you heard any media personality demand that Clinton denounce and reject Ann Coulter, another patently offensive and disgusting personality who has announced her support for Clinton? Why is Clinton getting away with having such unseemly supporters and not denouncing, or even just rejecting them?

It’s time to air this compilation:

Let me begin with my standard disclosure that I support Barack Obama for the Democratic nomination.

Dana Milbank wrote an article (Team Clinton: Down, and Out of Touch) in today’s Washington Post which casts the Clinton team in a very harsh light. Milbank was present at a recent confab between the Clinton campaign and the Washington Press corps. The description Milbank gives of this event can only be described as acerbic for the Clinton campaign.

First came Harold Ickes, who gave a presentation about Hillary Rodham Clinton’s prospects that severed all ties with reality. “We’re on the way to locking this nomination down,” he said of a candidate who appears, if anything, headed in the other direction.

Ickes comes across sounding like Baghdad Bob, giving tours on the street and insisting that the Americans had been bea