"fiscal conservatives...?"

Jesus H CHRIST! Congress has to haggle for weeks over an F---ing "stimulus package" worth a hundred-fifty billion dollars when THE WAR has cost us TRILLIONS! How can people NOT get that there's a relationship between Bush's war for oil, and $100 per barrel oil?! Conservatives talk and talk about letting us keep more of our tax dollars. Well, which would you rather have? Your tax rate under Bill Clinton, and the prices for food, energy, health insurance from back then? Or your tax rate under "W", with all our basic needs priced triple what they were under Clinton? Notice where the money lands in the two scenarios: in the national treasury (our collective wallet), or in the coffers of multi-national corporations - owned by the world's Super-Rich. The stupidity of so-called "fiscal conservatives" astounds me.

There's a 'perfect storm' brewing.

We won't be able to ride it out by hiding.

The torture issue is quickly gathering to a head. The evident contradictions between what our leaders have said in the past, and what we now know to be true, can't be sustained more than a few days longer. The growing demand for honest answers will not relent.

The Democratic candidate who "gets out in front" of the issue of torture will earn national respect and win the White House. The candidate who tries to duck and weave will be blown apart when the storm hits. The Republican Party is already tearing. It will be ripped in two, with McCain on one side, and Cheney and the neoCons on the other. McCain's presidential bid is doomed without avid Far Right support. Once he's forced to repeat what he has said in the past - that water-boarding is torture - he won't get that support. And already, he's starting to lose primaries to Huckabee.

But Barack and Hillary are in danger too if they continue to play coy with such an emotionally-charged issue. Torture is an issue that defines our national character beyond any other. Nobody can admire a politician who is so politically cunning that he or she lacks basic moral clarity. This is too simple: Torture is evil.

Want your candidate to win? Then demand that they hold these admitted criminals to account.

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MISSING: Where's McCain's "straight talk" on Cheney's torture?

We can check-mate John McCain in the next 5 days. Here's how:

Last week, the Administration was finally cornered by their torture videos - forced to admit to waterboarding prisoners. Now, their only way out of criminal charges is to try to make torture NOT ILLEGAL. That's why last Thursday (Feb 7th) Cheney publicly admitted to, and defended, torture. He stood in front of an Ultra-Right audience (CPAC) and, in-effect, dared the country to arrest him: "Would I do it again? You're damned right I would."

This places McCain in the ultimate no-win political bind. Torture is John McCain's signature issue. The best-known fact about McCain is that he was tortured. He lead the fight in the Senate to ban torture - and won the issue, over stiff White House resistance, 90 to 9! Right now he's in a fight with the Ultra-Right for his political life. Sean Hannity, Rush Limbaugh, et. al., are attacking him relentlessly and refusing to support the Republican ticket. He went before that same CPAC audience, just before Cheney, to beg for conservative support. He can't win the general election without it. So he can't cross the Ultra Right right now. But Cheney is defiant about breaking McCain's torture ban. And what has McCain done about that? NOTHING.

If McCain is going to give us "straight talk", he'll have to accuse the President and Vice President of war crimes. That would finish his campaign. BUT, if he fails to stand up for his principals and call them to account, he will brand himself as history's preeminent flip-flopping, pandering, wimp. It would destroy the McCain brand. If we demand that he answer the question, any answer he gives is his doom.

So our task is simple: for the next 5 days we hold John McCain's feet to the fire over torture. Our demand for his answer should be lead by both of our Democratic candidates.

And the price of failing to do so? To wake up tomorrow in an America in which torture is forever legal.

www.DeadElephant.ORG main site

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It’s now or NEVER on TORTURE! --- Drive a wedge into the heart of McCain!

Folks, the grab is on to make TORTURE ok.

• This week, the White House admitted to waterboarding (controlled drowning) of terrorist suspects. It’s an ancient and barbaric technique, long understood - without any question - to be torture.

• Cheney gave a speech in which he acknowledged and defended the use of this known torture.

• A White House spokesman reserved the right to do it again! But he refused to answer whether it would be torture if Al Qaeda waterboarded US soldiers.

• While questioning our new Attorney General today, Rep. Lamar Smith (R-TX) claimed that “99% of Americans would support” waterboarding. He emphasized that the Bush administration should “not be defensive about using” the technique.

• Ann Coulter this week comfortably acknowledged on national television that she supports torturing our prisoners. She felt no need to mince words about "waterboarding".

video of Cheney, and White House spokesman
transcript of Rep Lemar Smith
Anne Coulter: "I should feel concerned about putting a little water up a terrorists nose!?"

This is a balls-to-the-wall play to make the war crimes which they have now admitted to somehow, suddenly NOT BE CRIMES. It out-Cheneys Cheney for sheer aggressive, criminal hubris. They are moving right now to make TORTURE NORMAL. So NOW is when we MUST OPPOSE THEM.

We’ll kill two birds with one stone. Here’s HOW:

The Clinton, Obama, and Ron Paul campaigns must pull together on this and raise HELL right now! Besides the immorality of it, the normalization of torture is a wedge issue pointed right at the heart of John McCain. Because he taking hits from Right wing media (Hannity, Rush, etc.), McCain has not yet spoken out about the fact that Bush and Cheney have violated the anti-torture law that he lead the fight to create.

A poll three months ago asked Americans whether they think waterboarding is a form of torture. More than two-thirds of respondents, 69 percent, said “yes”. So not only are we are in the right, we are in the MAJORITY. And because most moderate Republicans and Independents are morally opposed to torture – including most Christian evangelicals (after all, who would Jesus torture?) - torture is the ideal issue by which to wedge McCain and moderate Republicans away from the fanatical Right. Away from pure evil.

Torture has no part in the America that you and I love. It is the scariest possible step towards a police state. We must hold John McCain’s feat to that fire NOW. (pun intended)



Jeff Goldsmith
www.DeadElephant.ORG

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Right-wing Melt-down

Wow. Since Super Tuesday I’ve been listening to right wing talk radio. Something important is happening on the extreme Right. The talk radio hate mongers, Rush Limbaugh, Sean Hannity, Ann Coulter, and others, are rabidly attacking McCain, and apparently are also rapidly loosing their relevance to their right-wing listeners. You’ve probably heard that Anne Coulter has said she would campaign for Hillary before she would vote for McCain. Well, she meant it – here’s a link to the video of her comments: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HuTqgqhxVMc .

Their issues with McCain are as follows:

• Rush: “He wants amnesty for illegal immigrants.” (McCain/Kennedy Act)
• Rush: “He’s for putting limits on free speech.” (McCain/Feingold campaign finance reform)
• Hannity: “He won’t abolish the ‘death tax’.”
• Hannity: “He says he’s pro-life, but said he wouldn’t repeal Roe vs. Wade”. Rush: “Pro choicers are voting for McCain - That’s who independents really are!”.
• Hannity: “He didn’t support the Bush tax cuts, and has used class warfare language about ‘benefiting the rich.’”
• Coulter: “He opposed drilling in the Alaskan National Wildlife Reserve.” Coulter was outraged that he posed with Governor Schwarzenegger at a solar energy plant “of all things!” “I mean why didn’t they pose in front of an abortion clinic?!”
• Coulter: “He opposes torture at Guantanamo.” Coulter is happy to call it torture, by the way, and supports it. “We’re supposed to worry about putting a little water up a terrorist’s nose?”
• Hannity: “He’s bad for Republicanism.” Rush: “We’ve watered down the party. “ Rush: “The party leaders have betrayed the conservatives.”
• Coulter : “Hillary would be stronger on the war on terrorism.”

Given that McCain has picked up the lion’s share of the votes of their conservative listeners, it appears that very few are heeding these warnings.

My first thought was that this was a plot to make McCain more palatable to independents by distancing him from the far Right. But this stuff is too savage for that. They will only further suppress the conservative vote. They don’t want anybody to vote for McCain, even if it means ruining the Republican Party for 30 years to come. Rush said specifically that today. And today Mitt Romny dropped out of the race. So it’s McCain. Assuming McCain loses the general election to Clinton or Obama (NOT a safe assumption) we just might be witnessing the demise of the “neoconservative” movement.

DeadElephants! Long may they stay that way.

-Jeff

How far will it go...?

• Patriot Act : unconstitutional
• REAL ID Act : unconstitutional
• Military Commissions Act : unconstitutional
• John Warner Defense Authorization Act : unconstitutional
• Homegrown Terrorism Act : unconstitutional
• Bush's executive order that makes him dictator in self-proclaimed emergencies : unconstitutional
• Bush's 2000 election : unconstitutional

"Don't throw the Constitution in my face! It's just a goddamn piece of paper!" - George W. Bush