The End Of a Murderous Beast

It is better that Barack Obama will not become the next President of the United States of America. Americans do not deserve such a honourable privilege. The American people is the most bloodthirsty monster ever on planet Earth. The murderous monster has to take some lessons.

Here you can find the poll
Half of the 300 million Americans want to kill all the 30 million Iraqi, the only way to win the war, while the Iraqi political parties are united now in a peaceful and orderly approach of their resurrection as a unity-state, without interference of Iran and Saudi Arabia and with the occupiers on leave within a certain schedule. Than the Iraqi War will be lost by the USA. About 94% of the Iraqi people want the foreign troops out of their country and prepare to fight for that.
They have good reasons.
The USA demands 60 permanent military bases in Iraq and legal immunity for their troops and contractors (the private slaughters who kill and rape). That’s an unlimited license to kill.
It is impossible to calculate what will cause more killings, the free hand to the foreigners without resistance of the people or a systematic genocide, but the last will faster be decided. To prevent the genocide it is reasonable for Russia, China and Europe to interfere and protect the Iraqi people with harsh military force, ruining the American economy and defeating them all over the world.
We can not tolerate that the whole population of a sovereign state will be wiped off the map for nothing more than “America’s honour.”
Will Barack Obama be able to defeat McCain in the elections and save the USA?
Yes he can, but Americans do not deserve that.
Half of the American population wants the genocide and that makes it the most bloodthirsty monster-people of the world since human mankind exists. They have to be exterminated for the safety of us all.
If Barack Obama will bring some change for a while, one day the monster will awake with their furious desire to kill again. For ones and all times we have to get rid of this cancer.

What has caused this hysterical desire for total genocide?
Well, it is simple and alone that they can not stand to lose an illegal war. That is only their honour, no need or ratio. For the Americans honour is the records of slaughtering people. They offer the lives of their youngsters to kill more of the others without any reason. The honour to be the most bloodthirsty killer is for most of the Americans the highest goal to achieve. And do not make mistakes, a part of them think that the young Barack Obama will do the job better than the old creep John McCain, a 100% mental disabled Vietnam veteran!

We sought that a peaceful and orderly transition to a democratic Iraq should satisfy the USA. It would be difficult. This year in his spring briefing general David Patreus said to see no light in the tunnel and McCain called that a tremendous success. During some months there was real success, but not thanks to the occupiers, who were at the side of the Iranian funded PM Nouri al Maliki fighting against the Mahdi Army of the mighty nationalist shiite leader Muqtada al Sadr who has the support of the whole opposition. Muqtada, a better politician than strong in armed forces, negotiated a cheese fire, The Russian President Putin granted Iran’s security in return for Iran’s not interfering in Iraq and by then Nouri al Maliki, his Badr party and the Islamic Supreme Council of Iraq stood alone with the Prime Minister’s life in play, if and as soon as the foreign troops should leave the country. Muqtada al Sadr position was stronger than ever and Nouri al Maliki went the other, the nationalist side and refused to negotiate the American proposals, for the first time gaining full support of the majority in the parliament and Al Sadr. Kurds, Sunnis and Shiites were united!
And the light in the tunnel?
There was no tunnel anymore.
The foreign troops were bound to leave and the Prime Minister of the sovereign unity-state Iraq demanded a time schedule to achieve that end of the occupation.
One can say, the war has made things better in Iraq.
It had to be so.
It’s just what Barack Obama wanted and that point of view was popular in the USA. But things changed in a way where McCain can believe in. Fuel prices rise to unthinkable record highs and the American economy is in bad shape, while the troops sit on the third largest oil reserve in the world and are foreseen to be send home. That makes all the difference.

What is the profit of the war?
If there is no profit, the war is lost!
To gain profit you need a crime.
To call that honour, McCain has to become the next President and that will cause World War III and the end of America.

Overstating Our Fears

Glenn L. Carle was a member of the CIA's Clandestine Service for 23 years and retired in March 2007 as deputy national intelligence officer for transnational threats. He has something to say to us, which is heard from his position outspoken a bit more convincing than my comments.
As it goes:
Sen. John McCain has repeatedly characterized the threat of "radical Islamic extremism" as "the absolute gravest threat . . . that we're in against." Before we simply accept this, we need to examine the nature of the terrorist threat facing our country. If we do so, we will see how we have allowed the specter of that threat to distort our lives and take our treasure.
The "Global War on Terror" has conjured the image of terrorists behind every bush, the bushes themselves burning and an angry god inciting its faithful to religious war. We have been called to arms, built fences, and compromised our laws and the practices that define us as a nation. The administration has focused on pursuing terrorists and countering an imminent and terrifying threat. Thousands of Americans have died as a result, as have tens of thousands of foreigners.
The inclination to trust our leaders when they warn of danger is compelling, particularly when the specters of mushroom clouds and jihadists haunt every debate. McCain, accepting this view of the threats, pledges to continue the Bush administration's policy of few distinctions but ruthless actions.
I spent 23 years in the CIA. I drafted or was involved in many of the government's most senior assessments of the threats facing our country. I have devoted years to understanding and combating the jihadist threat.
We rightly honor as heroes those who serve our nation and offer their lives to protect ours. We all "support the troops." Yet the first step for any commander is to understand the enemy. The next commander in chief should base his counterterrorism policies on the following realities:
We do not face a global jihadist "movement" but a series of disparate ethnic and religious conflicts involving Muslim populations, each of which remains fundamentally regional in nature and almost all of which long predate the existence of al-Qaeda.
Osama bin Laden and his disciples are small men and secondary threats whose shadows are made large by our fears. Al-Qaeda is the only global jihadist organization and is the only Islamic terrorist organization that targets the U.S. homeland. Al-Qaeda remains capable of striking here and is plotting from its redoubt in Waziristan, Pakistan. The organization, however, has only a handful of individuals capable of planning, organizing and leading a terrorist operation. Al-Qaeda threatens to use chemical, biological, radiological or nuclear weapons, but its capabilities are far inferior to its desires. Even the "loose nuke" threat, whose consequences would be horrific, has a very low probability. For the medium term, any attack is overwhelmingly likely to consist of creative uses of conventional explosives.
No other Islamic-based terrorist organization, from Mindanao to the Bekaa Valley to the Sahel, targets the U.S. homeland, is part of a "global jihadist movement" or has more than passing contact with al-Qaeda. These groups do and will, however, identify themselves with global jihadist rhetoric and may bandy the bogey-phrase of "al-Qaeda." They are motivated by hostility toward the West and fear of the irresistible changes that education, trade, and economic and social development are causing in their cultures. These regional terrorist organizations may target U.S. interests or persons in the groups' historic areas of interest and operations. None of these groups is likely to succeed in seizing power or in destabilizing the societies they attack, though they may succeed in killing numerous people through sporadic attacks such as the Madrid train bombings.
There are and will continue to be small numbers of Muslims in certain Western countries -- in the dozens, perhaps -- who seek to commit terrorist acts, along the lines of the British citizens behind the 2005 London bus bombings. Some may have irregular contact with al-Qaeda central in Waziristan; more will act as free agents for their imagined cause. They represent an Islamic-tinged version of the anarchists of the late 19th century: dupes of "true belief," the flotsam of revolutionary cultural change and destruction in Islam, and of personal anomie. We need to catch and neutralize these people. But they do not represent a global movement or a global threat.
The threat from Islamic terrorism is no larger now than it was before Sept. 11, 2001. Islamic societies the world over are in turmoil and will continue for years to produce small numbers of dedicated killers, whom we must stop. U.S. and allied intelligence do a good job at that; these efforts, however, will never succeed in neutralizing every terrorist, everywhere.
Why are these views so starkly at odds with what the Bush administration has said since the beginning of the "Global War on Terror"? This administration has heard what it has wished to hear, pressured the intelligence community to verify preconceptions, undermined or sidetracked opposing voices, and both instituted and been victim of procedures that guaranteed that the slightest terrorist threat reporting would receive disproportionate weight -- thereby comforting the administration's preconceptions and policy inclinations.
We must not delude ourselves about the nature of the terrorist threat to our country. We must not take fright at the specter our leaders have exaggerated. In fact, we must see jihadists for the small, lethal, disjointed and miserable opponents that they are.
==================

But even this is too scaring, while 9/11 was a false flag operation, an inside job and Al Qaeda did until now not dare to attack the USA homeland.

Giant Steps in the Near East Peace Process and the Mediterranean Partnership With Europe.

If you can’t beat them, buy them!
The Mediterranean Union is a fact, but all states of the European Union speak about the rebirth of the “Barcelona Demands”. Anyhow it is a great triumph for the French President Sarkozy to get it done that all the Mediterranean countries accept Libya were on the top-conference in Paris, 43 heads of states, in Paris.
There was the Palestinian President Abbas and the Israeli President Olmert to announce that peace is very close and there was the other President Abbas of Syria to as assistance in achieving peace with Israel, while Syria and Lebanon agreed to open embassies in each other’s countries.
France became this month chair-country of the EU for the next half of the year. When it’s your turn to chair the Union you want to reach something special and substantial and it is planned and prepared years before. The French achievement is impressive and the prestige of Sarkozy, succeeding where Bush and Rice have failed and making more with less, that prestige of the French President gets a boost.
An Arab journalist asked the Egyptian President Mubarak if it wasn’t a trick, that Mediterranean Union, to push the Arab states to normalize their relations with Israel. The Egyptian President waved his hands in the air and said: “one day anybody will have to make attempts to relations with Israel.”
Mubarak is for the next two years together with Sarkozy appointed to co-chair the Mediterranean Union. France has close and long times relations with North Africa. There are also some concrete projects, such minor as environmental measures and cleaning the Mediterranean Sea and the common rules for freight ships along with giant ambitions to develop Solar Energy Plants in the desert.
Yes, it’s not direct the need of electric for the Mediterranean but the heat of the sun is such an unlimited source of energy that there is enough to produce clean water which they terrible need in the region. That is gold for that thirsty nations and their agriculture. Food, water and energy. In return Europe wants room in their sunny desert and peace.
Yep, if you can’t beat them, buy them.

The Friendly Fire of Fear to Fabricate Fabulous Faceless Force Against You

In the former democracy it was government’s first goal and custom to free you from fear and sorrow and give you the opportunity to unfold your best qualities to the full extend of your capacity. Good for you, good for society, good for the government too. It is a political holistic idea to provide circumstances to achieve the best for as much people as possible. And, of course, there is also misfortune which is as much and effective as possible to avoid by rules and prescriptions. Take care! That makes the traffic much less dangerous.
Only dictators rule by terror and fear.
By now the reign by fear is introduced in democracy. And the browbeating is not unique for single parts of the western world. How come?
The concerns of government to free you from fear is privatized and now it’s your own responsibility. But all what is privatized will become corporate and by then there are benefits of fear to gain.

The British essayist Frank Furedi denounced last year on his website Sp!ked the politics of fear which is invoked anywhere.
As the sociologist David Altheide has argued, ‘fear does not just happen; it is socially constructed and then manipulated by those who seek to benefit’. While this description of socially constructed fear tends to inflate the role of self-interest – the extent to which fear entrepreneurs exploit fear in order to gain some direct benefit – its emphasis on the role of human agency in the making of fear is nonetheless a useful counterpoint to the idea that fear is something natural or purely psychological.
So, the meaning and experience of fear are continually shaped by cultural and historical factors. The historical fear of famine is very different, for example, to today’s ‘powerful fear’ of being fat. The meaning that societies once attached to fear of God or the fear of Hell is not quite the same as today’s fear of pollution or of cancer. And fear does not always have negative qualities.
The sixteenth-century English philosopher Thomas Hobbes regarded fear as being essential for the realisation of the individual and of a civilised society. For Hobbes, and others, fear could be seen as a fairly reasonable response to new events and big changes. In the individual, too, fear has not always been viewed as a negative emotion. As David Parkin argued in his 1986 essay ‘Toward an apprehension of fear’, as late as the nineteenth century the sentiment of fear was linked to ‘respect’, ‘reverence’, ‘veneration’. ‘Fearing the Lord’, for example, was culturally celebrated and valued. In contrast, the act of fearing God today sits far more uneasily with the prevailing cultural outlook.
Matters are complicated further by the fact that the words and phrases used to describe fear are culturally and historically specific. Today, we talk about fear as something unspecific, diffuse, and intimately tied to the therapeutic view of the individual. In her important study of the cultural history of fear, published in 2005, Joanna Bourke points to the importance of the recent ‘conversion of fear into anxiety through the therapeutic revolution’. Anxieties about being ‘at risk’ or feeling ‘stressed’ or ‘traumatised’ or ‘vulnerable’ show very clearly that today’s individualised therapeutic vocabulary influences our sensibility of fear.
That’s all in the toolkits of fear mongers.
Threats are mediated through the cultural outlook. And today, the role of culture is arguably more significant than it was in previous times. According to Stefanie Grupp, in her paper on the ‘Political implications of a discourse of fear’, individual fears are cultivated through the media and are less and less the outcome of direct experience. ‘Fear is decreasingly experienced first-hand and increasingly experienced on a discursive and abstract level’, concludes Grupp. She also suggestively notes that ‘there has been a general shift from a fearsome life towards a life with fearsome media’.
This point is echoed by Altheide, who claims that ‘popular culture has been the key element in promoting the discourse of fear’. Even Osama bin Laden seems to have grasped this trend. In an interview in October 2001, when asked ‘why is the Western media establishment so antihuman’, bin Laden replied: ‘Because it implants fear and helplessness in the psyche of the people of Europe and the United States.’ The legal theorist Christopher Guzelian argues that this indirect aspect of fear is the most distinctive feature of contemporary fear culture. He believes that ‘most fears in America’s electronic age’ are the results of ‘risk information (whether correct or false) that is communicated to society’. He concludes that it is ‘risk communication, not personal experience, that causes most fear these days’.
However, the influence of fear today cannot be explained as a direct outcome of the power of the media. The very real dynamic of individuation means that fear is experienced in a fragmented and atomized form. That is why fear is rarely experienced as a form of collective insecurity, as it often was in earlier times. This shift from collective fears to individuated fear is captured well by Nan Elin, who argued in the 1999 book Postmodern Urbanism that the fear we sense today is no longer the fear of ‘dangerous classes’; rather, fear has ‘come home’ and become privatized. The sensibility of fear is internalized in an isolated fashion, for example as a fear of crime or as a rather banal ‘ambient fear’ (as Hubbard describes it) towards life in general. Hubbard notes that this is a kind of fear that ‘requires us to vigilantly monitor every banal minutia of our lives’, since ‘even mundane acts are now viewed as inherently risky and dangerous’.

Escape, Avoiding the Teutonic Limbo

If you are a politician you have not only to tell the truth, but also you must have a good and realistic plan to make things better.
I like Ron Paul for his manner of life and he seems to be very sympathetic, but his ideas about economy and government are disastrous and that is obvious enough to withhold people to vote for him. He should have been a writer to work out his romantic fantasies in fiction stories and than he should soon recover that public life according to Ron Paul brings more than half of the population in the Teutonic Limbo. The most cruel idea is losing regular education. He does not know what that means. Think about it. Quote:
Paul has stated: "I agree on getting rid of the IRS, but I want to replace it with nothing, not another tax. But let's not forget the inflation tax." In other statements, he has permitted consideration of a national sales tax as a compromise if the tax need cannot be reduced enough. He has advocated that the reduction of government will make an income tax unnecessary. Paul would substantially reduce the government's role in individual lives and in the functions of foreign and domestic states; he says Republicans have lost their commitment to limited government and have become the party of big government. He would eliminate many federal government agencies, such as the U.S. Department of Education, the U.S. Department of Energy, the US Department of Commerce, the US Department of Health and Human Services, the Department of Homeland Security, the Federal Emergency Management Administration, the Interstate Commerce Commission and the Internal Revenue Service, calling them "unnecessary bureaucracies".
Paul would severely reduce the role of the CIA; reducing its functions to intelligence-gathering. He would eliminate operations like overthrowing foreign governments and assassinations. He says this activity is kept secret even from Congress and "leads to trouble." He also commented, "We have every right in the world to know something about intelligence gathering, but we have to have intelligent people interpreting this information."
End quote
All right, at last he writes some fine words about the CIA, showing he is very human. I don’t want to demonize the man as others were calling him a racist, he is not. With the best intentions he is terrible naïve and, of course, hyper-conservative.
About taxes I can say, that it does not matter how high taxes are if you can see by control or transparency that the benefits come back to the people and that the government is effective, affective en efficient and the rules don't restrict private life.
The business of collective facilities is best managed by a democratic government structure to supply
justice and order,
clean water,
domestic and industrial energy,
safety and infrastructure,
education,
health care,
basic science and scientific development,
cultural maintenance and development and also
pensions and assurances.
That's a lot less and a lot more than by now and by improving the government's efficiency at all levels you don't need more people to manage all the tasks in the row above because efficiency is the second weakest point in the apparatus of government. The first weakest point (or in worst case the defensive shield) is the non-transparency. You pay taxes and you don't know exactly where the money flows, how and to who. The answer is the internet but even the use of broadband transmissions is behind in the USA.
We in Europe have the same problems after two decades when we followed the USA until the beginning of the new century. Large collective facilities became privatized in the expectation that the profits would become cheap when the corporate businesses are in charge. That is the logic of the free market, but it doesn't work. Look at the railway traffic to see how the concurrence on the free market works:
Business one owns the rails
Business two/a/b owns the trains used countrywide
Business three/a/b/c owns the trains used local
Business four/a/b/c owns the trains used in subways
Business five does maintenance on trains
Business six/a/b/c/d supplies electric energy
Business seven manages the passengers schedules
Business eight manages the freight schedules
The passengers union ROVER became the largest of all unions. Safety, personal and technical, is in sharp decline and does not meet the European rules. Prices are fast inclining for years, two times doubled in 12 years, but wages of engineers are dropped down, fare dodging and related violence is exploded resulting in fewer personnel in control on the trains (typical kind of Ron Paul idea).
You understand that it drove me and a large amount of fellow train travellers back to the overcrowded road traffic.
All this trouble is called freedom by Ron Paul.
In Belgium there are some successful experiments with free public transport. It works and is also safer by social control, but you need taxes and public management to finance and regulate the system and in the end it is cheaper too voluntarily freeing the traffic lanes from much private transport.
Yes, it is big government and conservatives cry that such is very, very, very bad, near criminal. But reality shows convincing the opposite.
If the public wants freedom, let the public rule and the government has to serve the public.
Look what the corporate society has done to you!

The concept of Ron Paul is to minimize ruling and control, partly because he doesn't trust the servants of the corporate businesses who are their hired core of the government. We all understand that.
The solution is not to crack the government but to strengthen and clean the government, dropping out that servants of corporate business and defending the public interests. Taking back the privileges of corporate businesses is enough to crack them and the government can buy them out and nationalize the tasks of public interests and cut down the multi-million dollar wages of no-care but dividend managers. What is a sovereign nation while half of the country is owned by Arab princes and other foreign multi-billionaires like the family Bin Laden to decide for instance what you will eat today and tomorrow?

One of the better ideas of libertarians is that the economy has to be consumer-driven instead of supply-driven. The public has to get what they ask, buying a product that meets their needs. But the libertarian Ron Paul does not meet that idea in his concept.
I am not against small scale thinking. As an ocean sailor I bake every day's bread myself and I eat a lot of fish, which keeps me very healthy and with my length of 183 cm on a weight of 75 kg. Out on the sea I purify seawater and most of the energy I need comes from the sun/daylight. I need to take some diesel oil about enough for a daily ride of 30 miles, 0.5 kg flour a day and dry-frozen vegetables with me, while curious fresh fishes form a queue in the stern wave. That’s all to survive comfortable without seeing any coast for months. I don't ask you to adopt my ascetic way of life, but I give it as an example how less your needs can be without any suffering. So, you have a lot of freedom in your choices, when all the sham-needs are removed from the market and it will be amazing how the costs of health-care will drop.
By now you are almost liable to punishment if you withhold your kids from obesity and violent computer-games and that makes me thinking there is something rotten in the whole western world, also in Europe.
Psychologists blame this to overacted individualism. Societies seem to have lost the feeling for collectivity. How come?
When our world is ruled by the corporate society, the anonymous rulers, living in multi-million estates paid by tax cuts and the profits of decisive power, you are left behind by the governments, who serve those bosses. When the government shows no responsibility as parents of the country's household, then you get what your choice has been on the ballot, because democracy is a self-help organisation and as Michelle Obama stated: you have to take your own seat at the table of democracy.
Crack down the rulings, like Ron Paul wants to do? That's something else. Living alone in a toilet is no democracy, left alone in a toilet is the Pauline democracy. That left is too far left.
The difference with a conservative libertarian for a progressive liberal is the solidarity of the community and common responsibility and the chosen transparent government has to go ahead as an enlightened example, like parents in a national's household.
Therefore you need a capable community builder as your next President of the United States of America.

Strong Evidence Against Weak Fantasies About IX-XI

The tragic event of 9/11 was an inside job. There is strong evidence to assure this statement beyond any doubt, but the position of researchers and scientists who produced the evidential diggings is heavily undermined by concurrent fantasies and spiritism, leading to a mass of conspiracies, some very hard to believe, some total out of touch with reality or proven untrue.
All conspiracy theorists are driven by fear.
The core of their fear is the real existence of a group of neocons with the pursuit of a New World Order under their supra-national control and reality is, that a fraction of this neoconservative movement, the self-called Vulcans, dominate the administrations of Bush41 and Bush 43 with Dick Cheney as a kind of godfather of the neocons. This group is suspected to plan and realize the 9/11 operations to achieve a Pearl Harbour effect in order to make the public opinion ready by perception management or so-called mind control to start large-scaled wars against Afghanistan, Iraq, Syria and Iran. The suspicions are very convincing, but have to be proved in the way of justice and law.
The dogma of the conspiritists is that any form of international discussion and cooperation, out of sight as behind closed doors, but even not secret, is part of the neoconservative strategy, towards the supra-national New World Order and that can’t be true. It can’t be true because of the lack of unity and the existence of concurrent interests between several governmental, non-governmental and business parties in the Real World’s political theatre. Most politicians and business leaders in the world are strongly opposing the principles of the neocons. The neocons are as unrealistic dreamers as the conspiritists are. The platform of the neocons is supposed to be the United Nations, so not the USA administration where they are in charge yet.
This is very clear absolutely untrue and endless away from reality. Are we from the same planet? That’s also the question in circles of conspiritists, but they are very serious about the alleged evidence that extra-terranians or their helpers are ruling or infiltrating our world and so we enter the magic spheres of UFO’s and crop-circles, the modern variation of solipsism.
Well, you have moderate conspiritists and extreme ones, but they all are damaging the message of true reality, that the tragic event of 9/11 was an inside job and a false flag, which by almost all conspiritists became subscribed. Dear Yo, deliver us from that evil conspiritists.
False flag operations are not a new invention of the neocons to start a war. The planned Operation Northwoods rejected by J. F. Kennedy is a known example, designed to start a war against Cuba. Earlier, US President Roosefelt did not use foreknowledge of the Pearl Harbour attack to bring the fleet at sea in defensible position and gained the way of opportunity to take part in the war. But the most deeply encroached false flag operation is the 9/11 disaster and it is the most characteristic one with all the trimmings and a lot of fuss.
Of course conspiritists hurled themselves on the issue, but that does not mean that the conspiracy is all nonsense as the most ideas of die hard conspiritists. The problem is, that conspiritists use not sufficient proven evidence to claim the truth and if serious scientists and experts do that with more serious work, the idea of a conspiracy, false flag operation or inside job is already contaminated with the wildest fantasies and a lot of fantastic consequences, out of touch with reality.

We know and we can prove that the Twintowers came down by explosives and we know and can prove that WTC #7 the same day was pulled by controlled demolition. We also know that the cell phone calls from planes to the ground were not possible at the time, so it is faked and we know that no Boeing attacked the Pentagon. We can prove that and the evidence is overwhelming and scientific confirmed. There is also overwhelming indisputable evidence that the administration hides the truth and is involved in an large-scale cover-up operation. The self-named Vulcans is a group of neocons which is dominating present in the administration of Bush43 needed an attack like Pearl Harbour to drive their policies through in the direction of their goals, world dominance by war.
In a set of short articles with links to other sources this blog will provide you with the serious and proven evidence on the base of facts and science.

McCain's Speech Widely Panned

The Lime Green Monster:
It may be a superficial quip with Senator McCain's speech tonight, but as Marc Ambinder of the Atlantic noted, in presidential politics, "theatrics matter."
The choice of a lime green backdrop was, to put it kindly, not wise. Beyond representing a jarring visual for even the most colorblind political viewer, the set up was clearly a distraction from the speech itself. Take a look at some of the reviews:
Ambinder: "I wish I had a screen grab... but the green background is very weird and very jarring. On this stage, theatrics matter."
Matt Yglesias notes: "...it's interesting that he's shifted his aesthetic from his old black and white 'fascist' aesthetic to a new green and white Islamofascist aesthetic."
Andrew Sullivan: "From the re-branded green background to the silly attempt to capitalize on Democratic divisions to the Clintonian cooptation of an Obama meme - "a leader we can believe in" - McCain's opening gambit in the general election was, in my judgment, underwhelming."
Atrios: "It'll make you look like the cottage cheese in a lime jello salad. Always a good look for an older gentlemen... The aesthetics of McCain's speech, just mercifully completed before a slightly energized crowd of literally dozens, was awesome in how dreadful it was. No matter what Harold Ford thinks, who was somehow thoroughly moved by lime-jello McCain.
This is not to distract from McCain's address; that too was poorly reviewed. The most biting of the criticisms came from CNN's Jeffrey Toobin, who intoned, moments after its conclusion: "That was awful! That was pathetic!"
Josh Marshall, over at TPM, noted: "Here's how bad it is. All the Fox commentators are giving competing explanation for why McCain's speech sucked."
But if you think this was strictly a liberal prerogative, here is a sampling of the Republican response to McCain's general election launch.
Here's Mark Levin over at National Review's The Corner: "Not to offend those who might be offended, but this speech is a mash and tough to digest. You have to get through the self-congratulatory praise of independence and commander-in-chief pose from the Senate, then you have to try to follow the inconsistency of some of his big-government ideas vs. his anti-big-government rhetoric, and his inconsistency even on his supposed strength -- the surge in Iraq vs. closing GITMO and conferring additional rights on the detainees."
Summing up GOP sentiment was prominent Republican media consultant, Alex Castellanos, speaking on CNN: "Last I checked this was not a speech-making contest, thank God."
Let's get serious!