Occasional Collection of Observations on the American

Presidential Primaries and Related Matters

SUPER TUESDAY

McCain has no real competition.

His opponents are both relatively weak candidates and poor campaigners.

Romney is insipid, but rich enough to carry on.

Huckabee is simply an idiot, but an idiot with some strong emotional appeal to the Religious Right.

Romney and Huckabee do have the advantage of pulling the Religious Right from McCain, slowing his way to the nomination which does appear inevitable now.

Clinton has the pull for those who think being a woman

is the most important quality, not a small crowd.

Unfortunately this crowd fails to recognize that the first women to do a big, big job are often nasty pieces of work.

I cite Mrs. Thatcher, Ms. Albright, and Ms. Rice – the last two surely qualifying as war criminals by international standards.

Clinton’s reference to “it ending” at the beginning of 2009 in her speech is totally ambiguous. What is the antecedent for the pronoun “it”?

The woman voted for this pointless war, and she has endorsed other atrocities including Israel’s pointless attack on Lebanon.

She also brings the unwelcome baggage of her husband, a man we all had enough of, even those of us who defended him against impeachment.

If McCain ands Clinton are the candidates, the war as an issue might well be out of the campaign, a truly depressing thought.

But one must take heart that Obama has come from nowhere just two months ago. That is a remarkable achievement, and his opponent is someone who has been a national name for the best part of two decades.

He is the only candidate to offer genuine promise against the violent insanity Bush has ignited.

MCCAIN AS WAR HERO

McCain “a genuine war hero”? What a black joke.

The man was bombing civilians around Hanoi when he was shot down.

The entire Vietnam War was an insane holocaust, the greatest such event since Hitler’s. I’ve always thought the black subterranean walls of the Washington Memorial fitting for this reason. That mass murder was a national shame.

Three million corpses left behind along with a deadly sea of Agent Orange and a million landmines to cripple thousands of poor farmers for years afterward.

And for what? Choosing a government of which the U.S. disapproved.

The government of the artificial rump-state, South Vietnam, was in every detail as much a dictatorship as the one in the North. It was deliberately created in conniving with the departing French colonial power.

The U.S. had no business trying to tell the Vietnamese how to settle their affairs.

These facts considered plus the clear fact that the U.S. never bothered with the nicety of declaring war pretty much means that McCain and the other murderers of innocents were exactly what the Vietnamese called them, war criminals.

Actually, despite McCain’s whimpering about his treatment, he and the other prisoners got off rather lightly.

Do a thought experiment: just imagine a North Vietnamese pilot during the war somehow getting through to a city in California and dropping bombs or napalm.

What would have happened to him if he were shot down?

He would have been torn limb from limb or lynched by the people who almost launched an atomic attack on Afghanistan because of something done by some Saudis and who used to enjoy family picnics during lynchings of blacks.

John Chuckman lives in Canada and is former chief economist for a large Canadian oil company. Copyright © by John Chuckman. Read other articles by John, or visit John's website.

6 comments on this article so far ...

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  1. TDC said on February 7th, 2008 at 12:39pm #

    So… No mention what so ever of Ron Paul?
    And with Romney’s sudden dropping out of the race… where does that place the chips? What does that make the war-mongering (potentially Draft bringing) McCain?

    One nation, under God…

    well God help us all.

    So far he seems to not give a damn.

  2. DavidG. said on February 7th, 2008 at 8:31pm #

    Powerful Forces are at work, manipulating the political system to benefit themselves. The Democrats are divided and likely to be more so as the year progresses. And God is dead or AWOL.

    Help, I want to get off! Anyone want to join me?

  3. ted singer said on February 8th, 2008 at 8:14pm #

    Remarkable! Someone finally expressed the McCain reality.Why does everyone wave the flag for a “hero” ? FEAR? Now that Jane is born again, who is left? We all bear the guilt of naive,deluded patriots from that era, and this! The Black wall indeed. What will the next one be made of? Crushed IPODS?

  4. Giorgio said on February 8th, 2008 at 8:19pm #

    Good article…but then not word on Ron Paul ????
    From this distance I’m watching the prez primaries, Ron Paul seems to me to be the only decent, principled and honourable candidate !
    All the rest are a bunch of ‘con-artistes’ and ‘sleazebags’ trying to outsmart the other as to who possesses the best snake oil on sale…

  5. Bill said on February 10th, 2008 at 10:16pm #

    I can’t stand McCain…Ron Paul is the only hope America has in this election. Too bad the mainstream media is blacking him out, leaving the majority uninformed and left in the dark about this great man.

  6. hp said on February 12th, 2008 at 2:58pm #

    “Every election is a sort of advance auction sale of stolen goods.”
    H.L. Mencken