Like this:

1.  This is why all the ludicrous tea-baggers need to be entirely ignored:

“according to the “Tea Party Anthem,” “believe in the Constitution and all it stands for/Anyone who tramples it should be booted out the door”?

He has only one thing to ask. “Where were they the last eight years?”

http://original.antiwar.com/vlahos/2009/08/17/a-primer-for-the-neo-patriots/

2.  “It’s becoming easier by the minute to believe that McChrystal only eats one meal a day and just sleeps a few hours a night. In an Aug. 11 interview with NPR, McChrystal droned incoherently, sounding like Gen. Jack D. Ripper babbling about “precious bodily fluids” and the evil effects of putting fluoride in children’s ice cream.

In response to these crises, Gen. David Petraeus, chief of Central Command and responsible for both the Iraq and Bananastans theaters, says the U.S. will help Yemen fight terror. It sounds like he’s making Iraq and the Bananastans someone else’s problem.

The only successful strategies that “military genius” David Petraeus has been involved with so far have involved feeding David Petraeus’ ambition. He isn’t much of a warrior, but he’s a Rove-class spin merchant.

His tour as commander of Mosul after the fall of Baghdad was hailed as a shining success amid a sea of incompetence, but Petraeus merely achieved a false peace in the city by bribing everyone to lie low. After he left, Mosul went up for grabs, and it remains a trouble spot to this day. During his next Iraq assignment, while in charge of training Iraqi security forces, Petraeus allowed more than 100,000 AK-47s and other military gear to migrate into the hands of militants. Later, as top commander in Iraq, he repeated his tried-and-true methods, creating an artificial drop in violence levels by handing out weapons to militias and bribing the militias not to use them. Today, two-and-a-half years after the surge began, the situation in Iraq is as precarious as it has ever been.

Petraeus’ performances would have earned other military officers a permanent transfer to Fort Palooka. Incredibly, though, Petraeus is now the most important U.S. theater-strategic commander since Dwight Eisenhower had charge of the European Theater of Operations during World War II, and he may be the next former general to become, like Ike, a Republican commander in chief.”

http://original.antiwar.com/huber/2009/08/17/look-whos-not-talking/

3.  I thought he ran on an antiwar platform.  What a loser, just another lying, murderous politician.  Ever get the feeling you’ve been cheated?

“Obama ‘Blasts Defense Establishment’ While Touting War”

http://news.antiwar.com/2009/08/17/obama-blasts-defense-establishment-while-touting-war/

4.  Ugh:

“The Pentagon Wants Authority to Post Almost 400,000 Military Personnel in U.S.

The Pentagon has approached Congress to grant the Secretary of Defense the authority to post almost 400,000 military personnel throughout the United States in times of emergency or a major disaster.

This request has already occasioned a dispute with the nation’s governors. And it raises the prospect of U.S. military personnel patrolling the streets of the United States, in conflict with the Posse Comitatus Act of 1878.

…

Mike German, the ACLU’s national security policy counsel, expressed amazement “that the military would propose such a broad set of authorities and potentially undermine a 100-year-old prohibition against the military in domestic law enforcement with no public debate and seemingly little understanding of the threat to democracy.”

At the moment, says Pentagon spokesperson Belk, the legislation does not have a sponsor in the House or the Senate.”

http://www.progressive.org/wx081209b.html

5.  “The overlap between — and deliberate blurring of — political power, media opinion-making, and large corporate largesse is unlimited now.  The aforementioned Tom Daschle just spent an hour this past Sunday on Meet the Press ostensibly to analyze the health care reform debate despite the fact that, as Time‘s Michael Scherer documented, Daschle currently works for numerous health insurance industry interests, relationships completely undisclosed during the entire one-hour health care program.  Between Richard Wolffe, the Pentagon’s military analysts, Gen. Barry McCaffrey, Daschle, and Davis, one wonders if NBC News ever presents any “political analysts” who are free of undisclosed conflicts of interest.

What makes all of this particularly notable is that the centerpiece of Barack Obama’s presidential campaign was putting an end to this type of corporate influence over our political debates — particularly when those influences are concealed.  Just marvel at how clear Obama promised to conduct health care negotiations out in the open in order to ensure that undisclosed pharmaceutical and insurance industry interests did not drive the process

Obviously, as David Corn recently complained, none of that has even come close to happening.  There is substantial debate over the role the Obama White House played in the apparent death of the “public option” — did it happen against their wishes or with their blessing? — but all one can do is guess at that question because, contrary to his crystal clear and oft-stated campaign pledge, the negotiations that lead to that collapse were completely secret.  What one does know is that the pharmaceutical industry is so delighted with what they think will be the ultimate plan that they are spending vast sums of money to advocate for it, preceded by a secret White House deal with that same industry to ensure there are no government negotiations for better prices (a result that, when combined with mandates to buy health insurance, would vastly increase the profits of these industries).  Indeed, it’s difficult to recall a single piece of major legislation recently enacted over the objections of the large corporate interests that control and own the American political process.”

http://www.salon.com/opinion/greenwald/

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