McCain: No More Blood For Oil

McThuselah is losing his mind.

“My friends, I will have an energy policy which will eliminate our dependence on oil from Middle East that will then prevent us from having ever to send our young men and women into conflict again in the Middle East."

Again? Prevent us from sending our kids to the Middle East... AGAIN?! Five years ago, when "No Blood For Oil" was being chanted by anti-war protesters, the right wingnuts were calling that theory absolutely insane and the tinfoil hat liberals were at it again, conjuring up some crazy conspiracy to defame the intrepid president and his astute administration officials.

Of course McCain's campaign tried to wipe off the shit he stepped in and expected us to be stupid enough to believe that Mr. Double Talk was speaking about the FIRST Gulf War. When pressed, McCain conceded he wasn't thinking of Gulf War I. Nice try, fellas.

Republican John McCain was forced to clarify his comments Friday suggesting the Iraq war involved U.S. reliance on foreign oil. He said he was talking about the first Gulf War and not the current conflict.
...The expected GOP nominee sought to clarify his comments later, after his campaign plane landed in Phoenix. He said he didn't mean the U.S. went to war in Iraq five years ago over oil.
"No, no, I was talking about that we had fought the Gulf War for several reasons," McCain told reporters.
One reason was Saddam Hussein's invasion of Kuwait, he said. "But also we didn't want him to have control over the oil, and that part of the world is critical to us because of our dependency on foreign oil, and it's more important than any other part of the world," he said.
"If the word `again' was misconstrued, I want us to remove our dependency on foreign oil for national security reasons, and that's all I mean," McCain said.

McThuselah is making it a habit of misspeaking, although he would like us believe it is we who are "misconstruing" his words. The "no more blood for oil" gaffe comes on the heels of blaming the deadly Minneapolis bridge collapse on too much pork-barrel spending... and then backing off that one too.

I suppose the campaign should just hire an interpreter for Grandpa Moses and have him attached at the waist at all times, so they can decipher what he means to say from what he actually says.

Chasing the Chimp

I was away this past week, but here is what I've seen happening with Curious George just these last few days alone:

Bush, Mr. Compassionate Conservative, threatened to veto the S-CHIP Program, (State Children's Health Insurance Program). The legislation renews an effort to provide health insurance to children of America's working poor. But President Bush is threatening to veto the plan.

In the midst of the Minneapolis bridge collapse, Bush decided to blame Congress for not spending the discretionary highway monies in the budget properly while at the same time, is considering a fresh plan to cut tax rates for U.S. corporations.

Minnesota Republican Governor Tim Pawlenty had earlier rejected a 5 cent per gallon tax to help in funding road and bridge repairs.

When asked about the Pat Tillman case, in which seven separate Pentagon investigations have all been a dead end, Bush decides to look the other way and then invokes executive privilege dealing with the death of the soldier whose sacrifice this administration used in the drumbeat for war.

The House of Representatives passed a bill (HR 3159) which would guarantee troops as much time at home as they spend deployed. The vote count was 229-194 (191 Republicans and 3 so called Democrats whose days are numbered by this vote, no doubt).

The White House's response? The bill would “infringe on the president’s constitutional authority as commander-in-chief to manage the readiness and availability of the armed forces” and would “substitute the mandates of Congress for the considered judgment of our military commanders. If this legislation were presented to the president, he would veto the bill.”

And that's just the tip of the iceberg.

So let's recap: We can't afford to continue providing children in need with health care (approximately $7 billion a year over the next 5 years). We can't afford to rebuild our crumbling infrastructure, meaning dams, bridges, power grids, water supplies, etc., that are in desperate need of repair and are at critical conditions at the cost of $160 billion over the next 10 years. But we can afford $12 billion spent in Iraq monthly (close to $600 billion and counting that we know of), and we can afford more corporate tax cuts. They claim to support the troops, but won't give them much needed time at home, and earlier this year, the White House opposed a 3.5% increase in pay for the military. Now they are fighting a Democratic effort to restore full educational benefits for returning veterans, according to an official's comments last week.

Republicans at their finest, protecting billionaires in need. God, I hate these people.