COLLECTIVE MADNESS


“Soft despotism is a term coined by Alexis de Tocqueville describing the state into which a country overrun by "a network of small complicated rules" might degrade. Soft despotism is different from despotism (also called 'hard despotism') in the sense that it is not obvious to the people."

Monday, October 15, 2007

McCain is Getting Back on Target


Take out Russia and Replace with India.

McCain would exclude Russia from G8 nations
Mon Oct 15, 2007 2:45pm EDT

Reuters

By Steve Holland

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Republican presidential candidate John McCain said on Monday if elected he would push to exclude Russia from the Group of Eight conclave of major industrial nations to punish Moscow for rolling back political freedoms.

"We need a new Western approach to this revanchist Russia," McCain wrote in a Foreign Affairs magazine article outlining his views on foreign policy looking ahead to the November 2008 election.

The Group of Eight, known as the G8, includes the United States, Britain, France, Italy, Germany, Canada, Japan and Russia. Their leaders gather each year in one of their countries to discuss major economic and political challenges facing the globe.

Russia is a fairly recent entry into the group, joining the Group of Seven in 1997, and President Vladimir Putin played host to the annual G8 summit in St. Petersburg in 2006.

McCain, an Arizona senator who frequently denigrates Putin, said the G8 should again become "a club of leading market democracies: It should include Brazil and India but exclude Russia."

"Today, we see in Russia diminishing political freedoms, a leadership dominated by a clique of former intelligence officers, efforts to bully democratic neighbors, such as Georgia, and attempts to manipulate Europe's dependence on Russian oil and gas," McCain wrote.

At age 71 trying to become the oldest American to win a first term as president, McCain said the challenges facing the country are such that "there will be no time for on-the-job training."

McCain sought to distance himself from the foreign policies of President George W. Bush in the article, never mentioning the current president, while singling out Bush's father, George H.W. Bush, for praise for forming a broad international coalition during the Gulf War of the early 1990s.

He said years of "mismanagement and failure in Iraq" are proof that the United States should go to war only with sufficient troop levels and with a realistic and comprehensive plan for success.

But he said the current U.S. troop build-up is working in Iraq and should be pursued, dismissing Democratic candidates who promise a quick pullout.

"The war in Iraq cannot be wished away, and it is a miscalculation of historic magnitude to believe that the consequence of failure will be limited to one administration or one party," he wrote.

McCain said if elected he would set up a new intelligence agency patterned after the Office of Strategic Services, the World War Two predecessor to the CIA, to fight "terrorist subversion around the world and in cyberspace."

"It could take risks that our bureaucracies today rarely consider taking -- such as deploying infiltrating agents without diplomatic cover in terrorist states and organizations -- and play a key role in frontline efforts to rebuild failed states," he said.

To fight climate change, McCain said he would do what the current administration has refused to do. He would agree to set reasonable caps on emissions of carbon dioxide and provide industries with tradable emissions credits.



22 comments:

  1. Big John, big bad John!

    He is right about Brazil and maybe India ...

    Kick the Russkis out of the G8 and it'd be a polarizing move.

    FOX News reporting the Generals maybe saying "We've Won!"

    Prepping the battlefield of media PR. Gotta have the people's minds ready, by March.

    The new narrative begins ...

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  2. How about making the G8 the top 8 countries by GDP? That means Russia has to get in line behind Spain and Brazil.

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  3. How do we keep the Chicoms out?

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  4. McCain is an old, nasty anti-free speech, open borders-loving asshole.

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  5. I'd vote for Hillary, first. At least, she hasn't taken any of my first ten "Rights" away, yet.

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  6. Bush Blurts another INSULTING Speech about us patriots and "immigration."

    We don't want to admit we are a nation of immigrants, and we want to kick them all out!

    Thanks, you miserable, lying, elite SOB!
    ---
    Conflating, as always, immigrants with illegals, thinking we don't know Ellis Island from Tijuana, or an Indian Phd from a Mexican Coke Smuggler.

    Bastard's gonna try to ram it down our throats at least one more time before he leaves or meets his early demise.
    Not to suggest, of course...

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  7. Operative word is "yet"
    Rufus!

    Fairness Doctrine Here We Come!

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  8. For Cubans, a Twisting New Route to the U.S.
    The island of Isla Mujeres has become a stepping stone to the United States for many Cubans who believe that a route through Mexico boosts their odds of reaching Miami.

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  9. "Cuban authorities contend the migration is more economic than political, and is fueled by Washington’s policy of rewarding Cubans who enter the United States illegally.

    In fact, unlike Mexicans, Central Americans and others heading to the United States’ southwest border, the Cubans do not have to sneak across. They just walk right up to United States authorities at the border, relying on Washington’s so-called wet foot/dry foot policy, which gives Cubans the ability to become permanent residents if they can only reach American soil.
    "

    Cool!


    Hadn't thot of that!
    Smart, hardworking folks that become instant patriots.

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  10. Gore would have us "join an international treaty within the next two years that cuts global-warming pollution by 90% in developed countries and by more than half worldwide."

    Why Gore Won't Run

    A rickshaw in every garage would be the slogan, and an unpopular one. He'll have to stick with being St.Al, patron saint of environmentalists.

    McCain and Giuliani are teaming up in an informal alliance to bash Romney, I read, paying tribute to Romney's strength.

    I don't know, Rufus, I think you'd have to put a gun to my head to make me vote for Hillary. I might do it if I had a gun to my head.

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  11. So few comments on the "swing" in the narraive?

    aQ has been beaten, General O said so in August, to Ralph Peters.
    Now, the day after General Sanchez says there not even a light at the end of the tunnel, it's leaked we've already won, but it's midnight, in a sandstorm. So few can see the coming dawn, yet.

    Few think we've even gotten out of the tunnel.

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  12. Well, to be honest, Bob, they'd have to pull the trigger. I wouldn't, really, vote for either one, under any circumstances.

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  13. McCain is what he is. I never spent seven years in NVA
    stir.Had I, perhaps I would be something close to this

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  14. DOUG: How do we keep the Chicoms out?

    Don't buy Wal-mart crap anymore.

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  15. Giuliani also is leasing a plane for the campaign, paying full charter fare. Among his other expenditures, Giuliani's campaign paid more than $131,000 for security services to his company, Giuliani Security and Safety.

    Thompson also leased charter planes, spending $427,000 overall on travel. He paid $6,712 in travel costs to UST Inc., parent company of U.S. Smokeless Tobacco and Ste. Michelle Wine Estates.

    Planes supplied by corporate backers have helped candidates defray travel costs because they have been allowed to pay only first-class fare for the trips, a significant discount from the charter rate. New ethics rules passed by Congress, however, will now require all presidential candidates to pay full charter costs.


    Plane Leasing

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  16. How do we keep the Chicoms out?

    You buy Red White & Blue. Insist on it.

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  17. McCain mentions Alexander Hamilton in the 1st paragraph. I'm listening to Forrest Church, Frank's son, a Unitarian minister all his life, talk about his latest book. He just said Hamilton wanted to get rid of Article VI Clause III, the religious test clause, thinking the nation needed the stability a religious test would provide(in his view). This is odd as Hamilton wasn't known as one of the pious believers of his time. But that is what Forrest just said.

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  18. I like McCain's idea of a League of Democracies.

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