Day: April 9, 2008
Poll: Obama, McCain Tied
Rasmussen’s daily presidential poll took an interesting turn today.
The Rasmussen Reports daily Presidential Tracking Poll for Wednesday shows Barack Obama with a statistically insignificant one-point advantage over John McCain, 46% to 45%. While that lead is statistically insignificant, it is the first time Obama has had any advantage over McCain in a month…
While that lead is statistically insignificant, it is the first time Obama has had any advantage over McCain in a monthIn a match-up with Hillary Clinton, McCain attracts 47% of the vote while Clinton earns 44%. McCain has a very slight edge over Clinton among unaffiliated voters but trails Obama 49% to 39% among that key group. McCain leads both Democrats by double digits among White voters but trails by large margins among African-American voters. Rasmussen Markets data shows that Democrats are given a 59.2 % chance of winning the White House this year.
McCain is viewed favorably by 53% and unfavorably by 44%. Obama’s reviews are 53% favorable and 45% unfavorable. For Clinton, those numbers are 45% favorable, 52% unfavorable.
Today’s numbers might be influenced by yesterday’s Petraeus/Crocker hearings, at which Sen. John McCain again had a hard time getting his arms around the differences between those darn Sunnis and Shiites. The hearings also reminded voters that six months ago, Sen. Hillary Clinton dissed Petraeus by saying she’d have to suspend disbelief to believe him, which I think, is another way of saying she doesn’t believe him which might, when you think about, be a way to say he’s lying.
McCain’s Sunni-Shia Confusion: Senility or Bushevik Conflation?
During his questioning of Gen. David Petraeus and Amb. Ryan Crocker at the Senate Armed Services Committee hearings yesterday, John McCain again confused — or deliberately conflated — the relationship between the Iranian regime, which is controlled exclusively by Shiites, and al Qaeda, a Sunni terror cult.
Here’s what McCain said:
SEN. MCCAIN: There are numerous threats to security in Iraq and the future of Iraq. Do you still view al Qaeda in Iraq as a major threat?
GEN. PETRAEUS: It is still a major threat, though it is certainly not as major a threat as it was, say, 15 months ago.
SEN. MCCAIN: Certainly not an obscure sect of the Shi’ites, all overall, or Sunnis or anybody else.
McCain’s confusion/conflation yesterday was the fifth time he’s made the mistake, according to an email sent out by the Democratic National Committee yesterday. If so, the first error may have been a slip of the tongue. The second time could have been misspeaking. The third may have been a brain fart. But the fourth time he confused Shias and Sunnis was simply egregious, and this fifth time may well be presenting for senile dementia.
On the other hand, Republicans have been talking up a purported threat from Iran whenever possible lately, and the Petraeus/Crocker hearings provided an excellent venue for fear-baiting. So maybe McCain was not confused at all. Maybe he has deliberately conflating Shiite Iran with its bitter Sunni enemies in order keep the GOP base too terrified to think rationally about, say, how Republican economic policies have devastated their family finances.
While the difference between the Islamic sects is obscure to most Americans, as it was to George Bush before he invaded Iraq, Shiites and Sunnis have been bitterly at odds for the better part of 12 centuries, and voters must demand that the next president have a comprehensive understanding of the blood lust of these internecine factions, which is at the core of the violence faced by U.S. occupation forces in the region.
No Impeachment Or War Crimes Charges For Bush – Only ‘Punishment’ Will Be Treatment in Oliver Stone Biopic
What fate will befall George W. Bush as retribution for leading the United States into the worst debacle in our military history, illegally authorizing torture, deliberately betraying a secret CIA operation tracking the black market for terror weapons or the drowning of New Orleans on his watch?
It’s safe to say it won’t be impeachment, at least not while he remains in office, and it is surely wishful thinking to suggest he might be tried for war crimes later on.
No, as it was with Richard Nixon, whose malfeasance pales in comparison with Bush’s, the only “punishment” awaiting Bush is to grow old in disgrace — and to be the subject of a fictionalized biographical film by Oliver Stone.
Hollywood is buzzing about the film, which is titled “W.” (pronounced “Dubya”), starting with the fact that Josh Brolin, son of James Brolin, the spouse of uber-liberal Barbra Streisand, has been signed to play the title character. Now the film-biz trade rag Hollywood Reporter has obtained the first couple of pages of the script for Stone’s movie, which in the real world might be be called a “scoop” but in this town it is called, “promotion”:
Even before a single talent deal was signed or locations scouted, Oliver Stone’s “W” was hotter than a Texas afternoon in July. Conservative pundits were ready to pounce on the provocateur for what they said was agenda-driven filmmaking, while Stone and his partners said they were simply telling the story of the Bush White House without varnish or sugar-coating.
As Stephen Galloway and Matthew Belloni report in THR today, both turn out to be right — sort of. According to four Bush scholars who read a draft of the script, the tale has elements that are unquestionably accurate (like when George Jr. comes home drunk and nearly gets into a fistfight with his father) and elements that are just plain made-up (like when the president and his advisers discuss high-level policy in a casual, even frat-house, sort of manner).
Rather than just let the experts judge, we decided to offer the first few pages of the script, in which Bush and his advisers prep for the “Axis of Evil” speech, here on Risky Biz — with the caveat that this comes from a draft of the script dated in mid-October and, according to sources close to the project, may have changed in the interim.
Here are the script pages in PDF.
