Santorum: What does McCain know about torture? – War Room – Salon.com.

John McCain has been on something of a crusade this week on the question of how we found Osama bin Laden, giving speeches and writing Op-Eds outlining his position that it was not torture of detainees that led the U.S. to its man.

Now comes presidential candidate and “enhanced interrogation” supporter Rick Santorum arguing on Hugh Hewitt’s radio show that McCain simply “doesn’t understand how enhanced interrogation works.” Yes, he’s talking about the same John McCain who, in his five and a half years as a prisoner of war in North Vietnam, was interrogated during a program of beatings and torture.

Torture is always and everywhere wrong. In my mind, it’s a bright line that separates the good guys from the bad guys. I can’t see how anyone with a conscience can come to any other conclusion.

I know right and wrong when I see it. I know I have a moral center, I don’t think people like Santorum do.  I believe this disqualifies him from consideration for any position of power, let alone President. He deserves nothing but scorn.

Sen. John McCain said Sunday he would not necessarily support his former running mate if she chose to run for president.

So the question becomes why the hell did he pick her?

I know it’s asking a lot I’d like to see the mainstream media actually report the truth when they show McCain mocking Obama for suggesting conservation and developing new sources of energy like solar and wind. The Energy Dept. reports that expanding drilling will on the continental shelf add a whopping 0.2% to world oil production in twenty years.  The impact to oil prices will be insignificant.

EIA – Impacts of Increased Access to Oil and Natural Gas Resources in the Lower 48 Federal Outer Continental Shelf

Bush Made Permanent – New York Times
But here’s the thing: the reason the Bush tax cuts are set to expire is that the Bush administration engaged in a game of deception. It put an expiration date on the tax cuts, which it never intended to honor, as a way to hide those tax cuts’ true cost.

The McCain campaign wants us to accept the success of that deception as a fact of life. Mr. Holtz-Eakin is saying, in effect, “We’re not engaged in any new irresponsibility — we’re just perpetuating the Bush administration’s irresponsibility. That doesn’t count.”

It’s the sort of fiscal double-talk that has been a Bush administration hallmark. In any case, it offers no answer to the principal point raised by the Tax Policy Center analysis, which has nothing to do with scoring: the McCain tax plan would leave the federal government with far too little revenue to cover its expenses, leading to huge budget deficits unless there were deep cuts in spending.

UPDATED: McCain makes a major mistake about a very basic Iraq issue — two days in a row – AMERICAblog: A great nation deserves the truth
Pressed to elaborate, McCain said it was “common knowledge and has been reported in the media that al-Qaeda is going back into Iran and receiving training and are coming back into Iraq from Iran, that’s well known. And it’s unfortunate.” A few moments later, Sen. Joseph Lieberman, standing just behind McCain, stepped forward and whispered in the presidential candidate’s ear. McCain then said: “I’m sorry, the Iranians are training extremists, not al-Qaeda.”

He just shot himself in the foot, twice. There’s another example with audio from the Hugh Hewitt radio show. Are we gonna leave him in charge of the really big guns? Seriously, this kind of mistake shows a profound misunderstanding of the situation of the kind with the mistakes that got us in Iraq in the first place. So, was he that monumentally ignorant or have his 71 years caught up with him? Either way it’s not what I want to see from someone who wants to make the decisions in the Oval Office. He did serious damage to the central theme of his candidacy: that John McCain is the voice of knowledge and experience on national security issues. Not so much…

Mutual Contempt
Though they differ in many ways, John McCain and Barack Obama have one thing in common: Each sees the other as a posturing phony. When McCain talks about Obama on the stump, he trades his typical graciousness for sarcasm and contempt. When McCain lectured Obama about the future of Iraq last week, he did so with what The New York Times called “a tone of belittlement in his voice.” McCain has also called Obamamania a swindle. “America is not deceived by an eloquent but empty call for change that promises no more than a holiday from history,” he said in Wisconsin last month. And he has huffed that “I don’t seek the presidency on the presumption that I am blessed with personal greatness.” After Obama issued a press release last May noting that conditions were still dangerous enough in Iraq that McCain had been forced to wear a “flack jacket” during a public tour of a Baghdad market, a McCain release taunted Obama for his inexperience, adding, “By the way, Senator Obama, it’s a ‘flak’ jacket, not a ‘flack’ jacket.” For good measure, an unnamed McCain aide drove home the point to the Politico, saying that “Obama wouldn’t know the difference between an RPG and a bong.”

Obama has swung back in similar, if somewhat milder, fashion. Noting that McCain had changed his position on the Bush tax cuts, Obama joked last month that “the Straight Talk Express lost its wheels.” Later, he cracked in a Democratic debate that McCain “traded his principles for his party’s nomination.” Snickering at the idea that McCain is a scourge of lobbyists, Obama recently said that “he takes their money and has put them in charge of his campaign.”

Hillary’s New Math Problem | Newsweek Voices – Jonathan Alter | Newsweek.com
Hillary Clinton won big victories Tuesday night in Ohio, Texas and Rhode Island. But she’s now even further behind in the race for the Democratic nomination. How could that be? Math. It’s relentless.

To beat Barack Obama among pledged delegates, Clinton now needs even bigger margins in the 12 remaining primaries than she needed when I ran the numbers on Monday—an average of 23 points, which is more than double what she received in Ohio.

Counter point from Andrew Sullivan:

Still, we think “the math” will make all the confusion disappear. Sorry, but no matter how many graphics generators, telestrators or calculators we deploy, this is politics. It is not algebra class. And in this campaign, it looks like the only count that matters will be the first ballot at the Democratic national convention.

The Daily Dish | By Andrew Sullivan
If McCain is going to give us straight talk – one thing the Bush administration has been completely unable to do – and believes that Iraq should remain a permanently integrated part of a new, expanding American protectorate in the Middle East, then he needs to say so. He needs to be honest about what his goal of turning Iraq into a stable, non-despotic, unified country, permanently occupied by US troops, requires. It will require trillions of dollars, a bare minimum of another decade of occupation, over 100,000 troops (probably more) committed indefinitely, and no lee-way to tackle any major security threats anywhere else on the planet including Afghanistan, Pakistan and Iran, without a draft. Oh, and then there’s a need to maintain US public support for the Sisyphean task of nation-building a place where there is no nation, in a place a long way away, where our reward for such an effort will be fathomless contempt and hatred.

McCain says we all want to leave Iraq. But some obviously don’t. It is increasingly clear that the point of the surge and the occupation is to stay in Iraq for ever. Do we want that? Is it in the West’s interest? Maybe, after all these years, we can have some minimal honesty in this debate.

Doesn’t that all sound like a wonderful investment of American blood and treasure for minimum of the next decade?

After courageously opposing the Bush Administration’s  love affair with torture, the Straight Talker himself voted against a Bill to outlaw torture. The only real satifiying explaintion for this is that he sold his soul to win the approval of the torture loving GOP leadership. How sad for a man who was once tortured into signing a false confession. He should know it’s harmful to those who do the torture, harmful to our legal system and ineffective in finding the truth.

Jon Chait points out that Obama has made very specific policy recommendations and that it’s Sen. McCain who’s been all fuzzy and non-specific. Voicing a criticism of an opponents positions is certainly valid, but pretending that they don’t exist is just stupid.

Bush Urges Conservatives to Rally Behind 2008 Nominee – New York Times

“We have had good debates and soon we will have a nominee who will carry the conservative banner into this election and beyond,” Mr. Bush said to a boisterous audience. “Listen, the stakes in November are high. This is an important election. Prosperity and peace are in the balance.”

Ironically he’s right. If you elect McCain we won’t get either peace or prosperity. It’s difficult to see how one might construe the reign of error otherwise know as the Bush Administration as either peaceful or prosperous. The man is either deluded,  dishonest or some unique combination of the two.

The Associated Press: McCain Seals GOP Nod As Romney Suspends
John McCain effectively sealed the Republican presidential nomination on Thursday as chief rival Mitt Romney suspended his faltering presidential campaign. “I must now stand aside, for our party and our country,” Romney prepared to tell conservatives.

“If I fight on in my campaign, all the way to the convention, I would forestall the launch of a national campaign and make it more likely that Senator Clinton or Obama would win. And in this time of war, I simply cannot let my campaign, be a part of aiding a surrender to terror,” Romney will say at the Conservative Political Action Conference in Washington.

Really the irony here is that the only remaining candidate to really state that they would immediately get all troops out of Iraq was Republican Ron Paul. Obama and Clinton both see a long term need for an America troop presence in Iraq for counter-terrorism operations, force protection and training Iraqi forces. To say otherwise is a flat out lie. It’s ugly, mendacious and plays to fears the GOP does their best to nurture. In other words the normal run of the mill Republican rhetoric.

CBS Poll: Clinton, Obama Tied, McCain Has Big Lead Among Republicans; Also, Most Americans Think Economy Is In Recession – CBS News
With only one full day remaining before voters in more than 20 states head to the polls on Super Tuesday, the races for the Democratic and Republican nominations could not be more different, a new CBS News/New York Times poll finds.

Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama are running neck-and-neck among Democratic primary voters, while John McCain appears to have solidified his status as the Republican Party’s front-runner, opening up a wide margin over his nearest rival for the GOP nomination, former Massachusetts Gov. Mitt Romney.

John McCain seems to have firmed up his lead over the remaining GOP hangers-on. The Unholy Trinity of greater Wignuttia (Rush Limbaugh, Ann Coulter and Laura Ingraham) must be really pissed off about right now. Let me enjoy the Malkinfreude of it all for a few minutes.

UPDATE:

Others are less than convinced this will end up as an Obama victory. Also this nugget is buried in the text of the CBS Poll story:

The picture in the states voting on Super Tuesday is not nearly as close as the overall picture and offers some good news for Clinton. Among voters in those states, she leads Obama, 49 percent to 31 percent, with 16 percent still undecided.

Ouch, they really really don’t like McCain. About the only thing that would get them out the door to vote on election day would be voting against Clinton.

I don’t watch Fox Noise, if I can help it. There’s nothing worse than being forced to listen to a fool like Steve Doocy blather on in a waiting room because it someone’s bizarre idea of a “good news show”. Ewwww

Anyway, Auggie took one for the team and posted this segment from Hannity and Colmes where the High Priestess of Adam’s Apples and Hatin’ on Liberals, Ann Coulter swears that she will campaign for Hillary if McCain is the Republican nominee. Can you see it? Can you picture what that might look like in your mind’s eye. Me neither. Maybe Hillary will take her up on the offer. That would really be taking “keep your friends close and your enemies even closer” to a ridiculous extreme.

Update:

Sully loves it when Hugh Hewitt gives Ann a good talking to.

Does McCain know that the internets keep everything he’s said? He claims that he’s always thought the Bush/Rumsfeld was a failure despite many, many statements of support for the Iraq policy in the nearly five years this disaster has stumbled along.