Steven Jonas

So the Republican Right managed to go through over 30,000 recorded minutes of the sermons of the Rev. Jeremiah Wright and they came up with a few minutes of supposedly outrageous statements by him that they draped around a few disembodied remarks by Sen. Barack Obama and strung together into one of the most watched non-pornographic cinema loops of all time.

On Jan. 18, 2008, I reported on a "come-clean" speech that John McCain would never actually give about the true costs of his "50-100 Years in Iraq" policy. (Of course if he were truly a "Straight-Talker," he would have given that speech, but he isn't so he didn't and never would.) In this column, we report on a "come-clean" speech that President Bush would give to the American people in support of his veto of the ban-torture bill passed by the Congress, were he not such an abject liar, such an expert in hiding his true policies and his reasoning for them from the American people, and truly concerned that his "legacy" be something other than being both the most successful (in terms of his own real agenda) and the worst President the United States has ever had (see my columns Nos. 155-57 at The Political Junkies.net).

So a talented Obama staffer called Hillary Clinton a "monster" and off the campaign she went. The Clinton camp must have breathed a huge sigh of relief not to have to deal with the brilliance of Harvard Professor Samantha Power, an unpaid aide, any more. Well I guess it's a good thing I don't work for the Obama campaign -- for what I am about to say about Hillary in this Commentary would surely have me bumped as well. No, not monster, but Vice President. How could saying that get an Obama staffer bumped? Read on.

John Bolton. You remember him, don't you? He was the man who partially built his career by promoting U.S. withdrawal from the United Nations, if not the total destruction of that body, and then received a recess appointment from George W. Bush as U.S. Ambassador to the UN. Then, Bolton being considered totally unqualified for the job regardless of his politics, one year later, Bush couldn't get him confirmed for the job even by his rubber-stamp Republican Congress.

There was a very nice puff piece on the Senator from AIPAC, Joe Lieberman, in The New York Times recently. It didn't mention one odd fact about the McCain-Lieberman link. It is well known that when McCain picked up the endorsement of the party-less Sen. Joe Lieberman in December, McCain seemed to be totally out of it. But that's not what was odd. It was surmised in some quarters that Lieberman was angling for the Vice Presidential nod on a ticket headed by McCain.

On "Morning Joe" on MSNBC today, without referring to the specific texts that he quoted, Howard Wolfson, media director for the Hillary Clinton presidential campaign, continued to call out Sen. Barack Obama as a plagiarist. He noted that Gov. Deval Patrick of Massachusetts, a political supporter and long-time friend and colleague of Sen. Obama, had used the same quotes in a speech that Sen. Obama did. "This amounts to a major crack in the Sen. Obama's credibility," Mr.

In an article entitled "Powell's UN Fiasco: Fresh and Festering" published by Ray McGovern, one of the leading members of Veteran Intelligence Professionals for Sanity (VIPS) on the International Clearinghouse on February 6, 2008, he said in part:

The late 19th century Republican equivalent of Karl Rove, Mark Hanna, once made a statement about money and politics that sounds best when it is put in the form of the quote about winning in sports that for years has been attributed, perhaps incorrectly, to the legendary Green Bay Packers pro football coach, Vince Lombardi: "Money isn't everything; it's the only thing."

Yesterday, a powerful Senator, Arlen Specter, Ranking Member of the Judiciary Committee, issued his strongest statement yet on the destruction of the well-known secret videotapes. Indignation spewing forth between every word, the Senator stated that those responsible would be called before the Committee to explain, without equivocation or hesitation, just why the tapes of the horrendous practices under discussion were first, made, then revealed, and then without any explanation or apparent justification destroyed.

Yes, Barack Obama really said that. And boy did folks, including me, jump all over him for it. I wrote to a friend (fortunately not for publication) wondering how could he say that about the man who ensconced modern Republicanism in its place, the Republicanism drowned in oil, based on race, hate, and misogyny, devoted to destroying the Constitution and along with it any positive power of the Federal government.