KCRWs Left Right & Center 8.15.08 Show

I thought it was routine for there to be a roll call vote to nominate the candidate. Why is Hilary being criticized for what is standard procedure. After the roll call vote there usually is a call to make it unanimous.

P.S. I thought SOMEONE would draw the parallel between "Obama Nation" and "abomination." If someone had named their sleazy slam on the other candidate, "A McPain In My Ass," would no one have noticed?

Yay! We get an ep. of LRC that has a fair fight for once! Tony usually gets double teamed by Arianna and Bob. Maybe they should sit out alternate weeks to keep things balanced.

I am not buying that the 'independent progressive blogosphere' and 'the left' are not allied against 'the right'. I don't even believe that the two should be seen as independent entities.

Also, is it just me, or does someone need to use a chess clock or something to keep Bob from going over his alotted time most weeks?

I think that the Georgia analysis was spot on this week!

I had hoped that someone might address the criticism Obama's camp levelled at McCain regarding his having a lobbyist working for him who used to represent the interests of Georgia. Frankly, that seemed to me to be inappropriate- as if the crisis were just another opportunity to score political points.

Arriana might make a good campaign manager for Obama.

This was a disapointing session on the Russia-Georgia conflict. Perhaps it would have been better if Scheer had been on the show. The moderator at least got the dynamics right, if in the sanitized analogies that forget that human beings are being killed and terrorized in this violence. "Georgia rattled the bear's chain and the bear bit." After that everyone on the program seemed to agree with the assumption that we are talking about the Cuban missle crisis or at least that it plays like that to American voters. First of all, South Ossetians have voted twice that they don't want to be part of Georgia. Now self determination of the peoples often doesn't matter when the world's big players have self interest to the contrary, think of the Kurds or Chechnya or the Balkans. South Ossetia was in the same Soviet Republic as Georgia, so we had a boundary line drawn by drawn by someone else (Stalin apparently) that stuck it in post Soviet Georgia, but South Ossetia has essentially been autonomous. The Georgians start shelling it even though there were Russian peacekeepers there and Russia is much more powerful militarily than Georgia. Did the fact that Georgia's president is an American lawyer and/or the fact that Georgia sent troops to help the US. in Iraq and was being proposed for NATO membership, or the fact that there is an oil pipeline there, or some mixed messages from the Bush administration cause them to think Russia would not counterattack? Unfortunately Russia took the opportunity to overflex their macho muscles and play to their frustrations at being a third rate power since the USSR broke up. Unfortunately that too involves killing and terrorizing people. But it is pretty clear they will eventually pull out of Georgia proper, the Soviet Union will not be reconstituted, and things will more or less go on as before. There is too much at stake for the Russians in world relationships for them to do anything else. In the meantime, instead of talking about this, LRC talks about whether Obama should have put on a suit, waved some flags or even flown home to show the gravity of the situation. Obama gets flack when he acts like he is already president, and now he gets it for not acting like he is already president. Actually Bush is president, and this again shows the limits of his relying too much on military violence to solve the world's problems. Of course even if this conflict really was important to world peace or US safety, the US military could do nothing because it is embroiled in Iraq and Afghanistan. You only get so many wars guys, spend them wisely. Obama's view could easily be that we need to have other ways to deal with the issues in the world, in this case the people of South Ossetia wanting to be free of Georgia, without drawing in the great powers into some military conflagration like started World War I. And if older US voters remember the "Russian Bear" (Reagan actually had a commercial with a bear in it during the 1984 campaign) most of them also either know that the cold war is over or are so used to hearing about the threat of Islam that we don't know what to do when Orthodox Christians start killing each other. Is Arianna right that safety and security will be the dominant issue as it was for Bush in 2004? Or will American voters have a more realistic view of the world's dangers as time passes and the costs and harms of the Iraq episode present a counter-perspective? If so, Obama may be a welcome alternative and McCain's tough talk both failed same-old same-old and transparently phony. No one expects McCain or Bush to do anything significant harm to Russia about South Ossetia. We will have to see what if anything it all means to voters.

I'm really perplexed. Doesn't any one realize the Georgian troops killed several thousand South Ossetia civilians in their initial attack? And that this so-called democrat Shaakashvili called out the troops to halt peaceful democratic demonstrations against his rule last year during his reelection campaign? Does anyone read the numerous articles on the web that show the Abkasian and Ossetian people have an age old culture that is not Georgian? And does any one have any evidence that the Georgian government has demonstrated it will deal fairly with the Abkasian and South Ossetian people????

Warren, Obama claims to be a compromiser but his voting record says he is not. Look for Obama to push for the progressive agenda after he wins the votes of moderates who do not know he is a progressive.

I wanted to say that I enjoyed Marc's sharp one-liners on the show, and that he is quite clever, and did a great job filling in for Matt. I agree Arianna was really on-point in a couple places, especially with the comments about referring to past foreign policy. I do think that a tough national security stance could indeed backfire with a war-weary populace if it goes too aggressive.

I also appreciate Tony's comments re-framing war as the social and material rather than political issue it should be.

Thanks for mentioning Boone Pickens... I live in his home territory and have met the guy. I would like to hear more about his plan, and have heard some hearsay that his "green" energy plan is not nearly as green as it claims to be. I cannot verify this, but I've been told that it might be a token concession to allow him exploitation of natural resources that he was previously not allowed. I would like to know if this is true.

Please discredit Jerome Corsi as much as possible, since his credentials are quite similar to those of David Duke, and his book shows blatant disregard of facts in order to create controversy, mislead the ignorant, and sell books.