To listen to all the flap about the rescue of Betancourt the last few days over Alvaro Uribe, the President of Columbia, one would get them impression that he is a left wing hero. 

Nothing could be further from the truth.  Alvaro Uribe is a right-wing hardliner.   His political life has been dominated by his desire to rid Colombia of the leftist rebels who killed his father, a rich landowner 20 years ago.  Hardly "a man of the people" Uribe comes from a wealthy family and he was educated at Oxford and Harvard.

Columbia under the leadership of Uribe is a perfect example of people trading in their rights for a leader who will keep "law and order".  They forget that it was the paramilitaries, paid for and supported by Uribe and friendly USA business interests that kept the fighting up in their cities to keep the leftist out that created the conflicts.  They forget that it is friends and relatives of Uribe who push the small landowners out.

Now Uribe is trying to get the Constitution of Columbia changed so he can be "legally" re-elected for his third term.  (LOL I'm sure if Bush had a competent  PR person instead of "turd blossom" Karl Rove all these years, he might have done better and would be pulling the same sort trick.  What is more likely from Bush will be an attempt to start a war in Iran, suspend the elections and declare marshal law.)

Read from the BBC news:

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/americas/3214685.stm

Death Squads meet on Uribe's ranch

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2007/04/17/AR2007041702007.html

http://www.nytimes.com/2007/05/16/world/americas/16colombia.html

Perhaps since the Underdog image isn't getting any traction, McCain should change his new image to Underpig.  That might at least attract some of the big Republican donors who continue to refuse to donate to his campaign.

According to an article this morning from the Associated Press to call McCain an underdog is an understatment.

"McCain also doesn't seem to have a coherent message let alone much of a strategy despite securing the nomination three months earlier than Obama." 

The McCain campaign still does not have a big theme around which to build a winning campaign.  And when it comes to message and strategy, McCain continues to flounder while Obama runs ads in 18 states compared to 11 for McCain.  McCain has 300 people working for his campaign and Obama has 1,000.

 That was the joke.  Now for some truth.

McCain has some very unsavory friends and supporter.  Among them include  Carl H. Lindner Jr., a billionaire Cincinnati businessman, former CEO of Chiquita Brands International and co-host of a recent top-dollar fundraiser. 

"Beginning under his tenure, Chiquita executives paid hundreds of thousands of dollars to the United Self-Defense Forces of Colombia (known by the Spanish acronym AUC), which is described by George Washington University's National Security Archive as an 'illegal right-wing anti-guerrilla group tied to many of the country's most notorious civilian massacresIn 2007,

Chiquita, the international fruit corporation, admitted to funding a Colombian terrorist group and agreed to pay a $25 million fine. The justice Department indictment,  filed March 13, 2007 in D.C. Federal Court, states that Chiquita gave more than $1.7 million to the United Self-Defense Forces of Colombia (Autodefensas Unidas de Colombia - AUC), an illegal right-wing anti-guerrilla group tied to many of the country's most notorious civilian massacres.

SOURCEs
http://www.gwu.edu/~nsarchiv/NSAEBB/NSAEBB217/index.htm

http://latimesblogs.latimes.com/laplaza/2008/07/in-colombia-mcc.html

As far as I'm concerned, Colin Powell's endorsement would not be a plus for Obama.

Twice in his life Colin Powell had the chance to stand up and tell the truth for his country and both times he failed.

Colin Powell lost it for me the day I found out that he was sent to Vietnam to investigate early claims of an American soldier about My Lai that the US soldiers had wantonly killed and abusedVietnames citizens. He came back and filed a report that nothing was wrong. Turns out, as we all know that report did not reflect what happened. 

Then as if that were not enough in 2003, Powell proved himself yet another time to be a yes man when he lied about the Iraq War to the United Nations.   Powell even admitted it himself   In a February 2005 interview with Barbara Walters on ABC News "20/20" program, Powell himself declared his UN Iraq speech to be a blot on his reputation. 

http://www.counterpunch.org/roberts02072006.html   

FROM WIKI ABOUT MY LAI: 

Six months after My Lai,Tom Glen, a 21-year-old soldier of the 11th Light Infantry Brigade, wrote a letter to General Creighton Abrams, the new overall commander of U.S. forces in Vietnam, accusing the Americal Division (and other entire units of the U.S. military) of routine and pervasive brutality against Vietnamese civilians. The letter was detailed and its contents echoed complaints received from other soldiers.Colin Powell, then a 31-year-old Army Major, was charged with investigating the letter, which did not specifically reference My Lai (Glen had limited knowledge of the events there).

In his report Powell wrote: "In direct refutation of this portrayal is the fact that relations between American soldiers and the Vietnamese people are excellent."My Lai was the mass murder of 347 to 504 unarmed citizens of the Republic of Vietnam  (South Vietnam), almost entirely civilians and the majority of them women and children, conducted by U.S. Army  forces on March 16, 1968. Some of the victims were sexually abused, beaten, tortured, or maimed, and some of the dead bodies were mutilated

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/My_Lai_Massacre

I read today where Obama spent the Fourth of July in Butte Montana.  Only two Democratic candidates since 1948 carried Montana. (In 1948 Harry Truman was the Democrat who won Montana.)

Most presidential candidates don't spend much time or money in trying to capture Montana.  It has been a rather solid red state and it only has three electoral votes.

Bill Clinton did win it in 1992 but only with a third of the vote because Ross Perot split the conservative vote. (Clinton lost Montana in 1996) The other Democrat who won was Lyndon Johnson who beat Barry Goldwater in 1964.  [Interesting Goldwater, like McCain hailed from Arizona.]

By contrast, McCain has not even visited Montana this election year.

The McCain campaign remains confident.  Tom Steward, a McCain spokesman reported:  "The more often Barack Obama travels to Montana, the more voters will be reminded of why they disagree with him on the issue they care most about."

SOURCE:

http://www.newsday.com/news/politics/wire/sns-ap-montana-battleground,0,3603877.story

I wonder why Obama cares about Montana?

As if the Bush administration has not already done enough to bring our country and its people to our economic knees, they continue to do their damage. And as each day passes, I grow angrier and angrier at the members of the House of Representatives for not beginning the impeachment proceedings against George Bush and Dick Cheney. 

In addition to the horrible implications of nuclear war (bought about by Pakistan, who do have nuclear bombs and who could possibly retaliate in defense of Iran); there is a more immediate effect of the Bush administration along with Congress’s support of continued badgering of Iran:  the price of oil.

One way to take that speculation away is to remove Bush and his administration from the equation by impeaching Bush and Cheney.

And members of our Congress continue to vote YEA on amendments like the Kyle-Lieberman Amendment and H.Con.Res. 362 that are nothing more than bully threats against Iran that increase instability in the Middle East and drive up the price of oil for Americans.

Isn’t it time to tell them NO. and to demand that they begin impeachment proceedings against this administration now while we still have a country and a world left?  

http://www.impeachbush.org/site/PageServer

Paul Krugman said it best in his NYT column yesterday in his comments about General Wesley’s  statements about McCain.

“  .   .   .   What General Clark actually said was that Mr. McCain’s war service, though heroic, didn’t necessarily constitute a qualification for the presidency. It was a blunt but truthful remark, and not at all outrageous — especially given the fact that General Clark is himself a bona fide war hero.

Yet the Clark affair did reveal something important — not about General Clark, but about Mr. McCain. Now we know what a McCain administration would represent: namely, a third term for Karl Rove.

It was predictable that the McCain campaign would go wild over the Clark remarks. Mr. McCain’s run for the White House has always been based on persona rather than policy: he doesn’t have ideas that voters agree with, but he does have an inspiring life story — which, contrary to the myth of the modest maverick, he talks about all the time. The suggestion that this life story isn’t relevant to his quest for office was bound to provoke a violent reaction.  .   .  “Source:  http://www.nytimes.com/2008/07/04/opinion/04krugman.html?

The main reason for Esmin Green’s death, contrary to what some have suggested on this site, has nothing to do with Esmin’s race-- or of the people who did not come to her assistance.

The problem is that this facility is run according to the same model that most privately owned hospitals and care facilities operate—for a profit.  I’m sure it has many similar rules, some spoken and others unspoken.  The standard rule for most emergency waiting areas is to make patients wait who have no insurance (unless they are gushing blood) so as to discourage them so they will leave.  After waiting several hours, many people will just give up and leave.  This is a plus for the hospital as they don’t have to incur the loss of treatment without payment.

Of all the nations in the world we have been the most irresponsible in the use of nuclear weaponry.  To begin with, we are the only nation in the world who has ever used nuclear bombs against humanity and we did it twice (more if you count the numbers of times that we have detonated nuclear devices on this planet.