Will The GOP Slap Down Obama By Torpedoing Chuck Hagel?

I've never been a fan of Chuck Hagel's-- and I'm not about to start now. Would he be a better Defense Secretary than Casper Weinberger, Frank Carlucci, Dick Cheney and Don Rumsfeld (or, for that matter John C. Calhoun and Jefferson Davis, although back in their days it was called Secretary of War)? He could hardly be worse. But I'm not going to get stampeded into "rooting" for him just because warmongers and partisan shitheads like McCain and Ted Cruz are opposing him. Cruz, for one, will oppose anyone Obama nominates for anything. He was one of only 3 who voted against John Kerry as Secretary of State. Yes, the hysterical, McCarthyite opposition to Hagel is really little more than a temper tantrum on the right and a way for them to express their psychotic hatred for Obama and their insistence than his presidency is illegitimate. A KKK stalwart like Jeff Sessions (R-AL) and his claque will never recognize someone as president who was elected with "colored" votes. As for McCain... the bile and venom and the unending lust for young blood has rotted his brain to a point where he's as great a danger to America as any anywhere on the planet.

The Republicans seemed to behave as the confirmation hearing was about finding the next U.S. Ambassador to Israel rather than someone to run the Pentagon. Hagel didn't do himself any favors with his performance, emboldening the extremists in the GOP to press for a filibuster against confirmation. Unfortunately, people watching C-Span learned more about the venality of McCain, Jim Inhofe and Cruz than about Hagel and about how he would run the Pentagon. The questions were about whatever their pet peeves happen to be in their sick jihad against President Obama... and against America. and, yes... Jim Inhofe gets his information from the Drudge Report. Poor Oklahoma!

Will Hagel be confirmed anyway? Unless the GOP goes ahead with an unprecedented filibuster that the whole demented caucus agrees to, yes. And two Republicans-- Thad Cochran (MS) and Lisa Murkowski (AK)-- have already said they're voting for confirmation. Hagel doesn't even need a single Republican vote to win a straight up or down confirmation vote. He's not going to lose any Democrats and both Independents seem to be OK with voting for him. And the GOP probably doesn't have the guts to mount a real filibuster against a former conservative Republican senator over trumped up charges on lunatic fringe right-wing websites. the kooks and obstructions will, as anyone who watches the Senate already knows, vote no. So? What else is new?

Has Madonna Got McCain Pegged Right?

Before I got my first job at Warner Bros. I did a punk rock radio show at KUSF. Madonna was the most successful musical artist of the day and, obviously, our station didn't play her music. (The closest we got were cover versions of smash hits by alternative artists like BiGod 20 and John Wesley Harding.) But I went even further than not playing her; I had a station promo made bragging that my show was the one place on the dial where the listener could be safe from ever hearing any of her wretched music. Take that!

So my first job at Warner Bros was as general manager of Sire Records and, although I liked thinking of it as the label of The Ramones, Talking Heads, Pretenders, Depeche Mode, Smiths and Ministry... Madonna paid the bills-- all of them. My boss tried luring me to a show she was doing at Madison Square Garden. I resisted. He said he'd give me a hundred dollar bill if I came; it was the early 80s and that was a lot of money back then-- months of gasoline, not a week's worth.

The show was fun enough. I always love the energy when people are all focused on having a good time and this was a party crowd. Afterwards my boss forced me to go backstage and meet her. I didn't want to. When we got backstage she was giving an AIDS treatment organization a check for the entire box office. It was private and unheralded; no press, no announcements. I cried all night-- and not because my boss never gave me the hundred bucks.

I wasn't surprised when a friend of mine sent me a story about her treatment of John McCain at the kickoff of her new tour this weekend in Wales.

As Madonna kicked off her international "Sticky and Sweet" tour Saturday night, she took a none-too subtle swipe at the presumptive Republican nominee for U.S. president.

Amid a four-act show at Cardiff's packed Millennium Stadium, a video interlude carried images of destruction, global warming, Nazi dictator Adolf Hitler, Zimbabwe's authoritarian President Robert Mugabe-- and U.S. Sen. John McCain. Another sequence, shown later, pictured slain Beatle John Lennon, followed by climate activist Al Gore, Mahatma Gandhi and finally McCain's Democratic rival, Barack Obama.

But the friend who sent it to me was giggling... "They compared McCain to the Nazis... lol."

He was giggling because he finds that far-fetched. That's because he's ignorant of history and politics, having never finished high school. He uses his supposed Attention Deficit Hyperactive Disorder as an excuse for all of his shortcomings and failings, much the way McCain uses his time as a prisoner of war. When you explain to him that rightist politics inevitably leads to fascism he is incapable of imagining that Nazism is anything other than hatred of Jews. Probably all of the yentas and fressers are.

Neither my politics nor my motivations are identical with Madonna's but when she juxtaposes McCain and Hitler, it isn't unfounded. Will McCain put Jews in gas chambers? No, I doubt that's something he'd get behind-- their era's scapegoats are probably someone else. But Hitler's authoritarianism, his melding of corporate and government functions and his use of war for social cohesion and political gain... now we're talking.




UPDATE: McCAIN CAMP CALLS MADONNA "DISAPPOINTING AND VULGER"-- HE'LL STICK WITH VICIOUS GAY BASHER JOHN RICH

When one of McCain's handlers woke him up and told him what Madonna was up to, he said he was relieved that at least Baby Jesus hadn't denounced him too. The handler brought him some warm milk and tucked him in and went out to the press to say that "It's a disappointing and vulgar attack on John McCain, who has devoted his life to the cause of freedom and the fight against tyranny. But, it's not surprising that Barack Obama and his fellow celebrities stick together." What about singin' homophobe John Rich and reggaeton singer Daddy Yankee? The McCain camp doesn't see them as "celebrities," just as wealthy entreprenuers and "success stories," like McCain's gangster father-in-law whose Mafia business paid for McCain's dozen or so homes.