Clinton and McCain seem to believe President Bush’s unprecedented policy of beating the drums for war and refusing to talk to anyone (unless such dictators and terrorists are helpful - like Moamar Quadaffi, Kim Jung Ill and Saudi Arabia’s King Abdullah) is the best path, while Obama believes Eisenhower, Kennedy, Reagan and Nixon had the right idea (each met with enemies of the U.S. that makes Iran pale in comparison).

Apparently, once upon a time (like 2 years ago) McCain attempted to be a grown up too:

Will Paul get a speaking role at the convention? I wouldn’t hold my breath but Paul still has enough power, influence and support to be heard in some manner - whether the Republican Party honchos like it or not. Check out this video featuring the one good thing about FOX News, Andrew Napalitano:

Speaking before the Knesset, Bush said that “some people” believe the United States “should negotiate with terrorists and radicals, as if some ingenious argument will persuade them they have been wrong all along.”

Democrats have interpreted the comments as an attack on Sen. Barack Obama, and Biden, the chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, said that the president was out of line.

“He is the guy who has weakened us,” he said. “He has increased the number of terrorists in the world. It is his policies that have produced this vulnerability that the U.S. has. It’s his [own] intelligence community [that] has pointed this out, not me.”

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But President Bush - who is not only a big government liberal but completely awful on foreign policy - disagrees. Said Dubya in Israel this week, in what was no doubt, a shot at Obama:

“Some seem to believe we should negotiate with terrorists and radicals, as if some ingenious argument will persuade them they have been wrong all along,” the President said to the country’s legislative body, “We have heard this foolish delusion before. As Nazi tanks crossed into Poland in 1939, an American senator declared: ‘Lord, if only I could have talked to Hitler, all of this might have been avoided.’ We have an obligation to call this what it is –- the false comfort of appeasement, which has been repeatedly discredited by history.”

One can only assume our chickenhawk president (for whom it is eternally Munich in 1939 and every foe is the “next Hitler”) is reffering to his latest bogeyman, Iranian president Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, among others. But it is Bush who is discredited by history. Writes Pat Buchanan:

“What is it about this tiny man that induces such irrationality?

Answer: He is president of a nation that is a “state sponsor of terror,” that is seeking nuclear weapons, and is moving munitions to the Taliban and insurgents in Iraq.

But Libya was a “state sponsor of terror,” and Col. Khadafi was responsible for Pan Am 103, the Lockerbie massacre of school kids coming home for Christmas. And President Bush secretly negotiated a renewal of relations in return for Khadafi giving up his nuclear program and compensating the families of the victims of that atrocity. Has Ahmadinejad ever committed an act of terror like this?

Richard Nixon went to Moscow and concluded strategic arms agreements while Moscow was the arms supplier of the enemy we were fighting in Vietnam that used, at Hue, mass murder as a war tactic.

Nixon went to Beijing to toast Mao Zedong, the greatest mass murderer in history, responsible for the deaths of 37,000 Americans in Korea, who was, in 1972, persecuting and murdering dissidents in the Great Proletarian Cultural Revolution run by his crazed wife, and transshipping Russian weapons into Vietnam.

And Nixon is today hailed as a statesman for having gone there.

In 1959, President Eisenhower rode up Pennsylvania Avenue in an open convertible with Nikita Khrushchev, Stalin’s gauleiter in Ukraine, who, three years before his tour of the United States, had sent tanks into Budapest to butcher the patriots of the Hungarian Revolution.

What has Ahmadinejad done to rival these monsters?

America and Iran have great differences, but also common interests. Among the latter, no Taliban in Kabul, no restoration of a Sunni Baathist dictatorship in Baghdad and support for the present governments. Iran cannot want a Sunni-Shia war in the region, which would make her an enemy of most Arabs, and she cannot want a major war with America, which could lead to the destruction and breakup of the nation where only half the people are Persians.

That is plenty to build a cold peace on, if the hysteriacs do not stampede us into another unnecessary war.”

Read Buchanan’s entire column

“A Southern icon, by way of Minnesota; a national treasure, who became such practicing a trade that gets little respect; and a personal hero, in ways he’ll never know. Diamonds are forever - so are life-shaping memories - and so is Ric Flair.”

Beck’s guest, colonel-turned-commentator Oliver North, said that Wright’s fiery language was helping recruit young men into Al-Qaida. I’m not kidding. North really said this, and Beck agreed with him. “Just how stupid are we going to get with this controversy?” I thought to myself.

North and Beck are not alone. Take a quick listen to Sean Hannity, Michael Savage, Mark Levin, and the entire Republican talk radio echo chamber, and you will find all-Obama attacks, all day, every day, as hosts offer the most tortured, guilt-by-association arguments imaginable. These hacks aren’t simply beating a dead horse at this point — they’ve buried the horse, dug it back up, and are now obsessing over the carcass.

Each host insists that they are doing voters an invaluable service and believe it’s fair game to judge Obama by the company he keeps. Fine. But why not apply the same logic to John McCain?”

Read the entire column

Former US congressman Bob Barr on Monday announced plans to run for president on the Libertarian Party’s ticket, in a move some analysts say could hurt Republican presumptive nominee John McCain. “My name is Bob Barr and I’m a candidate for the presidency of the United States of America,” said the former Republican lawmaker, who played a key role in the congressional impeachment of former president Bill Clinton.

Barr said he was running because there was not “currently or anywhere on the horizon” any candidate who understood the principles of fiscal conservatism and basic principles on which he said America was founded.

The former Georgia congressman, who announced his plans at a press conference here, must first win the Libertarian Party’s nomination before throwing himself into the 2008 field for real.

The 59-year-old said he was not concerned about the prospect of damaging McCain, possibly among conservative voters whom the Republican candidate has had trouble courting.

“If Senator McCain … does not succeed in winning the presidency … it will be because Senator McCain did not present, and his party did not present, a vision, an agenda, a platform and a series of programs that actually resonated positively with the American people.”

Barr believes spending by the US government is running out of control and says federal authorities have seized powers not granted by the constitution, and believes US forces should be brought home from Iraq.

The Libertarian Party stands for non-interference by the US government in the personal and business lives of Americans, and advocates lower taxes, a smaller government and more individual freedom.”

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But what’s been largely overlooked is Paul’s candidacy as a reflection of a powerful lingering dissatisfaction with the Arizona senator among the party’s most conservative conservatives. As anticipated a month ago in The Ticket, that situation could be exacerbated by today’s expected announcement from former Republican Rep. Bob Barr of Georgia for the Libertarian Party’s presidential nod, a slot held by Paul in 1988.”

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