Financial news of Wall Street meltdowns, Fed takeovers of big insurers and mortgage giants, and some serious death and destruction on the Texas coast from Hurricane Ike (which we’re finding out about piecemeal after 6 days of “Heckuva Job, Skeletor”), it has become more and more obvious that the country is in such terrible trouble that this will be one of the most important Presidential elections of our lifetimes.

So perhaps it’s not so surprising that both friends and enemies of Republican candidate John McCain are beginning to become alarmed at what appears to be some sort of serious mental decline that has taken hold and accelerating rapidly. What’s going on?

Since McCain – a 72-year old man who has survived four bouts with malignant melanoma – has refused to release the results of his most recent medical check-ups and testing, we aren’t likely to find out what’s actually wrong during this election cycle unless (God forbid) he suddenly becomes gravely ill. In which case it’ll still be All About Palin, since the ballots are already printed. John Ashcroft, it must be remembered, lost an election to a man who died during the campaign. So yes, that CAN happen in this country, on this level of politics.

Now, I don’t want to have to live through either a McCain or a Palin presidency. I think they’re both more dangerous than Junior Moron, and Palin’s definitely in line as heir to the Cheney “Imperial Vice-Presidency.” But I also don’t relish the thought of anything awful happening to any of the candidates, or having to watch as McCain painfully slides into some kind of overt dementia. This is a guy who really has had a long and storied career of public service, and who really has had a strong grasp of various foreign policy issues on a much higher level than merely being able to see Russia from the kitchen window. He’s looking sick, exhausted and is scarily losing his mental acumen – why have his handlers not checked him in for a few days of serious rest and medical attention?

It’s more than just not remembering how many houses and condos he and his heiress wife own. That can be understandable if you’re that rich and she’s got her own games going. It’s more than stupidly echoing failed Republican economic pablum on a day when the whole world suffered massive economic meltdown. Now McCain has lost touch so seriously he can’t remember who is running Spain – a NATO member and strong ally of the US – and even confuses things so badly that he thinks Spain is a South American dictatorship!

That’s just not right. And it’s not John McCain, who (in his younger days and in his right mind) knows all about Spain as a European country and NATO ally.

If it’s just jet lag and the stresses of hard campaigning, then he needs a few day’s R&R and nobody in his corner needs to apologize for it. If it’s more than that, they’re risking his very life forcing him to keep going in his obvious state of ill health and mental confusion.

Somebody please do the right thing. Help this man – whatever he loses by being out of the loop for a few days isn’t something that wouldn’t have been lost anyway if he keeps on demonstrating that he’s too old, sick and mentally unfit to be President. He deserves more just for having served so long. From his wife, his erstwhile “soul mate” in the Veep slot, his campaign lobbyists and his party.

Give him a rest. He obviously needs it.

Wow. That’s a real photograph of our dear President representing America at the Olympic Summer Games in Bejing. Pay particular attention to the look on daughter Barbara next to him… Even as Chinese police are slaughtering protesters north of the city and censoring internet access for people from all over the world. Some athletes and journalists covering the games can’t even get their own blogs…

Just for coming-in-January nostalgia’s sake, check out the rest of these fun photos over at Gawker. At the very least it’ll make you not feel so bad about those debate drinking games where you have to chug every time John McCain mentions being a tortured Vietnam veteran or Obama says “we can.”

Link:

Gawker: Bush Looking Drunk at the Olympics

Berlin

Jerusalem

Now, THAT’s how you woo the world! Our erstwhile allies are all pretty darned tired of being bullied. Maybe it’s not too farfetched to hope that Americans might finally get tired of being bullied too.

The Bushies (including John McCain) reacted to Obamapalooza just as everyone paying attention would expect. Secretary of State Condoleeza Rice issued orders the night before Obama left to State Department employees in all the scheduled tour stops that they must not attend any speeches or events or aid Obama (or the other two US Senators on the tour) in any way when they’re in-country. But since assisting US leaders – or even arranging their events, as has been done for McCain’s travels – when they’re in-country is part of the diplomatic corps’ job description, most pointedly ignored the orders.

This is going to be a fun election.

After a long, hard-fought and predictably ugly campaign for the Democratic nomination for POTUS, the Rules Committee of the RNC on Saturday did not hand Hillary Clinton what she demanded – ALL of the delegates for both Florida and Michigan. These two states had broken the rules by rescheduling their primaries to occur before “Super Tuesday,” knowing they would incur penalty and lose their seats at the convention. They did it anyway, Hillary claimed wins in both, even though Obama (and Edwards, and Richardson, etc.) weren’t even on the ballot in Michigan.

Thus as of today, June 2 on the eve of the last primary contest tomorrow, the count stands at Obama 2,071, Clinton 1,914.5. Obama needs 46 of the remaining 234 delegates, Clinton needs 202.5 of them. Which she isn’t at all likely to get, so for all intents and purposes (and barring some not-so clever coup d’etat at the convention by Bill and Hill), It’s Over.

There has been increasing buzz over the last couple of weeks that the Clintons are positioning for Vice-President on Obama’s ticket, but I predict this will quickly slide into the rain-gutter. Why would a President Obama want to have not one but TWO vice-presidents with egos so big they’d undermine his policies just to get the attention they crave? This is a bad idea, and I don’t think Obama or anyone moving and shaking in his campaign are going to fall for it.

So… what do we do with the Clintons? It’s quite obvious that their ambition, sense of entitlement and passion for divisive politics wasn’t quenched after 8 years’ worth of Vast Right Wing Conspiracy or Bimbo Eruptions. They still feel they’ve something to contribute, and we might all be better off if we go ahead and let them contribute. Here’s my ideas…

Hillary should go back to representing the State of New York in the Senate, and the moment one of the current cadre of Supreme Court justices dies or retires, she should be the first and foremost Obama nominee to that bench. With a Dem congress it should be a breeze to get her confirmed, and a lot of the folks there are themselves floating this idea of what to do with Hillary.

Think about it. She’s a very able lawyer with a strong populist streak and rich enough now not to be on the take. She’d make an excellent SCOTUS judge who could be counted upon to ask tough questions and write history-making opinions, and she’s got a strong enough personality to argue her opinions behind closed doors as well, helping to build consensus on the court. And she’d be this important historical personage for the rest of her life.

As for Bill, I say make him ambassador to the United Nations. There he could opine all day and night all he liked about all the issues that are of passionate interest to him. He’d be effective in building consensus, he’d be a tough operator not likely to be intimidated by rogue states pounding shoes on lecterns, and he could round out his life of service by negotiating treaties and pushing for peace and scolding war-mongers and such. He’d be as happy as a rich kid in a toy shop.

We’ll see within the next couple of weeks what the likely future positions of the Clintons will be in an Obama administration, so here’s my predictions. If I win, what prizes do I get?

Clinton loyalist and Hillary’s chief political strategist Mark Penn stepped down from his position on Sunday night due to conflicting interests through his PR firm Burson-Marsteller. Clinton campaign loyalists are breathing a sigh of relief, though there is some doubt that the damage Penn did by crafting Clinton’s weak campaign strategies can be rectified in time to allow Mrs. Clinton a realistic shot at the Democratic nomination over her rival Barack Obama.

The conflict came to a head last week when Penn met with the Columbian ambassador the the U.S. in his role as Burson-Marsteller chief executive overseeing a PR campaign to help secure passage of a “fast-track” bilateral trade treaty with the US. In her role as Senator from New York, Clinton is officially opposed to the treaty along with other members of the Democratic Party leadership. Penn’s PR firm also represents clients such as the country’s largest mortgage lender Countrywide Financial, and the Blackwater Worldwide mercenary outfit blamed for many civilian deaths in Iraq.

It is unclear why it took nearly a week for Clinton to act, given that her trade stance is so important in the Pennsylvania Primary, where workers blame free trade agreements with job losses. That primary is just two weeks away, so the extra week she’d had if she’d fired him last week could turn out to have been crucial. The Columbian government, on the other hand, fired Penn’s firm on Saturday, saying his efforts to distance himself from his efforts on their behalf were an insult.

Clinton loyalists within the campaign had previously expressed resentment towards Penn for letting his business interests overrule the interests of the campaign. Reacting to news of Penn’s fall from grace, top Obama campaign adviser David Axelrod called the event “stunning” on MSNBC’s Morning Joe program with host Joe Scarborough.

Meanwhile, as Penn’s troubles with both the Columbians and the Clinton campaign came to a head, President Bush announced Monday, April 7 that he is sending the controversial trade agreement to Congress where its fast-track status will force a vote within 90 days, before the fall campaign recess. Democrats in Congress oppose the treaty because Columbia has not done enough to halt violence, protect labor activists or disband paramilitary organizations operating with impunity in the country.

Bush has insisted that a failure to approve the treaty with Columbia would encourage Venezuela’s Hugo Chavez’s anti-Americanism, which casts the U.S. as “untrustworthy and impotent” in the region.

Links:

Clinton’s Chief Strategist Mark Penn Resigns
Bush to Force Vote on Columbia Trade
Top Clinton Aide Leaving Post Under Pressure

So it was with interest that I read a report from the Denver Research Group dated 9-15. In which they report things that should definitely be of concern to Americans. The gutting of both intelligence capabilities and diplomatic standing during the Bush-II presidency have been significant, and may prove difficult to rectify when they’re gone (scheduled for January 20, 2009).

The Denver Group’s report lists eight factors that have contributed to the crisis. I’ll repeat those because they make it easy to see how bad the situation has become…

• The loss of US influence as a result of the Iraq war.
• A view across the globe resulting from Abu Ghraib and range of missteps that the US has lost the moral high ground it had enjoyed for decades.
• A feeling among global leaders that the US is without a coherent foreign policy strategy… a belief that has started feeding on itself and has emboldened US adversaries.
• China’s rise, its smooth diplomatic technique, its re-alignment with Russia and its aggressive, clever drive to form new alliances with nations extending from Asia and Africa to South America.
• Russia’s recent rise combined with Russian President Putin’s domestic popularity and his reputation for effectively standing up to the West.
• The rise of non-aligned nations emboldened by the inability of the US to effectively use the extraordinary power it possesses.
• A view among key global leaders that the US will be bogged down in Iraq for many years (a view heightened significantly by President Bush’s September 13 Iraq speech), thus distracted and unable to respond effectively to key political moves by the range of international players.
• A recognition by the international community that the Bush Administration not only hasn’t been able to deal effectively with non-state actors (e.g. terror groups like al Quaeda) but they are holding their own or starting to win.

Scary.

Links:

PostGlobal: Global Power Barometer

WaPo Confirms: Bush Losing the Soft-Power War Badly