John McCain, go to hell!

Obama speaks to the UFCW:

While Obama is talking about our hopes and dreams, the Bush administration's outsourcing of weapons design has come home to roost.

In a narrow sense, the troubled birth of the coastal ships was rooted in the Navy’s misbegotten faith in a feat of maritime alchemy: building a hardened warship by adapting the design of a high-speed commercial ferry. As Representative Gene Taylor, the Mississippi Democrat who leads the House Armed Services Subcommittee on Seapower and Expeditionary Forces, put it, "Thinking these ships could be built to commercial specs was a dumb move."

Behind the numbers in the Accountability Office study, experts say, is a dynamic of mutually re-enforcing deficiencies: ever-changing Pentagon design requirements; unrealistic cost estimates and production schedules abetted by companies eager to win contracts; and a fondness for commercial technologies that often, as with the ferry concept, prove unsuitable for specialized military projects.

At the same time, a policy of letting contractors take the lead in managing weapons programs has coincided with an acute shortage of government engineers trained to oversee these increasingly complex enterprises.

The coastal ships — called littoral combat ships — are especially important to the Navy, which has struggled to retain a central role in American military operations after the cold war. In part, they are a response to the Navy’s own Sept. 11 moment, which came in October 2000, when two terrorists in a bomb-laden rubber dinghy rammed the destroyer Cole, killing 17 sailors and wounding 39 more.

While Barack Obama would bring change to the world, a vote for John McCain would put our nation at risk as there would be more outsourcing, more shoddy weapons systems designs, and more massive cost overruns. This is what happens when you put people like Bush or McCain, who think government is the problem, in charge. This creates the mentality where people think that things are not their problem because government is the problem.

Obama lays out his plan to bring down high gas prices, now at $3.50 per gallon:

John McCain's plan for gas prices? Nothing.

Bush's FDA failed to protect thousands of patients from complications from lasik treatment.

In the first hour of a public hearing, more than a dozen patients and patient advocates stepped to the microphone to tell an advisory panel of the Food and Drug Administration about their years of eye pain, night driving problems and suicidal thoughts.

"You have a serious problem on your hands," said Michael Patterson, a lasik patient from Atlanta.

Patterson and others asked the FDA to stop lasik, which stands for laser-assisted In situ keratomileusis. They also asked for stronger warnings about the surgery's risks and urged the FDA to better track complications and to monitor false claims in surgeon's advertisements.

Some also questioned the impartiality and expertise of the panel. Patterson pointed to one panel member, Dr. Andrew Huang, a professor of ophthalmology at Washington University in St. Louis, and shouted, "We don't need your expertise."

Patterson claimed Huang failed to follow safe lasik procedures during surgery.

Among those attending were lasik patient Matthew Kotsovolos and his wife, Beth, of Raleigh.

Matthew Kotsovolos, who experienced debilitating complications after lasik surgery, called the hearing a sham. He referred to a news release put out by a trade group for laser surgeons claiming that the FDA considers lasik to be safe and effective.

And this is the typical response from Bush's agencies -- nothing is their problem because government IS the problem. Therefore, they are doing everyone a favor by not protecting people against the risks of such procedures such as lasik surgery in their twisted reasoning. And John McCain would be no different than George Bush in that regard.

What is so twisted about this whole line of reasoning by George Bush and John McCain's reasoning is that it forces people to become scientists and prove for themselves that lasik surgery, for instance, is safe and effective. Why should people have to spend hours of their valuable time on the Internet to determine whether our foods or our cars or our medicines or some medical procedure is safe? That is what such agencies such as the FDA and the EPA and other such groups are supposed to be there for -- they are supposed to act as our representatives and determine whether or not the things that we buy are safe and effective or not.

The Ashville paper praises the House for defying billions of dollars of Medicaid budget cuts that would have done North Carolina out of tens of thousands of jobs:

North Carolinians owe U.S. Rep. John Dingell, D-Mich., their gratitude for leading the fight against Bush administration regulations that would cut Medicaid funds totaling $2.7 billion to the state and $50 billion nationwide over the next five years.

A bill sponsored by Dingell to put the regulations on hold for a year passed the House Wednesday with strong bipartisan support and a veto-proof vote of 349-62.
Advertisement

The legislation has yet to be taken up by the Senate.

The ripple effect from the regulations, which were issued by the administration without congressional review, would have cost North Carolina 11,700 jobs and $415 million in lost wages during the first year alone, according to a report issued by Families USA.

U.S. Rep. David Price, D-N.C., who was among 220 House co-sponsors, helped lead the fight to pass the House bill. Other North Carolina co-sponsors included Reps. George Butterfield and Bob Etheridge.

This vote shows the kind of recklessness that is part of the Bush administration and the kind of scorched earth policy that would be part of a McCain administration -- cut budgets for the sake of doing so, regardless of who they would hurt or how it would affect our healthcare system.

Obama's ability to attract voters who have tuned out politics:

What is different about Obama is his ability to attract voters who in the past have tuned out politics. That’s true not just on college campuses, where the Illinois senator is drawing enthusiastic support, but also in neighborhoods where residents frequently feel forgotten by their elected leaders.

If those potential voters follow through on Election Day in any significant numbers, Obama will be very formidable, not just on May 6 but also in November. He’s clearly bright, personable and blends in enough nuance on issues that the public may well overlook his liberal voting record.

Clinton, presumed a few months ago to have a lock on the nomination, learned this winter just how tough Obama is on the campaign trial.

John McCain, who has yet to campaign in Indiana in any significant form, may learn the same thing come November.

But then again, John McCain is not knowledgeable about these sorts of things.

The Times reports significant uncertainties in how much Iran is really involved in Iraq:

The United States has gathered its most detailed evidence so far of Iranian involvement in training and arming fighters in Iraq, officials say, but significant uncertainties remain about the extent of that involvement and the threat it poses to American and Iraqi forces.

Some intelligence and administration officials said Iran seemed to have carefully calibrated its involvement in Iraq over the last year, in contrast to what President Bush and other American officials have publicly portrayed as an intensified Iranian role.

It remains difficult to draw firm conclusions about the ebb and flow of Iranian arms into Iraq, and the Bush administration has not produced its most recent evidence.

But interviews with more than two dozen military, intelligence and administration officials showed that while shipments of arms had continued in recent months despite an official Iranian pledge to stop the weapons flow, they had not necessarily increased.

So, while George Bush and John McCain engage in crackpot conspiracy theories on Iran, back in the real world, reality indicates that we have a measured response to Iran. And the best way to gauge Iran's intentions is Barack Obama's plan of diplomacy and personal talks with Iran's leaders, while John McCain's plan is to engage in crackpot conspiracy theories and make-believe.