Also, He'll Never Send A Million Dollars To The ACLU Unless They "Lighten Up"

Bill O'Reilly has laid down the marker. Under no circumstances will he ever, ever, visit Spain.



O'REILLY: Finally, unless this action is condemned by the Spanish Prime Minister Zapatero, then I am not going to that country.

In a related development, Spain asked to get that in writing. I don't know if this extends to Billo's poolboy Jesse Walters, who could have a field day on a 6-night tour of the Costa del Sur ambushing random Spanish girls.

Meanwhile, Dennis Miller chi-chis that the Spanish "folded like a balsa wood chair after a Cat 5" after the Madrid train bombing. But they haven't had a terrorist attack on their soil since, and because that's the only marker on which we're supposed to judge President Bush, clearly Zapatero is a strong, powerful leader. Wait, their arguments have no internal logic? Stop.

(By the way, I'd love to see Miller playing the Waziristan Chuckle Hut and backpedaling furiously, "Hey, you cats are solid, America has been asking for it like a terminal cancer patient by a Kevorkian machine! Can I keep my testicles?")

Revenge Of The Neocons

Following up on this bizarre story about John McCain seemingly not knowing the name of the Spanish Prime Minister, the damage control artist Randy Scheunemann has stepped away from his lobbying gigs long enough to offer an explanation, and it's worse than the initial assumption that McCain was just confused:

Zapatero is a center-left politician, but McCain has suggested that as president he would seek to repair relations that have been badly frayed in Europe during Bush's tenure. In an early-April interview with a reporter from Spanish newspaper El Pais, McCain said, "This is the moment to leave behind discrepancies with Spain."

He added: "I would like for [President Zapatero] to visit the United States. I am very interested not only in normalizing relations with Spain but in obtaining good and productive relations with the goal of addressing many issues and challenges that we have to confront together." [...]

McCain foreign policy adviser Randy Sheunemann (sic) said McCain's answer was intentional.

"The questioner asked several times about Senator McCain's willingness to meet Zapatero (and id'd him in the question so there is no doubt Senator McCain knew exactly to whom the question referred). Senator McCain refused to commit to a White House meeting with President Zapatero in this interview," he said in an e-mail [...]

Asked to explain McCain's apparent shift in tone and position since April, Scheunemann gave almost no ground.

"In this week's interview, Senator McCain did not rule in or rule out a White House meeting with President Zapatero, a NATO ally," he said in an e-mail. "If elected, he will meet with a wide range of allies in a wide variety of venues but is not going to spell out scheduling and meeting location specifics in advance. He also is not going to make reckless promises to meet America's adversaries. It's called keeping your options open, unlike Senator Obama, who has publicly committed to meeting some of the world's worst dictators unconditionally in his first year in office."

(That's Prime Minister Zapatero, genius)

The female interviewer basically backs this up, believing that McCain "ducked the question" because the Bush Administration doesn't have good relations with Zapatero.

Wow. I knew the neocons were belligerent, but this explanation makes them sound suicidal. Spain is a NATO ally. We would be obligated to go to war on their behalf if they were attacked. McCain wants to refuse to meet with their leaders?

This is part of a pattern of the McCain campaign trying to cover up a bad moment with an even worse explanation. But it's also worth noting that the neocons are far more invested in McCain than they ever were in Bush, if that's possible. He's a very willing parrot for all of their petty grudges and magical thinking. And they're scheming to indoctrinate the other half of the ticket.

Comments by the governor of Alaska in her first television interview, in which she said Nato may have to go to war with Russia and took a tough line on Iran's nuclear programme, were the result of two weeks of briefings by neoconservatives.

Sources in the McCain camp, the Republican Party and Washington think tanks say Mrs Palin was identified as a potential future leader of the neoconservative cause in June 2007. That was when the annual summer cruise organised by the right-of-centre Weekly Standard magazine docked in Juneau, the Alaskan state capital, and the pundits on board took tea with Governor Palin.

Her case as John McCain's running mate was later advanced vociferously by William Kristol, the magazine's editor, who is widely seen as one of the founding fathers of American neoconservative thought - including the robust approach to foreign policy which spurred American intervention in Iraq.

In 1988, Mr Kristol became a leading adviser of another inexperienced Republican vice presidential pick, Dan Quayle, tutoring him in foreign affairs. Last week he praised Mrs Palin as "a spectre of a young, attractive, unapologetic conservatism" that "is haunting the liberal elites".

Now many believe that the "neocons", whose standard bearer in government, Vice President Dick Cheney, lost out in Washington power struggles to the more moderate defence secretary Robert Gates and secretary of state Condoleezza Rice, last year are seeking to mould Mrs Palin to renew their influence.

They go after everyone. Some of them work out, some of them don't. In the end, they stay in charge. This "twilight of the neocons" idea was vastly overrated.

¡Viva Zapatero!

So John McCain granted an interview to the Spanish newspaper El Pais, which is interesting in itself since he's basically shut out the American press, to the point that reporters staged a rally to get McCain out from the front of the campaign plane (which is completely pathetic).

So he gives this interview, and he's asked about some Latin American hot spots, like Venezuela, Bolivia, and Cuba. And then the reporter turns back to Spain, and... well, look:

Then the interviewer switches gears and asks about Zapatero, the Spanish Prime Minister. And McCain replies -- very loose translation -- that he'll establish close relations with our friends and stand up to those who want to do us harm. The interviewer has a double take and seems to think McCain might be confused. So she asks it again. But McCain sticks to the same evasive answer.

I don't speak Spanish, but you can hear the tape of the interview here. Those who have heard it agree that it sounds like McCain either doesn't know Spain is in Europe, doesn't know Spain is a NATO ally, or doesn't know who Zapatero is. John Aravosis thinks that McCain might have thought he heard "Zapatista" as in the Mexican insurgents.

When asked about Spain and Zapatero, by a Spanish reporter for a Spanish newspaper, McCain responded about Mexico and Latin America. A reader suggested something that Josh had already considered, that perhaps McCain thought the reporter was talking about the Zapatistas in Mexico, the guerilla group. But that's not possible as the reporter clearly said she was talking about Spain and Spain's leader, Zapatero. She told McCain this twice. Let me tell you exactly what she asked McCain (per the translation):

"Senator, finally, let's talk about Spain. If you're elected president, would you invite President Zapatero to meet with you in the White House?"

McCain then gives this odd answer about America's friends and America's enemies. He also, oddly, talks about Mexico (why Mexico? The question was about Spain) and how he'd invite friendly leaders to the White House. She then asks him again, would that invitation include President Zapatero? He says again that he'd have to review relations first, blah blah. She then says again, "so you'd have to wait to see, so would you meet with him in the White House?" He again repeats his weird statement about friends and enemies. McCain also throws in, oddly, to the Spanish reporter, when she's asking him about meeting the Spanish president, a line about the importance of our relationship with Latin America (this is now the second time he answered a question about meeting the president of Spain with an answer about Latin America). She then says to McCain one last time:

"Okay, but I'm talking about Europe - the president of Spain, would you meet with him?"

This time, there was no room for confusion. McCain then gives this very bizarre answer:

"I will meet with any leader who has the same principles and philosophy as us in terms of human rights, democracy, and freedom and I will stand up to those who do not."

Zapatero is a bit of a leftist, but he remains an American ally. Sounds to me like McCain doesn't know who the hell he is. This is supposed to be the experienced warrior who knows the global scene. And he's practically caused an international incident in Spain. Wow.

No wonder he's being hid from the press. He's so deathly afraid of making a mistake. Someone needs to ask the campaign about this.

...there's now an English-language version which has been released.



At first I thought this could have been because of a faulty phone line, but no, the reporter was in the room with McCain in Miami. Clearly he has no idea who Zapatero is. He thinks this it's someone allied with Mexico, and he reverts back to his boilerplate answer about meeting with leaders who respect democracy. He didn't understand that she said "Europe" in her thick Spanish accent.

It sounds really bad.