I bet we can all agree that the majority of politicians are innately self-serving scumbags.

At the end of the day, after everything anyone can spin about him, McCain is still dumb as dogshit.

America...

I just don't get it.

According to the RS article, he spent 2 years in "a box" and the for rest of his time, he was given preferential treatment due to who his father was.

Look, the dude was a POW for 5 years. Preferential treatment or not, this was no cakewalk. Even if he was tortured for 'only' two years, isn't that plenty?

If you want to jump on him for his war record, ask about his judgment in hopping into the 5th plane after crashing four others and ask why he was given the chance to pilot that fifth plane in the first place--thats where the WTF is.

Just making it clear.

I posted or at least tried to post something much more detailed last night but it apparently disappeared on hitting submit. I'm not going to try to recreate it because it included long excerpts from that book i just finished, which i don't have with me even if i felt inclined to re post it.

But I don't really care about the parochialism aspect. He can't control who his family was and he'd have been dumb not to take advantage of opportunities that presented to themselves to him. Barry's more self-made maybe but he's had a lot of luck along the way as well (taking about how he got to skate into the Senate). I also disagree with the attacks on de-regulation, which was not the cause of the S&L crisis or the current crisis, and think the author was a little reckless in how he implies that McCain votes or support for causes were so readily available for sale to the highest bidder.

That said, he's not a maverick and he's never really been a straight talker. He's a highly ambitious politician whose lived most of his life in or near political power and he's nearly always put his political ambition first (not country) often egotistically assuming alignment of the two.

He's benefitted from the press always loving him and giving him the benefit of the doubt. Its partly because he gives the press unparralled access, partly because he's always trying to position himself as a populist willing to fight his own party, and partly because he figured out a long time about that it was best to reveal and spin some of his indisgressions rather than try to hide his poor past behavior, especially when he could dismiss it as being youthful indisgressions and arrogance that he's put in the past.

The Myth of the Maverick though is full of examples of unseemly behavior, lies and unprincipled actions that McCain has committed over the years. A few examples.

He always talks about Vietnam as a major turning point in his life and how it made him put country first. He talks about undertaking an intensive 9 month program at the Naval War College where he claimed to study the causes of why went to War in Vietnam and how and why we lost. He makes a big point in his books and in introductions to other books about how greatly this informed his nuanced foreign policy. The author through a FOIA application discovered that his studies at the Naval War College had nothing to do with that. He instead had worked on a 40 page report on the US Code of Conduct visa vis POW's.

When he was first running for Congress, in his first primary, he claimed to have a hand in stearing an Army contract to a Mesa, AZ defense contractor when he had absolutely no role at all. Barry Goldwater who had played a role was so pissed at McCain that he sent a telegram to McCain's three primary opponents laying out the facts and setting the record straight 2 days before the election. Goldwater was apparently always cold towards McCain despite having an excellent relationship with McCain's father. Later McCain convinced Goldwater to attend an event that he billed as a tribute to Barry Goldwater with Reagan and Bush as fellow attendees. Goldwater found out through friends later that it was actually a McCain fundraiser and that McCain was leveraging Goldwater's name to charge between $500 and $2000 a plate for attendance. Goldwater was again fuming and told McCain a week before the event that he wasn't coming unless McCain split the money with the RNC which he ended up reluctantly agreeing to do. Goldwater later had to intercede again when McCain hadn't coughed up the money to the RNC and the RNC was going to have trouble meeting the week's payroll without the funding.

The RS article mentioned the Reform Institute. The book provides a little more detail indicating that McCain was chairman of the non-profit (up until 2005) and that the staff was a rolving door between the campaigns and the institute including Rick Davis who served as the President. The Institute was officially barred from political activity but mailed fundraising letters signed by McCain to mailing lists developed by McCain's PAC raising up to $50,000 from some donors. The money was used to advance McCain's policy agendas. Some soft money warrior.

The more I learn about McCain the less respect I have for him. I know its politics but its one thing to be a slimy politician, its another to be one who tries to run on a "straight talk"/"reform" agenda.

And this




is exactly where I'm at. The more details I see about the stories of his past, the worse he looks.

Even for that, even though billyg would have neither Barack nor Walnuts as his president, he would much rather have Walnuts in power. Y'know... I don't know what to say.

& Barack "skated" into the Senate 'cause the Illinois Republican Party in '04 was at about the point where the Alaska GOP is now.

Kill yourself.

His superiors wanted him to die. Just making it clear.

I'm getting tired of the POW talk. I don't mean to say it's not impressive, but it's kind of like calling a paraplegic a hero for surviving a car crash. Sure, it's unfortunate and horrible and takes perserverence, but in these sorts of extreme situations we've all really only got two options: survive or die. In a POW camp, like the car accident, it's generally the luck of the draw who lives and who dies. And the poor motherfuckers who died weren't any less heroic, just less fortunate. It really doesn't make McCain any better than anyone else, because humans everywhere are constantly going though similarly nightmarish shit - and most of them don't tie themselves to a snowbilly douchebag just to win an election.

Probably the best comment in this thread.

For the sake of "smearing" equally. Type in "infanticide" into a youtube search and watch the first video.

this is sloppy thinking and is the type of thing that lets a whole lot of people take themselves off the hook for not voting or doing something to make things better.

"they're all bums"

"x is bad, but y is just as bad"

"it doesn't really matter who gets elected, nothing will change"

wrong. wrong. wrong.

Yeah i don't agree with that at all either. There are a lot of backbenchers who have no greater ambition than trying to serve their constituency well and there's a bunch of ideologues who (whether I agree with them or not) are ambitious more to push their ideas and agenda than for personal gain or advancement. Unfortunately, neither Barrack, McCain nor W. fit that description.

I know I've drunk the kool-aid and all that, but I don't think you're giving Obama a fair shake.

I really don't see how he's in this just for himself. The dude is smart and charismatic, and knows it. He could have taken his career in a lot of directions, but I don't think any of them would have been behind the stage. Its arrogant for anyone to think they could be president, so I don't begrudge him that.

I've read his books, listened to his speeches, watched interviews and all that. His message has been consistent the whole time. I like his message and I believe that its possible for the right and left to work together to make government work rationally. I don't see anyone else out there who actually has the personal skills and charisma to make this happen.

The way I see it, this guy's either telling you what he believes, or he's been able to fool 1/2 the country with the most effective campaign of misinformation and propaganda since Hitler, and he's done it by abusing a message of hope rather than flaming fears. If that's the case, I'm pretty sure that makes him the anti-christ and it doesn't matter who's president anymore.

To me, it's Okham's razor--all else being equal, the most straightforward answer is best.

you will never get some like billyg to go along with anyone as far left as obama. you have to remember, bg is just a little to the left of Atilla the Hun (and bg is meaner to his prisoners).

I'm just saying that there are valid reasons to vote against Obama, but character isn't one of them. I disagree with McCain and wouldn't vote form him, but that has nothing to do with what I think of his character. He's an asshole, but that ain't always a bad thing. Up until the convention, I considered him to be fundamentally decent. My trust in him has taken a pretty heavy hit since then, but he's regained some status with what he said in the article timmy posted.

i dont think its that easy for someone to separate their views of someone's character from their views of his policy. i likely disregard or minimize a lot of these attacks on obama because I am so in favor of his overall worldview and policy positions.

Here's a fun scenario. The whole market crash and financial crisis (including the 770 bailout that inflamed passions) was engineered by the international Tribunal of Lords of Capital (talking illuminati level here) so that there are riots and unrest in order to allow an armed coup to take over and restore order (preventing the black socialist from taking power).

As I said in another thread kristallnacht

Its not easy by any means. It helps me get up in the morning though. I used to see an ugly, vast right-wing conspiracy in the face of every republican I met. Now its just in a few, and I feel better for it.

Its easy to dismiss another person's policy concerns if you consider them character flaws. If you take a look at the actions of congress for the past twenty years, it seems pretty clear that it doesn't help anyone get much done.

Karl Rove is one of the most brilliant political strategists we've ever seen. He's managed to pull some pretty slick and calculated, moves on his quest for a 'permanent republican majority' I hate him, but have to admit that he's pretty damn good at what he does.

But a Permanent Republican Majority? Sounds like an EPIC FAIL to me. He's as cunning as they come and he fucked up big time.

Republicans are a fucked up bunch of special interest groups trying to figure out how to get something done--just like democrats. I'm pretty sure that if I looked hard enough I'd be able to find both good and evil people on either side of the aisle.

Postscript:
Just saw McCain on TV and had a vision of him orchestrating mob activity so he could show himself to be an honorable moderate by talking them down. Sigh...guess its time to take my meds.

I think you've misunderstood me. The reason I can't support Obama is his position on the issues and not his character. That doesn't change that Obama is a highly ambitious politician motivated imo more by his own goals for personal advancement than a strong belief in a core ideology which he wants to advance. If he was an ideologue, he'd have spent more time legislating and less time writing books and campaigning for his next job in his brief tenure in the Senate.

Also, can you really argue that you believe that Obama's middle class tax cut is worth the paper its written on. That he's campaigning on it with the full intention to implement it and that its because its what he believes the country needs and not because its politically expedient for him to propose it. He's a politician happy to make promises that I'm sure he knows he'll never keep. That doesn't make him better or worse than most candidates for high office and at least he's not running around claiming to be a maverick that he's not. I just don't put in the select group of Senators and Congressman that I really have a lot of respect for.

The way I see his ambition is that he wanted to be president in 2020 and it looks like he's going to make it 12 years early. Whether its damning personal ambition or not, it shows that he has a hell of a lot of ability.

I think Obama's tax cut was worth the paper once. Pretty sure the renewal of Bush cuts is dead in the water either way as well. It'd be a bizarre election indeed if either of them (or any politician) took back promises of tax relief this late in the campaign, wouldn't it? I'm not sure how Obama thinks he's going to get two terms if he backpedals on this one though.

Call it class warfare if you want, but I think his plan is sound. We do need to start shifting some the tax burden from the middle class to the wealthy. A society where the lower and middle classes are given substandard educations and asked to go to war while the UMC and above are sending their children to college will eventually become whatever the capitalist equivalent of an aristocracy is.

Think about it...there are a lot of blue-collar folks out here that said they didn't want the bailout, even if it meant that it might end in a depression and they'd lose their jobs. Whether bluster or not, their underlying message is that they're willing to risk losing everything, as long as the rich suffer worse. They weren't against the bailout, they were for a board reset.

But we're running in circles...I think we both believe in the value of a meritocracy, we just disagree on how to best enable it. I come from the position that this is best achieved by ensuring that the needed tools are available at the ground level--especially education and health care. You seem to come from the stance that free markets are the best way to leverage our resources for future growth and ensure prosperity for all. Its really hard for me to see why we aren't both right.