McCain’t Nothing Gonna Change Under This Supposed Maverick’s Watch

The NY Times has a great editorial by Frank Rich today. If you click on the title of this blog, you can read it for yourself. Along with everything I saw and heard over the weekend, it made me think and thinking made me despise the Republican party all over again. It also lessened my opinion of John McCain AGAIN. (It's like a Limbo refrain; How low can it go?)



Check out this article that traces more of the revolving door type political and financial ties that have completely corrupted our government and turned it into nothing more than a power and money trough for corporate special interests. And John McCain is the star.

http://www.thenation.com/doc/20080929/berman_ames



McCain's campaign continually tries to sell us on the idea that he is not a part of the corruption in Washington and never has been. But, those who don't remember, or are too young to remember, McCain started out his career embroiled in scandal and allegations of corruption. The media hasn’t seen fit to bring up John McCain’s questionable past regarding the Savings and Loan fiasco. That may be changing now that this country is dealing with the fruits of McCain and Co’s deregulation labors. If you haven’t ever heard about his involvement in the Savings & Loan scandal, back when he was a Washington nubie, there is a story at this link:

http://www.azcentral.com/news/specials/mccain/articles/0301mccainbio-chapter7.html

The Sunday morning political shows this weekend were all about the Market Meltdown and how each candidate handled themselves. It was shocking to hear the conservative pundits on the Sunday morning shows openly question whether McCain possesses the leadership qualities that are necessary for the Presidency. And equally shocking to hear them commend Barack Obama on his leadership skills.



But I do wonder if talking heads are too late to undo the disgusting falsehoods that conservatives and Republican operatives have been planting in the fertile minds of the fearful, racist, wantonly ignorant portion of our society that is wholesale behind a Palin/McCain presidency. Check out this editorial which I believe smacks the nail on the head:

http://www.nytimes.com/2008/09/21/opinion/21kristof.html?em

It is frighteningly familiar and disgustingly believable that bigoted people who refuse to claim their racism would go to such great lengths to try to demonize Obama so they have an excuse (besides “the black thing”) not to vote for him and to publicly encourage others to vote against him as well. When I first heard the claim that Obama could be the anti-christ coming from a co-worker who is not politically savvy, but is educated and intelligent, I could NOT believe my ears. It is beyond repulsive to admit that I live in a society where the following article appeared in TIME magazine.

http://www.time.com/time/politics/article/0,8599,1830590,00.html



That a major news magazine felt the need to address this notion is absolutely unbelievable in our modern world. And now, because I would not want to inadvertently add to this ridiculous slur, I must publish the Snopes website’s debunking of this pathetic myth: http://www.snopes.com/politics/obama/antichrist.asp


And John McCain may not have come right out and said, Obama could be the anti-Christ, but this "message" that he approved was intended to speak to those true believers in a coded language that they understood only too well.



No wonder even the conservative pundits are turning away from him. What a disgusting individual. What slimy immoral lows will McCain not stoop to in order to attain the power of the Presidency? And he charges that Obama has only personal ambitions at heart. I know this much is true: Whenever a Republican makes an accusation against an opponent, he is actually talking about himself.

Sphere: Related Content

Lies, Lies and More Lies Courtesy the McAin't Campaign

Todays News: More lies from the McCain campaign.

What a shocker.

Yesterday I read an article about how lying in political campaigns is some kind of time-honored tradition and that Americans actually admire politicians who lie. If that is true, we deserve exactly what we have gotten from the republicans for the last ten years. Since the republicans came up with the contract on America scam, they have played the same game in every single congressional and presidential campaign;

· republicans run on supposed moral superiority, but their behavior has often been immoral.
· republicans run against crime and support robust punishment of criminals, but their actions have been increasingly criminal and they have either gone unpunished or received slaps on the wrist.
· republicans run on their alleged moral character, but the number of Republicans that actually possess any character has become fewer and fewer.
· republicans ran on bringing “faith” into government, and then almost immediately broke faith with the Christian conservatives that worked so hard to put them there.
· republicans run on honesty and integrity…PLEASE!

It stretches the bounds of credulity that anyone would sell themselves as a maverick and a reformer after 25 years of going along with the status quo. If McCain is America’s Knight in Shining Armor, where the hell has he been while the country has been run into the ground? Voting with the ones who were driving us there! You might even say he was a co-pilot.

On what issues does he differ from the current regime? Zero, zilch, nada, bupkiss. He KNOWS what it means to be tortured and he wouldn’t even stand up to his own party about that, but he’ll use his experiences to garner sympathy. How disgusting.

How much more of this self-righteous hypocrisy, self-serving mendacity and delusional dishonesty are the American people going to stand for?

The McCain campaign lies so much, I have started calling him John McAin’t. (He McAin’t no maverick, he McAin’t no reformer and he McAin’t fit to be President).
The arguments that republicans make for their candidates would not even fly with a ten-year-old.

Today on The View, he actually made the case that Sarah Palin is qualified to be Vice President because of Alaska’s proximity to Russia. And in an interview with Charlie Gibson, Palin made the same argument, saying “"They're our next door neighbors and you can actually see Russia from land here in Alaska, from an island in Alaska." Great news for those of you who have ever seen a foreign country; you now have the foreign policy qualifications to be Vice President!

She has also cited a less-than-one-year stint as chairman of the Alaska Oil and Gas Conservation Commission as “expertise” that would help her to bring about energy independence. And my one-year stint as Fundraising Chairman of the PTA makes me qualified to run a bank. (Makes just about as much sense).

Sarah Palin has been marketed by the campaign as a maverick and a straight-shooter. They say she reformed Alaskan government.

After spending weeks in seclusion from the press and media and repeating the same tired lies at campaign stop after campaign stop, the straight-shooter sure was SQUIRMING during her first press interview on ABC. It looked more like a game of dodgeball! After repeatedly attempting not to answer questions by repeating the same drivel she had been spouting at campaign stops, she finally had to answer some real questions and her answers were disturbingly enlightening.

Her foreign policy might be called “Leave No War Behind.”

· If Israel felt threatened, as Vice President, she would support them in a nuclear attack on Iran.
· As Vice President, she would welcome Georgia and Ukraine into NATO and be prepared to defend them in future “disagreements” with Russia.
· She is four-square behind McAin’t in leaving troops in Iraq (in the past he has stated that they may stay there for as much as one-hundred years).

It sounds like she thinks that we have an unending supply of troops. She is seemingly unconcerned about sending her “own troop” into endless war. Perhaps she is planning to repopulate the military with more of her “own troop(s).”

Meanwhile, the McAin’t campaign has surrounded her with veteran Bushies and special interest lobbyists. For the full run-down, check out “Palin Team Stocked with Bush Veterans.” On Yahoo.com:

http://news.yahoo.com/s/politico/13323;_ylt=AtUbbBhgiu6p2n8m7uYex9Jh24cA

It looks as though McAin’t a maverick and Sarah Squirmin are planning to reform our government by adding more lobbyists and corporate insiders.

Hey, they said, “change,” but they never really explained what that change would be!

Sphere: Related Content

Not Mavericks-That's For Sure

Main Entry: mav·er·ick
Function: noun
Etymology: Samuel A. Maverick died 1870 American pioneer who did not brand his calves
Date: 1867
2: an independent individual who does not go along with a group or party
http://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/maverick

The McCain Campaign has adopted the label of “Maverick” for themselves. They put out a commercial labeling themselves as such and repeated the label over and over again at the Republican National Convention. The crowd at the convention ate it up, but the label left many of us scratching our heads.

The Merriam Webster dictionary defines the word “maverick” as “an independent individual who does not go along with a group or party.” How can you be a maverick when you are not only going along with your political party, but you have changed your stance on just about every issue so that it matches a faction of your party that you used to disdain? The answer is you can’t-unless you are misrepresenting yourself. And this is exactly what the campaign is doing.

The campaign was running on “Experience” as McCain’s advantage over Obama or Hillary, until they realized just how motivated the people of this country are to get things back to the way they were before the Republican party took over and destroyed the economy, our standing in the world, our military and our hope for the future. So, changing with the political winds, as McCain has a record of doing, the campaign adopted the successful message that Obama has run on and supported long before he even announced his candidacy. Suddenly, they were the “Change” party.
How can you be the “change” party when it’s your party that has screwed things up so badly? You can pretend you are an outsider and describe yourself as a maverick. And repeat it over and over again and hope that people believe it. So, that’s what they are doing. Hence the commercial and hence the fact that in every clip of McCain and Palin you will see on the nightly news they will just be repeating the same lies over and over again.

“Mavericks” No

“He fights pork barrel spending” Not until recently (In six of his 25 years in Congress, McCain voted for spending bills that included 12,763 pork-barrel earmarks worth more than $144.4 billion, according to the nonpartisan Congressional Research Service)

“Sarah Palin stopped the Bridge to Nowhere” Lie. (She ran for Governor in support of it and supported it until Congress decided not to fund it. Then she gave up on it but kept the funds)

“John McCain reformed Washington” Untrue. (If Washington is so reformed why is he running on “Change”, if he is so against lobbyists, why are there so many lobbyists running his campaign?)

“Palin took on Big Oil” Lie. (Records show that she has collected significant amounts of money in campaign contributions from oil company executives and their family members for years)

This is a campaign trick that has been successfully used in the past AGAINST McCain by Bush. Bush smeared McCain with lies and whisper campaigns. Now McCain is using the same tactics to win—just as he accuses Barack Obama of being the one who will say and do anything to win. The Washington Post has described this strategy as “Untruth Can Become Fact.”

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2008/09/09/AR2008090903727.html

And this does not address the accusations that McCain has leveled at Obama in some of his other television ads where he tries to scare people into believing that Obama will raise their taxes and bring about "years of deficits," "no balanced budgets" and "billions in new government spending." Factcheck.org calls this “Another Stitch in a Bad Pattern” and provides facts to dispute every single one of these claims.

http://www.factcheck.org/elections-2008/a_new_stitch_in_a_bad_pattern.html

As one viewer of that commercial observed “Everything they say about Obama is exactly what the Republicans have done for the past eight years. Obama is trying to fix all that. How can they get away with telling these outright lies?”

The answer is that they can only get away with it if we let them. They can only paint themselves as Mavericks if we believe it and they can only smear Obama with lies if we buy into the strategy.

So, if McCain/Palin aren’t Mavericks, what are they? How do we define them if we know that they aren’t the political outsiders, fighting to change the system as their phony maverick status was employed to make you believe?

What do you call people who lie and twist the facts? What do you call people who use smear tactics to defeat their opponents because they can’t win on the issues? What do you call people who accuse their opponents of caring more about their own ambitions than about the nation when they changed themselves over completely and misrepresented their records in order to win the nomination of their party and have repeatedly shown that there is no low they will not stoop to in order to win?

What do you call a party that constantly wears their Christianity on their sleeves but whose policies promote war, poverty, sickness, despair and hopelessness?

What do you call a party that constantly brings up the troops but refuses to fund benefits for returning veterans, denies their families benefits and steadfastly refuses to end the occupation of Iraq and bring those troops home for a well-deserved rest?

What do you call a party that constantly claims to be fiscally conservative and then every time they get into office they grow government, spending huge amounts of money and leave the country’s budget in historically huge deficits?

Hypocrites. Phonies. Liars.

But you won’t see those labels on your television screen anytime soon.

Sphere: Related Content