Left News and Views

…but I couldn’t resist posting just one last jab.

25 Reasons Why John Sidney McCain III Sucks
By GREG STACY
<http://www.ocweekly.com/authors/view/32793>
October 22, 2008
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1. He’s a closet neocon.
According to Rolling Stone, McCain privately calls himself “the original neocon.” McCain began pushing for war with Iraq in the ’90s, and within hours of the World Trade Center attacks he was on talk shows insisting Iraq was developing WMDs. Pre-war, he repeatedly stated we would win easily. Later, after the war became a disaster, McCain pretended he’d always been
against it. “The American people were led to believe this could be some kind of day at the beach,” he said in 2006, “which many of us fully understood from the beginning would be a very, very difficult undertaking.

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2. Elect McCain, and you can expect more pointless, bloody wars.
McCain clearly has his sights set on Iran, for starters. Retired general John H. Johns, McCain’s former friend, says if McCain’s elected, he’ll be “Bush on steroids. . . . He puts military at the top of foreign policy rather than diplomacy.”

3. He doesn’t know when to hold ‘em or fold ‘em.
McCain’s got a gambling jones. He blows thousands per game playing craps. John Weaver, McCain’s former chief strategist, told Time, “Enjoying craps opens up a window on a central thread constant in John’s life. . . . Taking a chance, playing against the odds.” Suddenly it makes sense why McCain chose a moose-hunting beauty queen for his running mate: It was a huge
gamble. We can’t risk McCain “rolling snake eyes” with America’s future.

4. He’ll destroy what’s left of the economy.
McCain has admitted that “economics is not something I’ve understood as well as I should.” With the economy so grim that every morning you pray your corner ATM still dispenses cash, do you want to hand things over to a guy who declared this March he’s “always for less regulation”? One of the Keating Five? Mister “The fundamentals of our economy are strong”? Elect McCain, and blame yourself when your family is staying warm by burning your useless checkbooks.

5. That awful woman.
I don’t even want to get started on Sarah Palin, or this list will quickly turn into 25 reasons why she sucks. Let me just say that Palin is so horrible that people who like her are a danger to themselves and others, and shouldn’t be allowed to walk around without protective headgear.

6. When Karl Rove says your campaign’s lies have gone too far, you’ve gone too far.
McCain’s running a revoltingly sleazy campaign, but it’ll be tough to sink lower than his commercial suggesting Obama wanted to teach kindergartners about sex. (”Learning about sex before learning to read?”) The ad implies teachers would be telling kids how to find the G-spot before naptime, but the bill Obama co-sponsored would actually have focused on age-appropriate
topics like how to avoid molestation. Imagine if Obama’s ad people were willing to twist the truth like that: “John McCain doesn’t want little kids to know about the dangers of pedophiles. Does John McCain like pedophiles?”

7. He’s Charles Keating Jr.’s ex-BFF.
In the late ’80s, Charles Keating Jr., owner of Irvine-based Lincoln Savings and Loan, also owned McCain’s ass. McCain and four other senators (the infamous “Keating Five”) received ample campaign contributions from Keating. McCain partied like a pimp on Keating’s dime, enjoying what he called “Charlie Keating’s Shangri-La.” Keating actually boasted to reporters about buying McCain’s loyalty. The Keating Five pressured regulators to overlook Keating’s illegal activities, leading to a bank failure costing taxpayers over $120 billion by some estimates. It was a dress rehearsal for our current horror show, with McCain at center stage. McCain officially cut ties to Keating in 1987. His wife’s business partnership with Keating lasted until 1998, but McCain insists he didn’t know.

8. He agrees with Bush 95 percent of the time.
McCain’s trying to distance himself from the unpopular Bush, but in 2007 McCain voted with Bush 95 percent of the time, according to Factcheck.org <http://www.factcheck.org/> . Seriously, your dog doesn’t even agree with you 95 percent of the time.

9. He’s very old.
Things McCain is older than: Life Magazine, World War II, the Golden Gate Bridge and Keith Richards. In 2000, McCain himself suggested he’d be too old to run by 2008, saying, “I think I might be ready to go down to the old soldiers’ home.”

10. He’s in lousy health.
He’s endured four bouts of malignant melanoma, the deadliest form of skin cancer. Ominously, McCain refuses to allow full access to his medical records.

11. His age and health really matter.
It’s not unlikely McCain would croak in office. Then we’d be stuck with Palin, and W’s administration would seem like the good old days.
12. He’s such an asshole, other Republicans hate him.
Various Republican senators have described McCain tantrums where he shouts profanity and shoves people. “It was incidents of irrational behavior,” said Bob Smith. John LeBoutillier calls McCain a “vicious person,” adding, “Nearly all the Republican senators endorsed Bush because they knew McCain from serving with him in the Senate.” Thad Cochran claims that during 1987 diplomatic talks in Nicaragua, McCain went nuts and grabbed a Sandinista
official. This January, Cochran said, “The thought of [McCain] being president sends a cold chill down my spine.” (Cochran has since endorsed McCain. You can’t really blame him . . . would you want to be on McCain’s bad side?)
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13. Seriously, he’s a total asshole.
“At least I don’t plaster on the makeup like a trollop, you cunt.” (McCain to his wife in 1992, in full earshot of reporters, after she joked about his thinning hair.)

14. Wow, is he an asshole. “Why is Chelsea Clinton so ugly? Because Janet Reno is her father.” (A McCain joke from 1998. [Karma in action: Little Chelsea grew up to be a stone fox, while the once-handsome McCain now has a head like a moldy biscuit.])

15. He’s an asshole, asshole, asshole.
When McCain returned from Vietnam, his then-wife had been in an accident that left her five inches shorter and on crutches. While the mother of his children was undergoing painful physical therapy, McCain cheated on her and eventually dumped her for a younger, prettier and richer girl (the current Mrs. McCain).

16. Did we mention he’s an asshole?
McCain has repeatedly clashed with families of POW-MIAs, and in 1996 one clash turned particularly ugly. A woman in a wheelchair equipped with portable oxygen approached him to ask about her son. Witnesses say McCain raised his arm to strike her before shoving her wheelchair away. Forget running the country, you shouldn’t trust McCain to watch your cat.

17. No abortions for you.
McCain has said, “I do not support Roe v. Wade. It should be overturned.” Palin, meanwhile, wouldn’t let you have an abortion even if your dad raped you.

18. If McCain wins, expect more Katrinas.
McCain swears he’d never mismanage a disaster response like Bush mismanaged Katrina. But after Katrina, McCain actually voted against emergency funding for Louisiana and Medicaid and unemployment for Katrina victims. (And where was McCain the day Katrina hit? In Arizona, celebrating his birthday with
Bush. Cameras captured the pair cutting into a big cake and grinning like newlyweds.)

19. He’s a self-described “computer illiterate.”
In an age when a cyber-terrorist attack could cripple America, should we elect a dude who doesn’t understand what the kids are doing with those infernal machines? Or idiot…

20. “Bomb, bomb, bomb, bomb, bomb Iran.”
McCain criticized Obama for publicly discussing his plans for Pakistan . . .after McCain announced his own aggressive intentions toward Iran in song form.

21. His “senior moments.”
McCain’s had troubling memory lapses. He referred to the “Iraq/Pakistan border,” forgetting Iran is between those countries. He addressed a rally as “my fellow prisoners,” suggesting he may be having ‘Nam flashbacks on the
campaign trail. In an interview, he mistook Spanish Prime Minister Zapatero for the head of a Latin American dictatorship, refusing to say if he would meet with him.

22. His environmentalist talk is a bunch of greenhouse gas.
He told The Orange County Register “addressing climate change effectively” is one way he’ll distinguish his administration from Bush’s. But in 2007, McCain earned a zero score from the League of Conservation Voters, and if he dies in office, we’ll be stuck with Ms. Drill-Baby-Drill.

23. He “palled around with terrorists.”
In the ’80s, McCain was on the advisory board of the American branch of the World Anti-Communist League, an ultra-conservative group linked to Nazi collaborators and Central American death squads. McCain claims he resigned
in 1984, but the group has no record of his ever leaving. And McCain has the stones to attack Obama for briefly serving on an educational board with a ’60s radical-turned-tweedy professor?

24. He supports torture.
In 2007, McCain rightly denounced waterboarding as torture, noting that it was used in the Spanish Inquisition. But he later hailed Bush for vetoing an anti-waterboarding bill, and voted against it himself. McCain’s been tortured himself, he knows firsthand how horrible it is . . . and he supports torture.

25. Mr. “Straight Talk” has no integrity.
McCain has cozied up to the fundamentalists he once dismissed as “agents of intolerance.” He’s pushed for the tax cuts and oil drilling he once opposed. He’s hired the guys who sank his 2000 presidential bid with a whisper campaign about his “illegitimate black child”‹the same guys he once said deserve a “special place in hell.” And, oh yeah, he now supports torture.
During McCain’s August appearance at OC’s Saddleback Church, he described himself as a “very imperfect person.” Well, at least we know he’s honest about something.