John McCain is Willing to Be Anything, Say Anything & Do Anything, Lobby-Anti-Lobby, Global Peace Index, Israeli Appeasers, Ted Kennedy,Alien Trucker

I finally got around to getting the garden done today, so I'm tired and looking for something east.

Thanks John McCain.

It's kind of incredible that John McCain is taken seriously as a presidential candidate.

But then, we still have the same Mainstream Media and the same fools who voted for George W. Bush in 2004 out there acting like "staying the course" is a viable solution.

Not much you can do with someone who experienced Bush's first four years and wanted four more of the same. But surely we can do something about the pitiful excuse for who passes themselves off as news organizations nowadays.

There are still a lot of folks out there who honestly believe that the media has a liberal bias. There are a lot of folks out there who still think that Obama is a Muslim. Hell, there's still people out there who think that we just haven't found Saddam's WMDs yet.

If you're one of them, you'd just as well stop reading now.

The MSM is so bad that Barack Obama is even pointing it out.

ABC News' Sunlen Miller reports: Sen. Barack Obama, D-Ill., offered up a
criticism of the press' coverage of Sen. John McCain's presidential campaign,
during a town hall with seniors in Gresham, Ore., today.

Fairness & Accuracy in Reporting has an article titled, The Press Corps’ Unshakeable Crush on McCain Some straight talk about the media’s favorite ‘maverick’.

A candidate could only get away with such an elaborate and long-running con with
the media as willing accomplices. “The press loves McCain,” explained NBC host
Chris Matthews (9/10/06). “We’re his base.”

Talk about straight from the horse's ______. Add your own noun.

The Carpetbagger Report has some 20 odd McCain flip flops and they're still updating. Here's the latest.

* McCain pledged in February 2008 that he would not, under any
circumstances, raise taxes. Specifically, McCain if he were a “‘read my lips’
candidate, no new taxes, no matter what?” referring to George H.W. Bush’s 1988
pledge. “No new taxes,” McCain responded. Two weeks later, McCain said,
“I’m not making a ‘read my lips’ statement, in that I will not raise
taxes.”

* McCain’s campaign unveiled a Social Security policy that the senator
would implement if elected, which did not include a Bush-like privatization
scheme. In March 2008, McCain denounced his
own campaign’s policy.

Just a couple of days ago John McCain showed just how tenuous his grasp of how the world works really is. I mean, he says if that's what the average American thinks, then he does too. Brilliant.

But as the National Security Network’s Ilan Goldenberg notes,
“if the ‘average American’ thinks that Ahmadinejad is the ultimate leader of
Iran” it would be McCain’s job as president “to dissuade them of this notion -
not reinforce it.”

Remember Obama's preacher? Of course you do. It's all the Mainstream Media could talk about for quite some time. McCain solicits a couple of way out there, religious nuts and that's hardly worth mentioning.

May 20, 2008 John McCain has some seriously screwed-up holy men surrounding
him. First, there's the Rev. John Hagee, a hate-monger and certifiable loon who
believes that Hurricane Katrina was God's judgment on New Orleans for planning a
gay parade, calls Catholicism a "false
cult system" that conspired with Hitler to exterminate the Jews, and
believes that America's divine duty is to destroy Iran. Then there's the Rev. Rod Parsley, who garnishes his bigoted theology by
calling Islam "the greatest religious enemy of our civilization and the world"
and saying that Muhammad was "a mouthpiece of a conspiracy of spiritual evil."

Firedoglake has certainly noticed the media inconsistency, Welcome To An Edition Of “If A Democrat Did This It’d Be On The Evening News”.

If you've been paying attention, then you know all about McCain's lobbyists running his campaign problem. John McCain now wants to seen as the anti-lobby candidate. Here's what some of his own people think about that little brainstorm.

Some of McCain's advisers said Monday they are mystified by the new policy,
which they said gives Obama an opening to attack their candidate.

"The most interesting thing in every campaign is the self-inflicted
wound. This is a great case," said one GOP fundraiser, who spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss
McCain's campaign decisions candidly. "When asked to name the 10,000 things
people think are the most important issue, this doesn't make the list."

Another adviser said: "There's scratching of heads. What is going
on? Why are we doing this?"

If this is an example of McCain's decision making, watch out if he gets elected.

But the McCain campaign does understand its strongpoints, get its non-thinking supporters to flood the internet with prepackaged McCain propaganda. Thanks Huffington Post.

McCain Campaign: Comment Trolls Wanted

Wishing you could be a campaign surrogate, but don't have a national platform?
Do you find blogging your own opinions tedious? Wish you could have someone tell
you what to think during this political season? Well look no further than John
McCain's new blog outreach!

You can even get McCain brownie points. Makes you wonder how these people could even come close in an election.

Select from the numerous web, blog and news sites listed here, go there, and
make your opinions supporting John McCain known. Once you’ve commented on a
post, video or news story, report the details of your comment by clicking the
button below. After your comments are verified, you will be awarded points
through the McCain Online Action Center.

Enough of John McCain. There's 167 days left until the election and I'm sure John will have plenty of stuff to keep us shaking our heads an saying, "Huh?".

According to the Global Peace Index, the U.S. ranks 97 out of a possible 140 countries. Not bad after seven years of George W. Bush. It's worth clicking on, just to see all the flags.

The table below provides the GPI rankings for the 140 countries analysed in 2008
and the 121 countries analysed in 2007, as well as year-on-year comparison.
Countries most at peace are ranked first. A lower score indicates a more
peaceful country. You can click on a country to see the detail of its peace
indicators and drivers.

I just found out that the Israeli government is comprised of a bunch of appeasers. It looks like President Bush had better give them a history lesson.

Israel’s Vice-Prime Minister, Haim Ramon, admitted Monday that the government of
Israel has, for the last several weeks, been holding talks with the Hamas party,
in contradiction with Israel’s stated policy of 'isolating and attacking’ the
elected Hamas-led government of the Palestinian people.

Can you imagine what they were thinking while Bush was giving them his little "appeasement" speech?

I want to wish Teddy Kennedy the best in his latest fight, not against the Right, but brain cancer. He has been a part of history for most of my life and we need more like him.

And my buddy Rocky over at Alien Trucker been going through some bad luck. Rocky and I have a lot in common, we're both in our 50's (me more than him), we both have blogs, we both understand the need for medical marijauna and we've both had our legs stop working for a while.

But he's still putting that blog out tho', go over and and check out the music video 99 Red Balloons, I'm listening to it now. It's an anti-war piece that takes me back to the days when I started to have to think seriously about the draft.

Hump day, enjoy.

Later

The McCain Maverick Mythunderstanding.

Image from Slowpoke Comics.

If you believe that John McCain is a maverick, chances are that you're right of center or else you get most of your information from the Mainstream Media. Aren't you happy that you've got the internet.

While McCain may only be a maverick in his own mind, the Mainstream Media are happy to perpetuate John's fantasy.

Don't take my word for it. Eric Boehlert at Media Matters proves it.

"The campaign's general-election strategy is to sell the McCain brand to
show voters that he is distinct from President Bush and other Republicans," the
Post reported.

So guess what members of the press, including those at MSNBC, CNN, NBC,
The Washington Post, Newsweek,
the Politico, and The Boston Globe, have been doing incessantly in recent weeks.
They've been making glowing references to the durability and appeal of the
"McCain brand." I mean, how lucky can the Republicans get? The press is echoing
precisely the message that the candidate's advisers want repeated again and
again. What are the odds?

Still think that there's a liberal media out there doing its best to undermine everything that's great or good about this country?

Check this out. CNN does its part to keep President Bush from looking like the hypocritical, idiot that he is.

In reports during the 10 and 11 a.m. ET hours of the May 15 edition of CNN
Newsroom, CNN aired comments by Robert Gibbs, Sen. Barack Obama's communications
director, responding to President Bush's remarks that "[s]ome seem to believe we
should negotiate with terrorists and radicals," reportedly
in reference to Obama, but CNN spliced the audio clip to omit part of the
statement in which Gibbs noted that Secretary of Defense Robert Gates, like
Obama, has reportedly said that the United States needs to be willing to meet
with Iran. CNN had left intact Gibbs' reference to Gates in the audio clip of
Gibbs' comments it aired during the 9 a.m. hour of the program.

Pretty sneaky, huh?

But this isn't about the liberal media myth, it's about the John McCain/maverick myth.

To be honest, if you define maverick as willing to change your position in a heartbeat, then John McCain is truly a maverick.

After Bush's little Obama "appeasment" speech to the Israeli Knesset, John McCain jumped right on board with the President.

Yes, there have been appeasers in the past, and the president is exactly right,
and one of them is Neville Chamberlain. I believe that it’s not an accident that
our hostages came home from Iran when President Reagan was president of the
United States. He didn’t sit down in a negotiation with the religious extremists
in Iran, he made it very clear that those hostages were coming home.

I guess that thinking that you're a maverick effects the memory. Because he seemed not to remember Reagan's arms-for-hostages negotiations.

Now his campaign is saying that they never used the word "appeasement". Appeasement, appeasers, big difference.

PFOTENHAUER: Senator McCain responded directly himself and said he took the
president at his word, that those comments were not directed toward Senator
Obama. […]

SHUSTER: Nancy, does the McCain campaign believe that talking to our
enemies is the same as appeasing them?

PFOTENHAUER: We have never used the term appeasement and you know
that.

McCain conveniently forgets that, not too long ago, he was one of those appeasers.

"They're the government; sooner or later we are going to have to deal with them,
one way or another, and I understand why this administration and previous
administrations had such antipathy toward Hamas because of their dedication to
violence and the things that they not only espouse but practice, so ... But it's
a new reality in the Middle East. I think the lesson is people want security and
a decent life and decent future, that they want democracy. Fatah was not giving
them that."

So it shouldn't be too hard to believe that the man who made the following statement is now sucking up to the NRA.

The NRA is entitled to their advocacy. I don’t think they help the Republican
Party at all, but I don’t think they should in any way play a major role in the
Republican Party’s policy making. [CNN, 5/12/00]

You know a man must be a maverick if he says something like this,

“The political tactics of division and slander are not our values. They are
corrupting influences on religion and politics, and those who practice them in
the name of religion or in the name of the Republican Party or in the name of
America shame our faith, our party and our country… Neither party should be
defined by pandering to the outer reaches of American politics and the agents of
intolerance.”

and then seeks the endorsement of a lunatic like John Hagee, who says things like this,

“Behold I will send for many fishers and after will I send for many hunters. And
they the hunters shall hunt them” - that will be the Jews - “from every mountain
and from every hill and from out of the holes of the rocks.” If that doesn't
describe what Hitler did in the Holocaust... you can't see that. So think about
this - I will send fishers and I will send hunters. A fisher is someone who
entices you with a bait. How many of you know who Theodore Hertzel was? How many
of you don't have a clue who he was? WOO... Sweet God! Theodore Hertzel is the
father of Zionism. He was a Jew that at the turn of the 19th century said -
“this land is our land, God wants us to live there”. So he went to the Jews of
Europe and said, “I want you to come and join me in the land of Israel”. So few
went, Hertzel went into depression. Those who came founded Israel; those who did
not went through the hell of the Holocaust. Then god sent a hunter. A hunter is
someone who comes with a gun and he forces you. Hitler was a hunter. And the
Bible says - Jeremiah righty? - “they shall hunt them from every mountain and
from every hill and out of the holes of the rocks”, meaning: there's no place to
hide. And that will be offensive to some people. Well, dear heart, be offended:
I didn't write it. Jeremiah wrote it. It was the truth and it is the truth. How
did it happen? Because God allowed it to happen. Why did it happen? Because God
said, “my top priority for the Jewish people is to get them to come BACK to the
land of Israel”. Today Israel is back in the land and they are at Ezekiel 37 and
8. They are physically alive but they're not spiritually alive. Now how is God
going to cause the Jewish people to come SPIRITUALLY alive and say, “the God of
Abraham, Isaac and Jacob, He is God”?"

Wow, I never realized that the Jews brought the Holocaust upon themselves. I bet they were "appeasers" too. It's just amazing that there are people out there who actually believe this garbage. Bruce Wilson of Talk to Action really put a lot of research in on John Hagee. If you missed the link above, here it is again.

Maverick McCain does have a set of standards, but they seem to be mostly double standards.

John McCain and the Dictator Money Trail

John McCain will fire you for lobbying for Burma, but he'll still take
your money.

Speaking of money, John McCain shows what a maverick he can be when it comes to his budget as president. He's a maverick because he's the only person that thinks building up Bush's deficit is the right thing for the country.

McCain’s Budget Would Create Largest Deficit In 25 Years, Largest
Debt Since WWII

You gotta admit, that's different.

McCain's health care policy is more Republican than maverick.

In fact, John McCain is more Republican than maverick.

Bush to join McCain at high-dollar campaign event.

Later

Mission Accomplished, Bush Bushed, McCain: Bush III, John Hagee, Religious Right Power, Hillary/Limbaugh 08 & Screw the troops, Love the Contractors.

Remember that? That was five years ago. We had just won the war in Iraq.

You remember. The troops would be home soon. We were rebuilding Iraq's infraructure. We were on the verge of uncovering those dreaded WMDs.

George Bush and the neocons were military geniuses. A good time was had by all.

Now five years later most people are starting to figure out that the whole Bush Presidency has been seven years of unadulterated BS. It's been a sham, propped up by right wing propaganda.

By Elisabeth Bumiller

WASHINGTON, May 1—President Bush’s made-for-television address
tonight on the carrier Abraham Lincoln was a powerful, Reaganesque finale to a
six-week war. But beneath the golden images of a president steaming home with
his troops toward the California coast lay the cold political and military
realities that drove Mr. Bush’s advisors to create the moment.

By Michael R. Gordon and Eric Schmitt

BAGHDAD, May 2—The Bush administration is planning to withdraw most United
States combat forces from Iraq over the next several months and wants to shrink
the American military presence to less than two divisions by the fall, senior
allied officials said today.

By David E. Sanger

WASHINGTON, May 2—In his speech, Mr. Bush argued that the invasion and
liberation of Iraq were part of the American response to the attacks of Sept.
11. He called the tumultuous period since those attacks ‘‘19 months that changed
the world,’’ and said Mr. Hussein’s defeat was a defeat for al-Qaeda and other
terrorists as well.

I just didn't want to let the fifth year anniversary of the end of the Iraq War go by unmentioned.

Apparently, someone mentioned to Bush that the price of gas is getting a mite high and that maybe he ought to say something to ease their fears. He did.

Bush, reaching back to the earliest days of his administration, resurrected GOP demands for new drilling in the Alaska wilderness, fewer
restrictions on oil refineries and other measures aimed at lowering fuel prices
through higher production.

"If there was a magic wand to wave," Bush said, "I'd be waving it, of
course. . . . But there is no magic wand to wave right now. It took us a while
to get to this fix."

He's right about one thing, it took us a while to get in this mess. I estimate about seven and a half years.

Do you know who's fault it is? Congress. If the Congress would just do it's job, things would be great. And that's got to be the truth, because we all know that Bush wouldn't tell a fib.

But the president had something else up his sleeve. He used his appearance
before the White House press corps to perform one of the oldest tricks in the
book: blaming Congress. He faulted lawmakers 16 times in his opening statement
alone.

And he got petulent with Martha Raddatz at the press conference.

THE PRESIDENT: No, you can’t. This is the second follow-up. You usually get
one follow-up, and I was nice enough to give you one. I didn’t give anybody on
this side a follow-up, and now you are trying to take a second follow-up.

Q Can I just say —

THE PRESIDENT: They just cut off your mic. You can’t, no.

It looks like the most vacationed president in history needs a rest. I know his doing a little down time in a federal pen would do wonders for me.

How would his hoped for successor, John McCain, handle things? Well, he would pretty much follow the party line and crap on the American people to help out Big Business.

Today Arizona Sen. John McCain will deliver what his handlers are hyping as
a major address on health care. McCain’s plan is a dangerous fraud.

He wants voters to think he is going after health care cost inflation.
In reality, he wants to dismantle the employer-provided system that now covers
over 60 percent (or about 158 million) of non-elderly Americans, forcing
millions of us who now get fairly decent health insurance on the job to instead
buy whatever they can find on the individual market controlled by unregulated
and predatory insurance companies. And he would drive health care costs upward,
not downward.

And McCain is starting to have other problems. Instead of a maverick, he's starting to look like a dyed in the wool Republican.

Yet, racism for electoral gain obviously did not go away with Helms' retirement
from politics. And neither has Republican timidity in doing anything to control
the extreme elements in the party--or their base if you will. So once again,
just as other conservatives sat idly by and claimed Jesse was just being Jesse,
now John McCain throws his hands
up in the air as if there is nothing he can do when a racist ad is run by
the North Carolina GOP against Barack Obama:

Oh yeah, McCain's got a preacher too. You just don't hear much about him. But he sounds like a really nice guy. Crazy as hell, but a really nice guy.

America is also collectively cursed for specific reasons, such as legalized
abortion and a Supreme Court decision against sectarian Bible classes in public
schools but also, more generally, for rebelling against God. As a consequence of
America's disobedience and rebellion, according to McCain-endorser John Hagee,
God's has cursed America and that curse has caused American military defeats, in
Korea and Vietnam, plagues such as AIDS and social blights like violent crime.
God's curse on America has also led "hundreds of thousands" to secretly
sacrifice children to the devil.

Hundreds of thousands of children sacrificed to the devil? I didn't know you could do that. By the time you find out these things, you're already stuck with two teenagers. Damn.

Speaking of damn. The Religious Right is going all out to turn church services into Republican rallies. But I guess something has to be done to stop us evil liberals and our sick philosophy of peace and prosperity for everyone.

"I think that's the case," Cureton replied. "The pastors need to speak
clearly about it. I'll tell you we are working with the Alliance Defense Fund on
a series of sermons this fall for pastors to preach, so that they educate their
people on the issues.

"We're gonna be talking about the value of life, the value of family
and the value of freedom, basically talking about abortion and stem-cell
research," he continued, "and then also about the gay agenda and then finally
about our Christian heritage and how it's being stripped from every corner of
society. And then finally we're gonna be doing a candidate comparison message
that is going to ask pastors to cross the line."

Just like Jesus said.

Quick primary update thing. It's just more of Rush urging Republicans to get out and vote for Hillary.

More from the Howey-Gauge
poll in Indiana: "The Democratic primary is going to be decided by
non-Democrats. To be determined is which group -- Republicans or independents --
are going to decide this race.

"The poll shows that self-identified Republicans favor Sen. Hillary
Clinton, 50% to 44%, while independents favor Sen. Barack Obama, 54% to
38%.

Among Republicans, there "appears to be two kinds of Republicans: the
'Obamacans' as the Illinois senator likes to call them -- earnest Republicans
deeply disappointed in their own party's performance on the budget, economy,
social issues and the Iraq War -- and the Rush Limbaugh Republicans who are
planning to crossover to vote for Sen. Clinton because they perceive her to be
the weakest rival to U.S. Sen. John McCain in the November election."

And finally the military. It's not enough that troops are told to pull four or five tours in Iraq or Afghanistan, but then they are treated like second class citizens. By the Military!

With all the money from this country's wealth that goes to the military budget, you'd think that they would at least have decent quarters when theydid get to come home for a few minutes.

Brig. Gen. Dennis Rogers, who is responsible for maintaining barracks throughout
the Army, told reporters at the Pentagon that most inspections were done last
weekend but he had not seen final results.

Part of the reason may be because the military has to subsidize defense contractors screw-ups.

Now get this, the Marines need amphibious tanks, obvously. So General Dynamics builds the tank. But the tank kinda don't work, at all. I mean it sucks at everything that it's supposed to be able to do.

So what does the military do?

- Due to the problems raised in the tests, the Pentagon
gave contractor General Dynamics another $143 million for
a redesign and estimated that another $700 million to $800 million was
needed to do another “system development and demonstration” test.

- Due to the budget increase, the Pentagon now says it will buy only
593 vehicles for $13.2 billion compared to the original estimate that it would
buy 1,025 EFVs for $8.4 billion.

The tanks don't work, so we give them even more money and then we buy a lot less tanks for a lot more money.

We're being taken by the defense contractors and the officers who want to go to work for them.

At least it's not Monday.

Later