Tag: John McCain

In 1967, John McCain was shot out of the North Vietnamese sky, crash landed in a lake, taken prisoner, and held in captivity for … 41 years, so far.

No one can dismiss the unimaginable agony of enduring six years in an enemy prisoner of war camp. It is surely a brutal experience both physically and mentally. It is the sort of experience that never leaves you and, indeed, it seems never to have left John McCain. His entire post-POW frame of reference is shaped by what he went through, and also by what he missed as a consequence of his incarceration.

Back in 1988 when the Exxon Valdez ran aground, I can recall at least a few weeks of steady coverage by both the three major networks and cable news (just CNN at the time) of the disaster, its environmental impact, and efforts to clean it up.

But the fuel oil spill that happened in Louisiana earlier this week proves to be a much larger disaster with farther-reaching consequences–yet for some news briefs I’ve seen on NBC Nightly News and a couple of cable channels, there hasn’t been the major coverage it should be getting. Why aren’t the MSM taking it seriously?

And scorpiorising says,

it is somewhat shocking to me, given the size of the spill and its potential impact on fragile wetlands, that there isn’t more help coming to help wildlife, and to help with cleanup.

I wasn’t planning on posting anything today, have too much to do and other thoughts on my mind.

But yesterday I watched, as many have seen by now, someone who should have a much better understanding, above that of its citizens, what this country’s policies are and their implementation.

McClatchy  has a couple of reports  that hit on a couple of the Points of the ‘surge’:

(cross posted at dailykos)

The real issue is not the New Yorker and what its editors and artists consider satire. I wish it were. But look at the News Headlines for the last weeks. Which Candidate has been in the news? Which Candidate has made a “flub” more often? Which candidate has had a member of his “team” or a famous supporter make a flub. Which candidate has been labeled as having an erosion in his support?

Do you see where I am going?

The recent flurry of controversy over the questioning of McCain’s qualifications for the Presidency reveals a strange transformation in American politics. We no longer argue about the substance of candidates and issues, but about their poses and postures. The defenders of John McCain are not outraged that critics question how John McCain would go about being president. They are outraged because critics question how John McCain goes about being John McCain. It is the coolness, the righteousness, the mojo of the McCain BRAND that was being questioned.

What John McCain’s propaganda machine is trying to sell to the electorate is a posture, a way of acting, an attitude toward the world, not a set of principles or policies. To attack the goodness of his behavioral facade is to strike at the core of a modern political candidate. The electorate has been conditioned to buy the package, not the contents of the package. The taboo that General Clark violated was to attack the attractiveness of McCain’s personality package.

The persona of the “military man” is a powerful brand in American politics. We saw it defended vigorously when General Petraeus was criticized for backing an escalation of the Iraq war. Opponents of the surge were NOT attacked for questioning the surge tactic; they were attacked for questioning the goodness of an American Army officer. Their crime was trying to damage the US military “brand.”

Similarly, McCain’s defenders are defending the “gutsy Navy pilot” brand, not the leadership qualifications of John McCain, who hasn’t flown a jet in decades. The inability to focus on the actual qualifications of political candidates is a sign of a dysfunctional political process. A similar focus on Obama’s magical, mystical persona as an agent of change afflicts the campaign of the Democratic candidate.

Unfortunately, when the voters go to the polls to elect a President in November, they will be choosing between two package designs, not two sets of alternative policies. It is time to pay attention to the package contents, because the challenges facing America in the next decade will not be solved by posturing and packaging.

So Former Naval POW John McCain walks into the American Presidential audition room and proceeds to shuck and jive through his entire schtick, twirling his POW flag around while telling you that he’s not, and trying to convince America to vote for him because everybody tells him he’d be a swell president.

Gen. Wesley Clark, sitting in Simon Cowell’s chair, can’t take any more and raises his hand to stop the music.

“You’re a terrific juggler,” Gen. Clark says, “but

your future involves not being president.”

The free ride that John McCain is getting from the mainstream media continues.  McCain has been around so long that the cozy relationship that he’s built with the media for many years is turning out to provide a super-Teflon coating for the candidate of 2008.  The flip flops, back-flips, miss-statements, and outright deceptions go uncovered by reporters eager to curry favor with the candidate.

The Nation magazine this week does a brilliant job of first acknowledging McCain’s likability, then his blatant pandering, and lying.  It’s both common knowledge and unspoken criticism that the candidate McCain of 2000 is vastly different than the candidate of 2008.  Eric Alterman and George Zornick sum it up succinctly below the fold:

It’s refreshing to see that some businesses are doing well in today’s economy.  Perhaps the most successful venture going today is the pawn shop.  From Peoria to Pasadena,  pawn shops are seeing a boom in clients.

Says Doug Robinson, a pawn shop owner in Pasadena,

We’ve been on a continuous uphill run for a number of months.  I don’t see anything that will stop it.

Worse even than the paycheck advance loans, a pawn shop loan typically involves an annual interest rate in excess of 50%.  Yes, that is fifty percent per year.  In Mississippi, the cap is 25% per month, which is 300% per year (if not compounded monthly).  

Given that credit card debt is often 18% or higher, it is incredibly sad to imagine the poor soul who pawns an object at 50% interest to pay that very same object off on the 18% credit card debt.  

cross posted from The Dream Antilles

The Supreme Court ruled 5-4 this week that Louisiana’s statute permitting the death penalty for child rape was unconstitutional.  The decision was a step against extending the barbarianism of the death penalty to crimes in which the victim was not killed.  

Justice Anthony M. Kennedy wrote the opinion, saying, in essence, that the crime, awful as it is, does not merit capital punishment.

“The incongruity between the crime of child rape and the harshness of the death penalty poses risks of over-punishment and counsels against a constitutional ruling that the death penalty can be expanded to include this offense,” Kennedy wrote.

He was joined by Justices John Paul Stevens, David H. Souter, Ruth Bader Ginsburg and Stephen G. Breyer.

source

Put simply, a majority of the Supreme felt that as a substantive matter, the death penalty for child rape was cruel and unusual punishment in violation of the Eighth Amendment and could not be permitted.