“Man once surrendering his reason, has no remaining guard against absurdities the most monstrous, and like a ship without rudder, is the sport of every wind.”
– Thomas Jefferson to James Smith, 1822.
“Across this country this is the agenda I have set before my fellow prisoners…”
– John McCain, at a campaign rally on Oct. 8, 2008 in Bethlehem, PA.
McCain’s Freudian slip was not only a nod to those who still support him – frightened hoodwinked hostages of vacuous Republican fanfare, convenient for-profit warmongering, and obdurate personal delusion, traveling on the GOP Bridge to Nowhere in faith it’s still the Yellow Brick Road – but to his own status as the decrepit and pathetic protagonist of a Russian novel, a man who has abandoned every conservative principle he previously claimed to hold dear, and scrapped every ounce of honor or dignity he may have once had to embrace his former abusers and speak drivel he knows to be false; a prisoner of his burning ambition to be president that has become an ugly and embarrassing obsession.
It’s said McCain loves to shoot craps; unspoken is that he often loses. In August, his dwindling audiences yawning and his poll numbers shrinking, he gambled his campaign on an inexperienced first-time governor with a lean resume from a state with three electoral votes, hoping that one throw of the dice would put him in the lead. While it temporarily gave him a boost, his numbers had started sinking, contrary to the Pundits spin, even before the depth of the economic crisis became the Big Media daily news lead. Now Palin has passed the barrier into public punch line while McCain himself attracted snickering at his last debate performance from not only Democratic and independent voters, but even Republicans.
McCain, at the head of one of the most deceitful and detestable campaigns in living memory, has abased his honor and integrity to the point of promoting palpable falsehoods, from the pitiful Joe the Plumber fiction and the ACORN ‘vote fraud’ distraction, to peevishly ridiculing his opponent’s popularity, all the while defending his beauty pageant running mate’s lightweight experience and outright lies connecting his opponent to domestic terrorists, and bizarrely grinning at his effort. McPalin are not just an insult to what’s left of the nation’s intelligence, they are an insult to the history of civilization as well.
So dismal, debauched and hideous is the McCain-Palin monstrosity that even formerly staunch conservative outlets such as the Chicago Tribune, a Republican newspaper that has never supported a Democrat in its 161-year history, just endorsed Obama, along with conservative-icon William F. Buckley’s kid Christopher, and none other than Reagan debate coach George F. Will.
Yes, McCain is a prisoner of his own making, trapped in a negative campaign of deception and bile that he apparently thinks is his only chance to win; trading off his integrity for an office that becomes more remote as the days until the election diminish, ironically offending those who supported him in 2000 to cater to packs of frenzied religious nuts, closet racists and fringe extremists, most of whom only show up to see Sarah Palin.
Now, with talk of an Obama landslide permeating even the Corporate Media broadcasts, McCain is a ditch digger who has brought a shovel to his own burial; a rudderless ship who has surrendered his reason to absurdities, his decency to expedience, his honesty to vanity, and his courage to scoundrels who once tried to ruin him.
After losing the war, where does an old fool so hollow go for absolution?
McCain deserves every bit of the electoral ass kicking it’s looking more and more likely he’ll receive. I hope he enjoys the joke status that will be attached to his sad historical footnote. Bob Dole, anybody?
Comment by Anon — October 20, 2008 @ 3:30 am
Anon, I think McCain will be even worse off than Dole after he loses both the presidency and his senate seat.
After the election, I wouldn’t be surprised if some major corruption case came out connecting McCain with sleazy Arizona land and water developers. How does he dodge a second Keating Five?
Comment by RS Janes — October 20, 2008 @ 6:44 am
Or RSJ,something like this story:
http://www.shortnews.com/start.cfm?id=74158
Where there is smoke there is usually fire!
Comment by Rainlander — October 20, 2008 @ 4:49 pm
Rain, that should be enough to do it, but the Fannie/Freddie mess wasn’t connected directly to McCain, except through his obsession with deregulation.
I was referring to something more like his wife’s investment with Charles Keating in a shopping center; the story of McCain using his influence to secure water rights and land zoning in AZ for wealthy supporters is no doubt laying around waiting for some ‘journo-type’ to pick up and run with — the national press corps who travels with McCain is too busy primping for the camera to do the legwork, but maybe some ambitious wretch from the print media will sniff this one out.
Did you catch this piece on McCain yet?
Make-Believe Maverick
Tim Dickinson
Rolling Stone
Oct. 16, 2008
http://www.rollingstone.com/news/coverstory/make_believe_maverick_the_real_john_mccain
Comment by RS Janes — October 21, 2008 @ 7:04 am
RSJ,thats a helluva read.
At one time I was proud of McCain and this was long after switching affiliation to an independant.
Upon hearing McCain doing flip-flops which I knew for bald-faced lies,I looked into his senatorial voting record and discovered a Man so right-winged as to make Darth Cheney look like Mother Theresa.The original Neo-Con indeed!
snipp:< “In congress, Rep. John McCain quickly positioned himself as a GOP hard-liner. He voted against honoring Martin Luther King Jr. with a national holiday in 1983 — a stance he held through 1989. He backed Reagan on tax cuts for the wealthy, abortion and support for the Nicaraguan contras. He sought to slash federal spending on social programs, and he voted twice against campaign-finance reform. He cites as his “biggest” legislative victory of that era a 1989 bill that abolished catastrophic health insurance for seniors, a move he still cheers as the first-ever repeal of a federal entitlement program.
McCain voted to confirm Robert Bork and Clarence Thomas to the Supreme Court. In 1993, he was the keynote speaker at a fundraiser for a group that sponsored an anti-gay-rights ballot initiative in Oregon. His anti-government fervor was renewed in the Gingrich revolution of 1994, when he called for abolishing the departments of Education and Energy. The following year, he championed a sweeping measure that would have imposed a blanket moratorium on any increase of government oversight.”< Wow!
As for Shady Land deals like the Keating fiasco,
I would think that the reform foundation which was initiated as a anti-lobbyist group opposed to soft money but was in fact a huge fund-raiser of soft money from the telecoms and which was part of vast publicity scheme to benefit one John Sydney McCain ]I[ would come closer to violating federal laws where the telecoms used McCain to apply leverage against the FCC for which He received and still receives gifts and compensation while holding a chair.
A clear and present conflict of interest.
One of the traits which makes him so unsuitable for command is his ability to learn from his mistakes and from this article I would gather that when this guy screws the pooch He does it on a collossal scale.
Not the finger I want on the Nukkular option hot button.
Sorry for the shitty syntax and punchiation!
Cheers Rain.
Comment by Rainlander — October 21, 2008 @ 8:49 pm
I would like to offer a correction =His inability to learn rather than ability to learn.
Again,Sorry.
Comment by Rainlander — October 21, 2008 @ 8:52 pm