How Much Time Should She Do?
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John McCain’s Character
In song:
In prose:
Just six months after being rebuked by the Senate Ethics Committee for exercising “poor judgment” when he interfered with federal regulators on behalf of a wealthy donor, Senator John McCain engaged in activities that may have constituted an abuse of his office for personal gain. In August 1991, McCain hosted a family reunion at the Bermuda Naval Air Station (BNAS) for at least seven days at taxpayer expense. McCain’s entourage of eleven included his wife, Cindy, and several of his children. The trip took place as Washington was still dealing with the fallout from the Keating Five scandal, an episode that involved other improper luxury Atlantic-island trips for McCain.
McCain’s junket to BNAS was first reported by ABC’s Primetime Live in a postscript to a December 1992 story on Senior Petty Officer George Taylor, the whistleblower who exposed the use of the Navy base by top officials for nongovernmental purposes. A March 1993 Navy Inspector General report, precipitated by thePrimetime Live segment, as well as a BNAS log record and a new interview with Taylor corroborate and amplify the substance of ABC’s story.
The Navy IG report, obtained by The Nation and never before made public, redacts the name of the “one U.S. Senator” who used BNAS as a “vacation site.” But in an interview with The Nation, Taylor, who was stationed at BNAS from May to November 1992, confirms that the senator in question was John McCain. A log book from BNAS, also obtained by The Nation, lists McCain as the only senator to have stayed on the island between 1989 and 1992.
In his interview, Taylor now recounts a conversation he had with a military psychiatrist who examined Taylor in 1992 for a psychiatric evaluation ordered by his supervisor in the wake of thePrimetime Live show, in an apparent act of retaliation for his whistleblowing. The anecdote raises the disturbing possibility that McCain’s Senate office attempted to influence the outcome of Taylor’s psychiatric evaluation.
In his 2002 memoir, McCain declared that he had learned from his mistakes in the Keating Five affair, writing, “I have carefully avoided situations that might even tangentially be construed as a less than proper use of my office.” But this most recent disclosure casts doubt on that claim.
“It was a family reunion…and the guests included grown children from a prior marriage…and minor children…a baby and a nanny,” the IG report says of the McCain family vacation—some aspects of which may have violated the law.
(Read the rest of McCain’s Bermuda Triangle.)
McCain’s Self-Immolating Campaign
For an elaboration on why the McCain/Palin hate mongering is a losing strategy see Abby’s post.
I feel like McCain is doing a great job appealing to the bottom 16th percentile…. And “shoring up” the bottom 16th percentile isn’t going to win him any elections. There’s just not enough population there.
Let me tell you what I’m not saying: I’m not saying that people who are voting for McCain are stupid. But I think that their support for him must come from the work he’s done in his political life BEFORE the last few weeks or their allegience to their party, because the way his campaign has gone, the only new people left listening are likely people who don’t quite comprehend complex policy. Shouldn’t the smart “winning chess move” kind of thing to do right now be appealing to the swing votes? Surely swing voters are not too impressed with what they are seeing.
Attacks get people at a gut level. They are easier to hurl than calm, non-responsive even thinking. These frothed up crowds are the product of that kind of campaigning, and they are dangerous. In fact, I’m scared now EVEN IF OBAMA WINS. That isn’t strategic chess-playing. That’s reckless irresponsibility, because creating seething anger among groups of people is never a good idea!
When Is McCain Going to Denounce Anti-Semites in His Campaign?
A lack of time and nothing more to add lead me to give you this one whole cloth, by dnA over at his excellent blog, Too Sense.
Anger over anti-Semitism on the American Right, when coming from the Goyim, has only to do with the fact that the vast majority of American Jews are white. It’s what causes folks on the Right to sputter over Farrakhan’s anti-Semitism while ignoring that of their most prominent Christianist leaders.
McCain for his part, has more than his share of avowed anti-Semites on his campaign, as opposed to critics of Israel, which is what the Right is usually referring to when they speak of “anti-Semites” on the Left.
This is not to say that there are no anti-Semites on the Left. On September 11th, a white girl told me that 9/11 was my fault because I had “killed innocent Palestinian children.” I’m saying that these people do not comprise a significant part of the establishment on the Left, while the theo-cons who have endorsed McCain are mainstream enough for him to trumpet their approval without fanfare. Via Matthew Yglesias, McCain supporter Pastor John Hagee:
It was the disobedience and rebellion of the Jews, God’s chosen people, to their covenantal responsibility to serve only the one true God, Jehovah, that gave rise to the opposition and persecution that they experienced beginning in Canaan and continuing to this very day.
Simply put, the death of six million Jews in the Shoah was our fault for not accepting Jesus.
Nothing Farrakhan has said or done is more vile than this. Yet McCain appears with Hagee on the campaign trail, while Barack Obama has to denounce Farrakhan repeatedly despite a complete lack of an association beyond race.
Gentiles on the Right don’t care about anti-Semitism. They just want to hate without being hated back.
Support for Israel based on a desire to facilitate Armageddon is not “support”. If Jewish “leaders” weren’t as out of touch with the views of the community they supposedly represent as today’s black leaders (leading blacks), they would not embrace this man.
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