johnnie’s feet of clay

Ahhhh, Johnny, we knew you after all.

John McCain long has been one of those rare politicians whose career mirrors the crucial sentiment from the last reel of The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance: "This is the west, sir. When the legend becomes fact, print the legend."

John McCain’s legend always has transcended his mere fact.

Yes, John McCain is a decorated war hero – a survivor of the infamous Hanoi Hilton. He deserves honor and respect for the many sacrifices he has made for his country.

But when it comes to politics, John McCain is a neo-con hiding behind a populist image. And like any good neo-con, ends always seem to justify means.

During Campaign 2000, McCain was savaged by George W. Bush and Karl Rove. “Turd Blossom” used a racist push poll to imply to South Carolinians that McCain had an illegitimate black child – using the fact that McCain and his wife had adopted an orphan from Southeast Asia. The campaign of a man who went AWOL from the Texas National Guard questioned the service of a man who spent years as a prisoner of war. They suggested through backchannels that those years in captivity had left him mentally unstable.

That treatment by Bush/Cheney 2000 outraged many – especially John Kerry, who would be subjected to much the same treatment four years later.

So why, many ask, has McCain cozied up to George W. Bush more tightly than Monica Lewinsky on a late night near the Oval Office? Why would a man who experienced torture, who claims to represent a higher moral authority on the subject of torture, bail on an agreement with the White House over torturing prisoners?

The most obvious answer would be a Faustian bargain with Rove, et al, in advance of a run for the Presidency in 2008. And that answer appears to be a good one.

This weekend, facing an embarrassing loss to Sen. Bill Frist in a Republican Presidential straw poll of some 2,000 GOP activists from 26 states in Memphis for a meeting of the Southern Republican Leadership Conference, McCain moved to poison the well by urging supporters NOT to vote for him.

No, he told them – write in the name George W. Bush.

That’s right. For a straw poll ahead of an election two and a half years off, John McCain wanted his supporters to write in the name of the one man in the country who is least eligible to run – our lame duck president, Chimpy McSmirk.

"For the next three years, with our country at war, he's our president and the only one who needs our support."

I will now pause so that you, gentle reader, may slap your head with the palm of your hand and say “What?!?!?”

The word “Desperate” comes to mind – and this from a man who dubbed his campaign bus “The Straight Talk Express.”

More soon.

sticks and stones: beaten up by words

The war of words is all about word warfare.

For the longest time, conservatives and Republicans have been working overtime to control the debate by controlling the language. Men like Frank Luntz, who moonlights as an unbiased commentator for NBC News (yeah, right) have given us such gems as renaming the Estate Tax the Death Tax. We’ve seen it at work in recent weeks as wiretapping has been replaced with terrorist surveillance. We’ve been beaten up by the term ‘liberal,” and bludgeoned by the idea that “Democrats don’t have a plan.”

The one that really pissed me off came from a talk radio debate over the South Dakota abortion ban. Caller after caller kept referring to “pre-born babies.”

Give me a break. If you have two kids and a third on the way, you don’t tell everyone you have three kids. Period. End of sentence.

If you’re pregnant on December 31, you still don’t qualify for an extra deduction for a dependant child. Try it and you're pre-audited.

And while we’re at it, you don’t walk into your local Denny’s and order two pre-born chickens sunny side up.
Virgin girls are not pre-fornicated.
Married people are not pre-divorced.
Babies are not pre-educated.
Living people are not pre-dead.
Baked beans are not pre-farted.
Oprah is not pre-deified.
Tom Cruise' unproduced movies are not pre-bombs.
The new Jenna Elfman series is not pre-cancelled.
Employees are not pre-fired.
Unemployed people are not pre-employed.
Homeless people are not pre-housed.

However, we can consider George W. Bush to be pre-impeached.

And we can consider Karl Rove and Dick Cheney pre-indicted.

And since all our communication is monitored as part of the Terrorist Surveillance Program, and because I dare to criticize the Imperial Presidency, I can consider myself pre-busted.

More soon.

’tis a small thing, but a smart thing

When you do a little digging, one finds that things are rotten in the state of Ohio. And Florida. And Nebraska. For that matter, any state that has bought into the idea of using touchscreen, paperless voting machines.

So what do we do?

Here’s a list of things we must do:

First, we must remove the people who oversee elections in these states – the very ones who championed paperless voting machines long before they were proven secure. That means we need to focus attention on Secretary of State in each and every state. We’ve seen what Katherine Harris was able to do in Florida in 2000 and what Kenneth Blackwell was able to do in Ohio in 2004 for George W. Bush. Al Gore actually won the state-wide vote in Florida in 2000, and exit polls showed John Kerry carrying Ohio by a comfortable margin in 2004.

Second, we need state legislation barring any official holding state-wide office from holding any position in a national campaign. If some Katherine Harris or Kenneth Blackwell wants to chair a campaign, make them resign their office. You don’t put the fox in charge of the hen house, and you definitely do not want the person overseeing an election guaranteeing to deliver a state for his or her candidate.

Third, we must, MUST, enforce election laws already on the books. This country was built on the foundation of one person, one vote – and yes, I know that originally did not include African Americans or Native Americans in the early days. Republican thuggery always has focused, and must continue to focus, on denying people the opportunity to vote. From throwing people off voter rolls in Florida to forcing heavily Democratic areas in Ohio to use far fewer than the minimum number of machines needed, Republicans have scammed the system for the last time.

Which leads me to the most important item on this list: Each And Every Democrat Must, MUST Vote By Absentee Ballot!!!!!

The only way to thwart these paperless machines – machines that have proven to be so vulnerable that a laptop computer with an Internet connection sitting outside the polling place can manipulate the vote tally – is to make sure every vote is cast, counted and available for recount. Under the current system, that means obtaining an absentee, paper ballot and voting by mail. In addition, Democrats must be careful and diligent with their vote. As for the ballot, vote and submit that vote. Do not allow anyone else to request the ballot for you – Republicans attempted to do that in 2000 in Florida for residents overseas.

We must vote.

We must make sure that our vote counts.

More soon.