McCain's Health Care Plan Makes Me Sick

There is an interesting tidbit in this Associated Press article about McCain's health care plan. First, there was this:

McCain would provide refundable tax credits of $2,500 for individuals, and $5,000 for families, for all those who buy health insurance.

This, in itself, is not all that interesting, except that what McCain is offering is a huge give-away of our tax dollars to the insurance industry disguised as a health care plan. Coincidentally, Obama is offering pretty much the same thing. The problem with these plans is that insurance does not equal health care.

It is the job of the insurace industry to make money off of policy holders. They do not make money by paying out claims. Therefore, every insurance company has an army of people whose sole purpose is to deny paying for medical expenses. I am not faulting the insurance companies for this; they figured out how to make tons of money by not providing the services they promise, so bully for them. My issue is with the notion that having the government pay for peoples' insurance is the solution to the problem. It is not; it is merely feeding the beast.

But perhaps that is an issue for another time.

In the AP article, there is also this:

Employer contributions toward health insurance would be treated as income, meaning workers would have to pay income taxes on it.

Hmm... Couple that with this quote from the Houston Chronicle:

Companies that provide coverage to workers still would get tax breaks.

McCain's plan is to pay for health insurance credits by taxing workers for the amount that their employer contributes. According to the Chronicle, McCain's advisor Doug Holtz-Eakin states McCain's plan would raise "an estimated $3.6 trillion in revenues."

So to sum up McCain's philosophy, we need to keep the Bush tax cuts for the wealthy; we need to reduce or eliminate taxes on corporations; but it's OK to raise taxes on hard-working Americans to the tune of 3.6 trillion dollars.

So to every non-millionaire conservative, I ask this: how do you reconcile voting for a candidate who states flat-out that he's going to raise your taxes?
.

One Debate We All Lose

Senator Obama, the presumptive Democratic nominee for president, has announced that not only is he going to continue one of Bush’s most constitutionally questionable policies, the faith-based initiative, but he is actually going to expand the program. In fact, the New York Times reports that if Obama is elected, he “would consider elevating the director of his Council for Faith-Based and Neighborhood Partnerships to a cabinet-level post.”

Is this the sort of “change” that we can expect from an Obama presidency? I am not naïve enough to expect a candidate to agree with me on every policy position, but this is one of the more offensive initiatives that Bush has brought us. Despite the arguments that church-based organizations are often able to provide services better and/or cheaper than their secular counterparts, the government should not be giving money to them. Bush’s faith-based initiative represents a crack in the wall separating church and state; as such it should be filled, not expanded. I feel that Obama is really letting me down on this one.

One silver lining of the Obama plan is that he has pledged to rescind Bush’s executive order that allows the church-based organizations receiving tax dollars to discriminate in their hiring and firing based upon a person’s religious beliefs. Predictably, some religious groups are out of their minds over this.

“If you can’t hire people within your faith community, then you’ve lost the distinctive that is the reason why faith-based programs exist in the first place,” said Richard Land, head of the public policy arm of the Southern Baptist Convention.

Well, damn. And here I thought the reason the faith-based programs existed was to help people in need. Shows what I know.

For his part, Straight-talk McCain chimed in on the matter as well.

A McCain campaign spokesman, Brian Rogers, said Mr. McCain “disagrees with Senator Obama that hiring at faith-based groups should be subject to government oversight.”

So McCain believes that not hiring someone because of their religious beliefs is okay. Do we really need laws protecting people from discriminatory hiring practices? If McCain is elected, maybe we can get rid of them and find out. You know, free market blah blah blah.

So who wins the great faith-based initiative debate? Nobody. The religious nuts come off as religious nuts; McCain comes off as clueless once more; and Obama shows himself to be a sellout. The real losers, though, are the American citizens. The separation of church and state is a cornerstone of our democracy, and it seems that no matter who we put in office, that separation will be a little narrower as a result.
.

Straight-Talking McCain Tells It Like It Isn't

John McCain has a new ad (available on his web site) in which he blatantly tries to distance himself from George Bush. His people have finally wised up to the fact that McCain's allegiance to Bush is going to weigh on him like an albatross in the general election. So the new ad shows Maverick John standing on a mountain staring into the distance in what may be the most hammed-up moment of the campaign so far.

Back in reality, however, we have a couple of interesting headlines:

Bush urges offshore oil drilling

McCain calls for lifting ban on offshore drilling

McCain is so different from Bush that he has the same worthless "plan" for easing down gas prices.

In his speech to the oil industry yesterday, McCain said, among other things,

But the stakes are high for our citizens and for our economy. And with gasoline running at more than four bucks a gallon, many do not have the luxury of waiting on the far-off plans of futurists and politicians. We have proven oil reserves of at least 21 billion barrels in the United States. But a broad federal moratorium stands in the way of energy exploration and production. And I believe it is time for the federal government to lift these restrictions and to put our own reserves to use.

What he said there is technically true, but it's misleading. While the US does have 21 billion barrels of proven reserves, according to the Department of Energy (check page 7 of this report,) there are 5.174 billion barrels of proven reserves that are not currently in production.

So if the US removed all impediments to drilling and the entire available reserves came online today, we would have the equivalent of a little under three years worth of OPEC imports available. This is McCain's big solution? He states that we can't afford to wait for "far-off plans of futurists and politicians," and yet, he offers little more than some far-off plans himself.

If McCain were truly serious about this problem five years ago, as his ad states, perhaps he should have done a little more to get the members of his party to join the cause instead of blocking every effort of the Democrats to promote conservation and improved fuel efficiency.

Maybe the real problem is that McCain just isn't a very effective leader.
.

Why The US Needs Obama's Foreign Policy

A lot of hay has been made by conservatives over Obama's foreign policy plans. The sentiments of the right were summed up nicely by President Bush when he stated that anyone who would have a dialog with our "enemy" was the equivalent of Chamberlain, who thought that appeasing the Nazis would avert a war.

Bush's analogy was, of course, absurd. Last I checked (though admittedly, I don't get CIA briefing on these things) Iran was not amassing troops at their border, preparing to attack a neighbor. Not even Israel.

Marco Vicenzino has an interesting article in the Turkish Daily News. In part, he states:

The reality is that dealing with Iran is less contingent upon who occupies the White House and more dependent on who wins Iran's next presidential election in 2009, and even more so upon the ultimate discretion of Grand Ayatollah Khamenei. If moderate rhetoric prevails on both sides at the early stages of both new presidencies, some form of a new direct or indirect dialogue could possibly evolve in a very gradual manner by the middle of each respective president's term.

Something that doesn't get a lot of play in the US media is the fact that Iranians elect their president. Mahmoud Ahmadinejad is not a dictator, no matter how much the Bush administration likes to paint him as such. The coming election in Iran is at least as important as this fall's US election to the process of peace or war in the Middle East.

In the US, we have two main choices: Barack Obama or John McCain. McCain wants to bomb Iran. He has stated as much and even sang a song about it. With McCain in the White House, the people of Iran will have real reason to fear the US. They will live every day wondering if American HellFire is going to rain down on them and destroy their homes, their lives, and their country. McCain will push for more sanctions and further isolation of Iran from the global community. If those measures have their desired effect, the people of Iran will suffer as their economy takes a serious hit.

Within that context, they will be confronted by a choice: should they elect a president who will try to bargain with the Great Satan, or should they stick with Ahmadinejad, who stands defiantly thumbing his nose at the superpower?

Fear is a strong motivator. Just look at Bush's approval ratings after 9/11. Just look at the Republican scare tactics used in 2002 and 2004. All of you conservatives, think back to the election of '04 where you were faced with the threat of "Islamofascists" and had to pick between Kerry, who wanted to find a way to reduce our military involvement in the Middle East, and Cowboy Bush, who is so tough he told the enemy to "bring 'em on." Whom did you choose?

If the Iranian people are presented with a US president who is willing to work with their leaders to meet the security interests of the region and the world, while bringing them into the global economic community so they can prosper and have better lives, would they choose to reelect the radical Ahmadinejad, or the more moderate candidate who wants to work with the US to make their lives better?

So we have to decide: do we want to put the warmongering John "Bush III" McCain in charge so he can continue saber-rattling, all but guaranteeing that Ahmadinejad will win reelection and the spiral toward war will continue? Or do we want to put Barack Obama in the White House, so he can start moving Iran, and the Middle East, toward a more moderate leadership, so they can join the rest of the global community and perhaps make the Middle East a place where the constant threat of war is little more than a fading memory?

We need Obama's foreign policy. It's as simple as that.

NOTE: For an opposite view of Obama's foreign policy, check out According To Nikki.

The Blue Wave

Last Thursday, Bob Beckel over at Real Clear Politics had an article about how the election this fall will be a blowout in Obama's favor. He makes a strong argument, starting with the results of the 2004 election, which looked like this:



He gave McCain New Hampshire, which seems fair. Then he gave Obama Iowa, Colorado, New Mexico and Ohio. He took Montana, North Carolina, Georgia and Florida away from McCain since they are all too close to call. His map looks like this:



Which would result in a nice big win for Obama, no matter which way the four swing states fell.
I think that Beckel missed one important state, though. There is one state that has been a Republican stronghold recently, and in most scenarios is considered a gimme for the GOP. Let me put a picture of it here, so you all can start to get used to seeing it.



The latest poll I can find shows McCain leading Obama in Texas by only 5 percent, 48 to 43, with 9% undecided. I think that as McCain tries to play tough on illegal immigration and border fences in order to placate the GOP base, a lot of hispanics are going to shift over to the Democratic camp. Add to that the quarter-million blacks displaced from New Orleans who now call Texas home and the emergence of Bob Barr as a Libertarian alternative for Ron Paul's supporters, and I think that the Lone Star State will tip back to blue, as it was in almost every election through 1976. This is what my electoral map looks like:



Isn't that nice? I left Florida as undecided because it's too hard to say how that one's going to fall. I think it will be blue, but I'm not confident in that prediction. I also gave North Dakota to Obama because he's currently leading McCain in that state as well.

So, will McCain get wiped out this November or is it just wishful thinking? We'll find out in five months. Stay tuned.

NOTE: All of the maps here were created on my new favorite web site: 270toWin.com. Go check it out.
.

More Crooked Talk From The Straight Talk Express

John McCain was in Chicago yesterday to deliver a speech on the economy and explain how he's not going to just continue Bush's policies. I'm sort of hurt that I wasn't invited. Sure, I'm not a member of the National Restaurant Association, but I figured a maverick like McCain would want someone like me to be there. Oh well.

(All of the quotes from his speech in this post are from the copy provided on NBC's web site.)

I propose to bring some very different ideas to the presidency.

McCain is the candidate of change. Ignore for the moment the fact that over the past couple of years he has abandoned many of the positions that made him a "maverick." Don't pay attention to his many flip-flops and contradictions. He's all about change. Change, change, change.

As president, I will keep the current low tax rates...

Different Idea #1: Maintain Bush tax cuts.

What's more, we're going to double the size of the child tax exemption, so that moms and dads can spend and save more for their own children.

Aww, doesn't that sound good? Funny that someone who is so concerned about moms and dads having more money for their children would oppose a law that promotes equal pay for women and makes it easier for them to sue their employer over wage discrimination. Of course, something like that would be a limit on corporate activities, which McCain opposes flat out, across the board. (Unlike every other neocon in Washington -- see how different his ideas are?)

He also proposes phasing out the Alternative Minimum Tax, which will help rich people; add a flat tax system, which will help rich people; give tax credits for people to buy private insurance, which will help the rich people who run insurance companies; and reduce the capital gains tax, which helps rich people. (And before any of you fans of supply-side voodoo economics tell me about how reducing the capital gains will increase the revenue from it, read this article, which explains things like how the revenues from capital gains taxes were higher under Clinton, even though the rates were higher.)

Different Idea #2: Reduce taxes to help rich people.

McCain then goes on to explain how he wants to expand benefits to American workers who lose their jobs to globalization.

It is not enough to keep offering employment programs designed for the problems of the 1950's. We have to help displaced workers at every turn on a tough road, so that they are not just spectators on the opportunities of others. And I have made that commitment with reforms to expand and improve federal aid to American workers in need. We need to help millions of workers who have lost a job that won't come back find a new one that won't go away. As American companies invest abroad, we need to invest in our own country and in our own workers.

Different Idea #3: Expand a program of government handouts. (Keep in mind that at the beginning of the speech he said it was the Democratic candidates who would "spend more of your money in Washington.")

If I am elected president, this country will honor its international agreements, including NAFTA, and we will expect the same of others. And in a time of uncertainty for American workers, we will not undo the gains of years in trade agreements now awaiting final approval.

Different Idea #4: McCain will push for the same free-market trade agreements that have been a centerpiece of Bush's foreign policy agenda.

Then McCain did something that would be surprising if I didn't already know what a flip-flopping hypocrite he is: he lambasted Congress for giving tax breaks to huge corporations. He said, "I have proposed a reduction in the corporate tax rate..."

Oh, wait, that's the part of the speech where he was for giving tax breaks to huge corporations. In the part of the speech where he was against it, he said,

...along with the [farm] subsidies comes the usual harvest of tax breaks, bailouts, and other forms of corporate welfare. To take just a few examples, the thoroughbred industry hit it big this year with 93 million in tax breaks for race horses. The timber industry made off with 260 million dollars in tax breaks. And then there's a company that describes itself as, "the largest and most geographically diverse land owner in the nation." That doesn't sound like a hardship case to me. But the Congress has just voted to give that same company 250 million dollars in public money.

Different Idea #5: Support giving tax breaks for corporations, but don't support giving tax breaks to corporations. Don't like where "straight talk" McCain stands on an issue? Wait five minutes.

McCain then wraps up his speech with a slew of abstract promises about free markets and helping farmers and blah blah blah.

So what are the "different" ideas that McCain promises to bring to Washington? I'm not sure; from the speech he gave yesterday it sounds like he's offering more of the same: Bushonomics, flip-flopping, and empty rhetoric. Conservatives have been spouting on about how voting for Obama would be choosing the unknown, but what is their candidate offering? Which McCain would show up to any given meeting? Pro tax cut or anti tax cut? Pro handouts or anti handouts?

And the one thing that McCain didn't mention, that I really wish he did, is how he plans on paying for the occupation of Iraq. He claims he wants to bring fiscal responsibility to Washington, but Bush has been paying for the occupation on borrowed money. Would McCain do the same, or would he use tax dollars? Where would those extra few hundred billion dollars per year come from? Where's the straight talk when you need it?

.

McCain And Torture, Part Two

This is the second post in what hopefully will not become a series on John McCain and the politics of torture. You can read the first post here, if you like.

SEC. 327. LIMITATION ON INTERROGATION TECHNIQUES.
(a) LIMITATION.—No individual in the custody or under the
effective control of an element of the intelligence community or
instrumentality thereof, regardless of nationality or physical location,
shall be subject to any treatment or technique of interrogation
not authorized by the United States Army Field Manual on Human
Intelligence Collector Operations.

That's the section of HR-2082 that John McCain had an issue with. It's one clause in a military appropriations bill, but it was enough to cause McCain to vote against it. The bill passed, but was vetoed by The Decider. The vote to override the veto fell short--there are simply too many torture-loving Republicans in the House.

Of course, there could be any number of reasons that McCain voted against the bill. He is marketed as a fiscal conservative, after all. Maybe he wanted to reduce the budget for the military. Yeah, right. McCain was actually crystal clear on his reasons for voting against this bill. His statement on the floor of the Senate starts with this:

Mr. President, I oppose passage of the intelligence authorization conference report in its current form.

During conference proceedings, conferees voted by a narrow margin to include a provision that would apply the Army Field Manual to the interrogation activities of the Central Intelligence Agency.

And in fact, his entire statement is about how the Army field manual is insufficient for non-military intelligence agencies, specifically the CIA. The problem with the Army field manual is that it makes clear and plentiful references to the Geneva Conventions for treatment of prisoners of war. For example, in section 5-73, the manual quotes Article 17:

No physical or mental torture or any other form of coercion may be inflicted on EPWs to secure from them information of any kind whatever. PWs who refuse to answer may not be threatened,insulted, or exposed to unpleasant or disadvantageous treatment of any kind.

The field manual not only makes extensive reference to the Geneva Conventions, it also explains why we want to adhere to them. However, this flies directly in the face of the Military Commissions Act of 2006 (MCA), which states:

GENEVA CONVENTIONS NOT ESTABLISHING SOURCE OF RIGHTS.
—No alien unlawful enemy combatant subject to trial by military commission under this chapter may invoke the Geneva Conventions as a source of rights.

§ 948c. Persons subject to military commissions
Any alien unlawful enemy combatant is subject to trial by military commission under this chapter.

The MCA also states that information obtained through the use of torture (or "in which the degree of coercion is disputed") may be admissible in a tribunal so long as a military judge determines:

(1) the totality of the circumstances renders the statement reliable and possessing sufficient probative value;
(2) the interests of justice would best be served by admission of the statement into evidence; and
(3) the interrogation methods used to obtain the statement do not amount to cruel, inhuman, or degrading treatment prohibited by section 1003 of the Detainee Treatment Act of 2005.

Wow. That's a grey area big enough to drive a truck through. The Detainee Treatment Act of 2005, which McCain holds up as an example of the laws that protect Illegal Enemy Combatants, states:

No individual in the custody or under the physical control of the United States Government, regardless of nationality or physical location, shall be subject to cruel, inhuman, or degrading treatment or punishment.

The DTA subsequently gets its definition of "creul, inhuman, or degrading treatment or punishment" from the United States Reservations, Declarations and Understandings to the United Nations Convention Against Torture and Other Forms of Cruel, Inhuman or Degrading Treatment or Punishment done at New York, December 10, 1984. That document states:

the United States considers itself bound by the obligation under Article 16 to prevent "cruel, inhuman or degrading treatment or punishment," only insofar as the term "cruel, inhuman or degrading treatment or punishment" means the cruel, unusual and inhumane treatment or punishment prohibited by the Fifth, Eighth, and/or Fourteenth Amendments to the Constitution of the United States.

Wouldn't it fall to the Supreme Court, then, to determine the legality of various interrogation methods, since they are the final arbiter of what is or isn't constitutional? I don't believe that the SC has declared waterboarding to be unconstitutional. In fact, according to the Washington Post:

Supreme Court Justice Antonin M. Scalia echoed the administration's view when he said in a BBC Radio interview yesterday that some physical interrogation techniques could be used on a suspect in the event of an imminent threat, such as a hidden bomb about to blow up. "It would be absurd to say you couldn't do that," Scalia said. "And once you acknowledge that, we're into a different game: How close does the threat have to be? And how severe can the infliction of pain be?"

So with the Bush administration, the Bush Justice Department, and at least one Supreme Court Justice lining up on the side of torture, the only way to protect anyone from the eager ghouls in the CIA is through the type of legislation that John McCain voted against--because he is in favor of torture.

.

McCain Proves He Really Really Really Doesn't Get It

On Tuesday, the 25th, John McCain gave a speech before the Orange County Hispanic Small Business Roundtable. (Read the text here. ) The main topic of the speech was to address the current financial crisis faced by the US., namely the aftermath of the subprime mortgage collapse.

McCain pointed the finger at a few of the parties responsible (curiously leaving out the Federal Reserve and George Bush, who both have some culpability.) He blames the homeowners who bought more house than they could afford, and the mortgage companies that loaned them the money. I agree with his assessment that those two groups are partially to blame.

He then goes on to say:

The other part of what happened was an explosion of complex financial instruments that weren't particularly well understood by even the most sophisticated banks, lenders and hedge funds. To make matters worse, these instruments -- which basically bundled together mortgages and sold them to others to spread risk throughout our capital markets -- were mostly off-balance sheets, and hidden from scrutiny. In other words, the housing bubble was made worse by a series of complex, inter-connected financial bets that were not transparent or fully understood.

While his explanation of the mortgage-backed securities scam is not complete, it will suffice. The important part is where he says these instruments "were mostly off-balance sheets, and hidden from scrutiny." And the part about "financial bets that were not transparent..." The problem is that the convoluted mechanisms that banks used to turn high-risk loans into triple-A rated securities was hidden from view and understood by very few people.

So far, I'm with him.

But then he said, "Let's start with some straight talk," so I knew the BS was to follow.

His plan to help homeowners is to do nothing to help homeowners. Any assistance that the government offers to people with mortgages must be limited to those who didn't act irresponsibly. So he wants to give aid only to those people who don't need it, because if someone signed on to a mortgage they didn't understand or couldn't afford, then they should lay in the bed they made (which will probably be in a refrigerator box under a viaduct.) "Central to those reforms," he says, "should be transparency and accountability." He wants people to be accountable. There's some straight talk.

So how would Saint McCain handle the banking industry, which has brought our economy to the very brink of collapse, requiring a several-hundred-billion dollar bailout by the Fed?

Our financial market approach should include encouraging increased capital in financial institutions by removing regulatory, accounting and tax impediments to raising capital.

The financial institutions that a few minutes earlier he was lambasting for using unregulated, hidden tactics to spread massive risk throughout the economic foundation of America should be allowed to do whatever they want to make money.

So to sum up: after very nearly destroying the economy (and really, the jury is still out on that) these titans of greed should be trusted to do whatever they feel is appropriate to increase their bottom line. Remember when McCain said, "The issue of economics is not something I've understood as well as I should"? Well, this is what he was talking about.

.

McCain Takes Much Needed Break From Reality

Earlier today, John McCain spoke about the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. According to the NY Times, he said:

withdrawing American military forced [sic] in those countries could allow them “to sink back into chaos and extremism” that would “determine the fate of that critical part of the world, but our fate, as well.”

If US forces leave, he says, Iraq could sink back into chaos and extremism. I hate to be the one to break it to him, but if Iraq has risen out of chaos and extremism (which is itself a dubious claim) it is already well on its way to sinking back into the quagmire. The Christian Science Monitor reports:

Residents and Mahdi Army militants alike appeared to be bracing for a coming battle, guarding against US and Iraqi forces advancing to stop the rockets allegedly fired from Sadr City that hit the Green Zone again Wednesday for the third day since Sunday.

Although it's in Basra, the oil-rich southern city, where the Mahdi Army and Iraqi forces were locked in a bitter fight for a second day, killing at least 55, many in Baghdad fear that clash will trigger a new battle in Mr. Sadr's Baghdad stronghold. Already there were reports by US-funded Al Hurra TV, citing hospital sources, that at least 20 people have been killed and 140 wounded in sporadic clashes in Sadr City since Tuesday.

Now, in a place where the US has done battle many times before, a sense of siege and helplessness has replaced some of the flickers of optimism that emerged over the past few months as a result of improved security made possible by the US surge and the Mahdi Army's seven-month cease-fire, which now looks to be shattered.

McCain went on to say:

We have incurred a moral responsibility in Iraq. It would be an unconscionable act of betrayal, a stain on our character as a great nation, if we were to walk away from the Iraqi people and consign them to the horrendous violence, ethnic cleansing and possibly genocide that would follow a reckless, irresponsible and premature withdrawal.

One of the most disturbing talking points of the right is that there is a possibility of ethnic cleansing taking place in Iraq if US troops pull out. How can we trust McCain to lead this country if he doesn't even know that Iraq has already fallen victim to ethnic cleansing? How far up his own ass has McCain stuck his head? Is he getting the same daily briefings that Bush gets? The ones that say, "Everything Is Good?"

You can Google Iraq ethnic cleansing and see for yourself, but in case you don't feel like doing that, here's a bit from Patrick Cockburn:

Civilian casualties have fallen from 65 Iraqis killed daily from November 2006 to August 2007 to 26 daily in February. But the fall in the death rate is partly because ethnic cleansing has already done its grim work and in much of Baghdad there are no mixed areas left.

Once everyone has been killed, it only stands to reason that the death rate will drop.

And of course McCain claims that Bush's "surge" is working.

“Political reconciliation is occurring across Iraq at the local and provincial grassroots level,” he said. “Sunni and Shi’a chased from their homes by terrorist and sectarian violence are returning."

Obviously there isn't any evidence of political reconciliation. As for the people chased from their homes, ReliefWeb puts it like this:

Hundreds of thousands of Baghdadis now live in walled-in, ethnically cleansed, heavily guarded enclaves that they are terrified to leave. Sunnis do not venture into Shia areas, and vice-versa. Sectarian hatreds have been contained, but not resolved.

2 millions of internally displaced and 2 millions of refugees ... are still struggling to survive in dire conditions. They cannot return to their place of origin, as their safety cannot be guaranteed.

I don't know what Iraq John McCain just visited, but it sounds a hell of a lot nicer than the one that we have here on Earth.

.

McCain Appears Presidential

John McCain has been on tour this week, first through the Middle East, and then on to England. The point of his trip, of course, is to provide many photo-ops of him with various leaders to shore up his claims of having foreign policy experience. He wants, in short, to appear presidential. I'd say he has succeeded.

Unfortunately, the president he resembles is George W Bush.

We all had a chuckle on Tuesday when McCain asserted more than once that Iran is training Al Queda operatives and then sending them back to Iraq. His response was that everyone makes mistakes and we should move on. (The one difference with McCain being that Bush would never acknowledge making a mistake. History would have to judge that.)

In England, McCain met with their Prime Minister for more glad-handing. According to The Telegraph, in a piece that got all wet and sloppy with how awesome Saint McCain is and how he would never have screwed up Iraq as much as W, McCain said:

"The problem with Iraq ... is because it was mishandled after the initial success. That caused great sacrifice, frustration and sorrow."

While that statement may be true to a degree, in that the occupation was indeed mismanaged and has certainly caused a great deal of "sacrifice, frustration and sorrow," that is not the problem with Iraq.

The problem with Iraq is that we should never have invaded in the first place. The problem with Iraq is that the cause for war was fabricated. The problem with Iraq is that the invasion was illegal, immoral, unjust and unnecessary. Of course, I wouldn't expect McCain to do anything but stand behind the decision to go to war in Iraq. Why would he let facts get in the way of his ideology? In an interview with the Jerusalem Post, when asked about the NIE that stated Iran had stopped its nuclear weapons program, he said:

I was critical of the NIE at the time. The director says now he wouldn't do that again, but I think the damage that was done by weakening the resolve of our European allies was serious.

This latest round of sanctions that was passed at the UN is remarkable in its weakness. I don't even know how you call them sanctions. So I believe the NIE was damaging, but I do have some optimism particularly where [French President Nicolas] Sarkozy is concerned. I'm glad the [German] chancellor is here in Israel.

Over time we may be able to gather more European support as the evidence becomes clear, as it will, that Iran is progressing on the path towards construction and acquisition of nuclear weapons.

The intelligence estimate states that Iran abandoned its nuclear weapons program. Since that's counter to McCain's ideology, he has decided to not believe it, replacing actual intelligence with made-up "facts" that will support his agenda.

So we got to see McCain acting presidential this week, showing us a little bit of what we can expect if Saint McCain prevails in the coming election.

I don't think our country, or the world, can survive four more years of Bush policies, Bush agenda and Bush wars, which is exactly what McCain promises.

.

McCain's High Road Leads Over Cliff

Last Thursday night, Senator John McCain cast a vote in favor of a bill that would have halted the practice of earmarks for one year. According to CNN, the measure failed by a vote of 29 to 71. McCain took the opportunity to speak on the one issue that he has been consistent on over his career, and to harp on the Senate for not following the will of the people, who he claims are opposed to earmarks.

"There's only one place left in America that they don't get it," McCain told a town hall gathering outside Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, referring to Washington. "Pork-barrel spending is out of control and Americans want it stopped."

He said the result "is an interesting commentary on how the Congress and the Senate [are] disconnected from the American people."

The suggestion, of course, being that McCain is the true man of the people and that the two Democratic candidates are not, even though they both voted in support of the 1-year suspension of earmarks.

The problem with McCain's argument is that it opens him up to an evaluation of his other positions under the same microscope.

According to CNN:

A majority of Americans consider waterboarding a form of torture. ... Asked whether they think waterboarding is a form of torture, more than two-thirds of respondents, or 69 percent, said yes; 29 percent said no.

Asked whether they think the U.S. government should be allowed to use the procedure to try to get information from suspected terrorists, 58 percent said no; 40 percent said yes.

So on the issue of torture, McCain is obviously, as he puts it, "disconnected from the American people."

According to USA Today:

Which would be better for the United States?
Keep a significant number of troops in Iraq until the situation there gets better: 35%
Set a timetable for removing troops and stick to it regardless of what is going on in Iraq: 60%

Obviously, McCain is out of touch with America when he says, on his campaign website:

A greater military commitment now is necessary if we are to achieve long-term success in Iraq. John McCain agrees with retired Army General Jack Keane that there are simply not enough American forces in Iraq. More troops are necessary...

So 60% of Americans want to set a timetable for withdrawal and McCain wants to send more troops. Who's disconnected?

One of McCain's strategies is to run as an outsider. People in Washington just don't get it, he says, conveniently ignoring the fact that he is one of the people in Washington. Americans are disappointed with Congress, which doesn't listen to them, and doesn't get anything worthwhile accomplished. Meanwhile, McCain--who is a member of Congress--has totally ignored his duties as a Senator. According to that first CNN story:

McCain returned to the Senate for the first time in a month to cast his ballot for an issue that is one of his central themes on the campaign trail.

McCain's only interest in his job as a Senator is making himself look better for the presidential election this fall. Maybe we should have a poll to find out how many Americans approve of that.

.

McCain: Talk, Shmalk, Let's Have Some Action!

John McCain is pinning his electoral hopes on people's perception that he will make a good commander in chief. He is a war veteran, of course, and for some reason that is supposed to automatically qualify him for the job. The major question is how he would prosecute the Iraq war.

This morning, McCain stated:

My friends, the war will be over soon. The war for all intents and purposes [will be over], although the insurgency will go on for years and years and years, but it'll be handled by the Iraqis not by us...

How does McCain envision the war ending? How will the US hand the problem over to the Iraqis? I would have imagined by getting the various parties to come together and work out their disagreements. Later in his town hall meeting, McCain said:

I think one of the most overrated aspects of diplomacy is talks

So... He plans on handling the war in Iraq by... not talking to the Iraqis? I'm beginning to see why he predicted that the US will be in Iraq for another hundred years.

With McCain running the show, we'll continue Bush's failed policy of shooting first and not asking questions later. If we had listened to McCain last summer, we'd be at war with Iran right now, over a non-existent nuclear program. Serving in the military doesn't automatically make someone a good leader. It's time Americans took the stars out of their eyes and looked at the man behind the uniform.

McCain Was Against Bush Tax Cuts Before He Was For Them

Senator John McCain voted against Bush's tax cuts in 2001 and 2003. At the time, he said:

There's a theory, I think, that's prevalent--it was true in the 2001 tax cuts--that if you give it to the wealthy people, then they will then, you know, create jobs, etc. The interesting thing to me is that most economists will tell you that it's the middle-income Americans that have been keeping the economy afloat buying cars, buying houses, consumer goods, not the wealthiest of America.

Tax cuts for rich people do not help the economy. That's what McCain said. For some reason, though, he has changed his position.

[McCain] could "see an argument, if our economy continues to deteriorate, for lower interest rates, lower tax rates, and certainly decreasing corporate tax rates," as well as giving people the ability to write off depreciation and eliminating the alternative minimum tax.

McCain was defending his support for an extension of tax cuts sought by President Bush, which McCain voted against.

I guess the one positive aspect of this is that if McCain were to become president, nobody would be able to say that they are surprised when he turns out to be another Bush. He's been steadily laying the groundwork for just that. And just to make sure we get the point:

"No new taxes," the likely GOP presidential nominee said during a taped interview broadcast Sunday.

Read his lips.

As McCain's Star Rises, His Integrity Approaches Zero

John McCain is a straight shooter. He tells it like it is and if you don't like it, that's too bad. He compromises when he has to, he works across the aisle, he buckles down and gets things done --all in the name of America. At least that's his shtick. And because people buy into it, they believe he has integrity. The interesting thing is that McCain has shed pretty much all of his "independence" and "maverick" style over the past couple of years. Now, he is little more than a morally bankrupt Bush clone.

CBS News reported yesterday that Bush has promised to veto the Intelligence authorization bill that just passed the Senate, because it limits CIA interrogators to techniques outlined in the US Army Field Manual. No big surprise there. The surprising (well, not surprising. More disturbing, really) part was this:

Sen. John McCain, who has previously spoken out against torture (having been tortured himself while held captive during the Vietnam War), voted against the bill, but said his vote was not inconsistent with his previous calls for a ban.

The disturbing part is that McCain knows that torture doesn't work. Newsmax, Limbaugh and some other right-wing hacks have taken some of McCain's quotes out of context to argue that he claimed that torture worked on him during the Vietnam war. Media Matters has an article that refutes that claim. They quote a passage from a Newsweek article in which McCain states:

Obviously, to defeat our enemies we need intelligence, but intelligence that is reliable. We should not torture or treat inhumanely terrorists we have captured. The abuse of prisoners harms, not helps, our war effort. In my experience, abuse of prisoners often produces bad intelligence because under torture a person will say anything he thinks his captors want to hear -- whether it is true or false -- if he believes it will relieve his suffering. I was once physically coerced to provide my enemies with the names of the members of my flight squadron, information that had little if any value to my enemies as actionable intelligence. But I did not refuse, or repeat my insistence that I was required under the Geneva Conventions to provide my captors only with my name, rank and serial number. Instead, I gave them the names of the Green Bay Packers' offensive line, knowing that providing them false information was sufficient to suspend the abuse. It seems probable to me that the terrorists we interrogate under less than humane standards of treatment are also likely to resort to deceptive answers that are perhaps less provably false than that which I once offered. [Media Matters' emphasis]

So John McCain knows that torture is not a reliable way to get useful information out of a detainee. He knows because he has been subjected to torture (which I think gives him a unique perspective on the matter among his fellow Senators) and when he reached his breaking point he gave up false information because he knew that as long as the interrogators got that much, they would stop torturing him. But now he's flip-flopped on the issue. Why? What could he possibly gain from it?

Oh yeah, he's going to be the Republican nominee for president. Got to look tough if you want to do that. Can't let little things like reason or logic or a basic respect for human rights get in the way.

McCain has a reputation (justifiably or not) as someone who will compromise to get the job done. The job this time is getting the nomination for president. The compromise? His ideals, apparently.