Stay Classy, Senator McCain - Bonus History Edition!
Senator McCain is running on his biography. He's a straight talker, he's a Maverick. He's a quirky dude with a downright fun sense of humor. Reporters love him! You should too!!
Amy Silverman has been covering Senator McCain for about 15 years. She does us the favor of taking a brief trip down memory lane. With the good Senator. Among the highlights?
1. McCain arranges for an extortion investigation against he guy who blew the whistle on his wife's theft of medicine from the charity she ran.2. McCain brings a reporter with him on a visit to the ailing Mo Udall.
3. McCain threatens the job of a federal scientist for sticking to his opinion about whether a University of Arizona project threatens an endangered squirrel species.
4. A Republican governor is driven from office and replaced by a Democrat, Rose Mofford, who previously served as Secretary of State and has little knowledge of the Central Arizona Project, a huge piece of Federal pork. McCain helps Republican efforts to get her recalled by setting her up to be blindsided at a Senate hearing just eight days after she is sworn in. He gleefully brags about his role at lunch with a newspaper publisher — "I'll embarrass a Democrat any time I get the chance" — then proceeds directly to tell a bunch of reporters "I'd never do anything like that." He later calls the Governor and tells her "I didn't have anything to do with that."
Basically? A man with very little grace. Small, mean-spirited, dishonest, and pissy. And hypocritical. But other than that? Great barbecue!
Read the entire article, here. (Helpful synopsis via Ezra Klein)
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To think is not enough; you must think of something -- Jules Renard
- Harley's blog
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References -
Heh. Not that this should come as a surprise.
--To think is not enough; you must think of something -- Jules Renard
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)http://theforvm.org/diary/kierkegaard/russo-georgian-war-day-3#comment-1...
--GW Bush, leading contender for worst President ever.
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| parent )WTF?
--GW Bush, leading contender for worst President ever.
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)Fred Hiatt strikes again. Damn librul media.
--To think is not enough; you must think of something -- Jules Renard
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| parent )but this was a story written by a staff writer.
It's not until midway through the piece that we get any mention of McCain's plan and even that's only a brief paragraph with no real attempt at comparison.
$1.6 billion in spending cuts? Without gutting entitlements and while increasing defense spending and that's not including 'fixing' SS which actually reduces the deficit while it remains in surplus.
There's the real story waiting for someone to write. Where do you intend to make your massive spending cuts Senator McCain and don't the people you are hoping will vote for you deserve some specificity on this before they make up their minds?
--GW Bush, leading contender for worst President ever.
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| parent )No more cell phone for you, sir! Here.
--To think is not enough; you must think of something -- Jules Renard
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)Getting beyond the routine accusations of ageism when anyone tries to raise it, is there a justifiable concern that McCain may not have what it takes to match the physical and mental demands of the modern Presidency? A Senator's job is a fairly easy gig compared to that of chief executive, staying in the Senate well into your 80's and 90's despite obvious infirmities has become a regular occurrence. Take a look at before and after pictures of Bush II and Clinton and the obvious toll the job takes. McCain looks as bad or worse now even before he's potentially sworn in. Either the Presidency will kill him or he's going to effectively delegate much of the workload and decision making to the same people who populate the current Bush Presidency and wingnut welfare think tanks. A McCain Presidency really would be a Bush third term for the many GOP'ers who currently staff it or support it from the benches and who might very well get the opportunity to play an even bigger role in a McCain Presidency.
God help us all.
--GW Bush, leading contender for worst President ever.
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| parent )on the same night in Minneapolis?
Areas where McCain / Bush / Cheney may face internal conflict:
(1) Georgia / Russia policy
(2) Anthrax - Did Cheney lie to Bush about Saddam's links to the anthrax plot?
(3) Forged WMD documents? (Suskind thesis #1) Again, did Cheney play Bush?
(4) We KNEW Saddam was bluffing about WMD before we invaded (Suskind thesis #2)
Is McCain more of a Bushie or more of a Cheney-ite?
--Fence post turtles -- They don't get up there by themselves, some moron had to put 'em there.
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)http://www.ajc.com/metro/content/shared-blogs/ajc/politicalinsider/entri...
You republicans proud of yourselves for supporting this guy?
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)Well. Maybe it's just Steve Schmidt. But while an Olympic ad buy is a great idea, using the cash/time to put more snarky attack ads in the middle of all that athletic uplift is a disastrous decision. It plays like this. Daring gymnasts risk life and limb. Obama runs uplifting ad about everything he wants to do for America. Daring gymnasts risk more life and limb. McCain runs an ad making fun of Obama, and then tacks on a couple things he'll do for America.
So basically? He's branding himself as a bitter old dude who doesn't like the popular guy.
I'm fairly sure this was a bad idea.
--To think is not enough; you must think of something -- Jules Renard
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)Oh, for a second there, I thought you were talking about Amy Silverman. Never mind. She sounds like a vindictive little shrew.
--"I want America to know that I'm, like, totally ready to lead." -- Paris Hilton
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)Someone who knows McCain better then we do. Give my best to your lovely family!*
*For those not in the know, this is not an ironic sentiment.
--To think is not enough; you must think of something -- Jules Renard
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| parent )Tess is a little cutey, and I'm glad that we can mutually commiserate about teenagers.
--"I want America to know that I'm, like, totally ready to lead." -- Paris Hilton
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| parent )Their latest response to criticism of the campaign over lobbyist/advisor Randy Scheunemann's connections with the government of Georgia:
"Obama bizarrely in sync with Moscow"
(via TPM)
Right: Barack Obama as a stooge of the Kremlin: are these guys in some sort of time-warp, or what....???
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)for the money paid to Randy Scheuenemann.
Nope, there is no space-time discontinuity here. Scheuenemann was paid big bucks to advance Georgia's interests in Washington and when the rubber met the road, Georgia got bupkis for all that money.
--Fence post turtles -- They don't get up there by themselves, some moron had to put 'em there.
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| parent )At least the Georgians got one of the major-party candidates for President to more-or-less shill for them in the media, and advance some anti-Russian rhetoric (however lame and/or misdirected) into the public discourse.
However, when measured against the damage done to Georgia itself by a war, I guess their lobbying bucks weren't wisely spent after all...
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| parent )who was tortured in Viet Nam and is a straight talker who might, just might, put the conservative agenda back on its feet after the last guy who all the conservatives used to love who didn't put the conservative agenda back on its feet.
Plus, we need a horse race, even if it involves an angry, doddering old panty sniffer with eight houses and 500 dollar shoes. You know, a real man of the people. A maverick straight-talker.
How long after the non-McCain people get him elected do they turn their heads and sniff that he's just not conservative enough, that he doesn't represent conservative america?
I'll give it 9 moths this time around. Maybe he can get Reagan on Mt. Rushmore, and triple our trillion dollar debt.
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). . .to cheese them off after he gets into office. For Bush the Elder, it was going back on that tax pledge. Until he did that, he was doing fine with conservatives, even though they were suspicious of him because of the "voodoo economics" quote and the fact that he was pro-choice until he went onto the ticket in 1980.
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| parent )Uh huh. McCain is just gonna be excellent. Further in debt, bigger government, more war. What else could a conservative ask for?
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| parent )elimination of any program that has the word "social" in it, foreign policy based on emotional and nationalistic catchphrases, elimination of all taxation of people making more than $1 million per year, outlawing contraceptives, establishment of official church-state agencies ...
Really, Pranky, I thought you were more imaginative than that. There's plenty more they could and will ask for.
--I blame it all on the Internet
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| parent )brought to you by the party that planned a permanent majority by exploiting national division to fashion a plutocracy for the ages.
Two peas in a pod.
--GW Bush, leading contender for worst President ever.
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)Eight years ago, it was another local reporter who tried to warn us about a politician who was running for the Oval Office. Nobody listened to Molly Ivins. We ended up with this.
--To think is not enough; you must think of something -- Jules Renard
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| parent )A man with very little grace. Small, mean-spirited, dishonest, and pissy. And hypocritical. But other than that? Great writer of anti-McCain diaries.
oh, all in fun. Just kidding. Humor, ya' know.
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)raised by the taxpayers of the Republic of Georgia but when the rubber met the road, George Bush was all smiles and glad handing when he was with Putin in Beijing.
What exactly did the Republic of Georgia get for all that money they spent? Russian tanks and US Administration hand wringing.
Whether WE gave an express or implied "green light" to Georgia, McCain's top foreign policy adviser is certainly guilty of raising false expectations in Georgia while being paid by Georgia at the same time.
--Fence post turtles -- They don't get up there by themselves, some moron had to put 'em there.
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| parent )You know the rules.
--More Wagster!
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| parent )kinda funny, though, that people can post all kinds of comments clearly implying very negative things about a commenter, and because that's not a technical violation (kind of a matter of using adverbs instead of adjectives), there's no "rules violation" call. I can see some benefit to a posting rule drawing a line at explicit name-calling, but the loopeholes are so gapingly wide and easily exploited that it renders the rule largely moot. Oh well, it's not like the posting rules violations are generally noted here impartially anyway. That pesky "Posting Rules Violation Sensor/Notifier Machine" seems to get stuck a lot in an apparently non-random pattern favoring the dominant "side" here.
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| parent )for skirting the rules implying Harley is graceless, small, mean-spirited, dishonest, and pissy. Says the guy who declined to run for a moderator position, where he'd be free to hand out warnings left and right.
For the record, there's a whole world of rules-dodging out there in addition to using adverbs (insulting the verb) rather than adjectives (insulting the commenter), spanning from the relatively crude (signing off with a smiley), to the incredibly sophisticated use of conditional-mood analogies (see Kierkegaard about lessons), homilies whose tenor turns out to be that the respondent is a fart-biter, and an entire legal cottage industry based on walking the line of Godwin's law evasion vs. Godwin's law avoidance. A properly constructed Godwin shelter can be a lifesaver.
Anyway, don't blame the mods for not wanting to follow you guys down the rabbit hole of veiled insult comedy. We have enough on our hands curbing outbreaks of the explicit variety, plus trying with little hope of success to set an example for a better standard.
--Before you criticize someone, you should walk a mile in their shoes. That way when you criticize them, you're a mile away and you have their shoes. -JH
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| parent )I wasn't referring to mods only. Mods aren't the only ones who call out "rules violation". Others do as well, as is the case here, and I'm certainly not saying there's anything wrong with that. So I didn't "get a pass" in the sense that I'm talking about. I was called on it. And for what it's worth, I just copied & pasted Harley's words from his diary (describing McCain, who is not a commenter here, so I'm not implying that calling McCain names is a rules violation, although I thought at some point there was general agreement by a bunch of folks here to stay away from it, but it's possible that that conversation took place on a thread on SwordsCrossed rather than Forvm). And it was hard to resist, given how he set the joke up for me so well (but that's not an excuse).
And I'm not criticizing the posting rules. I think a reasonable case can be made either way as for prohibiting explicit insults of commenters despite the loopholes. I was just commenting that it's unfortunate and kinda funny that folks get away with pretty much the same essential insults just by easily working around explicit insults and clearly implying them instead, all under a pretense of some degree of civility.
And as for adverbs vs. adjectives, I was just using that as shorthand to make the point that there are easy ways by which folks convey insults without technically violating posting rules. I didn't mean to suggest there was a lack of variety. In fact, I had previously demonstrated and then pointed out one of my own -- insulting someone (explicitly or implicitly) and then saying it was just meant as humor.
Anyway, not something I planned on getting into this much, but when I saw all the snarky reactions to my admittedly insulting comment, that's when I thought I'd make an observation.
By the way, I should be more careful than most to stay away from such violations, lest I provide a pretext for the banishment that one guy has apparently made a mission of his (perhaps he's embarrassed by my past exchanges with him and is holding a grudge, or fears my poking holes in future arguments of his or of his "side", or perhaps he just wants to mitigate some negative feelings he has about his own past "enforced vacation", or all of the above). Anyway, with the occasional exception (e.g., my comment on this thread), the solution already exists: the individuals with whom I've found conversing to be a waste of time and I can just not respond to each other. It's a win-win. And if that ends up limiting me to some fraction of Forvm participants who are willing and able to engage in responsive, substantive, logical discussion/debate (as opposed to partisan yapping and insecure evasiveness), great. If, on the other than, that leaves me with so few that it's just not worthwhile for me to come around, that's ok, too, and better to find that out sooner rather than later.
It would be nice to find that some substantial portion of Forvm folks are interested in more than just a partisan food fight. Whether there is or not is something about which I'm not yet sure. As I've said, it seems that many here see their role as that of an unpaid campaign/party/ideology spokesperson focused solely on making the case for their "side", whether rationally or not, and even if it means spinning, throwing out straw men and non sequiturs, evasion of legitimate questions, etc., and show little interest (and/or little ability in some cases) in responsive, logical discussion/debate, because they have little interest in a good-faith exploration of the issue and of the respective arguments, and they certainly are not open to modifying their views or even conceding any significant point along the way. As I've said, I'm still trying to gauge what portion of folks here fit that description to a great degree, and if there is a subsantial portion remaining who are looking for a higher (and deeper) intellectual level of discussion/debate.
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| parent )Then engage in it, and ignore the rest. Don't talk about it, do it.
But I suspect you don't, at least not exclusively, and it's nothing to be ashamed of. I participate in the bickering stuff... with Timmy, most famously. I've come to terms with the fact that I enjoy certain kinds of conflict, even dumbed-down conflict. I think you should too.
Which is not to say that I haven't also participated in discussions here that have challenged me and made me learn. All you need to do for that is knock on the right door, listen and try to understand the other viewpoint, and then respond.
--More Wagster!
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| parent )and ignore the rest.
--Before you criticize someone, you should walk a mile in their shoes. That way when you criticize them, you're a mile away and you have their shoes. -JH
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| parent )This is my second B-banishment. Stick to your guns this time!
--To think is not enough; you must think of something -- Jules Renard
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| parent )how did you find my handbook and why did you post it!
--I blame it all on the Internet
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| parent )oh, I though it would be ok if I veiled it by calling it humor, a la Harley.
But I stand corrected.
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| parent )paragraphs describing why it's funny, and subsequently why and how no one else is getting your humor would help.
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| parent )Don't forget the centrality of the Socratic dialogue.
--To think is not enough; you must think of something -- Jules Renard
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| parent )I am posting this to let you know I am not interested in responding to your comment.
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| parent )I am not interested in responding to your comment either.
--To think is not enough; you must think of something -- Jules Renard
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| parent )So I don't think I'll reply either. I call again for a little all-expenses-paid Educational Field Trip for Brooks, should our moderators feel up to the challenge.
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| parent )