JOHN McCAIN PULLED HIS HEAD OUT OF HIS ASS, MET THE REPUBLICAN BASE, AND WANTS TO SHOVE HIS HEAD BACK INSIDE

We all know what causes fleas

John McCain has looked into the ugly face of Know Nothing GOP extremists in the past-- like in South Carolina during his primary challenge to Rove Bush in 2000. At the time, McCain was trouncing the hapless Empty Suit from Texas. At the time one might not have agreed with all of McCain's positions but at least he was inside the mainstream of American political thought. At the time Bush had never had an abstract thought in his life and his "Brain," Karl Rove was working for radical reactionaries willing to finance... well to finance all that has happened since the 2000 election was stolen. McCain's response to the vicious ugliness that was unleashed by the Bush forces on him and his family?

He groused and muttered, briefly-- and toothlessly-- grumbled about switching parties. And then he embraced Bush and the reactionary policies essential for support from the GOP's southern base and from the Vast Right-wing Conspiracy. Now he's on the campaign trail again and his pals in the traditional media have tried, tirelessly, to pump him up as the front runner. The Know Nothings might not know much but they've heard it repeated enough times that McCain isn't really "one of us," that they weren't buying it. When he and his posse-- namely Mini-Me Lindsey Graham-- went all out to support Bush's pro-corporate immigration agenda, the far right extremists went batshit insane and McCain's presidential aspirations tanked, or at least the reality of those aspirations did.

One of my pals is finishing up a book on McCain. I haven't asked him but I bet he's worried that, given the abrupt turn of affairs, no one may bother to read it. And he's such a good writer! Who could have known that he would have been better off writing a book about Fred Thompson's wife.

Anyway, one of the local Arizona papers carries a story today about McCain bitching about getting death threats from right wing nuts over immigration.

Presidential candidate Sen. John McCain, R-Ariz., said Wednesday that the issue of illegal immigration angered people unlike no other, including the war in Iraq, and sparked unprecedented death threats against him.

“It is unbelievable how this has inflamed the passions of the American people,” McCain said at The Aspen Institute, a public policy forum. He declined to elaborate on the threats.

McCain acknowledged that the immigration issue, along with his support for the war in Iraq, had cost him politically.

The difference, of course, is that the anger over immigration is coming from the far right (ergo: death threats) and the anger over his Iraq stand is coming from liberals and moderates, who don't threaten public officials' lives, not even enablers of war criminals. McCain is liable to be embarrassed again about his support for Bush's failed Iraq policies. Remember, no one has been more of an All-Hail-The-Mighty-General-Petraeus spewer than McCain.

The war will be discussed in September again-- we all know that-- when General Petraeus is ready to report to the Senate... General Petraeus and Ambassador Ryan Crocker will come to Washington in September to report on the status of their efforts and those of the Iraqis.

Or maybe BetrayUs and Crocker will come to Washington and read whatever Dick Cheney wants them to read. Today's Washington Post has a page one report that Petraeus and Crocker will merely be window dressing for the latest turn in Bush Regime blundering in the Middle east.

Senior congressional aides said yesterday that the White House has proposed limiting the much-anticipated appearance on Capitol Hill next month of Gen. David H. Petraeus and Ambassador Ryan C. Crocker to a private congressional briefing, suggesting instead that the Bush administration's progress report on the Iraq war should be delivered to Congress by the secretaries of state and defense.