O HYPOCRISY-- YOUR NAME IS GOP: GASOLINE, TAXES, IRAN, ANTI-GAY BIGOTRY AND ZIMBABWE

I always wondered how Republican voters-- the confused and conned non-millionaire ones-- could imagine that someone like George Bush could solve their most basic problems when he expressed shock when someone informed him at a press conference that gas would soon hit $4/gallon-- this when it was clear that the price was hurtling towards $5/gallon already. I guess he had more important things to deal with, like trying to gin up a war with Iran (which would drive the cost of gas to $10/gallon). Meanwhile, ole King McCole, always eager to reassure the Republican voters that his would be a third George Bush term, drooled at the prospect of provoking Iran into a war... and also admitted he doesn't know what people pay for gas. Testy Mr. Gas Tax Holiday told the Orange County Reporter, "I don’t recall, and frankly I don’t see how it matters."

It does matter. It matters to good hard-working people-- the ones, unlike the McCains, who pay their taxes-- who are being ruined financially by the Bush-McCain-GOP-Blue Dog economic policies that are fine for multimillionaires and terrible for everyone else. It isn't enough to defeat McCain in November; every single Republican and every single Blue Dog defeat will count as a step towards righting the wrongs of the past 7 years.

Meanwhile if Bush's (and Condi's) bellicose statements about Zimbabwe's sham election struck me as the height of hypocrisy, they made me realize that politicians will say and do anything if they think voters aren't smart enough to see through them. Bush's and Condi's declaration that President Mugabe's "reelection" in Zimbabwe undermined democracy in the eyes of the international community was perfectly true, but didn't take into account that Bush's election and reelection were viewed-- and are still viewed-- very similarly by the whole world outside of the Confederacy and Utah. It's as absurd as if Larry Craig and David Diapers Vitter got together to sponsor a Marriage Protection Amendment.


UPDATE: AND THEN THERE IS McCAIN ONLY SPECIAL LITTLE TRICK

Rafael Noboa doesn't think that his active duty service in the military, where he saw combat, qualifies him to lead the country. Nor does he think McCain's military service qualifies him. Most of McCain's military service involved fucking up everything he touched, crashing planes because he refused to follow instructions, and suffering during a 5 year stint in prison where he says he was tortured. But I wouldn't even recommend him for a job as a warden since he hasn't learned the most basic lessons that have caused mankind to outlaw torture. McCain makes a lot of self-righteous noise about it-- part of his grotesque shtick of "Look at this gaping wound I still have from serving the nation while you didn't; look, look, look-- but in the end, he facilitated a policy that most international law scholars believe could lead Bush and Cheney and others in their regime to be charged with war crimes.

McCain is known for three things, and three things only:

1. His role in the Keating Five Scandal, which may have led to
2. His role in fashioning a weak campaign finance reform package, and
3. Being shot down and consequently, spending five years as a prisoner of war.

Look, let’s accept, for argument’s sake, that the Vietnam War started in earnest in 1965, and essentially ended in 1973. That’s eight years. McCain was shot down in 1967, taken prisoner, and wasn’t released until 1972.

McCain suffered greatly at the hands of the enemy, that’s beyond question. I respect what he went through over there, even if he doesn’t. His combat experience, however, was fundamentally different from that of Wes Clark, or mine, or my uncle’s, for that matter.

There’s a further reason why Wes Clark or me or many other veterans don’t really talk about combat — it’s because we have other things to talk about! Essentially, we bring our game to the field, and leave everything on it.

McCain, on the other hand, has…no…game. None. Zip. In other words, Mad Jack is a punk, and he knows it! He knows it!

All he does is hint at his suffering, with a wink and a nod, and because regular folks don’t know how to deal with that when faced with it (trust me, they don’t, and that’s OK, as it goes), they give him a pass-- and they’ve been doing it for the last four decades.

Well, it all ends now. It starts with Wes Clark, continues with me, and there will be others, some louder than others. I refuse to sanctify or venerate some service more than others.

And Rafael isn't even mentioning that McCain has done all in his power to suppress his officer fitness reports so that when he uses the myth of his supposedly inspiring military leadership, no one can read the record of incompetence and insubordination that are the real hallmarks of his military career. If he wants to claim-- as he always has-- that his military career somehow makes him eligible for political office, then why not open up the records and let the voters see what kind of an officer he really was and why he was considered the worst screw-up in the Naval Academy and why he was permanently grounded and why virtually all of his superior officers thought he was unfit to lead men?