Real Men Vote How? For Endless Failure, Deception And Malfeasance?

I remember a few years ago when Neocon traitors, who will eventually have to be tried for misleading the U.S. into an unjustifiable war in Iraq, were clucking around the Beltway how "real men go to Tehran." This was even before McCain started serenading extreme right warmongers with his little ditty about bombing Iran. Today's premiere GOP propaganda site, National Review lists the 10 reasons why real men vote for McCain. Basically, it's the type of blatant, unsubstantiatable lies fabricated by the desperate right in the hope to cling to power.

And it isn't only the silly gooses at National Review who are desperate. McCain himself, watching his polling numbers sinking by the day, watching Obama outraise him, watching Obama making "red" states like North Carolina, Virginia, Georgia and Montana competitive, is getting more and more reckless in his distortions and his vicious, negative attacks against Obama.

it seems, with each passing day, that John McCain is starting to lose his cool. It’s one thing to go on the attack; it’s another to get reckless. As much as I understand McCain’s desire to be president, I can’t help but notice that his desperation is beginning to cloud his judgment.

Yesterday, for example, during an interview with the Kansas City Star, McCain suggested Barack Obama is an “extremist,” and possibly even a “socialist.” The Jed Report posted this gem:

What you see on the tape is a confused and desperate old man, sadly fighting his shibboleths and his ghosts of past failures. McCain is a wretched creature, completely unfit-- by temperament and, more importantly, by character-- for public trust or public office. How many times have you heard him repeat the Rovian talking point about Obama having the "most liberal" or "most extremist" voting record? Four years ago-- and what a coincidence, Rove, Bush, Cheney and Zell Miller said it was Kerry who had the most liberal voting record. That was a grotesque lie too. But Republican voters, conditioned by years and years of Fox, Limbaugh, Coulter and the rest of the untruth squad, swallowed it, hook, line and gas nozzle. Now we have Rove, McCain, Romney, the gay Mini-Me (R-SC) and Lieberman and their GOP echo chamber running around insisting Obama is "the most liberal." It wasn't true when Rove told Fox News to be sure to say it at least once every 20 minutes and it isn't true now. Let's call McBush's bluff and look at the voting record-- Obama's and his own-- and see who the extremist really is.

This ranking includes every vote-- not just some pre-selected one that can prove whatever the selector picks them to prove. They are ordered from most progressive (Dick Durbin, the other Democratic senator from Illinois) to most reactionary (Jim DeMint, a neo-fascist thug and Know Nothing from South Carolina), based on votes in the current 2 year session. But you can also order the list to reflect only tough, substantive votes (Durbin still most liberal although Mississippi kook Roger Wicker turns out to be the most reactionary) or lifetime score (where we find Sheldon Whitehouse of Rhode Island to be the most liberal and the South Carolina Know Nothing back as the #1 most reactionary). So where do Obama and McCain fit in?

By votes cast in the current session, Obama is not, as McCain and the GOP (and their media shills) claim, the most liberal; he is the 43rd most liberal. That's makes him one of the least liberal Democrats and close to dead center in the whole Senate. On that same scale, McCain is the 81st most liberal (or the 20th most reactionary). So it is very clear who the extremist is by voting record. Let's look at the more narrow partisan divide, the list that only shows the tough, substantive votes. Obama is still at #43 most liberal and McCain comes off slightly less extremist-- but just a bit-- at #71-- still more of a lunatic fringe member than Ted Stevens (R-AK), John Kyl (R-AR) or Liddy Dole (R-NC), but better than... James Inhofe (R-OK) and John Cornyn (R-TX). And on the final scale, lifetime scores, Obama move up to the 26th more liberal, around the middle of the pack among Democrats, although still not as liberal as Hillary Clinton (D-NY), Bob Casey (D-PA), Carl Levin (D-MI) or Amy Klobuchar (D-MN), and McCain moves up to the 60th most liberal, exposing him as not just a liar but also as a hypocrite who has been positioning himself in the past 2 years far to the right of his overall voting record. Suddenly his voting record looks more like Olympia Snowe's and Arlen Specter's than like those he's trying to emulate, Mitch McConnell (R-KY), Larry Craig (R-ID) and John Barrasso (R-WY).

McCain wants to whine about voting records? OK, take a look at his voting record. Here is an extreme right voting record, a mindless rubber stamp for the failed and catastrophic policies and vile agenda of George Bush. That's what John McCain thinks is going to propel his miserable carcass into the White House. Let's hope Americans have learned from the past 7 years what that will bring. Or just listen to his most trusted surrogates, like Phil Gramm, who thinks the recession is in our minds and that're we're a bunch or whiners, or McCain's old buddy Bud Day who seems to be indicating that if we don't kill all the Muslims they'll kill us. I guess that makes him a good candidate for Assistant Secretary of War under Lieberman of the gay Mini-Me (R-SC).