John McCain has earned another nickname to go along with Pinocchio and McSame. He is now the amazing Chameleon! All of a sudden, McCain behaves as though his buddy President Bush, whose major policies he has ardently supported for two terms, has now suddenly revealed himself to McCain as having been“wrong" on many policy issues.
Where was McCain when these “wrong policies” passed congress? Oh, yes, he was VOTING FOR THEM! Now, parroting Obama, he claims to be an agent of change, and presents himself as a maverick. But a hard look at three major-policy areas quickly reveals that rather than a maverick, McCain is more of a sidekick. I suggest we re-christen the good senator with a more fitting moniker: THE AMAZING CHAMELEON!
Do not forger the War on Iraq, costing us at least $10 billion a month. Senator Obama opposed the war right from the beginning, when to even hint it was wrong left one open to charges of being unpatriotic. McCain continues to cheer on this unlawful invasion—a war that costs U.S. taxpayers $10 billion a month--wrapped in the Bush-Cheney mentality that bombs and bullets are the perfect way to spread peace.
Hasn’t he learned the lessons of Vietnam? Obviously not. McCain would have the U.S. bogged down in the Middle East for God knows how long. Sure, the surge has tamped down levels of violence, but that’s rather like saying that, instead of being in the Emergency Room, the patient is now in the Intensive Care Unit—a patient who should never have been one, in the first place. McCain has also talked about bombing Iran and annihilating North Korea—as though two wars were not enough.
And where are Bin Laden, al Qaeda, and the Taliban? Alive and well in Pakistan, right across from Afghanistan, whence they escaped when U.S. forces, having surrounded them, took their eyes off the prize in order to invade Iraq. The Republicans have made enough bad decisions to fill a large, sad book.
Do not forget the Economy. Who said the economy was fundamentally sound the same week the credit markets froze, a huge investment bank collapsed, the world’s largest insurer had to be bailed out, and the whole house of cards that was Wall Street threatened to collapse? More-of-the-same McCain.
McCain has been a leading voice in calling for deregulation of the finance industry, not just the past eight years but going back to the savings and loan scandals of the late 1980s, so the bulls could have their fun? (A scandal in which the senator from Arizona was implicated and chastised by his Senate peers.) More-of-the-same McCain.
Suddenly, McCain has discovered the religion of populism. This, from a man whose main financial adviser for years was his buddy, ex-Senator Phil Gramm, Republican and former chairman of the Senate Banking Committee and fierce advocate of deregulation, who once sneered at the country as a “nation of whiners.”
McCain accuses Obama of class warfare and planning to raise taxes to “spread the wealth,” citing the now famous Joe-the-Plumber Wurzelbacher, who worriedly told Obama at a rally in Toledo, Ohio, that the latter’s financial plans would raise his taxes. But this will be true only if Joe’s business makes more than $250,000 in net income a year. More than 90 percent of U.S. small businesses make less than that. The vast majority would thus get a tax cut rather than a raise.
By the way, newshounds checking on Joe have found out that he is an unlicensed plumber who never even served an apprenticeship, voted Republican in the last primary (though he presented himself originally as non-partisan), and has an outstanding tax lien of $1,000. So he was a fake plumber of questionable reputation.
But did that stop McCain-Palin? Well, surely not. They have never seen a lie they did not like. So they launched the inane Joe the plumber, Betty the dietitian, Sarah the demagogue part of their campaign. Now Joe the fake plumber is part of their campaign of lies – a “special” guest! How very dumb.
But their ostrich-lemming supporters seem to love it! (Their rallies are like Jonestown before the Kool-aid. I almost expect cheers of “ Drink, baby, drink!”
But what about the McCain-Palin policies? More-of-the-Same McCain will extend the Bush tax cuts for the wealthy and such huge corporations as Exxon and Mobil (to the tune of $200 billion), perpetuating a highly inequitable system where the rest of us subsidize the rich. Now that is class warfare. That is Socialism for the rich!
The Republicans traditionally favor the so-called “free market” but a study done by a former editor at Money magazine shows that if a person had invested $10,000 solely with Republican or Democratic administrations since 1929, the result would be dramatically different. With the Republicans, that $10,000 would now be $51,211, excluding the Herbert Hoover years of the Great Depression. (Were we to include his term, the figure would be a paltry $11,733.) In contrast, with the Democrats, the sum today would have appreciated to $300,671.
Under Boy George, that $10,000 would have lost 5.1 percent annually, and one would wind up with less than $7,000.
McCain’s belief that the last eight years the economy has been fundamentally sound is clearly wishful and dangerously self-deluding.
Do not forget about Health Care. McCain intends to go the Bush administration one better with a plan that deregulates the health care industry by, for the first time ever, taxing job-related, health-care benefits 160 million citizens now get. He would force a great number of businesses to stop providing health care altogether, forcing the suddenly uninsured to purchase health insurance in the marketplace, with those needing it the most being the ones most likely to be denied.
This will exacerbate an already terrible situation, with 20 million added to the 47 million citizens now without health insurance. McCain’s proposed tax credit of $5,000 per family is supposed to pay for the cost, but this amount will hardly be enough to pay for a full year’s health insurance premiums. A free-marketeer, McCain believes health care is a commodity, not a right.
Meanwhile, the Barracuda Palin is working her best to distract voters from the abysmal state of the economy. Why such a person -- who makes a virtue of ignorance, flaunts her parochialism who stoops to rampant demagoguery, and shows absolutely no grasp of complex issues– is considered qualified to hold national office, a heartbeat away from the presidency, is a mystery to me. Her fans are more frightening than she is, and she is the worst of Halloween every day. And John McCain showed his poor judgment for all to see -- he picked her!!
There are a lot of ill-informed, under educated people out there. And so the Internet is ripe with rumors aimed at character assassination, not only of Barack but of his wife Michelle. But these reveal more about those who spawn and/or spread these scurrilous allegations than they do about their intended targets.
Sadly, many people believe this kind of trash – the character assassination emails and gutter level gossip, aided by the Robo-calls and the whisper campaigns that the Republigandists have perfected over their long term of election stealing successes. Pray it does not happen again.
It would be nice to live in a real democracy once again.
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