What will you like most about the McCain Presidency?

Coming late to the thread, and no, I haven't read all of it, but what I hope to like most about the McCain presidency will be one or two more appointments of committed Constitutional constructionists to the Supreme Court and similar appointments to the Federal judiciary.

Owns a Chia Pet Fantasizes:




There ain't that much audacity of hope in The Milky Way to make this mental incompetent president.

If McC's appointments to the court anything like Bush's, the country is in trouble. BTW, the conservative judges are far from strict constructionists.

The best thing about McCain in the White House is that Mrs. Clinton and BO are not in the White House.

How Many Iraq Gaffes Can One Man Make? link

Facts and the truth make no nevermind to the delusional set of conservatives. They've spent the last eight years sucking in stupidity on a cosmic scale and it never twigged with a one. Go figure.

That explains the Joe McCarthy story, doesn't it?

Yes, McCarthy was admired quite extravagantly by many; some people even continued to like him when he was sober; I'm remembering Richard Nixon as one of the later.

McCain makes Hillary seem downright accurate.

Elizabeth Edwards on McCain's Healthcare "Plan"

Elizabeth Edwards, wife of former Presidential candidate John Edwards.

I freely admit that I am confused about the role of overnight funding in repurchase markets in the collapse of Bear Stearns. What I am not confused about is John McCain's health care proposal. Apparently Douglas Holtz-Eakin, a senior policy advisor to McCain, thinks I do "not understand the comprehensive nature of the senator's proposal." The problem, Douglas, is that, despite fuzzy language and feel-good lines in the Senator's proposal, I do understand exactly how devastating it will be to people who have the health conditions with which the Senator and I are confronted (melanoma for him, breast cancer for me) but do not have the financial resources we have. In very unconfusing language: they are left outside the clinic doors.

Senator McCain likes to start speeches with a litany of questions that, presumedly, less plain-spoken politicians would refuse to answer. Well, here are some questions he does not ask but, as that plain-spoken politician, he might want to answer:

1. Under your plan, Senator McCain, would any health insurer be required to sell you or me (or those like us with pre-existing conditions) a health insurance policy?

2. You say your plan is going to increase competition to the point that it actually lowers costs. Isn't there competition today among insurance companies? Haven't costs continued to go up despite that competition?

3. You say that under your plan everyone is going to pay less for health insurance. Nice words, I admit, but they are words we have heard before. You must know when American families calculate the actual cost of health care, they have to include those deductibles and co-pays and not just the cost of the insurance. Are you talking about cheaper overall or just a cheap policy that doesn't kick in until after thousands of dollars of deductibles have been paid?

4. Isn't the type of competition you are talking about really a rush to the bottom? As long as you allow insurers to underwrite and deny access, you encourage insurers to offer plans that may be cheap, but that get that way by avoiding people with cancer or other high-cost diseases or by limiting benefits and treatments, particularly if the treatment is expensive or might be needed for a long time. We all live in the real world; those of us lucky enough to have health insurance have seen how insurers cut coverage and up co-pays or deny particular treatments. The insurance company makes money when it doesn't have to pay for our health care. (I suspect that if they could, they would write obstetrical-only policies for nuns.) Doesn't your plan really encourage insurers plans to compete to avoid people with cancer or other high-cost diseases? Don't you think that the kind of competition that starts with a decent level of required coverage, that doesn't exclude the care we actually need, would be better?

I am not confused about your reputation: you are the straight-talker, you like to say. This is about health care, Senator McCain. Doesn't the American voter deserve some straight answers to these questions? As one of those with a pre-existing condition, I sure would like some straight talk.

- Elizabeth Edwards

Newest thing to love about the McCain presidency - not having to cough up cash, weaken financial law, thereby further cartel-izing banking, not to mention real estate, nationalizing important capitol, and prevent sorely needed market normalization and let someone else can afford a joint (for christs sake) other than these chronic 'me-first' types, to settle up for other folks non-fixed rate mortgages (and second mortgages).

I mean, right or wrong they tied up the capitol - whatever house someone stands to lose is one I never made a claim to. And this crap about people losing 'their' homes - relatively speaking it's correct since everyone leases cars now, but come on, whose house is it when you make a 5% down payment?

McCain baby! I might be able to see myself in some sort of double-wide for cash and tell this apartment leasing-office to blow. Who'll tell me I can't change the oil in the parking lot then? Pride of ownership, sense of purpose, self-reliance - this is what America's all about!

Could you translate all that into English?

DAILYKOS.COM

Open Thread for Night Owls & Early Birds
by Meteor Blades
Tue Apr 01, 2008 at 09:56:55 PM PDT

In what apparently was not an April Fool's joke, the Los Angeles Times reported Tuesday:

Responding to Obama's frequent mocking of McCain's suggestion that U.S. troops might remain in Iraq for 100 years, the Republican nominee-in-waiting said the Illinois senator failed to understand that America has kept forces in Korea, Japan, Germany and Kuwait long after wars in each country ended.

"In all due respect, it displays a fundamental misunderstanding of history, of how we've maintained national security, and what we need to do in the future to maintain our security in the face of the transcendent challenge of radical Islamic extremism," McCain told reporters on his campaign plane.

Blue Texan, who regularly blogs at firedoglake, pointed out:

Someone who favorably compares Iraq -- three religiously and culturally distinct countries crammed into one by British after World War I -- with the ethnically, culturally and largely religiously united societies of Germany and Japan, displays a fundamental misunderstanding of history.

Someone who favorably compares the United States' peaceful occupation of Germany and Japan, neither of which were resulting in American casualties 5 years after our arrival, displays a fundamental misunderstanding of history.

Someone who asserts that occupying Iraq for 100 years is the solution to "radical Islamic extremism" displays a fundamental misunderstanding of history.

Days since Mission Accomplished: 1799.

Hours remaining in the Cheney-Bush reign: 7020

McCain Gets Iraq Facts Wrong Again

Yesterday, Sen. John McCain (R-AZ) said he was "surprised" by violent clashes between central Iraqi government and militias connected to Shi'ite cleric Moqtada al-Sadr last week in the southern Iraqi city of Basra. "Maliki decided to take on this operation without consulting the Americans," McCain told reporters on his campaign bus.

As MSNBC's Keith Olbermann noted last night, at the same time McCain expressed surprise about the developments in Basra, he also got basic facts wrong about the ceasefire that halted the violence on Sunday. McCain claimed that "it was Sadr who asked for the ceasefire," not Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri al-Malki:

Asked if the Basra campaign had backfired, he said: "Apparently it was Sadr who asked for the ceasefire, declared a ceasefire. It wasn't Maliki. Very rarely do I see the winning side declare a ceasefire. So we'll see.''

Watch it:

As Mother Jones' Jonathan Stein notes today, McCain's description of what happened is "completely misleading" and wrong. In fact, Sadr's call for a ceasefire only came after members of Maliki's political party traveled to Iran to broker a deal with him:

The backdrop to Sadr's dramatic statement was a secret trip Friday by Iraqi lawmakers to Qom, Iran's holy city and headquarters for the Iranian clergy who run the country.

There the Iraqi lawmakers held talks with Brig. Gen. Qassem Suleimani, commander of the Qods (Jerusalem) brigades of Iran's Revolutionary Guard Corps and signed an agreement with Sadr, which formed the basis of his statement Sunday, members of parliament said.

Ali al Adeeb, a member of Prime Minister Nouri al Maliki's Dawa party, and Hadi al Ameri, the head of the Badr Organization, the military wing of the Islamic Supreme Council of Iraq, had two aims, lawmakers said: to ask Sadr to stand down his militia and to ask Iranian officials to stop supplying weapons to Shiite militants in Iraq.

According to the AP, "the peace deal between al-Sadr and Iraqi government forces" not only "left the cleric's Mahdi Army intact," but it also left Maliki "politically battered and humbled within his own Shi'ite power base."

This is not the first time in recent memory that McCain has gotten basic facts about Iraq wrong. Two weeks ago, he repeatedly made false claims that Iran was training al Qaeda fighters in Iraq.

the first time he suffers an attack of incontinence on a talk show will be pretty f*cking hilarious...

He does seem to be getting too old by the moment. I think his mind, like that of Bush, has been damaged by excessive drinking over the years. This would not bode well for the country should he be elected.

He reminds me of old Bob Dole, who was really too old for the job.

IRAQ
Interpreting McCain's 100 Years
During a New Hampshire townhall meeting on Jan. 3, an audience member started to ask Sen. John McCain (R-AZ) how long he expected troops to stay in Iraq, saying, "President Bush has talked about staying in Iraq for 50 years," but McCain cut him off. "Make it a hundred," McCain replied. "That'd be fine with me, as long as Americans are not being injured or harmed or wounded or killed, that's fine with me." McCain continued later, "excitedly declaring that U.S. troops could be in Iraq for 'a thousand years' or 'a million years,' as far as he was concerned." Now McCain is decrying critics for supposedly taking his comments out of context -- even as he stands by his call for an indefinite occupation of Iraq. Yesterday, McCain accused Sen. Barack Obama (D-IL) -- who criticized McCain's 100-year framework -- of displaying "a fundamental misunderstanding of history and how we've maintained national security." McCain claimed that Obama is trying to "swindle voters" with "dishonest smears" by repeating McCain's comments. Some journalists have compared it to Sen. John Kerry's (D-MA) infamous 2004 remark about voting for war funding "before I voted against it." Both characterizations are misleading. There is nothing "dishonest" about Obama saying, as he did yesterday, that McCain "wants to keep tens of thousands of United States troops in Iraq for as long as 100 years." And unlike Kerry's misspoken statement, McCain repeatedly and constantly evokes the long-term occupations of Korea, Japan, Germany, or Kuwait when discussing Iraq.

KOREA FLIP FLOP: Although McCain is now fond of using South Korea as a model for the Iraq occupation, he hads rejected such a framework as recently as last November. At that time, PBS host Charlie Rose asked the senator whether he thought "South Korea is an analogy of where Iraq might be...over the next, say, 20, 25 years," to which McCain replied, "I don't think so." Rose followed, "Even if there are no casualties?" McCain repeated "no," adding that because of "the religious aspects of it [Iraq] that America eventually withdraws." Just two months later, however, McCain emphasized that as long as there are no casualties, he wouldn't mind staying in Iraq for "one hundred years, one thousand years, ten thousand years or until the earth collapses under global climate change." McCain is now fully embracing the Korea model, remarking just yesterday, "We fought a war with Japan and Germany. Afterwards we maintained a military presence there, which we are doing today. We fought a war in Korea, we maintained a military presence in Korea, which we are doing to this day. The first Gulf War, we threw Saddam Hussein out of Kuwait, and we have a military presence there to this day." But as McCain himself seemed to recognize just a few months ago when talking to Rose, sectarian Iraq presents a very different situation than relatively ethnically- and religiously-homogeneous South Korea or Kuwait.

RIGHT WING RUSHES TO McCAIN'S DEFENSE: Yesterday, MSNBC's Chuck Todd wrote that "not a day has gone by recently" without an aggressive pushback from conservatives on McCain's 100 years comment: "[T]hey are trying very hard to put the toothpaste back into the tube. They are petrified that it becomes the one thing everyone thinks they know about McCain and Iraq." Those on the far right are embracing McCain's vision for a permanent occupation. Recently, former White House adviser Karl Rove explained with approval that McCain was talking about "the projection of American power to maintain stability in a dangerous and difficult part of the world." New York Times columinist Bill Kristol praised the senator for choosing "to tell Americans the hard and unpopular truths that we'll be there [in Iraq] for a while." Washington Post columnist Charles Krauthammer echoed that sentiment, saying that McCain's permanent occupation creates an Iraq from which the United States "projects power and provides stability for the entire Gulf." But the Wonk Room's Matt Duss pointed out, "It's Charles Krauthammer who doesn't get that Kuwait is not Iraq, and that if we'd spent years bombing their country and kicking down their doors in the middle of the night, the Kuwaitis would want us to leave, just as the Iraqis do. ... [A]ny Iraqi government that agrees to a hundred-year U.S. presence in Iraq will never be seen as legitimate by the Iraqi people, and thus will require the presence of U.S. forces to ensure its government."

100 YEARS STARTING WHEN?: McCain's dissembling about his vision of an Iraq occupation shows how little he understands about the region and the Iraq war. Recently, McCain rejected the very question of "how long we stay there" as "a false argument," because "it's not a matter of American troop presence, it's a matter of American casualties." McCain insists his 100-year troop presence would begin only after American casualties have ended. He told Fox News's Sean Hannity, "This war will be won if we stay with it and then it's just a question of American presence," adding, "I haven't seen anyone demonstrate against troops in Kuwait. It's American success." McCain's logic is woefully muddled. Last month, McCain reassured a townhall audience that "the war will be over soon," though he added quickly, "although the insurgency will go on for years and years and years."

--americanprogressaction.com

I know no one that dislikes McCain will pay any attention, but there is a thread for you to post your McCain bashings in.

http://www.able2know.org/forums/viewtopic.php?t=114486

Just thought I'd throw that out there for you.

What I posted was not bashing him. It did clarify come contentious remarks.

But it has nothing to do with why you would like the McCain Presidency...