John McCain is a Schmuck

John McCain is a schmuck. John McCain is a sniveling weenie. John McCain is a bumbling buffoon of a fuddleduck. John McCain is a sleazy, pandering, deranged, and insufferably vapid goon. John McCain is, let there be no doubt, a right-wing extremist. But lest I be accused of hyperbole, for a republican candidate, he’s not so bad. After all, he got tortured in Vietnam, which apparently imparts upon one a higher degree of wisdom or morality, or something. It probably tends to engender a diminished proclivity to torture other people, as in McCain’s case. I guess that explains why he is nearly unique among his extremist comrades in that regard.

Besides his opposition to torture, there are a couple of other ways in which McCain is not so bad. But I can’t think of any right now. Suffice it to say that McCain is no George W. I sincerely believe that he isn’t an evil bastard, as opposed to the shrub, though he obviously lacks the degree of integrity or personal fortitude which would be required to counterbalance the seething tide of wickedness promulgated by his cohorts, and indeed, he seems to keep blissfully in step with their sinister ploys, except when doing so gives him nightmares that make him pee his bed, apparently.

Let me make my case.

First, he hardly ever makes any sense. For example, one of his keystone issues is domestic drilling. He talks about it everywhere he goes and acts like it’s some kind of “magic bullet” that will solve all of our energy problems, saying that it would “be very helpful in the short term resolving our energy crisis." Hmm. That puts him at odds with virtually every analyst in the country, including the Federal Energy Information Administration, whose 2007 study concluded that domestic drilling “would not have a significant impact on domestic crude oil and natural gas production or prices before 2030”. Other analysts put the return on investment even further out. The FEIA study also says that “Because oil prices are determined on the international market, however, any impact on average wellhead prices is expected to be insignificant.” THAT MEANS THAT THERE WILL BE NO IMPACT ON DOMESTIC GAS PRICES FOR AT LEAST 20 YEARS, and then, the impact on prices will be “insignificant”.

Shut up, already.

Why does he get away with spouting that nonsense all the time? The reason, of course, is that his followers either don’t bother to listen to objective analysis, or they get all their news from Fox and Rush Limbaugh. The effect in the mind of the uneducated voter becomes, “well, at least McCain is going to do something to make my gas cheaper”. The fact that the Republican party so uniformly supports domestic drilling in the face of it’s total purposelessness is, of course, simply an illustration of the extent to which they are in the pocket of the world’s largest and most powerful corporations. We might as well call them the Exxon-Mobilicans.

Another of my favorite inane statements from McCain came forward a couple of weeks ago in the form of a major policy statement, “What we need today is an economic surge. The surge has succeeded in Iraq militarily -- now we need an economic surge to keep jobs here at home and create new ones.”

Of course! A surge! It worked so well in Iraq, so obviously it’ll work in when implemented in a totally unrelated way, in a totally unrelated arena. The details of this “surge” remain undefined, except for massive tax breaks for the largest corporations, of course, as well as a continuation of Bush policies. But hey, who needs sound economic policy when you can just, “surge!”? Sounds good to me.

But perhaps the scariest thing about McCain is his apparent inclinations when it comes to Supreme Court nominations. When asked by Rick Warren, “What Supreme Court justices would you not have nominated?” McCain responded, “…Justice Ginsberg, Justice Breyer, Justice Souter and Justice Stevens” accusing them of “legislating from the bench”, a charge I’ve never quite understood. Clearly then, he has no problem with Scalia the Evil, or Clarence “The Government derives it’s right to rule from God” Thomas the Stupid (or as Obama put it, “He’s not a strong enough legal thinker”). If McCain wins the presidency, we are headed for a true disaster in the Judicial branch.

Please don’t let anyone you know vote for that schmuck.