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McCain is either nuts or stupid-maybe both!
By winston (about the author) Page 1 of 5 page(s)
For OpEdNews: winston - Writer
Big bro 43's Mini-me, McCain, has painted himself into a quagmire surrounded by a swamp. His career has been filled with so much hypocrisy that he has been
forced to say a lot of nonsense. He can't maintain consistency. That means he is a flip-flopper which the rabid right-wing extremists hate.
Let's throw some out. The first set of dueling stances are McCain's crooked role with the Keating Five and McCain's stances as an anti-lobbyist zealot--a campaign finance reformer.
The article "Amid McCain's new status, old scandals stir --Critics wonder what he learned from Keating 5" at click here describes Keating Five scandal and states "The story of how the "Keating Five"
senators allegedly pressured regulators to lay off a failing Arizona S&L became a major scandal, and marked a turning point in McCain's life - the near-death of his political career followed by his eventual rebirth as a crusader for campaign finance reform.
But McCain's emergence as the likely GOP nominee, combined with the rising volume of anti-lobbying rhetoric in the presidential campaign, has brought renewed attention to the Keating Five case, prompting questions about what McCain learned from it, what he's accepted was wrong, and whether he now is stepping back from some of his own scrutiny of his past errors. McCain also has faced fresh criticism for pushing the Federal Communications Commission to make a decision in a 1999 case affecting another major campaign donor, Paxson Communications. Responding to recent coverage of that case, his campaign issued a statement last week saying the Arizona senator has "never done favors for special interests." That declaration appeared at odds with McCain's previous acknowledgment that he made errors in the Keating Five case, which he called in his 2002 autobiography the "worst mistake of my life." The McCain campaign was asked repeatedly over a weeklong period to reconcile the two statements, but declined to respond to that
or other questions related to the Keating episode."
This issue is something McCain won't be allowed to dodge. Who cares about McCain's flirting with lobbyist Vicki Iseman? We should be irate about how McCain, just as back in the Keating Five scandal, acted to help Ms. Iseman's client, Paxson Communications Corp. Paxson Chairman Lowell Paxson and his associates had contributed almost $16,000 to Mr. McCain's campaign, and the senator had the use of the Paxson corporate jet, which also is reminiscent of the Keating Five scandal.
The article concludes "The Senate Ethics Committee determined that McCain, along with then-Senator John Glenn of Ohio, "exercised poor judgment.". Robert Bennett, the committee counsel, has said the pronouncement against McCain was harsh and the result of "pure politics" by Democrats on the panel. Bennett now is working for McCain to help respond to questions about the senator's efforts in 1999 on behalf of Paxson Communications. Bennett did not respond to requests for comment. In 2000, the Globe reported that McCain, in 1999, had pushed the FCC to act on Paxson's request for permission to buy a television station; in that case, McCain had received $20,000 in Paxson donations and flew aboard a Paxson jet.
McCain's actions raised questions at the time about whether he had learned from his Keating experience. McCain stressed that he never suggested how the FCC should rule on the matter. McCain has said he has learned the importance of avoiding the appearance of impropriety. He said in his autobiography he would not intervene with regulators or advocate "anything for any purpose that doesn't serve an obvious public
interest." He eventually renounced the practice of flying on corporate jets, but has stood by his general support of deregulation of financial institutions. During both his 2000 and 2008 campaigns, McCain has said on many occasions aboard his "Straight Talk Express" campaign bus that he learned from the Keating experience and that it turned him into a proponent of campaign finance reform. Nonetheless, on a recent campaign swing, he acknowledged he would be forever linked to the scandal. The Keating Five, he said, "will be on my tombstone."
Vicki Iseman, Paxson Communications will also be on his gravestone. McCain hasn't learned anything! His crusade as an anti-lobbyist zealot, a campaign finance reformer, is sheer duplicity. How does he have the nerve to have such diametrically opposed stances? Why isn't the media exposing this?
McCain was against torture, until he was for it! Doesn't that remind you of how Kerry actually did vote for the $87 billion before he voted against it?
The article "McCain reverses course on torture" at click here exposes himself generally as being Mini-me as "At the White House on March 5, Republican presidential nominee John McCain, glowing with George W.
Bush's endorsement of him, said that "on the fundamentals and the principles of our Republican Party and most of the specifics of our shared conservative philosophy, President Bush and I are in agreement."
Then the article deals with torture, a subject McCain takes credit for as he survived it and was opposed to it, until the vote occurred. The article states "Not mentioned was their affinity for certain practices of torture in the war against terrorists, a continued reversal of McCain's convictions."
McCain changed stances on Dec. 15, 2005, later in Dec. of 2005, the next year and as recently as February of 2008. it is easy to say that torture isn't the American way and get photo-ops, but words are cheap.
The article continues "During a February vote on the 2008 Intelligence Authorization Act, which for the first time would establish in law, through the Army Field Manual (which does prohibit torture), a single standard for all interrogations by our forces, McCain voted against that measure because it would end the special license the president has given the CIA.
A majority of the Senate and the House has voted for this amendment, which would compel the CIA to adhere to a basic American value firmly stated last May by Gen. David Petraeus in an open letter to his troops: "What sets us apart from the enemy in this fight ... is how we behave. ... Some may argue that we would be more effective if we sanctioned torture or other expedient methods to obtain information from the enemy. They would be wrong. ... In fact, our experience in applying the interrogation standards laid out in the Army Field Manual on Human Intelligence Collector Operations that was published (in 2006) shows that the
techniques in the manual work effectively and humanely in eliciting information from detainees."
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