I will never understand this fascination some Republican politicians have with joking about killing people. It must be something that appeals to the Republican electorate because both of the past two Republican Presidential nominees have done this. Then Governor and Presidential candidate George W. Bush joked about the execution of Karla Faye Tucker and mocked her pleading for her life as discussed in this Slate article http://www.slate.com/id/2131451/ saying "Please," Bush whimpers, his lips pursed in mock desperation, "don't kill me."
In April 2007, Senator John McCain, the Republican Presidential Nominee answered questions about possible military action against Iran by joking about bombing them. As stated in this MSNBC report, http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/18202742/ "In response to an audience question about military action against Iran, the Arizona senator briefly sang the chorus of the surf-rocker classic “Barbara Ann.”
“That old, eh, that old Beach Boys song, Bomb Iran,” he said in jest Wednesday, chuckling with the crowd. Then, he softly sang to the melody: “Bomb, bomb, bomb, bomb, anyway, ah ...” The audience responded with more laughter.
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Now, McCain has joked about killing Iranians with Cigarettes. The Arizona Senator was captured on video http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=h41GAqFbjxI reacting to a report of a rise in U.S. cigarette exports to Iran by saying it may be "a way of killing 'em."
McCain is so dumb, it took a quick jab to the small of his back by his wife, Cindy McCain, to alert Senator McCain to the fact that what he said might be offensive and he then tried to back off by saying "I meant that as a joke, as a person who hasn't had a cigarette in 28 years, 29 years"
It is ominous that McCain, who aims to be the person to have his finger on the nuclear button, thinks that death, particularly mass death, is something funny, something to be made the object of jokes. Even more ominous and sad is to consider who would be those who would die in McCain's joke scenarios. In a mass bombing campaign or from exports of cigarettes, it isn't the government of Iran or its armed forces that would suffer the brunt of the casualties; it is the everyday citizens of Iran, many of whom have nothing to do with their government. That doesn't seem funny to me.
McCain reminds me of a cross between Yosemite Sam http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rNFsnZdn1Ho and Peppermint Patty http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QGQ2WvjvTHA . Yosemite Sam being the gunslinger on the Bugs Bunny cartoon with a bad temper and Peppermint Patty the dim-witted, D-minus grade-getting talkative character on the Charlie Brown show who was always putting her foot in her mouth. I think those two cartoon characters had a kid and named him John McCain.
McCain has to be, along with ‘W’, one of the two dumbest people ever to win the US Presidential nomination from either party. McCain is a Presidential candidate who is on record as saying he doesn’t know anything about the economy. He is also in trouble with his Iraq policy because he has said he wants to stay in Iraq for a long time and now the Iraqis have said they want us to leave and soon. Then you have all of these jokes about death and all of the policies and proposals McCain has in common with the current President. I just don’t see how McCain could be a worse candidate if he tried.
