From The People Who Brought You Ketchup As A Vegetable, Pt. 2

A couple posts back, I ran a lampoon of John McCain's proposed health care policy based on statements he made about sunscreen. Well, that lampoon made more sense than the latest health care proposal put out by the McCain campaign. The McCain proposal would require the Bureau of Census to reclassify everybody by how they would pay their hospital bills. Since emergency rooms by law cannot turn a patient away, the McCain camp reasons that everybody is covered with some form of health insurance, therefore, there are no uninsured Americans. No, I am not making this up.
So, just like the Reagan administration had ketchup reclassified as a vegetable to fill federal requirements for school lunches, McCain wants to reclassify those without health insurance as insured based on a law that is for emergency use only. That's not going to drive up health care costs at all, what with every ER in the country filled with people who need treatment for non-emergency injuries and illnesses forced to wait with those in dire need of medical attention. This isn't a plan, it's pure and utter contempt for middle and working class people from somebody whose health care is provided by taxpayers, the very people of whom McCain displays contempt.
I guess John McCain feels we should all marry a wealthy heiress who's family fortune was based on her father's connections to organized crime. And perhaps, McCain has forgotten that for five and a half years, his health care needs were provided to him.

An Elephant Never Forgets, But The Republicans Can't Remember A Fucking Thing

For years now, the GOP, in concert with the corporate media have engaged in institutionalized hypocrisy, a double standard where what's wrong for Democrats is perfectly fine for Republicans. One example of this is all the hoopla made over the John Edwards affair, and the numerous affairs of Bill Clinton, while giving Republican adulterers like John McCain, Newt Gingrich and Rudy Giuliani a free pass. And this from the supposed "party of family values". But sometimes, in their rush to ridicule, they often will trip over themselves.
Another example of this is the derisive comments from the GOP concerning the back drop for Obama's acceptance speech, which has attracted all kinds of negative comments from the Republican party. What they don't tell you is that George W Bush used a similar backdrop for his 2004 acceptance speech. I guess it's OK for Bush to use one, he was a frat boy at one of the most exclusive colleges in the US (but that doesn't make him an elitist), and them frat boys are steeped in Greek culture. And so, with out a whiff of irony, the same shitheads that supported Bush in 2004 are now criticizing Obama. I guess the idle rich have nothing better to do.
Oh yeah, it's only a matter of time before McCain reminds us that for five and a half years, he didn't have any columns.

This Should Be Over

They say that a country gets the leaders it deserves, and if John McCain wins the election in November, it will because of a bunch of moronic Hillary supporters who will be protesting outside the Democratic convention. Having participated in protests in the past, I will unequivocally state they are an exercise in futility, unless, of course, you have the world's news media at your disposal looking to embarrass that arugula chewing, martini sipping, non-bowling elitist by any method available. The corporate media may have shown a bias (DUH), but it seemed to be against the Democratic front runner, not just Hillary.
These people are so Clintonatonic that they'd rather not vote and have McCain win than put someone more in touch with their mental faculties in the White House. My advice to them? Build a Goddamned bridge and get the fuck over it! Primary season is long over, your candidate has thrown her support behind the presumptive nominee, pissing and moaning about it isn't going to change a thing.
This election is still the Democrats to lose. However, I won't support a party full of people who seem more intent on fulfilling their own electoral fantasies than doing what's right for the country. That's why I'm voting for Cynthia McKinney.

Unfit For Command

Quick question: How many houses do you own? Not how many houses have you lived in, or how many houses did you stay at, but how many properties do you have in your name? Most of us people can answer that with maybe one, or possibly two, or three, some rental property, we all keep tabs on what we own because as responsible home owners, we need to keep up these properties lest they fall into disrepair. Well, John McCain has no idea how many homes he owns.
When you mention the fact that McCain is unaware of how many homes he owns to his campaign, or the slew of McCain apologists within the corporate media, their response is give him a break, he was a POW! As The Carpetbagger Report points out, a noun, a verb and prisoner of war is McCain's excuse for all his mistakes. The fact that he cheated on his first wife with his now second wife? He was a POW!. It has become a standard McCain campaign defense from criticism for things like his health care proposals, a fall back position to be exploited at every opportunity, or as a defense against every accusation. As with Bush, who couldn't be criticized for five years because of 9/11, McCain cannot be criticized for events that happened thirty years ago.
But to those who spent time with McCain in the Hanoi Hilton, McCain's finger should be nowhere near the red button. The right wing likes to paint McCain as a "war hero", while others have the temerity to ask what has he actually done to earn the "war hero" qualification? Drop bombs on civilians? Lose an Air Force jet fighter?
It should be obvious to anybody who has two brain cells to rub together that if events that happened over thirty years ago are still having a negative effect on John McCain's behavior today, that maybe he shouldn't be in the White House. Perhaps he shouldn't even be in the Senate. John McCain belongs in a veteran's home, where, hopefully, he can receive the counseling he needs to get himself beyond the events in the past. We don't need him being excused for annihilating the planet because he was, well, you know, a POW.

Mr. 9/11 To Address Republican Convention

Rudy Giuliani is set to give the keynote address at the Republican convention in September. The theme for his address will be "Country First", a bit hypocritical when you realize that John McCain has a plan to send 8000 jobs out of Ohio. Four days will be devoted to "service, reform, prosperity and peace".
So we know what to expect from this farce, lots of flag waving and invocations of 9/11 from the man who destroyed the evidence from the Twin Towers before forensics could examine it. And for all you beer swilling television watching morons who think that the explosion from the full fuel tanks caused the steel to melt, steel melts at 2500 degrees Farenheit , jet fuel, which is essentially modified kerosene, has a flash point of 1200 degrees Farenheit, less than the half required to melt the steel frames. And if you think that items within the structure burned hot enough to melt the frames, let's hope you're not meaning the fire retardant asbestos which filled the building and would have cost the Port Authority over $1 billion dollars to have removed. Perhaps Rudy was trying to hide the evidence of thermate on physical samples.
So the GOP will wave flags and prattle on about service, like how their candidate served his country in a POW camp in North Vietnam, reform, which is kind of hard to run on when you're the incumbent, prosperity, which means that the base has gotten richer while the rest of us struggle under their middle class breaking policies, and peace, from the party of the administration that has started more wars than it has troops to fight, and always based on the most specious reasoning. All of this will be brought to you courtesy of ExxonMobil, which is one of the companies doing extremely well under the Bush regime, and certainly will try to ensure they squeeze every last drop of blood from the working class in the McCain administration.

Farcical Bureau of Investigation

The FBI has announced they will present scientific evidence it has against the suspect in the anthrax case. Well, since the hair samples they had didn't match, you gotta wonder what is the scope of the evidence they have? Or is it merely going to take them until next week to manufacture evidence? Why haven't they investigated the one person caught on camera entering the anthrax storage area with out authorization? If the FBI can't find murder suspects in one killing where a bunch of undergrads could, how can we expect them to locate a suspect in the anthrax killings? The FBI seems better suited to smear campaigns based on outright lies than doing any investigative work.
Maybe it's because that person may be able to implicate the true mastermind behind the attacks.

FUTK

So corporate shill, pseudo country music artist and lynching advocate Toby Keith thinks that Barack Obama talks, acts and carries himself as a Caucasian.? I guess somewhere in Mr. Keith's beer addled brain, all black people are supposed to behave the way they are portrayed in the movies and television, as criminal gang leaders with less of a grasp of the American English language than Keith himself possesses.
Somewhere in Mr. Keith's tiny mind, he imagines Sen. Obama reverting back to his gangsta ways the day after the election, wearing his jeans down to his knees, with his boxers proudly displayed, an over sized tee shirt covering up the gat in the crack of his ass. Perhaps he fears that Barack will put a stripper pole in Air Force One, a zebra skin rug on the floor of the Oval Office, and totally pimp out the Presidential limousine.
It's easy to see why Obama intimidates Toby. Obama has style, while Mr. Keith still wears those flannel-shirts-with-the-sleeves-ripped-off that Bruce Springsteen stopped wearing over twenty years ago. Sen. Obama has class, something that White Trash With Money can never have. Not only that, Obama has a tendency to draw bigger crowds than Toby Keith, especially overseas in Europe.
One things for certain, for all his flag waving jingoist and chauvinst patriotism, Toby Keith can't see Barack Obama for what he really is: an American.

McCain's Health Care Policy Is Nothing But Sunscreen

(Tip o' the cap to the wonderful folk at The Carpetbagger Report)
In a speech last week, Sen. John McCain outlined his health care proposal:

He urged "all Americans to wear sunscreen, particularly this summer, to stay out of the sun as much as possible

Now McCain has a position that’s frankly ludicrous. He suggested if we all wore sunscreen, hat we would solve the problem. Think about it. You ought to take that clip. I think that clip is far more devastating than today because it’s loony toons. What is he thinking?
Sure, wearing sunscreen may prevent burns that may lead to melanoma, but does nothing to help the nearly 47 million Americans with out health insurance coverage, nor does it do anything to stop the rising cost of health care for all Americans. In fact his whole policy is just one big handout to Big Pharma. Americans need solutions for existing problems, not ones that may occur down the road. It's as if suggesting keeping our tires inflated will solve all energy problems.
(Cross posted at The American Insurgency)

Yeah, Sure, Blame The Dead Guy

Looking to wrap up the anthrax letter investigation before another administration took power and might have investigated possible malfeasance by the current one, a possible suspect in the anthrax letter investigation committed suicide today. Never mind that he warned of possible anthrax contamination at the Fort Detrick USAMRIID, or that videotape had caught someone else entering the lab with out authorization, after he had been released from his job for racially motivated attacks on a co-worker.
Never mind that taking a whole bottle of Tylenol 3 with codeine would cause you to vomit before it could kill you, or that Tylenol 3 is a prescription drug, you know, because of the codeine. You may damage your liver before it kills you, which wouldn't be immediate.(according to Snopes)
The main conspiracy is that the government was behind the anthrax attacks (which is why people in the Bush administration began taking Cipro on September 10). The letters were only mailed to key Democrats who may have stood in the way of passing the Patriot Act. Also to the photo editor at The STAR, which had been publishing pictures of the Bush twins underage drinking and falling down drunk. The letters were written to cast suspicion on Arabs, even though the spores came from an Army biological weapon lab (which, isn't that illegal?) at a time when rhetoric and propaganda had been ramped up for war with Iraq.
At first the FBI spent it's time and energy on a suspect who later successfully sued them for completely destroying his life. Which left the question unanswered, who did mail the anthrax? Until now, of course, and now that Dr. Ivins is dead, no big cash settlement to pay out because dead men can't fight you in court.