Test, Test...Tested

Joe Biden speculates that a President Obama would be tested by some world crisis and John McPOW immediately reminds us that he had something to do with jet aircraft.

"I sat in the cockpit on the flight deck of the USS Enterprise off of Cuba. I had a target," he said. "My friends, you know how close we came to a nuclear war. America will not have a president who needs to be tested. I've been tested my friends."

I'm left scratching my head with that one. I'm not sure if he could see Cuba from the flight deck and thus, like Gov Sarah, become an instant Cuban affairs expert - or actually not be able to see it like Gov Sarah couldn't actually see Russia and become an expert on the basis of bullshit. But, all that snarkiness aside, the gold is in the quote. "I had a target," isn't quite the same as, "I took measure of the situation and stared the Russians down." It is in fact something quite different from being tested at all, it is having orders to sit in a goddam cockpit and do what you're told to do by people with a clue. Maybe we're actually back on the McPOW thing, how he was heroic in Hanoi...he says. He says a lot of things and some of them he repeats and they are established lies - so? If he was 'heroic' in Hanoi that means exactly what? That he decided not to give up to pain? If I wanted somebody who'd go back to work after hitting their finger with a hammer that might be important, but that's about carpenters and paper cuts don't count. I'm having a few problems figuring out how getting shot down and being a prisoner means having judgement.

John McCain has been tested a few times and come up real short, Keating was a bit of a test, a broken wife was a bit of a test, BushCo's torture was a definite test - he's taken all the outs on those, none of this heroic stand he's fond of touting. I remember something about how he was going to run a civil and principled campaign, then he couldn't because Obama wouldn't do townhalls with him. I'm a bit flumoxed on the connection there, but he seems to think there is one - or he'd like everybody to believe that it doesn't have anything to do with not being in an easy win position. You could probably find some inconvenience in his stance against earmarks, if he didn't manage to get the pork other ways.

The fact that I don't like his politics has nothing to do with this - he is a despicable little man. He shows all the traits of the spoiled son of privilege we've grown so accustomed to under George II. If you think the son and grandson of Four Star Admirals is just some John you live in a strange world. If you think the 3rd from the bottom of the class at the Naval Academy gets a front seat in a jet 'just because' I've got a Bridge in Alaska to sell you. He spouts the Republican line of personal responsibility and takes none. For god's sake, a former POW should have been immovable on torture, nope - he gave George II what he wanted for political convenience. John McCain, of all Congressmen, had the standing to make that stink like a dead fish and bring it to a halt - he goddam caved. At the risk of our servicemen and to the shame of this country it happened when he could have stopped it. This is not about his plutocracy enhancing ideology, this is about character and his lacks much of anything. To my Republican friends of a responsible and respectable nature: I'm really sorry you've got such a bunch but that's what you've got and you've voted them into their positions. I sure as hell didn't.