Tuesday, September 30, 2008

My Opinion of John McCain Drops Lower

While watching the first McCain-Obama debate, I heard McCain site a pork barrel spending rating for Obama from “Citizens Against Government Waste” (www.cagw.org). I jotted the name down, because, as I think I mentioned before, I like sites that record how the candidates voted on bills. So, I looked up their website.
Let me digress for a bit. I used to be a big fan of John McCain. He was smart, funny, a hero, and when he thought an issue was important, he didn’t cave in to partisan pressure or lobbyists. He was a politician with integrity. But something happened a couple of years ago that was strange. It’s like a bad Halloween special where mad Doctor Frankencheney performs evil experiments on the unsuspecting John McCain, destroying most of his brain cells and turning him into (dunt, dunt, duh!) George W. Bush! Aaaaggghhh! I can’t watch!
McCain has reversed his stand on Roe v. Wade, Bush’s tax cuts, the NRA, Waterboarding, Domestic Surveillance and so on. Some websites list 61 flip-flops and counting. I think he may even have flopped on less filling or tastes great. All these reversals seem to be intended to align him politically with the conservative voting blocks. I heard on the radio today that voters are thinking he might be insincere. Go figure.
OK, I’m done digressing now. McCain quoted a rating from “Citizens Against Government Waste” and I went to their website. What they do is look at the bills in congress and label the results as either “The Taxpayers Won” (less waste) or “The Taxpayers Lost” (more waste) then they tally up the senators’ and representatives’ “The Taxpayers Won” votes; zero percent to 100 percent. Then I looked at the 2007 results and the average for both houses was; Republicans 63.5% and Democrats 5%. Then I looked at the bills. I couldn’t see what the criteria were for their “Won” or “Lost” rating, but it seemed like all the “Won” bills favored the GOP and all the “Lost” bills favored the Dems. Surely this non-profit, tax-free organization couldn’t be less than completely unbiased.
I googled the CAGW and found that the organization was started by a corporate CEO with a lot of safety and environmental violations and an ultra-conservative journalist. They are almost totally funded by corporate donations from people like Exxon, RJR Nabisco and Philip Morris. They have their own lobbying arm that had connections with Jack Abramoff and mostly opposes efforts by the govt. to punish corporations for federal crimes. Oh, and almost all of their campaign donations since 2004 have gone to John McCain. The organization is also under investigation for improper political active by a non-profit. If you think McCain is just a lucky recipient of their donations, listen. His cell-mate in the POW camp, long time friend, and veterans’ liaison for the McCain campaign, Orson Swindle, is on CAGW’s board of directors.
So that means John McCain is a corrupt, insincere, flip-flopping corporate shill and maybe our next president.

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