Perhaps He's an Animatronic John McCain

I have come up with this theory. You see, much like Chris Mathews and Andrea Mitchell, I am struggling with the idea that this John McCain is the same guy I remember from before this year.

So my theory isn't just that he doesn't actually know what his campaign is doing, it is that he is a) dead or b) being confined out of public view and, in his place, the Republicans and Karl Rove have an animatronic machine in his place. Almost like the movie Dave but without the real life stand in.

Is that ridiculous? I think so. The events of the last eight years make me less likely to just dismiss it out of hand though.

Reality is, this man has decided that winning is more important than honor. Win or lose, Senator John McCain cannot, with any kind of private introspective honesty, look back on this campaign and say he ran it honorably.

From AP on The View today:

McCain said he had chosen Palin because she would help to reform Washington, specifically cited curbing federal spending for earmarks. When pressed about Palin's record of requesting and accepting such money for Alaska, McCain ignored the record and said, "Not as governor she didn't."

From the Anchorage Daily News, again:

For the 2007 federal budget year, the administration of former Gov. Frank Murkowski submitted 63 earmark requests totaling $350 million, Palin's staff said. That slid to 52 earmarks valued at $256 million in Palin's first year. This year, the governor's office asked the delegation to help them land 31 earmarks valued at $197 million.

Folks, there is a chasm the size of the Grand Canyon between reducing the amount of the earmarks you request for your state and claiming you have been asking for no earmarks. The McCain campaign and, now from his mouth too, John McCain, continue to claim the latter when it is a patently false assertion and has been proven so, demonstrably, repeatedly, over the course of at least a week.

I think my animatronic explanation works best if you don't think that McCain could be consciously doing this.

Andrew Sullivan, also trying to reach on this, has another possible explanation:

There are two possibilities. 1. He's lying, regardless of the consequences. 2. He really hasn't been briefed or cannot retain the briefing or is simply in denial about the facts.

He supports hypothesis #2. I guess we all seem to want to believe in the old John McCain still.

Whether it's because he has completely derailed 'The Straight Talk Express,' he doesn't know/understand what it actually happening, or he is really an animatronic stand in, this is really a very sad process to watch.

As an aside, another quick quote from that AP Link:

"My heart sort of runs with McCain and my mind probably tends to run toward Obama." — David Scorup, 58, a county government official in Othello, Wash.

Would that there were more like this man.

Comments welcome,

Pat McGovern

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TPM Sarah Palin Earmarks video

For your viewing pleasure:



Yup, she hates earmarks alright;-)!

The great crew at TPM has now dug even deeper uncovering just what it was that the State of Alaska and it's reform-minded governor were asking for. The link to TPMMuckraker is here. The link to the State of Alaska's requests is here.

Apparently, it includes $3.2 million for seal genetics research among a slew of other things. I pick this out because TPM Muckraker contrasts this with John McCain:

"We're not going to spend $3 million of your tax dollars to study the DNA of bears in Montana," McCain said earlier this year, referring to a request from Montana for federal money to study the endangered grizzly bear. "I don't know if it was a paternity issue or criminal, but it was a waste of money."

It's amazing. You really have to wonder if Bill Clinton would have gotten away scot free with the "I did not inhale." line if Karl Rove had been his advisor. Hell, he might never have gotten impeached!

Lie. Lie. Lie. Repeat. Lie. Lie. Lie. Repeat.

Have at it! Truth! Truth! Truth! Repeat!

Comments welcome,

Pat McGovern

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Earmarks make Obama "awesome"?

Obama is Awesome!: Secures Earmarks for Lasers & Hummers

Obama helped secure $1.95 Million for the so-called "Compact Tactical Laser" program...Obama also landed $1 million for the Illinois Institute of Technology to develop a cost-effective conversion kit to retrofit Army Humvees with electric hybrid systems.

read more digg story

Alright. Could be just me but isn't just about everyone and their fourth cousin sick and tired of earmarks. Earmarks are, for those of you who aren't aware, the even higher fat content counterpart of pork. At least old time pork got inserted as an amendment and actually voted on. Earmarks get inserted somehow after all the voting is really done, quite a feat in a democratic bicameral legislature.

Now I am sure that both Senator Clinton and Senator McCain have plenty of earmarks to their credit as well. This is not a rip into Obama for having bowed to peer pressure and inserted them. Nor will I deign to say that they don't seem like relatively worthy projects.

No, my criticism is directed at joy and awesomnimity (yes, I am aware that this wasn't a word but I will take full credit for coining it if you wish to use it) ascribed to Obama for these earmarks. This is not a function of the Senator but rather the "digger".

Earmarks suck.

They need to be gotten rid of.

They are not awesome regardless of their morality or necessity.

Furthermore, could they have "dugg" the post, from Andrew Sullivan, that Wired got this from or, for that matter, the post in The Chicago Tribune's The Swamp. No, we just "dugg" the first story we saw, not the breaker, the perpetuator.

To reiterate, earmarks, no matter how well intentioned, suck. Please don't celebrate their awesomeness.

Finally, kudos should be given to the Obama camp for releasing this stuff in such a user friendly manner: the list.

Comments welcome,

Pat McGovern

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