The Watering Hole, Monday, November 26th, 2012: Time to Go, Senator McCain

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Wave Bye-Bye Now!


As Rachel Maddow so perfectly pointed out recently, John McCain’s regular – some might say ubiquitous – appearances on so many of the Sunday morning political talkfests only serve to show McCain’s desperation to remain relevant at any cost. Unfortunately, that ‘cost’ seems to be the remnants of McCain’s respectability along with the shards of his integrity.

McCain’s latest insanity is shown in his recent calls for a “Watergate-style” investigation of U.N. Ambassador Susan Rice regarding the Benghazi, Libya, attack. McCain’s rabid and, IMHO, unfounded attacks on Ms. Rice (including calling her “not very bright”, and his vow to block her possible nomination as future Secretary of State) were supposedly tempered a trifle yesterday, if by ‘tempered’ one means asking for the same information from Ms. Rice, presumably sans the “Watergate-style” investigation. Regardless, McCain still will not say whether, even if he (undeservedly) receives the requested information from Ms. Rice, he would consider NOT blocking her possible future nomination for Secretary of State.

But in McCain’s interview on Fox Sunday, he shows his characteristic bungling of essential facts:

HOST: You say that you will do everything in your power to block Susan Rice’s nomination if the President decides to name her to be secretary of state . . . . Is there anything that Ambassador Rice can do to change your mind?
MCCAIN: Sure, she can give everyone the benefit of explaining their position and the actions that they took. And I’ll be glad to have the opportunity to discuss these issues with her. Why did she say that al Qaeda has been decimated in her statement here on this program? Al Qaeda hasn’t been decimated. They’re on the rise. They’re all over Iraq.

Yes, John, of course Al Qaeda is “all over” Iraq, sure they are…NOT.

In the same Fox News Sunday interview, on women’s issues, McCain had this to say:

McCAIN:… And as far as young women are concerned, absolutely. I don’t think anybody like me, I can state my position on abortion, but, to — other than that, leave the issue alone. When we are in the kind of economic situation and, frankly, national security situation we’re in.

CHRIS WALLACE (HOST): When you say leave the issue alone, you would allow, you say, freedom of choice?

McCAIN: I would allow people to have those opinions and respect those opinions and I’m proud of my pro-life position and record, but if someone disagrees with me, I respect your views.

So, that would be a ‘NO’ to ‘freedom of choice”?

Since the 2008 Presidential election, when Senator McCain foisted Sarah Palin on us, it seems that his tenuous ties to reality, and his sense of decency and honor, have rapidly strained to the snapping point. I think that we all agree (and I wouldn’t be surprised if many in the Republican heirarchy agree, too), that it’s way past time for McCain to, shall we say, spend a lot more of his time at one of his seven -or was it eight? – homes.

This is our Open Thread. Feel free to discuss this topic, or anything else that comes to mind.

66 thoughts on “The Watering Hole, Monday, November 26th, 2012: Time to Go, Senator McCain”

  1. A friend of mine was an investigator during the Keating five investigation. He refers to John McCain as “contemptible”. I’ve never seen any reason to challenge his opinion.

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  2. Rick Perlstein finds that many “conservative leaders treat their constituents like suckers”:

    “Dishonesty is demanded by the alarmist fundraising appeal because the real world doesn’t work anything like this. The distance from observable reality is rhetorically required; indeed, that you haven’t quite seen anything resembling any of this in your everyday life is a kind of evidence all by itself. It just goes to show how diabolical the enemy has become. He is unseen; but the redeemer, the hero who tells you the tale, can see the innermost details of the most baleful conspiracies. Trust him. Send him your money. Surrender your will—and the monster shall be banished for good.”

    http://www.thebaffler.com/past/the_long_con

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    • A woman of conviction. Wouldn’t back down and paid with her life.
      Local law enforcement being in cahoots with the drug cartels makes it so difficult to curtail their activity. (not to mention the lucrative U.S. market that keeps the cartels flowing with money and capacity to destroy lives)

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  4. Breaking news: John McCain to join Insane Clown Posse.
    A loyal juggalo was quoted saying: “Nobody can make any sense out of what he says.
    He’s bitter and demented and he’s already a pastey shade of white. It’s a good fit, he’s a natural” .

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  5. Mr. Senatorial McIIIrd appears to be exhibiting the first signs of dementia. Or is it just his adorable flippingflopperooing persona he’s been displaying for the last twelve years or so?

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    • Dear Fundies,
      Failing to protect your daughter from an unwanted pregnancy will not stop her from having sex before marriage. Ask some of us older ladies. We grew up in a world without birth control, without abortion, and with the absolute certainty that we would be ruined forever in the eyes of our family, church, school, and community if we became pregnant. We had sex as teenagers anyway.

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  10. Learning from the drubbing
    or
    just typical Repugnant Party rhetoric:

    “The Democrats didn’t have a policy for dealing with illegal immigrants, but what they did have going for them is they weren’t mean-spirited about it. They didn’t know what the policy was, but what they were is they were kind.”

    That from the man who wears roadkill as a toupee.

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    • And there we see, once again, the fatal flaw of the right-wing authoritarian mindset. They are utterly unable to see, much less admit, that their message is both wrong and unpopular. They just want a way to fool people into thinking that they are right and popular without changing the message one bit.

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  11. Funny. The clip of Thomas Ricks being cut off on FAUX”News” is going viral among us “leftists” but, apparently, they can’t seem to find it over at FAUXNation.com. I wonder if Bill0 will name Ricks as “pinhead of the week” and whine about “far left bias” or, will he just pretend it never happened?

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  12. I know I haven’t been around much lately, but over at LGF, Charles has come across something unintentionally hilarious from the RW – Conservative Fact-Checking.

    http://littlegreenfootballs.com/article/41239_Inadvertent_Wingnut_Humor_Site_of_the_Day-_Conservative_Fact_Check

    Apparently they don’t understand the concept we all grasp – that facts have a liberal bias. Here’s their “About CFC” blurb:

    CFC is dedicated to providing a conservative alternative to enormously liberal-biased fact checking sites like snopes.com, factcheck.org, and politifact.com.

    It’s a familiar scenario: you receive a particularly juicy story about Obama in email and forward it to your friends. Then, somebody on your mailing list tries to ruin the fun by sending you a link from Snopes which declares your story to be false. What do you do if you know it’s true?

    Send them to CFC, of course!

    It’s going to take some time, but our goal is to offer a rebuttal to all the so-called fact checking site “facts” that matter.

    “What do you do if you know it’s true?” Do they have any clue what the words “true” and “fact” mean?

    And check out how they defend Michele Bachmann [emphasis mine]

    We assembled this chart by sorting PolitiFact’s complete list of “Pants On Fire” rulings. We filtered out any rulings of chain email or anonymous Facebook posts (although these were virtually all conservative viewpoints), as well as politicians or organizations who had only one “Pants On Fire” ruling (but again, even these were mostly conservatives).

    The results are, sadly, not surprising. But the situation is grave. PolitiFact (and other supposedly unbiased fact-checking sites) paint Mitt Romney as a serial liar. They also unfairly tarnish Michele Bachmann as a liar, when anybody who follows her already understands that many of her statements aren’t meant to be truthful in the first place — she simply says what she feels. …

    To have any semblance of fairness, PolitiFact should play it 50/50 and present an equal number of lies from both sides. They clearly are not concerned with any pretense.

    So, apparently Michele Bachmann doesn’t feel like saying things that are true, is that what they’re trying to tell us?

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    • In all fairness; Batscat Bachmann is a hard case for the GOoPers. She’s so obviously insane that it’s entirely possible that she believes the crap she spews. After all; all she does is agree with the voices in her head and the ravings of others who are every bit as unbalanced as she is.

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    • Of course, the whole site is just proof that the Reichwhiners don’t care if a person is a liar and/or a lunatic as long as said person says stuff they want them to say. Facts be damned!

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    • fact
         [fakt]
      noun
      1.
      something that actually exists; reality; truth: Your fears have no basis in fact.

      2.
      something known to exist or to have happened: Space travel is now a fact.

      3.
      a truth known by actual experience or observation; something known to be true: Scientists gather facts about plant growth.

      4.
      Republican fact. Lie.

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    • That sounds like the ‘astrophysicist’ who dispenses the crazy with whipped cream at the Creation Museum – he’s fine with science being the tool to understand nature and the evidence that supports our view of the world …. until it directly contravenes scripture, then the science must be wrong. His reason – God made nature and scripture is then given primacy over nature so the science must only work when the Bible says its cool.

      The TV presenter interviewing him was doing his best Louis Theroux and just letting this young nutcase tie himself in dogmatic knots.

      I would have just slapped him with the obvious one – so does the sun go around the earth then? Because the Bible says so and we must therefore just disregard 5 centuries of astrophysics from Copernicus to Hawking? And then: why’d you bother with the astrophysics degree then there Skippy, if it was all bullshit in 1632 – so said the Pope?

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  13. What is it about the male genome? I can’t grow hair on the top of my head for love nor money yet my mustache will go rabid Wilford Brimley almost over night. What is up with that?

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    • I liked yesterday’s ‘in your face crazy right-wing Uncle’:

      So how’d you like that Obama stock market rally – from 6,500 in Feb 09 to 13,000 in mid 2012? Outstanding corporate profits?

      CRWU: I didn’t see any of that, the economy still sucks….

      Ah, so you admit that ‘trickle-down economics’ is a crock of crap then?

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    • I would rather let my Bush Tax Cut expire than let the wealthy get another extension. I’d also rather let the sequester stand. At least then, the deficit will be reduced without reductions in SS and Medicare/Medicaid.

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  19. Ed Schultz: “And then Mr. Blankfein, he throws out a scenario which is totally unrealistic. People don’t have 25 year careers, they have forty year careers, is what they have.”

    Would you like to make that fifty, Ed? I started working when I was fifteen, and I have to go to 67 to get full SS benefits!

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  23. Who is depressed and enraged to the point of drooling idiocy? Why, it’s Bill0 and his ilk. You know? (alleged) Christian Zealots, racists, homophobes etc. Basically, any white male who feels entitled to special treatment because Jebus looks like them in all those old paintings. Call them what you will: bigots, extremists, right-wing authoritarians. The old guard has been kicked in the cerebral cortex and even they aren’t too stupid to realize that their time is coming to an end.

    That will continue to make them more dangerous for the indefinite future. I try very hard to think we can avoid another civil war but that becomes harder with each passing day. We haven’t had to burn out a dictator or a theocracy and, sadly, it doesn’t look like enough people can learn that lesson from history. They seem hellbent on reliving the “glory” of the Crusades and the 100 years war. Have I recently mentioned how much I hate these freaks?

    http://mediamatters.org/video/2012/11/26/foxs-oreilly-many-americans-are-depressed-becau/191518

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  24. Kid on Two and a Half Men, Angus T. Jones highest paid kid on television says people should stop watching show because it’s trash and he has found religion. Makes $300K per episode. Got a half million signing bonus and residual checks must come in by the pile because the show airs all day. What a stupid shithead.

    “If you watch ‘Two and a Half Men,’ please stop watching ‘Two and a Half Men.’ I’m on ‘Two and a Half Men,’ and I don’t want to be on it,” said Jones in a videotaped testimonial for the Forerunner Chronicles.

    The group is linked to the Voice of Prophecy Seventh-Day Adventist church in Los Angeles, where Jones worships.

    Read more: http://www.nydailynews.com/entertainment/tv-movies/men-star-angus-t-jones-blasted-series-filth-article-1.1208407#ixzz2DOTOTvqk

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    • Ya know kid, there have been folks who, rightly or wrongly, suffered and died for their beliefs. Walking away from a contract and taking the financial hit ought to be a piece of cake.

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    • I’ve never watched the show because I’ve long since given up on sitcoms. The writers submit 30-40 innuendo laden “jokes” and hope the censors let enough through to fill 20 minutes. That being said; I found that kid to be creepy just in the commercials and couldn’t really imagine a whole episode.

      On the other hand. What would be the penalty for breaking the last year of his contract? I would think that having to pay back a small portion of his immense earnings would be a small price to pay for his soul. Unless, of course, some charismatic leader is fleecing him and won’t let him give up their mutual income? Wealth, fame, and a cult. What could go wrong? I mean what could go wrong aside from young Angus finding himself alone and penniless in a couple years while waiting in vain for Jebus to cleanse his soul for him.

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