I WILL RISE AGAIN! (BUT NOT TODAY)

Yeah, this once-amusing blog that had oft flirted shamelessly with the subtle hilarities of human introspection has been reduced to an outlet for political propaganda.

I promise it won't be like this forever. I will rise again. I will have stories to tell about my life in corporate America. I will have heartfelt insights to share as a proud step-father. I will have keen observations to note in the realm of the defacatory arts. I will describe embarrassing moments. I will turn you onto Showtime's original programming, all of which is top-notch from Dexter to Weeds to Californication. I will tell you things that you may have heard but did not know were true: like the iPhone is pretty sweet, but the AT&T network is the absolute worst. I will wax philosophic on the role alcohol has played in advancing procreation.

But for today, more important matters are at hand. Somehow I feel obligated to share whenever someone has put into words something I wish I had the time to put into words.

Yes, it's political. So if that's going to turn you off, turn away now. Unless you're bored. Otherwise, wade a little deeper.

You know, McCain was once I guy I liked, admired, and respected. That was back when he wasn't afraid to break ranks with his crusty, white-bred party to support ideas that actually made sense. Believe it or not, the party of G-Dubs does not corner the market on brilliant ideas. That was back when he was "The Real McCain," or the "Maverick," as he so proudly calls himself these days. Fiercely independent. His own man.

But he's Rove's man these days. A man of the system. A victim, maybe. Another disappointment in a long line of disappointments, certainly.

These days he's all about fear and smear. And every time he's had an opportunity to stand up and do the right thing by denouncing these tactics as harmful to the process, calling for "reform" as he had so many times before he woke up and discovered he was viable, he's gone the way of the Rove. He's supported the fear. He's supported the smear.

There was a time I actually liked McCain. Andrew Sullivan essentially summarized for me the reasons I've moved away from him and no longer hold him in high esteem. I've posted it below for your reading pleasure. Just another career politician contributing to the problem...



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Andrew Sullivan on McCain's Integrity

10 Sep 2008 01:40 pm

For me, this surreal moment - like the entire surrealism of the past ten days - is not really about Sarah Palin or Barack Obama or pigs or fish or lipstick. It's about John McCain. The one thing I always thought I knew about him is that he is a decent and honest person.

When he knows, as every sane person must, that Obama did not in any conceivable sense mean that Sarah Palin is a pig, what did he do? Did he come out and say so and end this charade? Or did he acquiesce in and thereby enable the mindless Rovianism that is now the core feature of his campaign?

So far, he has let us all down. My guess is he will continue to do so. And that decision, for my part, ends whatever respect I once had for him. On core moral issues, where this man knew what the right thing was, and had to pick between good and evil, he chose evil.

When he knew that George W. Bush's war in Iraq was a fiasco and catastrophe, and before Donald Rumsfeld quit, McCain endorsed George W. Bush against his fellow Vietnam vet, John Kerry in 2004. By that decision, McCain lost any credibility that he can ever put country first. He put party first and his own career first ahead of what he knew was best for the country.

And when the Senate and House voted overwhelmingly to condemn and end the torture regime of Bush and Cheney in 2006, McCain again had a clear choice between good and evil, and chose evil.

He capitulated and enshrined torture as the policy of the United States, by allowing the CIA to use techniques as bad as and worse than the torture inflicted on him in Vietnam. He gave the war criminals in the White House retroactive immunity against the prosecution they so richly deserve. The enormity of this moral betrayal, this betrayal of his country's honor, has yet to sink in. But for my part, it now makes much more sense. He is not the man I thought he was.

And when he had the chance to engage in a real and substantive debate against the most talented politician of the next generation in a fall campaign where vital issues are at stake, what did McCain do? He began his general campaign with a series of grotesque, trivial and absurd MTV-style attacks on Obama's virtues and implied disgusting things about his opponent's patriotism.

And then, because he could see he was going to lose, ten days ago, he threw caution to the wind and with no vetting whatsoever, picked a woman who, by her decision to endure her own eight-month pregnancy of a Down Syndrome child in public, that he was going to reignite the culture war as a last stand against Obama. That's all that is happening right now: a massive bump in the enthusiasm of the Christianist base. This is pure Rove.

Yes, McCain made a decision that revealed many appalling things about him. In the end, his final concern is not national security. No one who cares about national security would pick as vice-president someone who knows nothing about it as his replacement. No one who cares about this country's safety would gamble the security of the world on a total unknown because she polled well with the Christianist base. No person who truly believed that the surge was integral to this country's national security would pick as his veep candidate a woman who, so far as we can tell anything, opposed it at the time.

McCain has demonstrated in the last two months that he does not have the character to be president of the United States. And that is why it is more important than ever to ensure that Barack Obama is the next president. The alternative is now unthinkable. And McCain - no one else - has proved it.

A MAVERICK ON THE HORN

This is another gem for your files. Nothing like a political throwdown to get America's creative juices flowing. Check out the phone call McCain made to Sarah Palin when he asked her to be his running mate.

Good stuff!