Archive for the ‘The McCain Question’ Category

Meghan McCain…At it Again

Sunday, April 19th, 2009

She’s trying to play down a feud she had a few days ago…and the best way to do that, in her young ditzy mind, is to warn of an upcoming civil war within “her” party.

Meghan McCain warned a group of gay Republicans Saturday that there was “a war brewing in the Republican Party” – a war between the past and the future.

“Most of the old school Republicans are scared s***less of that future,” she told a gathering of the Log Cabin Republicans, a group of gay and lesbian party members.

The 24-year-old daughter of former GOP presidential candidate John McCain pushed back against critics upset over her comments to CNN that she wanted President Obama to succeed, and played down her recent headline-grabbing feuds with conservative commentators Ann Coulter and Laura Ingraham. “I did not expect my frustration with what I perceive to be overly partisan and divisive Republicans to cause a national incident,” she said.

Meghan McCain“I feel too many Republicans want to cling to past successes…I think we’re seeing a war brewing in the Republican Party,” she said. “But it is not between us and Democrats. It is not between us and liberals. It is between the future and the past…

Whatever your vision on the same-sex-marriage issue — if you are not insane, you are at least open to, and would hopefully recognize, the solution is the recognition of the sovereign authority of the states. Yeah, states-rights. De-stigmatize that, cherish that, embrace that, learn to love it. It’s not a white-supremacist’s battle cry, it is the heritage of our nation.

Because if you want to force another state, two thousand miles from your home, to recognize same-sex marriage…as Meghan McCain does…there is something hideously wrong with you. Forget voting. You shouldn’t be allowed out of the house.

That goes for those of you who want to force another state two thousand miles away to ban it, if the citizens living there don’t want to ban it. You’re a bunch of raging psychopaths too.

This is a phony issue. California just voted on this. I voted “yes,” meaning I didn’t want same-sex marriage to be legal. My side won. This being California, there was a decent chance it would’ve gone the other way — in which case, I would have evaluated how important this issue is to me, decided it really doesn’t matter that much, and opted to stay where I am.

What matters more to me? Things that Meghan McCain doesn’t seem to give two shits about. I want to buy a newspaper — or crack open the web page for a federal agency — and not see words like “program,” “subsidy,” “deficit,” “need,” “demand,” “cuts,” “regulation,” et all…instead, I want to see words like “freedom,” “opportunity” and “liberty.” I’d like to see a better tethering between our nation’s founding vision, and the direction in which it is headed. I’d like to see a better tethering between the people who run that nation, and reality. And I don’t want to see euphemisms like “undocumented immigrant” ever again.

Because the people we elect into office, lately have the power to decide how much those things are discussed; what’s centralized as a “moderate” argument even if it’s silly, what’s marginalized even if it’s just plain common-sense.

Which is another thing I’d like to see fixed.

But Meghan McCain is more concerned about re-defining marriage. Good for her. And now, in that vein, she wishes to re-define the word “Republican.” Well, not in my dictionary, sweetie.

Cross-posted at Right Wing News.

Posted in Libertarian Split, The McCain Question | 3 Comments »

Fred Thompson on John McCain

Wednesday, September 3rd, 2008

It’s become an “Everyone Else Is Blogging It, I Might As Well Do It Too” thing. I could offer the hat tip to many others, but I’ll give it to Buck because I think he’s put some real quality thought (as have I) into this issue of when, why, and how much to ply our loyalty onto the presuptive Republican nominee, and how much to hold back, & why to do that.

We do not see eye-to-eye on this. And on that disagreement, I’ve tried to remain surgical-precise in my comments because there are things about McCain’s character that I do not understand. In politics, I’m convinced he has a passion for cobbling together alliances that borders on the jaundiced. We’ve probably said quite enough about that.

Personal-wise, I’m gonna have to go ahead and agree, this is a man of exceptionally strong character. In these war stories, as well as his personal life, there has been episode after episode after episode in which McCain could have benefited greatly from tooting his own horn, so to speak — and chose not to do so. This speaks well for him.

And Fred, to repeat what others have asked. Gotta ask the question, bud…where was all this fire-in-belly back in January? Could have changed history, for the better. You ARE the change we seek.

Posted in The McCain Question | 4 Comments »

Here’s Where He’s Way Too Liberal

Tuesday, September 2nd, 2008

On this issue of so-called torture. This is why I folded my arms across my chest and faced away while everyone else joined in on the party. There are a few other reasons too, but this is the big one.

“I obviously don’t want to torture any prisoners. There is a long list of areas that we were in disagreement on,” [Sen. and Presumptive Republican Nominee John] McCain said of [President George W.] Bush.

Fox interviewer Chris Wallace asked McCain if he was suggesting that Bush did want to torture prisoners.

“Well, waterboarding to me is torture, OK?” McCain responded. “And waterboarding was advocated by the administration, and according to a published report, was used.”

Bush has said the United States does not practice torture. But the Central Intelligence Agency has admitted using waterboarding, a form of simulated drowning, and a recent Justice Department probe cited cases of sleep disruption, “short shackling” and other physical techniques against terrorism suspects captured after the Sept. 11 attacks.

To me, this is the very essence of liberalism. To pull some kind of rule out of your ass, along with a definition to a word that doesn’t make much sense, or any sense at all. And then to say, now that I got that rule pulled outta my ass, everything takes a back seat to it no matter what.

And to not put any thought into where exactly that puts you. Okay…we don’t torture…torture is ANYTHING you can do to someone I wouldn’t want to have done to me. Well? Isn’t that what he’s saying? If I don’t wanna have it done to me, then it must be torture. So that’s our rule. I want it done to me, you can go ahead and do it to these guys — if I don’t want it done to me, then you can’t.

And don’t worry about the ticking time bomb scenario because it isn’t going to happen. Nor will anything that resembles it meaningfully. There. I just kind of pulled that out of my ass, too.

Liberal. Completely liberal. And this annointing of Saint McCain as some kind of a demigod uniquely qualified to decide these situations because of what he went through back in Nam, that’s liberal too. I don’t buy it. For one thing, I have the God-given right and privilege and obligation to noodle this stuff out between my left ear and my right one. That’s become a conservative value today; it’s supposed to be a liberal one, but the liberals gave it up with all their bullying about this guy’s Nobel peace prize, and that guy’s “doing so much for the planet,” and some other guy being such a wonderful President (to our liberals) — that they’ve positioned themselves atop the argumentum ad verecundiam fallacy as a way of shutting down debate. Where McCain’s campaign intersects with the torture issue, that’s exactly what this is. He has his opinion; any opinion held by any of the rest of us, isn’t worth anything unless we were in the Hanoi Hilton with him.

The truth of the matter, though, is that his experience doesn’t qualify him to have this opinion. If anything, it leaves him with a lot more explaining to do because at the time he was captured, the United States was a signing party to the Geneva Conventions. Now, admittedly, having not been there, my knowledge base is inferior, but it seems to me the operative question is: How much good did that do Sen. McCain in those dark days of his? And the answer would appear to be…not a whole hell of a lot. So shouldn’t he understand, better than anyone else, that this high-minded “United States Does Not Torture” rhetoric is just meaningless symbolism and nothing more? Shouldn’t he understand especially that expanding our definition of torture, and then resolutely insisting we still don’t do it, is particularly unlikely to win us any friends?

This is serious stuff, because if you say “The United States Doesn’t Torture Except In Certain Circumstances” that doesn’t mean a whole lot, nor is that the pledge anyone expects to be made, or to make. This is about absolutism. It’s about extremism. Just like banning the death penalty — it’s about the word never. And just like the death penalty, it’s all about saying the lives of United States citizens are worth a limited amount, so they can be subordinated to something else.

It’s all about cheapening life. It’s completely at odds with his pro-choice position.

Update: Since he done gone ‘n ticked me off, the day after I declared my support for him — you see, bandwagoneers, it does work the way I told you it works! — I went and changed my logo. The fine folks at IMAO speak for me. They usually do.

It even matches my color scheme; almost precisely. Hope nobody gets the idea that I’m the guy who designed it.

Tremble before the wrath of The Blog That Nobody Reads, Maverick.

Posted in Elections, The McCain Question | 13 Comments »