Letter to an Aquaintance

Cathy,
McCain brings a lot of experience? Are you kidding me? Age and
Experience may be the same thing, but experience and wisdom sure
aren't. McCain is an old man, but his experience amounts to doing the
same things wrong, and getting the same out of his experiences, for all
those years.

McCain was the son of an important and privileged person, an Admiral,
and he used those connections to get into Flight School and stay in
although he, by his own admission, didn't do a good job, wasn't a good
student, and ranked some 584 out of a class of 599. Anyone else would
have been flunked out but privilege kept him in. In the military, he
was a pilot, not a leader of troops. He did not have any responsibility
for men under him, for strategy, or for any kind of combat other than
bombing missions. More... He crashed his plane less than a month into his
first tour of duty in Vietnam and served out the rest of his war in a
prison camp. After the war he went to the war college and wrote a thesis
on why it was the fault of the press and the American people that we
hadn't been able to bomb the Vietnamese into submission. After *that* he
dumped his injured first wife because she had been in a near fatal car
crash and lost her model good looks. He abandoned his first family and
took up with a rich girl 17 years his junior and moved to Arizona where
her wealthy family could back his run for congress. For 26 years he has
held a seat from Arizona, either congress or the senate, without once
holding a private sector job, meeting payroll, or doing other than
shelling out handouts to corporate cronies and accepting favors from
them. After the Keating Five scandal in which he and other prominent
politicians accepted favors and bribes in return for political favors
and taxpayer goodies he reinvented himself as a "maverick" who would
talk about anything to the press in return for soft treatment. His
entire history as a "campaign finance reform guy" is an utter fake--as
evidenced by his conduct during this primary season when he took public
money and its limitations, used it to leverage private loans, and then
tried to back out of public financing and its rules in order to bust the
caps on the allowed spending once he thought he could make a go on
private lobbyist money. He is *still* not in compliance with FEC
regulations, still overspending the limits he himself agreed to for the
primary, and under any other less corrupt form of government would
actually be facing fines and jail time for robbing the taxpayer and
breaking the law just during the primary. McCain has backed Bush and
the war in Iraq 100 percent from the get go--only going on tv
occasionally when it suited him to pretend to argue with the boundaries
of our fighting strategy. He is against a woman's right to choose, has
supported the overturning of roe v. wade and has said that he would
appoint extremely reactionary judges to the supreme court. If you want
to know more about why this might be important here is a site
for women's testimony
about how hard it has become to get a legitimate, medical, abortion
under Bush. When asked what our "most important economic issues" were
just recently he replied that "fighting islamic terrorism" was the most
important--in the face of the subprime and prime mortgage meltdown,
record unemployment, skyrocketing gas prices, and two disastrous wars
he proposes to do...what? He's as bad as Rudy "9/11" Guiliani. He knows
he can't win on issues and so he'd just planning to beat the drum on
national defense--well, he has zero record on national defense as a
military strategist or leader. He's been in congress all these years
just lapping up taxpayer money and passing it on to his lobbyist friends.

The man is a wholly owned subsidiary of lobbyists--witness the fact
that his entire staff is made up of lobbyists whom he has had to
ostentatiously dismiss, one after the other. I have a particular
dislike of McCain and his scummy ways because he figured very largely in
the Abramoff bribery scandals--which as you may or may not know involved
mass bribery of congressional officials as well as the looting of the
treasuries of various Indian tribes as they tried to get more favorable
treatment from congress. Abramoff was also neck deep in the selling of
influence allowing the abuse of workers in the Marianas islands which
included the importation of chinese women workers into near slave
conditions, forced abortions, and other crimes. McCain was instrumental
in making sure that Abramoff's connections with top Congressmen and
Senators was covered up. Lots of this is in a book written by my cousin
Peter Stone who researches and writes for the National Journal. But you
can also read all about McCain in "Free Ride: John McCain and the Media"
by
David Brock (should be a clickable link) and in Cliff Schecter's new
book The Real McCain: Why Conservatives Don't Trust Him and Why
Independents Shouldn't.


That was certainly more than you wanted to know! But this is one vote
that is too important to waste. The Republicans have had eight years to
drive this country into a ditch. If you like where we've ended up by
all means vote for the Republican in this race--but don't vote for
McCain under the impression that he isn't a true blue Republican. He has
postured, but he has never deviated from the party line under Bush--not
on torture, not on wiretapping American citizens, not on anything.
Don't make the mistake of voting for the guy who represents an
"experience" you don't want. We may all end up with another four years
of Bush if you do.