(Community Matters) Wow, now that the press appears to be coming out of some starry-eyed daze with McCain, his campaign is throwing out lies faster than candies on that conveyer belt in I Love Lucy, and we’re learning that McCain can lie to our face without breaking a grin.
He certainly spoke like a maverick all those years, but he appears to have voted like someone bought and paid for. A bit reminiscent of his Keating 5 support and excursions to luxury villas on private planes as a member of Charles Keating’s entourage – red carpets, Dom Perignon and extravagant luxuries all along the way (paid for by taxpayers at the last financial meltdown).
Talked about reform and regulation of Fannie & Freddie in 2005, even co-sponsored legislation to “regulate & reform” the two organizations. Now we’re learning the legislation was a trojan horse to exempt the organizations from certain securities regulation and that his own party (which controlled the Senate) wouldn’t even pass this bad bill out of its committee. It was so bad even George Bush’s White House objected – no surprise Tom Delay’s House passed the bill. And lo and behold his current campaign manager, Rick Davis, was the major lobbyist in charge of ensuring no new regulations were imposed on Freddie or Fannie (that’ll cost us another $1 Trillion).
So, this week McCain (after Monday’s gafe that the economy is fundamentally strong) has been saying we need more regulation. But, in an article just published in a recently released health care journal, he cites financial deregulation as a good thing, even saying he’d do the same for health care. Until recently he also boasted about his passion for further deregulating all industries (hmm, more financial deregulation, consumer products deregulation, food & drug safety deregulation, that’s turned out well).
I don’t know if this last bit is true or political mudracking, but in light of all the straight faced lies, it’s hard to know what to believe. We’re hearing disturbing reports from other soldiers and POW’s about his time in the service and as a POW. Talk about his recklessness and temper, reports that he was nicknamed SongBird by other Hanoi Hilton POWs and anger from other former soliders and POW’s who haven’t forgiven his “obstruciton of investigations” as a member of the Senate Select committee on POW/MIAs. I hadn’t heard these allegations before. Not sure what to think.
I’ve long given McCain the benefit of the doubt, but these last two weeks have shown unequivocally that he’ll say anything and keep saying it even in the face of irrefutable, contradictory evidence.
I’ll still consider him a one time war hero but, frankly, even that is hanging by a thread.
Community Matters 