Is McCain fit to lead?

While the U.S. media focuses on debunking the ever-increasing pile of stinking lies, misinformation and half-truths spewing from the McCain campaign,  they seem to ignore the over-arching question of whether John Sidney McCain III is fit to lead the U.S. in the twenty-first century.  The media allows itself to be distracted with dicussions of whether Sarah Palin was a good choice because she “energized the Republican base” and obsesses about “lipstick on a pig.”

It takes a major newspaper across the Atlantic to ask the really big questions.  is John McCain fit to lead?  Furthermore, what does McCain’s selection of Sarah Palin as his VP running mate say about his fitness to lead the U.S. in the twenty-first century? 

The real story of John McCain

There is a mythology built up about ‘maverick’ McCain the war hero that is simply not based on fact. Recent probes into various aspects of McCain’s personal history tear aside the curtain and reveal a very different person than that presented in the MSM.

The first area that bears investigation is McCain’s military record.  On Huffington Post, Jeffrrey Klein lays out what is known about McCain’s Navy career and points out disturbing gaps.  What he finds is that McCain graduated in the bottom 1 per cent of his Annapolis class — and then got a plum assignment as an aircraft carrier pilot —  perhaps because both his father and grandfather were four-star admirals.   After the Naval Academy his performance was less than stellar.  Klein quotes an otherwise highly favorable biography of McCain by Robert Timberg: 

So last century …

Oops, Nader wants to do it again

Today on Meet the Press, looking gaunt and showing every one of his 73 years, Ralph Nader told Tim Russert that he was going to run for president yet again.  His reason, the two “business parties” (translation:  Republicans and Democrats) should not “own” the voters and he would offer a “choice.”

Eight years after he proclaimed that there was “no difference” between Gore and Bush, he still will not admit that he has been proved wrong about that.  Eight years later after he helped tip the election to GWB, the country faces economic collapse, there is neverending war in Iraq and Afghanistan and ordinary Americans face job insecurity, rising prices on gas and groceries, and a shredded safety net.  But Nader won’t admit that things would have been different under a Gore administration.

A form of murder?

I want to thank blogger Gayla McCord for drawing my attention to an article in the LA Times about the health care proposals of the leading GOP presidential candidates. To tell the truth I wasn’t aware any Republican even had a plan since the subject never seems to come up in the GOP debates and it is not prominently posted on their campaign websites. But it seems that I was wrong — they really do have some kind of a health care proposal. But the problem is simple — the plans are lousy market-based proposals and would not cover the life-saving cancer treatment that these guys received that enabled them be survive to run for President right now.

The LA Times looked at research on the proposed healthcare plans of Fred Thompson, a lymphoma survivor, Rudy Giuliani, who battled prostate cancer, and John McCain, who beat melanoma. None of these guys would be guaranteed coverage by their own plans. http://www.gaylamccord.com/

So the health care that these guys are propose for the rest of us is NOT of the same quality that they themselves received. These guys receive premium government-run coverage with taxpayers picking up the tab. But its OK by these GOP candidates for ordinary Americans to be at the mercy of the big private insurance companies — the kind that reward employees for canceling coverage on seriously ill patients. In other words they can’t get canceled but ordinary Americans with the same life-threatening conditions (lymphoma, prostate cancer, melanoma) can lose their coverage while they are undergoing treatment and battling for survival. [For more information about the cancellation policies of big insurance companies, read my earlier post “Another Chapter for Michael Moore’s Sicko”]