there'd be no distance that could hold us back

courtesy of ontd_political








What the fucking fuck. Secret service time?

Oh I see you, Paul McCartney, with your fucking impromptu rooftop concert. WHY DON'T I LIVE IN NYC?

Whew. Spent the first roughly thirty minutes of my omg-finally-off-work-for-today time promptly freaking the fuck out because I couldn't find my laptop and the downstairs door was unlocked. Downstairs where everyone and their moms can see it because there are UNNECESSARILY GIANT FUCKING OCTAGONAL WINDOWS, and of course I left it there this morning because I was braindead from 4:45 wake-up + only one cup of coffee + being slightly late to leave for work :| Only to learn my brother slid it under the couch because it was sitting on the little table he likes to use for his coffee, fucker. Close to tears cuz John decided my lappy wasn't a good enough coaster, wtf.

Had to take the day off from work last Thursday. No, not only because the Andrew Bird concert was Wednesday night and LA made me get home at one in the morning. (I wake up @ 4:45 and start work at 6, btw.) But once consciousness did surface, I found myself unable to roll over in my bed because apparently leprechauns punched me repeatedly in the kidneys while I slept through it ;__; And evidently pain in the kidneys also = mild nauseousness? Cuz I could barely keep anything down.

For the record I feel better now, but only about 85-90%. Can't afford to take more days off, can't afford to lose my job.

Manager gave me a whatever-month appraisal, too. Said I was an excellent worker. Yet I was ranked 8th out of 11 on the scale of Awesome Team Members, like, what? I hate having a completely arbitrary totem poll system on the job; it's so misleading. I mean, if you're at the bottom, you're continually fretting whether or not you're going to get fired, even if you're not really in danger. But you keep thinking you'll just quit before they can fire you, because getting fired? Not looking too good on the resume.

Flames. On the sides of my face.

Random: is it bad that movies/songs/etc. never make me cry?

Hard to get me to do anything other than listen to Noble Beast at the moment. Here, have a live performance vid of my fav song off it.

John McCain: the Make-Believe Maverick


Few politicians have so actively, or successfully, crafted their own myth of greatness. In Mc- Cain's version of his life, he is a prodigal son who, steeled by his brutal internment in Vietnam, learned to put "country first." Remade by the Keating Five scandal that nearly wrecked his career, the story goes, McCain re-emerged as a "reformer" and a "maverick," righteously eschewing anything that "might even tangentially be construed as a less than proper use of my office."

It's a myth McCain has cultivated throughout his decades in Washington. But during the course of this year's campaign, the mask has slipped. "Let's face it," says Larry Wilkerson, a retired Army colonel who served as chief of staff to Secretary of State Colin Powell. "John McCain made his reputation on the fact that he doesn't bend his principles for politics. That's just not true."

We have now watched McCain run twice for president. The first time he positioned himself as a principled centrist and decried the politics of Karl Rove and the influence of the religious right, imploring voters to judge candidates "by the example we set, by the way we conduct our campaigns, by the way we personally practice politics." After he lost in 2000, he jagged hard to the left — breaking with the president over taxes, drilling, judicial appointments, even flirting with joining the Democratic Party.

In his current campaign, however, McCain has become the kind of politician he ran against in 2000. He has embraced those he once denounced as "agents of intolerance," promised more drilling and deeper tax cuts, even compromised his vaunted opposition to torture. Intent on winning the presidency at all costs, he has reassembled the very team that so viciously smeared him and his family eight years ago, selecting as his running mate a born-again moose hunter whose only qualification for office is her ability to electrify Rove's base. And he has engaged in a "practice of politics" so deceptive that even Rove himself has denounced it, saying that the outright lies in McCain's campaign ads go "too far" and fail the "truth test."

The missing piece of this puzzle, says a former McCain confidant who has fallen out with the senator over his neoconservatism, is a third, never realized, campaign that McCain intended to run against Bush in 2004. "McCain wanted a rematch, based on ethics, campaign finance and Enron — the corrupt relationship between Bush's team and the corporate sector," says the former friend, a prominent conservative thinker with whom McCain shared his plans over the course of several dinners in 2001. "But when 9/11 happened, McCain saw his chance to challenge Bush again was robbed. He saw 9/11 gave Bush and his failed presidency a second life. He saw Bush and Cheney's ability to draw stark contrasts between black and white, villains and good guys. And that's why McCain changed." (The McCain campaign did not respond to numerous requests for comment from Rolling Stone.)

Indeed, many leading Republicans who once admired McCain see his recent contortions to appease the GOP base as the undoing of a maverick. "John McCain's ambition overrode his basic character," says Rita Hauser, who served on the President's Foreign Intelligence Advisory Board from 2001 to 2004. But the truth of the matter is that ambition is John McCain's basic character. Seen in the sweep of his seven-decade personal history, his pandering to the right is consistent with the only constant in his life: doing what's best for himself. To put the matter squarely: John McCain is his own special interest.

"John has made a pact with the devil," says Lincoln Chafee, the former GOP senator, who has been appalled at his one-time colleague's readiness to sacrifice principle for power. Chafee and McCain were the only Republicans to vote against the Bush tax cuts. They locked arms in opposition to drilling in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge. And they worked together in the "Gang of 14," which blocked some of Bush's worst judges from the federal bench.

"On all three — sadly, sadly, sadly — McCain has flip-flopped," Chafee says. And forget all the "Country First" sloganeering, he adds. "McCain is putting himself first. He's putting himself first in blinking neon lights."



That's only a part of the ten page overview of John McCain's life, following him through his time in the Navy, as a POW, and as a politician, up to the present. Seriously, if I had any shred of respect left for him, it's utterly gone. Going by personality traits, policy, and what kind of people he's surrounded himself with, I say it is completely unacceptable to have someone like this as our commander-in-chief.

If there is anyone on my flist who is not registered or not planning on voting, please, please change your mind. We don't need another master of the art of doublespeak in the Oval Office.