John McCain is a Mind Reader

Apparently if you can't negatively attack your opponent on their record, policies, or use of judgment, then you should just pretend you can read your opponent's mind and make shit up.  So goes McCain's newest attack on Barrack Obama's trip to Iraq
divisive and weak.  It's pissing me off like the last gasps of the Hillary campaign when she was criticizing Obama on anything and everything.

Extremely annoying.

I can't wait for the new commander in chief to cut the pork violence getting funded by congress to fight the war on terror.

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D is for Dumb

I'm going to start this post off with a confession.  Usually I only read the L.A. Times for its coverage on the dodgers.  There I said it.  Anyways, so I'm really reading the L.A. Times this morning (it's a decent paper) and saw this article on Medicare Part D.  
Confessions number two and three in one sentence is I'm on medicare (1) but I never signed up for part D (2).  Why?  Great question.  I'm not made of money,  I'm pretty sick, and my drugs are expensive.  Some of the reason is spite I think.

I dislike pharmaceutical (wow, spelled that correctly in one take) companies a lot.  I see how in the media they are constantly pushing products in commercials, but on the news or C-span they are poor mouthing to elected officials or general public about how expensive it is to come up with these crazy new compounds (although mostly they just make sequels to previously patented products..how expensive is that?) and if we don't continue to pay full price (unlike every other country on the face of the earth!) the pipeline of lifesaving medications will dry up.  What they don't tell you is how they recruit doctors from all over the country and pay them to pitch their products on their lunch break to other doctors offices in their area.  

There is an army of salespeople who's only job is to drive to the same doctor's offices over and over pitching their companies product(s) (usually just one).  Just another one of those areas where you give an industry an inch (when advertising restrictions were eased on it) and they lobbied for an extra mile.

I have more reasons, but the vitriolic paragraph above was enough of a release to stop writing about things that piss me off.  I'm going to go take my pills now...ohhh...damnit!

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Obama Withdrawal Bad, Bush/McCain Withdrawal Good

How dumb does the administration think we are? Repeating the same made up words and defining them most favorably for yourself while demonizing the essentially same word that has been demonized for a long time to the American people is, to borrow a favorite word from another guy that annoys me a bit less, Lou Dobbs, poppycock! I hear another of Bush's talking heads making the case on MSNBC saying that Obama's "timeline for withdrawal" is such a dangerous and dumb message to send to the enemy (without having any consultation/briefings from commanders on the ground) while "event horizons" and "mutual aspirational goals" are the way to go. WTF?

And since when did John McCain become psychic enough to know the future? If the surge hadn't been implemented then it wouldn't have been safe enough for Obama to have made a trip to Iraq? How does he know? If I remember the past (which did actually happen) correctly, Bush, Rice, and our best friend Dick went to visit Iraq even when the surge 'wasn't working' and violence was very high...the solution is lots and lots of security, the kind McCain had when he visited Iraq to appear for us back at home that he could walk down the street in Iraq. How don't they know that violence would not have dropped because there would have been no U.S. troops to shoot at if they'd been withdrawn?

I wish Quinnipiac would do a poll asking Americans if they think there is a meaningful difference between these two phrases.

The world has gone so 1984. I can't wait until the President gets on national television to tell us all we're at war with Eurasia. Oh wait, they've skipped the entire amorphous multi-continent phase of war (axis of evil?) and went straight to the even more amorphous, undefinable terrorists that could be living next door to you in little sleeper cells all over the globe and will never be "defeated".

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October Surprise May Come Early

So I'm watching msnbc and seeing general Patreyu (Atreyu from the Neverending Story's father) make up a new word--well I guess it's more of a new phrase to replace a word that the administration has attached such negative connotation to that they can't use it now that so they're now going to...gasp!...withdraw...

That new phrase is..."time horizons".

So after some more negotiations regarding "stuff" that they aren't really talking about they can say that the u.s. and iraq governments can agree on some "time horizons" and "aspirations" making sure to express that all the generals on the ground that wish to keep their jobs agree with the desired presidential version of reality on the ground.

We are winning. And oh geez, look how Afghanistan is slipping and there should probably be some more troops there. What a coincidence. Now you have McCain crowing I told you so and how he'd rather lose on an issue than a war...which begs the question, how is Iraq any different besides the Iraqi prime minister repeatedly telling the United States to get the hell out? Oh yeah, we'd have to be down on the ground and talking to generals to know that despite satellites and high speed internet.

I'm going to guess that the next set of talking points is when the troops do come home is that the hard lessons learned in Iraq can be applied over in Afghanistan.

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i was on a bit of a vacation

There was some family business to take care of in socal so I kinda went out there to take care of it.
'But don't they have the internet in socal too?'
Yeah, but it gets kind of complicated and all my reasons are better left unsaid.
'Oh. O.K.'

Anyways just wanted to drop one impression/thought...

John McCain reminds me a lot of Bob Dole in a number of physical ways

Generally stiff, like he has a stick up his ass. He walks alright, but his arms are held a bit stiffly as he walks. Maybe this is a sad result of his having been tortured as a P.O.W., but he's stiff in so many other ways that I don't feel guilty calling him stiff.
Smiles seem very thin lipped, tight, and forced.
He has a wooden demeanor ever since he started his presidential campaign. The criticism they used to use both against Dole and Gore. He's far less charismatic now than when he was the "maverick".

Anyways, I just wanted to clown on McCain a bit since all the news pundits are pummeling him for stuff that really manners like having no clue how Joe Nobody like me feels about anything or how we live.

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