Sen. (AZ) JOHN SIDNEY MCCAIN III
Born on August 29, 1936
We note during the Vietnam War, McCain as a naval aviator was shot down and badly injured. He endured five and a half years as a prisoner of war, including periods of torture, and in 1982, McCain was elected to the US House of Representatives, and in 1986, he was elected to the US Senate.
His flying career was testy, to say the least, and it resulted in several incidents. (nice way of saying crashes) Another pilot commented the 23-year-old junior lieutenant wasn't paying attention and erred in using "a power setting too low to maintain level flight in a turn," investigators concluded.
The crash was one of three early in McCain's aviation career in which his flying skills and judgment were faulted or questioned by Navy officials.
In his most serious lapse, McCain was "clowning" around in a Skyraider over southern Spain about December 1961 and flew into electrical wires, causing a blackout, according to McCain's own account as well as those of naval officers and enlistees aboard the carrier Intrepid.
In another incident, in 1965, McCain crashed a T-2 trainer jet in Virginia. This emphasizes the importance of having a father and a grandfather who were four stars in the Navy. If it was us, we would be commanding a rowboat on the Potomac.
After McCain was sent to Vietnam, his plane was destroyed in an explosion on the deck of an aircraft carrier in 1967. Three months later, he was shot down during a bombing mission over Hanoi and taken prisoner. He was not faulted in either of those cases and was later lauded for his heroism as a prisoner of war.
Maybe he felt politics was safer.
THE MAVERICK TAG
Described as a right-winger, and a "maverick". In the late 1980's, McCain became one of the "Keating Five" known to some extent that taking payoffs from corrupt savings and loans officials, passing legislation that deregulated the industry was OK. It was the basis for the “mortgage bubble”, more like a nice way of saying, the condom burst in the mortgage business with his help. He helped in getting it started.
The Lincoln Savings and Loan, headed by Keating, had become embroiled in scandal and federal regulators were looking to shut it down and investigate. Keating, who had known McCain began looking for a way to get the government to drop the investigation.
Between 1982 and 1987, Keating had given McCain $112,000. Directly after two meetings with Keating, McCain called Edwin J. Gray, the chief of the Federal Home Loan Bank Board, which was investigating Keating, and requested that Gray ease off the investigation. Gray testified that four other Senators, all of whom were recipients of political donations from Keating, had also contacted him with the same request. These became known as the "Keating Five."
And so, in 1994, McCain teamed up with Wisconsin Democratic Senator Russ Feingold to introduce the McCain-Feingold Act, a bill that would ostensibly diminish the influence of money in politics by placing limits on so-called "soft money" donations by corporations, union and other institutions. The bill was passed in 2002 and took effect in 2003."Bipartisan Campaign Reform Act of 2002 (BCRA, McCain–Feingold Act, Pub.L. 107-155, 116 Stat. 81, enacted 2002-03-27)." The largely useless McCain-Feingold Act was passed.
THE YEAR 2000 SHOT THAT MISSED
McCain ran for the Republican nomination in the 2000 presidential election, but was defeated by George W. Bush another aviator also considered dangerous by his flying peers. George however was never shot down like McCain because he never showed up when he had to. Some wished he had shown up.
The fight between Bush and McCain in South Carolina has become known as one of the nastiest and dirtiest fights in American electoral history given the fact that, by then, the Republican Party had already established itself as a particularly sleazy institution.
Trying again, in the 2008 Presidential GOP candidate race McCain easily beat a placid kind and enduring Mormon, Mitt Romney, an evangelical guitar player named Huckabee or Huckster for short, a popular libertarian former eye doctor, Ron Paul and a former 911 hero mayor of New York Rudy Giuliani, who gets increasingly nuttier day by day sounding like the head speaker at a “bong convention”. Hero to nutcase in ten short years.
After allowing the schmucks (Yiddish for political handlers) to pick a viable running mate, he chose instead to open Pandora’s box. Well, actually Palin’s box and she put him in a box. A coffin. McCain would go on to be defeated in the largest electoral landslide in the modern era. But the damage was done. The ultra conservative kooks found their Madonna. McCain publically stated he was proud of Palin and admired her. Privately laws do not allow us to print %@#*&(%$ other things we heard.
McCAIN'S WATER LOON
Not in touch, looms its ugly head again with McCain when he tells us our economy is sound on Tuesday and the ceiling is falling on his head on Wednesday, bad timing. Then he goes into acting 101 with his hurried trip back to Washington to convince Congress in a series of photo-ops during the stimulus package votes and hopefully the planet. To me I have seen better acting in a cartoon with Mighty Mouse when he sings, "Here I come to Save the Day!" McCain sang that song and crashed into a building because the rope was too short. It was more like, Here I come to save the …SPLATT ! ! ! !
The single reason McCain lost this election is that he was not John McCain. A true American hero, a fighter and a survivor, for that I honor him. I am a big fan of his, not his handlers. Where did he find that crew, I believe the infamous Karl Rove's name pops up… Granted he was a rogue pilot with a mind of his own, and spent five years in a hell hole in Vietnam, but he was shot down, and rule one is check your six, jink often, work with your wingman and so forth. His second biggest mistake was taking twenty of Bush's advisors with him for his campaign. Mitt Romney will learn that lesson in 2012 and for years to come.
They took the dark side, attacking Barack Obama’s birth certificate, his middle name, his religion, all with incredible inaccuracy, We refer to these decisions as Cranial Rectal Dyslexia. It is number one on the standard treatment forms in most Washington hospitals. Note: The second most common ailment in Washington is memory lapse. Occurs every day in Congress.
The commoners had just enough. Unprepared choices, popularity contests, musical skills, and not a brain amongst the candidates. Slogans not answers, rallies, not dispersion of good common sense and new ideas. And many showed a lack of constitutional knowledge, the spine of American Democracy.
TEMPER TEMPER
In speaking about whether he had ever witnessed McCain's notorious temper problem, former Pennsylvania Republican Senator Rick Santorum said, "I don't know anybody in the Senate who hasn't. Everybody has their McCain story."
McCain considers "national security" to be one his strengths. For instance, McCain stated unequivocally that Iraq had substantial weapons of mass destruction, and that Iraq was "a clear and present danger to the United States of America." McCain also claimed that U.S. forces would be greeted as liberators by the Iraqi people.
In April of 2007, after claiming that people were "not getting the full picture" of what was going on in Iraq, McCain made a stroll through an Baghdad market. He said there “are neighborhoods in Baghdad where you and I could walk through those neighborhoods, today.” He did not mention that he was accompanied by one-hundred soldiers, three Blackhawk helicopters, and two Apache gunships.
Later that same month, McCain was asked about possible military action against Iran. His response was to sing “Bomb bomb bomb, bomb bomb Iran” to the melody of the Beach Boys' song "Barbara Ann." Though this was widely criticized at the time, it should be noted, however, that deciding foreign policy based on punning lyrics to Beach Boys songs could not, at least, result in a worse situation than the one the United States finds itself in today.
McCain announced he was seeking the 2008 Presidential nomination of the Republican Party on the February 28, 2007. McCain would have been the oldest person ever to assume the Presidency at the initial ascension to office, being 72 years old and surpassing Ronald Reagan, who was 69 years old. With no clear front-runner in the race, McCain won the New Hampshire primary on January 8, 2008. He followed this with victories in South Carolina and Florida, after which he became the front-runner and presumptive nominee.
In short, when McCain did not win the presidency, it was not be because he failed to show the requisite verbal and requisite fellatio to the GOP base and party, but because he offered nothing in the form of a better future, a somewhat nutcase running mate and some really bad handling by Rove and crew. His reputation among the press and the American public as a "maverick," however, stands forever. Some joked we would probably be at war with Canada by now if he was elected.
Long overdue for retirement, he is still smarting over loosing to that Black guy, and asking himself, "Why did I ever agree to Palin”.