CNN Presents

I had been out for a good part of the day paying bills and doing a litle shopping. It is that time of the year to start getting home made goods ready for the fair. So returning to the house around 3 pm, to enjoy a subway sandwich and fries and a soda, I turned on CNN. Wolf Blitzer had sound bites of a personal interview with Senator John McCain. Among other things, Senator McCain felt free to criticize Senator Obama for failing to visit wounded troops at a military hospital in Germany. Well, seems the Pentagon let it be known that they didn't want presidential candidate Obama visiting the military hospital, but they wouldn't mind Senator Obama visiting the hospital, a private visit without photo ops. While radical bloggers picked up on that and also voiced their own criticisms; wasn't that the Pentagon's call to make? And isn't the ultimate authority over the Pentagon still GW Bush? Seems to me that all McCain and the narsty bloggers could have done is simply ask why the Pentagon didn't want a Senator Obama campaign event staged at that hospital? I would have asked. And it looks to me that Senator Obama only deferred to the Pentagon's wishes. Jeffrey Toobin made the rather remarkable argument that it makes Obama look bad. To initially schedule such a visit and then abandon it at presumably the Pentagon's wishes. Here is what ought to make a politician look bad: Such as GW engaging in plenty of photo ops with wounded soldiers trying to recover from the wars in Iraq or Afghanistan. But at the same time, GW pushes the sort of domestic policy that throws the same vets under the bus. And McCain's criticism? He'd be in a better position to criticize if he hadn't been busy himself throwing vets under the bus by his obstinent refusal to support GI Bills for vets, among other things.

Quite frankly, McCain had better watch what he is saying.

McCain also had a lot of whining about Obama, that he would love to visit Germany... And get media coverage? And draw ginormous crowds? Meanwhile, McCain in his sound bite interviews with Blitzer demonstrated just how much he was in lock step with GW circa 2005. Or 2006 or even 2007. We have successes in Iraq. But they are fragile. On "Lou Dobbs Tonight," Errol Lewis (?) had the audacity to ask what would McCain define as "victory?" Indeed, in the years in which we had been at war in Iraq, what did GW define as victory? You begin to wonder if McCain is terrified of leaving Iraq? Robert Zimmerman, one of the political analysts on Dobbs' show declared that McCain was practically accusing Obama of treason. That sounded exactly like what GW was prepared to do in 2002, 2004, 2006. Problem for GW, it didn't work in 2006. Wonder why? Hurricane Katrina maybe? Quite frankly, I don't think that I would ever want as a president a guy who acts possessive and controlling. It will all go poof and disappear into dust if I don't keep an eye on it.

For McCain's information, the American people are looking at their wallets this year, not the war McCain wants to continue.

So McCain ridicules and whines and gets little media attention. And on CBS, seems McCain's ridiculing and whining isn't helping his poll numbers any. The Daily Show with Jon Stewart showed us a clip of McCain touring a grocery store and nearly getting whacked by killer cans of applesauce cascading off the shelf. Something that CNN did not want to present. McCain ends up looking like an also ran, and even further, an idiot. And finally, McCain makes the rather interesting proclamation that he knows how to fight and win wars. Okay, I'll take that and run with it. McCain got shot down in Vietnam and spent several years as a POW. He was hardly in a position to fight and win a war as a POW. And it is too bad that CNN has yet to challenge him on it. As a Senator, he talks up a surge, that worked, except we can't trust the results of such a success. Either it worked or it didn't.

On Wolf Blitzer's show, "The Situation Room," some guy from the Weekly Standard claimed McCain was self-assured and acted like he knew what he was talking about. I have yet to see where McCain knows what he is talking about at any time. The surge worked, except it didn't. If CNN doesn't want to challenge McCain's waffling positions, this blog post will. Either the surge worked, and that is rationale enough for American troops to leave Iraq with honor, or it didn't. McCain, you can't have it both ways.