Seymour Hersch, who exposed the My Lai Massacre in the Vietnam war, and the Abu Ghraib scandal in Iraq, has long insisted that the Bush administration is guilty of war crimes and maintains that the US government has videotapes of boys being sodomized at Abu Ghraib.

Hersh, who has been described by hard-core neocons as “the closest thing American journalism has to a terrorist,” spoke before the election, in the spirit of hopefulness:

“You cannot believe how many people have told me to call them on 20 January [the date of Obama’s inauguration]… [Saying] You wanna know about abuses and violations? Call me then.”

While I was traveling overseas, our financial markets, experienced another…unfortunately…another round of upheaval…

Our financial market approach should include encouraging increased capital in financial institutions by removing regulatory accounting, and tax impediments to raising capital

On Health Care, this month!:

McCain, September 2008:

Opening up the health insurance market to more vigorous nationwide competition, as we have done over the last decade in banking, would provide more choices of innovative products less burdened by the worst excesses of state-based regulation

These people make me laugh and make me puke at the same time!

Today’s McCain campaign appearance song was the theme from Top Gun, “Danger Zone.” (Did you know that McCain was a fighter pilot/Pow?). This is the movie in which Tom Cruise starred as ‘Maverick.’ What a coincidence!

There are several ironies around this approach:

First off, McCain never flew fighter planes and never claimed to.

Second, The LA times is reporting this week that the Naval Aviation Safety Center deemed him a pilot of ‘mishaps.’

This report pretty much shows up some untruths to his stories as well. For example, John McCain wrote, in ‘Faith of Our Fathers’:

I crashed a plane in Corpus Christi Bay one Saturday morning. The engine quit while I was practicing landings…I took a few painkillers and hit the sack to rest my aching back for a few hours….I was out carousing, injured back and all, later that evening.

But the Washington Post accessed the actual Navy reports:

The official Navy report into the Corpus Christi accident on March 12, 1960, concludes that the AD-6 Skyraider trainer crashed because McCain failed to “maintain an airspeed above the stall speed.” It attributed the accident to “the preoccupation of the pilot coupled with a power setting too low to maintain level flight.” The single-engine prop plane sank to the bottom of Corpus Christi Bay. McCain was rescued by a helicopter after swimming to the surface.

The accident report excluded a series of other possible factors, including engine failure and disorientation of the pilot due to vertigo. It recorded pilot error as “the sole contributing factor” to the accident.

But the number one reason is this: The pilot who the whole Tom Cruise “Maverick’ character was modeled on, California Rep. Randy ‘Duke’ Cunningham (R), is now serving the longest sentence of any member of congress in history (eight-year, four-month sentence for conspiracy, tax evasion & bribery). This man was no hero - he sold his soul to the defense industry, steering contracts worth millions to his co-conspirators. He even bought a $2.5 million mansion while he was making $160,000 a year!

Upon his sentencing, he groveled, literally in tears (watch the video):

The truth is I broke the law, concealed my conduct and disgraced my office…I know I will forfeit my reputation, my worldly possessions — most importantly the trust of my friends and family.

“And I’ve joined this team that is a team of mavericks with John McCain”:

“I think that’s why we need to send the maverick from the Senate and put him in the White House”:

“That’s what John McCain has been known for in all these years. He has been the maverick”:

“What do you expect? A team of mavericks, of course we’re not going to agree on 100 percent of everything”:

“They are looking for change. And John McCain has been the consummate maverick in the Senate over all these years”:

“John McCain’s maverick position that he’s in, that’s really prompt up to and indicated by the supporters that he has” (from the transcript, really!):

Bush Last week:
“Our capital markets are flexible and resilient and can deal with these adjustments”

Bush Today:
“Our entire economy is in danger…Without immediate action by Congress, America can slip into a major panic”

McCain Last week:
“I believe, still, the fundamentals of our economy are strong”

McCain today:
“The whole future of the American economy is in danger…If we do not act, credit will dry up with grave consequences for workers and businesses across the American economy”

Need I say more?

John McCain, in a magazine article called “Better Health Care at Lower Cost for Every American” explains that we should deregulate the health care industry, as him and his boys deregulated the banking industry a few years back…Because it has worked so well!:

Opening up the health insurance market to more vigorous nationwide competition, as we have done over the last decade in banking, would provide more choices of innovative products less burdened by the worst excesses of state-based regulation

University of Nebraska researchers have demonstrated a correlation between higher general fear levels and the likelihood of someone being a ‘conservative:

Compared to staunch liberals, people with strongly conservative views were three times more fearful after factoring out the effects of gender, age, income and education, all of which can affect political attitudes.

…Other once-hailed McCain efforts – his cultivation of the press (“my base”) and even his fight for campaign finance reform (launched in the wake of his embarrassment over the Keating Five scandal) now seem to have been simply maneuvers. The “Straight Talk Express” – a brilliant p.r. stroke in 2000 – has now been shut down.

…Other aspects of McCain, including his temperament, began to trouble me. He seemed disturbingly bellicose. He gave the Iraq war unflagging support no matter the facts. He still talks about “winning” the war, though George W. Bush gave that up some time ago. As the war became increasingly unpopular, he employed the useful technique of blaming its execution rather than recognizing the misconceptions that had led him to be one of the most enthusiastic champions of the war in the first place.

Similarly, in making a big issue of having backed the surge (and simplifying the reasons for its apparent success), he preempts debate on the very idea of the war. He has talked (and sung) loosely about attacking Iran. More recently, he oversimplified this summer’s events in Georgia and made intemperate remarks about Russia, about which he’s been more belligerent than the administration for some time. (He has his own set of neocons.)

…By then I had already concluded that that there was a disturbingly erratic side of McCain’s nature. There’s a certain lack of seriousness in him. And he does not appear to be a reflective man, or very interested in domestic issues. One cannot imagine him ruminating late into the night about, say, how to educate and train Americans for the new global and technological challenges.

…Now he’s back to declaring himself a maverick, but it’s not clear what that means. If he gains the presidency, is he going to rebel against the base he’s now depending on to get him elected? (Hence his selection of running mate Sarah Palin.) Campaigns matter. If he means “shaking up the system” (which is not the same thing), opposing earmarks doesn’t cut it.

McCain’s recent conduct of his campaign – his willingness to lie repeatedly (including in his acceptance speech) and to play Russian roulette with the vice-presidency, in order to fulfill his long-held ambition – has reinforced my earlier, and growing, sense that John McCain is not a principled man.
In fact, it’s not clear who he is.