hes a republican, he was tight with regan... you suprised that hes racist?
They booed him?
Damn!
He's also from a state that--as I recall--was rather late to establish the holidy.
Well, if McCain voted against the MLK holiday, he wasn't alone in opposing it in his home state. IIRC, around that time Arizona had a really buffoonish ass-hat of a governor called John Meacham (?) who made some rather nasty remarks about the proposed MLK holiday and made state offices NOT observe the holiday even after the Federal government passed it. This earned AZ some bad publicity, leading the NFL to pull a future Super Bowl from Tempe.
Meacham later was forced from office or lost reelection as he was an embarrassment.
Hubris,
It's not the "KKK Flag." It is, as per Gilly's old writings,
THE AMERICAN SWATSTIKA.
Sorry, hit post before I was ready. As I was saying, REPEAT the "American Swatstika" meme. Repeat it often. Whenever someone brings up the topic of the (traitor, looser) "Confederate" flag, say "Oh, you mean the American Swastika?"
Beat that meme into the mainstream.
McCain's always been a racist prick.
He didn't change to get closer to the right wing nutters he always was one.
He was just a hell of alot better at hiding it.
I hear you Jen on the "American swastika" idea but for one objection.
The swastika has meaning at least in Asia as a symbol of health.
I remember being stunned at the swastika tiles on an outdoor shower I saw at a beach in San Diego until one of the surfers enlightened me.
The swastika has been turned into something bad. The confederate flag never served a good purpose.
I'm surprised, frankly, that he even tried to reach out to an african american audience. Bush and Mehlman tried that in the early days but since then the republican strategy, I thought, was to talk about african american voters as something the republicans *want* but *can't get* because democrats stand in the way keeping them "on the plantation" of "affirmative action." This strategy is, in fact, aimed at reassuring the suburban white voter that they can vote for republican tax cuts without being racist, and reassure republican racists that they can vote for republican race policies and still get tax cuts. In other words republican interest in african american votes (other than suppressing them) is all a head fake. so I'm surprised he even showed up.
aimai
John Meacham
Evan. Batshit crazy, he was...
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Evan_Mecham
Yes, he was a total ashhole.
"There's a man we call our Leader
Who's brave and fine and mad,
And we'll follow him forever
Though his mental state is bad..."
Now, I wouldn't know myself, but there are those who say that McCain's a Communist buttfucker whose wife rode with bikers in her youth ...
Baltogeek -
Yes, in Buddhism there is a swastika, but the arms of the swastika are somewhat different - the Nazis changed the position of it to make their symbol.
Thanks for the correction - Evan Mecham. Boy, was he a bigger nutbrain than I remembered!
Assuming McCain really didn't know all that much about MLK, why did he vote at all?! What is with these Congress critters?! Hillary voted for the war without even bothering to read that NIE she was provided with. Aren't we paying these people enough and giving them full staffs to reasonably expect them to know what they are voting for?
McCain is McCain. He can't be cursed any more than that.
I first heard of the American swastika from Jello Biafra. So that's two people I respect who've pointed that out. Works for me.
Was McCain at the Lorraine Motel? What was he thinking?
It was in 1987, four full years after voting against establishing MLK day that Arizona Gov Mecham cancelled MLK day, and McCain was fine with that decision then. He hadn't changed his mind at all.
It didn't sound like he'd learned any kind of lesson even today when he spoke in Memphis. He was a million miles away from that audience.
I heard a little of McSame's speech today........... and man, it sounded tired, lame and just plain underwhelming (setting aside his views on MLK). Sure, he might be able to string four more words together than the present incumbent, but I don't think he's got the physical or mental energy to make it through to May, let alone November.
If he ever gets elected, there's going to be regular nap time at 1600 Penn. Ave.
I remember being stunned at the swastika tiles on an outdoor shower I saw at a beach in San Diego until one of the surfers enlightened me.
Yeah -- it's at the pool I swim at. I was taken aback by the tiles at first, too, until I found out the pool had been built in 1915 (i.e., well before the Nazis even existed).
Re the Confederate flag: I've been calling it "The Flag of Southern Treason" for years to anyone who brings it up.
The swastika, in both orientations, was extremely popular in the US and Europe during the first three decades of the 20th century, for all sorts of interesting historical reasons unconnected to Naziism. I have a 1926 edition of Kipling's collected poetry with a great big swastika on the cover. There's even a story I've heard of a synagogue in NYC that had an entryway floor done in a linked swastika pattern in the late 1920s. They ripped it up less than a decade later, for obvious reasons.
The "swastika" was a popular Native American before the crazy nazi's got ahold of it. The Navajo called it "whirling logs" and I believe it was a symbol of luck or goodwill. Early Navajo rugs:
http://rivertradingpost.com/
hist...navajorugs2.htm
This was also a motif used across the early western cowboy/cowgirl saddles, gloves, boots and such. That all ended, of course, when it became a symbol of such evil.
Early Arizona highway markers, in the 1920's I think, sported the "whirling logs" motif as well.
Arizona has a history of terrible governors. mecham wasn't alone. It was no surprise such a red red state could elect a woman Democrat with 60% of the vote. She endorsed Obama btw 
There are some amazing similarities between mccain's placement in Arizona and renzi's. Both sons' of big military brass, both married very wealthy, well connected wives, both based out of VA and pop up in "newly created AZ1", both use wife's money for campaign, both get called to question for for it. Both on the hot path to keep AZ senate seats from falling to dems. Renzi was going to run for mccain's seat next, now I don't know since he's been indicted an all.
Right now AZ is faces probably the worst deficit at $107B+ that popped up in the last 8 months... and has to be resolved by end of June. Not a good time to have a state funded job in AZ or have your retirement with the state who, I'm sure invested heavily in real estate. People are bailing left and right where I work.
Arizona is the worst state. I'm glad they boooed him. Can't stand him :-|
Evan Mecham died a month or so ago.
To show just memorably insane he was, when I heard the radio announcement of his death, nearly twenty years after his impeachment and removal from office, the words that leaped involuntarily to my lips were: "Oh, thank God!"
I think it's a mistake to take serious what "McCain thinks." McCain is nothing more than a panderer to specific classes of Republican interest groups who's currently angling for the Presidency. Not complex. This "maverick" stuff is garbage; if you believe that you have been fooled well.
I know that McCain survived imprisonment and torture, but surviving doesn't make you a hero, just means you didn't die. I am glad he survived, of course, and got repatriated here. But it's tempting to put this guy into the category of "hero" or "racist scum" when actually he's just a reasonably careful, reasonably successful political whore with an ego and a temper.
Yet, he's obviously fooling some of the people all of the time.
Anyone who is considering voting Republican at this point should be considered a danger to themselves and others.
McCain is nothing more than a panderer
I misread this initially as "McCain is nothing more than a pander" and was going to snark about it, but then I realized how true it was.
Nothing about McSame is real. All of what he does exists for a single, specific, directed purpose: to pander to whoever will give him votes and elect him to the President's office. He has ceased to be anything meaningful and become... a kind of abstract entity, in which people project onto him what they think. People see him as whatever they want to see - a naval officer, a politician, a lying scumbag, a giant chicken - because he's lost all his personal definition.
McCain is a pander, indeed.
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