John McCain Discovers America: Senator McShame and the Wreckage

[Better Believe It]

Weekend Edition
August 23 / 4, 2008

Sen. McShame and the Wreckage
John McCain Discovers America
By DAVID MICHAEL GREEN

So how ‘bout that John McCain, eh? For an old geezer who hasn’t yet tried out the Internets, he’s a pretty sharp feller, no? Not only has he figured out that his country is worse off than it was four years ago, he’s even running ads saying so.

At one level, that seems a bit odd. For the majority of the last four years, his party and his ideology have controlled the entirety of the federal government. Nor did that change much, even after the other set of wankers supposedly got control of Congress following the 2006 election. It ain’t exactly like congressional Democrats have tried to do anything at all with their gavels over the last eighteen months, but whenever they accidentally did, Mitch McConnell and his band of merry filibusterers made sure nothing ever actually happened. And for the odd item that somehow did manage to escape Congress, there was old what’s-his-name down on the other end of Pennsylvania Avenue waving his veto pen. Say, remind me again, wouldya – which party is he in?

Let’s be clear on this, shall we? As successful as Harry Reid and Nancy Pelosi have been at doing absolutely nothing, it isn’t doing nothing that got this country into its present predicament. The Grand Old ‘Pocalypse will no doubt try to run and hide from themselves a thousand times a day, but the truth is nevertheless fully transparent: This is a Republican bummer, through and through.

Our economy is in shambles, though the president insists that the ‘fundamentals’ are just fine, and McCain’s former chief economic advisor, Phil Gramm, told Americans that there was no real recession going on and they should just stop whining about it. Gasoline prices have hit the stratosphere, to the point where many people can no longer even afford to get to work and make the money necessary to fill their tanks. Wait ‘til they see their home heating bills this winter. Too bad the election can’t be in February, eh? Meanwhile, the wealthiest Americans have just been raking it in, hand over fist, these last years, while middle class workers have been stuck, with stagnant wages, now being eaten alive by rising inflation to boot.

Please read the entire article at:

http://www.counterpunch.org/green08232008.html