McCain's Stones and Glass Houses

Will the real Sarah Palin and John McCain stand up. The characatures they are presenting to the American people are not even close to who they really are.

Sarah Palin's first foray into politics in the 1980's was as a supporter for Patrick J. Buchanan's bid for the Presidency. Most Americans are unaware that Pat Buchanan recently authored a book on World War II in which he suggested that Hitler was simply misunderstood. In her Republican Nominating Convention acceptance speech, Sarah Palin quoted a man who once called for the assassinations of Franklin Delano Roosevelt and Robert Francis Kennedy; a man so radical he was thrown out of the ultra-conservative John Birch Society. And in her debate last week, Sarah Palin sadly lamented that Dick Cheney hadn't expanded the powers of the Vice Presidency enough. If Dick Cheney had expanded the powers of the Vice Presidency any further he would have been, in effect, a co-President, and George W. Bush would have been relegated to a figurehead. Sarah Palin is no maverick. Sarah Palin is a radical, rightwing fascist.

Now Sarah Palin is going around the country telling voters that Barack Obama is palling around with a known domestic terrorist from the 1960's. Bill Ayers was never convicted or even charged with a crime. While Bill Ayers is the Obama's neighbor in Chicago and his kids go to school with the Obama kids, it stretches credulity to claim they are pals. But if Sarah Palin wants to throw that stone then she and John McCain should expect a stone in return.

John McCain's association with convicted felon Charles Keating forced McCain to sit through a full trial before the United States Senate on ethics charges in 1987. The result of that trial was a slap on the wrist for McCain, and McCain's first act as a so called maverick. His work on campaign finance reform was a direct result of his association with Charles Keating and the trouble it caused him. That work was not the work of a maverick. It was the work of a man trying desparately to avoid coming to terms with a character flaw that allowed him to sell the influence of his office to try and quell a criminal investigation against a campaign donor.

John McCain is not the heroic reformer he plays himself to be. And Sarah Palin is a fraud. I only hope the American people are smart enough to see the truth for themselves. McCain-Palin 08 can't win this election on the issues because their plans are essentially to continue the work of George W. Bush. Since they can't argue the issues, they are going to argue character. Well if they want that argument, in the words of George W. Bush, "Bring it on!"