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Category: Culture War (Page 13 of 23)

John McCain has never used Google

Last month John McCain acknowledged that he doesn’t use a computer and that he never did a Google search. And, he wants to run the United States in the 21st century. I know, he has people who can do that for him, but it raises the question of whether this man is completely out of touch with the modern economy. It’s even more galling when one considers that McCain and his attack team are trying to portray Obama as the elitist.

And it’s an amazing country where an Arizona multimillionaire can attack a Chicago South Sider as an elitist and hope to make it stick. The Chicagoan was brought up by a single mom who had big ambitions for him, and he got scholarshipped into Harvard Law and was made president of the law review, all of it on his own hook, whereas the Arizonan is the son of an admiral and was ushered into Annapolis though an indifferent student, much like the Current Occupant, both of them men who are very lucky that their fathers were born before they were. The Chicagoan, who grew up without a father, wrote a book on his own, using a computer. The Arizonan hired people to write his for him. But because the Chicagoan can say what he thinks and make sense and the Arizonan cannot do that for more than 30 seconds at a time, the old guy is hoping to portray the skinny guy as arrogant.

Good luck with that, sir.

Meanwhile, the casual revelation last month that McCain has never figured out how to use a computer and has never sent e-mail or Googled is rather startling. It’s like admitting that you’ve never clipped your own toenails or that you didn’t know that toothpaste comes out of a tube because your valet always did that for you. It’s like being amazed at the sight of a supermarket scanner. What world does McCain live in? Where does he keep his sense of curiosity? My 94-year-old mother has sent e-mail. Does somebody plan to show him how it’s done and will they explain to him what “LOL” means?

Why did John McCain refer to John Lewis?

At Saddlebrook, John McCain was asked by Rick Warren to name three wise men he would consult with if he were elected president. Strangely, John McCain spoke about John Lewis. Lewis responds:

In response to McCain’s latest invocation of his name, Rep. Lewis said in a statement requested by Mother Jones, “I cannot stop one human being, even a presidential candidate, from admiring the courage and sacrifice of peaceful protesters on the Edmund Pettus Bridge or making comments about it.” But, he added, “Sen. McCain and I are colleagues in the US Congress, not confidantes. He does not consult me. And I do not consult him.”

John Lewis is a hero, and it’s proper that McCain and other politicians would honor and respect him, but it’s certainly misleading for McCain to suggest he would consult with Lewis and rely on his counsel. He has not done so in the past, and they agree on very little so it’s obvious he wouldn’t do so much in the future. It doesn’t sound like a very honest answer.

McCain’s smears

For years, John McCain has enjoyed a great relationship with the press. Liberal commentators like Joe Klein and Jonathan Alter had great respect for McCain, and it was reflected in their commentary.

Both have turned on McCain, however, now that he has begun using all of the sleazy camapign tactics he once used to decry. McCain has sunk into the gutter, so Alter and other commentators are going after him.

Alter has an excellent article detailing the falsehoods in McCain’s ads.

For about a month, McCain’s campaign has been resorting to charges that are patently false. When Obama traveled abroad in July, to positive reviews, McCain decided he had to make attack ads that went far beyond the norm. In the past, plainly deceptive ads were the province of the Republican National Committee or the Democratic National Committee or independent committees free to fling mud that didn’t bear the fingerprints of candidates. But not this time. These smears come directly from the candidate.

First, a McCain ad charged that Obama was responsible for higher gas prices, which was not just false but absurd. Next, an ad said Obama had cancelled his trip to visit wounded soldiers in Germany because he couldn’t bring the press along. I was in Germany at the time, and as every reporter knew, the visit to the military hospital was never going to be open, not even to a press pool. It appeared on no press schedules. Obama had cancelled the visit when it was clear that the Pentagon viewed it as political. The charge was simply untrue.

The now famous Britney Spears and Paris Hilton ad, accusing Obama of being a celebrity, wasn’t false, just dopey. But it detracted attention from a string of false McCain spots on taxes. One ad said that Obama would raise taxes on electricity. Nope, not in Obama’s plan. Another said 23 million small-business owners would pay higher taxes under Obama. Factcheck.org found that the “vast majority” of small-business owners would pay the same in taxes as they do now, and “many” would pay less. An ad saying Obama had voted for a bill raising taxes, for families making more than $42,000 a year, was found to be “false.” And McCain’s consistent claim that Obama would “raise taxes on the middle class”–a major theme of his campaign–is “simply false,” according to this neutral policy center. In truth, under Obama’s plan, families earning less than $150,000 a year would get a tax cut, and only those making more than $250,000 would see their taxes rise. Maybe by the time the Democratic Congress got done with it, Obama’s tax program would look different. It’s reasonable to speculate that Democrats will raise taxes. But the McCain ads weren’t talking about that, they were talking about Obama’s plan, which is easily accessed on his Web site. McCain’s description of his opponent’s plan was and is untrue. This isn’t opinion, it’s fact.

The question is whether McCain will pay a price with independents for taking this approach. We’ll see. It helps if pundits like Alter keep letting him have it. We know that conservative commentators will not let up on Obama.

College presidents want to lower drinking age

Finally, we now have a legitimate movement to examine whether the national drinking age makes sense. In the 1980’s, each state was able to set it’s own drinking age until the Reagan Administration pushed through a national drinking age of 21. The federal government has no constitutional right to enforce laws in this area, so they tied the drinking age limit to the highway funds sent to each state. States had to increase the drinking age or lose out on highway funds.

It’s a huge mistake, as the government criminalized behavior that is very natural for young adults. College kids are going to drink, and prohibition works just as poorly for young adults as it did for all adults. It made it harder for parents and other adults to teach responsible drinking, so the law actually makes binge drinking even worse.

Many college presidents have figured this out, and now they are taking the courageous step of asking for a debate on this issue, risking the wrath of organizations such as MADD.

College presidents from about 100 of the nation’s best-known universities, including Duke, Dartmouth and Ohio State, are calling on lawmakers to consider lowering the drinking age from 21 to 18, saying current laws actually encourage dangerous binge drinking on campus.

The movement called the Amethyst Initiative began quietly recruiting presidents more than a year ago to provoke national debate about the drinking age.

“This is a law that is routinely evaded,” said John McCardell, former president of Middlebury College in Vermont who started the organization. “It is a law that the people at whom it is directed believe is unjust and unfair and discriminatory.”

Other prominent schools in the group include Syracuse, Tufts, Colgate, Kenyon and Morehouse.

McCain says life begins at conception

John McCain’s simple statement at Saddlebrook might open up a can of worms for him in the general election on the issue of abortion. He clearly placated conservatives with his answer, but it also brings up a host of issues regarding brith control and abortion that he may not want to get into.

As I mentioned before, his clear statement will potentially turn off thousands of independent pro-choice women.

But, as Nancy Gibbs points out in Time, McCain will now have to answer very complicated questions about birth control and stem-cell research that are raised by his bright-line definition. As we’ve seen, McCain is terrible on domestic issues when he needs to get into the details. He often contradicts himself, and he’s not very good at nuance in these areas. The abortion mine field could be a huge problem for him in the fall.

Of course, Obama will face his own issues on abortion, which may hurt him with Catholics and Reagan Democrats. He can only hope that McCain creates his own problems with this issue as well.

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