Incredible

God, the McCain campaign just makes me sad sometimes. They can't come up with a logo and stick with it. When they do, it's a blatant copy of the Obama logo and iconography. They can't come up with their own slogan ("A Leader We Can Believe In" sounds an awful lot like "Change We Can Believe In"), and even then they can't stick with their choice of someone else's slogan: they're now using a line the Tories ran with in England in the '70s. "Don't Hope for a Better Life; Vote for One."

Also, McCain got 300 economists to sign a letter saying they like his economic plan. Only, in order to get them to do that he took out two big chunks of his policy (balancing the budget, gas tax holiday), and oops! Looks like a bunch of them signed without reading, or think it's a mistake, or basically don't actually support the plan at all.

He goes on CNN and when a reporter actually asks him how (gasp!) he plans to entrench the Bush tax cuts, add more tax cuts, expand the Pentagon's budget, keep two wars going (and likely attack Iran) and still balance the budget by 2013, he can't explain it. Fancy that. Not only that, he gets pretty freaking pissed off.

Oh, and he said Social Security was a disgrace and "broken" because it takes taxes from young workers and gives the money to old people. Translation: Social Security is a disgrace because it's Social Security and not something else. See, the thing is, "broken" implies that at one point it worked differently and properly. But Social Security has NEVER worked differently. That is HOW IT WORKS. (And if that's so unfair, well, young workers get their turn when they get older. See? Like magic!) If you want to privatize (which he does, but only if you don't call it privatizing), we can have that debate, but don't pretend like you're "fixing" Social Security. You're switching it out for something else.

Oh, and according to this list, McCain, who likes to accuse Obama of flip-flopping all the time, has changed his mind 61 times of late. On every issue imaginable. And that doesn't even count the ones where he changed his position on the same subject more than once--each of those is counted as one, not two or three.


So, yes, that makes me pityingly sad. But what makes me really fucking angry is a media who couldn't be bothered, knowledgeable, or ethical enough to actually TELL PEOPLE THIS.

ETA: I forgot to mention that every time someone like, oh, a decorated retired general (cough cough Wesley Clark) ventures to mention that McCain's military experience, while honorable, has nothing to do with leading, managing, or being president, the campaign runs to Mama (i.e. the media) and whines "He said I'm not a patriot! Why's he spitting on my shiny medals? Why does he HATE AMERICA? WAAAAAH!" The fact that this campaign simply cannot seriously and calmly engage with ANY CRITICISM is very telling.