The real John McCain

This is great. An email from the liberal advocacy group Moveon.org points out a few things about McCain, some of which you may not know. I didn't. They're asking recipients to forward the email to others in their address books.

The thing is, I figure most of the people in my address book are only slightly more likely to vote for McCain than I am, and anyway may already be on the MoveOn list. Or, like PJ and Jeopardygirl, are not American citizens.

So I've chosen to do this instead: Below, you will find selections from the email, with the provided links, and occasional commentary by me. Should you want me to forward the whole e-mail to you, gimmie a holler.

According to Bloomberg News, McCain is more hawkish than Bush on Iraq, Russia and China. Conservative columnist Pat Buchanan says McCain "will make Cheney look like Gandhi."

The Children's Defense Fund rated McCain as the worst senator in Congress for children. He voted against the children's health care bill last year, then defended Bush's veto of the bill.

One Republican senator said: "The thought of his being president sends a cold chill down my spine. He's erratic. He's hotheaded. He loses his temper and he worries me."

McCain talks a lot about taking on special interests, but his campaign manager and top advisers are actually lobbyists. The government watchdog group Public Citizen says McCain has 59 lobbyists raising money for his campaign, more than any of the other presidential candidates.

This is my favorite sentence from the ABCNews story linked above:

"Everyone knows that John McCain is someone who has always stood on principle, taking stances against special interests," responded [McCain spokesperson B.J.]Boling when ABCNews.com asked whether the campaign would provide more disclosure.

Maybe not absolutely every time, but 99% of the time whenever anyone talks about something that "everyone knows," I get suspicious that I'm being spun. You know why? Things that "everyone knows"...nobody has to tell us. The things people have to tell us are things that we don't know that they want us to (or that they want is to believe).

(I'm the same way about "And I've always said this." Usually, it means someone is changing their position and wants to muddy their tracks.)

The pastor McCain calls his "spiritual guide," Rod Parsley, believes America's founding mission is to destroy Islam, which he calls a "false religion." McCain sought the political support of right-wing preacher John Hagee, who believes Hurricane Katrina was God's punishment for gay rights and called the Catholic Church "the Antichrist" and a "false cult."

Ok, I've made a decision. From now on, any blog I read that fires on Obama for his former pastor, the Rev. Jeremiah Wright, I'm searching to see what stance they're taking, if any, on McCain and these preachers.

If they're letting him walk, or just ignoring it, I'm not reading that blog anymore.

He positions himself as pro-environment, but he scored a 0—yes, zero—from the League of Conservation Voters last year.

Just a couple of the reasons why he did are that he dodged a vote on clean energy (causing a measure to fail)...and then his office lied about it to the Sierra Club.