McCain puts "Country first"? Don't you believe it.

Oh my, folks. Run, don't walk, over to Common Dreams and read the article entitled "Country Last" by David Michael Green. Read all of it. I'll start you off with this sample:

McCain began the week with an act that, in any healthy democracy, would have instantly disqualified him to be the city dogcatcher in Wasilla, Alaska, let alone leader of the free world. He has been telling us for years that the fight against Islamofascism is the transcendental struggle of our time. He has been telling us the most important job of the Vice President is be qualified to run the country at a moment's notice (not least because this particular dude is a seventy-two year-old four-time cancer survivor). He's been telling us over and over that Iraq is the central front in the war against terrorism. Then he chooses someone who has admitted that she doesn't really know anything about Iraq, ‘cause she's been focused on Alaska state government. Given that the war has been the premier foreign policy issue for America for half a decade now, we also can safely assume, I'm sure, that she knows even less about the rest of the world.

This definitely demonstrates two things about John McCain. First, that his judgement is deeply impaired. We know, for example, that he had hardly vetted Sarah Palin at all, other than within the last couple of days before the announcement. We know, from Alaskan Republicans no less, that no one from the McCain campaign was up there asking questions prior to the choice (but they are now!). We know that McCain had met her all of once before making the choice. Americans really need to ask themselves, do we truly want another four years of a president who goes on gut hunches and politicizes every decision?

Even more importantly, though, this choice tells us that McCain was more than willing to do something that would benefit his personal career ambitions, regardless of the consequences for the country and the world. Palin may help him have a shot at winning the presidency -- perhaps by attracting the votes of unsophisticated women, certainly by rallying the regressive freakoids in his party -- but it is ludicrous to believe that she is remotely qualified, let alone most qualified, to handle what McCain himself says is the most important project of our time. The man who sickeningly implies that his opponent is less patriotic than he is has exacerbated that base assault on decency and the fabric of American democracy by hypocritically doing exactly the opposite of what he claims as his campaign theme. The Palin pick was definitive proof that McCain puts country last -- even by the standards of his own formulation.

And while we're at it about McCain putting his country last, take a look at this comment to the above article:

Anyone who can read should know by now that McCain cracked in prison and was not a hero but a collaborator. "Songbird" was Radio Hanoi's go-to apologist. Broadcast this far and wide.

I will never forgive the scumbag Republicans for the way they ridiculed Kerry's Viet Nam service in 2004, and I'm no Kerry fan. But nothing is off limits to them, and I'm sick of the "hands-off McCain" attitude everyone else has. He is a womanizer still, was a failure at the USNA, he crashed three airplanes under suspicious circumstances before even being sent to Viet Nam (and would have washed out of flight status had his daddy been anybody but an Admiral), he started the fire on the USS Forrestal which killed 150 sailors, and he cracked in prison camp and became what the Republicans would eagerly call a traitor if he were not a member of the GOP.

But it seems American stupidity knows no bounds. I grieve for my country. I really, really do.