McCain pulls POW card on Leno

As much of an Obama supporter as I am, for a number of years I was also big on McCain. While there are some serious issues I disagree with him on, I felt he was a no bullsh*t guy with lots of integrity, more a Republican by default than effort. Even when he announced he would be running for President I was rather excited, thinking that for once, if a Republican won I’d at least feel like it was someone trustworthy.

Unfortunately, McCain has repeatedly deepsixed his “straight talk” image, the most recent evidence of this being the cheap misuse of his experience as a Vietnam POW.

On the Tonight Show last night, Jay Leno brought up McCain’s recent failure to answer a reporter’s question of how many houses he owns. McCain’s response, in part:

“I spent 5 1/2 years in a prison cell without — I didn’t have a house. I didn’t have a kitchen table. I didn’t have a table. I didn’t have a chair,” he said.

“I spent those 5 1/2 years … not because I wanted to get a house when I got out.” [from Reuters]

This isn’t the first time McCain or his campaign have used his POW history to shallowly dodge an issue, and don’t expect it to be the last. There is also some indication that the use of this experience, which he used to rarely bring up, is actually on the direct advice of Karl Rove… indicating, again, that if McCain is elected the next four years will be a repeat of the last eight.

That McCain served his country deserves respect, and that his survival as a prisoner of war in Vietnam builds his character up greatly. However, using this experience to deflect issues and questions that have nothing to do with an issue of war is not only beneath him, but anyone who should serve to lead as a senator, governor, or President.

Waxman: No more Roves

“Why should we be using taxpayer dollars to have a person solely in charge of politics in the White House?” Henry Waxman asked hypothetically in an interview regarding legislation he’s trying to pass to prevent another Karl Rove-like adviser from being on the White House payroll.

Is Amazon.com trying to suppress books critical of the Bush Administration?

UPDATE 5/29/08: After numerous complaints by customers, Amazon has made this book available via Prime. As documented on an Amazon message board, numerous customers experienced the same runaround as I did it, being told it wasn’t available for being oversized, only later to be told that the book was mistaken listed as not eligible for Amazon Prime due to a combination of computer and human errors. Considering this book rocketed to number one and has been a front page news item for days, I still find the whole situation highly suspect. The Bugliosi book is also now available for Prime.

I use Amazon.com enough that I pay an extra $80 or so per year to be a “Prime” member, allowing for free, 2 day shipping on just about anything. The exception tends to be toys, appliances, and other items that aren’t sold and/or shipped directly from Amazon, but even then it’s rare for an item to fall outside of being Prime.

However, I’ve never, ever seen a new book listed as “not eligible for Amazon Prime” at least until not over the past few days.

The two books are both high critical of the Bush Administration. The first is Vincent Bugliosi’s The Prosecution of George W. Bush for Murder, which I wrote about a few days ago. The second is former White House press secretary Scott McClellan’s What Happened: Inside the Bush White House and Washington’s Culture of Deception.

A search of other political issue related non-fiction books on Amazon’s Top 100 found no other books listed as “not eligible for Amazon Prime.”