The ship is sinking, Senator.

In order for you guys and gals to be informed about Senator McCain, you’d have to dig deep to discover the dirt and the truth. Thankfully, the Rolling Stone is a time-saver. Tim Dickinson (genius that he is) wrote a mini-biography of John McCain that could be consumed over a long lunch, all 27 printer-friendly pages of it.

I’m sure that many of you don’t have that kind of time on your hands. Luckily, I do. Read on for a few insights into the senator’s hush-hush break-up with first wife Carol Shepp, his recklessness in the armed forces, and the temper that earned him a nickname “mean little f*cker.” 

Warning: the article is explicit.

Fun fact from McCain’s childhood:

“The senator wrote in Faith of My Fathers: ”At the smallest provocation,’ he would hold his breath until he passed out: ‘I would go off in a mad frenzy, and then, suddenly, crash to the floor unconscious.’ His parents cured him of this habit in a way only a CIA interrogator could appreciate: by dropping their blue-faced boy in a bathtub of ice-cold water.’”

Academy years of carelessness and stupidity:

“John Sidney McCain III and George Walker Bush both represent the third generation of American dynasties. Both were born into positions of privilege against which they rebelled into mediocrity…In one vital respect, however, the comparison is deeply unfair to the current president: George W. Bush was a much better pilot.”

“McCain’s self-described ‘four-year course of insubordination’ ended with him graduating fifth from the bottom — 894th out of a class of 899. It was a record of mediocrity he would continue as a pilot.”

“McCain had a knack for stalling out his planes in midflight. He was still in training, in Texas, when he crashed his first plane into Corpus Christi Bay during a routine practice landing. The plane stalled, and McCain was knocked cold on impact. When he came to, the plane was underwater, and he had to swim to the surface to be rescued. Some might take such a near-death experience as a wake-up call: McCain took some painkillers and a nap, and then went out carousing that night.“

A young McCain destroyed several airplanes and damage government ships due to his carelessness. These same accidents resulted in numerous injuries sustained by ship crews. His destruction was something that would have gotten other people kicked out of the military. Luckily for McCain, his family is well connected.

Capture in Vietnam:

“There is no question that McCain suffered hideously in North Vietnam. His ejection over a lake in downtown Hanoi broke his knee and both his arms. During his capture, he was bayoneted in the ankle and the groin, and had his shoulder smashed by a rifle butt. His tormentors dragged McCain’s broken body to a cell and seemed content to let him expire from his injuries. For the next two years, there were few days that he was not in agony.”

“But the subsequent tale of McCain’s mistreatment — and the transformation it is alleged to have produced — are both deeply flawed. The Code of Conduct that governed POWs was incredibly rigid; few soldiers lived up to its dictate that they ‘give no information’…and to make no ‘statements disloyal to my country.’“

“Soon after McCain hit the ground in Hanoi, the code went out the window. ‘I’ll give you military information if you will take me to the hospital,’ he later admitted pleading with his captors. McCain now insists the offer was a bluff…In fact, his wounds were attended to only after the North Vietnamese discovered that his father was a Navy admiral.”

Meeting Cindy’s millions, dumping Carol:

“In the spring of 1979, while conducting official business for the Navy, the still-married McCain encountered Cindy Lou Hensley, a willowy former cheerleader for USC…For nearly a year the two carried on a cross-country romance while McCain was still living with Carol: Court documents filed with their divorce proceeding indicate that they ‘cohabitated as husband and wife’ for the first nine months of the affair.”

“Although McCain stresses in his memoir that he married Cindy three months after divorcing Carol, he was still legally married to his first wife when he and Cindy were issued a marriage license from the state of Arizona. The divorce was finalized on April 2nd, 1980. McCain’s second marriage…was consummated only six weeks later, on May 17th. The union gave McCain access to great wealth: Cindy, whose father was the exclusive distributor for Budweiser in the Phoenix area, is now worth an estimated $100 million.”

An adulterer and a liar, what are the chances! I don’t think such a man deserves to be the president of any country. May I remind you that McCain divorced first wife Carol after she had an accident that left her paralyzed. Obviously, the vows John took as he said ‘I do’ meant very little. Perhaps it’s for the best, I’m sure Cindy and John deserve each other.

War, war, war:

“A month after 9/11, with the U.S. bombing Kabul and reeling from the anthrax scare, McCain assured David Letterman that ‘we’ll do fine’ in Afghanistan.”

“In September 2002, McCain assured Americans that the war would be ‘fairly easy’ with an ‘overwhelming victory in a very short period of time.’ On the eve of the invasion, Hardball host Chris Matthews asked McCain, ‘Are you one of those who holds up an optimistic view of the postwar scene? Do you believe that the people of Iraq, or at least a large number of them, will treat us as liberators?’”

“McCain was emphatic: ‘Absolutely. Absolutely.’”

“Today, however, McCain insists that he predicted a protracted struggle from the outset. ‘The American people were led to believe this could be some kind of day at the beach,’ he said in August 2006, ‘which many of us fully understood from the beginning would be a very, very difficult undertaking.’”

Wrong again. Lied again.

John McCain knows even less about foreign policy than about the economy. If he thinks that the current foundations of the economy are “strong,” then of course he would blindly believe that the US would win the wars in the Middle East.

Wrong about Wall Street, drilling for oil, and torture:

“In March, McCain insisted to The Wall Street Journal that he is ‘always for less regulation.’“

“In June of this year, McCain reversed his decades-long opposition to coastal drilling — shortly before cashing $28,500 from 13 donors linked to Hess Oil.”

“In 2005, in a highly public fight, McCain battled the president to stop the torture of enemy combatants…a year later, as he prepared to launch his presidential campaign, McCain cut a deal with the White House that allows the Bush administration to imprison detainees indefinitely and to flout the Geneva Conventions’ prohibitions against torture.”

Pancake world of John McCain:

“McCain has become the kind of politician he ran against in 2000. He has embraced those he once denounced as ‘agents of intolerance,’ promised more drilling and deeper tax cuts, even compromised his vaunted opposition to torture.”

“…he has engaged in a ‘practice of politics’ so deceptive that even Rove himself has denounced it, saying that the outright lies in McCain’s campaign ads go ‘too far’ and fail the ‘truth test.’“

“[Lincoln] Chafee (the former GOP senator) and McCain were the only Republicans to vote against the Bush tax cuts. They locked arms in opposition to drilling in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge. And they worked together in the ‘Gang of 14,’ which blocked some of Bush’s worst judges from the federal bench.”

“‘On all three — sadly, sadly, sadly — McCain has flip-flopped,’ Chafee says. And forget all the ‘Country First’ sloganeering, he adds. ‘McCain is putting himself first. He’s putting himself first in blinking neon lights.’“

“Far from the portrayal he presents of himself as an unflinching maverick with a consistent and reliable record, McCain has demonstrated an unwavering commitment to taking whatever position will advance his own career.”

November 4th: VOTE! And let the force be with you.

Source: “Make-believe Maverick” from The Rolling Stone (explicit)

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