Nerve Endings Firing Away

Now that John McCain has run out of ideas, he is bringing up forgotten dirt on Obama to make a last-ditch effort to turn the election in his favor. With the days when the Dow drops by nearly 200 points and doesn’t bat eyelids getting increasingly common, you must wonder if those undecided voters really falling for this diversion?

But if McCain wants to play the biography story angle, it would be worth exploring his background too since all we hear is that he was a POW for five years and a maverick after that. Rolling Stone in a scathing long article takes a look at the real John McCain and I’m sure if things mentioned were widely known, the race would be long over (if it isn’t right now). One of the more enlightening passages comes right at the beginning and sets the tone for the rest of the story. But this anecdote reveals how cronyism and nepotism that McCain now rails against has landed a petulant undeserving and clearly unqualified individual so close to the White House. This conversation occured in 1974 with a colleague who was a fellow POW in Vietnam:

“I’m going to the Middle East,” Dramesi says. “Turkey, Kuwait, Lebanon, Iran.”

“Why are you going to the Middle East?” McCain asks, dismissively.

“It’s a place we’re probably going to have some problems,” Dramesi says.

“Why? Where are you going to, John?”

“Oh, I’m going to Rio.”

“What the hell are you going to Rio for?”

McCain, a married father of three, shrugs.

“I got a better chance of getting laid.”

If we love a ex-POW President so much then why don’t we see Dramesi running instead?