Tuesday, February 07, 2006

"Match me, Johnny!"


Senator John McCain shown here thinking, "Holy God how I hate you!" while remaining absolutely silent.
(Annoying Prologue: The actual picture is a Photoshopped composite from “The Sweet Smell of Success”, which is where the “Match me” quote is from as well. I included the transitional version of it at the bottom of this post because it’s actually a better product that the one above, but w/o the Bush layer I thought it was a little too obscure. Which it still might be, but WTF; I had fun doing it.)

It’s hard for me to imagine being John McCain.

A man of boundless and ravenous ambitions and undeniable but faded talents, who has seen his only currency – his maverick, outsider status – debased again and again. The few pints of street cred left in his tank siphoned off in the service a man who he despises, and a Party that thinks of him of an embarrassment.

A man who once upon a time genuinely cared about things such as military readiness, veterans issues and respect for service to country…and has seen each one of the things he claims to love and value most in life methodically pimped, shat upon and eviscerated. By the same man and the very same Party who so obviously loathe and sneer at his quaint habits.

The mortal enemy of all that John McCain professes to hold sacred is named George Walker Bush. He lives in a building called the White House, and is the leader of a party called the Republicans.

So how is it that naval aviator John McCain keeps missing his target by miles and miles and miles?

How is it that instead of concentrating his verbal fire on the source of his pain, Senator John McCain just up and suddenly goes ape-shit…all over Senator Barack Obama of all people?

Matt Stoller from MyDD picks up the threads of that story…

John 'I Need Anger Management Therapy' McCain Savages Barack Obama

by Matt Stoller, Mon Feb 06, 2006 at 06:30:34 PM EST

Now this is fun.

An outraged Sen. John McCain (R-AZ) today called Sen. Barack Obama (D-IL) insincere and partisan, suggesting the Illinois freshman as much as lied in private dicussions the two had about ethics reform last week.

Obama sent McCain a letter asking him to cosponsor the Democratic proposal on ethics reform rather than appointing a task force on the issue. McCain's response is one of the single most bitter, nasty letters I have ever seen from any Senator. It's rather remarkable, actually, and gives the lie to the notion that McCain is of a bipartisan mind.

I'm having trouble opening the PDF of McCain's letter, so I'll take the text from Marc Ambinder and Patrick Ottenhoff's well-written blog post.

"When you approached me and insisted that despite your leadership's preference to use the issue to gain a political advantage in the 2006 elections, you were personally committed to achieving a result that would reflect credit on the entire Senate and offer the country a better example of political leadership, I concluded your professed concern for the institution and the public interest was genuine and admirable. Thank you for disabusing me of such notions with your letter. ... I'm embarrassed to admit that after all these years in politics I failed to interept your previous assurances as typical rhetorical gloss routinely used in political to make self-interested partisan posturing appear more noble. Again, sorry for the confusion, but please be assured I won't make the same mistake again."

Obama's spokesman, Robert Gibbs, called McCain's letter "confusing" and "headscratching." He said Obama "remains committed" to reform and will work with "any Republican and Democrat" who is serious about the issue. His letter to McCain, said Gibbs, signaled his preference "to get legislation through committee, rather than wait for a task force."

In his letter, McCain says that his task force proposal would ensure that meaningless or cosmetic reforms aren't rushed into law -- and that the solution in the end would reflect the interests of both parties and their voters.

His last line suggests that Obama will not soon regain McCain's favor.

Writes McCain, "I understand how important the opportunity to lead your party's effort to exploit this issue must seem to a freshman Senator, and I hold no hard feelings over your earlier disingenuousness. Again, I have been around long enough to appreciate that in politics the public interest isn't always a priority for every one of us. Good luck to you, Senator."


Bipartisanship is dead. That's just true. It's sad, but Republicans have become too partisan to work for the good of the country. Voters will need to repair this at the ballot box in November.


Why the sudden political lycanthrope? This venomous – almost hysterical -- lashing out at Senator Obama for, well, nothing, while the leader of his Party stands proudly behind lies, torture and corruption and fucks over veterans?

Every. Single. Day.

Maybe it's a bit of a mystery of one is bedazzled by titles and money, so think of it this way.

John McCain, pencil nub behind his ear, in his faded white, short-sleeved dress shirt and belt-slung tape-measure is the assistant manager of USA Hardware.

He works in the Republican Division, and has worked there ever since he got out of the Navy.

USA Hardware promotes from within, and for most of the last 20 years they’ve promoted someone from of John’s division to the top spot.

The customers like him OK, and even though the management doesn’t, he thought he had a clear shot at the Big Chair six years ago. He’d put in the time, knows hardware like a dog knows it’s ass, and had a few good ideas on building the business. Even works with some of the people over in the Democratic Division from time to time, which is very rare these days.

USA Hardware needed a leader, and instead along came this little punk Bush kid. Soft hands and not a lick of sense in him. Lazy, drunk and mean, but son of a former company President so he gets promotions no matter how badly he fucks up.

And he fucks up something awful.

Put a stock boy’s eye out screwing around with a band saw once. Then laughed about it. Starts fires for fun, and then tries half-assed to put ‘em out. Usually they burn until the fire department comes and douses them, but he never gets a fine; instead his Daddy’s friends arrange for him to get bonuses and plaques for his “quick thinking”.

Killed a cat once with a nail gun. On a dare, just because he was bored.

John always hated the little prick in an abstract way, but didn’t think much about him until the Top Spot opened up, and suddenly George decided he wanted the job.

That’s when John’s gas tank suddenly got sugared, and his house got trashed. His accounts disappeared off the company computer. His wife started getting threatening phone calls at all hours, and somebody beat up his adopted daughter on her way home from school.

People he didn’t even know started talking loudly in public places about how he faked his war record, and goes foaming-at-the-mouth crazy every time he sees a "gook".

That punk Bush kid and his buddy Karl were behind every bit of it, and when the smoke cleared, Little George had the big corner office, and John was up to his scar tissue in debt and his reputation was in tatters.

That was six years ago and now, in addition to everything else, George has made John his valet. John grits his teeth and lights the kid’s cigarettes, wipes his ass and laughs at his jokes.

And waits. Hating every fucking minute of it, he hangs on by his nails, bites his tongue ‘til it bleeds, and waits.

Little George retires in a few years, and John figures he has one, last shot at the Big Chair, but he needs the little fucker to pull it off. Needs his money, contacts, and gang of ratfuckers to pave the way, because if he misses it this time, it’s Game Over.

Another chance will never come his way.

He reeks of Old Spice, and desperation, and worst of all, every day he now has to work with some rising young Rock Star from over in the Democratic Division.

Kid named “Barack”, who’s as smart and smooth and charismatic as they come. The opposite of that freak George in every way. A genuinely nice guy, too, and even though he’s only been at the home office for something like ten minutes, the customers like him, and the management grudgingly does too. Even some people in the Republican Division say nice things about him, and it seems like he doesn’t have to fight his own organization every inch of the way.

Exactly the kind of guy John McCain might have been friends with…thirty years ago. But people are suddenly talking about skipping this Obama kid to the front of the line, and putting him in the Big Chair right away. And so when he stands next to him out on the floor, McCain doesn’t feel that sense comradeship and friendly competition he might have had long ago.

All he feels is a million years old. And tired. Like an old Underwood typewriter in a world of ThinkPads and G4s, and as if on cue here comes George with some little, humiliating errand for him to do. Pick up his dry-cleaning, maybe. Or give his dog a pedicure, and he’d better fucking well jump if he knows what’s good for him.

John McCain, moldering middle manager at USA Hardware, who can’t talk back to the hateful, wastrel boss who degrades him, and can’t help noticing that the new guy is already Mr. Popular among his regulars, and is practically measuring the Big Office for drapes and carpet.

And then, one day, he loses it. Starts screaming his head off at the Obama kid in the parking lot.

For what seems a lot like no reason at all.


(Here's the transitional graphic between the original movie still and my final product.)

29 comments:

Anonymous said...

Spot on as always.

Anonymous said...

I never much liked McCain, now he shows himself to be just another rethug mofo.

Anonymous said...

I never liked him that much. He was too glib by half; singing tenor in the Keating 5, for starters.

And he completely lost me, when, in the South Carolina primary some years back, George Bush successfully inserted McCain's adopted (and dark-skinnned) Bangladeshi kid, up McCain's ass, as "proof" of McCain's infidelity with a black woman, and it played with Sandlapper voters. (Strom's youthful penchant for "dark meat" was cool; he was local...).

McCain, apparently unfazed by this "phone campaign" by bush supporters, basically spread his cheeks even further, and in the interests of the party, asked for another, please sir.

At that point, I was wondering what it would take for McCain to get outraged.
Now, with his letter to Obama, we know.

And I thought it really statesmanlike last week, when McCain, with his lips firmly locked on junior's love muscle, said that if "doing" Iran meant higher gas prices, then americans should just grease up THEIR assholes and be grateful that Exxon-Mobile priapis, with 36 bil in profits in 2005, is alive and well.
It's all getting to be like some grotesque lab-rat experiment;

as in: "Just how fucking batshit crazy does crazy have to get, before enough people name it as crazy, to get the crazies out of office, so we can make some pitiable and belated effort to repair the damage?"

The bushCo rat is beating himself senseless against the maze wall, and too many of us, with him.
McCain needs to get off the fucking rat, step out of the maze, and name the whole shittaree for what it was and is: the worst presidential fuckup in our history.

That'll do...for starters.

Anonymous said...

Match me, Johnny.

Anonymous said...

One of the turds in the bushCo punchbowl (there are so many) is Iran.

They don't seem too worried about sanctions actually being voted in. (China and Russia may have signed off on talking about it, but I think that's as far as they'll go; no votes to do it.)

Saber-rattling isn't working, and if the Iranians crank up that "bourse", and start trading their oil and natural gas in euros, I don't know just how much of an effect it will have on our big-muthah oil, but I doubt it will help.

And I've heard some people with an economic pay-grade higher than mine, say that Saddam was on the verge of doing the same thing, and that was a big part of why junior pulled the trigger on Iraq.

I'm having a debate with some good lefty buds, over whether or not bush will go after Iran.
They say that most of Iran's oil is in the part of the country which is nearest Iraq. I'm not sure about that, but saying it implies that bush has the option of grabbing for it.

I don't believe he does. The military is stretched too thin for any land operation against Iran. And I don't think our generals are insane enough to go along with that. They're already pissed at being handed "mission impossible", I'm thinking.

And if he does airstrikes on the reactors, the Iranians can lay enough anti-ship mines in the Straits of Hormuz that you could walk across on them, without getting your feet wet.
And there's the little matter of the Shia. Will they lie doggo, while bush bombs Iraninan facilities?
There is always the possibility that junior would let Isreal do it, but, absent our re-fuelling Iraqi planes over Turkey (What would they think about our using their airspace?) that would entail flying across Iraq, to get there. What would the Shia think of THAT? And is junior stupid enough to risk finding out?

Also, Sadr, and Musharraf, in Pakistan, have both recently said that they will support Teheran if bush attacks Iran. (I didn't know that Sadr had said that on his visit to IRAN, last week, but then, our MSM, doesn't "do" clips of purple-fingered Iraqi Shiites, exchanging dick-rubs with the Mullahs in Teheran. Not good for promoting "democracy".)

Sadr and Musharraf's offer won't include troops, but they have lots of ways to bedevil us, if they want to.

If bush attacks Iran, we won't have ENOUGH F-16 squadrons to give Pakistan, to get them to keep letting junior sniff Bin Laden's abandoned bicycle seat.
To put it another way, doing Iran will make the price for bush having the Osama-trophy to wave around in the mid-term campaign, so high that there won't be much left in the U.S. treasury for Halliburton and Bechtel.

And I don't think Sadr would be adverse to some more streetfighting. At this point, every U.S. casualty is becoming a voodoo pinstick, for bushCo.
4 more marines died in Anbar province today, and only an idiot can claim that we're "turning a corner".

I just don't think that bush has the Iran option, anymore.

But then, he can't stop and admit that it's over. All he can do is keep screaming:

"If we don't go deeper into the swamp, the crocs will get us."

This, with a couple of 12 footers, already hanging off his ass.

But he's into the Orwellian thing of perpetual threats. A war junkie, shooting up and trying to get the rest of us, to tie off with him. It's all he has left.

How long will it take the american people to see it, especially if the MSM is helping with the snakeoil dispensing?

Been said before; 2006 will not be boring.



I don't think it will work.

Anonymous said...

In gambling parlance, Bush has a "middle." Suppose you bet the Steelers to win, giving 5 1/2 points. Later in the week, the line moves, and you can get their opponent at plus 6 1/2.

If the Steelers win by six, you are "in the middle", and you win both bets. Any other outcome, and you win one bet or the other, but you can't lose both.

That's where Clusterfuck sits. If the price of oil remains steady, that's a win for Chimpy. If Iran jacks up the price of oil, ANWR will look like a Swiss Cheese in a matter of months. That's his safety net. His worst case scenario lets him have his way in Alaska.

Of course, if he's stupid enough to invade Iran, all bets are off. (Stupidity is such a odds-on favorite that all the reputable bookmakers have long since taken it off the board.)

Anonymous said...

Re: McCain -- He's proof of the old adage that embalming fluid is the only cure for Presidential fever.

Re: Iran -- If we do something, we do it alone. There will be no "Coalition of the Billing" on this one.
God only knows what happens in Iraq, but it won't be pretty.

Anonymous said...

Air attack on Iran or another "terrorist" attack, either one before the mid-term election in November. Bush-Nero cannot afford for the Democrats to control either the House or Senate.

Oh, and attack Iran? Instant recession for America as gas goes over $4/gallon.

jurassicpork said...

"Killed a cat with a nail gun." Priceless.

Did you catch how that fat prick was clapping like a toy chimp with cymbals during the SOTE... before Bush could even finish his sentence?

I have to say, DG, you have McCain pegged. Earlier, I was prepared to give him props over that No Torture For You! amendment but he keeps showing his true colors time and again.

Anonymous said...

He did a Dick Cheney "haven't seen much of you around in the Senate" to Obama. Edwards should have replied with a "you must come more often" but it's hard to think of a good reply when you're hit with a transmission from a parallel universe. Perhaps Obama could reply that at least the people he supports never invented a story about him fathering a mulatto child.

parsec

Anonymous said...

Spectacular take Drift...simply spectacular! Especially in your pointing out the seething, borderline manic desperation oozing from McCain's twitchy, last-chance-at-the-brass-ring pores.

On the surface we see them, twin, heaven-bound rockets...one having topped out speedwise long ago, its fuel nearly spent. More con-trail than fuel-fire from its thrusters.

Climbing still, but barely. Innards shifting from a 10G-forced compression to floor to a goofy zero-gravity free-fall. Stall point imminent.

The other rocket? Dead on the first one's tail, though fired an eternity later in Canaveral-Time. Hurtling skyward with--sh*tfire!, Three more stages to go! Tons less payload and more thrust than a coked-up John Holmes, circa '74. Newer parts, better engines--look at 'er go..passin' Rocket #1 like the f*cker was standing still...

...or perhaps feeling gravity's soft embrace go all Boston Strangler on its *ss. Hm?

This is indeed McCain's "preemptive strike" at the challenger most likely to rise from the ranks and possibly de-rail his last stab at the job he feels he is destined to hold--in spite of letting his last opponent, a mental and fortitude midget viciously malign his family, curry favor with backers who feel that 35 million Americans are somewhere ''round three-fifths of a human being, and yes...question his f*cking sanity and patriotism as he paid very nearly the highest price an American soldier can. I respect McCain for his military sacrifice AND pillory him for his salad-tossing and turd-gobbling in the hopes of getting an okay from those who would just as soon see him shambling down a street in Tucson, begging for alms beneath matted hair and a soiled fatigue jacket. Bravery's a funny thing, eh? A man can bend, but not break in the face of body-twisting punishment, yet faux-faint like an over-corseted Victorian looking for attention from a well-heeled suitor, Mighty Mouse brave in one theater, Sylvester the sh*t-scared cat in another.

Your Wal-Mart manager analogy was dead-perfect as well. The stumblebum lifer sneaks into the parking lot and pours sugar into the up-and-comer's gas-tank, puts firecrackers in the exhaust and keys up the driver's side doors in a desperate acting-out--all the while un-seeing the little red light from the camera mounted on the parking lot wall...catching it all for posterity. The same way it caught him letting the regional boss smack his wife and kid around and snagged him letting same dude french him for fun.

Sh*t...we all got a laugh when we saw that one in the dingy-*ssed break room. :)

And Drift...I can't bow to you often enough for your taste in film. "Sweet Smell Of Success" is one of my top ten of all time. Your visual noting of the slimy, sycophantic nature of Falco (McCain) to Hunsecker (Bush) is spot-the-f*ck-on. As a born-and-bred NY'er, the movie has a special resonance in that its one of the final glimpses of the town at its rip-roarin' entertainment-mecca best. (Cassavettes' "Shadows" may actually be the last rheumy-eyed look) many years ago, me and a few friends went on an alcohol-fueled, late night, impromptu "Sweet Smell" walking/stumbling "tour" just for the hell of it. For example, the building J.J. lives in (at least the lobby they used) is the famed Brill Building--pop songwriting's mecca in the second half of the 20th century. The theater his show was shot in was the Ed Sullivan theater--now used by Letterman. The Nedicks hot dog joint Sidney angrily bolts from at the movie's beginning was at the corner of 42nd & B'way and wrapped round the corner of the building. Gone now from that hallowed spot, but sorta returned as the Nedicks chain has returned after 25 years on hiatus. Too many places to mention. Back alleys 'round 51st Street. J.J.'s long walk and talk with Sidney down 49th Street and finally Sidney's beatdown and dumping in the Flatiron district.

As J.J. Hunsecker (a name I sometimes use when a greeter asks for one when I'm waiting for a table--always fun to see a couple of heads snap 'round when she calls "J.J. Hunsecker, table for two!") said it best:

I love this dirty town.

Keep the faith, and keep punchin',
LowerManhattanite

driftglass said...

LowerManhattanite,
And honor to have you here at the Copa :-)

punaise,
link away.

jp,
thanks

muddy,
thank you.

tanbark,
Gonna be a wild summer. Wild '68-style, or wild '74 I still don't know.

Gay Veteran,
And we need to be ready for it.

Anonymous said...

Has it occured to anybody yet that McCain's co-sponsoring of the "No Torture" bill was -- like pretty much every decent-appearing thing this man has done -- merely a cynical piece of political kabuki?

What else do those "signing statements" of which Dear Leader is so very fond mean except that the Preznit doesn't consider himself bound by any law passed by Congress. McCain surely must have been aware of this fact, so frankly, I don't cut him an inch of slack for it.

A ratfucker with military service is still a ratfucker.

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