Why John McCain is not America’s Friend

Women

John McCain has declared war on women, vowing, if elected president, to overturn Roe v. Wade. McCain believes that abortion is morally reprehensible and wishes to impose his belief upon women, even if their pregnancy poses a threat to the mother or is the result of incest or rape. There is no doubt in John McCain’s mind that all pregnancies are wanted and must, regardless of consequences, be completed unless naturally and involuntarily terminated. But, McCain’s war on women doesn’t stop with eliminating abortion; he seeks to expand the legal definition of abortion to more closely match the position of the Catholic Church and some extreme fundamentalist Protestants. John McCain, in lockstep with the Bush administration, is supporting a Department of Health and Human Services plan that would classify most non-barrier contraceptives as abortion.
The draft regulation to expand this definition has already been posted, though the Department of Health and Human Services claims that it is only a draft and the expansion in scope was unintentional; and we really needn’t worry about it. The draft was posted months ago, and no changes to this “draft” policy have been declared. Essentially, the draft regulation would deny federal funding to doctors, pharmacists, and facilities that provide birth control pills, the “morning after” pill, and intrauterine devices (IUD’s) to women as means of contraception.
John McCain’s new VP choice, Sarah Palin, has said that she is “as pro-life as it gets”.

Veterans

Those of us who have served this country, and those who haven’t, must give respect for the service that John McCain gave this, our country, in Vietnam. But, no service member’s time gives him the right to dictate for the entire country what is right for veterans. Especially this holds true for those who, like John McCain in Vietnam and those now serving in Iraq, served during a time of wrong and illegal military duty predicated by the desires of corporation-appeasing foreign policy makers. Certainly John McCain understands by now that his service and that of thousands of others benefitted not American interests, but corporate American interests. But John McCain has consistently voted against expanded veterans’ benefits. Even when he has not voted against expanded benefits, he has plain not voted. This says much about McCain’s complete lack of dedication to the common cause of his sisters and brothers in arms. Furthermore, John McCain seeks to retain troops in Iraq despite the obviety of the failures and deceptions that permitted a corporate-driven administration to justify and rationalize criminal military action, continuing it past the stated mission point and despite the expressed will of the Iraqi people. McCain sees service members as tools for the workings of the corporation-owned Republican party, to be discarded and forgotten when broken or no longer useful.

The Poor

The poor usually know full well that the Republican Party still subscribes to the pseudo-science of social Darwinism. It is understood that the poor are to be pitied, but not assisted. In fact, in John McCain’s world, as in President Bush’s, the poor are to be outcast and criminalized. Poverty is a crime of willful actions designed to elicit unearned sympathy and support from the elite. Poverty, to the Republican, is the fault of the impoverished, and should be of no concern to those of the demographically shrinking financial elite who have earned their place in society through hard work and superior genes.

The Middle Class

Do not believe for one moment that John McCain will do anything to help you maintain your standard of living. John McCain’s tax plan does provide for tax reduction for everyone, but there is a twist to the reduction. The middle class will see significantly little of McCain’s proposed tax relief. The greatest share of tax relief goes to those making over $ 500,000. In John McCain’s world, the greater your earnings, the larger, percentage and real dollar wise, your savings. John McCain has attempted to fool the middle class by claiming that Barack Obama’s tax plan will raise your taxes; this is not true. Barack Obama’s tax plan will raise taxes only for those earning over $250,000, who happen to be paying less than their fair share, anyway. Under Obama’s plan, the average American, meaning about 92 % of us, earning less than $100,000, the tax cut will be far more substantial than what McCain has proposed. An examination of the two tax plans shows that John McCain seems to believe that if one is stupid or genetically inferior enough to be poor or middle class, then one doesn’t deserve to keep one’s money as much as those who have made it to the top on one’s back.

The Environment

John McCain, like his possible predecessor, has concerns for the environment only in the business sense. That is to say he is concerned for the business environment. John McCain supports unlimited expansion of off-shore drilling; he wants to open up the Alaska National Wildlife Refuge for exploration. He wants to continue the Bush administration’s assault on the EPA and the Endangered Species Act, allowing business development to take precedence over ecosystems severely strained by over a century-and-a-half’s worth of industrialization. John McCain seeks to discredit work of environmental scientists to further the interests of his corporate sponsors who want us to believe that global warming and the shrinking Arctic ice fields are inconsequential matters not worthy of study or notice unless they can be exploited for profit.


At one time, this writer held John McCain in high esteem. But the man who once should have been president is gone. Now McCain seeks primarily to walk with his Republican brethren to the tune of their corporate raider masters. George W. Bush has performed wreaked a renaissance of American imperialism upon the planet to the harm of most for the benefit of a few. Somehow, in this time, John McCain has succumbed to the Republican corporate nationalist expansionist rhetoric and alienated himself from the populace he once befriended.