By Mark David Blum, Esq.
Stop it. Discussions of Bill Ayers, ACORN, Jeremiah Wright, and Joe the Plumber have got to stop and stop now. There are less than three weeks until the election and we need to be discussing healthcare, Iraq, the national debt, and infrastructure repairs. We must spend our national debate equity on issues of national importance. Every word uttered on the character assassination attempts by the McCain campaign shames the candidate and demeans us as Americans.
Nobody’s character is to be tested by the company they kept, places they worked, or beliefs once held. It is beyond cruel to judge a man’s entire life’s work by a single event or snapshot in time. Whether you support the Obama campaign or not, it would be un-American and beyond reason to make your judgment based on an historical tryst.
William Ayers may have been once a member of the Weather Underground but he is today a respected professor. God and how his lessons are preached has no place in Presidential politics. Joe the plumber should be one of a thousand such blue collar workers who should run for office and plumb the crap out of Washington D.C.
ACORN employees may be involved in voter registration fraud but that is not actual voter fraud. The former is a minor annoyance and petite crime while the latter threatens our democracy. The number of people registered is not relevant. I know this first hand because I defended here locally an ACORN canvasser accused of voter registration fraud. It is who actually shows up at the polls on election day that is of utmost importance. Every time an ignorant pundit uses the phrase, “voter fraud” I growl and see through their attempt to tamper with the facts.
I hold a special anger in my heart for John McCain. He wants to reach back into history and pull forward and make relevant passing flings with persons and places in history. Of all people, John McCain should shut the hell up on that issue. Remember that while he did his time at the Hanoi Hilton, then pilot McCain spilled his guts and told his interrogators everything they wanted to know. McCain admits in his own memoirs that “torture works” because it did on him. That is one meter by which I could judge the man before me today by the times and circumstances of history – a coward who cracked under pressure and arguably committed treason.
There is more:
McCain wants us to forget his up-to-his-eyeballs involvement in the nation’s last great economic scandal that cost taxpayers billions … the Savings and Loan Bailout. Indeed, the investigating committee referred to McCain as the unindicted coconspirator and cleared him of criminal wrongdoing, but as a moral and ethical issue McCain’s campaign says the matter is off the table. It will be off the table the moment I stop hearing about Ayers and ACORN.
Twenty six years John McCain has sat in the U.S. Senate. Shall we just look at our government’s record the past 26 years? In 1982, Ronald Reagan was President and deficit spending was beginning to take off. Once President Nixon took the nation off the gold standard, Republicans thereafter saw that as an open door to deficit spending. In twenty six years, John McCain has had his hand in the development of the largest debt ever seen on the planet. Since John McCain has been in office, taxes have skyrocketed, our economy has tanked, our status as a military and economic superpower has been lost. On John McCain’s watch, like he did as an aviator, Americans were sold out and our constitution sacrificed so McCain could avoid the pain. If there was a single ‘maverick’ in the Senate, no bullshit legislation would ever get out of the building. If John McCain was truly leadership quality material, he would have filibustered at least once during the past 26 years. I refuse to believe that every piece of legislation that has passed the Senate has been with Mr. McCain’s nod of approval. Where was his courage then?
John McCain has a life long history of running away from things that hurt. He sang like a jaybird while sitting out the war. When he returned stateside, he dumped his wife because she was ill and John went off and married a rich beer heiress. I sat and personally watched him advance the most recent Wall Street bank and brokerage bailout and proclaim “it’s the best we can do”. No, Senator, it was not the best you could do. I can only imagine what you would do as President.
Indeed, to use the same litmus test the McCain campaign is demanding we apply to the Obama candidacy, John McCain comes out smelling like fresh plumbed blockage. McCain’s relationship with the Keating Five, the Bush Family Four, the fifty six trillion dollar national debt, and one wrong war in Iraq is far more sinister than any former rock and bomb thrower. Remember, Viet Nam has a status as most favored nation for trading purposes. It hardly seems to make sense to apply the thinking of then to the situations of today. William Ayers is a professor and that is the end of that discussion.
Who each American votes for is their own personal choice. Do so at your own risk. But if you are casting your vote because of who a candidate once knew or where a candidate once worked or how a candidate relates to their God, then shame on you. Doing so is an affront to the concept of “the United States of America” and does great dishonor to our nation’s founders. Yes, character matters. But character is judged based on a lifetime, not a moment in time. Anything less is pure ignorance.
Karl Rove, I smell your presence here.
