"He either is so confused that he no longer remembers the last 20 years of American politics, or he assumes Fox News viewers just won't know the difference between reality and propaganda."

Definitely the latter. And...he'd be right.

John McCain is a war hero. These attacks on his character are despicable.

John Kerry/Max Cleland is a war hero. These attacks on his character are despicable.

f.u. a.O.

I hear McCain's argument all the time from Republican friends. McCain's argument is demonstrably false, but I think it is an example of the Republicans controlling the media reality.

Remember Republicans watch Fox News exclusively, and the other cable networks are only slightly better. McCain is never challenged by any of them. What he says has to be true, right? After all he is on television.

Never forget that lots of people think Tide is the best detergent in the world. The power of advertising is that it creates perceptions that may or may not be connected with reality.

Steve, on behalf of both the left and the right, I thank you for being the uncritical voice of the Obama administration. Sometimes David Axelrod and Robert Gibbs are too busy admiring the President's sartorial spendor or the First Lady's well-foned arms to pay proper tribute to whatever policy is being promoted (or hastily abandoned), but you always make time to uncritically reproduce the White House press releases.

Perhaps McCain should notice that the toxic political environment occurs whenever the Republicans are out of power and that the toxic natural environment occurs when they are in power.

It's not a coincidence.

John McCain is a war hero.

And how is that relevant? Does that excuse him from being a partisan hack?

Something is going on with WaMo demographics. The Genius of Al is going more and more unappreciated.

Do we have to change his name to "Al The Long Standing Parody Troll"?

JMcC is of course the guy that never ever heard of not granting a Senator a couple extra minutes to bloviate, as Al Franken did a couple days ago. Except the time he did it himself a few years ago.

McCain is just the kind of prick that Villagers fawn over for some reason. Littleman is another. McCain lost what remaining respectability he had in 2008 and never got it back.
BTW, you say they offered nothing but even so, doesn't the current HCR bill contain some provisions some of them asked for? Anyone know about which, how good or bad, etc.

Al is a parody but being a war hero never protected anyone from Republicans.

Republicans don't do history. They do have a mythic take on the past, but it isn't history, which at least attempts to use facts. They have stories about what happened, and the stories are subject to change as necessary.

Whether or not this is conscious I can't begin to guess. For some, I think it is, for many it is not. They are all terribly afraid and need reassurance that they are on the right side of "history [myth}" constantly. Some of their leaders use this fear, some of them may be infected with it, who knows. I am just glad I don't have to psychoanalyze any of them, that would be a nasty, messy place to go.

Can't somebody shut that damn fool up? Slap him awake? Something? What a complete ass ....

BTW I am sure criticizes Obama now and then, maybe admirers can post links (and better, he can put up a more critical post these days.)

McCain prepares to go on Fox News Sunday.

Outrage? Check.

Left the facts on the bus? Check.

Resentment? Check.

Blaming the Prez for lack of bipartisanship while ignoring his own party's polluting of political discourse, a party who mostly hate him anyway?

Check.

John McCain is on corporate television whining about bi-partisanship to keep the Obama administration firmly adhering to the deals already made with the corporate masters, and to keep the Obama administration snared in the corporate agenda.

Maybe Gibbs or one of the other Obama-bots will have to engage in a corporate media event to jabber back at McCain, (just like our good Steven does)

...it's all just fodder for the corporate crimes to continue unabated.

Since we're conditioned to watch soap opera on the teevee, McCain's schtick looks soapy... excellent performance...The Villagers do know how to perform to keep the natives entertained and distracted.

@Chris

Pretty sure it's a false dichotomy. In this case, both are true.

I don't know about the stupid part, but he's definitely not confused, because he knows that Fox viewers are too stupid to notice the difference.

John McCain is old. Very old. Older than most people his age, perhaps because of his experiences in life. As an Old Person, I think he can be forgiven the occasional lapse of memory. (And by "occasional," I mean every four or five minutes, especially if it concerns something a Democrat has done.) Sure, the good senator doesn't remember the time he refused to grant another senator 30 seconds to finish his remarks. Age does that to you. Sure, he doesn't remember all the concessions made to Republicans on the health care bill. Age does that to you. As long as he remembers the names of the moderators of the Sunday talk shows, all will be fine. Oh -- did I mention he's old?

@neill

Sure am glad we have someone like you to keep us stupid peons informed. I'm amazed that with your all-knowing powers you haven't actually done something with your life that would allow you to be more than an anonymous commenter on someone else's blog. Maybe you should run against Obama for the 2012 Democratic nomination. We could certainly use your leadership.

Note to McCain - if Republicans had a plan they should have offered it during the 12 years they were in power. How come the GOP didn't offer something like HR 3962 when they were at their peak, during the 2001-05 glory years of the Bush Era?

I suspect much of the conservative frustration we see these days stems from the fact that they're only just now realizing how much they could have done during their time in power. But instead, they invaded Iraq.

We'll see some heads explode in 2010 when we get a new immigration bill that is considerably more liberal than the one destroyed by right-wing activists in 2005. They'll be kicking themselves for not passing the bill they could have passed at the time. (Take note, HCR opponents on the left!)

In a strange way it's actually a good thing that Republicans were so indifferent towards healthcare reform when they were in power. The status quo is awful, but it would have been far worse if the Loyal Bushie congress had spent years tinkering with it. Just imagine a new health care system designed by Larry Kudlow, Rick Scott and Betsy McCaughey.

boy, converse, you sure told me!!!11!

Boo! "Corporate overlords!" Boogah booga booga!

There was a period of time when one might have been correct to say that John was senior, now he is just senile.

Actually Neil he did.

I have to wonder if in his soul, mccain thinks the last election was worth it. Was it worth sacrificing your political and personal integrity for a flash-in-the-pan, gimmicy shot with the selection of a nitwit beauty queen as his running mate? Demoralizing and/or denigrating himself and our electoral process. Was it really worth it?

He's become the predictable punchline to a bad joke. His selective dementia is certainly entertaining, but it has no place in reality. He's blinded by his anger, and it's a shame that he's misdirecting his efforts and choosing to leave a legacy of delusion rather than results. After the last elecetion, he could have bolstered his reputation and legacy, instead he's chose the alternate path and has just become an old man screaming at clouds.

"Fox News viewers just won't know the difference between reality and propaganda." Really? I can't believe that. All those "real Americans" who regurgitate every utterance of Glenn Beck on Fox. Please!

Obama's biggest problem is that he "tried serious to negotiate with Republicans."

I don't know where this fantasy got planted in Obama's head, but the combination of it and "I want a bill, any bill" meant Obama gave all power to the Republicans and insurance company Democrats.

And look where that got us.

McCain should just count his winnings and shut up.

Obama gave all power to the Republicans and insurance company Democrats

I really don't know what is so difficult to understand about this. It takes sixty votes for cloture on a Senate filibuster. There are more than forty "Republicans and insurance company Democrats" in the Senate, whether Obama liked it or not. Obama didn't give anybody power, they had the power simply by virtue of being elected Senators.

Seriously, how can you not understand that?

He is either so confused that he no longer remembers the last 20 years of American politics, or he assumes Fox News viewers just won't know the difference between reality and propaganda.

You missed some:
c) He's a bitter, lying piece of crap, pining for one of W's man-hugs. (Why doesn't he call anymore?)
d) He no longer cares.
e) He's laying the groundwork for after the health care reform bill has passed and Republicans start throwing more bricks at it in a desperate attempt to not lose more ground in the mid-term elections.
f) All of the above.

I pick option f.

Essentially true in context converse, but couldn't they have tried reconciliation to at least get the best with 51 votes?

@neil b

Because much of the "meat" of the current bill--regulations controling insurance policies such as no refusals for pre-existing conditions, no caps on annual and lifetime benefits, etc--cannot be passed through the budget reconciliation process. It is limited to items that specifically effect the budget, ONLY. There is some consideration that once the current bill is passed, budget reconciliation could be used for medicare expansion or possibly a public option. (shh, don't tell Lieberman about that!)

Believe me, he knows his audience. This is exactly what Fox viewers want to hear, because this is exactly what Fox viewers believe.

John McCain may be a war hero, but he is and never has been a gentleman or a scholar. He's a hypocrit and an egotist. McCain's stand on healthcare reform is almost laughably hypocritical as he has been on the receiving end of "government-run" healthcare since birth.

John McCain's presidential campaign promoted negative inuendo, smears, and blatant lies to paint Obama as weak and distrustful, an outider, a radical, scary black man who "palled around with terrorists." Cranky old McCain used Sarah Palin to gin up fear, anger, and hate for the Democratic candidate and misrepresent his character. While denying and attempting to rewrite their own history during the Bush years, the GOP and conservative lobbyist frinds continue to use similar tactics to fan emotional issues and raise the level of anger, hate, and fear among the conservative fringe, the so-called
grass roots protesters and tea-bagger crowd.

McCain's almost weekly Sunday talk show appearances are no accident. That's his role. McCain's support of Palin's babbling stupidity is predictable and nauseating. She is playing her role too. This is how defeated Republicans behave when they are out of power. Then they blame the Democrats for the divisiveness and bemoan the lack of bipartisanship that results from their own lack of cooperation and obstructionist tactics. Classic Rovian politics.

McCain will run for President in 2012. He's pretty certain that if he'd followed his own instinct and picked Joe Lieberman as his running mate instead of the Wasilla Nitwit he'd have won.

The "Democrats refused to negotiate with Republican" meme is so pervasive on the Right you have to think that this was the whole point of the GOP stragegy all along -- create an obstructionist dynamic in which it would be literally impossible for Democrats to negotiate with Republicans unless they wanted to abandon health care altogether, and then when Democrats go it alone make the issue Democratic intransigiance instead of Republican stonewalling.

I am guessing that one of the key GOP stragegies after Obama was elected was to destroy the reputation that Obama had as someone who would bring a different tone of cooperation to Washington. In a way, Obama calling for bi-partisanship was a thinly-veiled slap at Republicans for their dogmatism, and so they were insulted by the idea that Obama was going to improve the climate in Washington and were determined to strike back.

One way to do that is to create so much needless obstruction that you either force Democrats to govern exactly like the Republicans who the public rejected in the last two elections, or leave Republicans out of negotiations entirely since it has been pretty obvious to all of us that Republicans have decided it is in their political self interest not to negotiate in good faith -- on ANYTHING. Then, when Democrats leave Republicans out of a lawmaking process that Republicans themselves have already abandoned, you just do what McCain has done and call the president a hypocrit for not living up to his promise to be more inclusive with folks on the other side.

This is exactly what happend in the very first weeks of Obama's presidency when bi-partisanship somehow got re-defined as the President's ability to get GOP votes instead of the president's good faith efforts to involve Republicans in the legislative process and listen seriously to their concerns. Since the goal of the GOP all along was nothing more than to take the air out of the Obama bi-partisan balloon and embarass the president all Republicans had to do to win was deny him their vote. ANd that was easy since they really had nothing to lose, so long as FOX and Rush kept blaming Obama for the GOP's own block-headedness.

I find all the talk about McCain being a war hero very interesting and do not understand what makes one a hero just by staying in a Vietnamese prison, given very preferential treatment because of his status as the son of an Admiral, I agree it certainly was not pleasant for him. I know someone who is a decorated veteran of the Viet Nam conflict who never speaks about it, never shows his medals, never reads his citations who saved lives under fire, called in helicopters to get the injured out etc, much much more. He is my husband and I have never known him to think he was a hero.

JS is right and I never got the war hero crap about this coward.

It's too bad John McCain wasn't the victim of s single-aircraft ramp-strike 50 years ago when all he was was the failed son and grandson of two Admirals. A quick review of the past 50 years clearly demonstrates it would have been no loss, other than the cost of the lost airplane.

"John McCain is a war hero. These attacks on his character are despicable".

FOR THE LOVE OF gOD, STOP ALREADY. Enough PLEASE, with the "war hero? meme. No one, no where, has explained what makes John McCain a war hero. Why is that; it should be easy to do.

McCain is spending the end of his career obstructing the President. He is just a bitter old man who can't get over the facts: 1) that he lost the election and 2) that he lost it to a black man; A BLACK MAN. And neither can what passes for the main-stream media that continues to give him a platform to spout his nonsense.

McCain has made it his mission to dispute and challenge everything President Obama tries to do. He could be working with the President to create some great legislation that would benefit this country and the American people and be a legacy to the McCain name. But McCain would rather go out as an obstructionist. How pathetic?

Now to the "war hero" meme: WHAT exactly, or approximately, did John McCain do to make him a war hero? Be captured and held prisoner? What about the hundreds of other Americans who were captured and held prisoner by North Vietnam? These people must have been participants in a reality show contest.

Al, and others who continue this war hero meme, TRY to remember this: John McCain WAS NOT THE ONLY AMERICAN HELD AS A PRISONER OF WAR. There were almost 800 American POWs. Officially, 661 recognized prisoners were returned after the war. Why aren’t the 661 returning POWs ever mentioned? Aren't they war heros? So the question still is "were the other POWs just participants in a reality show contest"?

My brother was in the VN war. He received a couple of medals for bravery under fire and for going out under fire to to rescue another soldiers who had been wounded. He ACTUALLY fought the NV. He placed his medals in a drawer when he returned home and never spoke of Vietnam again. No bragging about how he got the medals.

So explain, please, just what makes John McCain a war hero?

And also why doesn't McCain explain what happened in the 1967 USS Forrestal fire that caused chain-reaction explosions on July 29, 1967, that killed 134 sailors and injured 161?

Sammy:

You do realize that the "Al" handle has a long history of parody, right?

Hearing a republican blame Obama for the extreme partisanship in Washington is like a rapist blaming it on his victims on the basis that "the bitch wanted it."