John McCain reveals how many fingers he uses to access the Internets.

When seventy-one year old John McCain acknowledged earlier this month that he was “computer illiterate,” it confirmed to many in the blogosphere (wherever that is) that the Republican presidential nominee was essentially clueless about politics in what some are calling the “digital age.” McCain’s commitment to this straight-talk strategery has also led him to previously admit economics and the economy is one other thing that he doesn’t understand very well, either.

However, at the Personal Democracy Forum in New York on Monday, conference organizer Andrew Rasiej pointed out that McCain was approaching 152,000 hits on something called “Facebook,” a kind of “social networking technology” the Senator is getting hip to. Senator Obama was said to have passed the one million mark last week on the Facebook thingy, but Republicans feel that does not necessarily indicate that their grassroots supporters are any less active than their Democratic opponents.

The Pew Internet and American Life Project released statistics earlier this month which show Democrats are using the social networking thing to actually contribute money to the Obama Campaign, something else McCain is said to be “aware of.” A spokesman for the McCain camp clarified that McCain’s recent comment — “F you! I know more about this than anyone else in the room,” was directed at immigration reform and not computer literacy.

McClatchy News Services reports:

Cheney on Wednesday told the U.S. Chamber of Commerce that “oil is being drilled right now 60 miles off the coast of Florida.”

“We’re not doing it. The Chinese are in cooperation with the Cuban government.”

”Even the communists have figured out that a good answer to high prices is more supply,” he added. “Yet Congress has said … ‘no’ to drilling off Florida.”

The claim was immediately repudiated by U.S. Sen. Mel Martinez, R-Fla., an independent congressional report, industry experts and other observers, who said there is zero evidence that China is drilling in Cuban waters.

China doesn’t even hold a lease to drill offshore…

With both parties squabbling over what to do about rising gasoline prices, Democrats had seized on the remarks to bash the GOP, accusing it of spreading the Cuba-China rumor as a “scare tactic” to force Congress to lift a ban that prevents drilling along the Outer Continental Shelf and in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge.

Same old scare tactics Darth Cheney and his his oil buddies used to launch the Iraq war and drive up the price of oil 600% since 2002.

NEW ORLEANS— John McCain stammered his way through one of his more memorable speeches ever Tuesday night, but unfortunately it was memorable for the number of speaking miscues off the teleprompter, not the content. It was memorable for the forced, creepy smiles at the end of sentences that didn’t warrant them. Even his repetitious blinking was unnerving. And with more than twenty word fumbles through the course of this painfully long Geritol info-mercial, it was particularly telling that CNN felt it necessary to put a “HAPPENING NOW” tag directly over McCain’s right lung.

I knew the evening was going to go badly when the Phoney from Arizoney began by adding an extra syllable to “New Or-le-ans.” Bush’s constant mangling of “nu-cu-lar” sprang instantly to mind, and thus a speech designed to separate the two men joined at the fragile hip of John McCain was doomed to failure.

Then this mis-speak, only two and a half minutes in: “I believe that still; but we must rise the occasion as we always have.” Well, he didn’t “rise the occasion.” He sank, and he continued to sink until CNN cut away. But all was not lost. My favorite McBushism from the speech was this line: “The right change will stop impeding Americans from doing what they have always done, overcome every obstacle to our progress, turn challenges and opportunity into opportunities. . .”

Over-powered by what the press called the “Lime Green Monster,” the background from hell gave McCain a pallor only a cadaver could love. But with timing that could only have been arranged through divine providence, McCain dropped this turd-bomb bomb bomb right before one of the most historic speeches ever to be delivered in America, Barack Obama’s announcement to the world that a black and white man had turned an opportunity into an opportunity to run for president of the United States.

A venue tip to McCain’s advance people: Never— ever— choose a venue where the acoustics are such that one big-mouth supporter can rise teh occasion by drowning out the rest of the audience. Very creepy. And speaking of loudest. McCain drew his loudest applause when he read without error, “They might think me an imperfect servant of our country, which I surely am; but I am her servant, first, last, and always.” Great.

But we don’t need another “servant” in the white house. We need a leader.

Where have I seen this movie before?

Oh yeah. Here:

[Due to formatting limitations in the comments section, I have chosen to reply on the main forum.]

Hi Stan:

Thanks for reminding us of the bigger picture. I’ll have fewer bald patches from frustrated hair-pulling that way.

A few passages from The Urantia Book (TUB) lit up my synapses as I read along. But in the ecumenical spirit you showed by quoting Wallace Stevens, let me first add this related thought from the great German idealist, Immanuel Kant:

“Enlightenment is the emergence of Man’s self-incurred immaturity.”

You wrote:

For two days following nine-eleven terrorism had already been defeated in a spiritual sense, by the unity of the world community, and needed only forward-looking leaders who could help people sustain that unity and expand on it, calling not only for the capture of the perpetrators but also for a truly reflective investigation into what had led people to want to do such a thing. Without this curiosity, we began just another endless conflict. . . This need for reflection before action, especially when gripped by fear, is something self-righteousness will only blind us to.

There’s a lot to unpackage here. Explicitly: fear, world community, forward looking leaders, curiosity, reflection. And implicitly, the roles that intelligent patriotism and emotional maturity should play in the response to events like 9/11.

Adjusting the lenses in my UB kaleidoscope accordingly (i.e., making those kaleidoscopic adjustments in the comprehension of meanings and values), I find the following passages instructive:

1. Unreasoned fear is a master intellectual fraud practiced upon the evolving mortal soul.

2. Political wisdom. Emotional maturity is essential to self-control. Only emotional maturity will insure the substitution of international techniques of civilized adjudication for the barbarous arbitrament of war. Wise statesmen will sometime work for the welfare of humanity even while they strive to promote the interest of their national or racial groups. Selfish political sagacity is ultimately suicidal — destructive of all those enduring qualities which insure planetary group survival.

3. The ideal state functions under the impulse of three mighty and coordinated drives: Love loyalty derived from the realization of human brotherhood. Intelligent patriotism based on wise ideals. Cosmic insight interpreted in terms of planetary facts, needs, and goals.

4. A moral society should aim to preserve the self-respect of its citizenry and afford every normal individual adequate opportunity for self-realization.

Since the last shall be first, I’ll start there.

(4) Self-realization is, naturally, a product of reflection and curiosity. Imagine a society where reflective meditation was actively encouraged, if not mandated outright. (”Woman, get thee to a nunnery!” would have a radically different meaning.) Europe seems to have a head start on us, where shorter work weeks and much longer vacations are de rigeur. Locally, initiatives like employer tax incentives and community zoning variances could help establish appropriate mediation and reflection centers. (Inspired by this passage, I started a non-profit 503c corporation some years back to network otherwise vacant vacation homes, time share condos and the like, for the purpose of “serving the servers”— providing the necessary space to recharge one’s physical, emotional and mental batteries.)

(3) While the whole tone of your piece underscores the need for the realization of human brotherhood and the role that cosmic insight plays in the context of planetary facts, needs, and goals, I would add a word about “intelligent patriotism.” Intelligent patriotism naturally stands in contrast to the kind of knuckle dragging nationalism reflected in the “My country right or wrong” slogan that leads to an end-justifies-the-means, “Kill’em all and let God sort’em out’ ethic— the implicit and explicit mantram of so much right wing media. One can lay claim to loving and being loyal to one’s country, but until we shift our individual and collective identities to the brotherhood of all humankind, war and lesser conflicts will continue as population pressures and resource demands escalate.

(2) If one needed to provide an example of the exact opposite of how an ideal state functions, one need only note the track record of the Bush Administration. Led by an incurious, emotionally arrested adolescent who has never had to account for his actions, it has brought monumental suffering to untold millions of innocent people. It’s neocon driven, “unipolar” foreign policy, and its “might makes right” national security strategy is exemplified by its self-proclaimed right to wage preventive war on anybody it wants— the very definition of war crimes that emerged from the Nuremberg Tribunals.

(1) Like the modifier “intelligent” used with patriotism, the modifier of “unreasoned” with respect to fear is a typical use of nuance by TUB’s authors. Evolutionarily speaking, fear is a survival function of our repto-mammal limbic system, a highly efficient threat assessment computer that emerged from millions years of adaptation to various environmental challenges. (This legacy of animal fear is what TUB refers to as “the mark of the beast,” so powerful that it isn’t completely expunged until considerable adjustments are made in the afterlife.) Politically speaking, it is the target of so much right wing Republican propaganda that it has succeeded it painting the Democrats as weak on national security. This, in turn, has prevented them from bringing the Iraq war/occupation to a close by the simple device of refusing to provide further funding for this highly immoral and destructive enterprise.

The good (and bad) news is that the economy has finally reached the breaking point where further expenditures cannot be sustained. Foreign countries (like Kuwait), which have provided the money (at interest) no longer seem willing to do so for sheer economic, if not political, reasons.

I would close with this very timely passage from TUB, which can be excused for being a bit self-referential, given the problem it addresses. It also serves as a useful theme for what I see as the purpose and potential of UrantianSojourn.com:

Hunger and love drove men together; vanity and ghost fear held them together. But these emotions alone, without the influence of peace-promoting revelations, are unable to endure the strain of the suspicions and irritations of human interassociations. Without help from superhuman sources the strain of society breaks down upon reaching certain limits, and these very influences of social mobilization— hunger, love, vanity, and fear— conspire to plunge mankind into war and bloodshed.

Cross-posted from one of the fine Commenters at Driftglass; from Driftglass’ entry: “Get Rid Of The Bitter”
TANBARK said:

Last night was a republican victory. In this year in which the repubs are going into the election with more negatives than any party in decades, for the DEMOCRATIC candidate to win the popular votes in Texas and Ohio by saying things like:

“Vote for me or the terrrists will eat your children”

and, 24 hours before the Texas and Ohio primaries:

“I think that I have a lifetime of experience that I will bring to the White House. Senator John McCain has a lifetime of experience that he will bring to the White House. Senator Obama has a speech he gave in 2002.”

…is depressing. We do NOT have, as the Hillary supporters keep saying: “Two fine candidates.” We have a republican-lite on the war, and on such issues as helping bush with the Kiel-Lieberman amendment, and co-sponsoring, with one of the rankest right-wingers in the senate, Robert Bennett, an amendment to make burning the american flag a federal crime; and the other candidate, a bright, decent man, who can legitimately go after the republicans for their bloody mess in Iraq.

It’s starting to sound like she’s angling for the second spot on the fucking republican ticket.

THIS is the stuff of wingnut dreams.

MORE. She is the CANDIDATE of wingnut dreams. When the brain-trust of the RNC read that little statement, their eyes got glassy. When I googled to find the precise words, guess where it came up first?

A right-wing blog.

And does anyone reading this think that McCain and the GOP won’t use it if she’s able to get the nomination?

Is she going to sit across from John McCain at the debates and say THAT to him?

What is nauseating is reading the blogs run by women who support her, as they so studiously ignore the reality of her using these republican talking points against a candidate who has used NO right-wing smears on her.

They keep hammering away at McCain, while Clinton says things like the above comment.

It’s fucking insane. And it’s the same kind of Orwellian doublethink that let bush and the warpimps get us into the quagmire.

It’s no accident that the drool-heads like Limbaugh, Coulter, etc., were telling their fans to cross over and vote for Clinton. They KNOW who they want to run against.

It’s a terrible indictment of a lot of democrats, including some that call themselves “progressives” that at least some of the time, Rush Limbaugh, etc. are politically smarter than they are.