GOP: I'm With...

Stupid:

Third Term McSame Agrees With Bush:

McCain in ‘05: I’m ‘totally in agreement’ with Bush on ‘the most important issues of the day.’

Sen. John McCain (R-AZ) is working hard to dispel the notion that his presidency would effectively constitute a third Bush term, saying recently that he has “disagreed strongly with the Bush administration” on Iraq. But McCain took a very different stance in June 2005... [Video at HuffPo]

Tim Russert: The fact is you are different than George Bush.

SEN. McCAIN: No. No. I–the fact is that I’m different but the fact is that I have agreed with President Bush far more than I have disagreed. And on the transcendent issues, the most important issues of our day, I’ve been totally in agreement and support of President Bush.

More fallout from NRCC embezzlement scandal:

House Republicans have had to deal with the nearly $2 million tab from its embezzlement scandal ($725,000 stolen by their former treasurer, and continued legal and accounting costs trying to sort out the mess), not to mention the severe public embarrassment which allows people like me to say, "Republicans run their committees the same way they run the country."

Morally Bankrupt:

In response to today's landmark Supreme Court decision granting habeas corpus to Guantanamo detainees, Lindsey Graham has decided he wants to amend the United State Constitution to strip it of any pesky kinds of civil rights protections that have existed since the Magna Carta. [snip]

Every member of the Congress that approved the Military Commissions Act and the Detainee Treatment Act, now correctly reversed by the Court, will have the moral stain of having been a party to it besmirching their careers and their legacies forever. History will be only slightly less unforgiving to the Congress which allowed the grave abuses of the Constitution by the Bush administration than it will be to Bush himself. So no member of the Senate should be quick to follow Graham further down that path to complete ignominy.

Pathological:

More of this sort of bluntness, please:

GOP claim about Chinese oil drilling off Cuba is untrue

"China is not drilling in Cuba's Gulf of Mexico waters, period," said Jorge Pinon, an energy fellow with the Center for Hemispheric Policy at the University of Miami and an expert in oil exploration in the Gulf of Mexico. Martinez cited Pinon's research when he took to the Senate floor Wednesday to set the record straight.

Who's guilty of spouting this particular line of bull?

Vice President Dick Cheney, in a speech Wednesday to the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, picked up the refrain.

Surprise!

But guess what? It wasn't a lie, it was "faulty intelligence!"

Cheney quoted a column by George Will, who wrote last week that "drilling is under way 60 miles off Florida. The drilling is being done by China, in cooperation with Cuba, which is drilling closer to South Florida than U.S. companies are."

The article also catches House Minority Leader John Boehner -- whose otherworldly tan is itself rumored to be of offshore Chinese manufacture -- repeating this crap, as well as relative nobody Rep. George Radanovich (R-CA). It also reportedly appeared in an Investor's Business Daily editorial earlier this week. [snip]

Moral of the story: These guys will lie about absolutely anything. WMD. War and peace. POW rescues. The combat records of actual war heroes. Whether or not they marched with Martin Luther King. Everything.

And you can't "work out bipartisan compromise" with liars. Compromise requires at least two genuine positions to start with.

McSame Flip Flopping, again:

"But I'm not for quote privatizing Social Security, I never have been, I never will be."
[New Hampshire Town Hall, 06/12/08]:

"Without privatization, I don't see how you can possibly, over time, make sure that young Americans are able to receive Social Security benefits."
[C-Span Road to the White House, 11/18/2004]

Ok, you need more? You got it. Here is McCain from March of this year on at least partially privatizing Social Security:

"As part of Social Security reform, I believe that private savings accounts are a part of it – along the lines of what President Bush proposed."
[Wall Street Journal, 3/3/2008]

Once again, case closed. McCain has conveniently changed what he believes, because that's just what "straight-talking mavericks" do.