Having happened across this post again, I just realized...

I'm kinda creeped-out by the use of the word "transcendent" to describe the issues.

The issue of whether we should be rounding up thousands of people, keeping in the black prisons, torturing them...I dunno, I don't much like the application of the word "transcendent" to that.

I think that Bush's (s)elections in 2000 and 2004 told us what we were about, as a nation.

It was sad, and we had to wear the pointy cap for 8 years, but we have a chance to either show the world that we've learned from our mistakes, or that we've got the IQ of a Fox News anchor.

McCain has never been a "maverick". He, like 99 others in the Senate, have their moments in the spotlight for the folks back home. Then they sit down and do as they're told.

His handlers played his 'moments' up, gave him a nickname, a theme song, ("...every hero has a theme song")and a talking point. ("I'm a maverick")

What he and his people do is mainly image changing, depending on what's popular at the moment.

So ... Maverick. McBush. CinJohn. Master Mac. Whatever.

You're just the geriatric P.Diddy.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Linda_Gail_Arrigo

A real enough person in Taiwan with a website (in chinese).

I'm going with the sister is a nutbar on this one. You get pretty good at this after awhile.

This is an excellent article from CounterPunch

A CounterPunch Special Investigation

Pilfered Scholarship Devastates General Petraeus's Counterinsurgency Manual

* Core Chapter a Morass of "Borrowed" Quotes

* University of Chicago Press Badly Compromised

* Counterinsurgency Anthropologist Montgomery McFate's Role Under Attack

By DAVID PRICE

http://www.counterpunch.org/price10302007.html

But who read it? Wild CIA conspiracies generate hits, like Brittany's crotch shots.

Counterpunch runs articles from a wide variety of sources for its on-line publication (It is also a print mag). Not exactly a news aggregator like Alternet or many other on-line pubs but they do reprint articles from all over. For the most part, Counterpunch is a reliable source when publishing authors who get no coverage elsewhere, but the discriminating reader must always take an outlet and source's bias into account and then do some vetting on their own. Just because CounterPunch, The WaPo, HuffPo, AlterNet or even Salon prints something, it doesn't mean it is true or accurate. Just because you find something on an obscure and unknown blog doesn't mean it's bullshit. As to Ms, SueAnn Arrigo, I have no idea but I did find this:

As it turns out Sue Arrigo has another sister, Linda Gail Arrigo, Ph.D. in Sociology, who left a comment on my original post stating in part:

I am sorry to say that my sister Sue Ann Arrigo has periodic episodes of paranoid schizophrenia, and this has been over a period of ten years at least. It is amazing how her wild stories have proliferated all over the web.

I have since exchanged a few emails with Linda Arrigo. She writes:

I believe that my sister Sue Ann has been having periodic bouts of paranoid schizophrenia since about 15 years ago. She is convinced that our father was both a member of the CIA and the Mafia, and that he inducted her at a young age into intelligence activities, and that she has been under mind control since then, and subject to frequent kidnapping and threats by agents, wherever she is in the world. However, she has no material or historical evidence of this other than her later memories and physical symptoms, as she reported recently for supposedly being kidnapped in Ireland in early June 2007. I talked by telephone with my mother who was with her right afterwards and accompanied her to the doctor and the police, and my mother now believes Sue Ann is subject to hallucinations.

Our father, born 1914, served 20 years in the U.S. military, about 1941-61, in Europe, the Pentagon, Korea, Japan, and Taiwan. His work was logistics, not intelligence. I lived with him in Taiwan 1963-68; my sisters had virtually no contact with him after 1962. He is senile now, in San Francisco, and I sorted through most of his papers during the last few summers. He is not a pleasant personality, but I am certain he had no such CIA contacts or capacity.

If any consistent check were made on Sue Ann's schooling and employment for the last 30 years, it would be obvious that her current allegations of service as a CIA medic are pure fantasy, even if well-informed by public knowledge of current issues in U.S. government behavior.

There are enough real victims of U.S. military and intelligence actions; it is not surprising, perhaps, that victims of schizophrenia like my sister should feed on these accounts.

Given the incredible allegations of Dr. Sue Arrigo, the complete lack of supporting evidence, and this statement by her sister, I see no reason to give any credence to her claims. I wish her well.

http://coverthistory.blogspot.com/2007/07/return-from-spookyville-on-june-2-i_27.html

I'm sure there is enough real graft and corruption, already being investigated and prosecuted, (it has been in the news, Randy Duke Cunningham, Dusty Foggo, et al), without making stuff up and claiming vast conspiracies... but who can say?

from Amity:

"Is it so hard to try to accept McCain as he is, instead of always cutting him down? He's a maverick — a loner who treads dark paths in the bitter cold of unforgiving solitude. He's a cowboy, and he rides those trails alone."

The long dark tea-time of the soul...? (Hitchiker's Guide)

So if someone says over and over that they are a banana, and when they are tired of that their friends chime in for them, we should all believe they are a banana. That may work at Pescadero, but not on the way to the Whitehouse.

It took me several minutes to wipe the sticky goo off after this one. I accept very little about someone from what they say. Like written history, a person will and does say what they want to hear or what others would like to hear (in their best estimation).

Like Bush saying he doesn't think much about himself, then rattles on in an interview for an hour and a half, about himself. Or being a uniter, not a divider, or never being about "stay the course".

In 2000 McCain had a deserved reputation as a maverick, but judging from his actions, he's lost that as he tries to win over Americas hearts and minds.

I'm sorry to see this happen to McCain, but he's doing it to himself.

I'm also sorry to see intelligent people buy into a personal myth.