Physician: "McCain's the most likely senator to start a nuclear war"

[bunnies]

An oldie but a goodie...

The Mushrooming Clouds That Hang Over McCain

By ALEXANDER COCKBURN

(snip)

There was a famous fight in Arizona that went on for years about Mount Graham, on which the federal government wanted to put a telescope. Indians said it was sacred. Greens said its slopes sheltered the endangered Mount Graham red squirrel (Tamiasciurus hudsonicus grahamensis). In 1992, a couple of well-respected physicians, Robin Silver and Bob Witzeman, went to meet McCain at his office in Phoenix to discuss Mt. Graham. At the time of McCain's 1999 run the doctors told CounterPunch co-editor Jeffrey St Clair that at the mention of the words Mount Graham McCain erupted into a violent fit. ""He jumped up and down, screaming obscenities at us for at least 10 minutes.", Silver said. "He shook his fists as if he was going to slug us. It was as violent as almost any domestic abuse altercation."

Witzeman told Jeffrey that he left the meeting stunned: "I'm a lifelong environmentalist, but what really scares me about McCain is not his environmental policies, which are horrid, but his violent, irrational temper. I think McCain is so unbalanced that if Vladimir Putin told him something he didn't like he'd lose it, start beating his chest about having his finger on the nuclear trigger. Who knows where it would stop. To my mind, McCain's the most likely senator to start a nuclear war."

The last time anyone made that sort of charge against a senator from Arizona and presidential candidate, it was about Barry Goldwater, who ran against Lyndon Johnson in 1964. A famously effective campaign ad showed a little girl picking a daisy, which then mutated into a mushroom cloud. Painted as a potential nuker of the planet, Goldwater lost in a landslide.

(snip)

footnote: Robert Witzeman is a retired anesthesiologist, Conservation Chair Maricopa Audubon, SW wildlife conservation issues

link: http://www.counterpunch.org/cockburn02232008.html

We need to focus on this stuff.

Oh and... anyone remember when he roughed up 92 year old Strom Thurman back in 1995? Nice guy that McCain.

[AndyTiedye]

1. Bring Back the "Daisy" Ad

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OKs-bTL-pRg

perhaps have the mushroom cloud at the end morph into this:

[bunnies]

2. Great idea.

That photo is equally as horrifying!

[AndyTiedye]

7. How About This?

[PA Democrat]

3. What did McCain do to Strom?

You'd think those two would have been best buddies.

[bunnies]

5. he got in his face... nearly started a fist-fight.

One account of it:

In January 1995, McCain was midway through an opening statement at a Senate Armed Services Committee hearing when chairman Strom Thurmond asked, "Is the senator about through?" McCain glared at Thurmond, thanked him for his "courtesy" (translation: buzz off), and continued on. McCain later confronted Thurmond on the Senate floor. A scuffle ensued, and the two didn't part friends.

http://www.washingtonian.com/articles/people/6506.html

[PA Democrat]

6. OMG. No wonder McCain came in second in a survey of Senate staffers for the Senator having the

worst temper. Of course, he may soon be #1, as the king of bad tempers according to that survey was Ted Stevens.

[invictus]

4. K&R