Dark Star

The Open Left blog has a post about McCain and his "Jesus Complex". There is a lot of ridiculous psycho-babble (liberals just love to garnish their arguments with pseudo-academic extrapolations - makes'em look smart) but at the end of the day, the argument is basically this:

Senator McCain's motto seems to be: Judge me not by what I say or do or who I climb into bed with, rather judge me by the fact that I served my country. This is what might be called the, I'm Jesus Christ argument. Having suffered, been imprisoned and then raised again on behalf of America, who are ordinary mortals such as Senator Obama, to question McCain's judgments?

I think this is hilarious. Apparently, Libs think this argument is just fine when it serves their purposes. We saw the very same argument used to their benefit in the following cases:

The Jersey Girls (9/11 widows critical of the Bush Administration); from Michelle Malkin:

You’ve read the story of the day, all day, on Drudge: Ann Coulter is antagonizing the Left with her comments about the liberal 9/11 widows known as “The Jersey Girls.” Hillary Clinton is going ape. TV producers of all partisan stripes are ecstatic. So are Ann’s publicists and publisher.

Unfortunately, lost in all the hype and hyperbole on both sides is the central point about the absolute moral authority the MSM confers on victims they agree with–while victims whose politics they do not share can’t get the time of day. Ann told Sean Hannity today she hopes her comments will demolish the “liberal infallibility” the MSM confers on its faves. (Video here.) Ironically, IMO, the facade has already eroded considerably–thanks to new media, talk radio, Fox News, etc. Case in point here.

"Phony Soldier" Jesse MacBeth; from Rush Limbaugh's transcript:

Here is a Morning Update that we did recently, talking about fake soldiers. This is a story of who the left props up as heroes. They have their celebrities and one of them was Army Ranger Jesse MacBeth. Now, he was a "corporal." I say in quotes. Twenty-three years old. What made Jesse MacBeth a hero to the anti-war crowd wasn't his Purple Heart; it wasn't his being affiliated with post-traumatic stress disorder from tours in Afghanistan and Iraq. No. What made Jesse MacBeth, Army Ranger, a hero to the left was his courage, in their view, off the battlefield, without regard to consequences. He told the world the abuses he had witnessed in Iraq, American soldiers killing unarmed civilians, hundreds of men, women, even children. In one gruesome account, translated into Arabic and spread widely across the Internet, Army Ranger Jesse MacBeth describes the horrors this way: "We would burn their bodies. We would hang their bodies from the rafters in the mosque."

Now, recently, Jesse MacBeth, poster boy for the anti-war left, had his day in court. And you know what? He was sentenced to five months in jail and three years probation for falsifying a Department of Veterans Affairs claim and his Army discharge record. He was in the Army. Jesse MacBeth was in the Army, folks, briefly. Forty-four days before he washed out of boot camp. Jesse MacBeth isn't an Army Ranger, never was. He isn't a corporal, never was. He never won the Purple Heart, and he was never in combat to witness the horrors he claimed to have seen. You probably haven't even heard about this. And, if you have, you haven't heard much about it. This doesn't fit the narrative and the template in the Drive-By Media and the Democrat Party as to who is a genuine war hero. Don't look for any retractions, by the way. Not from the anti-war left, the anti-military Drive-By Media, or the Arabic websites that spread Jesse MacBeth's lies about our troops, because the truth for the left is fiction that serves their purpose. They have to lie about such atrocities because they can't find any that fit the template of the way they see the US military. In other words, for the American anti-war left, the greatest inconvenience they face is the truth.

And who could forget Liberal Anti-Bush cause celeb Valerie Plame; from Andrew McCarthy:

My colleague Cliff May has already demonstrated the bankruptcy of the narrative the media relentlessly spouts for Bush-bashing public consumption: to wit, that Valerie Wilson, nee Plame, was identified as a covert CIA agent by the columnist Robert Novak, to whom she was compromised by an administration official. In fact, it appears Plame was first outed to the general public as a result of a consciously loaded and slyly hypothetical piece by the journalist David Corn. Corn's source appears to have been none other than Plame's own husband, former ambassador and current Democratic-party operative Joseph Wilson — that same pillar of national security rectitude whose notion of discretion, upon being dispatched by the CIA for a sensitive mission to Niger, was to write a highly public op-ed about his trip in the New York Times. This isn't news to the media; they have simply chosen not to report it.

The hypocrisy, though, only starts there. It turns out that the media believe Plame was outed long before either Novak or Corn took pen to paper. And not by an ambiguous confirmation from Rove or a nod-and-a-wink from Ambassador Hubby. No, the media think Plame was previously compromised by a disclosure from the intelligence community itself — although it may be questionable whether there was anything of her covert status left to salvage at that point, for reasons that will become clear momentarily.

And, of course, Cindy Sheehan, victim of smears by the right; from Salon.com:

She's been profiled in dozens of papers and hailed in a New York Times editorial. Consequently, she's also been smeared by the right. Pundits have pointed out Sheehan's apparent inconsistencies -- in the past, she said that she believed Bush cares about the troops who've died, and she spoke warmly of a brief visit with the president after Casey's death that she now recalls as insincere and impersonal. All this week Matt Drudge has hammered on Sheehan, publicizing criticism by some of her family members, who say they support Bush and the war. On the Tuesday edition of his show, Fox host Bill O'Reilly said Sheehan's behavior "borders on treasonous."

This is what they call "Swift-Boating" on the Left. A pejorative term for any criticism of whomever the Left considers a hero - usually protesters or "whistle-blowers" that stoke the fires of Liberal pet beliefs (i.e. Bush lied, etc.). It does, as this term's origin shows, extend to those who are SOLIDLY in the political fray and have been for years.

So I would urge the Left to cool it with all the psycho-babble they think explains this type of mind-set in John McCain.
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