John McCain is a patriot. And he is unfit to be president. When the junior senator from Illinois finally has a chance to turn his attention to the aged senator from Arizona, the difference will be stunning.

This kind of evasion from domestic issues will likely be more common when he has to debate the Democratic candidate.  He got laughter, like a joke receives, however his incompetance is hardly comedic if he secures the presidency with only a biting wit and an impressive past.

Universal health care as POW camp treatment in Vietnam?  That must be the most fumbled witticism of his career.  

I really hope that McCain can emerge from behind this ludicrous Republican boilerplate on health care and say something intelligent sometime.  One day he's going to have to answer questions seriously.

It's a cheap shot to point out the truth - that he has had government funded health care his entire life and he chooses to prevent other Americans from having that same opportunity? It's a cheap shot to raise a legitimate point about a legitimate issue? And then at another point in the interview he turns around and actually does cheap shot Obama about a decidedly non-issue, Ayers, using tactics he promised earlier in the primary he would never use. He has no honor. There isn't anything this man won't do or say for the sake of his ambitions.

How dare you question his lack of knowledge, lack of policy, lack of consistency, complete hypocrisy - he was a POW damn you! No wonder he and Jomentum are such great friends - Senator Sanctimonious meet Senator Sanctimonious. He is not the Republican nominee; he is the recipient of the Bob Dole Award for demanding he be given the Presidency like a gold watch given to the guy retiring after 50 years in the biz.

I am so looking forward to the general election match up Bill Maher calls "YouTube vs Feeding Tube".

If McCain thinks this is gonna fly in the general, he must be suffering from dementia, He has the nomination wrappped up. Time to tack to the center again and remind people that he's a bi-partisan guy. I think his mind is beginning to go. At least he could said, "I believe markets to be more efficient than government health care. Instead he leans on his POW experience? The "I was a POW" can only be pulled out so many times. It's probably wasted on health care

mcgumbleton,

It seems to me that McCain was actually prefacing his own comment as a 'cheap shot.' He knew it was out of line and irrelevant, but he just couldn't resist playing the POW card anyway. (I guess I'd have to see the clip and not just read it to be sure though.) I knew he would play the POW card early and often, but honestly. From idiotic "jokes" like this to his using his POW footage in campaign commercials (something he once said he would never use for crass political points), he's just becoming shameless.

Man, this is going to be an ugly run to November. I positively despise the lowest common denominator politics McCain practices. If you thought Bush ran a bumper sticker campaign, just brace yourself: In the mess Bush has created, bumper sticker politics is going to be oh so much worse. Taxes bad! War! Global warming ha ha ha! Must wear flag pin! Argh! Feed me meat!

Lookin' better and better for the Dems in November.  This guy is just this side of assisted living -- courtesy of the government, of course.

Worse, McCain seems to have taken no heat from the press for his absurd proposal to eliminate federal gasoline taxes during the summer. He never took freshman economics, evidently, so he does not know that a market price is the one that clears the market. Cutting the tax will not change the market-clearing price, it will just add to the profits of the sellers. Didn't anyone in the news media take economics either? Why does this elementary fallacy go unchallenged?

Oh, come on. McCain's healthcare provider can be twisted around a million different ways to mean anything you want, it's an empty question. "Senator McCain, your job has provided healthcare for you your entire life; wouldn't you say that the rest of Americans should get their health care coverage from their employers?"

Woody,

Looking at it again, you're right - it does appear he was referring to his own comments. I made the mistake of following the link. The more he dissembled and tried to bully George into not having to actually answer the question - and then BS about Ayers - the more pissed i got and the more pissed i got the more quickly I read the damn thing, so comprehension decreased. My bad. His calling his own remarks a cheap shot was the only time the Straight Talk Express actually appeared in that interview. He had no grasp of what he was saying at all.

Speaking of having no grasp of the issues, Titanio, I think reporters don't either, thus the inability to challenge McCain.....

HIs affect overall was very strange. He was laughing at inappropriate places throughout the interview. Stylistically, it was kind of like Bush at his nadir. The nervous chuckling, the disconnect between words and emotion.

"Families make the right decisions."

This is true....when THEY BLOODY WELL HAVE HEALTH INSURANCE!  Otherwise, when faced with unaffordable medical expenses, their only decision is this:

A) Rob bank.

B) Die.

His day has come and gone. Obama will beat him like a rented mule.

Actually, titanio, it is unclear how much of the tax burden is borne by consumers and how much by producers.  It depends on the relative price elasticities of supply and demand. Demand is probably pretty inelastic in the short-term as people cannot change cars and most driving is a function of where they live.  That would suggest that consumers bear most of the cost and that reducing taxes would therefore flow mostly to consumers. However,  when, as I believe is the case, there is not much excess refining capacity, supply is also pretty inelastic in the short-term, which means more of the cost of the taxes is borne by producers and they would gain.  Not obvious on the face of things.

What is obvious is that it is a stupid idea for multiple reasons, although certainly designed to appeal for votes.  It would be better to spend the same tax money as a rebate for the employee side of payroll taxes.  Just as well to keep repeating that McCain's suggestion would be a windfall for producers so it gets no traction.  That too is an idea that voters can readily understand even if the reality is more complex.

I wish when McCain says look at England or Canada somebody ask him about the Japanese health care system and then watch him fumble and stumble. Actually, I doubt he really even knows about the English or Canadian systems either and it would be nice if Stephy actually asked him to critique exactly what is wrong with them. McCain said look at them, but we never actually do besides anecdotes. How about questions to him like. "Senator, Japan has UHC, spends less per capita than we do, and has better outcomes. How do you think they do it? After all, you have a reputation for expertise on Asian affairs (wink wink), can you say why this is can not work in the US?" Honestly, I would really like to know the answers to these questions. The fact that McCain can't answer them is his fault, not mine for asking him.

But instead lameass Stephy goes for his gotcha.

Rouboulai: You are quite correct that price elasticities govern the outcome, but for the US gasoline market short-run supply is inelastic while short-run demand is elastic. Because world-wide oil production is fixed in the short run, the only way higher prices to sellers could bring forth more supply is if we could then outbid other countries for oil – diverting to the US some of what is now flowing to China, for instance. But, such allocations are made by forward contract, so significant adjustments in the 4-6 month period of McCain’s proposal could not occur. Besides, refining capacity is already maxed out in the US so, getting more crude here would not result in much more gasoline.

I completely disagree that consumer demand for gasoline is inelastic. True, people still drive to work, but they think carefully about how they use their cars when it costs $100 to fill the tank. If that were not true, the pump price would have to be much higher than the current $4/gal to clear the market.

The only way to get prices down to, say, $3/gal in the short run would be some kind of price controls and 1970s-style lines at the gas pump. If consumption were not curtailed by the price mechanism, it would have to be curtailed some other way -- there is only so much gasoline to go around.

Mrs. Edward's comment was uncommonly stupid as applies to servicemen.  Of course, they have government provided health care.  They are soldiers and sailors, serving in special circumstances where the government says they ought to serve and putting their lives at risk.

Only a moron would compare the situation of military servicemen to that of the general populace.  

In the case of Congress, they have chosen to give themselves special privileges and that could, indeed, be open to question.  However, you could argue that some of them, at least, are earning far less serving in Congress than they could earn in private, thus the subsidy.

On the other hand, clearly a lot in Congress couldn't earn half their Congressional salary on the outside.

so channy, poor people who can't afford insurance should just die? No, wait work 3 jobs, and then you can bitch about how they are absentee parents, right? Please, address what should be done about the 50 million uninsured in America.

"Mrs. Edward's comment was uncommonly stupid as applies to servicemen.  Of course, they have government provided health care.  They are soldiers and sailors, serving in special circumstances where the government says they ought to serve and putting their lives at risk."

The problem with that, Chan, is the problem that conservatives in general have when one asks them, as they finish their last vent against "government" and simultaneously demand that everyone "support the troops!", why they appear to believe that the military isn't "government."

As we don't have private armies carrying out U.S. policy abroad (until Black Bush or whatever they are called, anyhow), conservatives usually don't have a good answer.  Understandaby, for whichever way you cut it, the military is government as much as any other agency.  Furthermore, although nobody could want to cut down on medical treatment for service personnel and their families, the issue that Mrs. Edwards was addressing was, I think, more the question of veteran benefits rather than field medical services.  

There we have an old American argument as to whether veterans should enjoy specific lifelong benefits that other citizens don't  It wasn't always a cut and dried issue, and there were many tussles in the late nineteenth century about the government's responsibility to those who had served in the Civil War on the Union side.

In general, although conservatives tend to try to get out of the bind by asserting a difference involved in national security -- in other words, waving a philosophical wand to render the military a privileged part of government that escapes their dislike of "government" -- national health may turn out in the future to be as important as national security.  Indeed, both health and defense may turn out to be really two aspects of national security, and more connected than we think.

blackton, the minute we start giving free (bad) health care to the 50 million poor you claim aren't getting it, the other 103 million of your beloved Mexicans who aren't here already would come norte for that irresistible freebie.

We don't have the wherewithal to provide free healthcare to all at Congressional or military standard without bankrupting the country and degrading the health care for everyone else.

While were at it, blackton, why allow any poor people at all.  Let's decree those 50 million middle class and provide them with a $50 or 60k/yr income.

Where's the scratch coming from, blackton?  Are you paying American taxes down in Mexico?

irony, the military is not "government" in the sense that you mean it.

National defense is one of the core purposes of government. The majority of what government does today is extraneous and was not forseen by the Founders.  Would that we were rid of much of it.

You envision the military as just another government bureaucracy like the Dept of Energy.  It is not.  It is a special domain with a special ethos of self-sacrifice.  They have earned their medical care and other perks as just compensation for all they give up and are willing to bear during their time of service.

Your analog is absurd.  And if there were still a draft and you and other a goodly sector of the male population had served, you would know how absurd it is.  Such talk as this was not abroad tween WW2 and the end of the draft in the mid 70s.  Men knew the difference between the military and the post office then.