John McCain has bounced along the hallways in Washington so many years his sense of reality and issues is as old as the walls. A conservative supporter at HuffingtonPost looks critically at McCain’s so-called Town Hall meetings and finds only staging and sloppy meandering:
In answer to a question about buying gas, the Senator typically ranges far afield and wanders (no surprise) into one of his favorite topics, Iran. “As you also know, in recent days they [the Iranians] have tested missiles which could probably, in some ways, deliver a nuclear weapon, so it’s very serious, a very serious situation. Now I believe that we are seeing a positive response from our European friends. I suggested a long time ago a League of Democracies, and it’s very clear that Russia and China, especially Russia, will veto significant measures which will impact the behavior of the Iranians. Now I regret that. And I regret some of the recent behavior that Russia has exhibited, and I will be glad to talk about that later on, including the reduction of oil supplies to Czechoslovakia after they [the Czechs] agreed with us on missile defense system, etc.”
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John McCain says, “I think that you are right. I think that the American people are beginning to understand more clearly that this huge transfer of $700 billion a year of your money is one of the greatest transfers of wealth in history. And it is a national security issue, my friends. It is an environmental issue, clearly an economic issue. But we can’t afford this as far as our national security is concerned — that money goes — you mentioned a couple of them, Venezuela, ah, some other countries that — that are clearly not our friends, and there is compelling evidence that some of that money ends up in the hands of terrorist organizations. So it is a national security issue. And I would be glad to identify them, although the American people, whom we tend sometimes to underestimate, have figured a lot of this out.”…
McCain adds a stunner. “The first telephones cost a thousand dollars and they were about that big! We all remember that!”