Zombies!? Lemme at ‘em!

Radar Magazine scored the what appears to be the final interview with John McCain before his GOP presidential nomination was announced.  And there are some surprises.

Despite not understanding Google or being able to deal with his own email, McCain has an innate  grasp of the underlying  complex themes contained in the zombie sub-genre of horror movies.

After admitting to having watched and enjoyed both undead gore fests 28 Days and the sequel, 28 Days Later, the GOP candidate drops the bomb comment:

A lot of those zombie movies are political, you know.

Deep. He also enjoys Dexter, blood and black humor drenched series about a serial killer who kills other serial killers:

I think it’s a very good series. I enjoy Dexter…I  think it’s an interesting show with lots of black humor. I’ve enjoyed watching it.

But how does McCain feel about torture IRL, like at Gitmo? And, asks Radar, didn’t he flip flop on torture, along with offshore drilling?

How could I possibly flip-flop on torture? I’m against torture. I said we have to stop it. I said water-boarding is torture. I fought the administration tooth and nail about that. I have no idea how someone could say I’m not against torture.  What we said was that they could use some additional techniques, but they still had to be in accordance with the Detainee Treatment Act and the Geneva Conventions. So we still outlawed torture. We allowed a few additional techniques that are not cruel, inhumane, or degrading treatment. We tried to set up a situation where special agencies of our government have some additional techniques at their disposal. Uh, what was the other question?

 McCain also says that he’s all about healing and reconciliation:

…[M]y life has been characterized by reconciliation and healing, whether it was becoming best friends with the head of the antiwar group Students for a Democratic Society during the Vietnam War or having Jerry Falwell come into my office and say, "I want to put our differences behind us." So if that’s a personal failing—reconciling with people who were previously on the other side—sure, I’m guilty.

Guilty in the Keating 5, too. McCain pushed to delay regulations of the savings and loan industry, thus benefiting Keating.  From 1982 and 1987, McCain had received $112,000 in contributions from Keating and his associates. When Keating’s house of cards collapsed, a vast number of primarily senior citizens lost their life savings, a total of  about $285 million.

The Senate ethics committee did not sanction McCain but concluded his conduct reflected poor judgment. The lion’s share of McCain’s "poor judgment" centering around Keating–including rides on Keating’s jet and a trip to the Bahamas–occurred while he was in the House.

According to the New York Daily News, McCain certainly showed that "reconciliation and healing"  by helping out a friend from those halycon days of fraud and large donations, Mark Voight, president of the board of the Latch School, a special education school in Arizona.

Voigt had been the vice president of Charles Keating’s holding company, the American Continental Corp when Keating was breaking all those banking laws in the ’80s and his associates donated more than $100,000 to McCain.

The Latch School  had been denied $288,000 grant from the FCC  in 2002 and their pleas to McCain for help fell on deaf ears.  Then the new president of the board, Mark Voigt, wrote McCain about the matter, followed up with three letters in three months and finally got action. 

McCain concludes his  Radar interview saying:

It’s easy to say that I’m not the same McCain, but you can’t cite a single instance where I’ve changed my position.