Another Miss For McCain

This Democracy Arsenal link tells us that “Senator Honor And Virtue” missed the hearings today with MNF Commander Gen. David Petraeus and Lt. Gen. Raymond Odierno before the Senate Armed Services Committee (interesting testimony I think, basically showing the slow separation taking place between the generals and the preznit/John W. McBush).

This is not an unusual occurrence for McCain at all, by the way. As this link tells us, he has missed 255 of 450 votes cast in the Senate since January including every vote this year (by comparison, Barack Obama has missed about 40 percent, or 170 votes during that period, and Hillary Clinton has missed 24 percent, or 108 votes, according to a tally by the Democratic National Committee – and HRC apparently asked some good questions today in the hearing; despite how I feel about her campaign, no one should ever question her smarts, toughness and dedication).

And to provide a historical perspective, McCain has missed 672 of 4038 votes (17%) since Feb 4, 1993, as noted here by GovTrack (rated "exceedingly poor" relative to peers). To be fair, though, 31 of the 537 bills he sponsored since ’93 were enacted, which is rated as “exceedingly good” by GovTrack. Also, this HuffPo link tells us that John Kerry also missed a ton of votes when he was running for president, and McCain hasn’t yet come close to Kerry’s mark.

However, as Ilan Goldenberg noted previously, McCain is the ranking minority party member of the Senate Armed Services Committee, and seeing as how our people are fighting and dying in his precious Iraq war, don’t you think it would behoove him to get his ass back to Washington to meet with the guy who is the next nominated commander of US CENTCOM and ask him what’s going on?

But then again, I’m just a filthy, unkempt liberal blogger who never served, so what do I know?

(By the way, McCain apparently is going to release his medical records tomorrow, and they should contain a psychological evaluation by an impartial and qualified third party - though I'm sure they won't - because as far as I'm concerned based on this post, this guy is flippin' nuts!).

Update 6/2/08: As noted here, "Senator Honor And Virtue" is a real sweetheart, isn't he? The records were available to view for only three hours and no photocopying was allowed (yes, I know about HIPA regs, but the guy is running for president, for God's sake.)