Why don't you remember, I'm your pal? Buddy, can you spare a dime?

John McCain doesn't give one crap about poverty in America.

Proof? A search of his site, using the built-in search engine, provides only 1 hit, from 4.04.2008. Yep, yesterday, when he cynically tried to hop onto the MLK Assassination train by saying this:

Some people lament privately, others are brave enough to take their call for change to the public arena. Martin Luther King III has done his father's legacy proud this week by courageously insisting that our nation's next leader do something about the poverty that ensnares over 36 million of our citizens. I will answer his call, and tell him and the American people today that I will make the eradication of poverty a top priority of the McCain Administration.

Right, John. Too bad you weren't one of the ones to "take the call":

John McCain today brought his effort to reinvent himself for the general election to a new low by misleading the voters on his full record on a holiday honoring Dr. Martin Luther King. McCain tried to suggest that his opposition to a holiday honoring Dr. King was limited to his 1983 vote against a federal holiday. In reality, McCain maintained his opposition to it until at least 1989, voted against funding for the commission working to promote the King Holiday in 1994, and used divisive language about state's rights to defend himself. McCain even supported Republican efforts to repeal a holiday in his state in 1987.

Stinging indictment. Where from? Fox Business. Quoting the DNC, but still...

And McCain's view of what was meaningful news in the '60s is illuminating:

"They never gave us any meaningful news," McCain said. "They told us the day that Martin Luther King was shot, they told us the day that Bobby Kennedy was shot, but they never bothered to tell us about the moon shot. So it was certainly selected news."

I stood outside MusicLand, where I taught guitar lessons, with my friend, band-mate, and fellow teacher Mike Peters, when a distraught woman walking down the sidewalk told us that MLK Jr. had been killed. We were young, free, and somewhat politically aware. And a few years later, when the Apollo moon landing occurred, I remember watching it with friends, and feeling amazed.

I never did time in a Viet Namese prison. But I have a clear recollection of the relative importance of these events in the context of the '60s. For me, safe at home, the moon landing was pretty cool, but hardly the devastating impact on the American political scene as the assassinations of 2 great political leaders of the time.

I don't begrudge McCain his take on current political events, but I firmly disagree with it. His emprace of the MLK holiday is too late, too calculating, too cynical.

And I note in amazement that it took this topic to cause St. John to use the word 'poverty' for the first time.

Ugly is as ugly does.