Lotus-Eater LAT to McCain: Are You Fit to be POTUS? You're Disabled!

"The Sargasso of the Imagination" of the Los Angeles Times always raises the bar for the utmost stupidity in an editorial on the news page. Just when you think the NYT has retired the Guinness Cup, as it has been doing in its adoration of the Obamanable Showman and its "outing" of McCain's bogus hoax affair with a lobbyist, the LAT puts the Reward for the Most Bogus Issue Cup Competition back in play.

Sen. John McCain has long said he is in robust health and is strong enough to hike the Grand Canyon, but he also is receiving what his staff Monday termed a "disability pension" from the Navy.

When McCain released his tax return for 2007 on Friday, he separately disclosed that he received a pension of $58,358 that was not listed as income on his return. On Monday, McCain's staff identified the retirement benefit as a "disability pension" and said that McCain "was retired as disabled because of his limited body movements due to injuries as a POW."

McCain campaign strategist Mark Salter said Monday night that McCain was technically disabled. "Tortured for his country -- that is how he acquired his disability," Salter said. Certain types of military and veterans pensions are either partially or completely tax-exempt, depending on the seriousness of the disability. In McCain's case, the exemption is 100%.

The sun-worshippers in the LA Basin will shudder with a frisson of anger that this tax exemption for a war hero disturbs their Obamadoration. Didn't Obama suffer taunts and jibes from whites? Actually no, it was the Indonesian kids who threw young "Hussein" Obama into a watery swamp to drown after they beat him up. But he leaves that out of his autobio and instead remembers bitterly imaginary slights from white kids in Hawaii [actually he was BMOC for his athletic abilities!]

The Sargasso is stagnant and reeks of hypocrisy, but it is a breeding ground for all sorts of strange creatures. The LAT is one of them.