Back Away from the Twitter, Senator

John McCain makes cheap cracks online when he should be busy legislating

Remember last year, when we had that presidential campaign? Former John McCain associates kept shaking their heads sadly and saying, "I don't know why he's pulling all these dumb stunts, for he is a noble war hero with not an ounce of frivolity in his body" as he ran ads about Paris Hilton and deified an unlicensed plumber from Toledo.

Now we have definitive proof that John McCain is precisely as petty and frivolous as we'd feared. Look no further than his Twitter feed.

Given McCain's legendary lack of technology chops, this latest dumb stunt is almost certainly the work of some hapless intern -- and boo to John McCain for not even bothering to exercise a little more editorial control over what "he'" is saying. We should not see inanities like "$1 million for mormon cricket control in Utah -- is that the species of cricket or a game played by the brits?" coming from the Twitter feed of a man who was almost President.

The more "tweets" you read, the dumber his latest quest to point out the "porkiest projects" in the stimulus bill looks. Does he really think it will outrage anyone to know that a whole $100,000 have been appropriated for a regional robotics training center in South Carolina? This training center will educate students in how to operate advanced manufacturing equipment. In other words, it is an entirely useful workforce training project that will help blue-collar workers get better jobs in the future. Does John McCain really think that throwing $100,000 of federal money toward such a project is so contemptible?

The whole exercise of plumbing the stimulus bill for comedy -- chortling at $1.7 million for a honey bee factory when one-third of our food supply depends on plants pollinated by honeybees, which have been dying mysteriously and in record numbers for years -- just makes John McCain look pointlessly ignorant and more than a little juvenile.

Senator McCain would do well to look at the big picture and concentrate on, oh, helping to fix our collapsing economy and prevent a politically destabilizing global depression instead of snarking away on Twitter all day. Otherwise he just looks like a scornful, small-minded windbag whom we should we grateful isn't the President.

The apiarist and robot trainer Sara K. Smith writes for NBC and Wonkette.

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