TODAY'S WORST PERSON IN THE WORLD

Dick Cheney Lite, otherwise known as John McCain:

McCain [in a "Twitterview" with George Stephanopoulos] said it is "too early" to tell if President Obama has put the nation at risk of a terror attack, refusing to agree or reject Cheney's recent comments.

Charming, Senator. Is it McCarthyite in here, or is it me?

And on another subject:

McCain also said he is working on alternatives to Obama's budget plan, and pointed to Rep. Paul Ryan, R-Wisc., as someone with "great ideas."

Paul Ryan's "great ideas," laid out in a Wall Street Journal op-ed a couple of weeks ago, essentially consist of huge tax cuts for everybody!!!! Whoopeee!!!! Federal debt? What federal debt?

Rather than raise the top marginal income tax rate to 39.6%, it should be dropped to 25%. The lower tax brackets should be collapsed to one 10% rate on the first $100,000 for couples. And the top corporate tax rate should be lowered to 25%....

The administration and congressional Democrats want to raise capital gains tax rates by a third. Instead, we should eliminate the capital gains tax....

And if that doesn't bankrupt the government forever, Ryan's "Roadmap for America's Future" (PDF) "[o]ffers workers under 55 the option of investing over one third of their current Social Security taxes into personal retirement accounts" -- which immediately removes those workers' payments from the pool of money used to pay Social Security to current retirees, just as massive numbers of baby boomers retire and those payments by current workers are desperately needed. (And, of course, for anyone nearing retirement, switching from the SocSec Trust Fund to Wall Street investments would have been such a great move over, say, the last couple of years, wouldn't it?)

Oh, and there's also this from Johnny Mac:

Last week, ThinkProgress reported that hate radio host Laura Ingraham responded to Meghan McCain's criticism of right-wingers like Ann Coulter by calling her "plus-sized." Meghan shot back, telling Ingraham, "stop talking about my body." Yesterday, Meghan ripped Ingraham on The View, saying, "Kiss my fat ass!"

Today, in his "Twitterview" with ABC’s George Stephanopoulos, Sen. John McCain (R-AZ) shied away from condemning Ingraham's gratuitous attacks on his daughter. Stephanopoulos asked McCain, "What do you think of Meghan's feud with Coulter and Ingraham?" McCain first said, "I'm proud of my daughter and she has a right to her opinions." When asked if he agrees with his daughter, McCain did not say, simply stating, "like any family we agree on some things and disagree on others"...

It's unclear why McCain wouldn't directly admonish Ingraham, who has mocked his daughter's voice, weight, and just yesterday, called Meghan a "useful idiot." ...

Republican family values.

And, as Atrios notes, McCain's newfound enthusiasm for Twitter comes mere months after we were told, in response to a Barack Obama campaign ad, that McCain doesn't use a computer because of war injuries. Here's Jake Tapper last September telling us that if we have tears, prepare to shed them now:

Assuredly McCain isn't comfortable talking about this -- and the McCain campaign discouraged me from writing about this -- but the reason the aged Arizonan doesn't use a computer or send e-mail is because of his war wounds.

I realize some of the nastier liberals in the blogosphere will see this as McCain once again "playing the POW card," but it's simply a fact: typing on a regular keyboard for any sustained period of time bothers McCain physically.

He can type, he occasionally does type, but in general, the injuries he sustained as a POW -- ones that make it impossible for him to raise his arms high enough to comb his hair -- mean that small tasks make his shoulders ache, so he tries to avoid any repetitive exercise.

Again, it's not that he can't type, he just by habit, avoids when he can, repetitive exercise involving his arms. He does if he has to....

(In the "Twitterview," McCain specifically said he doesn't dictate his tweets -- he types them himself on a PC or a BlackBerry. But in the fall, he was too wounded to send an e-mail.)