Matt Taibbi of Rolling Stone must've been in a difficult bind--in this video, he can't decide who to ridicule more, John McCain or the voters. He never seems to include Democrats in this kind of political bashing.

Apparently, he's taking his anger out on McCain for not bashing President Bush like Taibbi wishes he would:

That supposed straight-shooter quality already cost McCain dearly in South Carolina once, when his refusal to fight back against a sucker-punching George Bush in 2000 sent his political career into a spiral, indirectly sending the rest of us careening into an ill-considered invasion of Iraq. Now, in mid-September, I watch him return to the state as a prisoner of Bush's idiot policies in Iraq. This time around, by some curious leap of Stockholm-syndrome logic, McCain has chosen Bush's cruel and asinine Mesopotamian war as the great principle he will not betray. This leaves him looking like a morbidly tragicomic figure, the doomed last rat stubbornly remaining on the deck of his one-time enemy's fast-sinking ship. As he makes his fateful return to the state where it all started to go wrong for him eight years ago, you can almost see a flash of pained recognition in his eyes, as if he is seeing his mistake too late, as the water rises up to drown him in obscurity.

It was obvious right from the start that things had changed decidedly for the sadder since the last time McCain campaigned in South Carolina. Back then, in 2000, McCain was the hottest name in American politics, a Newsweek cover boy fresh from his victory in New Hampshire. This former POW came to South Carolina on an all-time high, expecting to win this state in a rout and be crowned nominee of his party and probable next president of the United States. In those days, his candidacy's signature image was his campaign bus, a decked-out vehicle with STRAIGHT TALK EXPRESS plastered on the side that was received as a campaign co-star bigger than even McCain's war record or his doe-eyed, former-pill-popping wife. That, of course, was before the so-close-you-could-touch-it fantasy turned completely to shit -- amid a strange firestorm of whispers and rumors about McCain having gone crazy in Nam and later fathering an illegitimate child with a black prostitute, rumors the Bush-Rove camp winkingly denied thinking up for the pre-election amusement of these simple rural folk.

Fast-forward to September 2007. Buzz all gone, campaign coffers nearly empty, having suffered the indignity of finishing behind Barack Obama in a survey of Iowa Republicans, McCain limps into South Carolina a whipping boy for the loser-hating national press. This time around, he has named his bus after a failure. While rivals Rudy Giuliani, Fred Thompson and Mitt Romney all ride in pimped-out circus vehicles with geeky names (the "Mitt Mobile" is an all-time low), McCain's bus looks like it was rented off a lot in Paramus, New Jersey. It features no stenciled flags, no proud-looking eagles, nothing -- just a single green stripe with a sad little double-entendre inscription on the side reading NO SURRENDER. As in, No Surrender in Iraq, as well as No Surrender in My Doomed Campaign. That someone in the McCain camp thought it prudent to advertise, on the side of a bus, the desperate nature of the candidate's situation should say everything that needs to be said about how his campaign has been run all year.

—Kathleen McKinley is a blogger whose posts appear at Rightwing Sparkle.