Cosmic Iguana - Voice of the Evil Doers

_{Actual Official White House Photo}

We've been hearing for years just how awesomely mavericky John McCain is, and finally I decided to find out for myself. Fortunately, the awesomely liberal Washington Post (you know the same folks who brought us the Clinton impeachment) have bipartisanly put up a list of just how partisan (the opposite of mavericky) each Senator is [*]. In the last Congress, due to Democrats having control, they outrank Repugs in partisanship by 6%. But enough of that, just how partisan is Mr Maverick?

It turns out he votes with his party 88.5% of the time. So he is a maverick 11.5% of the time. Doesn't seem particularly mavericky, but well, numbers mean nothing by themselves, so maybe let's put it in context.

The next even more mavericky person in the senate is that awesome maverick Trent Lott (with 88.4% partisanship - 11.6% maverick). Yes, Mr "Strom Thurmond should have been President" is more mavericky than John McCain!

Even more mavericky is Idaho's remarkable maverick Mr. "Wide Stance" Larry Craig (11.7% maverick). Well, you knew he swung both ways after all.

More mavericky yet, is Mr "I bonked a hooker, but I repented" David Vitter (11.9% maverick). I guess you can see that McCain's recently exposed peccadilloes are just part of the maverick territory.

Far more mavericky (by a couple percent) is "Global warming is a myth" James Inhofe (13.1% maverick). Now that's what I call a real maverick.

PS: The WPost page listing the maverick quotient of our US Senators is down: Either it was crushed by the wave of Iguana visitors (yeah, right...) or maybe they got upset about embarassing the press's favorite candidate. But in case you were wondering, the Senator that scored highest in maverickiness was Olympia Snowe with 32%.