There are a number of reasons that I find the idea of voting for John McCain for President to be…unpalatable.

Some are big things, like the torture thing and the 100 year war thing.

But some of my reservations are small and petty. This is a small and petty one.

John McCain doesn’t know how to use a computer.

This isn’t conjecture. This isn’t bullshit. It comes straight from his own mouth.

You can see that mouth speaking those words here.

Question: Do you use a Mac or PC

John McCain: “Neither, I am a [sic] illiterate who has to rely on my wife for all of the assistance I can get.”

Small and petty to be sure…but….Daaamn…really?! You don’t even use a computer?

It certainly explains a lot…at least to me.

UPDATE: It looks like this was a pretty timely post (despite the fact that McCain admitted his lack of basic modern knowledge back in March). There has been a general response to McCain’s tech cred given by Carly Fiorina, former CEO of HP.

NEW YORK (CNN/Money) – Hewlett-Packard Co. Chairman and CEO Carly Fiorina, one of the most powerful women in corporate America, is leaving the troubled computer maker after being forced out by the company’s board.

Shares of HP (Research) jumped 6.9 percent in heavy trading on the New York Stock Exchange Wednesday on the news. But at one point, the stock was up as much as 10.5 percent.

“The stock is up a bit on the fact that nobody liked Carly’s leadership all that much,” said Robert Cihra, an analyst with Fulcrum Global Partners. “The Street had lost all faith in her and the market’s hope is that anyone will be better.”

Here’s what Fiorina had to say recently…

[Jim Puzzanghera] asked her about McCain’s opposition to so-called network neutrality, proposed government rules that would prohibit Internet service providers from charging websites for faster delivery of their content. McCain is on the side of the cable and phone companies, which argue that the rules would squelch investment in new broadband networks. Obama has been a big supporter of net neutrality, a huge issue among online activists that adds to his Internet buzz factor, leading some (OK, it was us) to ask if Obama is a Mac and McCain a PC.

Carly Fiorina: There’s no question that it is to our economy’s benefit to have more Internet access, more broadband capability, to have this country more wired, so to speak, as we move forward…. I think John McCain understands the way to get that done effectively is by principally allowing business to get it done as opposed to a big government-mandated program. And business won’t get it done unless they see sufficient return on their investment.

The problem here and with big business and net neutrality, is that maintaining an open, level playing field on the internet costs potential profits for these businessses.  If they could find a way to charge more for the same thing, and charge people more to access their fat dump-truck tubes (as would happen if network neutrality was nixed), they would make more money…and the people would lose an amazing resource, not to mention creating huge barriers of entry for the next myspace/napster/youtube.

When you have a computer illiterate President, you can be damn well sure that he doesn’t understand network topology and packet switching, and therefore doesn’t have a clue as to why soooo many computer savvy individuals are standing together to try and defend their realm.   We know what can happen once the network is compromised.

We’ve already seen what happens in the Internet realm when Big Business and Big Brother get together.  When you take this already proven propensity for snooping and mix it with a 70-something computer illiterate President the result can only be one thing.

A bad thing.