And post something about the Bail-out, especially after Bane showed so much confidence in me in eightfourO's blog post, but sadly economics are a weak point for me. Especially this bail-out shit. So I figure I'll make a fun post and then close with my few bailout thoughts.... aaannndddd
What's more fun than watching McCain get lost on stage?
I guess it's also pretty fun to see him say that he turned to Palin for foreign policy advice many times in the past... lolz
NPR: Given what you’ve said Senator, is there an occasion where you could imagine turning to Governor Palin for advice in a foreign policy crisis.
MCCAIN: I’ve turned to her advice many times in the past, I can’t imagine turning to Senator Obama or Senator Biden because they’ve been wrong. They were wrong about Iraq, wrong about Russia –
NPR: But would you turn to Governor Palin?
MCCAIN: I certainly wouldn’t turn to them, and I’ve already turned to Governor Palin particularly on energy issues and I’ve appreciated her background and knowledge on that and many other issues.
Oh, almost forgot! What's more fun than good poll results??? Obama had a sick day of good polling coming in... wow:
Anyway, back to the bailout. eightfourO posted a video that had a bit of a conspiracy theory feeling to it (especially cause the guy talking was really funny to watch). I'm gonna repost it here in the spoiler, and put a shorter version of the same thing without the weird guy above it. I'm not endorsing these ideas yet but I figure you guys are smart enough to take in the info and come to a conclusion.
Weird looking guy who is apparently credible and not a conspiracy theorist in spoiler: + Show Spoiler +
And here's my response to those video's that I posted in eightfourO's blog:
That guy in the first video was really funny looking and funny to watch. But he made some interesting points.
If he's right and all the reason's we've been sold are just BS, then wow, this totally ain't cool. I also think it's very sus for paulson to say that it's a veto if money can't go overseas =(
Overall I don't know who this guy is so I am approaching this skeptically as potential conspiracy theory, but I also think it's quite possibly true, which really is ridiculous. Anyway, I think that if there does need to be a bailout, this ridiculous "PUSH IT THROUGH ASAPLY" line of thinking doesn't make sense to me. I feel like it just means we're going to compromise important shit because we're rushing... Now they're having to add other tax cuts to the bill to make it appeal to the house. The senate is attaching it to another popular bill which is an uber gay move imo. Overall I just don't like anything about this bailout situation =(
No conspiracy guy, he hates "tin foil bullshit" on his forum. Things must be supported by truth or he won't say it. He has appeared on Glenn Beck and he's credible.
So that gets things one step closer to being solid. Now I need to see that the bill really wouldn't be applied to helping on this student loan/mortgage and so on shit. I wouldn't be surprised if this guys right though, which is a really sad state to be in T_T
This isn't important or anything, just kinda funny...
So it seems that Palin has never actually SEEN Russia from Alaska, cause she's never been to the 1 part of the state where it's possible to do so. Lolz.
It's funny. When I first started this blog a year ago it was with the idea that I would post all my problem hands from every poker session and hope people gave me advice. That failed very quickly. I then started using it to track results and thoughts and swings and so on (basically what everyone else does). Then the primaries started and I tentatively started blogging about politics. I figured I'd get nothing but negative comments and people would probably just ignore it, cause, this is a poker site not a political one!
Well I was right. At first the only people commenting were people who thought I was stupid, or people who said "who cares?". But I kept posting cause for me, it was a way to prevent my head from exploding. I see all these crazy things, and sometimes good things, and I just need to vent about it. So I run to my blog and throw it down. Sometimes I get views/comments, others it's ignored. Lately there's been a lot more interest though, and a lot more support, so thank you guys for that =)
Anyway, this blog post is titled "This is why" and the end of that sentence is "I support Obama". I've already made a post like this, but I gotta do it again cause Obama has put out another positive ad focusing on the issues and his plan to solve the problems we face, while the Republicans are trying to politicize the bail-out bill that McCain supports and use it against Obama... Two very different approaches to this campaign and Obama's approach impresses me so much more than McCain's.
Vs
Obama Campaign Statement:
"For John McCain's party to demagogue a rescue plan that he supports in order to score cheap political points is not only dishonest and dishonorable, it is the height of irresponsibility on a day when we urgently need to pass that plan to prevent an economic catastrophe. So much for country first," said Obama-Biden spokesman Bill Burton.
Palin, seriously, drop out and give the Republican's a chance. Actually, fuck that, stay in, you're gold for my guy. But anyone who says Palin is ready to lead or a good VP choice for reasons OTHER than exciting the base is full of shit.
THE QUESTION DIDN'T COUNT CAUSE HE WAS A VOTER?!!?!? ROFL!!!
And McCain with his "it was a gotcha question" BS.... wow. Spin spin spin spin spinnnnnnnnnnnnnnnnn!
Anyway, Richard Wolfe awesomely lays out all the BS McCain has been feeding us about the bailout over the last week:
It's funny cause before the bailout failed the McSpinners were all gloating how McCain was the one who made it all happen:
"This bill would not have been agreed to had it not been for John McCain... This is a bipartisan accomplishment, a bipartisan success. And if people want to get something done in Washington, they just watch John McCain. He's been the guy whose name is at the top of major pieces of legislation for a long time."
-- Mitt Romney, NBC's Today show, 9/29/08
"What Senator McCain was able to do was to help bring all of the parties to the table, including the House Republicans, whose votes were needed to pass this"
-- Steve Schmidt, NBC's Meet the Press, 9/28/08
"We're optimistic that Senator McCain will bring House Republicans on board without driving other parties away, resulting in a successful deal for the American taxpayer."
-- McCain spokeswoman Kimmie Lipscomb, 9/26/08
If McCain was taking credit for it passing, before it passed, shouldn't he get credit for it failing too?
Also, let's laugh at palin some more:
And from that same katie couric interview, here's a question/response that isn't getting much attention but should, considering that Palin endorsed Hamas...
Couric asked, "What happens if the goal of democracy doesn't produce the desired outcome? In Gaza, the U.S. pushed hard for elections and Hamas won."
Palin's answer, in full, was this: "Yeah, well especially in that region, though, we have to protect those who do seek democracy and support those who seek protections for the people who live there. What we're seeing in the last couple of days here in New York is a President of Iran, Ahmadinejad, who would come on our soil and express such disdain for one of our closest allies and friends, Israel ... and we're hearing the evil that he speaks and if hearing him doesn't allow Americans to commit more solidly to protecting the friends and allies that we need, especially there in the Mideast, then nothing will."
So we had an economy bump for Obama, then McCain regained as talk of a bailout was made public. McCain drew even (46/46) and then announced his campaign suspension. At that point he began to drop and Obama began to rise. Once the debate finished Obama started cruising, and is now tied for his record high and biggest lead. I hope this isn't another bounce, but rather keeps going up and then solidifies.
I guess I need to post something about the debate, and I will a bit lower, but I think what's even more telling and important is how McCain acted before and after the debate. I think Frank Rich of the NYT said it well:
WHAT we learned last week is that the man who always puts his “country first” will take the country down with him if that’s what it takes to get to the White House.
For all the focus on Friday night’s deadlocked debate, it still can’t obscure what preceded it: When John McCain gratuitously parachuted into Washington on Thursday, he didn’t care if his grandstanding might precipitate an even deeper economic collapse. All he cared about was whether he might save his campaign. George Bush put more deliberation into invading Iraq than McCain did into his own reckless invasion of the delicate Congressional negotiations on the bailout plan.
By the time he arrived, there already was a bipartisan agreement in principle. It collapsed hours later at the meeting convened by the president in the Cabinet Room. Rather than help try to resuscitate Wall Street’s bloodied bulls, McCain was determined to be the bull in Washington’s legislative china shop, running around town and playing both sides of his divided party against Congress’s middle. Once others eventually forged a path out of the wreckage, he’d inflate, if not outright fictionalize, his own role in cleaning up the mess his mischief helped make. Or so he hoped, until his ignominious retreat.
I'm personally sick of "Country First" when it's obviously "McCain's Ambitions First" and he believes that nothing is too disgusting as long as it can get him into the white house. First the attack ads which developed into the most dishonest ads in history, going out of the realm of "stretching the truth" or "exagerating" or "takign quotes out of context" which are standard political BS, and arriving in the land of bald faced lies.
Then the Sarah Palin pick which was extremely gimmicky and blatantly political... it had nothing to do with "Country First" cause she is NOT the best person for the job, she's just the best way to shake up the race and excite the Republican base. And it's extremely irresponsible to put such a clueless, inexperienced, unqualified and extremist right wing person in position to be 1 heart beat away from the presidency. And I choose "heart beat" intentionally cause McCain's got a 72 yr old heart, a history of skin cancer, and refuses to release his medical records.
Now this campaign suspension. Another gimmick that he throws together cause he's scared he's losing to Obama because of the economy. This one backfired horribly because people are seeing through his BS more and more. It's so ridiculous and insulting that it makes me very very angry. Let's give Kerry a minute to rip McCain apart:
And here's a nice detailed explanation of how it all went down over the last week... click the spoiler.
To put these 24 hours in context, you must remember that McCain not only knows little about the economy but that he has not previously expressed any urgency about its meltdown. It was on Sept. 15 — the day after his former idol Alan Greenspan pronounced the current crisis a “once-in-a-century” catastrophe — that McCain reaffirmed for the umpteenth time that the “fundamentals of our economy are strong.” As recently as Tuesday he had not yet even read the two-and-a-half-page bailout proposal first circulated by Hank Paulson last weekend. “I have not had a chance to see it in writing,” he explained. (Maybe he was waiting for it to arrive by Western Union instead of PDF.)
Then came Black Wednesday — not for the stock market, which was holding steady in anticipation of Washington action, but for McCain. As the widely accepted narrative has it, his come-to-Jesus moment arrived that morning, when he awoke to discover that Barack Obama had surged ahead by nine percentage points in the Washington Post/ABC News poll. The McCain campaign hastily suited up its own pollster to belittle that finding — only to be drowned out by a fusillade of new polls from Fox News, Marist and CNN/Time, each with numbers closer to Post/ABC than not. Obama was rising most everywhere except the moose strongholds of Alaska and Montana.
That was not the only bad news raining down on McCain. His camp knew what Katie Couric had in the can from her interview with Sarah Palin. The first excerpt was to be broadcast by CBS that night, and it had to be upstaged fast.
But even that wasn’t the top political threat McCain faced last week. Bigger still was the mounting evidence of the seamless synergy between his campaign and Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, the mortgage monsters at the heart of the housing bust that set off our current calamity. Most of all, it was the fast-moving events on that front that precipitated his panic to roll out his diversionary, over-the-top theatrics on Wednesday.
What we were learning — through The New York Times, Newsweek and Roll Call — was ugly. Davis Manafort, the lobbying firm owned by McCain’s campaign manager, Rick Davis, had received $15,000 a month from Freddie Mac from late 2005 until last month. This was in addition to the $30,000 a month that Davis was paid from 2000 to 2005 by the so-called Homeownership Alliance, an advocacy organization that he headed and that was financed by Freddie and Fannie to fight regulation.
The McCain campaign tried to pre-emptively deflect such revelations by reviving the old Rove trick of accusing your opponent of your own biggest failings. It ran attack ads about Obama’s own links to the mortgage giants. But neither of the former Freddie-Fannie executives vilified in those ads, Franklin Raines and James Johnson, had worked at those companies lately or are currently associated with the Obama campaign. (Raines never worked for the campaign at all.) By contrast, Davis is the tip of the Freddie-Fannie-McCain iceberg. McCain’s senior adviser, his campaign’s vice chairman, his Congressional liaison and the reported head of his White House transition team all either made fortunes from recent Freddie-Fannie lobbying or were players in firms that did.
By Wednesday, the McCain campaign’s latest tactic for countering this news — attacking the press, especially The Times — was paying diminishing returns. Davis abruptly canceled his scheduled appearance that day at a weekly reporters’ lunch sponsored by The Christian Science Monitor, escaping any further questions by pleading that he had to hit the campaign trail. (He turned up at the “21” Club in New York that night, wining and dining McCain fund-raisers.)
It’s then that Angry Old Ironsides McCain suddenly emerged to bark that our financial distress was “the greatest crisis we’ve faced, clearly, since World War II” — even greater than the Russia-Georgia conflict, which in August he had called the “first probably serious crisis internationally since the end of the cold war.” Campaigns, debates and no doubt Bristol Palin’s nuptials had to be suspended immediately so he could ride to the rescue, with Joe Lieberman as his Robin.
Yet even as he huffed and puffed about being a “leader,” McCain took no action and felt no urgency. As his Congressional colleagues worked tirelessly in Washington, he malingered in New York. He checked out the suffering on Main Street (or perhaps High Street) by conferring with Lady Lynn Forester de Rothschild, the Hillary-turned-McCain supporter best known for her fabulous London digs and her diatribes against Obama’s elitism. McCain also found time to have a well-publicized chat with one of those celebrities he so disdains, Bono, and to give a self-promoting public speech at the Clinton Global Initiative.
There was no suspension of his campaign. His surrogates and ads remained on television. Huffington Post bloggers, working the phones, couldn’t find a single McCain campaign office that had gone on hiatus. This “suspension” ruse was an exact replay of McCain’s self-righteous “suspension” of the G.O.P. convention as Hurricane Gustav arrived on Labor Day. “We will put aside our political hats and put on our American hats,” he declared then, solemnly pledging that conventioneers would help those in need. But as anyone in the Twin Cities could see, the assembled put on their party hats instead, piling into the lobbyists’ bacchanals earlier than scheduled, albeit on the down-low.
Much of the press paid lip service to McCain’s new “suspension” as it had to its prototype. In truth, the only campaign activity McCain did drop was a Wednesday evening taping with David Letterman. Don’t mess with Dave. Picking up where the “The View” left off in speaking truth to power, the uncharacteristically furious host hammered the absent McCain on and off for 40 minutes, repeatedly observing that the cancellation “didn’t smell right.”
In a journalistic coup de grâce worthy of “60 Minutes,” Letterman went on to unmask his no-show guest as a liar. McCain had phoned himself that afternoon to say he was “getting on a plane immediately” to deal with the grave situation in Washington, Letterman told the audience. Then he showed video of McCain being touched up by a makeup artist while awaiting an interview by Couric that same evening at another CBS studio in New York.
It’s not hard to guess why McCain had blown off Letterman for Couric at the last minute. The McCain campaign’s high anxiety about the disastrous Couric-Palin sit-down was skyrocketing as advance excerpts flooded the Internet. By offering his own interview to Couric for the same night, McCain hoped (in vain) to dilute Palin’s primacy on the “CBS Evening News.”
Letterman’s most mordant laughs on Wednesday came when he riffed about McCain’s campaign “suspension”: “Do you suspend your campaign? No, because that makes me think maybe there will be other things down the road, like if he’s in the White House, he might just suspend being president. I mean, we’ve got a guy like that now!”
That’s no joke. Bush has so little credibility he can govern only through surrogates (Paulson is the new Petraeus). When he spoke about the economic crisis in prime time earlier that same night, he registered as no more than an irritating speed bump en route to “David Blaine: Dive of Death.”
It’s that utter power vacuum that gave McCain the opening to pull his potentially catastrophic display of economic “leadership” last week. He may be the first presidential candidate in our history to risk wrecking the country even before being voted into the Oval Office.
Anyway, what I found really hilarious is that while McCain was supposedly on a suspended campaign, he released a web ad saying he'd won the debate... before he even said he was going to attend the debate! His entire campaign is a joke and an insult these days. Sam Stein lays it out well...
After days of saying that John McCain would not attend Friday's presidential debate unless an agreement on a bailout package for the markets was "locked-down," the McCain campaign has gone back on its word.
On Friday, it announced that the Senator would head down to Mississippi even though, as they readily admit, much work remained needed on the bailout agreement.
The whole episode left even conservatives admitting that the McCain campaign looked erratic and a bit foolish with no apparent direction or guiding principle.
"It just proves his campaign is governed by tactics and not ideology," said Republican consultant Craig Shirley, who advised McCain earlier in this cycle. "In the end, he blinked and Obama did not. The 'steady hand in a storm' argument looks now to more favor Obama, not McCain."
Now that brings us to the Debate. First, if you haven't seen it the best place to watch it is on the MSNBC politics page. They have a cool video player which allows you to jump around easily by keywords, questions, and lot's more. Go here and scroll down to the "Debates" box.
I've heard both of them say all the same things so many times that overall it was kinda boring to watch. I do think Obama won, but hell, I am an Obama fan, so it's not like it means much for me to say that. But let me try and explain some of my reasons.
1) I think that McCain spent more time attacking Obama than he did discussing the issues, and when he did talk about the issues he sounded like he wanted to keep Bush's plans. Obama on the other hand answered the questions by listing out his plans point by point. He was clear and left me feeling like he was focusing on the issues and knew what he wanted to do for this country.
2) Obama did a good job of rejecting any lies McCain told, always interupting McCain with "that's not true" or something along those lines when McCain was lying, and then making sure to explain why it wasn't true when he got his chance to talk. Obama also didn't tell any whoppers, while McCain made big mistakes and lied. Here's a good post by Jed Lewison laying that out:
I've put together a summary of the misstatements of fact in last night's debate as tracked by FactCheck.org.
The bottom-line is that while Obama did make a few mistakes, none were outright fabrications, and even when wrong, he was fairly close to being accurate.
McCain, on the other hand, delivered several whoppers that weren't even close to the truth.
* Denied voting for a budget plan that called for a tax increase on people making $42K. He did vote for a budget resolution with such a recommendation, but even if it had passed, it would have not have had the force of law. Moreover, he does not support such a tax increase in his current plan.
* Claimed Iraq has a $79 billion surplus, but that figure is outdated and the actually number is now closer to $60 billion.
* Claimed 95% of "the American people" would see a tax cut under his plan when he should have said "95% of American families with children."
* Claimed McCain's health care plan would levy taxes against employers on health care premiums when McCain would actually be taxing individuals.
Second, McCain misstatements:
* Denied Kissinger called for meetings with Iran without conditions, when Kissinger had made such a call.
* Claimed Joint Chiefs Chairman Mike Mullen had criticized Obama's troop withdrawal plan when Mullen had not.
* Claimed earmarks had tripled in the last five years when they have actually decreased.
* Claimed U.S. pays $700 billion per year to buy oil from hostile nations when the actual figure is at most $359 billion.
* Claimed Obama would hand the health care system to the federal government, which is false.
* Claimed Dwight Eisenhower had penned a letter offering his resignation if Normandy had failed, but that didn't happen.
Basically, when Obama erred, he was saying 2 + 2 = 4.01. When McCain erred, he was saying 2 + 2 = 4,000,001.
3) Lastly, body language. McCain was stiff, stared straight ahead and pretended Obama didn't exist. He looked scared. He wasn't willing to make eye contact or talk directly to Obama. McCain looked scared. He also was smirking and condescending throughout the debate, and it didn't look good. Obama on the other hand was looking at McCain, talking directly to him, not scared to cut McCain off, and seemed strong and in charge.
Overall I agree with Obama on the issues and disagree with McCain. There are a few things I agree with McCain on, and it seems Obama does too, as was evidenced by the times he'd say "John is right about that" and so on. Cause McCain isn't all bad - we're with him on ear marks and taking care of the vets and so on. And I thought it was great how Obama was sure to give McCain credit when he was right. I think it's shitty of McCain's campaign to try and use that against him with an ad though...
Despite the McCain Camps spin (and lack of spin from Palin as they locked her away, lolz), and the pundits middle of the road "it was a tie" pronouncements, the polls all say Obama won.
A new USA TODAY/Gallup Poll shows 46% of people who watched Friday night's presidential debate say Democrat Barack Obama did a better job than Republican John McCain; 34% said McCain did better.
Poll_warning Obama scored even better -- 52%-35% -- when debate-watchers were asked which candidate offered the best proposals for change to solve the country’s problems.
(I'm too lazy to find more links to other polls, but just search and you'll find em).
I hope this is the point in the election where people finally wake up and realize that Obama is the right choice for this country.
I bet some people were surprised to see that I didn't make any posts during the debate. I'm surprised too. But I had a good reason - I was out of town camping with my special lady, celebrating our 2 year anniversary.
We live in Colorado so we packed up our car with camping gear and went on a mountain tour. It was the best road trip I've ever done. We saw a whole lot in 3 days and had an amazing time. We shoulda taken more pictures, but there are still quite a few good ones that I'll share with ya'll:
Ahhh, the Rocky Mountains. Click the spoiler for the rest of the pics
Our campfire from the distance. We got a camp spot in Rocky Mountain National Park right by where the Elk were doing their thing. There's some sorta big elk migration this time of year, seemed like a mating meeting. At least it sounded like that all night long - get a room right?
Up close pic of our first night's dinner. Had some leftovers from lunch mixed in with hot dogs, heh.
View from our campsite in the morning.
We head out to the Stanley Hotel - this hotel was Steven King's inspiration for the shinning and this is where he wrote the book. They didn't film the movie here, but it is where they filmed the TV miniseries.
Us in front of the Stanley
We leave Estes and drive through Rocky Mountain National park on our way to Steamboat Springs. We see our first Aspen's turning for fall.
We get to the top of a big ass mountain and it's a sweet view
This pic makes me want to work out more.
As we cruise the mountain we get rained on, hailed on, see snow, and look down on the clouds.
Awesome
We find a find a pear in our mixed dried fruit bag that looks like something else completely. haha
On the way to Steamboat we start seeing some gorgeous trees. Check out the video's below for better footage.
As we get closer to our second campsite (which will be at strawberry hot springs) it just keeps getting prettier.
We arrive at our 2nd campsite and have lunch.
A view of the hot springs. We spent a bunch of time in here. It was especially awesome at night cause the stars were amazing and it felt like something out of a movie.
The next day we head out to Aspen and say goodbye to the gorgeous Steamboat hillsides.
We drive through Aspen thinking "this can't be Aspen" cause it's not very pretty... and we end up doing independence pass. This is a view looking back at the pass from the bottom.
2 vids of the drive into steamboat
I'm also working on another political post which I'll throw out once this one works its way through the front page. Still got a lot of catching up to do from the days I was outta town!
And also planning to get serious on poker. I got lucky and SakiSaki took me on as a full time student. I am gonna blog about my progress under his master tutelage as well as the political stuff =) Though, till the election is over there will probably be more politics than anything else.
This week they spoofed the Katie Couric Interview. If you haven't seen it yet, here's a short clip of the must see part (helps you get the jokes in the SNL skit):
He canceled Letterman and Dave didn't take that lightly:
And Craig Ferguson makes some funnies about J-Mac:
Obama says "Thanks but no thanks"
Nico Pitney makes a good point in this quick post:
Why does John McCain suddenly want to suspend his presidential campaign and postpone Friday's debate? His campaign surrogates are saying it's a typical "maverick" move, that McCain is simply "putting country first." Let's look at the evidence:
1) As Ben Smith notes, McCain's move "is a mark, most of all, that he doesn't like the way this campaign is going. ... The only thing that's changed in the last 48 hours is the public polling."
2) The idea of uniting the campaigns to find a bipartisan solution to the Wall Street crisis wasn't even McCain's idea. A few minutes ago, Obama spokesman Bill Burton emailed to reporters:
"At 8:30 this morning, Senator Obama called Senator McCain to ask him if he would join in issuing a joint statement outlining their shared principles and conditions for the Treasury proposal and urging Congress and the White House to act in a bipartisan manner to pass such a proposal. At 2:30 this afternoon, Senator McCain returned Senator Obama's call and agreed to join him in issuing such a statement. The two campaigns are currently working together on the details."
3) John McCain has skipped more votes during this session than any member of the Senate except for Tim Johnson, who had major brain surgery. He hasn't cast a single vote in five months, since April 9. All of a sudden, McCain is demanding that the presidential race shut down so he can return to Washington?
4) A reminder: President Bush was able to debate John Kerry while he was president. For all of his sudden urgency, McCain acknowledged just yesterday that he had not even read the administration's three-page bailout proposal.
5) It's not at all clear that having McCain and Obama back in DC will actually help. "What does seem apparent, though, is that putting the two candidates in the negotiating room is far more likely to distract--and derail--negotiations than having them out on the hustings," Jonathan Cohn writes at the New Republic.
It's impossible to know why McCain chose this course, but it sure seems like more of a political stunt than a maverick moment.
And Bob Cesca had me laughing my ass off with this article:
There are several reasons why Senator Obama is enjoying a double-digit lead in the "honest and trustworthy" category (47 percent to 36 percent according the new ABC News/Washington Post poll). First, Senator Obama doesn't, you know, lie to the American people every damn day. Second, Senator Obama didn't vote with the dishonest, corrupt Bush administration 90 percent of the time.
All along and without regard to the actual status of the economy, Senator McCain has blurted out the well-known talking point "the fundamentals of the economy are strong." Why? Because that's the Bush Republican position. Those exact words. And shortly after President Paulson announced his bailout plan when it appeared as if we were on the verge of a complete meltdown, Senator McCain, in the most Pavlovian sense, couldn't help himself and -- WHOOPS! -- he said it again. Why? Because that's what he always says about the economy.
When he was immediately and appropriately called out for being a doof, he blurted out that everyone in the world misunderstood him. The "fundamentals," he claimed, meant "the workers." In other words, American workers are strong. What the hell does that have to do with the status of the economy? Does it mean the workforce can lift heavy things -- like factory equipment that's being shipped to China? How does one quantify worker "strength" as an economic indicator? Even if a crazy economist somewhere includes the morale of the workforce as a fundamental of the economy, the McCain campaign clearly overlooked the reality that we've lost 1.75 million jobs this year and unemployment spiked to 6.1 percent two days after Sarah Palin's overrated acceptance speech. Not strong, McCain. Bad! But, then again, he really didn't mean "the workers" in the first place anyway.
When this failed, he blurted out something about averting the impending economic meltdown by convening a government commission, ostensibly to study the urgent crisis and perhaps issue a recommendation sometime in the future. Decisive!
When that didn't work, he called for the firing of the head of the SEC, Chris Cox, even though Phil Gramm, the author of McCain's economic plan (pre-crisis), is also responsible for the Gramm-Leach-Bliley Act of 1999 -- a piece of legislation which, along with Reaganomics and Alan Greenspan's love of all things bubble-shaped, is directly responsible for this present mess. Phil Gramm. A man who said that the economic crisis is mostly a figment of our whiny imagination. A man who could be our next Treasury Secretary and steward of the economy. Hire him, but fire the other guy. Because that'll somehow help. Oh, Magoo.
It's worth noting that while that idea was failing, Senator McCain inexplicably called for the firing of the head of the Federal Elections Commission, Donald F. McGahn II. Poor McGahn II. Minding his own business, and suddenly McCain's on television calling him out for screwing the economic pooch.
When that failed, Senator McCain rolled out one of his most egregious lies to date, claiming that Senator Obama, of all people, has been directly responsible for the crisis. Why? Because the former CEO of Fannie Mae, Franklin Raines, once talked on the phone with someone associated with the Obama campaign. Like 16 months ago. And that somehow makes Raines a close economic advisor. Never mind that Rick Davis, McCain's campaign manager, was on the Freddie Mac payroll as recently as a couple of weeks ago.
Which leads us to Senator McCain blurting out that no-one on his staff is associated in any way with Freddie Mac and Fannie Mae.
What's next, McCain campaign? A Mogwai ate a sandwich after midnight; morphed into a Gremlin; then caused the economic crisis? Or will it be Marty McFly's sports almanac screwing up the space-time continuum? Or will it be Reverend Wright putting a curse on the banks? Whatever is next is bound to be crazier than what's already been said.
I keep finding shit to add but this is getting really long so if you're enjoying this post click the spoiler for more fun videos =):
And some fun Palin video's. First let's hear about her WITCH HUNTING preacher! Second we'll see her give us a great "moose in the headlights" pause about Davis, and then stumped on giving examples of McCain regulating the market, cause, well, he's spent 26 years DE-REGULATING IT!
And let's have John Stewart Explain what's going on:
He canceled Letterman and Dave didn't take that lightly:
Obama says "Thanks but no thanks"
Nico Pitney makes a good point in this quick post:
Why does John McCain suddenly want to suspend his presidential campaign and postpone Friday's debate? His campaign surrogates are saying it's a typical "maverick" move, that McCain is simply "putting country first." Let's look at the evidence:
1) As Ben Smith notes, McCain's move "is a mark, most of all, that he doesn't like the way this campaign is going. ... The only thing that's changed in the last 48 hours is the public polling."
2) The idea of uniting the campaigns to find a bipartisan solution to the Wall Street crisis wasn't even McCain's idea. A few minutes ago, Obama spokesman Bill Burton emailed to reporters:
"At 8:30 this morning, Senator Obama called Senator McCain to ask him if he would join in issuing a joint statement outlining their shared principles and conditions for the Treasury proposal and urging Congress and the White House to act in a bipartisan manner to pass such a proposal. At 2:30 this afternoon, Senator McCain returned Senator Obama's call and agreed to join him in issuing such a statement. The two campaigns are currently working together on the details."
3) John McCain has skipped more votes during this session than any member of the Senate except for Tim Johnson, who had major brain surgery. He hasn't cast a single vote in five months, since April 9. All of a sudden, McCain is demanding that the presidential race shut down so he can return to Washington?
4) A reminder: President Bush was able to debate John Kerry while he was president. For all of his sudden urgency, McCain acknowledged just yesterday that he had not even read the administration's three-page bailout proposal.
5) It's not at all clear that having McCain and Obama back in DC will actually help. "What does seem apparent, though, is that putting the two candidates in the negotiating room is far more likely to distract--and derail--negotiations than having them out on the hustings," Jonathan Cohn writes at the New Republic.
It's impossible to know why McCain chose this course, but it sure seems like more of a political stunt than a maverick moment.
And Bob Cesca had me laughing my ass off with this article:
There are several reasons why Senator Obama is enjoying a double-digit lead in the "honest and trustworthy" category (47 percent to 36 percent according the new ABC News/Washington Post poll). First, Senator Obama doesn't, you know, lie to the American people every damn day. Second, Senator Obama didn't vote with the dishonest, corrupt Bush administration 90 percent of the time.
...
All along and without regard to the actual status of the economy, Senator McCain has blurted out the well-known talking point "the fundamentals of the economy are strong." Why? Because that's the Bush Republican position. Those exact words. And shortly after President Paulson announced his bailout plan when it appeared as if we were on the verge of a complete meltdown, Senator McCain, in the most Pavlovian sense, couldn't help himself and -- WHOOPS! -- he said it again. Why? Because that's what he always says about the economy.
When he was immediately and appropriately called out for being a doof, he blurted out that everyone in the world misunderstood him. The "fundamentals," he claimed, meant "the workers." In other words, American workers are strong. What the hell does that have to do with the status of the economy? Does it mean the workforce can lift heavy things -- like factory equipment that's being shipped to China? How does one quantify worker "strength" as an economic indicator? Even if a crazy economist somewhere includes the morale of the workforce as a fundamental of the economy, the McCain campaign clearly overlooked the reality that we've lost 1.75 million jobs this year and unemployment spiked to 6.1 percent two days after Sarah Palin's overrated acceptance speech. Not strong, McCain. Bad! But, then again, he really didn't mean "the workers" in the first place anyway.
When this failed, he blurted out something about averting the impending economic meltdown by convening a government commission, ostensibly to study the urgent crisis and perhaps issue a recommendation sometime in the future. Decisive!
When that didn't work, he called for the firing of the head of the SEC, Chris Cox, even though Phil Gramm, the author of McCain's economic plan (pre-crisis), is also responsible for the Gramm-Leach-Bliley Act of 1999 -- a piece of legislation which, along with Reaganomics and Alan Greenspan's love of all things bubble-shaped, is directly responsible for this present mess. Phil Gramm. A man who said that the economic crisis is mostly a figment of our whiny imagination. A man who could be our next Treasury Secretary and steward of the economy. Hire him, but fire the other guy. Because that'll somehow help. Oh, Magoo.
It's worth noting that while that idea was failing, Senator McCain inexplicably called for the firing of the head of the Federal Elections Commission, Donald F. McGahn II. Poor McGahn II. Minding his own business, and suddenly McCain's on television calling him out for screwing the economic pooch.
When that failed, Senator McCain rolled out one of his most egregious lies to date, claiming that Senator Obama, of all people, has been directly responsible for the crisis. Why? Because the former CEO of Fannie Mae, Franklin Raines, once talked on the phone with someone associated with the Obama campaign. Like 16 months ago. And that somehow makes Raines a close economic advisor. Never mind that Rick Davis, McCain's campaign manager, was on the Freddie Mac payroll as recently as a couple of weeks ago.
Which leads us to Senator McCain blurting out that no-one on his staff is associated in any way with Freddie Mac and Fannie Mae.
What's next, McCain campaign? A Mogwai ate a sandwich after midnight; morphed into a Gremlin; then caused the economic crisis? Or will it be Marty McFly's sports almanac screwing up the space-time continuum? Or will it be Reverend Wright putting a curse on the banks? Whatever is next is bound to be crazier than what's already been said.
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