 sj |
||
|
||
BS: Popular views on McCain
|
|
|
Subject: RE: BS: Popular views on McCain From: Barry Finn Date: 29 Sep 08 - 12:41 AM Rigs, you have not looked at the Great Depression at all have you. Orginized Crime got it's real start & boost during the 20's & into the early 30's with the proabition era but the gambling that was not a big winner prior to the depression & probabition became the major side effect of the poverty when the depression hit. So much so that it was fought overe for the control of this quickly rising industry. It was realized very quickly by the bookies that when the economy was at it's worst that's when the poor have no hope & try all the more to gamble their way out of poverty. What the bookies knew then is a scientific fact now. Kind of like drilling our way out of our oil crsis, gambling our way out of poverty. "Palin will wise up real quick, I suspect, and quit responding to graduate students from Temple" So she needs to bite down hard on her foot so her mouth stays closed on her foot & she can't be heard, even when she does speak, great quality for a canidate. Why not just put duct take acoss her lips so we can't read them tell she gets in office & then we can find out what a lying idiot she is? It'll be to late by then, MaCain can't hide her from now till the elections though it seems aas if that's what he'd love to do, another idiot whose lost his village. "That's a lot different than Obama's proposal of just simply invading Pakistan without pre-conditions" That's not what Obama said & you know that Rig. Barry |
|
Subject: RE: BS: Popular views on McCain From: Riginslinger Date: 28 Sep 08 - 09:49 PM "'If that's what we have to do stop the terrorists from coming any further in, absolutely, we should," Palin said.' That's a lot different than Obama's proposal of just simply invading Pakistan without pre-conditions. Palin will wise up real quick, I suspect, and quit responding to graduate students from Temple. One might very well be an operative of MoveOn.org. |
|
Subject: RE: BS: Popular views on McCain From: Amos Date: 28 Sep 08 - 02:43 PM "Suppose John McCain had been in the White House in October 1962, facing one of the great tests of the modern presidency. If so, we might remember that period not as "the Cuban missile crisis" but as "World War III." Fred R. Conrad/The New York Times Nicholas D. Kristof On the Ground Nicholas Kristof addresses reader feedback and posts short takes from his travels. Go to Columnist Page » As Mr. McCain demonstrated in Friday evening's debate, he is a serious foreign policy thinker who has traveled widely, and he certainly showed vision and bipartisanship in helping to repair relations with Vietnam. But it's equally clear that in recent years Mr. McCain has become impish cubed — impulsive, impetuous and impatient — and those are perilous qualities in a commander in chief. Although he is frantically trying to distance himself from President Bush, Mr. McCain, by his own accounting, would be more Bushian in foreign policy than even Mr. Bush is now. While Mr. Bush has been forced to accept more sensible policies in his second term, Mr. McCain has become steadily more of a neocon in the cowboy role that Mr. Bush played in his first term, prone to solving problems with stealth bombers rather than United Nations resolutions. Judging from Mr. McCain's own positions, he might well revive a cold war with Russia and could start a hot war with Iran or North Korea." (Kristoph, NYT) |
|
Subject: RE: BS: Popular views on McCain From: Alice Date: 28 Sep 08 - 01:57 PM Some candidates are running from the Bush Republican label by not using the word at all, but rather turning to the Grand Old Party (GOP) brand, but erroneously calling it the GOP Party (Grand Old Party Party). Dino Rossi, in WA, is listing himself on the ballot as GOP Party, instead of Republican Party. (Grand Old Party Party!) Just opening her mouth on a shopping trip for cheesecake got Sarah into gaffe trouble again: "Sen. John McCain retracted Sarah Palin's stance on Pakistan Sunday morning, after the Alaska governor appeared to back Sen. Barack Obama's support for unilateral strikes inside Pakistan against terrorists Saturday night, while on a stop for cheesesteaks in South Philadelphia, Palin was questioned by a Temple graduate student about whether the U.S. should cross the border from Afghanistan into Pakistan. "If that's what we have to do stop the terrorists from coming any further in, absolutely, we should," Palin said. |
|
Subject: RE: BS: Popular views on McCain From: Amos Date: 28 Sep 08 - 01:33 PM That's really silly, Rig. A |
|
Subject: RE: BS: Popular views on McCain From: Riginslinger Date: 28 Sep 08 - 01:08 PM And why would all the gambling gurus be backing McCain? Because they know that if McCain is elected, people will have a lot more money in their pockets to take to the casinos. |
|
Subject: RE: BS: Popular views on McCain From: Amos Date: 28 Sep 08 - 12:41 PM For McCain and Team, a Host of Ties to Gambling SINGLE PAGE REPRINTS SAVE SHARE By JO BECKER and DON VAN NATTA Jr. Published: September 27, 2008 Senator John McCain was on a roll. In a room reserved for high-stakes gamblers at the Foxwoods Resort Casino in Connecticut, he tossed $100 chips around a hot craps table. When the marathon session ended around 2:30 a.m., the Arizona senator and his entourage emerged with thousands of dollars in winnings. HONING AN IMAGE Senator John McCain, as chairman of the Indian Affairs Committee, at a hearing in 2005 to examine accusations of misconduct made by six Indian tribes against their former lobbyist, Jack Abramoff. Mr. McCain supported tax breaks for casinos over the years, including one that helped Foxwoods in Connecticut. He has also gambled there. A lifelong gambler, Mr. McCain takes risks, both on and off the craps table. He was throwing dice that night not long after his failed 2000 presidential bid, in which he was skewered by the Republican Party's evangelical base, opponents of gambling. Mr. McCain was betting at a casino he oversaw as a member of the Senate Indian Affairs Committee, and he was doing so with the lobbyist who represents that casino, according to three associates of Mr. McCain. The visit had been arranged by the lobbyist, Scott Reed, who works for the Mashantucket Pequot, a tribe that has contributed heavily to Mr. McCain's campaigns and built Foxwoods into the world's second-largest casino. Joining them was Rick Davis, Mr. McCain's current campaign manager. Their night of good fortune epitomized not just Mr. McCain's affection for gambling, but also the close relationship he has built with the gambling industry and its lobbyists during his 25-year career in Congress. As a two-time chairman of the Indian Affairs Committee, Mr. McCain has done more than any other member of Congress to shape the laws governing America's casinos, helping to transform the once-sleepy Indian gambling business into a $26-billion-a-year behemoth with 423 casinos across the country. He has won praise as a champion of economic development and self-governance on reservations. "One of the founding fathers of Indian gaming" is what Steven Light, a University of North Dakota professor and a leading Indian gambling expert, called Mr. McCain. As factions of the ferociously competitive gambling industry have vied for an edge, they have found it advantageous to cultivate a relationship with Mr. McCain or hire someone who has one, according to an examination based on more than 70 interviews and thousands of pages of documents. Mr. McCain portrays himself as a Washington maverick unswayed by special interests, referring recently to lobbyists as "birds of prey." Yet in his current campaign, more than 40 fund-raisers and top advisers have lobbied or worked for an array of gambling interests — including tribal and Las Vegas casinos, lottery companies and online poker purveyors. ... |
|
Subject: RE: BS: Popular views on McCain From: Amos Date: 28 Sep 08 - 12:37 PM McCain's Suspension Bridge to Nowhere By FRANK RICH Published: September 27, 2008 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. The question is why would a man who forever advertises his own honor toy so selfishly with our national interest at a time of crisis. I'll leave any physiological explanations to gerontologists — if they can get hold of his complete medical records — and any armchair psychoanalysis to the sundry McCain press acolytes who have sorrowfully tried to rationalize his erratic behavior this year. The other answers, all putting politics first, can be found by examining the 24 hours before he decided to "suspend" campaigning and swoop down on the Capitol to save America from the Sunnis or the Shia, or whoever perpetrated all those credit-default swaps. 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!" ... (From Frank Rich |
|
Subject: RE: BS: Popular views on McCain From: GUEST,beardedbruce Date: 26 Sep 08 - 02:01 PM I just find the appropriate use of your own words so ... satisfying. When you decide to discuss facts instead of opinion, you make a lot more sense- and at least do less damage to your "appointed" candidate's image. I still use your tirades to show undecideds what kind of people support Obama- it has decided several of them- On McCain. |
|
Subject: RE: BS: Popular views on McCain From: Amos Date: 26 Sep 08 - 01:56 PM Your talents as a mockingbird are without peer, Bruce, but it would be nice if you could come up with your own commubnications once in a while. This sort of grade-school mimicry is kind of below you, sir. A |
|
Subject: RE: BS: Popular views on McCain From: GUEST,beardedbruce Date: 26 Sep 08 - 01:25 PM All the world's a stage, and this sanctimonious Chicago lawyer wants to stand in the center of it. Did he contribute anything at all to the resolution of the banking crisis? If so I haven't seen a record of it. Wodda showoff. |
|
Subject: RE: BS: Popular views on McCain From: Amos Date: 26 Sep 08 - 01:23 PM Oh, so now John IS going to the debate after all, having shown the world what a heroic executive he is. All the world's a stage, and this pompous septuagenarian wants to stand in the center of it. Did he contribute anything at all to the resolution of the banking crisis? If so I haven't seen a record of it. Wodda showoff. A |
|
Subject: RE: BS: Popular views on McCain From: GUEST,beardedbruce Date: 26 Sep 08 - 01:21 PM updated 2 hours, 7 minutes ago Commentary: McCain has his priorities straight Story Highlights Ruben Navarrette: John McCain should be commended for returning to Washington McCain returned to Congress to work on proposed bailout deal with colleagues Navarrette: Obama-friendly media quick to dismiss McCain wanting to delay debate By Ruben Navarrette Jr. Special to CNN Editor's Note: Ruben Navarrette is a nationally syndicated columnist and a member of the editorial board of the San Diego Union-Tribune. Read his column here Ruben Navarrette Jr. says John McCain showed real leadership by trying to assist with the bailout deal. (CNN) -- Talk about a last-minute reprieve. Tonight's presidential debate in Oxford, Mississippi was nearly a casualty of the financial crisis. It's back on schedule. But hopefully, not back on script. Given all that took place this week, it's obvious that the format of the debate should be immediately revamped to focus not on foreign affairs and national security as planned but on the one subject every American is talking about: the economic crisis. It would be surreal to watch Barack Obama and John McCain debate what to do in Baghdad or Kabul when the country's attention is fixed on Wall Street. At some point, the candidates will have to make plain what they would do to fix the crisis, restore Americans' confidence and rally their respective parties in support of a common vision. It's not enough for them to show that they understand the problem. They have to lead the way to a solution and show that they have the will, courage and strength to get us there. Earlier this week, McCain abruptly suspended his campaign and requested that the debate be postponed until Congress finishes the heavy lifting of approving a bailout. That put Obama and McCain in a classic Mexican standoff with each trying to look presidential, while attempting to map out a course that would benefit him politically. Some in the Obama-friendly media were quick to dismiss McCain's move as a political stunt. I don't know. It's not like launching one's candidacy in Springfield, Illinois, in the hopes of conjuring up comparisons to Abraham Lincoln, or moving one's convention speech to a football stadium to accommodate a larger crowd. I think McCain deserves applause for having his priorities straight. For the past several days, the media and members of both parties have been scaring the daylights out of the American people by calling this the most serious economic crisis since the Great Depression. This week, President Bush warned that our current situation threatens not just the lending industry but also the entire U.S. economy. After all the doom and gloom, pundits were then somehow surprised when McCain decided to temporarily suspend his presidential campaign and return to his day job in Congress, where he tried to work out a bailout deal with his colleagues. Well at least most of his colleagues. Despite having decried the economic crisis in near-apocalyptic terms in an attempt to lay blame on President Bush and, by association, McCain, the junior senator from Illinois didn't feel the urgency to show up for work and try to do what he could to address it. Obama certainly has standing and more than his share of influence. This is, after all, the de-facto leader of the Democratic Party. Unfortunately, he also looks like someone who is so focused on what he hopes will be his next job that he has lost interest in his current one. McCain showed real leadership this week. And frankly, if we were more accustomed to seeing that sort of thing from our elected officials, we might be less cynical and better able to recognize it on the rare occasions when it surfaces. iReport.com: Are you planning to watch the debate? The clock is running down on the Bush administration. It is almost time to hand off the baton. The financial crisis will no doubt become McCain's No. 1 agenda item if he is elected president. Or it will be Obama's No. 1 agenda item if he is elected. This issue is as difficult as they come. I get that. It requires making sacrifices, wrestling with tough choices and telling Americans the hard and unpleasant truth -- all the things that politicians hate to do. Too bad. The presidential candidates can't run from this issue any more than the rest of the country can. That's why both of them should have cleared their plate and gotten to work on a solution. But only one did. The opinions expressed in this commentary are solely those of the writer. |
|
Subject: RE: BS: Popular views on McCain From: GUEST,Sawzaw Date: 26 Sep 08 - 11:49 AM And what did McCain's tagalong, Obama do? |
|
Subject: RE: BS: Popular views on McCain From: Riginslinger Date: 26 Sep 08 - 11:47 AM Not boring is certainly better that Obama! |
|
Subject: RE: BS: Popular views on McCain From: Amos Date: 26 Sep 08 - 11:31 AM How on earth does one make sense of it? The last week, he has plunged from one gimmick to another, finally landing on this transparently cynical bid to "suspend" his campaign until a bailout deal - then returning to Washington to actually say nothing while the deal collapsed: At the bipartisan White House meeting that Mr. McCain had called for a day earlier, he sat silently for more than 40 minutes, more observer than leader, and then offered only a vague sense of where he stood, said people in the meeting. In rode the man on the white horse, whom no one really needed. And when he got there, he didn't resolve the impasse, and he didn't propose a plan. He just sat there, er, blinking. Now he's tied himself into the comic position that if this deal isn't made by tonight, he won't show up at the debate, so there. It's like a seventeen year old going to their room and slamming the door when he can't be the center of attention. Matt Cooper notes: McCain certainly hasn't helped and now we're at a point where a deal seems unlikely tomorrow in time for the debate which means McCain will have to make another decision--whether to swallow his pride and show up for the Meeting in Mississippi or be the biggest no-show in the history of American politics. Since he doesn't seem to have added anything to the negotiations in Washington, it's hard to see why on earth he should show up for the debate with Barack Obama. If he shows up with no deal, he'll look beyond lame. If he shows up after the deal, he will not be able to say truthfully he had anything to do with it, especially if he now leads opposition to the bailout. All in all: it's very hard to know what is going on in his head, what stunt he's going to pull next, what new drama he wants to unveil. Calming, isn't it, to think what a McCain presidency would look like. Not boring, anyway. (From Andrew Sullivan in the Atlantic |
|
Subject: RE: BS: Popular views on McCain From: Riginslinger Date: 25 Sep 08 - 09:48 PM Alice - I would agree that America needs more than two parties, but Bill Clinton was a very good president, in my opinion. Maybe McCain will be as well. |
|
Subject: RE: BS: Popular views on McCain From: Alice Date: 25 Sep 08 - 03:17 PM The Republicans can keep Bill C. I gave up on him years ago. |
|
Subject: RE: BS: Popular views on McCain From: beardedbruce Date: 25 Sep 08 - 03:16 PM I amy have to go work for Barr... |
|
Subject: RE: BS: Popular views on McCain From: beardedbruce Date: 25 Sep 08 - 03:11 PM September 25, 2008 Bill Clinton lavishes praise on McCain Posted: 01:41 PM ET From CNN Ticker Producer Alexander Mooney Clinton had kinds words for John McCain Thursday. (CNN) – Bill Clinton has long pointed out he has enjoyed a good relationship with John McCain, but for a moment the former president almost sounded like a surrogate for the Republican presidential nominee Thursday morning. Appearing on ABC's Good Morning America, Clinton said McCain's move to suspend his campaign and request a delay in the first presidential debate was a move done in "good faith," rather than as a stunt to halt falling poll numbers as several Democrats have alleged. "I presume he did that in good faith since I know he wanted — I remember he asked for more debates to go all around the country and so I don't think we ought to overly parse that," Clinton said, sounding a familiar McCain Campaign talking point. A few hours later Clinton lavished praise on McCain as he introduced him at the Clinton Global Initiative forum, saying Republican presidential nominee had taken the lead in his party when it comes to climate change. |
|
Subject: RE: BS: Popular views on McCain From: Barry Finn Date: 25 Sep 08 - 01:34 AM & he just left David Letterman in the lurch for another pretty faced newscaster. That was a wirlwind fling with Shara, is it over yet? Barry |
|
Subject: RE: BS: Popular views on McCain From: Amos Date: 24 Sep 08 - 11:12 PM Because he's good at sliming out of issues? Great move, bosh!! He's not needed in Washington, he's leaving UMiss in the lurch for over 5M bucks, and he's demonstrating he doesn't trust Sarah Palin to cover the campaign for him for a few days while he messes around where he's not needed. Bah, humbug--he's degenerated into a poseur with Alzheimer's. |
|
Subject: RE: BS: Popular views on McCain From: Riginslinger Date: 24 Sep 08 - 09:34 PM "By making such a startling announcement this afternoon, McCain has managed to most certainly change the subject -- for now." Great move. Indicates to the voters why McCain is a much better choice than Barack Obama. |
|
Subject: RE: BS: Popular views on McCain From: Amos Date: 24 Sep 08 - 05:01 PM How the McCain campaign misrepresents the will of the American public to the American public. A telling tale of rather slimy duplicity. A |
|
Subject: RE: BS: Popular views on McCain From: Amos Date: 24 Sep 08 - 04:55 PM "The "Oh no, he didn't!" Award for today goes to Sen. John McCain with his announcement that he's suspending his presidential campaign tomorrow and wants to postpone Friday's debate with Sen. Barack Obama so that he can help negotiate the bipartisan bailout of America's wrecked financial system. Oh, and he's called on Obama to put politics aside and join him. That's certainly a bold move. But why now? This has not been a good couple of weeks for McCain, and today has been horrendous. The latest Washington Post/ABC News poll showed Obama with a clear lead over the senator from Arizona for the very first time. As if that weren't bad enough, a national poll from Fox News/Opinion Dynamics and battleground state polls from Marist appear to back up the contention that Obama is striking a chord with voters on the economy. This is giving him valuable momentum going into Friday's debate. Then, as E.J. wrote about earlier, there was the front page New York Times story today contradicting McCain campaign assertions that the firm founded by campaign chief Rick Davis had had no dealings with Freddie Mac for three years. The story reports that Davis's firm, Davis Manafort, was paid $15,000 a month from the end of 2005 through last month. By making such a startling announcement this afternoon, McCain has managed to most certainly change the subject -- for now. Maybe he's putting "country first." But coming 41 days before the election and on a day of tough news for McCain, forgive me for thinking that there's more than a bit of self-interest here...." (Capehart, WaPo) |
|
Subject: RE: BS: Popular views on McCain From: Amos Date: 24 Sep 08 - 02:03 PM McCain's campaign manager linked to Freddie Mac The aide's lobbying firm got payments from the troubled housing lender until last month, a source says. From the Associated Press September 24, 2008 "WASHINGTON -- The lobbying firm of John McCain's campaign manager was paid $15,000 a month for several years until last month by one of two housing companies taken over by the federal government, a person familiar with the financial arrangement said Tuesday night. That money from Freddie Mac to Rick Davis' firm was on top of more than $30,000 a month that went directly to Davis for five years starting in 2000. Blog: Top of the Ticket 2008 electoral vote mapCampaign '08 Daily Newsletter The $30,000 a month came from both Freddie Mac and Fannie Mae, the other housing entity now under government control because of the crisis in the financial markets. All the payments were first reported by the New York Times, which posted a story on its website Tuesday night revealing the $15,000 a month to the firm of Davis Manafort. The newspaper quoted two people with knowledge of the arrangement. In response to the disclosure, McCain's presidential campaign issued a statement saying Davis left the firm and stopped taking a salary in 2006. A person familiar with the contract says the $15,000 monthly payments from Freddie Mac to Davis' firm started around the end of 2005 and continued until about last month. The person spoke on condition of anonymity. The connection between Davis and the housing giants that figure so centrally in the global financial crisis emerged after the McCain campaign unleashed a sharp attack on Democratic rival Barack Obama. McCain has tried to tie Obama to Fannie's and Freddie's troubles and has called on Jim Johnson and Franklin Raines -- former Fannie Mae executives who are both Obama supporters -- to return million-dollar "golden parachute" payments they received from the corporation after leaving..;.." (LA Times) |
|
Subject: RE: BS: Popular views on McCain From: Amos Date: 24 Sep 08 - 01:43 PM The Kansas City Star did run a virulent denial and attack on the NYT for that story. They insisted Davis was not on the take, but the story did not say he was, as I recall, just that his firm benefited. So the denial kind of mismatche4d the allegations, and rebutted a paper tiger, easy to do. A |
|
Subject: RE: BS: Popular views on McCain From: dick greenhaus Date: 24 Sep 08 - 01:15 PM Rig- Please note that neither Rick Davis nor McCain denied the accusation. They simply attacked the newspaper. |
|
Subject: RE: BS: Popular views on McCain From: Amos Date: 24 Sep 08 - 09:51 AM "...But what happened after that was even more unusual, and possibly without precedent: McCain's supporters simply suggested that the truth or falsity of their statements didn't matter. McCain spokesman Brian Rogers said this to Politico about the increased media scrutiny of the campaign's factual claims: "We're running a campaign to win. And we're not too concerned about what the media filter tries to say about it." Republican strategist John Feehery made the point even more bluntly, telling The Washington Post: "The more The New York Times and The Washington Post go after Sarah Palin, the better off she is, because there's a bigger truth out there, and the bigger truths are: She's new, she's popular in Alaska, and she is an insurgent." Then, he added, "As long as those are out there, these little facts don't really matter." Here we have the distilled essence of the McCain campaign's ethos: Perception is reality. Facts don't matter. McCain has presented himself as the grizzled champion of timeworn values. But the defining trait of his candidacy turns out to be a postmodern disdain for truth. How could McCain--a man widely regarded, not so long ago, as one of the country's most honor-bound politicians, and therefore an unusually honest one--have descended to this ignominious low? Part of the answer is that McCain is simply doing what works--and there is good reason to believe that his campaign's strategy of persistent dishonesty will pay dividends come November 4. ..." (New Republic) We've gotten quite accustomed to having a Great Falsifier as head of state; perhaps it is time we threw off the addiction. A |
|
Subject: RE: BS: Popular views on McCain From: Amos Date: 24 Sep 08 - 09:47 AM Actually, it does not. A |
|
Subject: RE: BS: Popular views on McCain From: Riginslinger Date: 24 Sep 08 - 06:14 AM Actually, it ignores facts! |
|
Subject: RE: BS: Popular views on McCain From: dick greenhaus Date: 24 Sep 08 - 12:26 AM Pay no attention to the Times--their reportage is hopelessly contaminated with facts! |
|
Subject: RE: BS: Popular views on McCain From: Amos Date: 23 Sep 08 - 11:24 PM McCain Aide's Firm Was Paid by Freddie Mac One of the giant mortgage companies at the heart of the credit crisis paid $15,000 a month to a firm owned by Senator John McCain's campaign manager from the end of 2005 through last month, according to two people with direct knowledge of the arrangement. The disclosure contradicts a statement Sunday night by Mr. McCain that the campaign manager, Rick Davis, had no involvement with the company for the last several years. Read More: http://www.nytimes.com/?emc=na |
|
Subject: RE: BS: Popular views on McCain From: Riginslinger Date: 22 Sep 08 - 09:20 PM "Popular views on McCain..." Brilliant, simpy brilliant! |
|
Subject: RE: BS: Popular views on McCain From: Amos Date: 22 Sep 08 - 04:24 PM From a website called "Young Turks": "John McCain published an article in the current issue of Contingencies magazine. In the artice he wrote: Opening up the health insurance market to more vigorous nationwide competition, as we have done over the last decade in banking, would provide more choices of innovative products less burdened by the worst excesses of state-based regulation. As the young poster said, 'I have nothing to add'. A |
|
Subject: RE: BS: Popular views on McCain From: Amos Date: 22 Sep 08 - 03:23 PM In an ongoing battle between the candidates to appear more down-to-earth, the Democrat's campaign branded the Republican as out of touch and guilty of betraying US workers, after it was reported that Mr McCain and his wife Cindy's vehicle collection included a Toyota, Honda and a Volkswagen. Mrs McCain's principle car, according to investigations of public records by Newsweek, is a Lexus with the private number plate "Ms Bud", which is registered to the Budweiser beer distributorship and fortune she inherited from her father. Mr McCain said in a recent interview with a television station in Detroit, the heart of the struggling US car industry that "I've bought American literally all my life and I'm proud". But the United Auto Workers union (UAW), which has endorsed Mr Obama, accused the Arizona senator of deceit. "When he's in the Midwest, he tells voters he supports the industry," UAW president Ron Gettelfinger said, referring to economically bereft battleground states. "That's a really a nice campaign line, but it turns out that John McCain wasn't being straight with the people of Detroit," he added. By contrast, Mr Obama and his wife Michelle own a single car: an environmentally friendly 2008 Ford Escape hybrid. It was purchased last year to replace the family's Chrysler, a "gas-guzzler" which was ditched after complaints that Mr Obama was lecturing Detroit on building more fuel-efficient cars. It is the second time that Mr McCain's wealth, which is almost entirely derived from his wife, has become a campaign issue. In July he revealed that he did not know how many properties the couple owned. The answer was seven. After Mr Obama made a remark about rural voters clinging to guns and religion in bad times, Mr McCain's campaign and his supporters have tried to portray the Democrat as an aloof liberal unfamiliar with ordinary people's priorities. John and Cindy McCain's cars: |
|
Subject: RE: BS: Popular views on McCain From: Amos Date: 22 Sep 08 - 08:52 AM "The Democratic National Committee, using publicly available records, has identified 177 lobbyists working for the McCain campaign as either aides, policy advisers, or fundraisers. Of those 177 lobbyists, at least 83 have in recent years lobbied for the financial industry McCain now attacks." -- Mother Jones magazine |
|
Subject: RE: BS: Popular views on McCain From: Amos Date: 22 Sep 08 - 07:37 AM The "mavericks" are "Bushites": "When Gov. Sarah Palin flew home to Alaska for the first time since being named the Republican vice presidential nominee, she brought along at least half a dozen new advisers to conduct briefings, stage-manage her first television interview and help her prepare for a critical debate next month. And virtually every member of the team shared a common credential: years of service to President Bush. From Mark Wallace, a Bush appointee to the United Nations, to Tucker Eskew, who ran strategic communications for the Bush White House, to Greg Jenkins, who served as the deputy assistant to Bush in his first term and was executive director of the 2004 inauguration, Palin was surrounded on the trip home by operatives deeply rooted in the Bush administration. The clutch of Bush veterans helping to coach Palin reflects a larger reality about Sen. John McCain's presidential campaign: Far from being a group of outsiders to the Republican Party power structure, it is now run largely by skilled operatives who learned their crafts in successive Bush campaigns and various jobs across the Bush government over the past eight years." WaPO |
|
Subject: RE: BS: Popular views on McCain From: Amos Date: 21 Sep 08 - 06:07 PM Why "realists" on the right are a little worried about John McCain. SOme interesting remarks on the personalization of politics. A |
|
Subject: RE: BS: Popular views on McCain From: Riginslinger Date: 21 Sep 08 - 05:53 PM "How so? And if so, so what?" As chairman of the Federal Reserve, he jacked interest rates through the ceiling, while Carter was trying to get them down. Then, just before the election, he raised them again. |
|
Subject: RE: BS: Popular views on McCain From: dick greenhaus Date: 21 Sep 08 - 05:42 PM I suspect that George H.W. Bush is tha man that destroyed Jimmy Carter's presidency. |
|
Subject: RE: BS: Popular views on McCain From: Amos Date: 21 Sep 08 - 11:40 AM How so? And if so, so what? A |
|
Subject: RE: BS: Popular views on McCain From: Riginslinger Date: 21 Sep 08 - 08:47 AM "Whatever blanks are yet to be filled in on Obama, we at least know his economic plans and the known quantities who are shaping them (Lawrence Summers, Robert Rubin, Paul Volcker)." Paul Volcker - Isn't that they guy who destroyed Jimmy Carter? |
|
Subject: RE: BS: Popular views on McCain From: CarolC Date: 21 Sep 08 - 03:59 AM The McCain campaign is the Old Boy Network... http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bVPNXzopdJQ |
|
Subject: RE: BS: Popular views on McCain From: Amos Date: 21 Sep 08 - 03:32 AM The rest of Frank Rish on McCain: "Network news, with its dwindling handful of investigative reporters, has barely mentioned, let alone advanced, major new print revelations about Cindy McCain's drug-addiction history (in The Washington Post) and the rampant cronyism and secrecy in Palin's governance of Alaska (in last Sunday's New York Times). At least the networks repeatedly fact-check the low-hanging fruit among the countless Palin lies, but John McCain's past usually remains off limits. That's strange since the indisputable historical antecedent for our current crisis is the Lincoln Savings and Loan scandal of the go-go 1980s. When Charles Keating's bank went belly up because of risky, unregulated investments, it wiped out its depositors' savings and cost taxpayers more than $3 billion. More than 1,000 other S.&L. institutions capsized nationwide. It was ugly for the McCains. He had received more than $100,000 in Keating campaign contributions, and both McCains had repeatedly hopped on Keating's corporate jet. Cindy McCain and her beer-magnate father had invested nearly $360,000 in a Keating shopping center a year before her husband joined four senators in inappropriate meetings with regulators charged with S.&L. oversight. After Congressional hearings, McCain was reprimanded for "poor judgment." He had committed no crime and had not intervened to protect Keating from ruin. Yet he, like many deregulators in his party, was guilty of bankrupt policy-making before disaster struck. He was among the sponsors of a House resolution calling for the delay of regulations intended to deter risky investments just like those that brought down Lincoln and its ilk. Ever since, McCain has publicly thrashed himself for his mistakes back then — and boasted of the lessons he learned. He embraced campaign finance reform to rebrand himself as a "maverick." But whatever lessons he learned are now forgotten. For all his fiery calls last week for a Wall Street crackdown, McCain opposed the very regulations that might have helped avert the current catastrophe. In 1999, he supported a law co-authored by Gramm (and ultimately signed by Bill Clinton) that revoked the New Deal reforms intended to prevent commercial banks, insurance companies and investment banks from mingling their businesses. Equally laughable is the McCain-Palin ticket's born-again outrage over the greed of Wall Street C.E.O.'s. When McCain's chief financial surrogate, Fiorina, was fired as Hewlett-Packard's chief executive after a 50 percent drop in shareholders' value and 20,000 pink slips, she took home a package worth $42 million. The McCain campaign canceled Fiorina's television appearances last week after she inadvertently admitted that Palin was unqualified to run a corporation. But that doesn't mean Fiorina is gone. Gramm, too, was ostentatiously exiled after he blamed the economic meltdown on our "nation of whiners" and "mental recession," but he remains in the McCain loop. The corporate jets, lobbyists and sleazes that gravitated around McCain in the Keating era have also reappeared in new incarnations. The Nation's Web site recently unearthed a photo of the resolutely anticelebrity McCain being greeted by the con man Raffaello Follieri and his then girlfriend, the Hollywood actress Anne Hathaway, as McCain celebrated his 70th birthday on Follieri's rented yacht in Montenegro in August 2006. It's the perfect bookend to the old pictures of McCain in a funny hat partying with Keating in the Bahamas. Whatever blanks are yet to be filled in on Obama, we at least know his economic plans and the known quantities who are shaping them (Lawrence Summers, Robert Rubin, Paul Volcker). McCain has reversed himself on every single economic issue this year, often within a 24-hour period, whether he's judging the strength of the economy's fundamentals or the wisdom of the government bailout of A.I.G. He once promised that he'd run every decision past Alan Greenspan — and even have him write a new tax code — but Greenspan has jumped ship rather than support McCain's biggest flip-flop, his expansion of the Bush tax cuts. McCain's official chief economic adviser is now Douglas Holtz-Eakin, who last week declared that McCain had "helped create" the BlackBerry. But Holtz-Eakin's most telling statement was about McCain's economic plans — namely, that the details are irrelevant. "I don't think it's imperative at this moment to write down what the plan should be," he said. "The real issue here is a leadership issue." This, too, is a Rove-Bush replay. We want a tough guy who will "fix" things with his own two hands — let's take out the S.E.C. chairman! — instead of wimpy Frenchified Democrats who just "talk." The fine print of policy is superfluous if there's a quick-draw decider in the White House. The twin-pronged strategy of truculence and propaganda that sold Bush and his war could yet work for McCain. Even now his campaign has kept the "filter" from learning the very basics about his fitness to serve as president — his finances and his health. The McCain multihousehold's multimillion-dollar mother lode is buried in Cindy McCain's still-unreleased complete tax returns. John McCain's full medical records, our sole index to the odds of an imminent Palin presidency, also remain locked away. The McCain campaign instead invited 20 chosen reporters to speed-read through 1,173 pages of medical history for a mere three hours on the Friday before Memorial Day weekend. No photocopying was permitted. This is the same tactic of selective document release that the Bush White House used to bamboozle Congress and the press about Saddam's nonexistent W.M.D. As truthiness repeats itself, so may history, and not as farce.? |
|
Subject: RE: BS: Popular views on McCain From: Amos Date: 21 Sep 08 - 03:28 AM NOT until 2004 could the 9/11 commission at last reveal the title of the intelligence briefing President Bush ignored on Aug. 6, 2001, in Crawford: "Bin Laden Determined to Strike in U.S." No wonder John McCain called for a new "9/11 commission" to "get to the bottom" of 9/14, when the collapse of Lehman Brothers set off another kind of blood bath in Lower Manhattan. Put a slo-mo Beltway panel in charge, and Election Day will be ancient history before we get to the bottom of just how little he and the president did to defend America against a devastating new threat on their watch. Fred R. Conrad/The New York Times Frank Rich Go to Columnist Page » Enlarge This Image Barry Blitt Readers' Comments Share your thoughts on this article. Post a Comment » For better or worse, the candidacy of Barack Obama, a senator-come-lately, must be evaluated on his judgment, ideas and potential to lead. McCain, by contrast, has been chairman of the Senate Commerce Committee, where he claims to have overseen "every part of our economy." He didn't, thank heavens, but he does have a long and relevant economic record that begins with the Keating Five scandal of 1989 and extends to this campaign, where his fiscal policies bear the fingerprints of Phil Gramm and Carly Fiorina. It's not the résumé that a presidential candidate wants to advertise as America faces its worst financial crisis since the Great Depression. That's why the main thrust of the McCain campaign has been to cover up his history of economic malpractice. McCain has largely pulled it off so far, under the guidance of Steve Schmidt, a Karl Rove protégé. A Rovian political strategy by definition means all slime, all the time. But the more crucial Rove game plan is to envelop the entire presidential race in a thick fog of truthiness. All campaigns, Obama's included, engage in false attacks. But McCain, Sarah Palin and their surrogates keep repeating the same lies over and over not just to smear their opponents and not just to mask their own record. Their larger aim is to construct a bogus alternative reality so relentless it can overwhelm any haphazard journalistic stabs at puncturing it. When a McCain spokesman told Politico a week ago that "we're not too concerned about what the media filter tries to say" about the campaign's incessant fictions, he was channeling a famous Bush dictum of 2003: "Somehow you just got to go over the heads of the filter." In Bush's case, the lies lobbed over the heads of the press were to sell the war in Iraq. That propaganda blitz, devised by a secret White House Iraq Group that included Rove, was a triumph. In mere months, Americans came to believe that Saddam Hussein had aided the 9/11 attacks and even that Iraqis were among the hijackers. A largely cowed press failed to set the record straight. (NYT) |
|
Subject: RE: BS: Popular views on McCain From: DougR Date: 21 Sep 08 - 01:18 AM Donuel: I'm delighted you beat Amos to starting this thread. When McCain is elected, you can modify the title to "Popular views on the McCain Administration, edging out Amos' thread, "Popular views of the Bush Administration," which existed, I believe, during the entire eight years of that administration. Despite Bush cleaning Gore's plow in the last presidential election when Bush won both the popular and Electoral College vote. DougR |
|
Subject: RE: BS: Popular views on McCain From: Stringsinger Date: 20 Sep 08 - 12:41 PM Reagan suffered from the onslaught of Alzheimers. McCain seems to have similar behavioral symptoms. McCain is a symbolic figure for the GOP with no definable or useful policy prescriptions for the problems besetting the economy. Palin is also an American Idol personality with very little talent. People in America have been so dumbed-down that they elect a president not on qualifications for the office but because they represent so-called "Christian values" based on ignorance. Palin is subject A. Until this country gets its priorities right and encourages intelligence, education and compassion in those running for public office, we will be here in four more wars. |
|
Subject: RE: BS: Popular views on McCain From: Amos Date: 20 Sep 08 - 12:34 PM "Mr. McCain, on Monday you repeated your delusional notion that the fundamentals of the economy are strong. Now, the federal government is working on a deal to save that economy from collapsing. You have admitted that the economy is not your forte, so you could have used a running mate with some financial chops. (Remember Mitt Romney?) But no. Who did you pick? SnowJob SquareGlasses whose financial credentials include running Wasilla into debt, listing (but not selling) a plane on EBay and flip-flopping on a bridge to wherever. In fact, when it comes to real issues in general, she may prove to be a liability. In what respect, you may ask? It turns out that the Republican enthusiasm for Sarah Palin is just as superficial as she is. They were so eager for someone to cheer for (because they really don't like you) that they dove face first into the Palin mirage. But, on the issues, even they worry about her. In a New York Times/CBS News poll conducted this week 77 percent of Republicans said that they had a favorable opinion of Palin. But when asked what specifically they liked about her, their top five reasons were that she was honest, tough, caring, outspoken and fresh-faced. Sounds like a talk-show host, not a vice president. (By the way, her intelligence was in a three-way tie for eighth place, right behind "I just like her.") When those Republicans were asked what they liked least about her, they started to sound more like everyone else. Aside from those who said that there was nothing they didn't like, next on the list were: her lack of experience, her record as governor and her lack of foreign-policy experience. Also, most Republicans think you only picked her to help with the election, not because she is qualified, and a third said that they would be "concerned" if for some reason she actually had to serve as president. And Palin is proving to be just as vacant as people suspected. In her interview with Charles Gibson last week, she didn't know what the Bush doctrine was. At your first joint town hall meeting with her in Michigan on Wednesday, in front of an invitation-only crowd of Republicans no less, she dodged substantive questions about the issues as if they were sniper fire, while issuing a faux challenge to the audience to play a game of "stump the candidate". Seriously? Many of your supporters will no doubt cry sexism. Fine with me. But that defense rings hollow. I find many of them to be sexist. Fresh-faced? Delegates on the floor of the Republican National Convention wearing buttons like "Hoosiers for the hot chick"? Seriously...." (Charles Blow, NYT) |
|
Subject: RE: BS: Popular views on McCain From: Riginslinger Date: 19 Sep 08 - 09:39 PM "Surely it is time for a Harvard man with better than a C average." If that man is an affirmative action candidate, is that something like a homerun hitter on steroids? |
