John McCain

October 6, 2008April 18, 2020

John McCain’s palling around with Charles Keating who defrauded tax payers in late 1980’s

Here is some history that needs to be said about Senator John McCain and his relationship with S&L crook Charles Keating back in the late 1980’s:

The current economic crisis demands that we understand John McCain’s attitudes about economic oversight and corporate influence in federal regulation. Nothing illustrates the danger of his approach more clearly than his central role in the savings and loan scandal of the late ’80s and early ’90s.
John McCain was accused of improperly aiding his political patron, Charles Keating, chairman of the Lincoln Savings and Loan Association. The bipartisan Senate Ethics Committee launched investigations and formally reprimanded Senator McCain for his role in the scandal — the first such Senator to receive a major party nomination for president.
At the heart of the scandal was Keating’s Lincoln Savings and Loan Association, which took advantage of deregulation in the 1980s to make risky investments with its depositors’ money. McCain intervened on behalf of Charles Keating with federal regulators tasked with preventing banking fraud, and championed legislation to delay regulation of the savings and loan industry — actions that allowed Keating to continue his fraud at an incredible cost to taxpayers.
When the savings and loan industry collapsed, Keating’s failed company put taxpayers on the hook for $3.4 billion and more than 20,000 Americans lost their savings. John McCain was reprimanded by the bipartisan Senate Ethics Committee, but the ultimate cost of the crisis to American taxpayers reached more than $120 billion.
The Keating scandal is eerily similar to today’s credit crisis, where a lack of regulation and cozy relationships between the financial industry and Congress has allowed banks to make risky loans and profit by bending the rules. And in both cases, John McCain’s judgment and values have placed him on the wrong side of history.
Keatingeconomics.com

John McCain also knew the relationship was wrong:

On his Keating Five experience, McCain has said: “The appearance of it was wrong. It’s a wrong appearance when a group of senators appear in a meeting with a group of regulators, because it conveys the impression of undue and improper influence. And it was the wrong thing to do.”
John McCain Report: The Keating Five, The Arizona Republic

There is more info at the website noted above or at Keating Five

October 3, 2008April 18, 2020

No moose in the headlights, but Palin still lost the debate

Well it seems Sarah Palin knows how to cram for an exam. Her debate with Senator Joe Biden lacked any “moose in the headlight” moments, mainly because there were no follow ups, but her folksy question avoidance didn’t win her or her ticket any help in the election. Tactically she did a good job but she lost the war. Her effort was a white flag of surrender for McCain-Palin.

The people have spoken:

CNN vote of debate watchers: Biden 51, Palin 36
CBS poll of undecideds: Biden 46, Palin 21

Most scary moment:

IFILL: Governor, you mentioned a moment ago the constitution might give the vice president more power than it has in the past. Do you believe as Vice President Cheney does, that the Executive Branch does not hold complete sway over the office of the vice presidency, that it it is also a member of the Legislative Branch?
PALIN: Well, our founding fathers were very wise there in allowing through the Constitution much flexibility there in the office of the vice president. And we will do what is best for the American people in tapping into that position and ushering in an agenda that is supportive and cooperative with the president’s agenda in that position. Yeah, so I do agree with him that we have a lot of flexibility in there, and we’ll do what we have to do to administer very appropriately the plans that are needed for this nation. And it is my executive experience that is partly to be attributed to my pick as V.P. with McCain, not only as a governor, but earlier on as a mayor, as an oil and gas regulator, as a business owner. It is those years of experience on an executive level that will be put to good use in the White House also.

Yes, she wants more power than Lord Cheney. Did you feel that chill?

In the lead up to the debate the right punditry went nuts about the fact that the moderator, Gwen Ifill, had written a book about blacks in politics – as if this some how made her biased. The right also complained about Palin mucking up her Katie Couric interviews – blaming the bad old liberal media and its “gotcha” journalism.

It is a the usual classic conservative attack mode – attacking the media.

Glenn Greenwald in Salon magazine summed this up perfectly:

Go pick whatever right-wing journals or polemicists you want and (with some isolated exceptions) what you will find is this simultaneously self-loving and self-pitying worldview permeating virtually everything they say, think and believe. You can reduce most of their arguments, and all of their group-based drives, to a rudimentary logical proposition: “I am X, and X is both superior and treated with deep unfairness.” It doesn’t matter what “X” happens to be for any one of them — conservative, male, Republican, Christian, Jewish, religious, white, Western, American — that is the formula that expresses how they perceive the world and their role in it.
Petulance and self-pitying grievance is what fuels them. This endless need to self-victimize would be one thing if the groups to which they belonged were small minorities targeted by a hostile and more powerful majority. But the exact opposite is true. By and large, the groups to which they belong (and therefore see as oppressed and treated with unparalleled unfairness) are the most numerous and the most powerful in the country and always have been. Yet still — nothing is their fault; they face hopeless obstacles imposed by Evil and Omnipotent Forces which hate them; “I am X, and X is both superior and treated with deep unfairness.”
They have run the country for the entire decade. For the last 14 years, they’ve controlled the House for all but 20 months. They spent substantial parts of the last eight years in control of all branches of government simultaneously. They’ve won 7 out of the last 10 presidential elections. The country’s largest and richest corporations — including the ones owning the most powerful media outlets — pour money into their party and perceive, correctly, that their interests are served by the Right’s agenda. But still — they can’t get a fair shake; everything is deeply oppressive to them; it’s all so unfair.
The right’s two-pronged religion of rage and self-pity

So as we get closer to the election – including the next 2 presidential debates – look for more whining from the right as they assume their place on the victimhood mantle.

October 2, 2008April 18, 2020

Palin sets bar so low you would need to be paper to go lower

Sarah Palin has many things going for her. She is attractive, has a decent family, and is ambitious. She also had to be able to influence and develop personable skills any good politician needs to get to the next level. After all she went from local town politician to governor of Alaska.

The problem with Sarah is what is wrong with a majority of Americans. She doesn’t have any good knowledge of things a Vice President of a country needs to have to be qualified for the job.

It is pretty sad when someone like me, who is extremely interested in politics, knows more than the chosen candidate for such a prestigious job as Vice President of the United States.

You know the job held by John Adams and Thomas Jefferson, founders of this country, Teddy Roosevelt who built the Panama Canal and created the National Park system, and Lyndon B. Johnson, who improved civil rights for minorities and helped the poor.

Palin is like most Americans who have no clue what goes on outside our borders and knows little of important history like Supreme Court cases.

I don’t think she’s stupid or uneducated only that she is ignorant of the stuff a high elected official ought to know before they get the job.

The proof is she doesn’t have pat concrete answers to basic questions like what newspaper or books she reads. She also couldn’t name another Supreme Court decision she disagreed with besides Roe v Wade. Knowing her evangelical religious background one would think she could instantly name Abington Township School District v. Schempp (1963) which ended state sanctioned school prayer.

Then when her ignorance is saved on video tape and in print she excuses it as an attack on her by the “elite liberal media”.

Right. Showing your ignorance is their fault. Yep that is also an average American response – “It’s not my fault its their’s.”

Bob Cesca wrote in his article on The Huffington Post:

The presidency, as we’ve learned the hard way, matters. An incompetent chief executive, no matter how he or she has been packaged, tends to breed disaster. There was a time when we could rest assured knowing that, even if the president wasn’t all there, he was surrounded by competent people who could grab the wheel if he blacked out. But those who are supporting the Republican ticket based on superficial appeal need to ask themselves: since when has the word “competent” been used to describe the current batch of operatives surrounding John McCain and Sarah Palin? These are the same handlers who camp up with the laughable “Alaska is right next to Russia” line. Put it another way, the man who first coined that line was Steve Doocy.
In the real world — a world in which America needs serious people making our most serious decisions — Alaska’s proximity to Russia has less to do with national security experience than a ’78 Nova without its back windshield has to do with a truck. It’s just not. Likewise, Joe Six-pack, while qualified for many decent jobs (governor of Alaska, too, I guess), is simply not qualified for our highest national office. Sorry, Joe! And sorry, Sarah. You’re just not up for this, regardless of what you’ve tricked yourself into believing.
Sarah Six-pack Needs To Put Country First by Stepping Down

Just as I don’t want Joe Six-pack doing brain surgery, I don’t want Sarah Six-pack one heartbeat from the Presidency.

September 28, 2008April 18, 2020

Local media coverage the day before the big McCain rally in Columbus

Here are some media reports related to McCain’s rally set to be held in Columbus on Monday the 29th. Both articles are from the Columbus Dispatch – which normally endorses GOP candidates.

Along with Sen. Barack Obama, Sen. John McCain has embraced a $700 billion bailout of the nation’s troubled financial industry.
In a telephone interview with The Dispatch from Washington yesterday, McCain said that Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson and Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Bernanke convinced him that the rescue plan is necessary.
“I’m sure everybody understands that this was something that just had to be done,” McCain said. “I’m kind of sorry in a way, but the tone of voice that Bernanke and Paulson used about this crisis, I’ve never heard anything like it in the years that I’ve been in public office, or alive.”
McCain and his running mate, Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin, will appear at a rally this morning at Capital University. In advance of the visit, McCain talked with The Dispatch about the financial crisis and other topics:
Dispatch: Some commentators criticized you for what they called erratic statements and actions last week heading into negotiations on rescuing the economy. Describe how you played a productive role in all this.
McCain: I’ll leave that up to others to make that judgment. This was an issue that was transcendent. I suspended my campaign and came back to Washington because I thought that it was vital to do so. Sen. Obama said he was available to discuss the issue by phone. I didn’t want to phone it in. I’m proud that we were able to get this done, and I’ll give the credit to everybody else.
McCain tells ‘Dispatch’ that bailout is emergency measure ‘to stop bleeding’

Didn’t want to phone it in? It seems McCain going to Washington to butt in the talks actually caused them to break down.

Palin is ideal for southwestern Ohio, with her tough talk and conservative stances on issues such as guns and abortion, said Ryan Barilleaux, chairman of Miami University’s Political Science Department. However, he is surprised by the level of enthusiasm.
“Earlier in his career, John McCain seemed to go out of his way to poke people in the eye, conservatives in particular, and they resented that,” he said. “But now he’s kind of redeemed himself.”
In the town of Monroe, where voter turnout in 2004 was about 80 percent, Ernie Wilson has been cutting hair at Ernie’s Hair Place for 50 years. As the election draws closer, political talk heats up, and Wilson said he hears quite a bit about Palin.
“The one thing I hear all the time is that when she got elected (governor), she said she was going to change things, and she sold that state jet right away,” he said.
Sitting in Wilson’s waiting room, William Murphy, 66, is among the Democrats who scratch their heads at the obsession with Palin, whom he calls “probably the most-inept vice-presidential candidate we’ve had.”
“She’s a fresh face, but they didn’t know nothing about her,” said Murphy, an occupational safety consultant from Monroe.
Palin’s shine has dulled a bit since the Republican National Convention, as some of her assertions, such as her opposition to the “bridge to nowhere,” are rebutted and her experience is questioned.
But folks seem more concerned about Obama’s background. Some are very bothered by his affiliation with the Rev. Jeremiah Wright, his controversial former minister. A few mentioned Obama’s race as a factor.
Jayne Keys, 51, a restaurant controller from Wilmington, questioned Obama’s experience but called Palin a “refreshing face who will bring a lot to the table.”
Asked about Palin’s lack of experience, Keys’ husband, Don, responded: “She’s not running for president. My anticipation is that (McCain) would last for eight years, and she would gain eight years of experience.”
Palin energizes Republicans in their Cincinnati-area stronghold

Cindy McCain did a satellite interview with one of our local TV stations (WBNS Channel 10) ahead of the McCain rally in Columbus on Monday. Notice in the video how the anchor focuses on the tax increase for those making more than $250,000 and giving short emphasis on the tax cuts for the middle class under Obama’s plan. He frames it that way twice in the video. He mentions Palin’s bad interview with Katie Couric last week but spins so Cindy can be a cheerleader.

A few months ago I had to write a letter to the station and complain about their biased reporting favoring McCain and there was only a short mention of the Obama event just after the convention when he stopped in Dublin.

The video does have some comments from Gov. Ted Strickland in Obama’s favor.

September 27, 2008April 18, 2020

Obama makes good showing in first debate

Well John McCain decided to show for the first Presidential debate in Oxford Mississippi on Friday.

After more than an hour and half of non-stop debating I feel that Obama held his own and even scored some good points. What is funny is that McCain has been a Senator for 26 years while Obama has been in the Senate for only about 3 years yet both seemed like seasoned veterans of debate.

Some of the snap polls gave the debate to Obama but the BBC website curiously said McCain won on points.

If McCain threatening not to show up was meant to throw Obama off, it didn’t work.

Favorite line?

Obama: So John, you like to pretend like the war started in 2007. You talk about the “surge,” the war started in 2003. At the time, when the war started, you said it was going to be quick and easy. You said you knew where the weapons of mass destruction were — and you were wrong. You said we were going to be greeted as liberators — you were wrong. You said that there was no history of violence between Shi’a and Sunni, and you were wrong. …if the question is, who is best equipped as the next president to make good decisions about how we use our military, how we make sure we are prepared and ready for the next conflict, then I think we can take a look at our judgment

I also wanted to share one of my favorite pictures of this election season. It comes from the site Punditkitchen, which lets visitors add captions to photos.

Whenever the concern trolls show up on one of the blogs I read, someone will post this picture in the comments and it cracks me up every time.

see Sarah Palin pictures