But you do have to wonder what McCain is doing because you never know what he is saying from one venue to the next. His message changes on a dime. And his own advisors say:
Think about that for a moment. As President, will John McCain speak for his administration's policies? If not, who will? Take a look at all the lobbyist throughout his campaign staff and list of advisors and you will have your answer.
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The Elitist Celebrity Quiz
- Which presidential candidate hosted Saturday Night Live (hint -- the musical guests were The White Stripes)?
- Which one had cameos on "24" and "Wedding Crashers"?
- Whose wife secretly got her pilot's license and owns a jet?
- Who is pals with Warren Beatty?
- Whose daughter is friends with Heidi from MTV's The Hills?
- Whose wife once told Vogue, explaining the purchase of a 7th or 8th house, this one a beach house, "When I bought the first one, my husband, who is not a beach person, said, 'Oh this is such a waste of money; the kids will never go. Then it got to the point where they used it so much I couldn't get in the place. So I bought another one.”
- Whose family credit cards have been known to ring up more than $500,000 in charges in one month?
Just askin'…
We'll add the following for Jake:
- Who wears $520 Italian shoes?
- Who owns ten homes valued at $13,823,269?
Here are some numbers:
AmEx expects the economy to worsen:
“The severe decline in home prices and the marked rise in oil prices have had a fundamental impact on consumer budgets and behavior. Not just as it relates to mortgages and home-related spending, but also across the full spectrum of the consumer economy... In other words, more and more consumers who are falling behind in their payments are remaining delinquent. This causes us to assume that a greater percentage of past-due loans will not be repaid. In light of the magnitude of the negative economic trends and our experience, we now believe the economic weakness in the US will likely worsen throughout the remainder of the year and negatively impact credit and business trend ... "
"... let's look at the straight talk he gave a voter yesterday in Michigan:
AUDIENCE MEMBER:
'As a Catholic male, I'm adamantly pro-life...Between Roe v. Wade...the unproven science of embryonic stem cell research, the moral implications of human cloning - I'm hoping to pull the lever for someone who will fight for the rights of the unborn. And can I count on you to fight for the rights of the unborn?'JOHN MCCAIN:
'Yes you can. I believe the noblest words ever written are that all of us are created equal and endowed by certain inalienable rights, among these are life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness. And I think that that applies to the unborn as well as the born.'
This man specifically included stem cell research as a part of the "fight for the rights of the unborn," and McCain unequivocally said that the man could count on him.
So, what is McCain's position on stem cell research?
'I believe that we need to fund this. This is a tough issue for those of us in the pro-life community. I would remind you that these stem cells are either going to be discarded or perpetually frozen. We need to do what we can to relieve human suffering. It's a tough issue. I support federal funding.'
So unless McCain is planning to flip-flop on the only position he takes that is overwhelmingly favored by the American people, he purposely mislead or lied to this man. In the grand scheme of John McCain's plans to to carry out George Bush's third term, perhaps this little sin of omission isn't important, but it says a lot about the
kind of person he is."
Imagine, for a moment, what we could have done in those days, and months, and years after 9/11.
- We could have deployed the full force of American power to hunt down and destroy Osama bin Laden, al Qaeda, the Taliban, and all of the terrorists responsible for 9/11, while supporting real security in Afghanistan.
- We could have secured loose nuclear materials around the world, and updated a 20th century non-proliferation framework to meet the challenges of the 21st.
- We could have invested hundreds of billions of dollars in alternative sources of energy to grow our economy, save our planet, and end the tyranny of oil.
- We could have strengthened old alliances, formed new partnerships, and renewed international institutions to advance peace and prosperity.
- We could have called on a new generation to step into the strong currents of history, and to serve their country as troops and teachers, Peace Corps volunteers and police officers.
- We could have secured our homeland—investing in sophisticated new protection for our ports, our trains and our power plants.
- We could have rebuilt our roads and bridges, laid down new rail and broadband and electricity systems, and made college affordable for every American to strengthen our ability to compete.
We could have done that. Instead, we have lost thousands of American lives, spent nearly a trillion dollars, alienated allies and neglected emerging threats – all in the cause of fighting a war for well over five years in a country that had absolutely nothing to do with the 9/11 attacks.
"If John McCain is elected president, just who is he going to find in the Republican Party to appoint to the EPA who will pursue a vigorous approach toward global warming when virtually everyone in the party either denies its existence or its significance? A president is not just a person; it is an administration with literally thousands of political appointees. The Democrats have become a centrist party in recent years while the Republicans have drifted to the extreme margins on almost everything. Those extremists are going to form the basis of President McCain's appointments no matter what he thinks. The fact that McCain may be slightly less irresponsible on global warming or immigration (this week) than the rest of his party is irrelevant since it is the members of his party who will be implementing his policies. I wonder how many profiles of Michael Brown or Alberto Gonzales were written
before the 2000 election ..."
Well OK, but these things happen during a long campaign right?"This is almost certainly going to sound nitpicky, if not actually petty, but bear with me. It’s not unreasonable to note that John McCain continues to make references to a country that doesn’t exist. At a press conference in Phoenix today, for example, McCain referenced Czechoslovakia. Again."
"So, McCain slipped up. He’s 71 and this is going to happen from time to time, right? Well, there’s a little more to it than that. First, as Greg Sargent noted, McCain has made this same mistake more than once during the campaign."Well, maybe no one near him every tried to correct him. You know, so he wouldn't get too grumpy. What? George Bush called him on it ... back in 2000? Yikes!
"Second, before Republicans condemn Dems for being picky on this, let’s not forget that in the 2000 campaign, when McCain also screwed up Czechoslovakia, it was none other than George W. Bush who said it deserved to be a campaign issue: “A guy gets up and quizzes me [on world leaders] … but John McCain says something about the ‘ambassador to Czechoslovakia.’ Well, I know there is no Czechoslovakia [there’s a Czech Republic and a Slovakia], but yet it didn’t make the nightly national news.”What's the big deal?
"Look, I know this was just another verbal slip. McCain has been incompetent about foreign affairs for quite a while, and in the grand scheme of things, it’s relatively inconsequential that he keeps referencing a country that ceased to be in 1993. He’s said far worse. But the raison d’etre of John McCain’s entire presidential campaign is the notion that he’s an expert on foreign policy, thanks to his decades of experience as a Washington insider. When the foreign policy expert keeps referencing a non-existent country, it’s not unreasonable to mention that maybe his expertise isn’t quite as impressive as his campaign and the political media establishment would like us toLeave John McCain alone!
believe."
"The traditional media in the US remains so wedded to the McMyth he's constructed for them of a 'straight talker', that they generally ignore any evidence that would shatter it. Revelations that would destroy another politician's career routinely are cloaked in silence to preserve the McMyth. Reporters have settled on their narrative for McCain, and they're damned now if they'll admit that they were just blowing smoke at the public."But he is also a liar and an adulterer. But don't you dare question his character.
Take the revelation yesterday that McCain has lied and continues to lie about his marital infidelity and divorce. Richard Serrano and Ralph Vartabedian of the LA Times uncovered documents to show that McCain's memoir falsified the facts.But it was a long time ago and maybe it's a private matter:
"Even for those who are willing to say that McCain’s personal/family difficulties are a private matter, there’s also the fact that McCain apparently lied about his infidelity. Now, I understand why he lied; he’s no doubt embarrassed. But, again, if Clinton’s lies about adultery were evidence of a poor character, McCain’s obvious untruths warrant similar scrutiny, don’t they?
This is the week that should have effectively ended John McCain's efforts to become the next president of the United States. But you wouldn't know it if you watched any of the mainstream media outlets or followed political reporting in the major newspapers. During this past week: McCain called the most important entitlement program in the U.S. a disgrace, his top economic adviser called the American people whiners, McCain released an economic plan that no one thought was serious, he flip flopped on Iraq, joked about the deaths of Iranian citizens, and denied making comments that he clearly made -- TWICE. All this and it is not even Friday! Yet watching and reading the mainstream press you would think McCain was having a pretty decent political week, I mean at least Jesse Jackson didn't say anything about him.So, why do the media do it? Everyone has a theory or explanation. But most journalists who cover him on a regular basis just say they like him. Maybe that's why Obama gets 24-hours-a-day press coverage and McCain does not. Maybe that's why they don't report that McCain usually doesn't work weekends. Maybe that explains why some papers send their A-Team after Obama.
"The Post has teams of reporters on each candidate. Stephens, who came from the investigative unit, has been assigned to report on Obama; another reporter, Kimberley Kindy, is doing the same on McCain. "
Joe Stephens is an investigative reporter who has won three Polk Awards, and is a two-time finalist for the Pulitzer Prize. And Kimberly Kindy? She was hired by the Washington Post in May and hasn’t been heard from since writing two articles about McCain at the end of May. We anxiously await the explosive investigative piece Ms. Kindy has apparently been working on for the past six weeks.
UPDATE:
- John McCain's Very Bad Week: A Cheat Sheet
- Another one.
"Apparently, 60 year old librarians saying McCain=Bush is considered a threatening insult at Republican rallies. Do you suppose she would have been thrown out for holding a sign that said McCain=Reagan? What an interesting comment on the current state of the Republican party."
UPDATE: She blogs!
“I invented the Internet!” That was the way “his enemies” projected it, Blitzer slickly said—failing to note that it was really his own mainstream colleagues who rode this mocking, “distorted” paraphrase for the next two years. And sure enough! Right to this day, more than nine years later, Blitzer and Kurtz refuse to describe the actual history of this monumental event. They forget to say who really drove this history-changing “distortion.”
Within the press corps, everyone knows he can say it now: Al Gore never said he invented the Internet. But Daddy, what did you say in real time? What did you say when it actually mattered? Isn’t it true that you cowered and quaked? That you didn’t say sh*t at the time?"
"The first step of accountability isn’t prosecutions. Rather, we need a national Truth Commission to lead a process of soul searching and national cleansing. That was what South Africa did after apartheid, with its Truth and Reconciliation Commission, and it is what the United States did with the Kerner Commission on race and the 1980s commission that examined the internment of Japanese-Americans during World War II. Today, we need a similar Truth Commission, with subpoena power, to investigate the abuses in the aftermath of 9/11."This country will remain polarized as long as it refuses to fight and treat the cancers that are eating it up from within. We have to move forward and deal with the difficulties ahead, but we also have the resources and the time to take an honest look back at our failures and face our shame that is in our recent past.
"Americans should see it to appreciate just how much things are out of joint on an Independence Day when a cartoon robot evokes America’s patriotic ideals with more conviction than either of the men who would be president."
"Craps is an absurd game of luck. You may have thrilling short term wins but only madmen play craps."
