McCain – Goofier By The Day

John McCain has turned into the guy who fell out of the Stupid Tree and hit every branch on the way down.

For weeks and weeks McCain has insisted that the fundamentals of the American economy are strong, strong enough in fact to make permanent the Bush tax cuts for the rich despite the government’s debt crisis.

Now that Fannie and Freddy have been nationalized, Merril Lynch snapped up and Lehman Brothers tossed into the latrine the Old Fool is dancing around trying to squirm out of it. From Salon.com:

On NBC’s “Today” show, Matt Lauer, from the floor of the New “bloodbath” and asked Mr. McCain how he could say that “the fundamentals of our economy are strong” while his campaign released an ad saying that the economy is in crisis. “Clarify this for me,” Mr. Lauer said. “It doesn’t seem as if both things can be true.”

Mr. McCain replied by saying that when he spoke about the fundamentals of the economy, he was referring to the workers — which is different from how he has described the term before.

“Well it’s obviously true that the workers of America are the fundamentals of our economy, and our strength and our future,” he said. “And I believe in the American worker, and someone who disagrees with that — it’s fine. We are in crisis. We all know that. The excess, the greed and the corruption of Wall Street have caused us to have a situation which is going to affect every American. We are in a total crisis.”

It’s hilarious to see McCain rise up against the greed and corruption of Wall Street given that the late, great Merrill Lynch has been his Numero Uno campaign contributor. McCain is up to his Jockey shorts in Wall Street.

And just what has the crusty old bugger been smoking to make him believe that the workers of America are doing all that well? Their government has every American household in hock to the tune of $440,000 (read my earlier post “Right Wing Meltdown”). Savings are at all time lows, debt at all time highs, folks are losing their homes in foreclosures and their jobs to outsourcing.

John McCain is saying whatever comes out of his backside without even trying to reconcile the persistent contradictions. Jeebus, I sure hope the American people aren’t dumb enough to put their country’s future in the hands of this guy. He’s like Dan Quayle minus the intellect.

 

Steinem on Palin

Another feminist icon has denounced McCain VP nominee, Sarah Palin. This time it’s Gloria Steinem. Excerpted from Steinem’s op-ed piece in the LA Times:

“This isn’t the first time a boss has picked an unqualified woman just because she agrees with him and opposes everything most other women want and need. Feminism has never been about getting a job for one woman. It’s about making life more fair for women everywhere. It’s not about a piece of the existing pie; there are too many of us for that. It’s about baking a new pie.

Selecting Sarah Palin, who was touted all summer by Rush Limbaugh, is no way to attract most women, including die-hard Clinton supporters.

Palin shares nothing but a chromosome with Clinton. Her down-home, divisive and deceptive speech did nothing to cosmeticize a Republican convention that has more than twice as many male delegates as female, a presidential candidate who is owned and operated by the right wing and a platform that opposes pretty much everything Clinton’s candidacy stood for – and that Barack Obama’s still does. To vote in protest for McCain/Palin would be like saying, “Somebody stole my shoes, so I’ll amputate my legs.”

This is not to beat up on Palin. I defend her right to be wrong, even on issues that matter most to me. I regret that people say she can’t do the job because she has children in need of care, especially if they wouldn’t say the same about a father. I get no pleasure from imagining her in the spotlight on national and foreign policy issues about which she has zero background, with one month to learn to compete with Sen. Joe Biden’s 37 years’ experience.

She was elected governor largely because the incumbent was unpopular, and she’s won over Alaskans mostly by using unprecedented oil wealth to give a $1,200 rebate to every resident. Now she is being praised by McCain’s campaign as a tax cutter, despite the fact that Alaska has no state income or sales tax. Perhaps McCain has opposed affirmative action for so long that he doesn’t know it’s about inviting more people to meet standards, not lowering them. Or perhaps McCain is following the Bush administration habit, as in the Justice Department, of putting a job candidate’s views on “God, guns and gays” ahead of competence. The difference is that McCain is filling a job one 72-year-old heartbeat away from the presidency.

So let’s be clear: The culprit is John McCain. He may have chosen Palin out of change-envy, or a belief that women can’t tell the difference between form and content, but the main motive was to please right-wing ideologues; the same ones who nixed anyone who is now or ever has been a supporter of reproductive freedom. If that were not the case, McCain could have chosen a woman who knows what a vice president does and who has thought about Iraq; someone like Texas Sen. Kay Bailey Hutchison or Sen. Olympia Snowe of Maine. McCain could have taken a baby step away from right-wing patriarchs who determine his actions, right down to opposing the Violence Against Women Act.

Palin’s value to those patriarchs is clear: She opposes just about every issue that women support by a majority or plurality. She believes that creationism should be taught in public schools but disbelieves global warming; she opposes gun control but supports government control of women’s wombs; she opposes stem cell research but approves “abstinence-only” programs, which increase unwanted births, sexually transmitted diseases and abortions; she tried to use taxpayers’ millions for a state program to shoot wolves from the air but didn’t spend enough money to fix a state school system with the lowest high-school graduation rate in the nation; she runs with a candidate who opposes the Fair Pay Act but supports $500 million in subsidies for a natural gas pipeline across Alaska; she supports drilling in the Arctic National Wildlife Reserve, though even McCain has opted for the lesser evil of offshore drilling. She is Phyllis Schlafly, only younger.

I don’t doubt her sincerity. As a lifetime member of the National Rifle Assn., she doesn’t just support killing animals from helicopters, she does it herself. She doesn’t just talk about increasing the use of fossil fuels but puts a coal-burning power plant in her own small town. She doesn’t just echo McCain’s pledge to criminalize abortion by overturning Roe vs. Wade, she says that if one of her daughters were impregnated by rape or incest, she should bear the child. She not only opposes reproductive freedom as a human right but implies that it dictates abortion, without saying that it also protects the right to have a child.

So far, the major new McCain supporter that Palin has attracted is James Dobson of Focus on the Family. Of course, for Dobson, “women are merely waiting for their husbands to assume leadership,” so he may be voting for Palin’s husband.

Being a hope-a-holic, however, I can see two long-term bipartisan gains from this contest.

Republicans may learn they can’t appeal to right-wing patriarchs and most women at the same time. A loss in November could cause the centrist majority of Republicans to take back their party, which was the first to support the Equal Rights Amendment and should be the last to want to invite government into the wombs of women.

And American women, who suffer more because of having two full-time jobs than from any other single injustice, finally have support on a national stage from male leaders who know that women can’t be equal outside the home until men are equal in it. Barack Obama and Joe Biden are campaigning on their belief that men should be, can be and want to be at home for their children.

This could be huge.”

 

John McCain Gaffe of the Day

Poor old, very old, John McCain has done it again, right on schedule. He just made a public appearance, wife Cindy at his side, when he told the assembled crowd he was urging her to enter the Sturgess bike rally Miss Buffalo Chip Beauty Pageant. McCain quipped she could be a first – an American First Lady and Miss Buffalo Chip. Seems McCain’s handlers didn’t tell him the pageant is a topless contest.

To take your mind off Cindy’s plight, here’s a little McCain “straight talk” from BraveNewFilms.org:

 

Dissecting "The Surge"

John McCain clings to “the surge” of US troops into Iraq as proof that 1) America is winning in Iraq and 2) that he’s the best man to serve as America’s next president.

The success line is built on two facts – the US sent an additional 30,000 soldiers to Iraq and violence in that country subsided. It’s highly convenient for McCain to claim that one led to the other, convenient but also highly misleading.

There are a number of reasons for the drop in violence in Iraq but there’s also an awful lot of wishful thinking thrown in for good measure by those with a personal stake in the surge.

We know that a major cause for the drop in violence in Baghdad has been the conclusion of ethnic cleansing. The Shiites have taken over the city and the Sunni and other minorities have been “cleansed” to their own, ethnic enclaves. The surge did nothing to stop much less reverse the ethnic cleansing of Iraq’s main city.

Another major cause for the drop in violence has to be credited to Muqtada al Sadr who has reined in his powerful Shiite militia, the Mahdi army. The good news is that al Sadr has told his forces to lay low. The bad news is that al Sadr has told his forces to lay low. The fuse on that little bomb may have been put out but the guy holding it still has a pocketful of matches.

Then there’s the Sunni resistance which has, at the moment, loaded up with American weapons and American cash to fight their fellow Sunnis, the al-Qaeda terrorists. Now that al-Qaeda has decided to refocus its efforts on Pakistan and Afghanistan, the resistance is pushing on something of an open door. The good news is that the Sunni resistance is winning. The bad news is that the Sunni resistance is winning. You see, the resistance has all along said, quite openly, that they’ve only called a temporary truce in their battle with the Americas and the Shiite militias. That was enough, however, for the US forces to re-arm, re-equip and heavily fund their once and future adversaries.

If the surge had really worked it would have meant somehow defanging the militias and the resistance. The whole political reconciliation business was intended to lay the groundwork for an end to ethnic violence but that hasn’t happened.

The spoiler is America itself. The United States wants Iraq to grant it a near-permanent and autonomous military presence in that country. The Pentagon envisions expanding its existing 32-bases to 60 in total. That, kids, is a clear statement that America has no intention of leaving or even limiting its military dominion over Iraq any time soon. There’s a reason why the US has built its largest embassy in the world in Baghdad, on a site bigger than the Vatican itself.

This is a demand that neither Sunni nor Shia can accept. America will need one hell of a lot more than a paltry surge if it incites Arab Iraq to unite and rise up against it.

In Iraq, all eyes are on America. With Obama leading McCain in the polls it probably suits the interests of the Sunni resistance and the Shiite militias to lay low for the time being. Why fight if not fighting is the best way to rid the country of foreign forces? There’ll be plenty of time for the Sunni and Shiite to hash out their differences once American forces are gone. Those people aren’t going anywhere, are they?

But this is an election year and we’re talking about an electorate not very good at digesting nuance. Surge works, mmmm goood! It may even be that John McCain truly believes it’s working. After all he believes that Iran is training al-Qaeda and that the terrorists are Shiite, not Sunni, and that Iraq shares a border with Pakistan. This guy doesn’t know which way is up but, then again, he’s only running to be president.

 

Iraq’s Maliki Backs Obama, Not McCain

Oh Johnny boy, this has got to sting.

Iraqi prime minister Nouri al Maliki has told Der Spiegel that Barack Obama’s 16-month timeframe for withdrawal of American forces from Iraq is spot on:

“Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki supports US presidential candidate Barack Obama’s plan to withdraw US troops from Iraq within 16 months. When asked in and interview with SPIEGEL when he thinks US troops should leave Iraq, Maliki responded “as soon as possible, as far as we are concerned.” He then continued: “US presidential candidate Barack Obama talks about 16 months. That, we think, would be the right timeframe for a withdrawal, with the possibility of slight changes.”

Oops, that isn’t going to sit well for John, 100-Years War, McCain.

“…apparently referring to Republican candidate John McCain’s more open-ended Iraq policy, Maliki said: “Those who operate on the premise of short time periods in Iraq today are being more realistic. Artificially prolonging the tenure of US troops in Iraq would cause problems.”

Iraq, Maliki went on to say, “would like to see the establishment of a long-term strategic treaty with the United States, which would govern the basic aspects of our economic and cultural relations.” He also emphasized though that the security agreement between the two countries should only “remain in effect in the short term.”

Maliki went on to say that he wasn’t expressly endorsing Obama, just his policy on Iraq.

“So far the Americans have had trouble agreeing to a concrete timetable for withdrawal, because they feel it would appear tantamount to an admission of defeat,” Maliki told SPIEGEL.

 

Dust Off the Mormon, McCain Can’t Run

The US Constitution provides that only a “natural born citizen” can become president of the United States. There’s now some uncertainty over whether John McCain fits the bill.

McCain, you see, wasn’t exactly born in the United States but in a US military base hospital in the Panama Canal Zone.

Nobody seriously believes McCain will be disqualified but some argue the constitution is unclear. From the Washington Post:

“…Sarah H. Duggin, an associate law professor at Catholic University who has studied the “natural born” issue in detail, said the question is “not so simple.” While she said McCain would probably prevail in a determined legal challenge to his eligibility to be president, she added that the matter can be fully resolved only by a constitutional amendment or a Supreme Court decision.

“The Constitution is ambiguous,” Duggin said. “The McCain side has some really good arguments, but ultimately there has never been any real resolution of this issue. Congress cannot legislatively change the meaning of the Constitution.”

Senators sympathetic to McCain’s position, including Democrats Claire McCaskill (Mo.) and Patrick J. Leahy (Vt.), dropped an earlier attempt to quell the eligibility controversy with legislation. McCaskill acknowledged in an interview that there is “no way” to completely resolve the question short of a constitutional amendment, a cumbersome process which could not be concluded before November. “

Then there’s New Hampshire resident Fred Hollander who just won’t let it go. Fred has filed suit in a US District Court claiming that McCain isn’t a “natural born citizen.” Good luck with that one Fred.

McClatchey Newspapers reports that Mr. Straight Talk has done it again. He’s now calling for Russia to be ousted from the G-8.

“One major problem: He can’t do it because the other G-8 nations won’t let him.

But the fact that he’s proposing to try, risking a return to Cold War tensions with the world’s second-largest nuclear power after 20 years of prickly partnership, raises questions about McCain’s judgment. It also underscores that many of his top foreign-policy advisers are of the same neo-conservative school that promoted the war in Iraq, argue for a tougher stance toward Iran and are skeptical of negotiating with North Korea over its nuclear program.

The Group of Eight, or G-8, as it’s popularly known, makes decisions by consensus, so no single nation can kick out another. Most experts say the six other countries — Great Britain, France, Italy, Germany, Japan and Canada — would never agree to toss Russia, given their close economic ties to their neighbor. A senior U.S. official who deals with Russia policy said that even Moscow would have to approve of its own ouster, given how the G-8 works.

“It’s not even a theoretical discussion. It’s an impossible discussion,” said the senior official, who requested anonymity because he wasn’t authorized to speak publicly. “It’s just a dumb thing.”

 

Will the White House be Decided by Stay At Home Voters?

Both the Demutantes and the Repuglicans are facing internal turmoil in their presidential nomination campaigns.

The “movement conservatives” of the Rove/Cheney camp detest their frontrunner, John McCain, while on the Democratic side, relations between the Clinton and Obama camps are positively toxic.

Of the two sides, the Republican dissent appears the least debilitating. McCain may never be right wing enough for his party’s base but he can ease their discontent by chosing the right running mate and relying on the endorsements of key Republicans – like the nod he just got from George w. Bush. Also he’s got eight months to win over the dissenters.

The Dems seem to be in worse shape. A lot of Hillary supporters say they’ll stay home on election day rather than vote for Obama and that seems to be echoed in reverse by many in the Obama camp. Despite their fleeting moments of civility, it appears these candidates are in store for a lot more bloodletting that could continue right up to the convention. That, right now, may be the Republican’s best hope for retaining the White House.

The Dems’ best hope might be for a Clinton-Obama ticket, something to reconcile both warring camps. Clinton for president, Obama in the wings to succeed her. Unfortunately the Clintons have shown themselves less than helpful to their vice-president in the past. Hillary stepped all over Gore while Bill was president and Bill was probably Gore’s greatest drawback in the Gore-Bush runoff.

Could Obama trust Hillary if he joined her ticket? Probably not. However the idea of an Obama-Clinton ticket isn’t realistic. Hillary would never take second place. She’s already been a vice president.

But Hillary may not be able to win without Obama and he may not be able to win without her supporters. Unless someone can find a way to defuse the bitterness and anger between the two candidates’ supporters, they might just hand John McCain the presidency.