Putting politics first, McCain pulls Hail Mary stunt
Call it flop sweat. Call it desperation. Call it B.S.
McCain's campaign has decided to disrupt the process of dealing with the nearly impossible to decipher bail-out plan being deliberated in D.C. by pulling a border-line crazy political stunt.
In response to plunging poll numbers since the Wall St. crisis, McCain decides to drop a bomb and say that he's "suspending" his campaign in order to lend his own dubious hand to finding a solution, thus using this weird excuse to try to duck the first debate.
This is patent non-sense, of course. McCain's presense in D.C. is neither wanted nor needed.
Hope to get more on this up later.... but feel free to offer your opinion on the recent wild gyrations and this stunt by McCain.
Does he even care anymore?
posted by The Inside Dope @ 9/24/2008
10 comments
10 Comments:
Perhaps his handlers beleive that "rushing" baack to DC will enhance his standing with voters.
I fear that the Democrats are falling into a quagmire. It will take more than four years to get out of the economic downturn. The Republicans can then blame the Democrats for adding amendments causing the delay in recovery. Of course GWB and his cohorts are using the successful WMD ploy again. The President this evening paid it out. " Panic, then a depression" he says "we" have to solve it. For the past two years the affordable housing activists have been warning that the housing bubble was going to burst. No one heeded them.
Now because of greedy bankers and insurance companies,"we" have to suffer.
I wrote my U.S. Senators that the $750 billion amounts to less than a hill of beans for the 6.1 unemployed, the 13 million living in poverty, the homeless men, women, children and veterans.
Their rush to a "solution" will not impinge on the lives of these citizens one iota.
Sen. McCain was slated to be on Letterman Wednesday, but cancelled, saying, "The economy is about to crater," and that he had to get back to DC. (Olbermann filled in for McCain instead.) Letterman found McCain's excuse questionable, and gassed about it at length.
Then, during his time with Olbermann, Letterman found out what McCain was really doing. He had his director send a news feed to the CBS-TV newsroom, and showed McCain at that moment being interviewed by Katie Couric. Another McCain untruth.
While showing the McCain-Couric feed, Letterman remarked, "Hey, Senator, I gotta question for ya: Do ya need a ride to the airport?!"
This stunt by McSame is astonishing to me. His campaign seems to be in tatters. I thought the last two Dem pres candidates ran incompetent campaigns, but McCain makes them look brilliant.
And I don't mind :)
Tacky,
I'm afraid you're right about all of it.
Lost in all of this is the bigger picture.
Step back a few miles and you can see some very disturbing facts that lead to disturbing conclusions.
The right wanted to "reduce government to the size where it can be drowned in a bathtub" according to Grover Norquist.
Ever since Reagan, they've run on a platform of dismantling government completely.
What this had entailed is grossly enlarging the size and scope of corporate involvement in defense contracting, with untold billions more thrown out willy-nilly to corporate interests under the banner of "Homeland Security".
They've started a war of choice and milked it for literally trillions in profits, all the while letting the little people worry about the true cost of life-long care of returning wounded, and the mind-boggling level of national debt with no end in sight.
They set about putting industry representitives directly at the head of government agencies tasked with overseeing and regulating the industries. They gutted regulation, passed out public land, public airwaves, and other public property to their cronies for pennies on the dollar.
They ransacked regulatory agencies, and if they couldn't put the people they were supposed to regulate in charge of the agencies, they'd cut their budgets to the point where they were all but powerless. (as in the case of the SEC)
They dismantled one of the best and most effective federal agencies under Clinton, FEMA, and appointed unqualified cronies and turned it into a joke.
N.O. was destroyed and poor blacks drowned by the hundreds and they didn't give a shit. They then rushed in to overcharge the government with fat no-bid contracts for reconstruction, and grabbed up prime land that they couldn't get to before to build casinos and condos for the wealthy.
Money flowed into MS where Haley Barbour was governor and rebuilt casinos and million dollar beach homes. N.O. still hasn't recovered.
And this is only the tip of the iceberg. The list goes on and on and on and on and on some more.
They have literally LOOTED our country, knowing that they'd never be held accountible, and could walk off with millions or even billions of tax dollars.
If it left the government crippled? So much the better!
The only government programs they wanted were the ones passing out inflated contracts and other corporate welfare, such as tax funded programs designed to help individual industries and corporations.
And of course, they wanted their taxes slashed, and they got it. Even in the face of record deficits and the economy teetering on the brink, they still refused to chip in.
Spending billions on buying politicians and hiring lobbyists payed off far more handsomely than any legitimate investment ever could.
They have deliberately and with forethought set out to destroy this country, and they have.
And now we're left to pick up the pieces.
And unbelievably, there are many people who, whether out of racial fears or some other equally silly reason, will go to the polls and vote to allow them to carry on.
Hey nooner...
Heard about that on Olberman, then tuned into Letterman. It was quite the smackdown... and well-deserved.
I looked for a clip to post and found one, but it had already been yanked from YouTube by the time I came across it.
If there's a link to the clip on the Letterman site, I'll post it.
My Critters,
Amen.
Now if we could just get old Joe Biden to stop acting and sounding like a fool, we have it made! ha!
Lord, I expected him to stick his foot in his mouth occasionally, but damn! It's like he's really working at it.
http://campaignsilo.firedoglake.com/2008/09/24/leaked-video-mccain-blows-off-letterman-for-katie-couric/ has the video. The McCain-Couric feed is about at the 7:15 mark.
At this writing, I do not know how McCain's stance will play out. But I will say this: John McCain is a US Senator and so is Barack Obama. They have a job that they were elected to do and they should do it. Obama and his supporters seem to forget that he does indeed have a "day job": being a Senator first and foremost. It's not glamorous and it's not always about getting up on TV and pontificating in front of crowds. Sometimes it means rolling up your sleeves and sitting down and making a difficult decision- confronting this mess we're in now is a case in point. It shows that McCain is "presidential" material. Obama is not.
McCain not only wanted to debate, but he wanted to do LOTS of debates and town hall meetings. Obama declined. Obama did not want to do any more debates than he absolutely had to...for reasons that will soon be obvious.
I don't consider Letterman to be a "serious" talk show. Now sure it's a pop cultural icon and its nice to get millions of viewers and yuck it up with Dave. But it's pretty light fare, and I think there are some shows that are beneath the dignity of a President. Especially SNL.
Still on your kick, eh, Nico?
How can you relentlessly carp about Obama not sitting at his Senate desk every day and night while utterly ignoring the fact that John McCain has spent nearly 20 freaking YEARS constantly campaigning for President?
I know McCain isn't your senator, and that makes a difference, but still, you're obsession with this non-issue really baffles me.
Secondly, Obama reached out to McCain and suggested they issue a joint statement to get beyond partisanship and allow them both to focus on this problem without bringing the distraction and political manuvering of the campaign into it.
McCain accepted, and then pulled the rug out from under Obama by pulling what is a bald-faced political stunt.
He said he "suspended" his campaign, then did nothing of the sort, and finally parachuted into D.C. only AFTER the participants had said they were close to an agreement.
He had his photo OP at the White House in which he said nothing until the very end, and then nothing of substance, and in the mean time, the delicate negotiations and deal making got completely upset and now everyone's back in their respective trenches playing games and not getting a deal done.
No one needed freaking McCain's presence in D.C. to work out a deal! McCain knows next to nothing about finanance by his own admission. That's fine.
But don't pull some transparent grandstanding stunt and screw up those who are trying to preserve a fragile bi-partisan effort to actually produce a plan which everyone can agree to.
McCain, once again, put country BEHIND his crazy political stunts.
The entire thing is a sham, most likely brought on by the fact he was afraid of getting his ass handed to him at the debate.
It's a fact that McCain was in a debate prep session and had been at it for hours when suddently they emerged to announce this phony "suspension".
What does that suggest?
And I'm really sorry that one of your senator's happens to be running for president.
I'm not sure how you are hurt by that, but I can't imagine you, or anyone else, is.
And since you thought it was so horrible that he ran for president. (the NERVE of that guy!)
I'm sure you'll get just as mad when Illinois gets greater federal aid and attention once he's in the White House.
You make it sound like McCain is afraid to debate Obama. Debates and town hall meetings are McCain's strength. He always performed well at debates in the primaries, Obama not so much. That is why Obama was reluctant to do as many debates as McCain wanted.
Obama gives good speeches to large groups, McCain does not. I will admit that. Tonight's format will not be the same as speaking to a stadium full of people. It will be a "debate". And that favors McCain.
McCain has not been running for President for 20 years, where the hell do people get that? When I met McCain in 1999 at his book signing, it was on the radar, but at that time he was still an unknown.
Well I have already gone over this whole issue of Obama's not being up to the job of being a Senator, the broken pledge, etc. I won't bother to rehash it.
You just don't get it. And that's okay. It baffles you.
So I guess when I show up to work on Monday morning at 7:30PM, it will be a "cynical stunt" or "grandstanding".
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