The Fox Smears On Michelle Obama

Hat tip to Feministing, who pointed me to this while I was on their site. It's really something to behold how low-down and dirty the Fox News Channel has become when discussing Michelle Obama.



Sean Hannity is fucking asshole, as is Michelle Malkin.

Feminists Say "Fuck You" To John McCain

This week, he definitely earned it:

Phil Gramm On Video

This is John McCain's top economic mind:



And TMP gives us a more in-depth round up of McCain's praise for Gramm:



A vote for McCain is vote for this mentality. Do you think Americans are just a bunch of whiners?

Or do you think our problems are real?

Don't Despair

At HuffPo, Max Bergmann writes "The Week That Should Have Ended McCain's Presidential Hopes":

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.

You should really go read the whole thing. It's a spot-on analysis of this disastrous week for McCain, which continues today with news that he married his second wife while still married to his first wife.

But I don't agree that McCain will skate by this week's gaffes unscathed. I remember back in January, when McCain made the "100 years" in Iraq comment, it was mostly ignored by the media for a few days, came up in a question during a media interview, but then was ignored by the press for another few months. The Democrats kept hitting McCain on it in their speeches, but the press either ignored it or tried to spin it to McCain's advantage. Yet eventually the DNC put out a great ad on it, the attack caught on, and now it is considered one of the most damaging gaffes McCain has made.

I think McCain's "disgrace" comment about Social Security will be the same way, along with the "nation of whiners" comment. His joke about killing Iranians with cigarettes was lame and unpresidential, but will probably remain fodder for jokes ala his "bomb bomb Iran" song. But those first two gaffes have the potential to be used in future attack ads all the way until November, and they will decimate his standing with seniors and working class folks worried about the economy.

It doesn't matter that McCain didn't say the "nation of whiners" comment. He has said similar things many times, saying we are in a "psychological" recession. And Gramm isn't some outside supporter like Wes Clark, he is McCain's top economic advisor. Even if McCain were to fire him or take further action, the damage will be long-lasting. Obama simply has to run an ad saying that "McCain's top economic advisor believes we are a nation of whiners" or "McCain's campaign has called us a nation of whiners".

Make an ad combining the 100 years remark, "nation of whiners", and his vows to dismantle the disgraceful Social Security system, and I just don't know if McCain could recover. He'd have to hope that dumb voters either don't believe the ad or don't care about those issues. But who doesn't care about the war, the economy, and Social Security?

So instead of lamenting that this week should have ended McCain's presidential campaign, I say just wait. This is the week that will end his presidential campaign. In it is planted the seeds of his doom.

New Radio Ad

This is a pretty damn good new radio ad from the Obama campaign.

Listen here.

Here is the transcript:

MAN: Oh man - he's starting already...

WOMAN: What now, honey?

MAN: John McCain. He's got new ads attacking Barack Obama on taxes.

WOMAN: Well, that's not new. Bush, McCain, Karl Rove - that's how those guys work.

MAN: Oh yeah, but this is shameful. He's just makin' stuff up.

WOMAN: Yeah?

MAN: But get this. Independent sources are putting McCain in his place. I went to FactCheck dot org. They said quote "it's not true."

WOMAN: Huh.

MAN: And look what Time says. Quote, "It makes sense that McCain is returning to the old playbook. But that doesn't mean he can just make up his own facts." End Quote.

WOMAN: Yowza! So what's the truth?

MAN: Obama's plan cuts taxes on the middle class - and won't raise taxes on anybody making less than two hundred fifty thousand a year. But McCain wants billions in new corporate tax breaks...and no way to pay for it.

WOMAN: Hmm. Sounds like George Bush all over again.

MAN: Guess that's why they say: John McCain - McSame as Bush!

WOMAN: Uh-huh.

Voiceover: On taxes, get the facts. Visit BarackObama.com

Obama: I'm Barack Obama, candidate for President, and I approve this message.

It's just a radio ad, probably won't affect the polls much, but it shows that Obama will be willing to hit McCain hard in the coming election. "Makin' stuff up", "McSame as Bush", "George Bush all over again" -- I love it!

Now if we can get some TV ads that are this tough, that would be even better. Whoever thought Obama would be too soft to run against the Republicans was dead wrong.

Polygamist John McCain

This is rather shocking:

Although McCain suggested in his autobiography that months passed between his divorce and remarriage, the divorce was granted April 2, 1980, and he wed Hensley in a private ceremony five weeks later. McCain obtained an Arizona marriage license on March 6, 1980, while still legally married to his first wife.

I'd love to get more details about this. Does "obtaining" a marriage license mean that he went to pick up the documents, or that John and Cindy went to the county clerk and got married. If so, McCain remarried before finalizing his divorce!

Watch as his evangelical base either covers their eyes and plugs their ears, or jumps off the McCain bandwagon altogether.

And yes, I know that this is technically "bigamy", not "polygamy". But we've already see right wingers accuse Obama's father of being a polygamist when he, like McCain, was just a bigamist. So what's good for the goose is good for the gander.

DeLay Hack In Charge of FEC

Not promising.

This morning, a full six members of the Federal Election Commission took their seats and announced they were back after a strange, seven-month hiatus. In their first official action, the commission elected a new chairman, Donald McGahn, who previously served as the lead lawyer for the House Republicans' campaign committee and handled legal work for former House Majority Leader Tom DeLay (R-Texas).

For all I know, the guy might be a straight shooter who will honestly assess the facts. But let's be honest -- anyone who worked for the Exterminator is probably just as much a cockroach as his criminal former boss.

I'd love to be proven wrong. We'll see.

Landslide?

We can only hope.

But the 100 or so in the crowd sat on their hands throughout most of McCain's speech, especially during his remarks about the need for free trade -- a policy that is generally reviled in manufacturing areas. The first question McCain received was from a free-trade critic, who told the candidate that "what we need to do is control some of those trade issues going on. What we want is fair trade."

With most Americans blaming President Bush for their troubles, McCain faced an uphill climb even before his campaign's recent miscues. Macroeconomic Advisers, a St. Louis-based economic forecasting firm, will release a report next week that factors in such variables as the growth rate of real disposable income, unemployment rate, real oil price increases, the power of the incumbent party as well as the impact of party fatigue to forecast the outcome of the election. The result projects a victory of more than 10 percentage points for presumptive Democratic nominee Barack Obama, said Chris P. Varvares, the firm's president.

"How do you define a landslide?" he asked.

Unloading On Phil Gramm

Americablog:

Interestingly enough, in this morning's FT there is an article about how Swiss regulators are telling UBS that they need to set aside more money to prevent a complete meltdown. In other words, Phil Gramm's employer better be sitting on a lot more cash if they are to avoid a Bear Stearns collapse. In the case of UBS, it's much worse though because it's a much larger organization. UBS has already written down close to $40 billion due to the subprime crisis, has had four consecutive quarters of losses and there is no end in site. Read more here about the outstanding problems at UBS including an inability to raise capital to remain afloat.

For McCain's economic brain to call the country "whiners" is amazing, since he has had a front row seat in the current crisis. He created the legislation that ushered in this new "anything goes" environment in finance and then went to work for one of the largest financial organizations in the world. No conflict of interest there, is there? More recently McCain's economic adviser lobbied for the troubled Swiss banking giant, seeking handouts by the American taxpayers for the self-created problems. So now Phil Gramm wants to call the US a bunch of whiners? Really? Are McCain and Gramm that out of touch that they can't appreciate the anger Americans have related to this subject?

To hell with whining, we're goddamn furious that elitists such as McCain and Gramm dumped this financial mess on the country and stuck average Americans with the bill. Can you imagine, one of the largest banks in the world asking for welfare handouts from middle class Americans? A bank? A Swiss bank, asking for American tax dollars? Gramm needs to quit his own whining about asking for corporate welfare. People living on million dollar salaries from exclusive Swiss banks or people who marry a trust fund have no idea what it's like for the rest of us. Maybe this BS works in their social circles, but it doesn't cut it back in the real world.

Thank You AgentX

Thanks for your loyal readership. Don't think your comments haven't been noticed, because they have. It's nice to have a energized reader who isn't shy about voicing his comments on a lean start-up blog like this.

The same goes for my other most loyal reader, RM. I want her to know that all of her input and support keeps me going through these long hard days of digging through McCain's dirt.

My hope is to change a few minds who come upon this blog while Googling the words "old" and "McCain". It may not make a big difference, but it should make a difference. We all have to do our part.

Feingold On Obama On FISA

So the FISA bill passed, it was a total disgrace, but not all is lost. Here is what Russ Feingold, one of the strongest opponents of the bill, said yesterday:

"Having a Democratic president and particularly Barack Obama should allow us to change this mistake. Barack Obama believes in the Constitution. He's a constitutional scholar. I believe that he will have a better chance to look at these powers that have been given to the executive branch and even though that he will be running the executive branch, I think he will understand and help take the lead in fixing some of the worst provisions. So this is a huge setback and it would have been much better for Democrats to stand together and not let it happen in the first place ‘cause it's much harder to change it after the fact. But I do believe that Barack Obama is well positioned both in terms of his knowledge and his background, and his beliefs, to correct this. And so I do think that people have a right to be disappointed but I also think they have the right to hope for change on this issue in particular starting in January."

And here is what Senate Majority Leader, Harry Reid, said about the bill:

"[T]his legislation needs more work. That is why I oppose it, and why I am committed to working with a new President to improve it.

"Congress should not wait until the 2012 expiration to improve this bill. I will work to ensure that Congress revisits FISA well before 2012, informed by the oversight that will be conducted in the coming months by the Judiciary and Intelligence Committees and by the reports of the Inspectors General.

"Next year, for example, Congress will be required to revisit a number of provisions of the Patriot Act. That may provide a suitable occasion to review the related issues in this FISA bill.

If we can elect Obama and a filibuster-proof Senate, I guarantee this travesty will be fixed. It's easy to get mad right now and blame Obama, blame the cowardly Democrats who hashed together this capitulation, but let's not miss the forest for the trees. A President Obama would never have signed this legislation, and with a few more Democrats in the Senate we could have filibustered this fucker.

But it passed, it's signed, and now we have to do everything in our power to make sure this problem (and so many others) are fixed starting January 2009. And none of that fixing will happen with President McCain, I guarantee you that.

Bush Continues To Embarrass America, This Time As McCain's Wingman

Looks like George W. Bush is doing everything he can to prevent Barack Obama's election. Last week we noted the rather coincidental timing of the hostage rescue in Colombia, coming the same day as John McCain's visit to that country. Couldn't have anything to do with the Bush/McCain policy on Colombian free trade, as opposed to Obama's more skeptical stance, could it?

And now an even more explosive story. As you may have heard, Barack Obama's campaign has been considering staging a speech at the Brandenburg Gate in Berlin during his upcoming world tour. The campaign has had the full support of Berlin's mayor, the Germany ambassador to Washington (who lobbied for the idea), and Germany's Foreign Ministry.

Everything was going along smoothly. Until last week. I'll let pserick take over from there:

But then, out of nowhere, either on July 6th or July 7th, the German Chancellor's office leaked its sudden disapproval to the press, calling into question not only the choice of the Brandenburg Gate but also whether it was appropriate at all for a candidate to campaign abroad --- even after the German ambassador's efforts to secure a public event.

The Chancellor insisted that the Brandenburg Gate has "only been used on special occasions for political events, and until now has only been offered to elected presidents."

Let's leave aside for a moment that the Dalai Lama, hardly an elected head of state, spoke to a cheering crowd of 25,000 before the Brandenburg Gate less than six weeks ago.

Leaving aside that other German political leaders, from various political parties, including the Chancellor's own center-right CDU, were puzzled and even laughed at her sudden insistence on the sacrosanctness of the Gate.

Leaving aside that the Gate is used for countless public carnivals, topless "Love Parades," and a couple weeks ago played host to 600,000 drunken sports fans watching the European soccer championship on jumbo screens.

Leaving aside that Chancellor Angela Merkel herself visited Bush in Washington in 2003 --- two and a half years before she became Chancellor. "Merkel knows," the Berlin mayor snorted today, "how to campaign in foreign countries." And: "She shouldn't throw any stones while sitting in a glass house."

Leaving all that aside, the questions remains:

Why now? What happened on July 7th?

The opening of the G-8 Summit in Japan.

The Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung (roughly the equivalent of the Wall Street Journal) reported that an irritated Bush administration staffer approached the Chancellor's foreign policy adviser Christoph Heusgen during the G-8 Summit and expressed his disapproval. The phrase used in the article is "angeblafft," or "snapped at."

In the following days, the Bush administration made its bitterness even more apparent:

Indeed, Deputy Treasury Secretary Robert Kimmitt told the mass circulation tabloid Bild that "it would be nice if the German government would focus on strengthening its contacts to us rather than already beginning to look for our successors."

The Chancellor's office immediately complied, choosing not to address its concerns privately to the Obama campaign but to publicly leak its disapproval --- committing an embarrassing diplomatic faux pas that now risks Germany's future relationship with someone who could be president of the United States.

Others, including Ben Smith at Politico, are starting to notice:

If this happened -- Bush's team thought a European government wouldn't leak it -- they were crazy. Seems remarkably ham-handed, and meddling on McCain's behalf in Europe seems pretty ill-advised.

I'm sure George W. Bush doesn't like the fact that Barack Obama is already more popular in Europe than he ever was, and doesn't want to see a liberal Democrat get the kind of overseas reception that he never had -- even before becoming President.

Interesting to see how this all plays out. If Germany is going to bow to Bush's demands, I'd simply stage the speech in Paris, London, Tel Aviv or -- and I know this is out of left field -- Baghdad instead.

McCain Has Long Said The Recession Is Psychological

There is plenty of good stuff here for another hard-hitting DNC ad. Thanks, Gramm. Thanks, McCain. Who needs oppo research when McCain keeps giving us good shit to hit him over the head with?

Obama Hits Gramm/McCain

McCain economic guru Phil Gramm has given a gift to the Obama campaign on the biggest issue facing voters: the economy.



Meanwhile, McCain flails while trying to distance himself from his economic advisor's remarks:



This is very bad for McCain, on top of his remarks of previous days. If I was a reporter, I'd start working on my "McCain Campaign Stumbles" article. But I'm not a reporter, and I'm sure most of them will instead concentrate on the Jesse Jackson nonsense or the Hillary Clinton nonsense instead.

McCain's Top Economic Advisor: We Are A Nation Of Whiners

In an interview with the Washington Times, McCain's top economic advisor Phil Gramm showed why Republicans are just not fit to be in charge right now:

"You've heard of mental depression; this is a mental recession," he said, noting that growth has held up at about 1 percent despite all the publicity over losing jobs to India, China, illegal immigration, housing and credit problems and record oil prices. "We may have a recession; we haven't had one yet."

"We have sort of become a nation of whiners," he said. "You just hear this constant whining, complaining about a loss of competitiveness, America in decline" despite a major export boom that is the primary reason that growth continues in the economy, he said.

"We've never been more dominant; we've never had more natural advantages than we have today," he said. "We have benefited greatly" from the globalization of the economy in the last 30 years.

Mr. Gramm said the constant drubbing of the media on the economy's problems is one reason people have lost confidence. Various surveys show that consumer confidence has fallen precipitously this year to the lowest levels in two to three decades, with most analysts attributing that to record high gasoline prices over $4 a gallon and big drops in the value of homes, which are consumers' biggest assets.

"Misery sells newspapers," Mr. Gramm said. "Thank God the economy is not as bad as you read in the newspaper every day."

I'm sure if you are an old rich guy like John McCain or Phil Gramm, racking up $750,000 in credit card debt in one month, struggling to pay property taxes on one of your eleven homes, or blowing thousands at a time at the craps table, then maybe it's hard to relate to the average Joe. When you are on a private plane, or being chauffered around, you don't realize the impact of $4 gas, downsizing, outsourcing, and job losses.

John McCain has never been unemployed in his life. The same is probably true for Phil Gramm. Neither man has ever had to struggle to pay the rent. Neither man has ever been without health insurance. They don't know what tough economic times are like.

But what's really rich about this, what's really disgusting in fact, is that Phil Gramm is one of the architects of our current economic crisis:

Before he retired from the Senate in 2002, he wrote the Gramm-Bliley bill, an act broadly deregulating the financial industry -- and now blamed by many economists for the epidemic of speculation and fraud that has shaken the global economy.

Touting those changes as a way to "modernize" American finance for a global future, Gramm said they would bring wonderful new efficiencies and savings to consumers. As with the energy deregulation that he sponsored -- which was supposed to bring lower prices and better service, but led to blackouts and price gouging -- those economic wonders never quite appeared. The damaging effects of banking deregulation took nearly a decade to be felt, but whether we have experienced the worst still remains to be seen.

Over and over again, from the savings-and-loan fiasco to the Enron shock to the global banking meltdown, the golden promises of deregulation have turned to leaden ruin. Perhaps nobody cares about the lobbyists surrounding McCain, but someone should ask him why he would cherish the advice of a man whose devotion to ideology has already done us so much damage.

McCain can pretend to distance himself from these comments...



...but McCain himself has said similar things before:



Voting for McCain is like voting for another four years of failed policies and ignorant leadership.

McCain Gets Uncomfortable, Confused When Asked About Birth Control Coverage

A few days ago, disgraced former HP CEO turned McCain advisor (and possible VP) Carly Fiorina argued that insurance companies who cover Viagra should also cover birth control.

Of course, Ms. Fiorina must have been ignorant of the fact that McCain has voted against legislation that would require insurance coverage of birth control, and he has previously become quite tight-lipped when asked about the subject of contraceptives.

Anyway, here's the video.



As I've said many times, John McCain is the most anti-woman candidate we've had since, well, since George W. Bush. And maybe even worse. Why the hell shouldn't birth control be covered? It's not a tough question.

McCain Is A Joke

If McCain wins this election, it will only be because the media covered for him while half the population wasn't paying attention. The guy is a miserable candidate.

When I started this blog, a few months back, I figured I'd have to post a few times per week, mainly just to make fun of how old and lame McCain was. The guy is an old coot who doesn't know what the hell he is saying half the time.

But I'm actually shocked by how much material we are getting on this guy. He literally makes at least one gaffe per day, sometimes more. Yesterday he made at least two MAJOR gaffes, the "killing Iranians" joke and the statement that our Social Security system is an "absolute disgrace". I've got a full time job and a social life, it's hard to keep up with McCain's avalanche of stupidity, flip-flopping, and general foot-in-mouth syndrome.

Don't get me wrong, as a Democrat I love it. I hope McCain keeps it up until Election Day, particularly during the debates when more folks will be paying attention. But as an anti-McCain blogger, it is tough to keep up. So for all of my readers (yes, all one of you!), my apologies. If I was blogging full time, this wouldn't be a problem. Tracking McCain's disastrous campaign is literally a full time job.

Anyway, here is the quote of the day, courtesy of Matt Stoller:

McCain is literally the most inconsistent and dishonest candidate imaginable.

Truer words have not been spoken.

McCain's contradictory policies get a devastating close-up at the New Republic:

The larger problem is the contradictory ambitions of the McCain campaign. The candidate wants to stand for "leadership, courage, and choices." Yet he also want to be both a supply-sider and a deficit-hawk. He wants to transform our health care system and Social Security without adding any money to either and without anybody getting hurt. He wants to be a tightwad on spending who doesn't cut any spending anybody cares about. These are impossible policies to explain, because the policies themselves are impossible. No wonder he ends up talking out of both sides of his mouth.

McCain's Iraq position is falling apart.

Both McCain and Obama spoke to a Latino conference yesterday, and Obama won:

McCain's speech felt like your typical rubber-chicken affair. Obama's felt like a party.

McCain's campaign is getting a thumbs down when it comes to coherence or consistency:

There seems to be some fundamental confusion about what McCain's policies are or should be, and also about his underlying principles. On a practical level, you never know precisely how a candidate's positions will be translated into actual policy -- but you can get some general ideas. That doesn't seem to be the case here. We don't know what McCain would actually do if he becomes president. And at least right now, neither does he.

And McCain's joke about killing Iranians with cigarettes is getting bad reviews all around.

His comments on Social Security are also being scrutinized -- and it ain't pretty.

And Josh Marshall is trying to figure out why McCain is such a horrible candidate:

Part of the reason may be that, despite a few of his claims to the contrary of late, I don't think McCain has had many contested races in his political career. I don't know exactly how his first election to the House went. But since he's been in, it's been pretty much smooth sailing. So a lot of this is just new to him.

This brings us back to the question of why McCain seems to suck so much this cycle whereas many people -- even political opponents -- thought he was solid as a candidate in 2000. And when I say 'solid', I mean a candidate whose public presentation was a big part of his attraction.

Inevitably, one part of the explanation is age. A lot happens between 63 and 72. But we also forget that much of the punch of McCain's candidacy was his anger at key segments of the conservative establishment that attacked him for not toeing the line on issues important to the religious right and on tax policy. That was his punch. That got his goat up. But most of his snark lines this season are meant to kow-tow to those same folks. And in any case, his manner seems to say, why am I up here having to do this anyway? I'm John McCain. Who's Barack Obama? Just make me president!

My theory: McCain has had it easy his whole life, save for those few years as a POW. Being the son of an admiral, being a war hero, being rich, being a big shot Senator, being lauded and loved by the Washington media, McCain's ego has simply exploded. I'd say his ego is perhaps as large, if not larger, than George W. Bush's. Bush's ego was mostly self-inflated, he never actually accomplished anything before becoming president. McCain did some worthwhile shit in his early 30s, and since then he's been resting on his laurels and getting praise from everyone around him. He doesn't have the patience to learn the issues, put some energy into a stump speech, get fired up and ready to go. He doesn't think he has to. He's never had to, not in any of his races.

Why should he sort through the chaos of his campaign, the incoherence of his policies, the mixed messages of his ads? The media still loves him, he's still the maverick straight-talker (in his own head), there's no way this young upstart Obama will stay in the lead until the end. Why does McCain suck so bad? Easy, it's cause he doesn't give a shit. He thinks he has it in the bag, and everyone around him should stop worrying their pretty little heads off. Americans will get serious sometime around the end of October and give McCain his due.

McCain might be right, who knows. Things change all the time in political campaigns. But if he doesn't take seriously the next few months, particularly his RNC speech and the debates against Obama, he'll find himself in a hole of blowout proportions and won't have time to claw his way out.

DNC Rips McCain Again

The DNC admakers are fantastic. Then again, McCain is giving them plenty of material to work with.

McCain Calls Social Security A "Disgrace"

Nice catch by Matt Yglesias:

John McCain: Americans have got to understand that we are paying present-day retirees with the taxes paid by young workers in America today. And that's a disgrace.

Sounds like a great way to win the senior vote.

I'm sure we'll be seeing ads about this in the fall, particularly if there is video. And Obama should quickly move to incorporate McCain's "disgrace" comment into his attacks on the stump, right alongside "100 years".

And guess what, here's the video:



McCain's defense on this, of course, would be that he was referring to Social Security's future viability as a disgrace, not the actual manner by which the program works. The problem with this "context" excuse is that McCain was discussing how the program is funded when he said it was an "absolute disgrace".

Also, McCain wants to privatize Social Security and dismantle it, so he probably does think the program is some sort of socialist fiasco. In other words, he does think the current Social Security system is a disgrace, and he wants to end it. I'm sure seniors would love to hear that.

Vets For Freedom: A Lesson In Ad-Making

So this is an ad from a 527 group called "Vets For Freedom":



When I first saw this, watching it rather casually as some couch potato might, I thought it was a pro-Obama ad. It talks about progress in Iraq and then says "That's change we can believe in", which, in case you missed it, is Obama's slogan.

The ad goes on to say that we need to finish the job no matter who is president. Ultimately, it comes across as sort of a wishy-washy commercial about supporting troops in Iraq. With a subtle pro-Obama undercurrent.

Yet when you look up Vets for Freedom, you realize that they are actually a hard core pro-McCain group, previously led by co-chairs Joe Lieberman and Lindsay Graham. Their incompetent spokeshole was even on Hardball today, trying to stand up for McCain and Bush's policy in Iraq:



But if this ad is the best the group can do, Obama has nothing to worry about. What is supposed to be a pro-military, pro-surge, pro-occupation, pro-McCain ad comes across as pro-military, pro-surge, pro-Obama ad.

Quite a lesson in pathetic ad-making. I thought the Republicans were better at this.

Cindy McCain: Trying To Keep Her Husband From Looking Dumb

Remember how Nancy Reagan used to correct her husband during his later presidential years, covering up the fact that he was becoming senile?

Well McCain isn't even in office yet, and already Cindy McCain is already trying to keep him on track. In the AP version of the Iran/cigarette story:

Cindy McCain's jab to her husband's back came a second too late Tuesday to keep him from making a wisecrack about the health impact of Iran's main import from the United States: cigarettes.

Republican presidential candidate John McCain was asked about an Associated Press report that $158 million in cigarettes have been shipped to Iran during George W. Bush's presidency despite restrictions on U.S. exports to that country.

"Maybe that's a way of killing them," McCain told reporters, smiling as he waited for a cheesesteak sandwich at the Primanti Brothers restaurant. His wife, sitting next to him at the counter, poked his back without looking up.

"I meant that as a joke," McCain quickly explained. "As a person who hasn't had a cigarette in 28 years," he began to say, when his wife corrected him: 29 years.

Taking a more serious tone, McCain said, "I'd like to look into" details of exports to Iran. "This is the first that I've heard about it," he said.

And I seem to remember Joe Lieberman having to correct McCain on the Iran/Al Qaeda issue back in March. Is this guy really ready to be president?

McCain Again Jokes About Killing Iranians

Look, I don't like Iran's leadership either, but isn't it unseemly for a would-be president to constantly be joking about killing people in a foreign country, even a country we don't like?

First we had this:



And now this:

Presidential candidate John McCain, who once sang in jest about bombing Iran, on Tuesday reacted to a report of rising U.S. cigarette exports to the country by saying it may be "a way of killing 'em."

McCain, known for acerbic comments and for sometimes firing verbally from the hip, was responding to a report that U.S. exports to Iran rose tenfold during President George W. Bush's term in office despite hostility between the two states.

A rise in cigarette sales was a big part of that, according to an Associated Press analysis of seven years of U.S. trade figures.

"Maybe that's a way of killing 'em," McCain said to reporters during a campaign stop in Pittsburgh. "I meant that as a joke, as a person who hasn't had a cigarette in 28 years, 29 years," he added, laughing.

Sorry, you don't joke about killing the citizens of a foreign country and then expect us to make you the Commander in Chief of the most powerful military in the world.

Either McCain has a deranged sense of humor, or he really does think it would be cool to kill Iranians. Whatever the case, it's not presidential.

Heard The New Whopper From McCain?

Get this, the old man thinks he can balance the budget in his first term. All while cutting taxes and increasing military spending!

Hilzoy breaks down the math. His conclusion:

I suspect that he doesn't fully understand many of his proposals, and so might well be unaware of exactly how big a hole he's planning to blow in the deficit, and how unlikely it is that he will be able to plug it by the means he's specified. But I don't think that even he can actually believe that he can make up $695 billion by cutting earmarks and "reforming" Social Security.

McCain Gets Angry With Vietnam Veteran

Boy, McCain doesn't like it when someone questions his record on veteran's issues:



The record does not lie. McCain has a terrible record when it comes to veteran's issues. Think Progress:

The recognition McCain has received from veterans groups is not “high awards” but failing grades:

— Iraq and Afghanistan Veterans of America gave McCain a grade of D for his record of voting against veterans. (By contrast, Obama got a B+.)

– Disabled Veterans of America noted McCain’s dismal 20 percent voting record on veterans’ issues. (Obama had an 80 percent.)

– In a list of “Key Votes,” Vietnam Veterans of America (VVA) notes McCain “Voted Against Us” 15 times and “Voted For Us” only 8. (Obama voted for VVA 12 times, and against only once.)

He opposed the new G.I. Bill, yet he is now taking credit for it despite speaking out against it and not voting for it. Barack Obama, meanwhile, was a co-sponsor of the new G.I. Bill and voted for it multiple times.

By the way, this wasn't McCain's only "asshole moment" of the town hall. From the Wall Street Journal:

A wheel-chair bound woman asked McCain about the Community Choice Act, a piece of legislation for disabled Americans that would give individuals greater freedom on where to live. “What that would do is it would end the institutional bias,” the questioner said, then asked him if he would consider supporting it.

“I will not,” McCain responded, “because I don’t think it’s the right kind of legislation.” A trio of people in wheelchairs left the room shortly after his response.

A liar. An asshole. An old coot. That's John McCain. Vote for him at your own peril.

The Incredible Lameness of McCain's Ad Campaign

Look, I'm a big fan of Powers Boothe (Southern Comfort and Red Dawn are two of my favorite pics) but he's been voicing-over some really lame McCain ads.

Here's the newest one, titled "Love":



The ad doesn't say it, but McCain has often said he didn't love this country until he became a POW. Kind of weird that you'd be a thirtysomething Navy pilot and not love your country, but whatever.

What's really lame about the ad is how dated and out of touch it feels. First it tries to demonize hippies, a tactic seems really odd in the year 2008. Imagine the first President Bush airing an ad in 1992 about how he was in the military/CIA while Beat poets like Jack Kerouac were smoking pot and writing weird poems in Greenwich village. It just makes the candidate seem old and out of touch.

And for a guy who claims that he never talks about his military service, boy, McCain sure does focus on it in all of his advertisements. No surprise that a 71-year-old candidate would keep showing videos of himself from 40 years ago, trying to trick folks into thinking he is younger than he is.

And look, I honor McCain's POW service. But it wasn't exactly unheard-of bravery to deny early release. In fact, he would have been betraying the officer's code of conduct if he accepted early release. He would have been betraying his fellow POWs. He did the right thing, but it wasn't as selfless as he makes it out to be. His own father, an admiral, probably would have been ashamed of him if he had accepted early release.

All this to say, I think it's a dumb ad. It may work with some folks, but overall it's too muddled and confusing. It tries to do too many things. It slams hippies, plays up McCain's POW service (again), slams Obama's "hope" message while also trying to appropriate it, plays up McCain's experience as a "reformer", but also says that he has been inside Washington since the Reagan years. The ad is a balancing act that falls off the high wire about 20 second in and never recovers.

Obama Hits McCain On Energy

A pretty good new ad:



A few points: I love that McCain's 26 years in Washington are actually used against him. How can McCain promise new ideas when he has been a Washington insider for almost three decades? Second, I love the images of McCain and Bush hand-in-hand. Such images are gold. Third, Obama is finally hitting McCain on voting with Bush 95% of the time. How can anyone think McCain is a maverick if he is towing the Bush line on almost everything?

Overall, a very effective ad that has the benefit of being true.

Thought Of The Day

I was wondering why nobody seems to care much whether John McCain explains the details of his policies. For example, nobody asks John McCain how he will achieve "victory" in Iraq, how he will really balance the budget, how he will pay for his tax cuts, how he will end our addiction to foreign oil in the near future, how he will improve access to health care.

Obama is asked repeatedly for details on all of these things. Just over the 4th of July the press grilled Obama for details on his withdrawal plan. You don't see McCain getting that kind of treatment.

Yes, I know, we've seen this same pattern before. The press is in love with Republican candidates, whether it be McCain or Bush, and won't press them on anything.

But I think something else is in play here. Nobody really expects McCain to win, so they don't care what his plans are. They expect Obama to win, and so they're quite interested in knowing what he will do when he wins, not if he wins.

We saw the same thing during the primaries, post-February. The press stopped paying attention to Hillary's ideas and plans, her fundraising and her VP picks, her plans for the convention, her polls versus John McCain. None of it mattered, because she wasn't gonna win. All of this stuff did matter for Obama, because he was gonna win. The only relevance Hillary had was how she might hurt/help Obama's eventual general campaign prospects.

McCain Still Sucks At Giving Speeches

As the NY Times told us yesterday, and as anyone who has followed the campaign knows, John McCain sucks at reading a speech from a teleprompter.

“His rhetorical style can best be described as ‘tired mayonnaise,’ ” the comedian Stephen Colbert declared on “The Colbert Report” before inviting viewers to enter the “Make McCain Exciting Challenge.”

Peter Spaulding, the chairman of Mr. McCain’s campaign in New Hampshire, said he recently saw a McCain speech on television that was “just atrocious.”

Dan Schnur, Mr. McCain’s communications chief during his 2000 presidential campaign, said, “Besides his convention speech, the only time I would even put him behind a podium at all between now and the end of the campaign is when he’s announcing a policy position.”

Mr. McCain’s advisers, who bristle at the idea that they are trying to transform the candidate, say that his lack of smoothness merely reinforces his reputation for authenticity.

McCain has been working with speech coaches to improve his podium mannerisms and facial expressions. But today, during a speech on his economic plans, McCain demonstrates that he still has a long ways to go:



Obama is giving his acceptance speech on August 28th before a crowd of 75,000 in Denver. McCain will give his "speech" before a crowd half that size one week later. I'll say it right now: McCain's gonna look like a doddering old fool on the verge of croaking no matter how many times he practices his speech. The blaring lights, huge crowd, and pressure will get to him, and the contrast with Obama's speech just won't look good.

Yes, I know, the media pundits such as Chris Matthews will applaud McCain's speech no matter how bad it is. But the American people are smarter than them, and have been for a while now. If I was McCain's advisors I'd want to scrap the speech altogether, but having a town hall type unscripted Q&A on the final night of the convention just doesn't seem viable.

Sorry, John. It sucks to be you.