Saturday, September 20, 2008

McCain Describing His Own Behavior In Atack On Obama


A former Fannie Mae executive has written to The New York Times in an effort to escalate Democrats' pushback to a McCain campaign ad accusing Sen. Barack Obama (D-Ill.) of guilt by association with former officials of the mortgage giant. The McCain ad, called "Advice," says: "Fannie Mae collapsed. Taxpayers? Stuck with the bill. Barack Obama. Bad advice. Bad instincts. Not ready to lead."
The former executive's letter, not yet published, was provided to Politico.com:

To The Editor:

Yesterday, Senator John McCain released a television commercial attacking Barack Obama for allegedly receiving advice on the economy from former Fannie Mae CEO Franklin Raines. From the stump, he has recently tried tying Senator Obama to Fannie Mae, as if there is some guilt in the association with Fannie Mae's former executives.

It is an interesting card for Senator McCain to play, given that his campaign manager, Rick Davis, was paid by Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac several hundred thousand dollars early in this decade to head up an organization to lobby in their behalf called The Homeownership Alliance. ...

I worked in government relations for Fannie Mae for more than 20 years, leading the group for most of those years. When I see photographs of Sen. McCain's staff, it looks to me like the team of lobbyists who used to report to me. Senator McCain's attack on Senator Obama is a cheap shot, and hypocritical.

Sincerely,

William Maloni
Fannie Mae Senior Vice President for Government and Industry Relations (1983-2004)

McCain Advocates Deregulating Health Care Like He Deregulated Wall Street

John McCain published an article titled, Better Health Care at Lower Cost for Every American, in the Sept./Oct. issue of Contingencies, the magazine of the American Academy of Actuaries. In his article, McCain attempts to make his case for deregulating the health insurance industry by extolling the benefits of the last decade of deregulation in the banking sector. McCain advocates a fully unregulated market-based health care system just like the now collapsing deregulated market-based financial market system that he, Phil Gramm and other Conservative Republicans created. McCain writes:
Opening up the health insurance market to more vigorous nationwide competition, as we have done over the last decade in banking, would provide more choices of innovative products less burdened by the worst excesses of state-based regulation.
In the last two days McCain has flip-flopped and is now talking like a market regulator while attempting to blame Obama for the financial system collapse brought on by McCain's own two decade long push to deregulate financial markets.

Friday, September 19, 2008

The Contrast: Barack Obama vs. John McCain

Republicans Spending Borrowed Money Worse Than Drunken Sailors

The United States became a net debtor under Reagan and these debts have grown rapidly under Bush 41 and Bush 43. Only under Clinton was the debt rolled back.

New government estimates released mid-September 2008 forecast that the federal government will be in a deeper a $546 billion deficit hole in 2009. (October 7, 2008 update - With the cost of the Wall Street Bailout added to the deficit, the new 2009 deficit projection approaches $950 billion)

In January 2001, the month President Bush took control of America from President Clinton, the Congressional Budget Office released budget estimates for each of the next ten years (2002-2011).

As Clinton left office the CBO predicted that the 2009 budget would show a $710 billion surplus. So the $546 billion deficit now predicted for 2009 is actually $1.3 trillion worse than CBO predicted nearly eight years ago. $1 trillion worth of the deficit deteriation is directly due to actions by the White House and Congress since 2001 -- specifically, the tax cuts and spending increases they enacted. The new $500 billion-plus deficit numbers represent about 3.5 percent of the economy, which is the deficit measure seen as most relevant by economists.

The two main reasons why the 2009 budget will be so much worse than CBO had predicted in 2001 are Republican tax cuts and increases in military and other security-related spending.

Tax cuts alone account for 42 percent of the budgetary deterioration for 2009 that stems from policymakers' actions since 2001. Increases in military and other security programs account for another 39 percent. Combined, these two factors account for 82 percent of the budget decline that is due to policy actions.

The tax cuts -- the largest of which by far was the giant 2001 Bush tax cut -- will cost $295 billion in 2009 alone. While nearly all taxpayers will receive some tax cut, the distribution of the tax cut benefits is highly skewed. In 2009, a typical household in the $40,000-to-$50,000 income range will receive a "Bush" tax cut of about $950; households with incomes over $1 million will receive tax cuts averaging $135,000.

The Bush administration has mis-managed the federal budget situation to an alarming degree. Although they inherited a budget surplus, they have continually spent more then they have taken in. As a result, the US is issuing debt like its going out of style. Total debt outstanding has increased from $5.8 trillion in 2001 to the current total of $9.5 trillion.

As a result of this problem, the currency markets have sent the (Trade Weighted Exchange Indexed) dollar lower for six years straight. If you were wondering why commodities in general and oil specifically have bee rallying for some time, you can thank the cheap dollar as a primary cause. The dollar has gone from peak to trough from nearly $130 to its current level of $72.75 -- or a drop of 44%. As the dollar has dropped in price, the dollar cost of commodities like crude oil and gasoline have have spiked in price for American consumers . One of the primary reason traders are bidding up commodities like oil and gasoline is as an inflation hedge.

The Republican controlled congress -- increased discretionary spending from 649 billion in 2001 to 1.041 trillion in 2007.

In short, the Republicans went on a spending spree while at the same time cutting taxes. That is a recipe for disaster.

But there is another, deeper problem at work here. The figure that is being reported is a dishonest figure because it counts the social security surplus. Remember in 2000 when Al Gore was talking about a "social security lock box"? What he was saying is we should take all of the surplus money paid into social security and not spend it now. However, that is exactly what we are doing and have been doing for a very long time. As a result, the "unified" budget deficit -- the figure reported in the press -- is, well a lie. The correct way to look at the budget deficit is to see how much debt we are issuing. And that figure is far worse than what is being reported.

Here are the yearly amounts of total debt outstanding.

09/30/2007 $9,007,653,372,262.48
09/30/2006 $8,506,973,899,215.23
09/30/2005 $7,932,709,661,723.50
09/30/2004 $7,379,052,696,330.32
09/30/2003 $6,783,231,062,743.62
09/30/2002 $6,228,235,965,597.16
09/30/2001 $5,807,463,412,200.06
09/30/2000 $5,674,178,209,886.86

The current total is $9,668,844,788,980.66. (October 7, 2008 update - With the cost of the Wall Street Bailout added to the deficit, the new total deficit projection exceeds $13 trillion - with all the zeros that's $13,500,000,000,000)

The point of all this is clear: the US' budget is structurally running a deficit to the tune of $500 billion dollars a year for the last five years. This is far worse than is being reported in the press.

Sen. John McCain promises that, as president, he would "cut taxes," mostly for corporations and wealthy individuals. But McCain's economic plan could create deficits as deep as 5.7% of GDP by the end of a two term presidency -- the highest federal budget deficit in 25 years -- and would accumulate the biggest debt since the second World War, according to a new analysis by the Center for American Progress Action Fund. McCain's current fiscal plan would recklessly exacerbate the fiscal irresponsibility of the Bush Administration further by gutting revenues far below the average level of the past 25 years.

For the past 25 years, deficits have never been more severe than 5% of GDP, with surpluses as high as 2.4% of GDP in the year 2000. Under McCain, yearly deficits would increase sharply, beginning with $505 billion in FY2009 (3.4% of GDP) and skyrocket to $1.2 trillion (5.7% of GDP) by FY2017. In 2018 these deficits would reach 6% of GDP, tied with the largest deficits since WWII. McCain's "tax cut" plan would further weaken the the (Trade Weighted Exchange Indexed) dollar value causing the cost that Americans pay for gasoline to further to climb to $5, $6, $7 or more per gallon at the pump.

Obama's economic plan would at least reduce the budget deficit growth and possibly even begin to again reduce the budget deficit. This in turn could begin to strengthen the (Trade Weighted Exchange Indexed) dollar value which would in turn begin to reduce the $4 per gallon price of gasoline back to something under $3 per gallon.

Which is more important to you - McCain's lower taxes for corporations and the wealthy creating a weaker dollar, which leads to higher gasoline prices at the pump? OR, Obama's lower taxes for everyone who earns under $250,000 per year and higher taxes on the wealthy, which will create a stronger dollar and lower gasoline prices at the pump for everyone? It's up to you, the voter, to decide!

Republican Deregulation To Cost Taxpayers $1.5 Trillion in Wall Street Bailouts

CNBC says the bailouts have cost taxpayers over $900 billion, so far:
The U.S. Federal Reserve stepped in to rescue insurance giant American International Group from bankruptcy with an $85 billion loan on Tuesday, the latest in a series of bailouts and loans for the financial and housing sectors. The action brings the total tab for government rescues and special loan facilities this year to more than $900 billion.
  • $200 billion for Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac...
  • $300 billion for the Federal Housing Administration to refinance failing mortgage[s]...
  • $4 billion in grants to local communities to help them buy and repair homes...
  • $85 billion loan for AIG...
  • At least $87 billion in repayments to JPMorgan Chase for providing financing to underpin trades with units of bankrupt investment bank Lehman Brothers...
  • $29 billion in financing for JPMorgan Chase's government-brokered buyout of Bear Stearns...
  • At least $200 billion of currently outstanding loans to banks issued through the Fed's Term Auction Facility...


The Newest Wall Street Bailout Plan announced yesterday to cost taxpayers an Additional Half Trillion Dollars:

Treasury Secretary Hank Paulson briefed Congressional leaders on plans to address the "illiquid assets" on U.S. financial institutions' balance sheets, possibly including the creation of a government facility to take on financial firms' bad debts.

The proposal to create a massive facility to buy mortgage-backed securities could cost as much as a half-trillion-dollars and would involve the purchase of both private-label and government-guaranteed mortgages, according to an administration official.

The plan would have two parts. The largest part would be the purchase of private-label (those underwritten by Wall Street) mortgages by some as-yet unnamed vehicle. Financing would occur through the sale of treasuries, the official said. That part of the plan would require congressional approval. The idea is to hold the securities to maturity. The average mortgage has a life of about 7 years.

A second part of the plan would involve the purchase by Treasury of additional government-backed (Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac) under a plan it announced several weeks ago to rescue the two government-sponsored entities. Back then, it said it would purchase $5 billion initially. The idea is to ramp up those purchases more quickly. It does not require approval by Congress. ...

CNBC first reported the creation of a Treasury plan, similar to the Resolution Trust Corp., that would take mortgage backed securities off the market. ...

A federal government plan could also involve FDIC-type protection for money market funds, according to a report in the Wall Street Journal.

It is the Republican Party's Hoover-like philosophy of no government regulation and the 1999 Financial Services Modernization banking system deregulation legislation written by McCain adviser Phil Gramm and pushed by McCain himself that helped pave the way for the 2008 financial system collapse. That deregulatory legislation allowed the very financial companies that have collapsed during 2008, to become mega-giant companies laden with self-destructing loans and investments.

Not only did McCain, and the Republican Party as a whole, push these destructive anti-regulation policies, Bush administration officials failed to step in to aggressively address the financial crisis’s first warning signs in 2007. Stephanie Pomboy, the founder of the economic consulting firm MacroMavens that has been forecasting the housing and credit crises, told Barron’s,

"We can’t resist pointing out had [President Bush's third U.S. Treasury Secretary, Henry "Hank"] Paulson and his bailout crew used their powers for ‘good’ from the get-go, they could have saved a lot of time, energy and, most importantly, money. Had they simply established a fund to buy up the surplus housing inventory, presently valued at just over $1 trillion, they could have stitched up this wound for less than they’ve spent layering Band-Aid after Band-Aid on top of it."

Alas, Paulson and the entire Bush Administration is stuck in the Republican "no government regulation" philosophical rut just like McCain, all of McCain's advisers and conservative legislators like Republican incumbent for the U.S. 3rd Texas Congressional District, Sam Johnson, age 78, Republican incumbent for the U.S. 4th Texas Congressional District, Ralph Hall, age 85, and Republican incumbent Senator John Cornyn.

Even as Paulson told congressional leaders Thursday night, "that we’re literally maybe days away from a complete meltdown of our financial system, with all the implications here at home and globally,” McCain said at a campaign stop, that the Federal Reserve needs to stop bailing out failed financial institutions and get back to "its core business of responsibly managing our money supply and inflation."

Wednesday, September 17, 2008

McCain’s Conservative "Hooverism"


Last Monday Sept 15th, one Wall Street bank, Lehman Brothers, filed for bankruptcy protection and another, Merrill Lynch, sought salvation by selling itself to Bank of America for $50 billion. Earlier this year, the government helped enable the sale of faltering investment bank Bear Stearns to J.P. Morgan Chase, and more recently took over mortgage giants Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac.

Today, Wednesday Sept 17th, the Federal Reserve (rather the American taxpayer) bailed out the mega-giant American International Group Inc. insurance company with a two-year, $85 billion loan. The Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation (FDIC) has a list of problem banks that numbers over 90. Since the California IndyMac Bank, which was declared insolvent in July, was not on the FDIC list a week before it collapsed, the number of "problem" banks might be greater than the FDIC currently understands.


Sen. John McCain (R-AZ) continues to insist that the “fundamentals of our economy are strong.” As Eric Rauchway notes in the American Prospect, McCain’s response to this economic crisis is reminiscent of President Herbert Hoover’s “the fundamentals are strong” response to the Great Depression. On October 25, 1929, a day after what is now known as Black Thursday, President Hoover declared, "The fundamental business of the country, that is the production and distribution of commodities, is on a sound and prosperous basis."

Financial system failures such as we are experiencing more and more frequently as 2008 progresses were supposed to have been prevented, or at least mitigated, by regulatory systems that the nation began to put in place after the banking system collapsed at the start of the Great Depression.

By 1932 after a decade of Republican laissez-faire government and unregulated "anything goes" excesses in the banking and securities and commodities trading systems, many banks at the time were badly wounded by their personal and financial ties to Wall Street. President Roosevelt and a wave of Democratic Senators and Congressmen won election in 1932 on the promise of a "New Deal" to clean up the economic mess left by the laissez-faire Republicans. The 1933 Glass-Steagall Act, and later the 1956 Bank Holding Company Act, mandated the separation of banks, insurance companies and securities firms.

Those and many other federal laws stabilized the banking, insurance and securities markets.

The Conservative "No Government Regulation Philosophy," that was the root cause of the 1929 Black Thursday crash, did not die out on Black Thursday 1929. Conservatives like President George W. Bush's grandfather Prescott Bush never forgave President Franklin Roosevelt for pushing the 1933 Glass-Steagall Act and other financial reform acts through Congress during the 1930's New Deal Era. Conservatives like Republican incumbent for the U.S. 3rd Texas Congressional District, Sam Johnson, age 78, Republican incumbent for the U.S. 4th Texas Congressional District, Ralph Hall, age 85, Republican incumbent Senator John Cornyn and Republican presidential candidate Senator John McCain, age 72, have never stopped their push to return the American financial system to the unregulated "anything goes" era of the 1920's.

Through this election year we have heard Senator McCain repeat time and time again,"I’m always for less regulation. But I am aware of the view [of Democrats] that there is a need for government oversight. … But I am a fundamentally a deregulator. I’d like to see a lot of the government regulations eliminated." And so, most of the government regulation that fostered a secure and robust American financial system from 1933 to the 1980's has been dismantled by conservatives, including some conservative "blue dog" Democrats.

Ronald Reagan finally led the conservative "no government regulation" movement to power in 1980 proclaiming faith in free markets and mistrust of government. That conservative philosophy of "no government regulation" has dominated America for the past 28 years. Over these last 28 years conservatives have systematically dismantled the "New Deal" and returned the American financial system to its unregulated "anything goes" status of the 1920's.

Even after taxpayers had to rescue deregulated savings and loans, or S&Ls, with a $200 billion bailout in the late 1980s, the push to loosen regulation paused only briefly.

In 1999, President Clinton signed the Financial Services Modernization Act passed by a Conservative controlled Congress, which tore down Glass-Steagall's reforms by removing the walls separating banks, securities firms and insurers. McCain joined with other Republicans to push through landmark legislation sponsored by then U.S. Senator from Texas, Phil Gramm, who is now an economic adviser to McCain's campaign. The Financial Services Modernization Act (also identified as the Gramm-Leach-Bliley Act) aimed to make the country’s financial institutions competitive by removing the Depression-era walls between banking, investment and insurance companies.


It is the Financial Services Modernization legislation written by McCain adviser Phil Gramm and pushed by McCain himself that helped pave the way for the very financial companies and banks that have failed during 2008 to become behemoths laden with bad loans and investments.

Then, in 2000, the Republican controlled Senate Banking Committee, controlled by Congress and Phil Gramm who is McCain's current financial advisor, pushed through a deregulatory exemption on electronic commodities trading without a Senate hearing or debate.

After President Bush took office his administration and the Republican controlled Congress turned their back on any responsibility to oversee the financial system.

With interest rates pushed to the floor after the events of September 11, 2001, the market grew for loans to borrowers with weak credit and private-sector mortgage bonds boomed. About 38 percent of those bonds were backed by sub-prime loans. These sub-prime loans loans, made possible by Republican deregulation, are at the root of today's financial crisis.

A generation ago, banks, credit unions and S&Ls issued home mortgages that they retained on their books as an asset. The lenders had a stake in receiving full repayment of the loans from credit-worthy borrowers.

But after deregulation, mortgages began to be sold to firms that cobbled the loans together to create mortgage-backed securities, or mortgage bonds. Loans to the least credit-worthy borrowers carried the highest risk but gave the highest returns, so banks and other institutional investors bought loads of them. Except no one was policing or even gave a second thought to the creditworthiness of the borrowers. Exactly the conditions behind the the 1929 Black Thursday crash.

Republican deregulation has cause other turmoil for American investors and consumers.

The so-called "Enron Loophole" deregulation legislation allowed Enron to speculatively exploit and manipulate electricity commodity trading in California energy markets in the summer of 2001, spawning artificial electricity shortages, steep climbs in electricity prices and rolling brownouts across California.

The "Enron Loophole" legislation was created and attached to U.S. Senate legislation in December 2000 by McCain campaign co-chair Senator Phil Gramm at the behest of Enron executives. In fact, internal Enron documents, which were released in 2002, revealed that the Houston-based company wrote the legislation for Gramm.

In 2006, the “Enron Loophole” allowed Amaranth Advisers hedge fund to shift its trades from the regulated New York Mercantile Exchange (NYMEX) to the unregulated Intercontinental Exchange (ICE) in Atlanta.

That let Amaranth corner the natural gas market, betting that futures prices would rise. The hedge fund lost about $6 billion and imploded as natural gas prices fell to a two-year low in September 2006.

The Federal Energy Regulatory Commission and the Commodity Futures Trading Commission charged that Amaranth manipulated prices paid in the physical natural gas markets. FERC has proposed $291 million in penalties and the forfeiture of “unjust profits.”


In 2008, the “Enron Loophole” has allowed a speculative free-for-all that helped drive oil prices over $135 per barrel last summer. As much as 99 percent of the market for U.S. premium crude oil is dominated by big financial firms, hedge, pension and index funds seeking short-term profits from oil's rise. Some analysts believe that as much as $70 of that $135 a barrel price was speculative froth.
In May 2008 the Commodity Futures Trading Commission, which normally keeps investigations confidential, said in a statement that it was "taking the extraordinary step of publicly disclosing an investigation into market manipulation because of the unprecedented [commodity] market conditions."

In addition to commodity trading manipulation, regulators are concerned that companies may be reporting inventory levels that benefit their own trading positions but that may not be accurate, people familiar with the regulators' thinking say. Commodity-market regulators are investigating whether energy-market players are injecting false data into the marketplace to influence perceptions about crude-oil supply and demand.

Republicans, including Texas Senator John Cornyn, have threatened to filibuster U.S. Senate business to block the efforts of Democratic Senators to close the "Enron Loophole." Obama Vows To Close "Enron Loophole."



Senate Democrats Discuss Eight Years Of Failed Bush-McCain Economic Policies

Drill Baby Drill


Conservatives like Republican incumbent for the U.S. 3rd Texas Congressional District, Sam Johnson, age 78, Republican incumbent for the U.S. 4th Texas Congressional District, Ralph Hall, age 85, and Republican incumbent Texas Senator John Cornyn join Republican Presidential Candidate John McCain in his support of big tax breaks for big oil and big coal companies and no investment in alternative energy development. The GOP answer to America's energy problem is "drill baby drill." The only problem is - the GOP's buddies, the big oil companies, already control thousands of oil leases across America and offshore, but they won't drill and they won't let anyone else drill either.




Something Lighter - Les Misbarack

With music from "Les Miserables," the video shows a Obama campaign office filled with supporters hoping for a better future.

John McCain's Health Records Must Be Released

A New "New Deal" For America

David Moberg, a senior editor at In These Times wrote this week in Back for the Future:

The discussions on the fringes of the [Democratic] convention often returned to another era: the 1930s. Progressives pointed to a panoply of problems facing the country: deepening economic downturn, environmental and economic crises based on our dependence on oil, record economic inequality, a broken healthcare system, and inadequate public investment in education and infrastructure.

Redressing these failings will require a "transformational presidency," like that of Franklin D. Roosevelt, as journalist Robert Kuttner argues in his new book, Obama’s Challenge. They will require the "next New Deal," according to U.S. Action, a coalition of statewide citizen organizations.

But it’s not just the Democratic left that sees the present through the prism of a New Deal past. According to pollster Anna Greenberg, more voters see the present as a moment comparable to the ’30s than as a time comparable to the ’70s or ’90s. ...

But conventional wisdom, often even among Democrats, denies the possibility of grand government action that makes most people’s lives better. That wisdom, according to Kuttner, says: There’s no money. Government doesn’t work, except to cut taxes. It must bow before private markets.

Obama's Economic Agenda

Barack Obama's campaign is releasing a new television ad in which the Senator, speaking directly to the camera, lays out his economic agenda. Obama says in the new ad, "The truth is that while you've been living up to your responsibilities, Washington has not. That's why we need change. Real change. This is no ordinary time and it shouldn't be an ordinary election. But much of this campaign has been consumed by petty attacks and distractions that have nothing to do with you or how we get America back on track."

Obama's Economic Agenda

Wednesday, September 10, 2008

Lies And Phony Outrage And Swift-Boat Politics

The McCain campaign attacked Barack Obama with an internet ad which accuses him of insulting Sarah Palin by using the phrase "put lipstick on a pig" in reference to the McCain campaign. (The ad falsely used an out of context clip, misleadingly captioned "Katie Couric on: This Election" that CBS News demanded be withdrawn.)

Obama responded by calling this a "made-up controversy" and describing the ad as "lies and phony outrage and Swift-boat politics."

The McCain Campaign seeks to find a daily faux outrage to distract the news media to keep them from writing stories about: Highest Unemployment Rate In Five Years... Housing Crisis... Stretched Military... Resurging Taliban... Energy Drought... Never-Ending War... Growing Nuclear Enemies... Global Warming... Lack Of Healthcare... Underperforming Schools...

Monday, September 8, 2008

A Republican Legacy To America

Highest Unemployment Rate In Five Years... Housing Crisis... Stretched Military... Resurging Taliban... Energy Drought... Never-Ending War... Growing Nuclear Enemies... Global Warming... Lack Of Healthcare... Underperforming Schools...

"F--- You," McCain Publicly Tells Texas Sen. Cornyn

In separate interviews with Politico during the last week of August, Senate Majority Whip Richard J. Durbin (D-Ill.) and Sen. Barbara Boxer (D-Calif.) said they have seen McCain “explode.”

“He has a huge anger problem,” Boxer said. “And he never hid that. ... I have seen it happen on the Senate floor many, many times. … He has exploded at me a couple times.”

Boxer said McCain has always apologized after the dust-ups. Nonetheless, she insinuated that McCain’s temperament makes him unfit for the White House.

“It’s all well and good to apologize,” Boxer added, “but if you are in charge of that black box, I worry about that.”

Durbin noted McCain’s temper is “well documented,” saying that he had been on the receiving end of it for what he considered “minor things.”

McClatchy Newspapers - McCain's History of Hot Temper Raises Concerns
By David Lightman and Matt Stearns
September 7, 2008


WASHINGTON — John McCain made a quick stop at the Capitol one day last spring to sit in on Senate negotiations on the big immigration bill, and John Cornyn was not pleased.

Cornyn, a mild-mannered Texas Republican, saw a loophole in the bill that he thought would allow felons to pursue a path to citizenship.

McCain called Cornyn's claim "chicken-s---," according to people familiar with the meeting, and charged that the Texan was looking for an excuse to scuttle the bill. Cornyn grimly told McCain he had a lot of nerve to suddenly show up and inject himself into the sensitive negotiations.

"F--- you," McCain told Cornyn, in front of about 40 witnesses.

It was another instance of the Republican presidential candidate losing his temper, another instance where, as POW-MIA activist Carol Hrdlicka put it, "It's his way or no way."

There's a lengthy list of similar outbursts through the years:

Read the rest of the story

Slate.com - One Angry Man
Should we worry about John McCain's temper?
By Christopher Hitchens
Posted Monday, April 28, 2008


We are still obliged to ask ourselves whether the senior senator from Arizona is a brick short of a load or, as heartless people in England sometimes say, a sandwich or two short of a picnic. Because "anger," make no mistake about it, is the innuendo for instability or inadequacy. What if McCain doesn't really have both oars in the water or is either too tightly wrapped or not tightly wrapped enough?

Read the full story

Saturday, September 6, 2008

McCain Is No Maverick

John McCain together with all of his spokespersons, which too often includes the established news media, are "marketing" McCain as a "Maverick Centrist Republican." In truth, when the vote really counts, McCain has always voted with other far-right conservatives in the U.S. Senate to enact the far-right conservative philosophy into federal law and to confirm far-right conservative judges for the U.S. Federal and U.S. Supreme Courts. This is particularly true on the issue of women's rights.

The Truth About Sarah Palin

Friday, September 5, 2008

The McMansion in McCain's Nomination Acceptance Speech

While I was watching McCain's nomination acceptance speech Thursday night I was puzzled why he had the picture of a McMansion projected behind him after the flap of him not remembering how many McMansions he owns.

The tight camera shots only showed McCain's head against the grass in the picture, which made it look like he was reprising his famed green screen performance. And when they panned out, it looked like McCain was showing off one of his mansions.

Josh Marshall at TPM may have solved the mystery in this posting - "I'm surprised this hadn't occurred to me. But several readers have suggested that perhaps one of the tech geeks charged with setting up the audio/visual bells and whistles for the evening was tasked with getting pictures of Walter Reed Army Medical Center but goofed and got this [picture of the Walter Reed Middle School in North Hollywood, California] instead.

At first I thought, No, that's ridiculous. This is a major political party with big time professionals putting this together. Nothing is left to chance. I mean, is this the RNC or a scene out Spinal Tap or Waiting for Guffman? I still have a bit of a hard time believing they're quite that incompetent. But when you figure in what appears to be the utter lack of any logic for this [North Hollywood middle] school being behind McCain and the fact that it has 'Walter Reed' in its name, I'm really not sure you can discount this possibility."

Statement from Walter Reed Middle School principal, Donna Tobin, "It has been brought to the school's attention that a picture of the front of our school, Walter Reed Middle School, was used as a backdrop at the Republican National Convention. Permission to use the front of our school for the Republican National Convention was not given by our school nor is the use of our school's picture an endorsement of any political party or view."

Thursday, September 4, 2008

Corndog

Sen. Cornyn: Tax Workers On Health Insurance Received From Employers

U.S. Senator John Cornyn, who is running for reelection this year, endorses Republican Presidential Nominee John McCain's proposal to shift employer provided health insurance from being an untaxed employee benefit to an insurance policy that Americans must purchase in the private marketplace for themselves and their families. "There's no reason today to have health insurance policies tied to employers," Cornyn told reporters on Monday.

McCain's plan, that Cornyn supports, would tax workers on the value of any health insurance they continue to receive from their employers. Under McCain's plan employees would have to report as income any insurance premiums paid by their employers. In contrast, Democratic presidential contender Barack Obama says he wants to expand Medicaid, the government health care program for the poor, and require employers to either provide health insurance to their workers or contribute to a newly created public insurance program.

Dallas Morning News
McCain's health insurance plan: More radical than Democrats'

North Texas employers are not saying they would drop employee coverage altogether if Mr. McCain's plan were enacted. But some do say the plan, which Mr. McCain detailed in July, would encourage young and healthy workers to forgo company coverage, purchasing insurance on their own rather than paying income taxes on the benefit. That would leave employers with only the costly sick workers to insure. And that, they said, could eventually lead to the death of company-provided health plans.

Rick Noriega, the Democratic Candidate running for the U.S. Senate seat against Cornyn, supports guaranteed coverage through partnerships between the federal government, states, employers, and private health care providers.

Dallas Morning News Blog
Rick Noriega Assails John Cornyn's Embrace of McCain Health Care Plan

Rick Noriega's Senate campaign has harshly criticized freshman Republican Sen. John Cornyn for seconding John McCain's plan to wean Americans off employer-provided health insurance and push them to buy their own coverage. Noriega spokesman Martine Apodaca called McCain's plan "radical."

Apodaca predicted that treating the employer health [benifits] as wages, as McCain proposes, will price families out of health insurance because the Arizona senator's $5,000 tax credits won't make up for the new burden they absorb. "Cornyn thinks forcing Texas families to fend for themselves in the individual insurance market is better than the employer based health care system.

But people don't choose to be sick like they choose to buy a car or a pair of shoes," Apodaca said. "Under the Cornyn scheme, the majority of Texans would be paying higher taxes, paying more for less coverage and employers would lose incentives to offer health insurance to their employees"

The Sarah Palin Smokescreen

The Nation
The Sarah Palin Smokescreen

by Katrina vanden Heuvel on 09/04/2008


"Here's the deal: Palin is the latest G.O.P. distraction," Bob Herbert wrote in a New York Times op-ed on Tuesday. "She's meant to shift attention away from the real issue of this campaign--the awful state of the nation after eight years of Republican rule. The Republicans are brilliant at distractions."

Herbert's right on target. Barack Obama honed in on that point in Denver too, "If you don't have any fresh ideas, then you use stale tactics to scare the voters. If you don't have a record to run on, then you paint your opponent as someone people should run from. You make a big election about small things."

On cue, Sarah Palin attempted to paint an absurd caricature of Obama in her speech at the Republican Convention last night: "What does he actually seek to accomplish, after he's done turning back the waters and healing the planet? The answer is to make government bigger ... take more of your money ... give you more orders from Washington ... and to reduce the strength of America in a dangerous world."

More than anything, this election should be about the big issues of our time--ending a disastrous war, restoring America's reputation in the world and building an economy that works for more than just the very rich. The challenge for Democrats is to frame these issues in a way that connects with traditional American and progressive values, exposes Republican callousness and extremism, and in doing so trumps the GOP's political marketing which cynically and cleverly plays on symbolism. As George Lakoff wrote, "Just arguing the realities, the issues, the hard truths should be enough in times this bad, but the political mind and its response to symbolism cannot be ignored..... Democrats, in addition, need to call an extremist an extremist: to shine a light on the shared anti-democratic ideology of McCain and Palin, the same ideology shared by Bush and Cheney. They share values antithetical to our democracy."

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Wednesday, September 3, 2008

Rock The Vote In 2008

From now until Election Day November 4th your Democratic friends and neighbors will be working in your neighborhoods to Get Out The Vote.

The objective of GOTV is to get more Progressive voters to the polls in Collin County this year than ever before by reminding them again and again why it is so important for them to vote in 2008; This is what "Get Out The Vote" is all about.

When the Democratic Party has a strong GOTV effort, our Democratic Candidates have a much better chance of winning. Your Democratic neighbors are already working hard with all our Democratic Candidates to Get Out The Vote in 2008 by Registering Voters, Phone Banking and Block Walking.

This year early voting starts on October 20th and continues until October 31st and Election Day falls on November 4th. We need Democrats to line up to vote starting at 7 A.M. on October 20th and keep lining up to vote until 7 P.M. on November 4th.

Please be a good Democratic friend this year and help your neighbors get out and vote starting October 20th. To sign up to help Get Out The Democratic Vote all across Collin County send an email to the GOTV coordinator, Barb Walters, at this email address: gotv@collindems.us. Barb Walters is working closely with the County Chair and all Precinct Chairs of the Democratic Party of Collin County as well as the campaign staffs of all the candidates whose name will appear on Collin County ballots on November 4th to Get Out The Vote.


Our Democratic candidates running for the U.S. Senate and U.S. House of Representatives, Rick Noriega, Tom Daley and Glenn Melançon, need our support! President Barack Obama will need all the help he can get in Congress when he takes office January 20, 2009!!

PLEASE, please help send Rick Noriega, Tom Daley and Glenn Melançon to Washington to help President Obama quickly turn our country onto the right road to a 21st century America!!


And, don't forget -- Other State of Texas and Collin County Democratic Candidates will appear on Collin County Ballots for the 2008 General Election too. They must also have your support!! For a list of all our local Democratic Candidates Click Here.

Please go to any or all of the candidate's websites and contribute any money and any volunteer time to their campaigns you can spare to help them get elected.