9 posts tagged “mccain”
We all know that the republicans have been having a lot of success in the past in painting virtually any Democrat as a rich elite snob. Of course, we all know that just about anyone who runs for national office these days is seriously richer than you or anyone you know. However, there's rich, and then there's rich. McCain falls into the latter category for sure...
From Tapped:
We know John and Cindy McCain are seriously wealthy
- Cindy's fortune has been estimated at $100 million, and they have
seven, yes, seven homes (if you're keeping track at home, there's the
estate in Sedona, which has two houses on it, the $4.7 million condo in
Phoenix, the condo in Arlington, VA, the condo in La Jolla, and the two condos in Coronado, California). But today, Politico managed to unearth
a few juicy details that show us just what kind of a lifestyle that
gets you. Sure, Cindy buys $3000 suits - not that big a deal. But here
are some other interesting points:
- Since 2004, they've spent $11 million on real estate.
- At times, Cindy has charged as much as $500,000 on one credit card and $250,000 on another in a single month.
You really have to work hard to charge three quarters of a million
dollars in one month. What is she buying, gold-plated Ferraris?
- Though the McCains spent a modest $184,000 on household
staff in 2006, in 2007 they spent $273,000. And who can blame them?
It's so hard to get good help these days.
- This is my favorite quote, about why they own two condos in the same building in the beachside town of Coronado: "When I bought the first one, my husband, who is not a beach person, said, 'Oh, this is such a waste of money; the kids will never go,'” she told Vogue. “Then it got to the point where they used it so much I couldn't get in the place. So I bought another one.”
Ahhhh, finally a Democrat who will not shirk from fighting with the republicans on national security issues! Not only that, but in Barack, we have someone who can simply and eloquently state the truth... and with that a devastating and damning argument...
Barack Obama continues hitting back hard today at the false McCain/GOP assaults on him for allegedly seeing terrorism as only a law-enforcement problem...
"I refuse to be lectured on national security by people who are responsible for the most disastrous set of foreign policy decisions in the recent history of the United States. The other side likes to use 9/11 as a political bludgeon. Well, let's talk about 9/11.
"The people who were responsible for murdering 3,000 Americans on 9/11 have not been brought to justice. They are Osama bin Laden, al Qaeda and their sponsors -- the Taliban. They were in Afghanistan. And yet George Bush and John McCain decided in 2002 that we should take our eye off of Afghanistan so that we could invade and occupy a country that had absolutely nothing to do with 9/11. The case for war in Iraq was so thin that George Bush and John McCain had to hype the threat of Saddam Hussein, and make false promises that we'd be greeted as liberators. They misled the American people, and took us into a misguided war.
"Here are the results of their policy. Osama bin Laden and his top leadership -- the people who murdered 3000 Americans -- have a safe-haven in northwest Pakistan, where they operate with such freedom of action that they can still put out hate-filled audiotapes to the outside world. That's the result of the Bush-McCain approach to the war on terrorism."
Do you still somehow think McCain is a "Maverick", or "will be better than Bush"? This is something that you should know about McCain. From the Political Animal blog:
"1. Does the president have inherent powers under the Constitution to conduct surveillance for national security purposes without judicial warrants, regardless of federal statutes?
McCain: There are some areas where the statutes don't apply, such as in the surveillance of overseas communications. Where they do apply, however, I think that presidents have the obligation to obey and enforce laws that are passed by Congress and signed into law by the president, no matter what the situation is.
Okay, so is that a no, in other words, federal statute trumps inherent power in that case, warrantless surveillance?
McCain: I don't think the president has the right to disobey any law."
Now:
"A top adviser to Senator John McCain says Mr. McCain believes that President Bush's program of wiretapping without warrants was lawful, a position that appears to bring him into closer alignment with the sweeping theories of executive authority pushed by the Bush administration legal team.
In a letter posted online by National Review this week, the adviser, Douglas Holtz-Eakin, said Mr. McCain believed that the Constitution gave Mr. Bush the power to authorize the National Security Agency to monitor Americans' international phone calls and e-mail without warrants, despite a 1978 federal statute that required court oversight of surveillance."
Here's the letter posted to NRO; here's Andrew McCarthy discussing it, and here's Glenn Greenwald. Glenn sums it up:
"These days, in order to please the self-proclaimed "small government" conservative movement, a candidate must now vow to spy on Americans with no warrants or oversight of any kind; reserve the right to torture; and even break the law -- ignore popular will as expressed through acts of Congress -- whenever such lawbreaking is deemed beneficial. Those are now defining planks in the limited-government "conservative" movement."
Yep. It's a strange, strange world.
By the "standards" of the Bush administration, this is just another day at the office... but you really have to be amazed that they are doing this crap. It is almost like they know that there is no way that McCain is going to get elected, so they don't mind being completely oblivious to public outcry... I mean, let's face it, as long as the MegaCorp (tm) is happy, then the Bush people are happy. And as for average citizens? Who? As for any government worker who actually tries to do her job... well she clearly has not gotten the Bush & Co. memo which directs them to either do nothing, or actively try to sabotage any publicly beneficial functions.
SAGINAW, Mich. - The battle over dioxin contamination in this economically stressed region had been raging for years when a top Bush administration official turned up the pressure on Dow Chemical to clean it up.
On Thursday, following months of internal bickering over Mary Gade's interactions with Dow, the administration forced her to quit as head of the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency's Midwest office, based in Chicago.
Gade has been locked in a heated dispute with Dow about long-delayed plans to clean up dioxin-saturated soil and sediment that extends 50 miles beyond its Midland, Mich., plant into Saginaw Bay and Lake Huron. The company dumped the highly toxic and persistent chemical into local rivers for most of the last century.
Gade, appointed by President Bush as regional EPA administrator in September 2006, invoked emergency powers last summer to order the company to remove three hotspots of dioxin near its Midland headquarters.
She demanded more dredging in November, when it was revealed that dioxin levels along a park in Saginaw were 1.6 million parts per trillion, the highest amount ever found in the U.S.
Dow then sought to cut a deal on a more comprehensive cleanup. But Gade ended the negotiations in January, saying Dow was refusing to take action necessary to protect public health and wildlife. Dow responded by appealing to officials in Washington, according to heavily redacted letters the Tribune obtained under the Freedom of Information Act.
Regional EPA administrators typically have wide latitude to enforce environmental laws, but in April Gade drew fire from officials in Washington after she sent contractors to test soil in a Saginaw neighborhood where Dow had found high dioxin levels. The levels in one Saginaw yard were nearly six times higher than the federal cleanup standard, and 65 times higher than what Michigan considers acceptable.
It is pretty amazing that something so insipid as a "gas tax holiday" from John McCain could gain any traction with the media... and with Hillary Clinton. The whole idea is so ridiculous that I find it hard to believe that it is being taken seriously by anyone. Clearly, there is some world-class pandering happening here, but it just doesn't take more than two seconds to realize that the idea is just plain dumb. The tax is something like 18 cents a gallon. All of that goes to highway and road construction. So where would that money come from if the tax is gone? Hmmm, I guess we can put that one on the national credit card... as for Hillary's idea of taxing the oil companies to pay for it, any guess as to whether Bush will sign that law? Uh huh.
Another part of the stupidity of this idea is something that republican McCain is supposed to understand - supply and demand. One of the main reasons why oil is so expensive is that there is too much demand, and not enough supply worldwide. When price goes up, one is taught by economists, the demand goes down until there is an equilibrium. So we should expect that after a period of $4 a gallon prices, people might start thinking about trimming fuel use. Most people can't go out and buy a new Prius tomorrow, but they might think about it more when it is time to trade in the Chevy Suburban in a few years. The idea is that gas is somewhat an in-elastic commodity in the US. People need to get to work, and our urban environments are built around cars and cheap gas. Changing those patterns and building a public transportation infrastructure take time and money. The only way those individual and collective investments are going to happen is if high fuel costs are sustained over the long term. I'd be willing to bet that gas isn't going under $3.50 a gallon ever again. So with all that in mind, dropping the gas tax isn't going to help anything, it is going to make things worse. If the slightly lower price stops people from conserving even a little bit, it will keep demand high, and cause the price to go up with a tight supply. Furthermore, it will divert resources which could be going to other non-carbon based energy research and development into making up the fuel tax revenue.
Take a look at a great article in The Guardian on Sweden's experience with a carbon taxes:
Between 1990 and 2006 Sweden cut its carbon emissions by 9%, largely exceeding the target set by the Kyoto Protocol, while enjoying economic growth of 44% in fixed prices.
Under Kyoto, Sweden was even told it could increase its emissions by 4% given the progress it had already made. But "this was not considered ambitious enough," explains Emma Lindberg, a climate change expert at the Swedish Society for Nature Conservation.
"So parliament decided to cut emissions by another 4% [below 1990 levels]. The mindset was 'we need to do what's good for the environment because it's good for Sweden and its economy'."
The main reason for this success, say experts, is the introduction of a carbon tax in 1991. Swedes today pay an extra 2.34 kronor (20p) per litre when they fill the tank (although many key industries receive tax relief or are exempted). "Our carbon emissions would have been 20% higher without the carbon tax," says the Swedish environment minister, Andreas Carlgren.
So basically, what we should be doing is raising the gas tax, not eliminating it. By making the public pay the costs of the externalities of oil use, we will allow people to make more environmentally-friendly choices. We have distorted the market in that we don't make anyone pay the full cost of using carbon-based energy sources. Once the true costs of it are factored in, and people have to pay for it, they will be more likely to act in their economic interests and choose energy which is cleaner for the environment. The demand for those energy sources will allow for sustained R&D in the least polluting energy sources.
I'm trying to look past the Democratic primary to the general election. Now, there are some people who say that McCain wouldn't be that bad. I'm here to tell you that this is a gravely mistaken assumption. Here's one in a long list of reasons why McCain would be just as bad as Bush... Equal pay for women.
A Republican minority in the Senate has thwarted attempts to repair the damage done by a bare majority of the Supreme Court in Ledbetter, which determined that companies should be able to engage in pay discrimination without the threat of punitive damages as long as they're able to to keep employees in the dark about it for 180 days after it starts. John McCain, although he didn't show up to the vote, applauds the Senate's decision to help companies pay women unequal wages:
"I am all in favor of pay equity for women, but this kind of legislation, as is typical of what's being proposed by my friends on the other side of the aisle, opens us up to lawsuits for all kinds of problems," the expected GOP presidential nominee told reporters. "This is government playing a much, much greater role in the business of a private enterprise system."
In other words, McCain favors women's rights...as long as they can't actually sue to enforce them. People who, affected by the bitterness of the primary, are tempted to think that the parties are indistinguishable may want to consider the votes in both the Senate and on the Supreme Court.
So McCain would like to support the retrograde republican-appointed Supreme Court which came to the tortured logic that the law regarding pay equity doesn't permit anyone to actually enforce it. The Ledbetter decision is so patently ridiculous, that I almost feel embarrassed for the Justices who signed on to it. It may be embarrassing, but sadly, it is not surprising. These jack-holes never saw a law limiting the ability of our corporate overlords to exploit us which they didn't like. With McCain, we'll get another generation of idiots like Alito, Scalia, and Thomas... and seemingly reasonable, but stealthily nasty corporate apologists like Roberts.
One thing I can promise is that with a President Obama (or Clinton), the next Justices will look nothing like that losers that Bush appointed...
From Tapped:
Here's the really amazing number from Wisconsin:
The loser of the Wisconsin Democratic primary got twice as many votes as the winner of the Republican primary. (440,000 for Clinton to 220,000 for McCain).
I know we've seen numbers like this in other states. But Wisconsin is a state that just a few years ago had Tommy Thompson as its governor and in the last two presidential elections, was decided by 10,000 votes in '04 and 5,000 in '00.
Sometimes, I can't imagine a world where McCain wins this thing... then I think about the last presidential election and despair... While we can't become complacent, and the republican muck-machine is just now coming out of its hibernation, news tid-bits like the one above give me hope.
Remember when you thought that it wouldn't be so bad if McCain won the election? Remember when you thought that he was a different kind of republican, a "maverick" who would vote his conscience instead of simply being a reactionary conservative? Yeah, read this, and then watch your old opinion of his supposed independence recede into the mists of history...
McCAIN vs. THE BASE, PART 487....National Journal sets the stage for today's Senate vote on a bill banning the CIA from using torture:
Supporters will need 60 votes to advance the bill, meaning they will need some Republicans to cross party lines. [Harry] Reid said Sen. John McCain, R-Ariz., could be a major swing vote, given his previous support for legislation against torture. But a spokeswoman for McCain, a Republican presidential candidate who has been trying to bolster support from party conservatives, did not return telephone calls and an e-mail late Tuesday seeking comment.
And why was the famously anti-torture and press-friendly senator avoiding phone calls last night? Because he ended up voting against the bill.
But hey — who can blame him? It's one thing to be against torture in a primary debate where you're trying to appeal to independents and crossover voters, but it's quite another thing to be against torture after you've won the nomination and need to appease a conservative base that's righteously pissed off and not afraid to let you know it. A base that Joe Klein watched in action last November when McCain told Mitt Romney, "We're not going to torture people. We're not going to do what Pol Pot did. We're not going to do what's being done to Burmese monks as we speak":
I attended Frank Luntz's dial group of 30 undecided — or sort of undecided — Republicans in St. Petersburg, Florida, last night...and it was a fairly astonishing evening. Now, for the uninitiated: dials are little hand-held machines that enable a focus group member to register instantaneous approval or disapproval as the watch a candidate on TV.
....When John McCain started talking about torture — specifically, about waterboarding — the dials plummeted again....Down to the low 20s, which, given the natural averaging of a focus group, is about as low as you can go. Afterwards, Luntz asked the group why they seemed to be in favor of torture. "I don't have any problem pouring water on the face of a man who killed 3000 Americans on 9/11," said John Shevlin, a retired federal law enforcement officer. The group applauded, appallingly.
These are the voters McCain needs now, and these voters don't want a president who opposes state sanctioned torture of captive prisoners. So McCain doesn't oppose it anymore. Any questions?
Hey, wasn't McCain against torture because he himself was tortured in Vietnam? Wouldn't you think that would give you the ultimate personal reason to buck the conservative orthodoxy on this issue? Hmmmm I guess he was against torture before his was for it...
All right Arizona! I just read this little tid-bit:
A newly released Behavior Research Center poll finds that Governor Janet Napolitano (D-AZ) would defeat John McCain for his Senate seat in 2010, with Napolitano ahead 47%-36%. The poll was conducted from July 27 to August 4.
So awesome. I'm not sure when the next time McCain is up for election is, but hopefully it is soon. It would be pretty awesome if that guy finally lost his seat. What a total phony!
