A Bridge To Nowhere Part 5

McCain seems to be risking it all by suspending his campaign and calling for a delay of the debates. His poll numbers have taken a huge hit in the last two weeks and now his campaign is floundering. I think that McCain, or his campaign, think that if he can "race back to Washington and save the day" it will make him seem presidential and win him the election.

There are a lot of problems with that thinking...

1. There is no way the Democratic leadership in Congress is going to allow him to drop in like the 82nd airborne and take over.

2. He is going to take a hit in his base if he votes YES on any bailout bill.

3. He is going to have to vote YES on any bailout bill now since it has become apparent that he has intended to provide leadership on the issue and if the bill fails he will suffer the ramifications.

4. 74 percent of Americans think there should be some sort of debate and he will take a big hit for not showing up.

He has painted himself into a corner and the paint won’t be dry until after November 4th. All of his erratic behavior in the past few months has really hurt him.

As my 80 year old father said the other day... "McCain is starting to act like a lot of 72 year old men that I have known, and that ain't good for anyone that wants to be president".

A Bridge To Nowhere Part 4

George Will wrote this article:

"The queen had only one way of settling all difficulties, great or small. 'Off with his head!' she said without even looking around."
-- "Alice's Adventures in Wonderland"

Under the pressure of the financial crisis, one presidential candidate is behaving like a flustered rookie playing in a league too high. It is not Barack Obama.

Channeling his inner Queen of Hearts, John McCain furiously, and apparently without even looking around at facts, said Chris Cox, chairman of the Securities and Exchange Commission, should be decapitated. This childish reflex provoked the Wall Street Journal to editorialize that "McCain untethered" -- disconnected from knowledge and principle -- had made a "false and deeply unfair" attack on Cox that was "unpresidential" and demonstrated that McCain "doesn't understand what's happening on Wall Street any better than Barack Obama does."

This is just another example of why McCain is not right for POTUS, and if he is elected he will tear the GOP apart in a way that will take 20 years, if ever, for it to recover. McCain is NOT a maverick as he likes to claim. He is a loose cannon. When he gets caught off guard he blurts out anything that he thinks makes him sound like a leader. Stating that he was POTUS, he would fire the head of the SEC, even though the POTUS can not do that.

Then he says on “60 Minutes” that he would replace Cox with Andrew Cuomo, the Democratic attorney general of New York. Getting scared now Republicans ?

Picking a completely unqualified person to be his VP is more loose cannon behavior. This after fighting with party leader to the bitter end for Joe Lieberman. All this “unhinged” behavior should be all the warnings voters should need to get off the “straight talk express”.

This is what people can expect to see from him at any time if he is elected. How do the people that support McCain because he will select better judicial selections than Obama justify that argument after all this ??

A Bridge To Nowhere Part 3

Am I the only one that finds it amazingly hypocritical that John McCain is claiming that he is the one that will fix the problems on Wall St. ?

He is demanding more regulation and oversight of the financial markets. This coming from the man that along with the other Keating Five members blocked regulators from investigating Lincoln savings for 3 years in return for nice big campaign contributions. He has campaigned for POTUS as a “Deregulator” and “friend” of big business up until 2 weeks ago. Last Monday, in the middle of the Wall Street meltdown, he was declaring the "the fundamentals of our economy are strong".




Now he is screaming about corporate greed and corruption being the main problem. Not the deregulation that he and members of his campaign all made happen years ago.



The Washington Post wrote this recently.

A decade ago, Sen. John McCain embraced legislation to broadly deregulate the banking and insurance industries, helping to sweep aside a thicket of rules established over decades in favor of a less restricted financial marketplace that proponents said would result in greater economic growth.
...
In 2002, McCain introduced a bill to deregulate the broadband Internet market, warning that "the potential for government interference with market forces is not limited to federal regulation." Three years earlier, McCain had joined with other Republicans to push through landmark legislation sponsored by then-Sen. Phil Gramm (Tex.), who is now an economic adviser to his campaign. 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.

That bill allowed AIG to participate in the gold rush of a rapidly expanding global banking and investment market. But the legislation also helped pave the way for companies such as AIG and Lehman Brothers to become behemoths laden with bad loans and investments.

McCain's logic- It's not the fault of deregulation. The problem is greed and corruption

A Bridge To Nowhere Part 2

I am not sure what McCain actually knows about his VP pick, Sarah Palin. He seems to be trying to tell the voters that she is the most qualified person in America to be VPOTUS.

During an interview he was asked about Palin's national security qualifications. His response was is just embarrassingly incoherent.

"Energy. She knows more about energy than probably anyone else in the United States of America. She's a governor of a state where 20% of America's energy supply comes from there. And we all know that energy is a critical and vital national security issue. We've got to stop sending $700 billion of American money to countries that don't like us very much. She's very well versed on that issue."And, uh, she also happens to represent, be governor of a state that's right next to Russia. She understands Russia."

First, the notion that Palin's proximity to Russia counts as national security experience continues to be unusually stupid, even for McCain.

Second, "Energy" is not a response to the question, "What experience does she have in the field of national security?"

Maybe the next time the Republican handlers prep Palin on how to answer questions, McCain should sit in and take a few notes.

McCain/Palin: A Bridge to Nowhere

The title of this post is vague and sweeping.

Just as the GOP convention has been. I listened to Sarah Palin's whole speech this morning. Last night was only 8 minutes.

The mockery went too far. There was no "there" in her speech. Or the McCain campaign. They played the “Obama doesn’t love America, just himself” card, over and over and over. When you need to let the country know your VP pick, you dont start by critiquing Barack Obama's biography.

Sarah Palin is not a trusted voice of authority -- she's much too new. Sarah Palin lacks the standing to make this critique of Barack Obama.

All that being said, instead of enforcing the reason McCain chose you, she decided it was better make a speech better suited for a Rotary Club meeting. She gave me no reason to think she is ready to be POTUS. She gave me no reason to think she is qualified to be VPOTUS. This is what she HAD to accomplish in her first national exposure. Save the mocking for the stump. She had to sell herself as the best choice for VPOTUS out there, and she didnt.

Was it wise for her to attack the media in an era of 24/7 cable news? Most of the media is pulling for Obama and she gave them more reason to do so.

Just my $.02, but I have a feeling that she has inspired the Democratic base to work even harder for Obama. There are many many more registered Dems than Pubs, and she may have awoken a sleeping giant with her condescension.