Arizona Senator John McCain (official)

[fourteenandoh]

Originally Posted by 'BusNative

Also, this is hilarious:

Bloomberg.com: Politics

same thing with obama in berlin. those numbers were way out of whack.

['BusNative]

Originally Posted by fourteenandoh

same thing with obama in berlin. those numbers were way out of whack.

don't tell the McCain campaign that - the whole Obama as an international superstar thing would have less bite

[daddyphatsacs]

I get the feeling that McCain has crapped out. He overplayed his hand, it's going to bite him in the ass. The new car smell has worn out on the Palin pick, now the McCain camp is back to being "Washington as normal". I wouldn't be surprised to see Obama open up a big lead going into October.

[DGADBTWSOM]

Originally Posted by daddyphatsacs

I get the feeling that McCain has crapped out. He overplayed his hand, it's going to bite him in the ass. The new car smell has worn out on the Palin pick, now the McCain camp is back to being "Washington as normal". I wouldn't be surprised to see Obama open up a big lead going into October.

I would agree except for the that is the most dreaded word in Presidential politics "October".

[Gatorubet]

Mika v. McCain | The Palmetto Scoop

McCain is clearly on the defensive here. If you study body language, his blinking like a subterranean bat being hit with a mag light means nothing - unless you believe the data that you blink rapidly when you are lying...but I'm sure that McCain did not mean that the fundamentals of the economy are sound, and that he was talking about the American worker - even though he has been saying the former for months before the market tanked, and was banging the deregulation drum until recently.

But Mac has to be telling the truth, as he is a Maverick and was captured by the North Vietnamese.

Nice touch at the end, basically telling Mika to get off his lawn.

[Gatorubet]

Political Radar: McCain Flub? Republican Says He'd Fire SEC Chair as President

The regulators were asleep, my friends," McCain said. "The chairman of
the SEC serves at the appointment of the president. And in my view has
betrayed the public trust. If I were president today, I would fire him."

But while the president nominates and the Senate confirms the SEC chair,
a commissioner of an independent regulatory commission cannot be removed by the president.

To be fair, Mac said he is not much on ecomomics...

[Southpaw Stone]

Originally Posted by Gatorubet

Political Radar: McCain Flub? Republican Says He'd Fire SEC Chair as President



To be fair, Mac said he is not much on ecomomics...

maybe McCain can get a tele-tubby to remind him of basic facts like Russia is bad and USA = 50 states.

[Gatorubet]

QUESTION: Senator, finally, let's talk about Spain. If you're elected president,
would you be willing to invite President Jose Luiz Rodriguez Zapatero to the White House to meet with you?

MCCAIN: I would be willing meet, uh, with those leaders who our friends [sic] and
want to work with us in a cooperative fashion, and by the way, President Calderon
of Mexico is fighting a very very tough fight against the drug cartels. I'm glad we are
now working in cooperation with the Mexican government on the Merida plan. I intend
to move forward with relations, and invite as many of them as I can, those leaders,
to the White House.

QUESTION: Would that invitation be extended to the Zapatero government, to the president itself?

MCCAIN: I don't, you know, honestly I have to look at relations and the situations
and the priorities, but I can assure you I will establish closer relations with our friends
and I will stand up to those who want to do harm to the United States of America.

QUESTION: So you have to wait and see if he's willing to meet with you, or you'll
be able to do it in the White House?

MCCAIN: Well again I don't, all I can tell you is that I have a clear record of working
with leaders in the hemisphere that are friends with us, and standing up to those
who are not, and that's judged on the basis of the importance of our relationship
with Latin America, and the entire region.

QUESTION: Okay... what about Europe I'm talking about the President of Spain?

MCCAIN: What about me what?

QUESTION: Okay... are you willing to meet with him if you are elected president?

MCCAIN: I am willing to meet with any leader who is dedicated to the same principles
and philosophy that we are for human rights, democracy and freedom, and I will
stand up to those that do not.


Spain!! El Nuevo Axis de Evil!!

[sandgk]

Nobody expects the Spanish Inquisition!!

['BusNative]

Originally Posted by Southpaw Stone

maybe McCain can get a tele-tubby to remind him of basic facts like Russia is bad and USA = 50 states.

[censored]ing a, the teleprompter thing again? You hang on to a dead issue like eke.... waaaaait a minute

[kinch]

Originally Posted by Gatorubet

MCCAIN: Well again I don't, all I can tell you is that I have a clear record of working
with leaders in the hemisphere that are friends with us, and standing up to those
who are not, and that's judged on the basis of the importance of our relationship
with Latin America, and the entire region.

QUESTION: Okay... what about Europe I'm talking about the President of Spain?

MCCAIN: What about me what?

(I only quoted the portion of McCain's response, in full above, that clearly shows he thought he was talking about a guy in Central America. LOL)

It gets better. He's done some damage control. The Washington Post reports on an e-mail from McCain's foreign policy adviser "clarifying" the situation.

McCain foreign policy adviser Randy Sheunemann said McCain's answer was intentional. . .

In this week's interview, Senator McCain did not rule in or rule out a White House meeting with President Zapatero, a NATO ally," he said in an e-mail. "If elected, he will meet with a wide range of allies in a wide variety of venues but is not going to spell out scheduling and meeting location specifics in advance. He also is not going to make reckless promises to meet America's adversaries. It's called keeping your options open, unlike Senator Obama, who has publicly committed to meeting some of the world's worst dictators unconditionally in his first year in office.

Okay, he's not going to meet with enemies like Obama will! Like Spain????

Well, at least Senator McCain will apparently meet with "President Zapatero." I'm glad that's cleared up.

If only Spain had a president, seeing as Spain is a parliamentary monarchy. . .

Oh well. Maybe McCain's group will clarify their clarification soon. . .

[sandgk]

McCain - the new education President?

[CookyPuss]

McCain on banking and health - Paul Krugman - Op-Ed Columnist - New York Times Blog

OK, a correspondent directs me to John McCain's article, Better Health Care at Lower Cost for Every American, in the Sept./Oct. issue of Contingencies, the magazine of the American Academy of Actuaries. You might want to be seated before reading this.
Here's what McCain has to say about the wonders of market-based health reform:

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.

So McCain, who now poses as the scourge of Wall Street, was praising financial deregulation like 10 seconds ago -- and promising that if we marketize health care, it will perform as well as the financial industry!

Good plan John, good plan.

[CookyPuss]

McCain camp criticism rife with errors - Ben Smith - Politico.com

Sen. John McCain's top campaign aides convened a conference call today to complain of being called "liars." They pressed the media to scrutinize specific elements of Sen. Barack Obama's record.

But the call was so rife with simple, often inexplicable misstatements of fact that it may have had the opposite effect: to deepen the perception, dangerous to McCain, that he and his aides have little regard for factual accuracy.

The errors in McCain strategist Steve Schmidt's charges against Obama and Sen. Joe Biden were particularly notable because they seemed unnecessary. Schmidt repeatedly gilded the lily: He exaggerated the Biden family's already problematic ties to the credit card industry; Obama's embarrassing relationship with a 1960s radical; and an Obama supporter's over-the-top attack on Sarah Palin when -- in each case -- the truth would have been damaging enough.

"Any time the Obama campaign is criticized at any level, the critics are immediately derided as liars," Schmidt told reporters.

But as he went on to list a series of stories he thought reporters should be writing about Obama and Biden, in almost every instance he got the details wrong.

Brilliant, the McCain campaign responds to being "derided as liars" by umm... lying?

[CookyPuss]

George Will is quite worried about McCain's temperment...

washingtonpost.com

Conservatives who insist that electing McCain is crucial usually start, and increasingly end, by saying he would make excellent judicial selections. But the more one sees of his impulsive, intensely personal reactions to people and events, the less confidence one has that he would select judges by calm reflection and clear principles, having neither patience nor aptitude for either.

It is arguable that, because of his inexperience, Obama is not ready for the presidency. It is arguable that McCain, because of his boiling moralism and bottomless reservoir of certitudes, is not suited to the presidency. Unreadiness can be corrected, although perhaps at great cost, by experience. Can a dismaying temperament be fixed?