Red State Renegade

I am without words right now…

On the Subprime Crisis, less than 6 months ago:

McCain, March 25 2008

While I was traveling overseas, our financial markets, experienced another…unfortunately…another round of upheaval…

Our financial market approach should include encouraging increased capital in financial institutions by removing regulatory accounting, and tax impediments to raising capital

On Health Care, this month!:

McCain, September 2008:

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

These people make me laugh and make me puke at the same time!

Today’s McCain campaign appearance song was the theme from Top Gun, “Danger Zone.” (Did you know that McCain was a fighter pilot/Pow?). This is the movie in which Tom Cruise starred as ‘Maverick.’ What a coincidence!

There are several ironies around this approach:

First off, McCain never flew fighter planes and never claimed to.

Second, The LA times is reporting this week that the Naval Aviation Safety Center deemed him a pilot of ‘mishaps.’

This report pretty much shows up some untruths to his stories as well. For example, John McCain wrote, in ‘Faith of Our Fathers’:

I crashed a plane in Corpus Christi Bay one Saturday morning. The engine quit while I was practicing landings…I took a few painkillers and hit the sack to rest my aching back for a few hours….I was out carousing, injured back and all, later that evening.

But the Washington Post accessed the actual Navy reports:

The official Navy report into the Corpus Christi accident on March 12, 1960, concludes that the AD-6 Skyraider trainer crashed because McCain failed to “maintain an airspeed above the stall speed.” It attributed the accident to “the preoccupation of the pilot coupled with a power setting too low to maintain level flight.” The single-engine prop plane sank to the bottom of Corpus Christi Bay. McCain was rescued by a helicopter after swimming to the surface.

The accident report excluded a series of other possible factors, including engine failure and disorientation of the pilot due to vertigo. It recorded pilot error as “the sole contributing factor” to the accident.

But the number one reason is this: The pilot who the whole Tom Cruise “Maverick’ character was modeled on, California Rep. Randy ‘Duke’ Cunningham (R), is now serving the longest sentence of any member of congress in history (eight-year, four-month sentence for conspiracy, tax evasion & bribery). This man was no hero - he sold his soul to the defense industry, steering contracts worth millions to his co-conspirators. He even bought a $2.5 million mansion while he was making $160,000 a year!

Upon his sentencing, he groveled, literally in tears (watch the video):

The truth is I broke the law, concealed my conduct and disgraced my office…I know I will forfeit my reputation, my worldly possessions — most importantly the trust of my friends and family.

Quotes from Palin at the Palen-Biden debate:

“And I’ve joined this team that is a team of mavericks with John McCain”:

“I think that’s why we need to send the maverick from the Senate and put him in the White House”:

“That’s what John McCain has been known for in all these years. He has been the maverick”:

“What do you expect? A team of mavericks, of course we’re not going to agree on 100 percent of everything”:

“They are looking for change. And John McCain has been the consummate maverick in the Senate over all these years”:

“John McCain’s maverick position that he’s in, that’s really prompt up to and indicated by the supporters that he has” (from the transcript, really!):

Bush Last week:
“Our capital markets are flexible and resilient and can deal with these adjustments”

Bush Today:
“Our entire economy is in danger…Without immediate action by Congress, America can slip into a major panic”

McCain Last week:
“I believe, still, the fundamentals of our economy are strong”

McCain today:
“The whole future of the American economy is in danger…If we do not act, credit will dry up with grave consequences for workers and businesses across the American economy”

Need I say more?

This speaks for itself…but the contrast between the last two administrations is amazing:

Elizabeth Drew, ex McCain admirer and author of a positive biography, “Citizen McCain” (Simon & Schuster, 2002, paperback 2008.) has now given up on him, and written an editorial questioning his integrity. Excerpts:

…Other once-hailed McCain efforts – his cultivation of the press (“my base”) and even his fight for campaign finance reform (launched in the wake of his embarrassment over the Keating Five scandal) now seem to have been simply maneuvers. The “Straight Talk Express” – a brilliant p.r. stroke in 2000 – has now been shut down.

…Other aspects of McCain, including his temperament, began to trouble me. He seemed disturbingly bellicose. He gave the Iraq war unflagging support no matter the facts. He still talks about “winning” the war, though George W. Bush gave that up some time ago. As the war became increasingly unpopular, he employed the useful technique of blaming its execution rather than recognizing the misconceptions that had led him to be one of the most enthusiastic champions of the war in the first place.

Similarly, in making a big issue of having backed the surge (and simplifying the reasons for its apparent success), he preempts debate on the very idea of the war. He has talked (and sung) loosely about attacking Iran. More recently, he oversimplified this summer’s events in Georgia and made intemperate remarks about Russia, about which he’s been more belligerent than the administration for some time. (He has his own set of neocons.)

…By then I had already concluded that that there was a disturbingly erratic side of McCain’s nature. There’s a certain lack of seriousness in him. And he does not appear to be a reflective man, or very interested in domestic issues. One cannot imagine him ruminating late into the night about, say, how to educate and train Americans for the new global and technological challenges.

…Now he’s back to declaring himself a maverick, but it’s not clear what that means. If he gains the presidency, is he going to rebel against the base he’s now depending on to get him elected? (Hence his selection of running mate Sarah Palin.) Campaigns matter. If he means “shaking up the system” (which is not the same thing), opposing earmarks doesn’t cut it.

McCain’s recent conduct of his campaign – his willingness to lie repeatedly (including in his acceptance speech) and to play Russian roulette with the vice-presidency, in order to fulfill his long-held ambition – has reinforced my earlier, and growing, sense that John McCain is not a principled man.
In fact, it’s not clear who he is.

“We deserve reimbursement”

The above are actual quotes from Gabriel Nathan Shwartz, a 29 year old Republican delegate from their convention in Minneapolis last month. “Less taxes and more war” he said to the news cameras. He said the U.S. should “bomb the hell” out of Iran because the country threatens Israel.

Poor Gabriel tasted his own medicine at the convention when an innocent one-night-stand went sour. After meeting a woman in his hotel bar, the two went upstairs to his room, where she told him to get undressed and she made drinks. That was his last recollection.

When he awoke, she was gone, along with over $120,000 in money, jewelry and other belongings.

I hope she donates some of that to Obama!

Last night at the Republican National Convention, John McCain used the word “fight” more than 40 times in his speech.

In the 16 years that we have served together in the Senate, I have seen John McCain fight.

I have seen him fight against raising the federal minimum wage 14 times.

I have seen him fight against making sure that women earn equal pay for equal work.

I have seen him fight against a women’s right to choose so consistently that he received a zero percent vote rating from pro-choice organizations.

I have seen him fight against helping families gain access to birth control.

I have seen him fight against Social Security, even going so far as to call its current funding system “an absolute disgrace.”

And I saw him fight against the new GI Bill of Rights until it became politically untenable for him to do so.

John McCain voted with President Bush 95 percent of the time in 2007 and 100 percent of the time in 2008 — that’s no maverick.

We do have two real fighters for change in this election — their names are Barack Obama and Joe Biden.

In a very-relevant-to the-issues exclusive interview, Good Morning America talked to four women whose major claim to fame seems to be that they have worked out with Sarah Palin.

They discussed their bonding, their workouts (NOT HOT) and their post-workout trips for chocolate and soda, as well as their (mostly undecided) voting plans, in an interview largely representative of all that is wrong with our media today.

“We’re a diverse bunch” Said one of the women. But this photo shows six of the whitest women on the planet:

If they were any whiter, they’d make the Northern lights disappear…

UPDATE: She doesn’t like cats!

That says a lot about her:

When asked to reveal something about Palin that no one knows, one woman offered, “She doesn’t care for cats very much,” and another chimed in, “Oh, yes, she’s afraid of my cat.”