I’m not normally one to encourage John McCain to make a change that would help his campaign, as I’ve made it pretty clear to regular readers here that I lean left, but he desperately needs to stop using the phrase “my friends”. It comes out of his mouth in just about every other sentence during his stump speeches and, frankly, I shudder every time he says it. During last night’s debate, for example, McCain uttered the words “my friends” nineteen times. He said “my friends” more than he mentioned the middle class, health care, energy, deficit, debt, and change — combined. I know he isn’t going to read my humble and insignificant blog, but someone needs to get across to him, for the sake of his dwindling political career, that referring to his audience as “my friends” makes him come across as sleazy. It is the kind of phrase you expect to hear at a used car dealership, flea market, or pawn shop, where someone is trying to sell you something whose value is clearly less than the price they’re pushing. The argument can be made that what the presidential candidates are doing is selling themselves to the American people, but any good salesman knows that you don’t get happy repeat customers with sleazy tactics. That said, for the sake of his stump speech and so that I can stop cringing whenever I watch the news, someone close to him needs to tell John McCain to stop saying “my friends”. In fact, I have typed the words “my friends” fewer times in this post about John McCain excessively using the term “my friends” half as many times than he said “my friends” in last night’s debate.
He’s visibly full of shit when he refers to voters as his friends, so do you want to know who his friends really are? Here’s the answer:
Although the registration information is hidden, if you swing by the domain VoteForTheMILF.com (Creation Date: 30-aug-2008) you will notice that without passing go and without collecting two hundred dollars, you will be instantly redirected to JohnMcCain.com. If you’ve never been before (or if you cleared your cookies) it will first direct you to Palin’s intro video.
Sure, this could just be some crazy supporter’s idea, so here’s the proof:
The URL was registered within about two days of McCain’s decision to select Palin.
The dot net and dot org counterparts also redirect to the McCain site.
The URL is held by the same registrar as JohnMcCain.com.
A simple trace route shows that voteforthemilf.com/net/org and johnmccain.com are hosted on the same IP: 64.203.107.149
This campaign never ceases to amaze me with its underhanded political tactics.
To be fair to McCain, if I had that many homes worth that much money, I wouldn’t be able to comprehend what is going on in today’s housing market either.
If you’ve ever heard John McCain talk about his time in a POW camp in Vietnam, or read his 1999 book, Faith of My Fathers, you’re likely aware of a story in which McCain tells of being interrogated and in lieu of naming his actual squadron mates he lists the defensive line of the Green Bay Packers at the time. Not just any Packer team, but the team that won the first Super Bowl. To be precise, here’s what he writes in the book:
Once my condition had stabilized, my interrogators resumed their work. Demands for military information were accompanied by threats to terminate my medical treatment if I did not cooperate. Eventually, I gave them my ship’s name and squadron number, and confirmed that my target had been the power plant. Pressed for more useful information, I gave the names of the Green Bay Packers offensive line, and said they were members of my squadron. When asked to identify future targets, I simply recited the names of a number of North Vietnamese cities that had already been bombed.
This is a story that he not only wrote about in his book, but has told it publicly several times and was even documented in a 2005 movie of the same name. This story has time and time again been a mainstay of McCain’s biography, but has been told by him numerous times to support his opposition to torture, noting that he gave false information under pressure.
McCain, however, must have hoped that no one would catch him playing the game of underhanded politics when, while campaigning in Pittsburgh on the 9th of this month, a local TV reporter asked him what he first thinks of in relation to Pittsburgh. His response? “The Steelers really made a huge impression on me, particularly in my early years.” He then continued blowing hot air out his ass saying, “When I was first interrogated and really had to give some information because of the physical pressures that were on me, I named the starting lineup - defensive line - of the Pittsburgh Steelers as my squadron-mates!”
So that’s how you’re going to play it, McCain? Stabbing your fond history with the Packers in the back? Next time you’re in Wisconsin, I hope one of our local reporters has the chutzpah to throw this back in your face and watch you flop around for an answer.
Most of the following McCain ad is garbage that you can ignore, but watch extremely closely at about the 25 second mark and try to identify the shirt that the woman shaking John McCain’s hand is wearing.
Did you catch it? If you did, you’re probably chuckling to yourself right now if not actually laughing out loud. If you didn’t, she’s wearing an Obama campaign shirt. Someone clearly wasn’t paying close enough attention when they put that commercial together. If this is the level of effort they are putting in to their campaign ads, I can’t wait to see what else we have to look forward to.
Not too long ago, John McCain proposed a gas tax “holiday”. Essentially, the 18¢ federal gas tax will be lifted for a period of time to, in theory, save Americans money. The only problem with this is that most economists don’t think this will work. Decreased price will increase demand, thus raising the price of gas. That’s how capitalism works. Then, once the gas tax is over, it will end up higher than when it started. On top of that, if it does save the average American any money, it will only be about $25. Not much. So this isn’t really the best idea, but that’s what can be expected when it comes to Republicans and taxes.
What makes this all interesting is that now Hillary is following suit (insert pantsuit joke here). She has already taken campaign strategies straight out of the republican playbook, so why not borrow McCain’s tax proposals? I am failing to see how exactly she is the “more electable candidate”, as her supporters would like me to think, if she just copies what the Republican candidate proposes. What baffles me even more than her recent republican tendencies, is that fact that the media is acting as if she came up with it. The very second she opened her mouth in favor of McCain’s gas tax suspension, mainstream media somehow developed selective amnesia about who had actually proposed it and declared it Hillary’s Gas Tax Holiday.
Thankfully, Barack Obama has the chutzpah call a gas tax holiday exactly what it is, a “classic Washington gimmick”. Plenty of his opposition will come back and say he voted for a suspended gas tax in Illinois when he was a state senator. What’s his response to this? “I voted for it. Then six months later we took a look and consumers had not benefited at all. I learned from a mistake.” A politician who is willing to admit his mistakes and subsequently demonstrate he has learned from them by taking the risky step of opposing a tax cut (no matter how fool heartedly it may be) is exactly what this country needs in our next President.
A tie or a loss for Hillary Clinton in Pennsylvania this past Tuesday would have more or less forced her out of the race, allowing Barack Obama to finally mount a national campaign, with the support of the DNC and other pro-Democratic groups, against John McCain and the Republican Party. Alas, this did not happen. Everyone (even the media!) knows that Barack Obama is going to walk out of the convention with his name on the ticket. He has won more states, he has more of the popular vote, he is leading her in pledged delegates, and none of the remaining primaries are going to change that. By winning Pennsylvania with a 10 point lead, Clinton has gotten the ego boost that she so desperately needed to convince herself and her supporters that it is worthwhile to stay in the race through the convention. No one quite knows what this will mean, as there hasn’t been a brokered democratic convention since the 50s, so this should be interesting.
I forsee an Obama/Clinton ticket to reunite an increasingly divided party and defeat McCain.
I’m not normally one to encourage John McCain to make a change that would help his campaign, as I’ve made it pretty clear to regular readers here that I lean left, but he desperately needs to stop using the phrase “my friends”. It comes out of his mouth in just about every other sentence during his stump speeches and, frankly, I shudder every time he says it. During last night’s debate, for example, McCain uttered the words “my friends” nineteen times. He said “my friends” more than he mentioned the middle class, health care, energy, deficit, debt, and change — combined. I know he isn’t going to read my humble and insignificant blog, but someone needs to get across to him, for the sake of his dwindling political career, that referring to his audience as “my friends” makes him come across as sleazy. It is the kind of phrase you expect to hear at a used car dealership, flea market, or pawn shop, where someone is trying to sell you something whose value is clearly less than the price they’re pushing. The argument can be made that what the presidential candidates are doing is selling themselves to the American people, but any good salesman knows that you don’t get happy repeat customers with sleazy tactics. That said, for the sake of his stump speech and so that I can stop cringing whenever I watch the news, someone close to him needs to tell John McCain to stop saying “my friends”. In fact, I have typed the words “my friends” fewer times in this post about John McCain excessively using the term “my friends” half as many times than he said “my friends” in last night’s debate.
, you’re likely aware of a story in which McCain tells of being interrogated and in lieu of naming his actual squadron mates he lists the defensive line of the Green Bay Packers at the time. Not just any Packer team, but the team that won the first Super Bowl. To be precise, here’s what he writes in the book:
