McCain's Very Bad Day

McCain's campaign has been all over the place today - from the economy, to his criticism of morning show anchors, to whether he invented the BlackBerry and on Sarah Palin's inability to run a company. And to make matters worse, conservative pundits are turning against McCain.

The biggest flub came this morning when McCain slammed Wall Street "fat cats" even though his single biggest donor is Merrill Lynch. After denouncing the very people that help pay for his campaign, McCain suggested the government set up a commission to look into what went wrong. Barack Obama criticized McCain for "passing the buck" on the economy:

Democratic candidate Barack Obama says he will take regulatory oversight seriously as president and accuses his Republican opponent, John McCain, of wanting to "pass the buck."

McCain proposed Tuesday to create a commission to study how the economic crisis came about. McCain compared it to the Sept. 11 commission established to investigate the 2001 terrorist attacks.

Katharine Zaleski is the Senior News Editor of HuffingtonPost.com. She can be reached at [e-mail]

Comments

[LAR1969]

The photo that accompanies this article is almost as pathetic as Dukakis in a tank.

[Clever Pseudonym]

Here's a caption I found with that picture:

2 months ago: Republican presidential candidate Sen. John McCain, R-Ariz., wears a hard hat and safety glasses as he tours a facility at CONSOL Energy in South Park, Pa. Wednesday, July 9, 2008.

It does seem very unrelated. I guess they just wanted a picture with him looking distressed. They ought to be able to snap A LOT more of those in the next few months.

:o)

[LAR1969]

goglibody & clever pseudonym,

Thank you for validating my feelings. :)

[golgibody]

As soon as I saw it, I instantly thought of John Kerry in that goofy space suit. And man...he looks old. Sorry to say.

[freedomalert]

Maybe he confused the name with Zapata, who is a communist guerrilla terrorist leader and an enemy of freedom and of course USA. I am pretty sure that you "royal know it all" knew about him too well not to get confused.

Obama is always bad news, just like any communist. He always said the country is doing bad, we are bitter, we cling to guns and religions, there's nothing to be proud of, is bad to be rich, is bad to struggle for what you want. He and his wife are cry babies and he wants all Americans to have a pitty party and feel sorry for ourselves and then he the "saviour" comes and gives us all a book of welfare stamps so we can have it easy. The spreading of misery continues. This is the first time I hear people in politics making fun of someone because he is old. This is one of the countries where old people are most respected. For the first time in my entire life I hear "in America" that being rich is wrong and that middle class has to unite to bring down rich people. Where does the American dream go? I thought we were supposed to get better each time. Obama is running to run our lives and to settle for what he wants to give us. He is encouraging Americans to be irresponsible and leave their lives in his hands. No way. Vote McCain.

[samanthemofthesun]

EEEEW! Really? I find it SO interesting how not only opinions vary, but perspectives as well. I am a middle of the road moderate, a fence sitter, if you will, willing to look at both sides of the coin and try to understand what I am seeing. I don't believe in extremes, as they are unhealthy and exclusionary. I find the Obama side a bit more balance, more inclusionary. When I read stuff like this, I wonder about the extreme's in your life; how does your body feel every day? How do you feel inside your spirit, your mind? The American Dream includes EVERYONE, and frankly, not everyone has been able to live it for quite some time. I would never vote for anyone who chooses not to include everyone. Not that choice has any place there, either. So please, lighten up.

Be Kind.

[AMonkey]

Being rich is great. Tearing down the country to build your wealth is not!

You know very well what state this country is in. And you know very well that you have slandered Senator Obama and his family in your comments. You have been flagged - I'm sure your're not surprised.

The "Red" scare tactics don't work anymore. We the people are taking this country back from those who are tearing it down.

Obama Biden

[nlc1]

Are you talking about Mexican revolutionary Emiliano Zapata? He died in 1919. I guess McCain is even older than I thought. I am pretty sure that you "royal know it all" knew that the guy's been dead for nearly a century and just got confused about the difference between past and present tense.

[mephjeff]

Guys, you gotta digg this: McCain doesn't know who Spanish Prime Minister is, and thinks he's our enemy!

http://digg.com/politics/McCain_Thinks_Spanish_PM_Is_U_S_Enemy

[Anciano]

The failin of Palin is mainly in the regainlin...

[Military1]

Bank Failure Count: 2008's 11th bank fails," McCain's son was director".

Posted Sep 6th 2008 10:05AM by Peter Cohan FDIC TAKES OVER BANK:
Nevada State Bank of Las Vegas will take over the insured deposits of Silver State -- which had $2 billion in assets and $1.7 billion in deposits at the end of June. AP reports that "[Silver State's] branches will reopen Monday as offices of Nevada State Bank in Nevada and National Bank of Arizona in Arizona."

"John McCain's son, Andrew," who is also CFO of his mom's beer distributorship, "sat on the boards of Silver State Bank and of its parent, Silver State Bancorp, starting in February but resigned in July citing 'personal reasons.' Andrew McCain also was a member of the bank's audit committee, responsible for oversight of the company's accounting," according to AP.

Taxpayers got off relatively cheaply bailing out Andrew's former colleagues.
The failure -- which was caused by "poor-quality loans primarily related to real estate development" -- will cost the FDIC deposit insurance fund between "$450 million [and] $550 million.

" Andrew' is following in his father's footsteps.

"John McCain"protected Charles Keating "from government regulators because he had arranged a real estate deal for his second wife, Cindy. The failure of" Keating's S&L cost taxpayers $3.4 billion." (JOHN McCAIN COST TAXPAYERS $3.4 BILLION IN SAVING HIS OLD BUDDY KEATING"

"Congratulations to Andrew McCain for bailing out"of Silver Lake before the FDIC took it over

[ShanniC]

Okay, so he wants to create a commission to find out what happened instead of actually FIXING it?! How many more days til Nov 4?

[golgibody]

Yeah, no kidding. Hmmm..I wonder what could have cause this?? DUH.
The sh*t is totally hitting the fan on their watch. The other team deserves a chance now.

[ensure]

Barack Obama Edges Ahead In The National Polls: http://www.sefermpost.com/sefermpost/2008/09/barack-obama-ed.html

[Thomas54]

So McCain wants to set up a commission to study why this happened??! Great , more tax money thrown away. There have been economists that have predicted this two years ago, and why. They knew where we were headed. Doesnt McCain read at all?? The reasons for this collapse, can be explained in two paragraphs , and has been,.. repeatedly. We need action and oversite, NOT another commission. If this is how McCain wants to handle this, we CANNOT let his man get in office!

[thedr9wningman]

Don't you understand? It is better [sarcasm] to spend a lot of money to see what has gone wrong rather than a little bit of preventative money to keep things from going wrong[/sarc]. That seems to be the way that the Right likes to do it. They'd rather prove that their market economics aren't working and then spend taxpayer money on bailouts. Sure, we can't afford education, healthcare, etc., but rich people can already afford that. The government's role is to step in and shield shareholders from investing in bad debt, don'tcha know?

It boggles the mind.

We need oversight, definitely, but usually it is underfunded, underresourced, and is actually a waste of taxpayer dollars. We need a little more oversight with people who are qualified to do it. Deregulation hasn't worked... ask those 'grannies' in California during the Enron debacle.

[alexis d]

Exactly. It's not complicated, John- here's what happened:

1. You and the Repugnicans flushed the banking regulations down the toilet.
2. Banks & thrifts made bizillions of dollars of loans they knew perfectly well wouldn't be paid back; any idiot could see it coming. But they didn't care, because they knew they could sock away the fees and make off with the silver before the whole thing collapsed, at which point the (now broke) taxpayers would hold the bag for them.

[carolealana]

GREAT POST! Hope Average Voter don't over complicate this thing.
Ya know, it really is'nt rocket science. We're going down the $hitter, that flushing noise is the sound of the $1 Trillion LOST to all of us WHINERS today on "Black Monday-Wednesday", while Johnny fumbles with his cue cards trying to say "American Workers" and as the workers at the car factory up in Michigan start chanting "OBAMA - 08 - OBAMA - 08", he walks out with a very serious "moose in the headlights" look himself.
On top of this blood bath, the mortgage meltdown, unemployment spiraling to the stratosphere, gas over $4 gallon, 4600 DEAD in Iraq & about to go at it again thanks to more STUPID Bush policies that will nullify the Sunni Awakening, $10 Billion/month down another toilet in Iraq, Afghanistan-a "can't kill our way to a solution" disaster forming/still. What else? John wants war with Iran -- +100 yrs in Iraq, & Sarah - never met an animal I didn't want to mount-Palin wanting to go to war with Russia or maybe starting a cold war up again, or -- I don't know, why don't we just nuke everybody and that way Jesus will call all us good Christians up to heaven in the Rapture and get it over with already!!???? Ya Think! Ufda!!!!! Give Me a Break! AMERICA - WAKE TF UP AND VOTE FOR OBAMA-BIDEN, YOUR LIVES DEPEND ON IT!

[pavroviandog]

And here's what Palin will announce: prosperity is around the bridge and there will be a moose in every pot, and some chocolate moose for dessert.

[Phil123]

In fact McCain predicted this in 2005, and co-sponsored a bill to try to prevent it. Obama - and most Democrats - voted against it. The bill was defeated. In 2006, McCain addressed the Senate and predicted the implosion of Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac. Congress did nothing. It seems that many of them were receiving big lobby money from these funds. In fact, the second biggest recipient was Barack Obama.

[paulbythebay]

The events of the past week illustrate the most basic difference between failed Bush/McCain economics and those of the Democratic Party: Imagine how bad off we would be if the Republicans had stayed in power in 06 and rammed through the privatization of Social Security? The whole idea was to put the growth and management of Social Security funds in the wise hands of professional managers--like Bear Stearns, Merrill Lynch, Lehman Bros and the others that are collapsing. They would have placed those Social Security funds in such wise and conservative investments as bundled mortgage-backed securities. Even that meager lifeline for seniors would have been destroyed in the stampede for greed in which our unregulated investment houses focused on their own short-term financial killing even if it was killing our nation financially. Deregulation opens the door to those who need to be regulated to lie, cheat and steal to get rich. They are out there, they are Republicans, and we have seen it with Enron, Worldcom, Tyco, oil futures, AIG and now this. The philosophy of pure unregulated capitalism works as well as that of utopian Communism in a perfect vacuum, but the problem is that our citizens are not perfect, and the only vacuum is between the ears of McCain and Palin and their ilk.

[ThomHartmannFan]

" McCain proposed Tuesday to create a commission to study how the economic crisis came about. "

Maybe the 25+ years of Reganesque deregulation of the economy???? Unregulated capitalism would kill itself, as evidenced this week....

[omahkohkiaayo]

Has anyone seen the MCaine ads featuring "The Mavericks"? On that ad, it makes the statement that Palin actually "stopped the bridge to nowhere." This is as bold and easily refutable a lie as any others and should be exposed as such resolutely.

[Feri]

What do you mean, Iraqis "should pay for their own war"? THEIR war? Are we forgetting that we attacked and invaded them on false pretenses, destroyed their infrastructure, killed, wounded, and displaced hundreds of thousands? This sounds like Bush wondering why they "lack appreciation." They had done nothing to us, and in fact were the victims of Saddam Hussein.

I don't think we should be asking them to bail out our big financial institutions. Fraud created this collapse, as fraud created that war. We should be demanding accountability ,where it belongs.

[paulbythebay]

The notion of it being "their war" is as absurd as Bush's racist rant that it is better to fight "them" "over there" than here. Bush sees that they are Arabs, so doesn't care whether we kill innocent people in their own land, because it is better that they die for our policy issues than Americans? It is as if the fact that Iraqis are part of the Muslim world makes it better to impose "our" war on terror on them in their own land rather than dealing with the people who are responsible for 9/11. It demonstrates a profound racist idiocy and the absence of respect for their lives and culture--a culture that predated our own by thousands of years.

[sharonh]

War for profit is not a "policy issue".

[burbz]

NEW SARAH PALIN HIP HOP ANTHEM!!

DOWNLOAD NOW:

"SARAH PALIN (I WANNA LAY PIPE)"
BY JOHN BROWN
http://www.zshare.net/audio/1887629822a542de/

[LAThinker]

Here is some more funny stuff

http://www.ucubd.com/Index.aspx?id=681&cid=3140

http://www.ucubd.com/Index.aspx?id=688&cid=3140

[viking612]

Barack Obama Donors:
Goldman Sachs $691,930
University of California $611,207
Citigroup Inc $448,599
JPMorgan Chase & Co $442,919
Harvard University $435,769

http://www.opensecrets.org/pres08/contriball.php?cycle=2008

[Stew118]

at $2,300 clips mind you- the ceo of goldman is not writing obama a check for 700k. Employees of the aformentioned groups have contributed to the campaign in relatively small increments.

John McCain's campaign architects have collected over $919,000,000 in fees for their respective lobbying firms. Now that is peddling influence.

[viking612]

Three executives from Goldman Sachs Group Inc. have raised at least half a million dollars for Obama. He also received at least $1.5 million collected by three senior executives at Lehman Brothers. Democratic candidates have accepted nearly $37 million from securities and investment firms in the current election, and Republicans have accepted nearly $29 million.

The industry's contributions to all federal candidates and political parties: $101 million so far in this two-year election cycle.

Bottom line: It goes both ways.

[tandrmcdonald]

viking612;
So how about a run-up of King John's gold key donors? It might be a good idea if you put some thought into the kind of stuff you're posting; someone is liable to throw your basic premise back in your face. Who donated to McCain and how much?
Huh, huh, whadjasay?

[WhenElephantsFly]

Comments welcome: http://whenelephantsfly.blogspot.com

McCain doesn't need anyone else to demonstrate his lack of integrity -- he does a good job of that himself: http://hk.youtube.com/watch?v=2arf1Fvuu5Y

[lobear00]

Hey" Mccain, its hard to tell the "Truth" when your "Conscious" is calling you a "Liar. You look in the mirror, and your reflection is calling you a "Liar", and a "Fraud.