McCain Claims Surrogate Meg Whitman 'Founded' eBay; Actual Founder Is Obama Supporter Pierre Omidyar

John McCain continued his string of gaffes this morning by claiming that Meg Whitman, a national co-chair for his campaign and potential pick for Treasury Secretary, had "founded" eBay with five employees.

In fact, Whitman joined eBay as CEO in 1998, three years after it was founded by Pierre Omidyar, a Barack Obama supporter.

Omidyar endorsed Obama on his blog in May:

"Barack Obama is showing a mirror to America, and despite the bad stuff we see in our reflection, we see that we are fundamentally good and strong and proud, and we can overcome our challenges by working together, across all sorts of lines, be they partisan, racial, cultural, religious, or whatever.

That's something unique about Barack Obama's America -- our America -- and that's the America I want to live in. "

Whitman has been lauded for turning the then-30 employee eBay into a multi-billion dollar auction site during her ten years as CEO. She now sits on its board. Recently eBay took drastic measures to spur growth by firing ten percent of its workforce. Days later, McCain suggested Whitman as a potential pick for Treasury Secretary.

Comments

[thegreatgiginthesky]

Like the Obama ad said,

Don't know much about the economy.....

[4wehttam]

Don't know about anything apparently.....can't pick a VP, can't pick honest surrogates, can't decide whether he supports Bush or not, can't run a steady, organized campaign let alone running a country.

[idileru21]

you are right.

[LiberTLover]

Well put!

[mrJJ]

Jim Cramer (Of Mad Money): Obama is a recession. McCain is a depression!

What will New York look like a year from now? The answer: bad and probably worse, and perhaps downright catastrophic. Three degrees of awful. The first step was passing the bank-bailout legislation. Now that it’s done—and if it didn’t get done we would have been looking at a guaranteed economic collapse—the critical issue will be presidential leadership. And while any president will be an improvement over the current one, there is a growing belief on Wall Street that Barack Obama has the capacity to lead us out of this wilderness while John McCain does not. I’ll go a step further: Obama is a recession. McCain is a depression.
snip
. For all his talk of being a maverick, McCain looks an awful lot like President Bush on the credit crisis: He doesn’t seem to understand Wall Street or Main Street, he is dogmatically anti-regulation, and his economic team is a joke. Carly Fiorina almost destroyed the onetime best technology company in America, Hewlett-Packard, and Meg Whitman took eBay, the best dot-com player, and turned it into a mediocre franchise that has no growth. Both are perceived by Wall Street to be also-rans who are on the team because they have nothing else to do.continued
http://nymag.com/news/businessfinance/bottomline/51007

Every Republican & GOP McBush candidate on the down ticket during this election cycle must be voted down or out of office.

[mmboucher]

As far as Sarah selling the jet on e-bay, it was the policy of Alaska to sell surplus on e-bay before she was governer!

[kody1529]

She didn't sell it on the e-bay

[Yve72]

I think mmboucher's point was Palin's false claim to be a "Maverick" by using Ebay when in fact it was standard policy.

[Bruupo]

And she sold it for a loss,

and then she started using a state police plane to jet around the state

[JohnPone]

McCain knows alot about nothing.

[d45]

Wow... This and CISCO paid 35% in taxes! (zero) He can't even get his own talking points right. It's sad to think he and Palin could be in charge.

[jsarets]

Just as it doesn't matter that Ahmadinejad doesn't control Iranian foreign policy, it's doesn't matter that Meg Whitman isn't the founder of eBay. In both cases, what's really important is that the average American believes these things to be true.

It also doesn't matter that the videos seared into our minds of jetliners hitting the WTC are obviously, indisputably, and embarrassingly fake. You don't think we know cut-rate CGI when we see it? We are what we are because of what we choose to believe -- or what we are encouraged to believe.

[OnceYouGoBarack]

Another mad tin-foil hatter. 9/11 was a terrorist attack by Al-Qaeda. Please don't tar Obama supporters with the loony conspiracy theory crowd.

[me again]

Whitman took an entepreunerial company which reacted to it's customers needs to a heavily staffed conglomerate which lost track of their customers needs. Her last "fixes" there have resulted in their current drop in sales and many lawsuits among their customers.

[TheNoBullExpress]

John McCain has the worst judgement of anyone in current government

Meg Whitman, an online auctioneer, as Treasury Secretary?
John McCain, not Bin Laden, is the greatest a threat to America

[DosaHut]

In any regular job, someone like McCain or Palin would be fired for lack of work ethic, lack of education, making mistakes, and racial harrassment.

In the GOP, they get promotions.

[Bademus]

McCain appeared this morning to give his economic statement with a line up of those he wishes he had choosen for VP.

[Bmantra]

McCain wouldn't know e-bay if jumped up and bit his wrinkly backside!

[wmholt]

Right! I'm sure he has never seen it, but he surely is smitten with it. It might have something to do with Meg's contributions to the McCain campaign.

[DosaHut]

Does McCain really know what eBay IS?
He doesn't know how to use the internet, and barely uses e-mail, admittedly.

[jorge4u]

Speaking of liars and useless people, where is Carly? She hasn't been seen in a while.

[KOisGod]

Did Meg sell that Alaska Jet for sarahcuda on Ebay? I hear she personally typed in the info

[DCCommuter]

What about Carly Fiorina? Oh yeah, she said McCain couldn't run a corporation.

[KOisGod]

Johnny boy thinks Ebay is a TV show with babes in bikini's running around on the beach.

[mjb5406]

That would be eBaywatch, which keeps track of eBay auctions. It's hosted by Pamela Anderson.

[KOisGod]

I think we have an new reality show in the works.

GOP suicide watch - directly from McMansions all over the USA

[cordyc]

Would like to hear what Meg's take is on how to fix the economy. Oops, I forgot, Republicans do not divulge their policies. How silly of me.

I think Meg did a good job at Ebay, but I can't see how that translates into the complex problems in global finance. She is just as inexperienced as Sarah. Selling beanie babies or snowmobiles just doesn't cut the mustard for the kind of talent we need now. She's just no Warren Buffet.

[mjb5406]

C'mon... it's simple. Everything in government would go up for auction, with a Reserved Price, some on 3, 5 or 7 days auctions, and that would bring in money. Except the listing and final value fees on those $200,000 Pentagon toilet seats will be killer, not to mention PayPal fees!

[saltpeter]

She would be the perfect for Treasury Secretary these days. She knows how to take other people's used junk and sell it to the highest bidder for way less than it originally cost. Like the way Paulson has taken our once glorious economy and sold it to the Chinese, Arabs and Europeans.