August 21, 2008
He’s blowing it. With each passing day, the opinion polls show increasing momentum by the McCain campaign. For their part, the Democrats have put together a lineup of really uninspiring orators for next week’s Convention. The schedule for this event will include such former stars as Jimmy Carter, Bill Clinton and John Kerry. (At least they had the sense to leave Mike Dukakis and Walter Mondale off the program.) What is Jimmy Carter going to discuss? … “How to Facilitate Runaway Inflation”? Is Bill Clinton going to explain “How to Beat a DNA Test”? (John Edwards will be listening to that one with abated breath.) We can count on John Kerry to present a coma – inducing diatribe about “How to Snatch Defeat from the Jaws of Victory”. Meanwhile, Obama appears to be writing his own handbook on that subject. After folding on the FISA (wiretap) bill and capitulating to the public’s ignorance on the offshore oil drilling controversy, he now appears ready to undermine his campaign theme of Change, by selecting a running mate, who has spent nearly his entire adult life in the Senate: Joe Biden.
Obama would be better off running with his best choice: Virginia Governor Tim Kane. Does Barack really believe that some chucklehead, watching “reality TV”, is going to be concerned about whether Kane has the adequate foreign policy acumen to attend the funerals of foreign dignitaries on behalf of the United States? The people of Virginia will support the team that includes a fellow Virginian. Southern voters will not vote for a ticket consisting of two individuals who put sugar on their grits. Catholics will vote for the candidate with a Catholic running mate, despite McCain’s anti-abortion pander.
At this point in the campaign, the often – repeated mantra of the commentators is that “negative campaigning works”. Obama has expressed his belief that by taking the “high road”, he will somehow be immune to any negative attacks. If he wants to win this election, he must face up to the need to launch his own negative character attack against McCain. For starters, he must restrain himself from saying nice things about his opponent. He should then draw some attention to the following issues:
1.) McCain’s divorce from his first wife, Carol, and Ross Perot’s feelings about that. In the June 8 issue of Britain’s Daily Mail, Sharon Churcher discussed Perot’s reaction to how McCain ditched Carol upon his return from Viet Nam, when he first learned of her crippling injuries:
But Ross Perot, who paid her medical bills all those years ago, now believes that both Carol McCain and the American people have been taken in by a man who is unusually slick and cruel – even by the standards of modern politics.
“McCain is the classic opportunist. He’s always reaching for attention and glory,” he said.
“After he came home, Carol walked with a limp. So he threw her over for a poster girl with big money from Arizona. And the rest is history.”
2.) McCain’s involvement in the “Keating Five” scandal. In 1991, McCain was criticized by the Senate Ethics Committee as having exercised “poor judgment” in connection with the Federal Home Loan Bank Board’s investigation of Lincoln Savings and Loan.
3.) Obama’s staffers should contact McCain’s fellow inmates from the Hanoi Hilton, to obtain a little more information than “no comment” as to their feelings concerning McCain’s candidacy.
4.) Get in touch with McCain’s Vietnamese captors to find out whether he provided them with any worthwhile information, justifying the reason for their offer of early repatriation, which he declined.
There’s a dirt in them there hills. Obama’s camp has to go dig for it. If they find it . . . they damned – well better use it.
It’s a dirty world out there, with such dirty players as: Vladimir Putin, Hugo Chavez and the Chinese baseball team. Unless he really can perform a miracle, the guy with the halo over his head won’t be moving into 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue. Of course, he could always trade in the halo for a nice set of darts.
This Should Have Happened Last Year
September 18, 2008
I’m sorry. What is happening in the financial markets right now, should have happened at this time, last year. I put my money where my mouth was, in the belief that a laissez-faire Republican government would have let market conditions run their course. That strategy caused me to lose money for the past year. When precious metals should have been going up, they were going down. Something “stinky” was happening. At this time, last year, Jon Markman of msn.com was discussing the “duct tape and pixie dust” being used to hold the economy together. In hindsight, I suspect that there may have been an effort to keep the ca-ca from hitting the fan until after Election Day (November 4). Time will tell whether there was some skullduggery involved in such an effort. Do you think that the “oil speculators” realized, at some point, that they could manipulate the prices of the small handful of stocks (30) that comprise the Dow Jones Industrials, by manipulating the price of oil? Are these same “oil speculators” on “good behavior” right now, out of fear that the “Enron Loophole” could be doomed?
I apologize because I have been making (back) lots of money this week, while many people have seen their retirement plans crash and burn. I stuck to my belief that the emperor was not really wearing any clothes. It cost me money to adhere to that opinion, although it is now “payback time”. To no surprise, the Carly Fiorinas of this nosedive will walk away with their golden parachutes intact. However, will AIG still be free to make crucial decisions about which lawsuits to litigate? Do they have a right to make those (and other) decisions as they used to, now that you and I own eighty percent of that company?
Meanwhile, John “Keating Five” McCain claims that he will champion the interests of those suckers who vote for him, by bringing “The Good Old Boys of Wall Street” to Alaskan frontier justice. Why would anyone believe this? Based on his record, McCain could not expect the voters to consider him as the advocate of the downtrodden. For some reason, the Obama campaign has expressed an unwillingness to use the “Keating Five” episode of McCain’s life, as fodder for negative ads. (They may find themselves thinking more clearly in late October.)
Let’s take a look back at the “glory days” of The Keating Five, from what is available on Wikipedia.org:
So where is the Obama ad using “Poor Judgment” as its theme? Wouldn’t it be nice to see that phrase repeated under a picture of Sarah Palin?