In any case, McCain’s smear — that Cox “betrayed the public’s trust” — is a harbinger of a McCain presidency. For McCain, politics is always operatic, pitting people who agree with him against those who are “corrupt” or “betray the public’s trust,” two categories that seem to be exhaustive — there are no other people. McCain’s Manichaean worldview drove him to his signature legislative achievement, the McCain-Feingold law’s restrictions on campaigning. Today, his campaign is creatively finding interstices in laws intended to restrict campaign giving and spending.

Which wacko liberal blog featured this? Which left-leaning newspaper columnist wrote it? He goes on:

The political left always aims to expand the permeation of economic life by politics. Today, the efficient means to that end is government control of capital. So, is not McCain’s party now conducting the most leftist administration in American history? The New Deal never acted so precipitously on such a scale. Treasury Secretary Paulson, asked about conservative complaints that his rescue program amounts to socialism, said, essentially: This is not socialism, this is necessary. That non sequitur might be politically necessary, but remember that government control of capital is government control of capitalism. Does McCain have qualms about this, or only quarrels?

Also, interestingly enough McCain would replace Cox with Andrew Cuomo, the very man some are claiming is responsible for the whole subprime mess in the first place:

On “60 Minutes” Sunday evening, McCain, saying “this may sound a little unusual,” said that he would like to replace Cox with Andrew Cuomo, the Democratic attorney general of New York who is the son of former governor Mario Cuomo. McCain explained that Cuomo has “respect” and “prestige” and could “lend some bipartisanship.” Conservatives have been warned.

Well, that’s truly interesting. And it was written by none other than George Will.

And here’s a different take on the “sexism” thing. It’s a fair point. They’re treating her like she is unfit to face questions. It’s either sexism or an admission that she’s totally incompetent. (I’m going with the incompetence assumption.)

Also, another look at McCain/Palin’s position in the meltdown debacle. It’s interesting, all the theories floating around about this mess. This author places the blame on Phil Gramm, not Andrew Cuomo.

A cruise on the Pacific goes all wrong, the ship sinks, and there are only three Survivors; Bob, Tom and Debbie. They manage to swim to a small island and they live there for a couple of years doing what’s natural for men and women to do.

After several years of casual sex all the time, Debbie felt absolutely horrible about what she was doing.

She felt having sex with both Bob and Tom was so immoral and bad that she killed herself.
It was tragic, but Bob and Tom managed to get through it.  After a while, Bob and Tom’s resistance to natures’  urgings waned, and the inevitable happened.

Well, a couple more years went by,  and Bob and Tom began to feel absolutely horrible about what they were doing.

So they buried Debbie.

(Dedicated to Marianne, who’s convinced men are pigs. :D )

John McCain has a long history of opposing regulation of the financial markets. Hell, he was part of the Keating Five, for crying out loud, one of the other times you and I and everybody you know has had to pony up and bail out a financial system run amuck. The idea that the markets should be able to work unfettered by government intervention is absolutely ludicrous. I think the events of the last couple of weeks bear me out.

Now, since it’s election season, McCain is railing at the corruption on Wall Street and the corruption in Washington and the CEOs who are making big piles of money while the little people suffer. Meredith Viera, during and interview with McCain this morning (pops to YouTube), asked the man to jibe that with his employing Carly Fiorina, ex-CEO of HP, as a top economic adviser to his campaign. Vieira noted that Fiorina “is an example of exactly the kind of person you say is at the root of the problem.” McCain replied, “I don’t think so”:

McCAIN: I don’t think so. … Because I think she did a good job as CEO in many respects. I don’t know the details of her compensation package. But she’s one of many advisers that I have.

Q: But she did get a $45 million dollar golden parachute after being fired while 20,000 of her employees were laid off.

McCAIN: I have many of the people, but I do not know the details of what happened.

“How can you not know the details of her past? I mean, that would be awfully important,” Vieira responded.

Nor is McCain’s statement that Fiorina did a “good job” as CEO of Hewlett-Packard quite accurate. The board of HP fired Fiorina in 2005, concluding “that she was spending too much time on the road, neglecting the nuts-and-bolts execution of her own strategic ideas,” according to the New York Times. “[H]er superstar status was also her undoing.”

As CEO, Fiorina parked profits overseas using tax shelters, even though it negatively impacted the economy. The company held more than $14 billion overseas in 2004, according to the Washington Post. The Wall Street Journal noted that her tenure was “marked by a drop in morale at a company with a legendary history of a collegial culture.”

Fiorina’s golden parachute and her rocky tenure at HP, however, don’t seem to matter to McCain, who does “not know the details of what happened.”

(part of this post is from thinkprogress.com)

Part II
Okay, it’s been suggested that, for once, I give reasons I’m voting for Obama rather than reasons not to vote for McCain. Very well, here we go, in easy-to-digest bullet list form:

• Obama actually has interest in a Lincoln-style Team of Rivals in his cabinet. It’d certainly be breath of fresh air after eight years of cronyism and yes-men
• He taught constitutional law at the University of Chicago. So he actually knows what’s in it, and there’s a better than even chance that he’ll respect it. Another breath of fresh air. I’m not expecting that from McCain, who’s voted with Bush 90% of the time. Some “maverick.”
• He believes in diplomacy, rather than saber rattling. I think he understands that we can’t afford another war (especially with the market bailout this week). McCain wants to bomb Iran and was actually more of a hawk over the Russia-Georgia situation than Bush.
• Obama’s energy plan is better than McCain’s
• His Supreme Court nominees will likely be more in line with the middle of the country rather than the far right fringe.
• His running mate isn’t Sarah Palin.

Well, that’s a start.

Part III

Another update about “the maverick.” Seems his campaign team features more than a few Bush acolytes. And why not? They’ve been great at running campaigns short on issues and long on divisiveness. And since Bush is doing such a marvelous job, I’m sure we want to elect the next guy these parasites are sellling.

Last week, the daycare we take Riley to had an Open House. He acted like a kindergartner the first time her parents come to school. Extremely excited, leading us around the place to show us all the fun places to play. Some dogs he tolerated coming near us (his friends, we assume) while other dogs he nipped at to back them off (probably not part of his clique).

It was damn cute. There are a bunch more pictures on my photostream.

This being the ’silly season,’ my last post was sure to rile a few people up, and it did. To you I say hey - I’m sorry if you took it personally. I’m not attacking any regular readers here. As I stated, my problems are pretty much with the criminals running the Republican party, and not with most conservatives.

Election season continues, however, and McCain/Palin becomes scarier and more annoying at the same time.

I happened across an article today that makes me worry even more about John McCain. This article, entitled “How John McCain Lost Me,” is written by Elizabeth Drew. She, like I, admired McCain back in 2000:

I have been a longtime admirer of John McCain. During the 2000 Republican presidential primaries I publicly defended McCain against the pro-Bush Republicans’ whisper campaign that he was too unstable to be president (aware though I was that he had a temper). Two years later I published a positive book about him, “Citizen McCain.”

So you see…I’m not the only one.

I’m getting the distinct impression that Palin would never have been worthy of admiration. From her first campaign for mayor until now, she’s been much more along the line of Bush than old John McCain. Vindictive and vengeful, she’s known for favoring loyalty over competence (heckuva job, Brownie!), and she’s beginning to gather a reputation for being a liar.

Take the Troopergate investigation, for example, which appears headed for a deep, dark hole - at least until after the election:

Palin initially welcomed the investigation, saying “hold me accountable,” but she has increasingly opposed it since Republican presidential candidate John McCain tapped her as his vice presidential running mate.

Let’s take a guess here. She welcomed the investigation when she was merely the popular governor of an out-of-the-way state. She’d appointed the Talis Colberg to the office of attorney general, after all, and let’s just say he owes her:

In an article Sunday in the New York Times, a family friend of Colberg described a conversation with him on his move from a one-room law office in rural Alaska to one of the highest offices in the state, supervising over 500 people: “I called him and asked, ‘Do you know how to supervise people?’,” Kathy Wells told the Times. “He said, ‘No, but I think I’ll get some help.’”

Sure, you’ll get some help, Talis, and when the time comes you’ll offer it right back. So here you are, Sarah — the help you leveraged:

Colberg sent a letter to Sen. Hollis French, who’s overseeing the investigation, asserting that the state employees who have been subpoenaed to testify in the probe won’t honor those subpoenas.

Poorly qualified political appointees? Ignoring subpoenas? Obfuscation, doublespeak, innuendo, outright lying, cronyism, obstruction? How in the hell can these people be running on a message of CHANGE and REFORM?

As if we haven’t had enough of this crap from the White House. I can’t be the only one who thinks Palin (and by extension and collusion, McCain) is holding a mirror up to Bush/Cheney and all their shitty machinations with the office of US Attorney General and other cabinet posts. Right?

Tonight she had an interview with that bastion of impartiality, Sean Hannity, in which they had the following exchange:

HANNITY: Should there be an investigation in terms of the relationship between the political donations and then of course the bankruptcy that ensued and the impact on the economy?

PALIN: I think that’s significant, but even more significant is the role that the lobbyists play in an issue like this also. And in that cronyism — it’s symptomatic of the greater problem that we see right now in Washington and that is just that acceptance of the status quo.

Really, Sarah? Your ticket’s campaign manager is Rick Davis,  who headed the Homeownership Alliance, a lobbying association that included Fannie, Freddie, nonprofit groups, real estate agents, homebuilders and consumer advocates. … [The group] worked to oppose congressional efforts to tighten controls on Fannie and Freddie. It’s not like you have a low-ranking pissant lobbyist laboring in some backwater office of your campaign; you have the super-über housing finance lobbyist running your campaign. He may have been sitting on the set during your interview. Perhaps he winked at you when you trotted out that little chestnut.

This is the kind of crap I’m sick of. Surely, I hope to God, I’m not the only one.