Come for the politics, stay for the snark.

You can’t attract Republican voters. You can only out organize them.

One way or another, he’s a liar.

Fight them, without becoming them!

When your entire life is steeped in white supremacy, equality feels like discrimination.

You don’t get to peddle hatred on saturday and offer condolences on sunday.

We are aware of all internet traditions.

We can’t confuse what’s necessary to win elections with the policies that we want to implement when we do.

People identifying as christian while ignoring christ and his teachings is a strange thing indeed.

Trump’s cabinet: like a magic 8 ball that only gives wrong answers.

Peak wingnut was a lie.

Hey hey, RFK, how many kids did you kill today?

I am pretty sure these ‘journalists’ were not always such a bootlicking sycophants.

Authoritarian republicans are opposed to freedom for the rest of us.

“Perhaps I should have considered other options.” (head-desk)

This country desperately needs a functioning fourth estate.

Putting aside our relentless self-interest because the moral imperative is crystal clear.

Do we throw up our hands or do we roll up our sleeves? (hint, door #2)

Insiders who complain to politico: please report to the white house office of shut the fuck up.

Every reporter and pundit should have to declare if they ever vacationed with a billionaire.

Usually wrong but never in doubt

“Loving your country does not mean lying about its history.”

Welcome to day five of every-bit-as-bad-as-you-thought-it-would-be.

If you still can’t see these things even now, maybe politics isn’t your forte and you should stop writing about it.

You passed on an opportunity to be offended? What are you even doing here?

You are here: Home / Elections / Election 2008 / But What About the Love Canal?

But What About the Love Canal?

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After two weeks of being condemned in the media as a liar, the narrative of John McCain as a liar and serial exaggerator just got better:

Asked what work John McCain did as Chairman of the Senate Commerce Committee that helped him understand the financial markets, the candidate’s top economic adviser wielded visual evidence: his BlackBerry.

“He did this,” Douglas Holtz-Eakin told reporters this morning, holding up his BlackBerry. “Telecommunications of the United States is a premier innovation in the past 15 years, comes right through the Commerce committee so you’re looking at the miracle John McCain helped create and that’s what he did.”

For a trip down memory lane, go here.

Reader Interactions

33Comments

  1. 1.

    SpotWeld

    The best part (and I suspect someone else will post this at about the same moment I do). BlackBerries were innovated by a Canadian company.

  2. 2.

    SGEW

    Ezra, as always, nails it:

    But folks should also be clear about what Dough Holtz-Eakin is saying: John McCain understands the financial markets because he has worked on telecommunications legislation. Read that again: McCain’s understanding of derivatives, security-backed mortgages, and leveraging comes from testimony offered by cable executives who didn’t want to be forced into providing a la carte cable offerings or constrained by decency laws. John McCain will, in other words, be ready on day one to crack down on obscenity and nudity on Wall Street.

    However, the McCain campaign responds by saying:

    This was obviously a boneheaded joke by a staffer.

    Doug Holtz-Eakin, one of John McCain’s top economic advisors, is now a mere “staffer.”

    How long before John McCain’s own statements are referred to as a boneheaded joke by a staffer as well?

  6. 6.

    Dreggas

    Heh, according to Carli Fiorina Palin is qualified to be VP of the sole remaining super power but is not qualified to be CEO of a fortune 500 company.

    I am wondering when someone will ask she of the Beaked Nose why, given that she pretty much fucked up HP, she is qualified to give any advice about anything. Then again this is the McCain campaign’s ship of fools.

  12. 12.

    Darkness

    John McCain invented the GPRS cell phone! Wow. I’m impressed. For a guy who doesn’t know how to use one… that’s even more impressive. Miraculous even with angels singing and everything.

    In reality, the U.S. has for 15 years been and continues to be pathetically lagging Europe on wireless and cell technologies. We don’t innovate. We copy Europe, 4 years after the fact. “looking at the miracle”?? Get a grip.

  13. 13.

    Napoleon

    Check out the fake “old time” ad on Americablog.com for Dr. John McCain’s amazing Black-Berry device”

  15. 15.

    ppcli

    McCain is responsible for the Blackberry, and Palin wants TransCanada to build Alaska’s gas pipeline.

    McCain for Prime Minister! Country first!

  16. 16.

    ThatLeftTurnInABQ

    Doug Holtz-Eakin, one of John McCain’s top economic advisors, is now a mere “staffer.”

    OK, now I’m confused.

    Is it that the candidate does not speak for the campaign, or the campaign does not speak for the candidate?

    Could somebody please get back to me when these people make up their minds which way they want it to be?
    I’m thinking that might be by about 2013 or so.

  18. 18.

    toujoursdan

    We Canadians are used to you Americans taking credit for our inventions, the radio, light bulb, basketball and Superman being just a few.

    It was inevitable that the Blackberry become appropriated sometime.

  19. 19.

    J. Maynard Gelinas

    So Senator McCain’s campaign staff get to openly lie about McCain ‘creating the blackberry’, yet it was the same staffers who jumped at the chance to use Declan McCullagh’s misrepresentation of Al Gore’s statement about his congressional support of the Internet.

    http://www.wired.com/politics/law/news/2000/10/39301

    The parallel between these two stories show without a question obvious media bias among journalists. If one – false claim – ‘crafted a narrative’ about a presidential candidate as a “serial exaggerator”, the other – a real lie – is ignored or downplayed.

    I mean, they turned Al Gore’s very real good work into a joke. It was funny. People still laugh about it – especially on Fox – and still promote the argument that he knowingly lied. Yet, to note a real lie about technology and Internet use by a Republican presidential candidate – just as laughable, if not more so – becomes a sort of ‘proof of liberal bias’.

    Shine a mirror in their face and they’ll tell you you’re ugly. And they don’t even see it’s them they’re referring to!

    Sophists before they even open their mouths. Un-fucking-believable.

  20. 20.

    Dennis - SGMM

    McCain’s accomplishment is all the more remarkable because Research In Motion, Ltd., the creator of the Blackberry, is a Canadian company.

  21. 21.

    SGEW

    We Canadians are used to you Americans taking credit for our inventions . . . .

    Not to mention the Kids in the Hall.

    Also: please let no one begin a “I’ll tell you who invented radio!” war. Please.

  22. 22.

    J. Michael Neal

    The best part (and I suspect someone else will post this at about the same moment I do). BlackBerries were innovated by a Canadian company.

    Worse. The profits from his invention are being used to try to steal hockey teams from the American heartland, such as Pittsburgh and Nashville, and move them to the hellhole that is Hamilton, Ontario.

  25. 25.

    PeterJ

    Is it that the candidate does not speak for the campaign, or the campaign does not speak for the candidate?

    Actually neither of them speaks for the campaign. Bill Kristol does, that’s why he got to pick McCain’s VP candidate.

  26. 26.

    Cris

    Hey, Shuster may have been born in Canada, but he drew his first Superman while in Ohio, USA.

    So the Canadians don’t get to claim the Man of Steel. Credit for Superman belongs firmly with the Jewish people.

  27. 27.

    David Hunt

    Hey, Shuster may have been born in Canada, but he drew his first Superman while in Ohio, USA.

    Hey, I thought Superman was a naturalized U.S. citizen from Krypton. Saying that he’s from someplace as alien and foreboding as Canada just destroys my willing suspension of disbelief and my empathy for the character!

    :)

  30. 30.

    Ecks

    McCain for Prime Minister! Country first!

    Please, no! We’ve already got an election with a right wing nut job (who’s likely to win anyway), we don’t need any more!

    though to be fair, our right wing nut job would probably fit into the right wing of the democratic party – once you’ve had universal health care you never want to give it up.

  31. 31.

    rachel

    toujoursdan Says:

    We Canadians are used to you Americans taking credit for our inventions, the radio, light bulb, basketball and Superman being just a few.

    So, the Ice Fortress: that was like an igloo, right?

  32. 32.

    ppcli

    QUOTE: Ecks Says:
    McCain for Prime Minister! Country first!

    Please, no! We’ve already got an election with a right wing nut job (who’s likely to win anyway), we don’t need any more!

    though to be fair, our right wing nut job would probably fit into the right wing of the democratic party – once you’ve had universal health care you never want to give it up.ENDQUOTE

    You can say that again. I moved to the States the week Mulroney was first elected. It took me a few months before it sunk in that the most conservative Prime Minister I had ever seen would have been on the left wing of the Democratic Party if he were in the U.S. (Well, except that he was a pathological liar, shameless patronage-monger, and serial appointer of incompetents, which would have qualified him for the GOP.)

    I was back at home for a few weeks before the last election, and caught the leaders debate on SRC. I remember profoundly holding three thoughts: a) “Damn, Harper’s French is bad, but it isn’t nearly as bad as I expected.” b) “The only one of these fools I would consider voting for is Duceppe. I wonder if the Bloc is running a candidate in Timmins-James Bay?” and finally c) “Every one of these guys would be either Democrats or caucusing with Saunders in the U.S.”

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