I feel like dancing:
Starting my weekend right by refusing to watch the bobbleheads on cable. You all have a good one tonight.
by John Cole| 80 Comments
This post is in: Previous Site Maintenance
I feel like dancing:
Starting my weekend right by refusing to watch the bobbleheads on cable. You all have a good one tonight.
This post is in: Mainstream Media's McCain Mancrush
Despite the dozens of slip-ups, gaffes, flip-flops, and other pretty glaring mistakes made by the McCain campaign, an overall disastrous performance, Time’s Mark Halperin declares the week a win for… McCain and Republicans (.pdf).
Not only that, but McCain won every metric Halperin used to judge, save one, the economy. On that, even with Gramm’s “whiner” comments and the tanking market and skyrocketing costs of fuel (now at $147 a barrel) and McCain’s calling Social Security a disgrace, Halperin did not see fit to score that a win for the Democrats. He called it a tie.
Screw it. I am going outside to get some sun. I am going to break my computer if I keep reading this crap. Liberal media, my ass.
*** Update ***
This is how I am feeling about the media right now:
I am the one in the raincoat.
*** Update #2 ***
More McBullshit:
It turns out that John McCain made an off-the-mark error when he launched at Barack Obama this week over Iran’s missile tests.
In a statement criticizing Obama’s positions on the Iranian Revolutionary Guard, the organization claiming credit for the missile launches, McCain wrote, “This is the same organization that I voted to condemn as a terrorist organization when an amendment was on the floor of the United States Senate. Senator Obama refused to vote.”
The problem with the critique? McCain also missed that vote on the Kyl-Lieberman amendment on September 26, 2007. Records show that Obama was in New Hampshire and McCain was in New York instead of being in the Senate chamber for the vote in question.
The McCain campaign admits the error but points to their candidate’s tough stance against the country President Bush once grouped into the “axis of evil.”
But, you know, Halperin probably knows something we don’t.
*** Update #3 ***
The lying just never stops.
by John Cole| 69 Comments
This post is in: Domestic Politics
The market is in steep decline again with news of Freddie Mac and Fannie Mae eating it:
Shares of Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, the beleaguered mortgage finance companies, plummeted again on Friday morning, as senior Bush administration officials consider a plan to have the government take over one or both of the companies and place them in a conservatorship if their problems worsen, according to people briefed about the plan.
Fannie Mae stock was down 36 percent in early trading compared with Thursday’s closing price; Freddie Mac stock was down 41 percent.
Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, respectively.
Calculated Risk is AWOL, so I do not know where to turn to make sense of all this. I guess I can just cross my fingers and hope things don’t get worse. There is this, though, of a CNBC reporter shocked about the drop in Freddie Mac’s price:
This was footage from yesterday. Good thing he didn’t put out a buy.
by John Cole| 72 Comments
This post is in: Domestic Politics
One of the things I don’t understand about the whole McCain contraception/viagra thing this week is why insurance agencies wouldn’t want to provide coverage for birth control.
Pregnancy costs lots of money and medical care, and that is if there are no complications. Babies cost money. Not only does pregnancy and the ensuing birth cost money, as every insurance policy I have been part of would offer coverage to dependents, doesn’t that mean the insurance company is also on the hook for the next 18 years? Not only do they have to pay for the pregnancy and the birth, but then they also get to eat every single health care cost for a child. Every e-room visit because they wrecked their bike and broke their arm. Every doctor’s visit for strep throat. And so on.
So putting aside all the other issues (should government tell companies what they can cover, etc.), what I don’t understand is why WOULDN’T an insurance company want to provide birth control. From where I am sitting, it looks a helluva lot cheaper. Adding to that, why WOULD they want to provide coverage for viagra, as that will possibly lead to… more expensive babies.
Could someone break this down for me- is this just something in the actuarial modeling that I do not know, and that it is cheaper to deny birth control than it is to take the chance on paying for pregnancies? Or is it really just as simple as there would be a boomer riot if they had to pay for Viagra, but there is no such comparable pressure from people who would use birth control?
*** Update ***
For obvious reasons, if you use the word Viagra in your comment, it will automatically get sent to the spam filter. Just substitute V-pill or whatever and it should be fine.
by John Cole| 19 Comments
This post is in: Mainstream Media's McCain Mancrush
I missed this, but it is so true:
As I noted earlier, after Phil Gramm said America was a nation of whiners, McCain said that Gramm didn’t speak for him. Which makes the fact that Gramm was, in fact, speaking for him at a meeting with the WSJ editorial board today all the more amusing.
After Gramm’s whiner comments, McCain campaign came out and explicitly stated that Phil Gramm does not speak for him, that he speaks for himself, and the media sighed and gushed, their heavy hearts lifted by the McMavericky straight talk.
Except, of course, the entire reason Gramm was speaking at the WSJ editorial board was to promote McCain’s economic policies.
by John Cole| 8 Comments
This post is in: Election 2008
McMaverick raised $22 million last month, so you know what to do:
I am trying to figure out how to create an ActBlue page for the DNC, and will post it as soon as I can. The convention bills will be coming quick.
This post is in: Mainstream Media's McCain Mancrush
The HuffPo:
This is the week that should have effectively ended John McCain’s efforts to become the next president of the United States. But you wouldn’t know it if you watched any of the mainstream media outlets or followed political reporting in the major newspapers.
During this past week: McCain called the most important entitlement program in the U.S. a disgrace, his top economic adviser called the American people whiners, McCain released an economic plan that no one thought was serious, he flip flopped on Iraq, joked about the deaths of Iranian citizens, and denied making comments that he clearly made — TWICE. All this and it is not even Friday! Yet watching and reading the mainstream press you would think McCain was having a pretty decent political week, I mean at least Jesse Jackson didn’t say anything about him.
And that isn’t even all of it. Here is Carly Fiorina caught dead to rights trying to lie about McCain’s position on issues important to women, here is McCain flubbing a reporter’s question about Fiorina’s comments (video of the tragic encounter found here), and as a Steeler fan, my personal favorite McCain moment:
And then McCain told a rather moving story about his time as a P.O.W. “When I was first interrogated and really had to give some information because of the pressures, physical pressures on me, I named the starting lineup, defensive line of the Pittsburgh Steelers as my squadron mates.”
“Did you really?” asked the reporter.
“Yes,” McCain said.
“In your POW camp?” asked the reporter.
“Yes,” McCain said.
“Could you do it today?” asked the reporter.
“No, unfortunately,” McCain said.
Here’s one reason he likely couldn’t do it today — the Steelers aren’t the team whose defensive line McCain named for his Vietnamese tormentors. The Green Bay Packers are. At least according to every previous time McCain has told this story. And the McCain campaign just told ABC News that the senator made a mistake — it was, indeed, the Packers.
Liar.
What is most amazing about all this is that he keeps getting away with it, and the media refuses to hold him responsible for the things he says. Imagine if Obama had done all these things this week- they would be doing post-mortems on the failed Obama candidacy on the Sunday shows. Compare the reaction to the whiners comment and the Obama bitter remarks. Those seats on the new Straight Talk Express must be really hard to earn.
Two quick side notes. I don’t want to be unfair, but it is my general impression that Carly Fiorina’s crowning achievement in business is to destroy the reputation of Hewlett-Packard. I wouldn’t even consider buying one, and haven’t for years. Am I wrong about this impression? If not, why on earth is she considered such an asset for McCain?
Second, I know I have turned fiercely partisan for the Democrats recently, but I honestly do not remember McCain being this bad. I never much cared for him and, in fact, supported Bush over McCain in 2000 (awesome judgment there, I might add), but I don’t remember him being this bad. Am I imagining things? Or is he far worse a candidate and aperson than he was ten years ago?