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OfflineYossarian22
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Registered: 09/12/07
Posts: 415
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Re: Why McCain should never be President [Re: Seuss]
    #8291729 - 04/16/08 02:30 PM (15 years, 9 months ago)

Part 2: the Spineless Flip-flopper



John McCain's a Maverick, a renegade. He plays by his own rules, bravely eschewing Republican ideology to find common ground with Democrats. Or at least that's how every article about him would have us believe. This comes as little surprise, given that he's hosted friendly BBQs with our oh so skeptical and objective press; of course, they returned the favor by welcoming him with donuts(with sprinkles, his favorite!); top newspaper editors called Obama a terrorist(Obama sounds like Osama, get it! Hyuk!) Of course, if the press spent more time researching and less time in line at Dunkin Donuts worrying whether their buddy would invite them to another barbeque, they'd know that he's nothing of the sort. True, in the past, he has staked out positions that put him in opposition with hardcore Republican dogma, but on just about every issue, he's long ago renounced the errors of his ways and has drank the Kool-Aid, so to speak.

At some points, he portrays himself as pro-science. In 1999, he dismissed creationism and said it should be up to local school boards whether or not to teach it. In 2005, he flip flopped:

Quote:

Daily Star: Should intelligent design be taught in schools?
McCain: I think that there has to be all points of view presented. But they've got to be thoroughly presented. So to say that you can only teach one line of thinking I don't think is - or one belief on how people and the world was created - I think there's nothing wrong with teaching different schools of thought.
Daily Star: Does it belong in science?
McCain: There's enough scientists that believe it does. I'm not a scientist. This is something that I think all points of view should be presented.




Yes, let's teach both sides of the controversy. Do babies result from the union of sperm and egg after sexual intercourse? Or do storks drop babies into chimneys? I don't know: let's teach the controversy. Is pi a rational or irrational number? I don't know: let's teach the controversy. Do objects fall to the ground because of gravity or because magical fairies sprinkle pixie dust on the objects causing them to fall? I don't know: let's teach the controversy. Apparently, there's no right-wing nutjob too stupid to pander to, no lowest common denominator for whose vote he's not willing to debase himself. What integrity.

Speaking of lowest common denominators, McCain has also flip flopped with regards to radical right wing Dominionists. In 2000, McCain famously referred to the right-wing hatemongers like Falwell and Robertson as "agents of intolerance". He now rejects this view and has cozied up to these vile bigots. He has since made peace with Falwell in order to avoid a repeat of 2000's South Carolina Primary. The fact that Falwell has since said things like the following hasn't convinced him otherwise:

Quote:

"I really believe that the pagans, and the abortionists, and the feminists, and the gays and the lesbians who are actively trying to make that an alternative lifestyle, the ACLU, People For the American Way, all of them who have tried to secularize America. I point the finger in their face and say 'you helped this happen.'"

Falwell, pastor of the 22,000-member Thomas Road Baptist Church, viewed the attacks as God's judgment on America for "throwing God out of the public square, out of the schools. The abortionists have got to bear some burden for this because God will not be mocked."




Now to be fair, he issued a half-assed apology, saying:

Quote:


"I do believe, as a theologian, based upon many Scriptures and particularly Proverbs 14:23, which says 'living by God's principles promotes a nation to greatness, violating those principles brings a nation to shame,'" he said.

Falwell said he believes the ACLU and other organizations "which have attempted to secularize America, have removed our nation from its relationship with Christ on which it was founded."

"I therefore believe that that created an environment which possibly has caused God to lift the veil of protection which has allowed no one to attack America on our soil since 1812," he said.
...
Falwell told CNN: "I would never blame any human being except the terrorists, and if I left that impression with
gays or lesbians or anyone else, I apologize."




So he would never blame anyone except the terrorists, except the people he just blamed(again). So repentant.

Here are some more wonderful quotes from that man:

Quote:

AIDS is the wrath of a just God against homosexuals. To oppose it would be like an Israelite jumping in the Red Sea to save one of Pharoah's chariotters.

The Jews are returning to their land of unbelief. They are spiritually blind and desperately in need of their Messiah and Savior.

It appears that America's anti-Biblical feminist movement is at last dying, thank God, and is possibly being replaced by a Christ-centered men's movement which may become the foundation for a desperately needed national spiritual awakening.

The idea that religion and politics don't mix was invented by the Devil to keep Christians from running their own country.

AIDS is not just God's punishment for homosexuals; it is God's punishment for the society that tolerates homosexuals.




Nope, absolutely nothing to denounce here(or reject). No intolerance or bigotry to be seen here.

He's also cozied up to John Hagee. In fact, Hagee claims that McCain actually sought out his support. So, let's recap: McCain does not attend Hagee's church, they do not know each other privately but have instead formed a purely political union, an alliance to advance each other's interests. So whereas Obama got slammed for sticking by a reverend with whom he had a deep and long-lasting personal and spiritual relationship, McCain sought out Hagee to advance his own political interests. Which is more distressing? So what has Hagee said that's so bad? For one thing, he wants to bring about the end of the world which will require a cataclysmic war in the Middle East as well as the conversion or mass murder of all non-Christian faiths. Having a presidential candidate who's been saber rattling against Iran and has (falsely and repeatedly) accused Iran of harboring Al-Quaida suck up to a preacher who "ratcheted up his rhetoric this year with the publication of his book, “Jerusalem Countdown,” in which he argues that a confrontation with Iran is a necessary precondition for Armageddon (which will mean the death of most Jews, in his eyes) and the Second Coming of Christ" is terrifying. For another, he's said a lot of hateful shit:

Quote:

It was the disobedience and rebellion of the Jews, God's chosen people, to their covenantal responsibility to serve only the one true God, Jehovah, that gave rise to the opposition and persecution that they experienced
beginning in Canaan and continuing to this very day... Their own rebellion had birthed the seed of antisemitism that would arise and bring destruction to them for centuries to come.... it rises from the judgment of God upon his rebellious chosen people.[26]

Well Islam in general -- those who live by the Koran have a scriptural mandate to kill Christians and Jews.

All hurricanes are acts of God, because God controls the heavens. I believe that New Orleans had a level of sin that was offensive to God, and they were recipients of the judgment of God for that.

The newspaper carried the story in our local area, that was not carried nationally, that there was to be a homosexual parade there on the Monday that the Katrina came. And the promise of that parade was that it would was going to reach a level of sexuality never demonstrated before in any of the other gay pride parades.

So I believe that the judgment of God is a very real thing. I know there are people who demur from that, but I believe that the Bible teaches that when you violate the law of God, that God brings punishment sometimes before the Day of Judgment, and I believe that the Hurricane Katrina was, in fact, the judgment of God against the city of New Orleans.




Sources: Wikipedia, NPR Interview.

Likewise, McCain has sucked up to another reactionary hatemonger, [url=http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rod_Parsley] Rod
Parsley [/url], even going so far as to call him "my spiritual guide". Besides the typical homophobia, antisemitism, etc. that's commonly found amongst such preachers, Parsley is rabidly Islamophobic, arguing for genocide against Muslims. From his book, Islam: The Deception of Allah:

Quote:

I cannot tell you how important it is that we understand the true nature of Islam, that we see it for what it really is. In fact, I will tell you this: I do not believe our country can truly fulfill its divine purpose until we understand our historical conflict with Islam. I know that this statement sounds extreme, but I do not shrink from its implications. The fact is that America was founded, in part, with the intention of seeing this false religion destroyed, and I believe September 11, 2001, was a generational call to arms that we can no longer ignore.




This will certainly help us win the hearts and minds of the Muslim world. I mean, could you possibly give Al-Quaida and other Muslim extremists a better propaganda weapon than "the President of the United States' spiritual adviser wants to exterminate Islam"? Being allied with the US is already the kiss of death to any moderate politicians in the Muslim world; are we really looking to alienate them further?

He's also flip flopped on the issue of campaign finance reform. The McCain Feingold Act is amongst his most famous legal initiatives. Yet it's interesting to note that McCain burst upon the national stage via a corruption scandal. Although the Senate Select Committee on Ethics ruled that no laws had been conclusively broken, they did note that:

Quote:

Mr. Keating, his associates, and his friends contributed $56,000 for Senator McCain's two House races in 1982 and 1984, and $54,000 for his 1986 Senate race. Mr. Keating also provided his corporate plane and/or arranged for payment for the use of commercial or private aircraft on several occasions for travel by Senator McCain and his family, for which Senator McCain ultimately provided reimbursement when called upon to do so. Mr. Keating also allowed Senator McCain and his family to vacation with Mr. Keating and his family, at a home provided by Mr. Keating in the Bahamas, in each of the calendar years 1983 through 1986.

From 1984 to 1987, Senator McCain took actions on Mr. Keating's behalf or at his request. The Committee finds that Senator McCain had a basis for each of these actions independent of the contributions and benefits he received from Mr. Keating, his associates and friends.




The fine tradition of publicly crusading for "reform" while skirting around the law is still alive and well with McCain. As ABC News notes:

Quote:

McCain has 59 lobbyists raising money for his campaign, more than any of the other presidential candidates, according to the latest finding from government watchdog group Public Citizen. The group, which advocates for public financing of elections, has identified more than 2,300 well-connected individuals, known as "bundlers," who have solicited contributions from friends and associates on behalf of a presidential candidate....When it comes to disclosing how much lobbyists are raising for his presidential campaign, however, the group found that McCain has fallen short, even by standards set by the Bush/Cheney 2004 campaign which voluntarily disclosed on its Web site the names of bundlers who raised at least $100,000 and $200,000.




You know it's bad when Bush is being less corrupt than your campaign. And not only has he broken the spirit of transparency that he supposedly touts, he's also broken his own law. You see, he accepted public financing earlier in his campaign(back when his fundraising efforts were lagging) and then used the public financing as collateral to procure a loan. By using the promise of public funds however, he has committed himself to using these funds, which he obviously doesn't want to do now that he's the presumptive Republican nominee. Unfortunately, the FEC can't do anything because it lacks a quorum since Congressional Republicans want all 4 nominees to be voted at once, instead of individually(which is a problem because one of the nominees is Hans Von Spakovsky who has been implicated in voter suppression and in the Attorney General scandal wherein the Bush administration was caught attempting to make the Department of Justice the armed wing of the Republican Party). So, he's for campaign finance when it makes him look like an anti-corruption crusader, but has no problem accepting shady financing and violating the law when it suits him.

Another subject where his public image and his actual policy have little in common is torture. McCain himself was of course tortured in the Vietnamese POW camps and has to his credit spoken out against torture. Yet his voting record tells a different story. In 2005 he voted for the Detainee Treatment Act which "prohibits inhumane treatment of prisoners, including prisoners at Guantanamo Bay; requires military interrogations to be performed according to the U.S. Army Field Manual for Human Intelligence Collector Operations; and strips federal courts of jurisdiction to consider habeas corpus petitions filed by prisoners in Guantanamo, or other claims asserted by Guantanamo detainees against the U.S. government, as well as limiting appellate review of decisions of the Combatant Status Review Tribunals and Military Commissions". Of course, Bush, following his unprecedented theory of the Executive Privilege which considers the Presidency as more of a dictatorship than an equal branch of government, attached a signing statement essentially saying "Nah nah na boo boo we can't hear you!"(except for the part about denying Guantanamo Bay prisoners habeus corpus, he had no problems with that). Since then, he hasn't pressed the issue and has in fact voted against every bill that sought to stop torture. For instance, in October of 2008 he urged Bush to veto a bill that would have banned the CIA from torturing.

Apparently being tortured himself didn't motivate him enough to actually oppose it. Likewise, despite having served honorably in the Armed Forces, he's declared his intentions to vote against a new GI Bill. Although he claims that the way out of the military's growing problems with dwindling recruiting is "one of the thing we ought to do is provide them significant educational benefits in return for serving", he has stated his opposition to the bill that would do just that. Why? Because, as the Pentagon says, "The incentive to serve and leave," said Robert Clarke, assistant director of accessions policy at the Department of Defense, may "outweigh the incentive to have them stay." How dare those soldiers, many of whom have been deployed multiple times, think of themselves as anything other than cannon(or IED) fodder!

In another thread on this same forum, people were discussing McCain's "plan" to temporarily suspend gasoline taxes. Such a halt would reduce the price of gasoline a whole 5 percent but would only increase the government's ballooning deficit. Now one way to reduce this deficit would be to end the war in Iraq which has so far cost us 3 trillion dollars and counting, at the rate of 12 billion dollars a month. However, as the previous part showed, McCain has a serious hard-on for the war so that's not going to happen. Which brings us to yet another in a long line of flip flops, the Bush tax cuts. In 2001, he was against them, saying "I cannot in good conscience support a tax cut in which so many of the benefits go to the most fortunate among us, at the expense of middle-class Americans who most need tax relief.” Now he wants to make them permanent. Of course, these tax cuts in a time of war are causing our deficit to balloon out of control. And it's a basic rule of economics that when there's such a large deficit, the value of the currency will likewise plummet. As the value of the dollar on the international market falls, oil becomes more and more expensive(in US dollars). In other words, his remedy for the skyrocketing gas prices will only make things worse.

I could go on, but I think it's clear by now that McCain has sold every ounce of integrity he once had to ingratiate himself into the hardcore Republican fringe. As Bush and his now-discredited ideology becomes all the more unpopular , McCain seems all the more determined to take up Bush's mantle and continue his legacy of failure, economic foolishness, and pandering to the most vile elements of the far right. If you liked the last 8 years, man, you ain't seen nothin' yet.


Edited by Yossarian22 (04/16/08 05:30 PM)


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Offlineblackegg
...has left the building.
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Registered: 01/25/06
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Phil Gramm Financial Wizard / Enron Hack / All Around Douche [Re: Yossarian22]
    #8638028 - 07/15/08 01:52 PM (15 years, 6 months ago)

Older...

Quote:


http://www.baltimorechronicle.com/2008/051908Leopold.shtml

May 19, 2008—Sen. John McCain says he opposes the $307 billion farm bill because it would dole out wasteful subsidies, but his chief economic adviser Phil Gramm also wants to stop its proposed regulation of energy futures trading, a market that was famously abused when Enron Corp. manipulated California’s electricity prices in 2001.

Clearing the way for that California price gouging, Gramm, as a powerful Texas senator in 2000, slipped an Enron-backed provision into the Commodities Futures Modernization Act that exempted from regulation energy trading on electronic platforms.

Then, over the next year, Enron – with Gramm’s wife Wendy serving on its board of directors – worked to create false electricity shortages in California, bilking consumers out of an estimated $40 billion.

Gramm left the Senate in 2002 but now has emerged as what Fortune magazine calls “McCain’s econ brain,” not only filling the Arizona senator’s acknowledged void on economic expertise (“I don’t know as much about the economy as I should”) but recognized as one of McCain’s closest friends in politics. The two men talk daily.











Newer...
Quote:

Let’s stop the whining. I mean it. It is ruining the country.

If we all stopped whining, the economy would recover, the banks would stop failing, the stock market would go up, the value of your home would rise and you could fill your gas tank for less than the cost of a diamond tiara.

OK, so maybe that last one is optimistic. But good things would happen.

And that is because almost all problems are mental.

Phil Gramm says so. And when it comes to mental, Phil Gramm knows a thing or two.

Gramm, a former U.S. senator and congressman and now a wealthy banker, has been a close friend and economic adviser to John McCain.

And Gramm said recently that we are not in a real recession, just a “mental recession,” and that our real problem is that we have become “a nation of whiners.”

He caught a lot of flak for this, but why not give his theory a test?

The average cost of regular gasoline is about $4.11 per gallon right now. (It is much higher than that in my neighborhood, but my neighborhood is filled with whiners.)

Ask yourself, however, why it costs that much. Isn’t it because your mental attitude stinks?

What if you drove into your local gas station and said to the mopey guy in the glass booth who is just there to sell cigarettes to teenagers, “Top o’ the morning to you! Isn’t it a great day? I think so. And, gee, you’re looking great. You been working out?”

Then you could say, “So can I get my gasoline for $3 a gallon today? Like I did a year ago?”

And you know what? This will work! The pump price will drop before your very eyes!

This is Phil Gramm’s Stop-Whining-Be-Happy Theory of Life that states that if you just stop whining about things, they will get better.

Gramm knows what he is talking about. He ran for president in 1996, raising $20 million, which was more than anybody else and real money in those days. (In today’s dollars, it would be about $12.95.)

At every campaign stop, Gramm reminded people that he had “flunked the third, seventh and ninth grades,” which means he was certainly smart enough to become a U.S. senator, but I guess people felt he needed to flunk a few more grades before he could become president.

Gramm decided to spend his money losing two contests that few people had ever heard of — the Alaska and Louisiana caucuses — so he could have a solid record of two losses even before he got to Iowa, where he came in fifth.

(John McCain was his national campaign chairman, and McCain learned a valuable lesson: Lose nothing before you lose Iowa.)

Gramm dropped out of the presidential race, but did he whine? No! Instead, he continued as a U.S. senator, retiring in 2002 and going on to become vice chairman for UBS Investment Bank, where he lobbied Congress, the Federal Reserve and the Treasury Department on banking and mortgage issues.
You can see how successful he was at that.

And there is no reason to limit Gramm’s theory to economics. It is all about attitude and how that affects everything.

Take the Iraq war. Sure, it has lasted longer than World War II. Sure, it has lasted longer than World War I. Sure, it has lasted longer than the Korean War and the Civil War.

But the Revolutionary War lasted longer and the Vietnam War lasted longer. And we batted .500 for those two!

So quit yer whining.





http://www.politico.com/news/stories/0708/11744.html





Great thread, by the way.


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