¶ The Paragraph

Three Quick Howlers from John McCain

September 22nd, 2008

McCain delivers a howler
with a straight face.

Lately, John McCain has been serving up some real howlers — claims ridiculously out of kilter with his record — all delivered with a straight face. Here is one of the howlers from his acceptance speech at the Republican Convention: “nstead of freeing ourselves from a dangerous dependence on foreign oil, both parties — and Senator Obama — passed another corporate welfare bill for oil companies.“x⁷⁰ So, the candidate of the Party of Big Business is charging his opponent in the Party of The People with corporate welfare!? Well, it turns out that the net effect of the bill McCain cited would actually raise taxes on oil companies, as well as lower taxes for renewable energy.x⁷¹ Further, McCain has worked and voted against measures to repeal oil company tax breaks.x⁷²x⁷³ Another McCain howler came last week in a speech where he baselessly accused Barrack Obama of doing the bidding of lobbyists for big finance, and then said of himself: “There will be no seat for [the lobbyists] at the policy-making table. They won’t even get past the front gate at the White House.“x⁷⁹x⁷⁴ But they sure got past the door of his campaign bus! McCain’s campaign staff is loaded with high-rolling lobbyists, including those for big finance.x⁷⁵ And McCain has championed those lobbyists’ issues, such as freeing financial markets from federal oversight.x⁷⁶ Also last week, McCain spoke about the looming meltdown of the financial system, and dished out this howler: “Under my reforms, the American people will be protected by comprehensive regulations that will apply the rules and enforce them to the full.“x⁷⁷ So this strident advocate of market deregulation, now wants to regulate the markets!?x⁷⁸ It was McCain’s top economic adviser, Phil Gramm, who pushed through the law to create the “shadow banking system”, which lies at the root of today’s financial turmoil.x⁷⁵ Senator McCain, enough already!

Sources

⁷⁰ John McCain’s Acceptance Speech, 2008-09-04

⁷¹ ‘FactChecking McCain’ – FactCheck.org, September 5, 2008

⁷² ‘John McCain Revealed’ – AFL-CIO

⁷³ ‘Big Oil vs. Little Wind’ – The Carpetbagger Report, August 12th, 2008

⁷⁴ ‘McCain Offers Few Details on Economic Plan’ By Robert Barnes, The Washington Post, 2008-09-19

⁷⁵ ‘McCain Neck-Deep in K Street Sewer’ – The Paragraph, 2008-08-23

⁷⁶ ‘McCain Enabled Our Economic Meltdown’ By Robert Scheer, Truthdig. September 18, 2008

… [McCain] voted for abolishing all of the significant rules put in place at the time of the Great Depression designed to prevent a repeat. The two main bills accomplishing that, bills which McCain enthusiastically supported, were the Commodity Futures Modernization Act and the Gramm-Leach-Bliley Act. The Gramm is former Sen. Phil Gramm, who was chair of the Senate Banking Committee when he acted as chief sponsor of both pieces of legislation. The same Gramm that McCain picked to co-chair his presidential campaign.

⁷⁷ ‘McCain Remarks on the Financial Markets’ – CQ Transcripts Wire, September 16, 2008

⁷⁸ ‘McCain Embraces Regulation After Many Years of Opposition’ By Michael D. Shear, The Washington Post, September 17, 2008, Page A01

⁷⁹ ‘Obama’s Fannie Mae ‘Connection’‘ by Michael Dobbs, The Washington Post Fact Checker, 2008-09-19

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By Quinn Hungeski – Posted at G.N.N. & TheParagraph.com

This entry was posted on Monday, September 22nd, 2008 at 11:17 pm and is filed under News, U.S. Election 2008. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can skip to the end and leave a response. Pinging is currently not allowed.

4 Responses to “Three Quick Howlers from John McCain”

1. wally Says:
   September 25th, 2008 at 4:02 pm

   Wow we got screwed as a Nation Today. I’ll never vote for an incumbent again. My recommendations are dump your dollars and American stock. Take long positions in the Euro and ADR Receipts and forget about American investments for a while. Also start taking deductions on your Income Taxes. I always used to overpay, figuring, “aww let Uncle Sam have the extra cash”.
   Never again will I do that as its not Uncle Sam that gets the Money, its the Banks,Wall Street and Congress that take your tax dollars for their own use. We Need a Third National Party!

2. hungeski Says:
   September 27th, 2008 at 10:04 am

   We have third parties — my favorite policy-wise is the Green. But the Green Party botched it big time when it ran Nader for president, took votes from Gore, and let the walking disaster, Bush II, sneak in. I think the Green Party should forget national races, and run candidates for city council and school board, where they could win and gain strength. But there is a quick-fix for third parties in national and state races — instant runoff voting, where you would vote for your third party candidate as first choice and a main party candidate as second choice. As I understand it, if no candidate had a clear majority, and your candidate was not in the top two, your second choice vote would be applied. So you wouldn’t be “throwing away your vote” by voting for the third party candidate. Australia has a “winner take all” system like the U.S.A., but the Australians put-in instant runoff voting, and I think it’s working out well for them.

3. contests Says:
   September 28th, 2008 at 9:31 am

   Absolutely \“real howlers\”. Who is advising this guy? Absolute goofiness. Even friends like Letterman are wondering what\‘s going on.

4. M.Green Says:
   September 28th, 2008 at 3:15 pm

   Mccain continues to try to tie Obama to lobbyists, crooked CEOs, and everything else under the sun. But it continues to fail, just like he will.