"Oh no, it's nothing negative at all. He's got a lot of experience and just stating the fact there, that we've been hearing his speeches for all these years. So he's got a tremendous amount of experience and, you know, I'm the new energy, the new face, the new ideas and he's got the experience based on many many years in the Senate and voters are gonna have a choice there of what it is that they want in these next four years."
Now, I'd be happy to go off on this latest Sarah Palin gaffe but somebody else already did a great job that I don't think I can surpass - John Aravosis at AmericaBlog:
So Palin is now saying that she wasn't trying to say "don't vote for the old guy." Instead, she was trying to say "vote for the new guy, not the guy with the old face who's been in the Senate a really long time."
You can't write this stuff folks. Every network and Hollywood studio in the world would toss this script in the garbage. Unbelievable.
Comments welcome,
Pat McGovern
It's got electoral votes. It's what politicians crave.
The work of fiction that Nancy Pelosi is to blame for yesterday's bailout vote is fading. On Nightline last night, Roy Blunt (R-MO) stepped back (via Political Punch):
Blunt was reluctant to attribute the loss of 12 Republican votes entirely to Pelosi's speech, but did say her speech was not helpful. "We clearly had some Members that were there but were precariously there and one or two of them may have been affected by the Speaker's speech," Blunt said. "In the weekend of negotiating this, the spirit in the room was very good, but the press conferences the Speaker and a few Democrats had outside the room were invariably partisan. None of that helped."
Blunt said that Republican leaders "had twelve people beyond, that we thought we had going into the float that we didn't have for various reasons and I haven't had time to go back and ask them all why it was that they didn't do what we thought they were gonna do ... That one speech was not helpful but I think you don't want to give too much blame to that speech."
I listened to Rep. Steve LaTourette (R-OH) this morning on WCPN's The Sound of Ideas say that anyone who's vote was changed by Nancy Pelosi's speech isn't seriously considering the situation and should find a new line of work. One of the few times I have actually found some respect for him.
Rep. John Shadegg (R-AZ) said "not a single vote" was changed by Pelosi's speech on MSNBC this morning with Joe Scarborogh (via TPM):
I told you yesterday, John Boehner is the one with egg on his face. He's the one who rallied behind the bill and then couldn't deliver the votes. Him...and OH YEAH! John McCain. Watch the spectacular tap dancing of Douglas Holtz-Eakin did on MSNBC yesterday:
Just as an aside, isn't it nice that at least most of the major networks, except for They Who Must Not Be Named, are no longer taking anything a McCain campaign spokesperson says at face value? It really is starting to restore my faith in journalism.
Even the McCain campaign has now stopped trying to pin this on Obama and the democrats directly. They have chosen a different tack. Blaming the Democrats and Barack Obama for Fannie Mae, Freddie Mac and this entire situation in their latest commercial:
According to Greg Sargent at TPM ElectionCentral, they released this ad just moments after John McCain said this in Iowa:
"I am disappointed at the lack of resolve and bipartisan good will among members of both parties to fix this problem," McCain said today in Des Moines, Iowa. "Bipartisanship is a tough thing; never more so when you're trying to take necessary but publicly unpopular action. But inaction is not an option."
"I call on everyone in Washington to come together in a bipartisan way to address this crisis," McCain later said.
Sadly, we have another month plus of this to go folks. I almost worry that if McCain just continues to be stupid people might start to like him for being a stubborn stupid. I hope that that is a ridiculous worry.
Finally, in what is admittedly a long post, even for me, the "good" people at FOX News (Oops! I named them!) fell over themselves trying to goad John McCain into fake suspending his campaign again:
As you can see, he will consider it.
The circus known as McCain-Palin 2008 must obviously go on.
Comments welcome,
Pat McGovern
It's got electoral votes. It's what politicians crave.
Digby has an amazing / scary piece about Lisa Schiffrin and her amazing ability to use reason and logic here. I swear I don't know whether to laugh or cry. I haven't for nearly fourteen years.
Comments welcome,
Pat McGovern
It's got electoral votes. It's what politicians crave.
I hadn't heard this line before. I have NO idea when he said it. But he apparently did say it. See for yourself:
Look, I've got nothing against WalMart. I worked for them! Their licensed professionals are good people who do a good job. But are you really going to trust them with primary care?! WTF?!
Not for nothing, but you're dreaming when you talk about "eliminating lines" and "WalMart" in the same sentence as well.
Comments welcome,
Pat McGovern
It's got electoral votes. It's what politicians crave.
Remember when you got to bring your Dad to that followup interview at your dream college after the first interview didnt go well?:
Neither do I. I expect that it would have gone just about as badly as this did if something like that did happen, though.
Exactly what is John McCain thinking? He looked exactly like a Dad trying to get his daughter out of hot water and suddenly remembering that the only way for her to do that would be for her to do that, herself.
Well, guess what? Whatever slim notions we did still have that Sarah Palin could hold her own were just disabused. Thats all thanks to you John. No one else to blame. Although I am sure you will find some way to try to blame Barack Obama, John. It's all you have left.
"Senator Obama and his allies in Congress infused unneccessary partisanship into the process." - Senator John McCain
"Now is not the time to fix the blame." - Senator John McCain
Pulsars have a hard time spinning faster than John McCain. (According to scientists, however, McCain still, try as he might, doesn't spin quite as fast.) These two statements were uttered within a 30 second span.
Point one. While it is true that McCain was obliquely referencing Nancy Pelosi's speech, and her fixing of the blame on George Bush's failed economic policies, on the House floor with the second quote, it seems rather a moot point considering he just tried to 'fix the blame' of why the bailout didn't pass with the first quote.
Point two. I cannot believe that the American people will let this guy get away with trying to blame Barack Obama and Nancy Pelosi with injecting partisanship into the process when it was he, with his fake1 "suspension" of the campaign, that injected partisanshop into the the process in the first place.2
I have a deep, sincere belief that Mike Judge's vision of the future in Idiocracy was, indeed, a vision of the future and not of the present. I love Jerry Springer and hate his show. Running a campaign like you run Jerry Springer's show is a poor way to do business. It may have been, or still be, a guilty pleasure for some but they aren't going to vote for the people on that show. Thinking otherwise shows who is really the idiot.
Comments welcome,
Pat McGovern
1 - I live in Northeast Ohio. The commercials may have stopped for an hour or so in the 12am-6am time period on Friday. Beyond that, we here in Ohio noticed no "suspension". 2 - Teachers, if you wish, you can use this as an example of a rambling run-on sentence. But only if the word rambling is used in conjunction with it.
It's got electoral votes. It's what politicians crave.
Here is what, presumably, is the offending portion of Nancy Pelosi's speech:
Here is Barney Frank and Rahm Emanuel responding to the Republicans:
You really can't describe it much better than Barney Frank did: "...and because somebody hurt their feelings they decided to punish the country."
Listen to the speech. Nancy Pelosi was probably a bit more partisan than she might have been but she was attacking Bush and the administration. Suddenly John Boehner, Roy Blunt, Eric Cantor and company are going to stand up for George W. Bush? You have to be kidding me!
Really?! How do you think this is going to play on Main St.? You really think that they aren't going to blame Bush for this crap happening too? You want to defend him? Guess who they will identify you with?
The Republicans should have thought this through a little more carefully. This could turn what was a bad election for them into a landslide. And since they threw the 'you are being partisan' crap first, it's now open season.
Maybe the House Republicans have "John McCain on the brain." This stunt has him written all over it. Country first, my a$$.
Hopefully, somewhere in the midst of all of this, we find a way to avoid Great Depression II.
Comments welcome,
Pat McGovern
It's got electoral votes. It's what politicians crave.
Here is the guy who is responsible for the bailout failure trying to spin the blame:
Nice, huh? So you get to blame Nancy Pelosi for the fact that you guys:
screwed everything up with your deregulation
screwed everything up with your lack of oversight on the regulation that was left
continue to screw everything up by prefering to let everything melt down than pass something that your administration says will help.
The Democrats are talking partisan. You, John Boehner, are acting partisan.
Assuming we don't get thrown back to the stone age, history will show that both sides did stupid stuff here but one party actually let everything go to complete hell because their feelings were hurt.
Oh, and buy the way, twelve more votes still wouldn't have given the eighty that you promised John, which was down from the 100 that the Democrats originally insisted on.
Finally, I don't think that it helped that Roy Blunt was back there smirking the entire time before he spoke. If he wasn't smirking, than I guess he is even more obnoxious looking than usual today.
Comments welcome,
Pat McGovern
It's got electoral votes. It's what politicians crave.
There are lots and lots of reasons not to like this bill. But most of those reasons are Democratic talking points. The GOP alternative proposal was borderline illiterate.
I’m writing this in haste, without a lot of reflection. But the whole way this has played out has been something of a watershed moment for me. There is only one party in Congress that thinks we are in a financial crisis, only one party in Congress with a functioning leadership.
I simply cannot express it better myself.
Comments welcome,
Pat McGovern
It's got electoral votes. It's what politicians crave.
