'Snuggles' McCain
mikethemadbiologist | October 23, 2008Brad DeLong puts it very eloquently:
I would advise every reporter covering the McCain campaign that their only road to having a career in journalism in the future is to write something that gets them thrown off the plane.
Given the outright, serial lying the McCain campaign has engaged in, I think this is about right.
mikethemadbiologist | October 20, 2008Recently, a McCain campaign spokescritter used the phrase 'real' Virginian. Anyone who has lived in the South has heard the phrase 'real Southerner' before. What's despicable about that phrase is that it always refers to white Southerners--African-Americans are completely marginalized and ignored in the definition of a Southerner as if they don't exist. Given the changing demographics of Virginia, 'real Virginian' has also entered the lexicon (and is something I've heard many times). Here's what the McCain spokescritter said:
....I can tell you that the Democrats have just come in from…
mikethemadbiologist | October 16, 2008Last night, "Joe the Plumber" (who's kinda like Conan the Barbarian, except that he's not) was featured front and center in the debates. So what did the actual Joe the Plumber think? By way of Jesse Taylor, from Politico:
"McCain was solid in his performance," he says. "I still don't know where he stands," he says of Obama. "I'm middle class. I can't have my taxes raised any more."
He also says he actually isn't in the bracket where Obama would raise his taxes -- but he's worried that Obama will shift the bracket down.
He also said that, in his encounter with Obama, the Illinois Senator […
mikethemadbiologist | October 12, 2008If Obama has a 'Ayers problem', why doesn't McCain have a 'G. Gordon Liddy problem?' From Jamison Foser:
G. Gordon Liddy. Liddy served four and a half
years in prison for his role in the break-ins at the Watergate and at Daniel
Ellsberg's psychologist's office. He has acknowledged preparing to kill someone
during the Ellsberg break-in "if
necessary." He
plotted to kill journalist Jack Anderson. He plotted with a "gangland
figure" to murder Howard Hunt in order to thwart an investigation. He plotted to firebomb the
Brookings Institution. He
used Nazi terminology to outline a plan to kidnap "…
mikethemadbiologist | September 21, 2008
Clearly, John McCain isn't reading the blog. Consider this McCain utterance by way of Josh Marshall:
"Opening up the health insurance market to more vigorous nationwide competition, as we have done over the last decade in banking, would provide more choices of innovative products less burdened by the worst excesses of state-based regulation."
We've been through this before, but the key point is this: people don't want exciting 'health insurance products', they want adequate care when they are sick. Also, how are we supposed to choose the 'right' healthcare? From the Mad Biologist's…
mikethemadbiologist | September 20, 2008
So John McCain apparently doesn't realize that Spain is: 1) not in the Americas; 2) fighting alongside us in Afghanistan and is a NATO ally; 3) not our enemy. Here's the backstory:
Per a post on Josh Marshall's site, I just listened to an interview John McCain did with a Spanish journalist recently. The interview is in English, but there's a Spanish translator translating the tape into Spanish at the same time. So the English part is difficult to hear. I am however fluent in Spanish, and what Josh reports is exactly what the Spanish version shows.Namely, that John McCain didn't appear to…
mikethemadbiologist | September 17, 2008Here's another resounding success of the Bush Doctrine. Erm, not so much (italics mine):
"It's like the good old days," Oleg Mikhailishchin, a pilot in camouflage uniform, told reporters during a rare visit by foreign media to the Engels base last month, before the war with Georgia further raised tensions with the West. More than 20 Tu-160 and Tu-95 bombers could be seen on the runway near the Volga River at this once top-secret base, where the two Tu-160 "White Swan" planes that landed in Venezuela on Wednesday flew from.
Russia is also dispatching a nuclear cruiser and other warships and…
mikethemadbiologist | September 16, 2008If Al Gore were dead, he would be spinning in his grave:
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.
Sigh. Actually, Democrats…
mikethemadbiologist | September 10, 2008Recently, a loyal reader related to me that the house next door to where I grew up sold at about fifteen percent less than the original asking price (not two years ago, housing prices were still climbing). This slashing of housing prices was euphemistically referred to by the broker as a "price enhancement." Some might call that turning a frown upside down, but its proper name is spin.
While the term price enhancement is spin, it does bear some relationship to truth: after all, it did encourage the buyer to buy. From the buyer's perspective, this is an enhancement--less money, same amount…
mikethemadbiologist | September 1, 2008One of the tactics that creationists use is what I call "words as weapons." What they say has no intrinsic meaning; instead, they are simply a way to manipulate people into joining their political agenda (this is why many around these parts, including the Mad Biologist, call them Liars for Jesus). The choice of Palin by the McCain campaign means McCain has adopted the same tactic of lies. This shouldn't be shocking: after all, the theopolitically conservative Uruk-hai are an essential part of his electoral strategy.
When McCain, for months, accuses Obama of being an inexperienced…
mikethemadbiologist | August 29, 2008Just a very quick observation about McCain's VP choice Sarah Palin. She doesn't have much of a record which is the same strategy that the Bush Administration used when looking for Supreme Court Justices. If 'the less they know, the better' is actually an apt description of your candidate and her policies, then you need a new candidate with different policies.
Just saying.
mikethemadbiologist | August 25, 2008I think we're up to nine McCain homes. It's so hard to keep track:
And the Aristocrats have some clues that you might own too many houses. Then there's this one with a groovy soundtrack:
Finally, some good, free advice:
There's a pretty easy way for Obama to knock McCain back on his heels with this patriotism schtick he's been playing. Separate and apart from the doddering, lying, confused old man part, which will never stick so long as McCain has a supplicant press covering for him, you can hit him hard -- very hard -- but make it not look below the belt. A simple ad that puts it in a…
mikethemadbiologist | August 24, 2008Orac is right to call out Stoller for referring to McCain as cancer-ridden--it's not true.
Worse, it's cruel, and I should have made it clear that I've never supported the 'cancer critique.' (I have called McCain many things, but never that). At the time, I thought it would be dishonest to cut out that one sentence, but I was absolutely wrong to not to call out Bowers on this. The part that I highlighted--which was why I thought the post was worth quoting:
Our nominee should crush this guy. And if he doesn't, then next year, the Generals are going to come out and undermine Obama unless…
mikethemadbiologist | August 21, 2008By now, you might have heard about McCain's forgetfulness about how many homes he owns (at least seven). But his campaign's response is utterly absurd (italics mine):
The houses gaffe doesn't matter because ... he was a POW!
"This is a guy who lived in one house for five and a half years -- in prison," spokesman Brian Rogers told the Washington Post.
For those of you who haven't kept track, the McCain campaign just recently cited McCain's POW years in explaining away the Miss Buffalo Chip gaffe, and in dealing with the allegation that he broke the rules and listened in on Barack Obama during…
mikethemadbiologist | August 20, 2008It's struck me as curious that fellow POWs haven't played more of a role in the McCain campaign--it can't be reticence on McCain's part since he repeatedly brings up his service (and starts many of his campaign events with a three minute film highlighting his capitivity). I was going to post about that, but then I stumbled across this column by another Vietnam POW:
People often ask if I was a Prisoner of War with John McCain. My answer is always "No - John McCain was a POW with me." The reason is I was there for 8 years and John got there 2 ½ years later, so he was a POW for 5 ½ years. And…
mikethemadbiologist | August 19, 2008Republican John McCain has repeatedly portrayed a study that uses bear DNA to estimate the population size of potentially endangered bears as an example of government waste and pork barrel spending. There's one small problem, however.
McCain was for it before he was against it (italics mine):
While he tried to cut money for several other projects in the same bill, he never proposed cutting the bear study and voted for the final bill containing it....
The ad goes on to criticize an earmark that provided "$3 million to study the DNA of bears in Montana." This is not the first time McCain has…
mikethemadbiologist | August 15, 2008From FDR's grandson, here's a video that puts Social Security--and its current politics--in proper context:
"A disgrace"? Hopefully, Democrats will run that in every ad.
mikethemadbiologist | August 4, 2008David Gergen this weekend described the Republican strategy towards Obama perfectly:
The best dog whistles are the ones most people don't hear. The reason McCain's ad works is because, at the root of it, there are a significant number of whites who see a successful, confident, intelligent black man. And they hate him for that, and that alone. He is everything they are not. But because he's black, they can latch onto that. As the old Southernism goes, "If you ain't better than a n----er, who is you better than."
I guess the Coalition of the Sane should be fortunate that the McCain camp…
mikethemadbiologist | August 3, 2008Glenn Greenwald's recent post about the botched anthrax investigation reminds me of a colleague who was investigated by the FBI after the anthrax attacks (and check out the letter claiming that Bruce Ivins was yet another scientist wrongfully accused).
When I heard that he was under investigation, I was shocked: he is one of the nicer scientists I know. Ultimately, he was cleared, and in a bizarre reversal, the government asked him for help in typing the anthrax strain.
The reason I bring this up is not to demonstrate that the FBI couldn't investigate its way out of a paper bag, but to note…