Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.) made an overnight change in the homeowner bailout he proposed at Tuesday’s presidential debate, making it more generous to financial institutions and more costly for taxpayers.
McCain’s staff says it was always meant that way.
60 million people watching and McCain — seemingly — just makes shit up. Is he a liar or does he just not know what he’s talking about?
Take the 29 question 2008 campaign trivia quiz from The New Yorker.
NewMexiKen scored just 18 correct out of the 29.
The notion that people don’t know who I am is a little hard to swallow. I’ve been running for president for the last two years. I’ve campaigned in 49 states. Millions of people have heard me speak at length on every topic under the sun. I’ve been involved now in 25 debates, going on my 26th. And I’ve written two books which any — everybody who reads them will say are about as honest a set of reflections by, at least, a politician as are out there.
Barack Obama
“Across this country, this is the agenda I set before my fellow prisoners.”
John McCain
“We are now projecting Obama to win the election 90.5 percent of the time, with an average of 346.8 electoral votes, and a 5.4-point margin in the national popular vote.”
An Obama supporter, who canvassed for the candidate in the working-class, white Philadelphia neighborhood of Fishtown recently, sends over an account that, in various forms, I’ve heard a lot in recent weeks.
“What’s crazy is this,” he writes. “I was blown away by the outright racism, but these folks are f***ing undecided. They would call him a n—-r and mention how they don’t know what to do because of the economy.”
“It turns out that that ‘overhead projector’ John McCain claimed Barack Obama tried to get a $3 million earmark for was actually money to rebuild Chicago’s Adler Planetarium, the oldest planetarium in the United States.”
A good correction to the McCain myth from the Daily Howler:
For the record, McCain wasn’t exactly “driven out of the 2000 Republican primaries by this sort of smear.” The editors seem to refer to the South Carolina primary, which featured a great deal of nasty, underground sliming. But McCain continued campaigning after that, winning subsequent primaries in six states (including Michigan and Massachusetts), losing primaries in eleven others (including a 61-35 drubbing in California). … McCain got waxed in a string of states—but there was never any particular claim that “smears” decided those races. McCain was substantially outspent by Bush, and Republican voters tended to prefer Bush’s more conservative posture. (In most of those states, independents couldn’t vote, unlike in New Hampshire, where they’d given McCain his big win.) But in the press corps’ treasured novel, a deeply noble, wonderful man was driven from the race by a goon squad.
Somerby goes on to list some of the negative crap McCain and his campaign pulled in 2000. He’s not some changed McCain eight years later as the media myth would have us believe. McCain has always been an ass, only now he’s a doddering old ass.
FiveThirtyEight.com projects 345.4 Obama to 192..6 McCain. Probability of Obama win, 89.2%.
Are West Virginia, Montana, North Dakota and that district in Omaha within reach?
A state’s electoral vote consists of one per congressional district plus two others. Nebraska and Maine apportion electoral votes by congressional district with the overall state winner getting the two “at large” state electoral votes.
Wyoming has one electoral vote for every 174,000 people. California has one electoral vote for every 665,000 people. New Mexico one for every 394,000.
I only wish she had been asked: “Governor Palin, if paying taxes is not considered patriotic in your neighborhood, who is going to pay for the body armor that will protect your son in Iraq? Who is going to pay for the bailout you endorsed? …”
. . .I can understand someone saying that the government has no business bailing out the financial system, but I can’t understand someone arguing that we should do that but not pay for it with taxes. I can understand someone saying we have no business in Iraq, but I can’t understand someone who advocates staying in Iraq until “victory” declaring that paying taxes to fund that is not patriotic.
How in the world can conservative commentators write with a straight face that this woman should be vice president of the United States? Do these people understand what serious trouble our country is in right now?
Tom Friedman in a column you should read.
“I like John McCain. He looks like the guy who thinks he’s the neighborhood sheriff, you know? One of those guys. ‘You better tie up those trash bags or we’re going to get raccoons.'”
David Letterman
Stolen unscrupulously from The mental_floss Blogs.
My god but we’re all getting old.
Today Crocodile Dundee, Paul Hogan, is 69; Jesse Jackson 67; Chevy Chase 65; Sigourney Weaver 59; and Stephanie Zimbalist 52. Even Matt Damon is 38.
Eddie Rickenbacker was born on this date in 1890.
Edward Vernon Rickenbacker was a man whose delight in turning the tables on seemingly hopeless odds took him to the top in three distinct fields.
In the daredevil pre-World War I days of automobile racing he became one of this country’s leading drivers, although he had a profound dislike for taking unnecessary risks. He had entered the auto industry as a trainee mechanic and made his first mark servicing the cranky machines of that day.
In World War I he became the nation’s “Ace of Aces” as a military aviator despite the fact that he had joined the Army as a sergeant-driver on Gen. John J. Pershing’s staff.
He was named by Gen. William Mitchell to be chief engineering officer of the fledgling Army Air Corps. His transfer to actual combat flying–in which he shot down 22 German planes and four observation balloons–was complicated not only by his being two years over the pilot age limit of 25, but also because he was neither a college man nor a “gentleman” such as then made up the aristocratic fighter squadrons of the air service.
In the highly competitive airline business, Mr. Rickenbacker was the first man to prove that airlines could be made profitable, and then the first to prove that they could be run without a Government subsidy and kept profitable.
Seems like he might have been the last man to prove that airlines could be made profitable too.
On Sunday, October 8, 1871, fire leveled a broad swath of Michigan and Wisconsin, including the cities of Peshtigo, Holland, Manistee, and Port Huron. At least 1,200 people died (possibly twice as many) as a result of the fire. Approximately 800 fatalities occurred in Peshtigo, Wisconsin. That same night, the Great Chicago Fire erupted in nearby Illinois.
Conditions were ripe for major conflagrations that year. Rainfall during the preceding months totaled just one-fourth of normal precipitation; early October was unseasonably warm; and winds were strong. Vast tracts of forest burned for a week in parts of Michigan and Wisconsin and Chicago firefighters battled blazes daily. Contributing to Chicago’s Great Conflagration were the facts that the bustling midwestern city was built primarily of wood and several woodworking industries operated within the city limits.
“After a housing slump that has pushed values down 30% in some areas, roughly 12 million households, or 16%, owe more than their homes are worth, according to Moody’s Economy.com.”
If a news reporter deliberately makes a false statement claiming that a private company like Boeing or Microsoft is going broke, the company has the right to sue the reporter and the news agency. That is why reporters rarely make statements like Microsoft or Boeing (or Lehman Brothers, AIG, or Goldman Sachs) are going broke.
However, reporters can freely impugn the financial health of a government program like Social Security because a government program cannot sue for libel. That is why Brokaw knew that he could imply that Social Security is going broke, even though it is not true. Social Security cannot sue Brokaw even if he deliberately tells explicit lies about its financial health.
Those who are interesting in learning about the true state of Social Security’s financial health can find out by looking at the non-partisan Congressional Budget Office’s website.
Regular gasoline spotted around town Tuesday for $2.999.