McCain Using Same Robocall Firm That Helped Smear Him In 2000

Story is here.

Note: This was a reply to the following ridiculous assertion:

"Tim Russert would have gone insane this election season with so many lies going around. I imagine him with anybody of the McCain campaign with the videos and the quotes to prove their contradictions in his very elegant and respectful way to cross examine. I believe that this election would have been a landslide by today if we would have somebody like him pressuring for interviews and confronting the politicians. I still miss him on sunday mornings!!!"

My reply:

Are you serious?

Russert would have kept every freaking GOP talking point roiling right up to election day. As Arianna said, he was a captive of conventional wisdom, a lazy thinker and largely AWOL in the runup to the Iraq War.

Please, he was weaker than a Shirley Temple.

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Note: Though shalt not criticize St. Timmeh.

Vicki Iseman Denies McCain Affair

Story is here.

So she waits until three weeks before the election to say, "I did not have sex with that man"?

Plus the National Journals has a well established rightwing bias, though not quite as outright cuckoo as National Review.

If the NY Times was so off base here---and that story they ran does seem to have damaged her career as a Capitol Hill lobbyist, why isn't she suing? She wasn't a public figure, so there would be no Sullivan Test for any possible libel action she might want to file, making it easier for her to win a favorable judgment.

This is just part of a Republican campaign to look like they were victimized by the media they claim is in the tank for Obama. But my suspicion is that McCain had his fundamental was in a tank of a different sort and now they are trying to sing and dance their way around it. And that phone call to Lanny Davis? That was an act.

Look, if her and McCain's relationship was so on the up and up, his aides wouldn't have been concerned about keeping them apart. So there was indeed some kind of smoke there, but we just haven't seen a definitive fire out of it yet.

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Joe The Plumber: Obama Tap Dances Like "Sammy Davis Jr."

Story is here.

Joe the Plumber appears to be Samuel Joseph Wurzelbacher.

According to Lucas County, Ohio court records, there is a Samuel Joseph Wurzelbacher who has a state income tax lien of $1,182.98. According to the court record he lives on a street that is part of the Lincoln Green subdivision.

And Joe the Plumber's Father appears to be Robert Wurzelbacher right wing fanatic and contributor who is the son in law of..... you're not going to believe this. Charles Keating.

This just gets better and better.

Oh there's also a Joe the Twice Divorced Wife Beater.

And The Joe I Haven't Had a Plumbing License Since 2002.

I wonder which of these will turn out to be the guy doing all the talk shows?

I'm sure we'll know by the end of the day.

****Update: Joe the "undecided voter" appears to be a registered Republican. He voted for McCain in the primary.

*** Update 2: There's another Wurzelbacher. Doug Wurzelbacher. Doug is active in competitive dog sled racing. Guess where he lives? Wasilla, Alaska. What are the odds? I wonder if he's related to "Plumber Joe"?

These questions need answers.

# posted by The Punisher @ Thursday, October 16, 2008
Comments:
An FYI--

A search on ancestry dot com turns up a Samuel J. Wurzelbacher at some point in the last twenty years living at - get this - 1960 W. KEATING Dr., Mesa, AZ!!!!

http://theobfuscationreport.blogspot.com/2008/10/joe-plumber-nope-joe-tax-dodger.html

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Note: I don't know why this was censored, though HuffPo has been censoring a lot of longer posts lately. Later on, I did put in a post with a short blurb about this and a link to the story, so this time around was a mixed bag. However, that only further exoses the arbitrary nature of the HuffPo censors.

An Old Boxer Who Has Been in One Too Many Fights

Story is here.

McCain's performance was not worse than that of Stockdale nor was it as horrendous as Cruz Bustamante's debate performance trying to replace Gray Davis as California Governor, but the fact remains that his fly by the seat of his pants style makes McCain perpetually ill prepared to take on sharper operators such as Obama.

He can blame his dad and wife for that since McCain has never had to pay a consequence, until now, for his laziness, impulsiveness, gutlessness and sense of entitlement because dad or his millionaire wife was there to bail his butt out or buy him what he wanted.

The McCain campaign was just a pathetic spectacle of privileged mediocrity that had never had to work for anything in his life. So he never developed the toughness and cunning that one learns from the experience of having to fight and claw for what one has.

McCain thought of himself as a downmarket aristocrat (just like Bush) and he reached the end of that rope Wednesday just as the Navy wouldn't make him an Admiral. His life is now a complete failure. I hope he is man enough to admit it and maybe he, like Jimmy Carter, can now do something constructive to save his reputation before he passes from this life. Don't count on it, though. He has always been an inertia kind of guy.

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Note: ??? Maybe they didn't like the shot I took at Bustamante?

One Reason Race May Not Derail Obama: The 'Do the Right Thing' Effect

Story is here.

"It's different," John Turturro's Pino Frangione insists. "Magic, Eddie, Prince are not niggers...They're not really black. They're black but they're not really black. They're more than black. To me, it's different."

Spike kinda blew that, actually. It's not that Magic, et al are "more than black," for some people, it is that they are ENTERTAINMENT, which gives a certain kind of white person permission to either laugh at blacks or to vicariously have blacks work for them while being free to slam them without social reprobation if they don't deliver on the court, etc.

The problem for some white people about Obama is that he has stepped outside the socially and culturally approved envelope they cubbyhole blacks into (there's a badly formed metaphor for you). Since many whites don't know black folks socially, it is scary for them to see one in a position of authority when they have never had a black boss or perhaps even coworkers.

And the GOP has been playing up the fear angle non-stop since 9/11, supplying the American public with more ready made terror than Osama Bin Laden. So anyone who doesn't see the McCain campaign as a racist carnival is in denial. No matter how much of a victory Obama wins, the GOP will see him as a glorified burglar breaking into "their" White House.

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Note: what did I write that was wrong? Or aren't white people allowed to address these questions?

McCain Co-chair Calls Obama "A Guy Of The Street," Raises Drug Use

Story is here.

This just in from the home office in Phoenix Arizona:

The Top Ten Reasons to Vote for McCain:

10. McCain has a kung-fu arm flap!
9. A Republican voter will be chosen at random for an all expenses paid party with the board of AIG!
8. Will make "Those Were the Days (The All in the Family Theme)" the national anthem!
7. Depressions mean big dividends for owners of Big Pharma and cardboard manufacturer stocks!
6. Free tickets to the Ron Silver Film Festival for all Republican voters!
5. But we still hate Hollywood!
4. Get back at those ungrateful grandchildren by shouldering them with the debt you created!
3. McCain gaurenteed not to shout "BooYa!" when he signs a bill!
2. Freepers and N R A members don't s h o o t old white Republicans!
1. Secretary of Defense Dick Armey!

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Ouch! McCain's Housing Solution Is a Gift from Taxpayers to Banks

Story is here.

That's all well and good, except if you read the Village Voice article on the mortgage crisis and Freddie and Fannie, HUD was one of the catalysts that ultimately necessitated the bailout of those two public-private entities.

I would also like to see a time limit put on this new layer of government bureaucracy so that it doesn't become a permanent burden on the taxpayer. I was also against the creation of the Department of Homeland Security not just on taxpayer grounds, but for fear that it would become an American oppression palace. I have been proven right on both counts.

We need a top to bottom reorganization of the DC bureaucracy anyway to put it on a 21st century footing and not the WWII one it is currently on.

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Biden: Palin Must Condemn Supporters' Hateful Obama Attacks

Story is here.

I saw that McCain had his wife out today attacking the Democratic ticket. However, there was something wrong with her and, at least to me, it was pretty obvious.

You see, because of the neighborhood I grew up in, I learned to tell when somebody had an undercover buzz on (that is, they were high and trying to not look like it).

And Cindy, I can say with some certainty, was definitely furtively freakin'. She is back on the meds and in dosages not recommended by any competent and ethical physician.

This McCain just gets sadder and sadder.

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Rolling Stone: McCain The "Make-Believe Maverick"

Story is here.

Everyone is rightfully focused on McCain's behavior, but what is getting lost amid the backwash of nepotism and narcissism is how easy it is to co-opt the media. While some may not want to see politics covered in the hagiographic way that sports commonly is, you still have too many reporters who are overwhelmed by the power and import of what occurs in Washington to the point that they become emotionally invested in the fates of those they cover/use as sources and the tendency, just as human beings, is to not scrutinize them as intently as a good reporter should.

There is also a kind of reflective narcissism going on, as reporters write for a living and thus are always looking for an angle for a possible book. They hope the people they cover will be significant just so they can say they regularly covered that pol (Chris Matthews, for example, who is a notorious name dropper) during some significant juncture in history. In other words, the prominence of a pol also reflects, for a reporter, on their own importance in the media pecking order. That makes reporters, as in sports, part of the star maker machinery behind the wannabe popular pol, to twist a Joni Mitchell lyric.

Any pol who realizes this psychological dynamic can easily own those who cover them, especially if the pol is from a political dynasty (Kennedys, Bushes, etc).


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McCain Angry With Himself?

Story is here.

You're giving McCain waaayyyy too much credit.

Through his life, McCain has been able to get what he wanted because he had some kind of enabler to make things happen, whether it was his granddaddy, his father, Senator Warner or his wife Cindy. He has never been one to brook any criticism, a narcissistic characteristic that is the hallmark of all spoiled little boys. That was encouraged by the deference and enabling the media displayed for him.

However, this time, Cindy can't buy him a presidency. It is for that he is angry. Just like Hitler at the end of WWII, who blamed the German people for failing him, McCain's sense of entitlement is now being buffeted by an uncooperative electorate and a VP running mate who has not only become a national joke, but who has emasculated him by being more popular with his party's regulars.

The media, now having their legitimacy seriously questioned by the leftwing blogosphere, has turned on him and his pathology of lies has only made reporters more determined to not be suckered AGAIN by his stories and general line of bs.

McCain has never been very competent at even being a human being. The intense scrutiny of a presidential campaign is now reminding him of something he has suppressed in his image of himself all of his life. The wave he rode for decades has crashed and left him high and dry on the rocks. And he has to live with that.

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Note: What the fuck? What did I say here that was worth of being censored? Or was the author offended by my assertion that he was "giving McCain way too much credit"? Or maybe it was because I called McCain a failed human being? I'm truly gobsmacked here.

Bloggers Lead Media to Report McCain/Palin's Campaign "Lies"

Story is here.

"The MSM knows their failure to call this spade a spade enabled GW Bush to bootstrap two lying campaigns into a profoundly dishonest administration that has disgraced and weakened our great nation. They don't want to be patsies all over again."

Missed it by THAT much.

The fact is that the media, in its complacent elitist and royalist way, was more than willing to be McCain's stenographer much as it did for Boy George because McCain was kissing its behind. If you play ball with MSM reporters and feed them a few morsels of inside baseball now and again they are putty in your hands.

However, bloggers started slicing and dicing the conventional wisdom and tendency to sleepwalk through recent campaigns by media figures and, with young people increasingly turning off the tv and ignoring newspapers, the big four networks and the three big 24 hour news networks were on the hot rails to cultural oblivion unless the media gave consumers a reason to believe in it again.

They are still falling down badly on the job, but at least they are improving. However, as long as a Brokaw, a Hume, a Couric and a Charlie Gibson is around, their value is going to be questionable. These aren't media crusaders, they are softball hurling enablers.

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VP Debate: McCain's Big Gamble Comes Up Snake Eyes

Story is here.

This was a reply to another poster's comment, which read in part:

"It is the elected representatives who come here from all over, and the preening appointees who arrive fresh from the campaign, plus their buddies in K Street lobby shops and other special interest groups, who breed "corruption" and even a little "greed (and it is only a little greed, compared with Wall Street)."

My response:

You forgot a media corps that becomes part of the DC socio-political scene, becoming so chummy with the folks they cover that a Dick Cheney can play them like Itzhak Perlman plays the violin. The get so caught up in the backwash of power like groupies following Def Leppard that they can't but help to protect their friends (and sources) in Congress and in the White House to the detriment of providing a clear view of what is happening in the centers of power to the public. They don't speak truth to power, they become stenographers for the "truths" that pols want dispensed to the electorate.

So the political coverage by the media, especially the electronic end of that, is a big dog and pony show. So a Tom Brokaw can be totally sucked in by the untrue McCain hype (see the Rolling Stone article on McCain, which is horrifying) and yet his brethren still hold him in high regard. He is little more than a Potemkin journalist and so are too many of his colleagues.

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The Race is Still Close -- but It's Beginning to Feel Like It Could Be a Rout for Obama

Story is here.

I have said this before, but Karl Rove knew that McCain would lose. McCain's candidacy scares the heck out of the GOP regulars for both policy and personality reasons. The base was demoralized and their staying home portended incalculable down ticket damage to the party's fortunes in Congress.

So Rove brought Palin in to energize the base and thus contain the downticket slaughter the McCain candidacy otherwise would have engendered. At this point, losing the presidency is almost an afterthought. This is about keeping people such as Mitch McConnell and Mean Jean Schmidt in office by getting the religious nuts to turn out for one of their own.

So Palin should be taken seriously for that reason and perhaps Democrats should tailor some of their ads in the weeks immediately before the election to the Palin voters by showing the disconnect between her state religious values and her and her family's actions.

But the Republicans, in their heart of hearts, will be glad to be rid of McCain and save Huckabee and Romney for 2012.

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Palin Contradicts McCain On Pakistan, Seems To Support Obama's Position

Story is here.

Two guys playing mavericks compared::

James Garner:

Son of a carpet layer, mother died when he was four.
Stormy family life, attended several high schools.
Joined the merchant marine at 16, but seasickness cashiered that.
Joined the National Guard after finishing high school and saw combat in Korea. Injured from mortar fire and then in a friendly fire incident. Called himself a "scrounger" in the army.
Had two successful tv series, Maverick and The Rockford Files plus a spate of movie roles. Did his own stunts.
Earned a Lifetime Achievement Award from SAG.
Hometown of Norman, Oklahoma erected a statue to him.
Liberal Democrat, turned down a 1990 offer to run for governor.

John McCain:

Coddled Panama-born son and grandson of admirals, entering the naval academy on his name alone despite not having the grades necessary regular people need.
Partied his way through the Naval Academy, finishing at the bottom.
Commissioned thanks to dad.
Lack of attention to the details of flying got him shot down over Vietnam.
Became a POW and milked it. Fellow POWs won't vote for him.
His wealthy second wife got him elected to Congress.
Flipped flop so often he might as well be Sybil.
A deregulator who engendered a $700 billion bailout
Confessed to running for president for narcissistic reasons
A onetime POW
Has had four cancerous moles removed.
He's a former POW
Voted with Bush 95% of the time
Erstwhile POW
VP nominee selected because she was a woman
POW background.

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McCain's Gambling Problem: Campaign Has Massive Ties To Gambling Industry

Story is here.

Another poster came up with the following Google search:
http://www.google.com/search?hl=en&q=mccain+gus+boulis&btnG=Google+Search&aq=f&oq=

Interesting tidbit gleaned from that search:

"The lavishly-furnished custom Boeing 727 airliner (727PX) which ferried Senator John McCain on four occasions during his Presidential run in 2000 also flew Saudi Royals out of the U.S. right after 9/11, carrying an entourage of Saudi Royals from Las Vegas to London six days after the 9/11 attack in a controversial operation later scrutinized by the 9/11 Commission.

The 727 figures in the current tempest over his relationship with female lobbyist Vicki Iseman, who provided and flew with McCain on the plane. "

Okay,. one of you media monkeys needs to ask McCain about this. Was he and his paramour too friendly with the Saudis?

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Jon Stewart: Bush Bailout Speech Just Like Iraq Speech (VIDEO)

Story is here.

"Evangelical Christianity, as everyone knows, is founded upon hate, as the Christianity of Christ was founded upon love. " (H.L. Mencken)

And think about this line from Mencken while watching the debate tonight and McCain is speaking:

"Thus he fought his last fight, eager only for blood. It quickly became frenzied and preposterous, and after that pathetic. All sense departed from him. He bit right and left, like a dog with rabies. He descended to demagogy so dreadful that his very associates blushed. His one yearning was to keep his yokels heated up -- to lead his forlorn mob against the foe. That foe, alas, refused to be alarmed. It insisted upon seeing the battle as a comedy. Even Darrow, who knew better, occasionally yielded to the prevailing spirit. Finally, he lured poor Bryan into a folly almost incredible.....

"....here stood the man who had been thrice a candidate for the Presidency of the Republic -- and once, I believe, elected -- there he stood in the glare of the world, uttering stuff that a boy of eight would laugh at! The artful Darrow led him on: he repeated it, ranted for it, bellowed it in his cracked voice. A tragedy, indeed! He came into life a hero, a Galahad, in bright and shining armor. Now he was passing out a pathetic fool."
http://www.peeniewallie.com/2005/06/h_l_menckens_ob.html

Censored and then later approved after I complained about it.

Note: Yes, that's right, Huffington Post censored H.L. Mencken. Now I assume that HuffPo's moderators have had college educations. So they should know who Mencken is. I did make another post in the same article with just a link to Mencken's column I quoted above AND IT GOT THROUGH! What is up with these assholes? These effete little punks who seem to have been hired because they don't know what satire is or who recoil when a pointed comment is too strong for their delicate limousine liberal sensibilities do little to help HuffPo's credibility.

I am now at 306 censored posts out of 1366, which is a ridiculously high percentage when I don't use curse words in my posts and I don't troll. The HuffPo moderation system is clearly broken. I hope they fix it, because users are really getting pissed at the inconsistent nature of the censorship.

Freddie Mac Paid McCain Campaign Manager's Firm Through last Month

Story is here.

Well, we now have THE MCCAIN PRINCIPLE.

The Peter Principle dictates that a person will keep rising through the ranks as long as he demonstrates competence at his job until he finally gets to a point where he finally becomes in over his head. But integral to that is a background of success.

McCain? He has never been successful at anything (except womanizing). He was about dead last at the Naval Academy, was an abysmal pilot (and it probably got him shot down in Vietnam), his wife bought him his seats in the House and Senate, he mishandled an earlier run for the GOP nomination for president and his campaign now is so bad that you just read news accounts of it for laughs rather than have to depend on comedy writers to shape his image to get guffaws out of an audience. He failed even at maintaining his previous image as a maverick, a reputation that was complete fiction anyway.

McCain is the exemplar of emasculated utter loserdom. Yes John, we are laughing at you, not with you.

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Bailout Plan "Not Acceptable" To Congress

Story is here.

The Financial Times torched the plan on the basis that the assets may not be worth bupkis by the time the U.S. wants to withdraw its involvement, resulting in a monster size write down that will ultimately have to be compensated for by taxpayers. So you have asset deflation, few loans being made to consumers and businesses, resulting in a stagnant economy and an increased tax burden coupled with our economic future now being decided by a combination of China, Saudi Arabia, Japan and Mexico.

And I hope nobody is planning on any foreign leisure travel for the next five years, because the dollar is probably going to be worth about as much as the peso during that time---if we are lucky.

Bush, Cheney and their congressional enablers (Mitch McConnell, Tom Delay and Bill Frist, I'm looking your way!) are guilty of a particularly insidious form of treason. They should all die in jail for this.

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Contessa Brewer Wins Latest Round Of "Stump Tucker Bounds"

Story is here.

This is a reply to another poster, who offered, "Don't blame Tucker, he is just doing his job. Unfortunately his job is defending the inane, unworkable positions of his boss."

But you know what? At some point you have to have some dignity as a MAN and not set yourself up to look like an idiot by defending McCain's lies, distortions and ignorance. Bounds needs to grow a pair and walk away from the train wreck. He is already the butt of jokes. If he is so craven as to enthusiastically keep fronting for this dog and pony show, he needs to turn his credentials as a man in at the front desk and head over to Nordstrom's to buy himself a pantsuit.


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McCain Ad: Obama Has Been MIA On The Economy

Story is here.

No wonder you are a Palin voter. You want simpleminded cheerleading rather than reasoned debate on the important issues facing our nation. That is just vapid and doesn't say much for you.

And the surge isn't working. You are deluded. The Shiites and Sunni basically engaged in a big gang fight and the Shiites have now won and are killing any Sunnis who try to return to their homes in Baghdad. So there is no more fighting there because, just like how 18th Street owns the Pico-Union area in L.A. and the Crips own the area around Compton, no competing gang can go in those sectors without being cut to ribbons.

The U.S. forces there were little more than bystanders in all this and many of the got killed during what was a religious civil war in Baghdad.

Stop listening to Rush, a junior college dropout. He doesn't know jack.

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