McCain, Palin, Lies, Golden Parachutes And The Mating Habits Of Alaska Crabs

Today the McCain campaign is dealing with the mortgage and foreclosure crisis in the only way it knows how-- through deception and political manipulation (i.e.- disenfranchising everyone they can who lost their homes). Joe Biden this morning:

In the midst of this housing crisis, John McCain said, "I will fight for those that lost their... real estate investments." He went on to say, "It's not the role of government to bail out big banks or small borrowers." What about small borrowers? What about homeowners? What about the people who don't invest in homes, but live in them? There's an important distinction between the predators and the preyed upon.

I heard that a Republican County Chairman right here in Michigan said that they're keeping a list of foreclosed homes, suggesting that if you've lost your home, you should also lose your vote. I have a different idea. I think that if you're worried about losing your home, you should vote for the guys who are going to help you keep it!

I noticed this morning that journalists and TV news anchors, nervous that their organizations can do to their careers what the shameless corporate kiss-ass bosses at General Motors' NBC division did to Keith Olbermann, have been pushing the Republican Party line that both campaigns lie. The media has already established-- with even Karl Rove admitting it!-- that the McCain campaign, like the Bush Regime he is striving to perpetuate-- is divorced from the concept of Truth. They can't change that but what they can do-- and with the help of their allies at Big Media-- what they are doing is saying "all politicians lie." They drives to important and well-worn right wing themes for dealing with pesky democracies. First off it excuses McCain's campaign of lies because so many disillusioned voters are only to ready to adopt the meme that Obama, a politician, is as dishonest-- or even almost as dishonest-- as McCain. And second, it disgusts voters with the process, holding down turnout on election day, historically the right wing's #1 goal for elections.

Sarah Palin was so convincing in Colorado today that she was on the side of ordinary families and standing up against the excesses of Big Business and corporate power and that she and McCain are fighting for federal regulatory agencies that one might forget-- which is what one is meant to do-- that she is a Republican and that McCain has a long and solid voting record that proves conclusively that he is not-- and never has been-- on the side of working families and that he has encouraged the excesses of Big Business and corporate power-- believe me, Big Oil hasn't given McCain more money than any politician in America because they want him to lower gasoline prices-- and that he has been in the forefront of the battle to dismantle the New Deal regulatory protections that Republicans have been chipping away at since they were first proposed in the 1930s when McCain was just a small child in Panama riding around on the family burro.

Amazingly when both McCain and Palin were busy trying to distance themselves from the Bush Economic Miracle, from etched-in-stone Republican Party dogma and from McCain's atrocious voting record, each promised to put an end to multimillion dollar golden parachutes. McCain's donor base must have been laughing its ass off to watch the ignorant suckers in Golden, Colorado applauding wildly when Palin, as earnest as she will ever be, shouted "We're going to reform the way Wall Street does business and stop multimillion-dollar payouts and golden parachutes to CEOs who break the public trust." I guess they could start with McCain's top economic advisor, Carly Fiorina. After nearly bankrupting Hewlett-Packard with her disastrous leadership-- laying off tens of thousands of workers and outsourcing like mad-- she was unceremoniously fired... but not before she reaped a $42 million severance package which included help with her mortgage, relocation expenses, and taxes to the tune of $1.6 million between 1999 and 2003. The company also, provided for her personal travel on Hewlett-Packard jets, "for security reasons," and helped with $50,000 in legal fees. That's standard GOP "free market policy:" a CEO drives a company into the toilet, ruins the lives of thousands and thousands of employees, drives the stock into oblivion and then waltzes out with a golden parachute instead of being tarred and feathered. If she wasn't such a boring speaker she would have wound up on McCain's ticket instead of on his perspective list of cabinet appointees.

Ironically, if GOP attempts to eliminate federal regulatory agencies had been completely successful, instead of just partially successful, Barack Obama wouldn't have been able to congratulate federal regulators who prevented the heads of Freddie Mac and Fannie Mae from walking off with their Fiorina-like golden parachutes.

And while Palin was deceiving Colorado voters-- plus a nationwide TV audience-- McCain was in Florida lying his ass off too, repeating one of his favorite stump speech lines for the 90 millionth time, about how congress requested money to study bear DNA. Somehow he must have forgotten to mention that the bear earmark was requested by the chairman of his Montana campaign committee and that his running mate requested $2 million to study the mating habits of Alaskan crabs.