If Palin Was A Pitbull With Lipstick, Cindy Was Trying Hard To Be Well Decked Out Big Bird

Last night John McCain's Republican Party showed us what it is made of. Their hope for the future, an inexperienced, nasty, unvetted ex-beauty queen laid it all out on the table. Glenn Greenwald called it The GOPs cheerful viciousness and even the severely Republican-biased was A.P. forced to admit that Palin lied her way through the whole speech. No one knows what a cutthroat sleazemeister Tucker Eskew is more than John McCain but McCain put Eskew in charge of Livin' Palin. What a monster! And I mean McCain, not poor Palin or vile Eskew. He had that worst-of-America speech written for her and then helped her practice deliver it with relish and venom.

My closest friend is a school teacher in Compton. He's a hero every single day, I've known him more than half his life and we've traveled all over the world together, from Morocco and Egypt to Myanmar, Nepal and Sri Lanka. I've been trying to help him buy his first house. Thanks to anti-regulatory Republican ideology the housing market crashed and the one silver lining in that cloud is that houses are more affordable for big city school teachers who make around $50,000 a year. But not a lot more affordable. We've driven around and around some pretty sketchy neighborhoods looking at an awful lot of 2 bedroom, one bath fixer-uppers.

Last night we watched Laura Bush dragging what we thought was someone dressed up as Big Bird across the stage. It turned out to be the daughter of a Mafia connected bootlegger and jailbird who left the McCains hundreds of millions of dollars. Her outfit cost quite a bit more than the houses my friend is trying to figure out how to afford.

Oscar de la Renta dress: $3,000
Chanel J12 White Ceramic Watch: $4,500
Three-carat diamond earrings: $280,000
Four-strand pearl necklace: $11,000–$25,000
Shoes, designer unknown: $600
Total: Between $299,100 and $313,100

My friend got really angry. It didn't cheer him up when I mentioned that the cost of the entire Big Bird costume was 60 times more than the tax-credit that John McCain is proposing to give families to cover their health care for a year. And you know what? It isn't just John and Cindy McCain. It's the whole stinking, corrupt party. Like all right-wing parties throughout history, they represent the interests of the haves, especially the haves-a-real-lot. The entire idea of "conservatism," means keeping power and economic wealth in the hands its in now.

A friend of mine who has been watching the congressional race in Pennsylvania's Lehigh Valley between Bush rubber stamp Charlie Dent and progressive community organizer Sam Bennett, sent me an interesting campaign flyer this morning, one that fits in well with Cindy McCain's $280,000 diamond earrings.

In a story called “What They Make,” the Morning Call reported Sunday on the wealth gap right here in Lehigh Valley, detailing the millions of dollars local CEOs earn. And who do they give to politically? The $13 million-a-year CEO of Air Products, John P. Jones, and $5 million-a-year CEO of PPL, James H. Miller, each give Congressman Charles Dent thousands of dollars. Meanwhile, the Vice Chairman and former CEO of Mack Trucks, Paul Vickner, which will cut hundreds of Lehigh Valley jobs, will still cut checks of thousands of dollars to Charles Dent. [opensecrets.org]

“At a time when Lehigh Valley families are struggling to fill their gas tanks, we need a representative in Washington who listens to working families, not multi-millionaire executives,” says Kathryn Seck, Bennett Campaign Manager.  “Dent takes more than $150,000 from Big Oil and Big Pharma and more than $100,000 from Washington lobbyists. Two more years of Congressman Dent-- unaffordable.” [opensecrets.org]

Dent repeatedly votes against the interests of workers and for the benefit of ultra rich executives and Washington lobbyists whose money Dent refuses to return.
 
• Dent votes AGAINST the Employee Free Choice Act [Vote #118, HR 800, 3/1/07]
• Dent votes AGAINST stopping unfair trade agreements like CAFTA [Vote #443, HR 3045, 7/28/05]
• Dent votes AGAINST fully raising the minimum wage [Vote #319, HR 5672, 6/27/06]
• Dent votes AGAINST equal pay for equal work [Vote #768, HR 2831, 7/31/07]

“Sam stands up for workers and working families while Dent stands with millionaires. Even the Morning Call’s report shows the pay gap for middle class Pennsylvanians is growing," says Seck.

“Someone earning the state's minimum wage of $7.15 an hour would have to work 899 years to match Jones' overall annual compensation,” according to the Morning Call.  “In 2007, the average CEO with large companies was paid $10.5 million, or 344 times what the typical American worker earned, according to a study by United for a Fair Economy...  The group cites union membership erosion as one of the key factors in the widening pay gap between executives and workers.”
 
Sam Bennett has received the support of 29 labor unions and other groups that represent the concerns of working families.

I want to tie this all together today with something that Pastor Dan wrote at Street Prophets this morning.

The GOP as it is currently constituted may talk the talk when it comes to faith and democracy, but they will never walk the walk. They can't stand the idea of faithful people working to make a difference in their world, of citizens bettering their communities, because it is too threatening to the corrupt and authoritarian system they have built. In Gov. Palin the McCain campaign has found a perfect representative to demonstrate to its core constituents that they have embraced fully the legacy of George W. Bush: nihilist, apocalyptic, and rotten to the core. They have utterly no idea of what they could do to move their nation into the future, and they are utterly contemptuous of anyone who tries. They have no faith, no hope, and no love.

Would McCain Whore Out His Wife To Get To The White House? There ARE Other Ways To Do Campaign Events

Have you ever been to a real in-the-flesh political fundraiser? Good ones can really be stimulating and fun. And no one in L.A. gives better fundraisers than a half dozen progressive women-- Nancy Stephens, Sara Nichols, Carol Coote, Yolanda "Cookie" Parker, Cheri Shankar and Beth Broderick-- going under the collective nom de guerre The Hopelettes. As John Amato, Irwing and I discovered when we went to one of their events for Andrew Rice, this is a totally cool way to spend an evening and meet some like-minded people, the kinds who prefer to talking about ideas over getting drunk in a noisy bar.

In fact, if you're the type who prefers to get shit-faced with a bunch of misogynist rednecks, you'd probably prefer a McCain event-- like the one at the Sturgis, South Dakota bike rally today, where McCain dragged his snooty, elitist wife and tried to get her to take off her clothes, like she used to do at beauty pageants back when they first met and she was Miss Cow Pie.

As the senator made his way through a sea of motorcycle enthusiasts, shaking hands with the many veterans in attendance and accompanied by his wife Cindy and Sen. John Thune, he was surrounded by scores of beer drinking men and scantily clad women, many of whom were as thrilled to see the war hero candidate as they were to watch Kid Rock perform later in the evening.

...McCain felt so comfortable at the event that he even volunteered his wife for the rally’s traditional beauty pageant, an infamously debauched event that’s been known to feature topless women.

“I encouraged Cindy to compete,” McCain said to cheers. “I told her with a little luck she could be the only woman ever to serve as first lady and Miss Buffalo Chip.”

The Hopelettes events are anything but debauched and there will be no topless, drug addicted Cindy McCains running around puking. So... here's what I want to do: I want to invite any Los Angeles DWT reader to come to the next Hopelettes event. It's for a candidate we share with them: Jeff Merkley (D-OR) and it's more than just an opportunity to meet Jeff. John, Irwing, Digby and I will all be there-- and, better yet, so will the Hopelettes. It's in a home of the ecological future, an amazing environmentally perfected house in Beverly Hills where I went to see Jerry McNerney speak once.

You're supposed to donate $50. You can bring a check or you can stick $50.00 into the Blue America ActBlue page for Merkley's campaign and I'll put you on the guest list and send you the address. (If $50 is too much, don't sweat it; no one is counting.) It's 6PM this Thursday and, if the food is anything like it was for the Andrew Rice shindig... skip lunch.

The McCrankys aren't dodging taxes -- they merely declared their own personal property-tax holiday on just one of their (at least) seven homes

Young Johnny and the lovely Cindy -- it's so
hard to keep track of every last home you own

Shout-out to HuffPost for breaking this news that Newsweek now has up online. Some people will see it as good old-fashioned tax-dodging. Others may chalk it up to a wee glitch in the vast network of the McCrankys' financial holdings. Personally, we think it was a statement of principle on the part of Young Johnny and the lovely Cindy.

As we all know, before Young Johnny was for Chimpy the Prez's slash-till-it-hurts tax cuts for the rich, he was more or less against them, but now he's so crazy for them that perhaps the McCrankys are looking to find any way they can to show that Young Johnny is the tax-cuttiest tax-cutter of them all. And that's why they took their own personal four-year holiday from paying taxes on their beachfront condo in La Jolla, California:

When you're poor, it can be hard to pay the bills. When you're rich, it's hard to keep track of all the bills that need paying. It's a lesson Cindy McCain learned the hard way when NEWSWEEK raised questions about an overdue property-tax bill on a La Jolla, Calif., property owned by a trust that she oversees. Mrs. McCain is a beer heiress with an estimated $100 million fortune and, along with her husband, she owns at least seven properties, including condos in California and Arizona.

San Diego County officials, it turns out, have been sending out tax notices on the La Jolla property, an oceanfront condo, for four years without receiving a response. County records show the bills, which were mailed to a Phoenix address associated with Mrs. McCain's trust, were returned by the post office. According to a McCain campaign aide, who requested anonymity when discussing a private matter, an elderly aunt of Mrs. McCain's lives in the condo, and the bank that manages the trust has not been receiving tax bills on the property. Shortly after NEWSWEEK inquired about the matter, the McCain aide e-mailed a receipt dated Friday, June 27, confirming payment by the trust to San Diego County in the amount of $6,744.42. County officials say the trust still owes an additional $1,742 for this year, an amount that is overdue and will go into default July 1. Told of the outstanding $1,742, the aide said: "The trust has paid all bills shown owing as of today and will pay all other bills due."

Dan McAllister, treasurer- tax collector for San Diego County, said that about 3 percent of San Diego's approximately 1 million property owners default on their property taxes each year. The county assesses a 1.5 percent penalty for each month that goes by unpaid and puts houses up for sale after five years. "We do hear an awful lot of excuses for why people don't pay," McAllister said. "Under the law, the property owner is responsible for keeping the address current. We're only as good as the information we are given."

"At least seven properties," eh? No wonder it's so hard to keep track of the address to which every last property-tax bill is supposed to be sent.

And it's no wonder that ordinary Americans are so comfortable with their straight-talkin' Johnny. Why, Young Johnny must be the "home"-iest darned feller we've heard tell of since the heyday of that other American folk hero, the late Kenny Boy Lay, who you recall had to start selling off some of his homes (were there seven of them too?) in the wake of all that Enron legal fuss.

But we can all rest assured: Once the McCranky's become aware that they're about to be humiliated in a national magazine as tax deadbeats, the checkbook opens with startling rapidity.

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JOHN AND CINDY McCAIN ARE HIDING SOMETHING FROM THE AMERICAN PEOPLE

"What is John McCain trying to hide? Throughout this campaign, he has acted like his own calls for openness and accountability apply to everyone but himself. Now he thinks he can bring that same double standard to the White House. Whether he is skirting the FEC, withholding his tax returns, or stocking his campaign with the same Washington lobbyists he attacks on the campaign trail, John McCain is showing that he doesn't respect the voters enough to be honest with them. John McCain may not like it, but the American people have a right to know about the well documented links between his political career and the McCains' business ventures. John McCain's refusal to meet the standard of every other candidate seeking the office is one more reason he's the wrong choice for America's future."

-Howard Dean

Two weeks ago McCain made some kind of bogus claim that his wife's tax returns are private and separate. Theresa Heinz Kerry's-- as the media (and the wingnuts) never stopped telling us-- weren't and yet Cindy McCain has financed John McCain's political career even before he was getting massive bribes from her daddy's rich corporate pals (like Charles Keating-- who bragged he expected to get his money's worth from McCain... and who, in fact, did). Once McCain was a committee chairman who could pressure corporations with business before his committee to pay to play, he wasn't as desperate for Cindy's millions, but to this day, he still gets to use her jet for campaigning, even when breaking Senate ethics rules.

Today Cindy was on Today and she doesn't care that everyone else's spouse released their returns; she's never releasing hers. What is McCain hiding?