Happy Hour Discurso

Today's Yesterday's opining on the public discourse.

Well, my darlings, as you know, I'm visiting the folks and watching two dear friends get hitched this weekend. I couldn't leave you without Happy Hour, and so I bring you the lowlights of yesterday's political discourse. Look, they're only slightly stale.

Something tells me that McCain's maverick reformer take-on-Wall-Street image would do a wee bit better if he didn't have so many mortgage industry lobbyists underfoot:

I'll simply never understand why John McCain decided that associations with Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac are a key measurement of a presidential candidate's worth. It keeps coming back to bite him on the butt.

When mortgage giant Freddie Mac feared several years ago that Sen. John McCain was too outspoken on the issue of executive pay, it pinpointed a lobbyist known for his closeness to McCain and hired him to work with the senator.

Mark Buse, a longtime McCain adviser who had been staff director of the Senate commerce committee, signed on as a Freddie Mac lobbyist, and his firm, ML Strategies, earned $460,000 in lobbying fees in late 2003 and 2004, according to lobbying disclosures. Buse is now chief of staff at McCain's Senate office. [...]

McCain's own entanglements include his campaign manager, Rick Davis, who earned more than $2 million as president of an advocacy group that defended Fannie and Freddie against stricter regulation. Davis's lobbying firm, Davis Manafort, also received monthly payments of $15,000 from Freddie Mac as recently as August.

A campaign spokesperson conceded that McCain's chief of staff is a former Freddie Mac lobbyist, but said this did not influence McCain's policy position.

McCain, you'll remember, berated Obama for having spoken on the phone to a former Freddie Mac CEO. But apparently, Freddie Mac lobbyists who were hired specifically to gain access to you are quite kosher as campaign staffers.

No, I don't understand it, either.

While the McCain campaign is preventing Palin from talking to all but the friendliest of right-wing nutjob "reporters," they may want to consider keeping McCain away from newspapers:

Yesterday, Sen. John McCain met with the editorial board of the Denver Post. Discussing Iran, McCain took an extreme hard-line approach, saying the U.S. should “cut off” all ties to Iran, including “diplomatic” ties:

Let’s cut off all kinds of credit to ‘em, all kinds — diplomatic, trade, you name it. Basically isolate them. Because they are in violation of solemn agreements that they entered into, concerning nuclear weapons. And so I really believe that we could have an effect on Iranian behavior.

[snip]

Later in the interview, when asked how he could impose sanctions without Russia and China agreeing, McCain replied, “I’m not exactly sure.” Instead, he restated his “radical” and “dumb” idea to create a “League of Democracies” as a way to push his extreme approach to Iran.

McCain said that the U.S. should “at least try this” extreme isolation of Iran, seemingly unaware that such isolation has been the exact policy of the Bush administration. Only after years of failure — and a strengthened and emboldened Iran — have members of Bush’s team finally recognized the need to engage Iran. In other words, McCain is now more extreme on Iran than the Bush administration...

This, my darlings, is allegedly America's Leading Expert on foreign policy. I don't quite know why my skeptic sense is tingling, but it's going a little insane just now.

That was by far the most extremely stupid comment he made to the paper - nationally speaking. Somehow, I think the Coloradans will forgive that egregious fuckwittery faster than they'll forget this outright lie:

Yesterday during an interview with the Denver Post, Sen. John McCain (R-AZ) claimed, “I will not and have never supported renegotiating the Colorado River Compact,” an agreement that “governs how seven Western states, including Colorado and Arizona, share the Colorado River“:

MCCAIN: And by the way, whatever misinterpretation there may have been, I will not and have never supported renegotiating the Colorado River Compact. … Never, Never would I support a renegotiation of the Colorado River Compact. Please. No. Got it?

But in August, McCain did exactly that. He told the Pueblo Chieftain that the compact “obviously, needs to be renegotiated“:

MCCAIN: I don’t think there’s any doubt the major, major issue is water and can be as important as oil. So the compact that is in effect, obviously, needs to be renegotiated over time amongst the interested parties.

I think the problem here is that McCain doesn't have one spit's worth of respect for the media. He'd like us to believe otherwise, but his own words indict him:

On Wednesday, Sen. John McCain (R-AZ) said that he “do[es] not complain about the media” even though he and his presidential campaign have been doing nothing but complaining about and attacking the media in recent weeks. Yet one day later, during a town hall meeting yesterday in Denver, McCain confessed that not only does he attack the media, but he enjoys it:

MCCAIN: I do believe that there are many occasions where the nature of the media is to exaggerate things and perhaps not be as accurate as we would like them to be. […] I love to bash the media all the time.

Hmm. He seems not to understand this concept of video and audio recordings, which mean he can't get away with saying one thing to one set of people, and the exact opposite to the other. Between the lies, the anger, and the idiotic statements, maybe the McCain campaign should prevent McCain from having any contact with the outside world at all:

But really, what else is the McCain campaign going to do with him? McCain spent the month of September touring the so-called battleground states... and those are the states where his poll numbers have deteriorated sharply.

Remember that from early on, Republican sources have indicated that McCain's best hope of winning was to make the contest a referendum on Obama. Everytime he shows up in person somewhere, though, he undercuts that hoped-for narrative... not to mention demonstrating the palpable lack of enthusiasm for his candidacy among the GOP rank and file.

This, in fact, is one of the many incentives McCain's handlers had to suggest that he "suspend" his campaign before the first presidential debate -- if nothing else, it would get the old guy off the trail. It may also be why McCain's current campaign schedule, according to his own website, shows a string of rallies featuring VP nominee Sarah Palin... but zero scheduled appearances for the guy at the top of the ticket (aside from the two upcoming televised debates).

Holy fucking shit, Batman! Seems like the McCain campaign and I agree on something!