Straightshooter McCain and his houses
US issues - - Posted on August, 24 at 12:34 am by Ken L
I never have any trouble remembering how many houses I own, but then I don’t have a ‘household staff’ bill of more than a quarter of a million dollars a year. If I did, I might also leave it to them to count the silverware and the loose change and the houses. Never condemn a man until you’ve walked a mile in his shoes, that’s my motto.
It has nevertheless been very entertaining watching McCain and his minders try to find a way out of the mess created when someone whose main claim to the presidency is that his opponent is an elitist can’t remember how many houses he owns. Of course he is a heroic ex-prisoner of war hero, even though you’d never know it from listening to him or his campaign staff, but people who want to get technical are arguing that this isn’t really relevant to the how-many-houses issue. Pedants.
I have to say that some of the people leaping to his defence may not actually be helping much. For example, a person named Robin Leach burbles happily that ‘McCain “tends to answer questions very rapidly without thinking of the correct answers. … I would call it honest confusion.”‘
As the estimable John Cole observes:
I think answering questions quickly without any regard for accuracy is a trait I look for in my leadership.
Not to mention the honest confusion when the phone rings at 3 am.
And yet the polls suggest McCain is overtaking Obama. I suggested a while back that this would happen but I hoped I was wrong. I still hope so. But if the Americans go ahead and elect McCain after the true nature of the man has been exposed so clearly for all to see, there will be no more room for argument that the administration doesn’t really represent the views of the people. It will be clear that the majority of Americans want to live in a state of perpetual war. I trust our government is prepared to start distancing us from this outcome starting mid-November, 2008.
Posted in US issues |
August 24th, 2008 at 8:39 am
It’s remarkable that Honest John McCain has a slight tendency to answer questions without any regard for accuracy. I can think of another Honest John, a recent Australian PM, who displayed similar elasticity with the truth to every question he was ever asked, meriting him the well-earned title of Lying Rat.
Today I’m sure that our new gov’t is already drawing up ‘war’ plans, so to speak, to embrace whichever new American president comes along, and whatever new war that will inevitably come hand-in-hand with him, as any differences between the Rudd/Smith suckholing yankophile policies and those of Howard/Downer are barely discernable, if at all.
This is despite the fact that Australians clearly did not vote for more of the same when they turfed the latter pair of war-loving thugs from office.
As a chinese loving/chinese speaking prime minister, Kevin Rudd has basically done everything possible to embarrass Australia in chinese eyes whilst simultaneously seeming to wet himself upon each sighting of the great God Bush. Smith appeared to need straight-jacketing when within proximity of Condi short-fried Rice.
So will Rudd’s more-of-the-same mob will be constantly raising American human rights issues with President McCain, just as he nagged our Chinese friends to death about theirs instead of just enjoying the Games? Of course not.
Australia seems just as obsessed with living in a perpetual state of war as are Americans - I suppose to ensure future turn-outs at Anzac Day marches - so I can only cringe at the future grovelling and backside kissing that we will be forced to observe and endure, yet again, instead of finally adopting a new path of Australian originality and self-determination in this world: it’s called growing up.
August 24th, 2008 at 9:46 am
Aargh. I just lost a longish post because the system reckoned the code was wrong. Maybe my eyes are going.
At any event, I was commenting on Obama’s choice of the appalling Joe Biden as running mate. The Democrats’ answer to Dick Cheney. Perhaps Obama should change his slogan from ‘Change you can belive in’ to ‘Plus ca change…’
August 24th, 2008 at 11:08 am
They should have stuck with the original system where the election runner-up became VP. That way, the VP was shunted off to a small office on the other side of Washington and given the mushroom treatment, thereby preventing the development of a parallel executive government unaccountable to anyone at all a la Dick Cheney.
August 24th, 2008 at 6:55 pm
One class this semester is roughly half Americans, half Australians. We were talking about globalisation and how the rest of the world knows more about America than Americans know about anyone else.
I suggested they look up the Pew surveys for an essay they’ve got coming up, and the global poll on who the rest of the world would elect president if they could. “The whole world is watching your elections, because your choice has consequences for the rest of us”
They just looked blank. They had no idea why anybody else would be interested.
August 24th, 2008 at 10:14 pm
Tut, tut with McCain not remembering all those houses of his, because as you leftys well know, poverty is all relative remember. That is if they’re capable of trmembering-
‘US presidential contender Barack Obama’s African half-brother says he is “ashamed” of his family ties because he lives as an impoverished recluse in a Kenyan shantytown.
The Italian edition of Vanity Fair says it tracked down George Hussein Onyango Obama living in poverty in a rundown shack in the violent town of Huruma on the outskirts of Nairobi.
George Obama, 26, is the youngest of the presidential candidate’s seven half-brothers and half-sisters.
He told the magazine: “No one knows who I am.”
He said he was embarrassed that he lived “on less than a dollar a month” and never mentioned his world-famous half-brother.
“If anyone says something about my surname, I say we are not related. I am ashamed,” he told the magazine. “I live like a recluse. No one knows I exist.”
The New York Post said the magazine had reported that George Obama’s 2m by 3m shack was decorated with football posters, a calendar of exotic beaches and a front page newspaper photograph of the Democratic US presidential nominee.
Senator Obama, 47, and George Obama share the same Kenyan father, Barack Hussein Obama Senior.
Senator Obama’s mother, Ann Dunham, was from Kansas and met Mr Obama Snr at university in Hawaii. She was his second wife.’
August 25th, 2008 at 11:28 am
Ah, well, we’ve always been at war with Eurasia …
August 25th, 2008 at 12:29 pm
Answer without thinking, what sort of a trait is that for a proposed leader of the free world. They take the world for fools now, and now throw this maniac up as a Presidential candidate, and defend his inability to answer simple questions accurately. Is this guy dumder than Geroge Dubbya, is that possible.
At 3am one morning when we wake the old guy up, if we can wake hi up, and the Ruskies have not left Georgia, the question of will we bomb or not, and he comes up with the wrong answer…wow how exciting. I can see the Empire going on a magic ride down the slipery pole to political and moral oblivian under this coconut. Go Obama.
August 25th, 2008 at 1:22 pm
Probably a case of him wondering if it was a trick question, considering he doesn’t own any - apparently.
August 25th, 2008 at 1:31 pm
If I recall correctly, the last President who tended to answer questions without thinking of the correct answer was Ronald Reagan. Or any answer at all really. Actually I think he usually answered different questions, and his media people held little press conferences afterwards to tell people what the real answer was. That was fun.