Friday
Jul112008
McCain simply “out of touch” with Americans
Staff
The Democratic National Committee held a conference call and discussed Sen. John McCain’s (R-Ariz.) “disastrous” week on the campaign trail. McCain was supposed to strengthen his stance on his economic policy this week, but instead showed how “out of touch” he is with the challenges that America’s families are facing. Sen. Debbie Stabenow (D-Mich.) said that she was insulted on behalf of the people she represents by McCain’s words and actions. She explained that McCain doesn’t understand what Americans go through everyday just to make ends meet and how his support for more years of a Bush economy would be disastrous for American families.
Stabenow explained that McCain actually called social security a “disgrace’ when he has “a total lack of understanding” of what it really is. She also said that McCain’s approach on tax policy would make it impossible to balance the nation’s budget, something that needs to be done. McCain also failed to vote for the current medicare bill; he was the only senator to miss the vote which “is critical to the future of medicare.”
Stabenow said that people in Michigan are suffering and are not experiencing “a mental recession.” Since President Bush took office, three and a half million manufacturing jobs have been lost in Michigan alone, and the state is currently experiencing an unemployment rate of eight and a half percent. Stabenow explained that McCain fully supported Bush’s policies and that the people of Michigan “cannot take four more years of this.”
McCain’s economic advisor Phil Gramm said that Americans are “a nation of whiners,” yet Stabenow said that the people of Michigan are not hallucinating when they aren’t getting a paycheck, when they can’t pay their mortgage, and when they can’t put food on the table. Stabenow said that people are struggling as every single cost has gone up while wages have gone down. She claimed that McCain is simply not in touch with what is going on in the real world. Stabenow also declared her support for Sen. Barack Obama (D-Ill.) and said that she is absolutely confident that he will make the changes that will help the country grow, and gets what the American population is going through.
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Stabenow explained that McCain actually called social security a “disgrace’ when he has “a total lack of understanding” of what it really is. She also said that McCain’s approach on tax policy would make it impossible to balance the nation’s budget, something that needs to be done. McCain also failed to vote for the current medicare bill; he was the only senator to miss the vote which “is critical to the future of medicare.”
Stabenow said that people in Michigan are suffering and are not experiencing “a mental recession.” Since President Bush took office, three and a half million manufacturing jobs have been lost in Michigan alone, and the state is currently experiencing an unemployment rate of eight and a half percent. Stabenow explained that McCain fully supported Bush’s policies and that the people of Michigan “cannot take four more years of this.”
McCain’s economic advisor Phil Gramm said that Americans are “a nation of whiners,” yet Stabenow said that the people of Michigan are not hallucinating when they aren’t getting a paycheck, when they can’t pay their mortgage, and when they can’t put food on the table. Stabenow said that people are struggling as every single cost has gone up while wages have gone down. She claimed that McCain is simply not in touch with what is going on in the real world. Stabenow also declared her support for Sen. Barack Obama (D-Ill.) and said that she is absolutely confident that he will make the changes that will help the country grow, and gets what the American population is going through.
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Reader Comments (15)
Why is it that when Jesse Jackson makes a vulgar comment that was obviously meant the headlines are "Jesse Jackson makes Obama comment" but when Gramm (and yes I do think he is an idiot as well) the headlines read "McCain Advisor Says Americans are Whiners"? The press is so beyond biased and dishonest in the entire politcal process and so is Sen Stabenow. Just as Obama has never truly been taken to task for anything anyone around him has said or done (his wife, his pastor, Jesse Jackson) then McCain should not be taken to task for what people around him say either.
I absoulutely agree with you, and the Democrats need to go to every state and make the common man/woman understand what is at stake in this election. Especially in the southern states people are still worried and will not vote for Sen. Obama because of his skin color. They may give you all kinds of excuses but the real reason is he is black.
PJ - Jesse Jackson is not an Obama advisor (also, he thought the microphone was dead). Mr. Gramm is McCain's senior Economic Advisor and has been mentioned as a possible secretary of the Treasury in a McCain administration. Big difference
Seems McCain has been busy lately, what with still trying to get past his bomb, bomb, bomb Iran foreign policy statement, his running around distancing himself from his top financial who called Americans whiners for complaining about our economy, his disgraceful comments on Social Security, to distancing himself from any talk of viagra and issuing challenges left and right for Obama to appear.
I have a challenge for Mr. McCain.
John Sidney McCain is hereby challenged to meet with the little old librarian who was denied access to his public forum on public property, issued a tresspassing ticket and threatened with arrest for simply carrying a sign that said McCain = Bush - to answer a few of HER questions.
Well, PJ, Jesse Jackson's relationship to Obama is simply not the same as Gramm's relationship to McCain. Jackson is not a formal campaign advisor to Obama, whereas Gramm is McCain's CHIEF economic advisor on the campaign trail. This means that McCain has hired Gramm because he respects what Gramm thinks about the economy. Obama has not hired Jackson to any official capacity. So, when Gramm says something public about the economy it is a direct reflection of McCain's closest cohort. Also, lets not forget that Obama was very seriously taken to task for the words of his pastor a few months ago. So, I think that your feeling that McCain is being unfairly picked upon is unwarranted. Also, McCain's rhetorical clumsiness and knack for saying the wrong thing make him an easier target for journalists than Obama's more polished public presence.
McCain tried to pin Wes Clark's statements on Obama, and he wasn't even in Obama's campaign. But now that McCain's own economic advisor spills the beans on how McCain and his people view Americans with such disdain... all of sudden only McCain speaks for himself.
Graham is a long time friend of McCain, central to his economic team, and the guy McCain looks to after saying that he personally doesn't understand the economic issues as well as he should.
McCain is corrupt. He's immoral. He cheated on his first wife wife, a disabled woman, and spent a lifetime proving that his time in captivity wasn't the real John McCain, the screwup McCain, the spoiled McCain, the hateful racist McCain, the McCain who has to ask his wife for an allowance to hit the craps tables... the one who's daddy got him out of every bungle he was in in the military.
I am totally in agreement with Rick. Speaking in front of a person Is Totally different from speaking behind someone's back.
John McCain shotdown by enemy fire is bacause he made a judgemental mistake. If John McCain made the right call and stayed in school or anything else, he would have avoided the incident all together.
PS. I just love to talk behind someone's back. Avoid the responsibility burden --TOTALLY.
The simple fact is that this article is trash journalism. The simple fact is that there is so much idiotic polarization in this country, that we, along with Washington, stand in the way of solving our problems. The comments by James McDouglas are so juvenile and so moronic and so uninformed, they do not deserve a response.
Before this race is over we will no longer have to question John McCain's manhood, values or character because it will be clear to all that the "Fiction" of McCain's legacy is a greater illusion than his testicular fortitude. The selling of the "Maverick John McCain" is a fiction perpetuated by his handlers and friends in the media. "WAR HEROES" do not run around telling anyone and everyone that they can find how damn heroic that they are. Do they? Ever listen to Bruce Springsteen's Song Glory Days? Heroes do not live to tell tall tales. Myths do. Heroes die. Liars never tell you how they graduated 4th from the bottom of their class at the Naval Academy, how their legacy admission is the only reason they were not expelled for being in a drunken stupor most of the time or that they were never promoted to Admiral. McCain was an abject failure at the Naval Academey, a man of low intellect with little if any intellectual curiousity and an ambivalence towards engaging in nny meaningfult flight plan preparation. Hence McCain's legacy is that he crashed numerous military aircraft and was hardly viewed by anyone at the Naval Academy as a serious Naval Aviator. In fact, he was more enamored with the title "Naval Aviator". McCain was a terrible and ill prepared pilot who probably should not have been given his assignment in Vietnam where he was shotdown, briefly tortured and then sung like a canary for the Viet Cong. Think about that. John McCain was a terrible pilot (leader/navigator) but was into the title, lifestyle and glory behind being a Naval Aviator but was not willing to prepare. Ask yourself whether this putz would be the same as President. Americans need to do to McCain what the Viet Cong did, shoot the incompetent pilot's political ambitions out of the sky before he destroys this country for the sake of achieving his long held political ambitions. McCain a soul less opportunitistic fraud who seeks the limelight and glory. So you say you are a Republican, I still say, look behind the "man" and what you will be reminded of is the Great Oz inthe Wizard of Oz. When they pulled back the curtain, there he was a little man. That my friends is the essence of John McCain.
JOHN MCCAIN---Unprepared at the Naval Academy
JOHN MCCAIN---Unprepared to lead America
Political parties are out of touch in general, doesn't matter what side of the aisle you are on. You can't pick on McCain when he's only a small part of a larger problem. I am sick of the stupid McCain=Bush argument, that's an tired, cliche'd, and ignorant saying. I could say Obama = Clinton (Bill + Hillary), which would be equally stupid and irresponsible to say. Our GOVERNMENT to a great degree is out of touch with Americans in general and the rest of the world. This article doesn't go far enough I suppose. The question is, when the rubber meets the road who is the better more experienced person to have in office when you start thinking about that at election time? No one looks at that any more it seems. Its the donkey or the elephant...geez I wish for once people would take off the "party blinders" and come to their senses! The media especially as it indicates a serious failure of the media to do their job properly...report unbiased information to the public! Wow what a concept!
I am terribly worried about the state of our country, but are any of these politicians? It really does not seem so. Here in NC we have lost textile & furniture jobs that have gone to China, Pakistan,etc. Another local furniture factory, Stanley announced a closing laying off 350 people this week. "Whiners?" "Mental Recession?" - I want to scream. Tell that to those 350 people! I think they would prefer to be working. My big question, when we no longer manufacture anything in the US anymore what happens if we have a crisis, like a war, & need things? What happens if China, the largest & most populated country, ends up making nearly everything, & decides,"Hey, we need to expand - that United States of America place looks pretty good - lets take that!" Folks, it can happen - we all need to WAKE UP! We can lose our sweet little world of cell phones, tatoos & nose rings. We can lose the right to drink overpriced Starbucks coffee everyday. We need leaders who will LEAD - say what they mean & mean what they say, not back up & put a new spin on every dumbass thing they've said after they say it. I read nearly 25% of our job force works in healthcare related occupations - what the hell is that about. It's about the same percentage we currently have working in manufacturing jobs - there is just something so wrong with that picture.
From one Chris to another, I agree with you. It is a sad state of our democracy that the less intellectually equipped but the most politically ambitious are from what Americans get to choose from. Unfortunately the "experience" that is deemed to qualify someone for the office of the Presidency, is not a lifetime in the Senate, sucking up to the military industrial complex, enriching yourself and holding on until you are 72 years old so you can make that glorious run. OBAMA is at least intelligent enough that he will try to put the best possible leadership team in place. McCain is simply too old, an empty vessel of a man who is clearly missing a soul.
The world is changing in profound ways that were not anticipated by the Neocons in the Military Industrial complex who have bankrupted this nation and placed the future security and prosperity of all Americans at risk. We must rise and lift ourselves up, but we need real leaders, serious leaders, people who want to fundamentally right the course without regard for whether there is a direct financial benefit for them. The elite in our own country, through their malfeasance and manipulation of the markets have destroyed the value of our currency and the middle class. I see the movie Mad Max From Thunderdom and wonder if that is what waits on the horizon for America. I prey not.
Running On Empty: How the Democratic and Republican Parties are Bankrupting Our Future and What Americans Can Do About It: http://www.amazon.com/Running-Empty-Democratic-Republican-Bankrupting/dp/0374252874
I'd like to know where you get your facts. It is stated "since Bush took office, three and a half million manufacturing jobs have been lost in Michigan alone, and the state is currently experiencing an unemployment rate of eight and a half percent." If both are numbers are correct, and all Michigan jobs are manufacturing jobs(which they are not) then Michigan would have had something like 80 million manufacturing jobs when Clinton was president. Absolute utter nonsense. Does it matter to anyone that such outrageous lies become "urban truths" to be believed by a significant portion of our society.
And for anyone that thinks that a 2% return on your retirement investment is good (about the rate you get from Social Security,)
I can understand why you would want and need more social programs in your later years. No one in their right mind would ever invest in our Social Security program as a retirement vehicle. It is wealth redistribution program and nothing more. Maybe that is a good thing, but don't insult me and try to convince me that it is anything but a investment disaster.