OBAMA WINS AS McCAIN RAILS AND RAMBLES
First, my apologies for having gone largely AWOL from commentary on this blog for the last month or so. It’s not that I don’t care. It’s not that I don’t love my corporal’s guard of faithful readers. It’s not that I have checked my passion and concern. It’s just that between preparations for Diversity Day and my work as Secretary of the Democratic Party of McHenry County and campaign stuff, I’ve been too busy to write. At least one of those things is out of the way now, so look for more gratuitous blathering from this direction.
Anyway, a tip o’ the hat to Chalice Chick for posting this in a .jpg format that I could rip off. I saw it earlier on ljdemocrats, but was unable to steal it because it was in the wrong format.
Just about everyone who is not paid to say the contrary agrees that a cool, collected and presidential Barack Obama handed an erratic, irascible John McCain his head in last night's debate. While McCain may have thought he was going on the offensive, his attacks kept veering off in the direction of old cootism. His dismissive reference to Obama as “That one” was just one of a series of head scratchers which included gratuitous insults to moderator Tom Brokaw-“Not you, Tom” in response to “who would you appoint Secretary of the Treasury”-and to an African-American questioner about the economy-“You probably never heard of Fannie Mae and Fredie Mac.”
My personal favorite was when McCain pulled a $300 billion program out of his ass. The proposal for the Federal Government to buy up individual mortgages and renegotiate terms with the borrowers at “adjusted property value” was a jaw dropper for so very many reasons. First, the just approved $700 bail out bill authorizes, although it does not compel, the Secretary of the Treasury, to do just that. Second, that this kind of direct relief for mortgagees was a demand of liberal democrats who preferred it to the bank bail out, not in addition to it. Third, that this pile-on of expenditure comes despite resolute opposition to any tax increases to pay for it thus ballooning the national debt. And finally, that this little bit of New Deal programming is bound to enrage-as it has-his conservative base, who were already tepid over the Team of Mavericks.
It speaks volumes of McCain’s performance that this biggest, boldest, stupidest gambit has raised hardly a ripple among the nattering classes, save the raving conservatives.
Two of my other favorite McCain antics actually occurred after the debate. The first was when he spurned Obama’s out reached hand practically throwing wife Cindy-who earlier in the day actually had the audacity to claim the Obama campaign was the dirtiest in history-between them to intercept the Democrat’s grasp. And then the McCains-both of them-just vanished from the stage leaving Barack and Michelle glad handing the audience, signing autographs and posing for pictures for a full 20 minutes. C-Span had the whole thing on camera while an announcer’s voice had to explain that the McCains had left the building. Other cable networks showed part of the Obama charm offensive as their talking heads nattered on. Judging from the big grins on the part of the audience/questioners, by the time Obama was finished he had personally sewn up the vote of everyone in the room.