Mark Casey Online » McCain

McCain Has Ties to Saddam Hussein?

Mark Casey — Tue, 14 Oct 2008 22:05:25 +0000

Very interesting developments in the guilt-by-association game:

William Timmons, the Washington lobbyist who John McCain has named to head his presidential transition team, aided an influence effort on behalf of Iraqi dictator Saddam Hussein to ease international sanctions against his regime.

The two lobbyists who Timmons worked closely with over a five year period on the lobbying campaign later either pleaded guilty to or were convicted of federal criminal charges that they had acted as unregistered agents of Saddam Hussein’s government.

After being annoyed for weeks by people trying to place guilt on Barack Obama for the actions of William Ayers, with whom he served on an education board, I’m reluctant to try to make this into a big deal for McCain.

But let’s be honest, for just one minute. Ayers is in no way involved in Mr. Obama’s campaign, nor to our knowledge, his life. McCain, on the other hand, has made a conscious business decision to make a fundamental part of his campaign this person, who was paid by Saddam Hussein, and whose coworkers in that endeavor are now in prison.

Again, does this mean McCain is sympathetic to dictators and terrorists? No, not any more than meeting Ayers does for Obama. But McCain did actually hire a man who was formerly hired by Hussein to make American politicians sympathetic to dictators and terrorists. Obama just took a job with several other highly respected figures, one of whom happened to be Bill Ayers.

So, you do the math.

The McCain Mutiny Very interesting stuff coming out of the McCain campaign today....
McCain Campaign Fissures, Palin Called a ‘Diva’ Yup, this is what a diva sounds like: McCain sources...
Obama vs. McCain Debate Reaction You can turn to any corner of the internet —...
McCain Suspends Campaign… But Doesn’t, really Anyone who follows politics now knows about John McCain’s 12-hour...

Related posts brought to you by Yet Another Related Posts Plugin.

“My Fellow Prisoners”

Mark Casey — Wed, 08 Oct 2008 20:41:29 +0000

John McCain referred to Americans as his fellow prisoners at a rally today. Pretty funny. He tells that POW story so often, it’s started to seep into other parts of his brain:

Ah-nold Terminates Education, Parks; Releases Prisoners Everyone’s favorite “acting” Governor (hah–see what I did there?),...
Obama Gets it Right Barack Obama appeared in Nevada today, reassuring supporters after his...
Obama Finally Eroding Clinton’s Key Demographics We’re almost to the point where we can stop suggesting...
Palin Accidentally Agrees with Obama, McCain Plugs Ears Should we cross the border from Afghanistan and run anti-terror...

Related posts brought to you by Yet Another Related Posts Plugin.

Andrew Sullivan’s Liveblog

Mark Casey — Wed, 08 Oct 2008 03:50:02 +0000

Sullivan recorded a good play-by-play, and reached this conclusion about debating, history, and Britishness:

This was, I think, a mauling: a devastating and possibly electorally fatal debate for McCain. Even on Russia, he sounded a little out of it. I’ve watched a lot of debates and participated in many. I love debate and was trained as a boy in the British system to be a debater. I debated dozens of times at Oxofrd. All I can say is that, simply on terms of substance, clarity, empathy, style and authority, this has not just been an Obama victory. It has been a wipe-out.It has been about as big a wipe-out as I can remember in a presidential debate. It reminds me of the 1992 Clinton-Perot-Bush debate. I don’t really see how the McCain campaign survives this.

Obama vs. McCain Debate Reaction You can turn to any corner of the internet —...
Markos’ Immediate Debate Reaction Snap polls, punditry, media gobsmacking and bloviation from myself and...
McCain Suspends Campaign… But Doesn’t, really Anyone who follows politics now knows about John McCain’s 12-hour...
Obama Wins More States; Clinton Mulls Skipping Debate for Chelsea Earlier this week, Hillary Clinton suggested that she might sit...

Related posts brought to you by Yet Another Related Posts Plugin.

Markos’ Immediate Debate Reaction

Mark Casey — Wed, 08 Oct 2008 03:05:21 +0000

Snap polls, punditry, media gobsmacking and bloviation from myself and my peers are well on the way, but first to come down the line was Markos over at Daily Kos, and here’s the money quote:

There’s no doubt what the public will think. Anyone watching CNN on a hi-def TV could see the dial focus group of a bunch of Ohio undecided voters. And throughout the night, it often seemed that Obama would break the darn meter, his ratings going through the roof. McCain, on the other hand, was the king of the flatline. I swear, you could see the downticks every time McCain said “my friends” — a tell to the audience that he was about to serve another heaping dish of b.s. It was painful. According to the Republican pre-debate spin, McCain was supposed to use “humor” to soften the blow of his mighty attacks, but 1) did any of his attacks connect? and 2) can anyone say, in all seriousness, that McCain delivered a single effective laugh line?

And here’s what struck me: Why in the world did McCain get so damn close to the questioners, at times awkwardly poking at them with his paws while he used a sappy sweet “happy man” voice? At times, he stepped up so close, the camera couldn’t even get an angle on him and we had to watch him nearly from behind.

Shoulda done a green screen.

Obama vs. McCain Debate Reaction You can turn to any corner of the internet —...
Forget the Debate, Look at Those Polls Both national tracking polls and those taken in battleground states...
Andrew Sullivan’s Liveblog Sullivan recorded a good play-by-play, and reached this conclusion about...
Obama’s “Closing Argument” Speech Billing today’s big speech as a “closing argument” doesn’t seem...

Related posts brought to you by Yet Another Related Posts Plugin.

Palin Accidentally Agrees with Obama, McCain Plugs Ears

Mark Casey — Sun, 28 Sep 2008 17:20:28 +0000

Should we cross the border from Afghanistan and run anti-terror missions in Pakistan, where Bin Laden lives?

It’s a fair question, and a delicate foreign policy area. Barack Obama said he would in a debate many months ago, and McCain called him out on it during Friday night’s debate. So a kid asks Palin about it in a cheesesteak hut, and she says Obama’s right.

Today, McCain gets angry, cancels his town hall meeting, and yells at George Stephanopoulos about it. Pretty funny.

Click here for video.

Obama vs. McCain Debate Reaction You can turn to any corner of the internet —...
McCain Campaign Fissures, Palin Called a ‘Diva’ Yup, this is what a diva sounds like: McCain sources...
McCain Suspends Campaign… But Doesn’t, really Anyone who follows politics now knows about John McCain’s 12-hour...
CNN Misquotes Sarah Palin to Benefit Sarah Palin At this point, it’s become both redundant and tedious to...

Related posts brought to you by Yet Another Related Posts Plugin.

Obama vs. McCain Debate Reaction

Mark Casey — Sat, 27 Sep 2008 20:29:15 +0000

You can turn to any corner of the internet — and I mean any corner — and read pages upon pages of post-debate reaction. Who won, who lost, who looked more presidential — these are all important things to consider.

But my reaction? YAAAWWN!

I never would’ve thought I’d be longing for the days of Bush vs. Kerry, but here I am today, almost putting myself to sleep trying to write about last night’s debate. Don’t get me wrong — I like substance, and substance is kind of what we got. But whether it was McCain somehow still tripping over endless regurgitations from his stump speech (”I’ll veto spending and be famous!”), or Obama taking way too much of his own time responding to McCain’s consistent attacks, I can only think of one word to sum up the debate: repetitive.

Obama’s strengths: Civility, bipartisanship, calm.
Obama’s weaknesses: Being baited into responding to McCain’s attacks, not spending enough time on his own plans
McCain’s strengths: Staying on-message, attacking Obama with every single answer
McCain’s weaknesses: He appeared contemptuous, angry, old and bitter. He was highly partisan.

According to post-debate polls, people are just loving Obama. I don’t totally get it, but I approve of it. I think he did, in fact, have the better debate. His answers were more appealing to everyday folks, and he had more specifics about his plans. McCain only seemed to offer specifics about Obama, and hardly any about himself.

McCain repeatedly interrupted Obama and the moderator, PBS’ Jim Lehrer, often raising his voice and speaking over them until they gave up, which could take up to 30 seconds of crosstalk, just like on Bill O’Reilly’s godforsaken show. This was one of the more annoying traits I’ve seen in a debater.

Other than that, next time bring out the fireworks, boys! Try to convince us that you have at least some passion for the job. (Note: McCain getting angry about Obama’s record does not count. Negativity doesn’t win debates, and the Independents polled proved that.)

Markos’ Immediate Debate Reaction Snap polls, punditry, media gobsmacking and bloviation from myself and...
Palin Accidentally Agrees with Obama, McCain Plugs Ears Should we cross the border from Afghanistan and run anti-terror...
Andrew Sullivan’s Liveblog Sullivan recorded a good play-by-play, and reached this conclusion about...
Debate: Hillary Wants to Criminalize the Poor? Tonight’s debate was an interesting one, particularly when it...

Related posts brought to you by Yet Another Related Posts Plugin.

McCain Suspends Campaign… But Doesn’t, really

Mark Casey — Thu, 25 Sep 2008 18:24:40 +0000

Anyone who follows politics now knows about John McCain’s 12-hour political stunt, where yesterday evening he announced that he was “suspending his campaign” because the economy was in such crisis. He called for the postponement of the first debate, which really was a ploy to cancel Sarah Palin’s vice presidential debate, which they are undoubtedly nervous about. Of course, they said it would all go away if congress signed Bush’s $700 Billion bailout bill — which they are, today, with no thanks to John McCain.

And now we’re getting to know all the juicy details of the McCain stunt, not the least significant of which is that he never actually suspended his campaign, and he never will. Andrew Sullivan notes that all the McCain ads are still up all over the country, and David Letterman was miffed last night to learn that McCain cancelled his appearance on the show because he had to “rush back to Washington,” when, really, he was in New York City giving an interview to Katie Couric instead of Letterman.

So while McCain is happy to call press conference after press conference talking about how eager he is to put his country first (even if he can’t seem to deal with more than one issue in that country at a time), his surrogates are still doing smear interviews, his ad team is still buying ads, and he himself is still not in the senate.

The final joke, of course, was that instead of being in the Senate this morning, helping to get the damn deal done, which was allegedly what the whole purpose of this “suspension” was, McCain was speaking at the Clinton Global Initiative. Way to crack that whip over Congress, senator.

And check out this bonus video, where McCain says he’s never actually read the bill that he fictionally suspended his campaign over because it’s so important to pass:

Bailout? Whose Bailout? Okay, so I was wrong when I said that congress...
Obama vs. McCain Debate Reaction You can turn to any corner of the internet —...
McCain Has Ties to Saddam Hussein? Very interesting developments in the guilt-by-association game: William Timmons, the...
McCain Campaign Fissures, Palin Called a ‘Diva’ Yup, this is what a diva sounds like: McCain sources...

Related posts brought to you by Yet Another Related Posts Plugin.

Sarah Palin Edits Her Own Wikipedia Page?

Mark Casey — Tue, 02 Sep 2008 20:05:40 +0000

As the sexist media narrative already takes shape that neither reporters nor Ms. Palin’s political opponents are allowed to attack her because she’s a woman, and attacking her will make them look “mean,” I’m more inclined to believe that she can take care of herself just fine.

She was elected mayor of a backwoods town in Alaska, and then governor of the state, which is a notoriously arch-conservative electorate, filled with burly woodsmen and a citizenship influenced by traditional frontier “values” more than anything else — or at least wannabes, trying to imitate the above. I’m not going to say it’s entirely unlikely that such a culture would elect a female as its leader, but it can be difficult to pull off.

Most importantly, there’s plenty of evidence to suggest that Palin knows how to game the media in her favor. Just before she was officially announced as the Vice Presidential choice of John McCain, her Wikipedia page was scrubbed of anything that might reflect poorly on her by a user going by the name of “Young Trigg,” which happens to be the name of her son.

For analysis and giggly conjecture, check out the NPR audio of the story.

For a list of the changes made, when, and by whom, the most comprehensive piece I’ve seen is this Daily Kos diary.

So while the cable news talking heads fabricate their “you can’t discuss the pros and cons of a woman” storyline, the woman in question appears to be one step ahead of them. And hey, so are most people — but I suppose the talk shows have to do something to keep the debate over this strikingly bad choice of a VP from turning into a bloodbath.

CNN Misquotes Sarah Palin to Benefit Sarah Palin At this point, it’s become both redundant and tedious to...
Sarah Palin finds Indiana Helps Her Focus on Alaska Click here for a newspaper clip of this article. Alaska...
Palin Accidentally Agrees with Obama, McCain Plugs Ears Should we cross the border from Afghanistan and run anti-terror...
Palin Claims Couric “Annoyed” Her, Was “Irrelevant” Sarah Palin is just so much smarter than Katie Couric,...

Related posts brought to you by Yet Another Related Posts Plugin.

CNN Reinstates its Pro-Clinton Bias

Mark Casey — Thu, 21 Aug 2008 23:46:38 +0000

For no apparent reason other than the fact that the Democratic National Convention is next week, CNN has once again trotted out its own private Clinton employee, Paul Begala, to lament the current choice of presidential candidates (read: no Clinton to vote for), as well as to lament the fact that Bill Clinton wasn’t named president for life.

No, really:

[Clinton's environmental speech] was a tour de force: so deep in the details that the propeller-heads were swooning, yet simple and compelling enough that I could follow it. On the day before his 62nd birthday, I couldn’t help cursing the 22nd Amendment, which limited Clinton to two terms. Heck, he’s still 10 years younger than McCain.

Now might be a good time to mention that Begala has been an employee of the Clintons for nearly two decades, and as a senior political correspondent for CNN during the most recent Democratic primaries (not to mention during the entire 2000 era), he was the clear architect of their unabashedly pro-Hillary bias.

After Hillary lost in the primary, Begala has been relatively scarce on CNN — apparently, he didn’t have anything left to say about the presidential race now that a Clinton wasn’t involved. (Note: CNN took so much heat for regularly featuring Begala and James Carville’s political commentary while they were paid staffers for Hillary Clinton, they briefly kicked them off the air for the final part of the primaries. Now, CNN has a massive disclaimer at the beginning of all his articles disclosing all his Clinton affiliations and promising that he’s no longer on the Clinton dole. Right.)

But now, just before the Democratic National Convention in Denver, Colorado, Begala reemerges to claim that neither the Obama nor the McCain presidential tickets are likely to be good enough, and that no one should care who they choose as vice president.

This is an ominous sign for the Denver convention, as Democrats are still worried about what sorts of antics the Clintons and their rabid fans might pull. Clinton is already going to ask that her delegates are seated — it’s considered an “honorary” measure, but it will do nothing to make the party appear unified behind Obama — and Bill Clinton has been wildly unpredictable and bitter regarding his post-primary remarks about Barack Obama.

Most people think the Clintons will do all they can to help Obama win. I’m not so sure. They seem to still be considering an Obama win tantamount to a Clinton loss. And Paul Begala’s timely reemergence is not a good sign.

CNN Spends the Weekend Promoting the Clintons Last week, I wrote that the reemergence of Clinton employee...
Clinton Criticizes Obama for Detailing Her Record Fireworks flew today after the Obama campaign sent out a...
Secret Code: Hillary Wants VP? Um… yes? How about: painfully obvious code. Clinton’s speech tomorrow,...
Does CNN Hate Barack Obama? I’ve noticed that CNN’s political coverage this year has been...

Related posts brought to you by Yet Another Related Posts Plugin.

McCain/Bush Joint… Non-joint Iowa Visit Causes Tension

Mark Casey — Fri, 20 Jun 2008 18:31:17 +0000

Yesterday, John McCain and George W. Bush visited the flood-damaged state of Iowa together… only, not together.

For whatever reason, they showed up on the same day. And for obvious, 29%-approval-rating reasons, they were very careful to never be anywhere near each other the whole time. They wouldn’t even visit the same towns at the same time.

The whole thing seems very awkward to me, and it’s not the first time Bush/McCain has attempted such an organized, separate-but-equal, fundraising/photo-op effort. They often go to the same places, or say the same things, on the same day — but make sure never to be seen in the same place with one another. What possible value being in the same state as Bush at the same time has for McCain is beyond me. It’s obvious that they tried to orchestrate some kind of “Look, the Republican party cares about you” press blitz, but it seems unnecessary.

Oh yeah, and there is that little matter of putting an enormous amount of strain on Iowa’s law enforcement officials, who are already overburdened and undermanned in the face of a disaster. They didn’t really need to be escorting odious politicians around to their various simultaneous photo-ops, which is why Iowa’s governor asked McCain not to appear in the state on the same day as the president — a request McCain ignored.

McCain’s people deny that they were asked to stay away from the state, but they would probably also deny that they were there with president Bush at this point.

How McCain (and the GOP) Can Win Without Pennsylvania The big push in Republican commentary and strategy seems to...
McCain on the Move Just two days after winning in Iowa, the spotlight appears...
Bush on $4.00 Gas: ‘That’s News to Me!’ No one is better at knowing the life and...
Obama vs. McCain Debate Reaction You can turn to any corner of the internet —...

Related posts brought to you by Yet Another Related Posts Plugin.