[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HAzDEbVFcg8]
With all the stories we are hearing about how honorable a Senator John McCain once was, he started out as an unethical Senator and now he shows himself to be unethical at a key point in his career as he runs for president.
John McCain has tried several desperation measures to try to compete for the presidency. He sacrificed his reputation as a moderate by taking a sharp turn to the far right. He sacrificed his reputation as a straight talker by running one of the most dishonest campaigns in history and then avoiding the press. He chose someone clearly unqualified to be vice president as his running mate. He pretended to suspend his campaign and called for a delay in tonight’s delay.
The scary thing is that McCain actually did take a short-lived lead in the polls after he went negative and after he picked Palin. This should only encourage him to try something else in desperation to attempt to move back ahead of Obama. Slate has compiled a list of McCain’s 10 Next Hail Mary Stunts:
1. Returns to Vietnam and jails himself.
2. Offers the post of “vice vice president” to Warren Buffett.
3. Challenges Obama to suspend campaign so they both can go and personally drill for oil offshore.
4. Learns to use computer.
5. Does bombing run over Taliban-controlled tribal areas of Pakistan.
6. Offers to forgo salary, sell one house.
7. Sex-change operation.
8. Suspends campaign until Nov. 4, offers to start being president right now.
9. Sells Alaska to Russia for $700 billion.
10. Pledges to serve only one term. OK, half a term.
Here’s a suggestion for a really extreme change in course: Fire all the Rove people, lobbyists, and anyone responsible for the current dirty campaign and start telling the truth. This might mean he won’t have hardly anyone left working on his campaign and he will lose, but at least he might regain his dignity. For now it looks like he has allowed lust for power to break him more than the North Vietnamese could.
John McCain’s attempt at playing politics with the financial crisis has failed. Polls showed most voters thought McCain should debate as planned, and all McCain accomplished was getting David Letterman mad at him (here and here). McCain has now agreed to show up for the debate, and even before announcing this had already started placing internet ads claiming that he won the debate (screen shot here). The lack of disconnect between reality and what comes from the McCain campaign is just amazing.
David Letterman is still pissed off at John McCain for standing him up, and Paris Hilton, who Letterman claimed was McCain’s first choice of running mates, even joined him in bashing McCain:
He said he felt like a “patriot” to let McCain off his commitment to deal with the economy and “now I’m feeling like an ugly date.”
“That’s what I feel like, I feel like an ugly date,” he said. “I feel used. I feel cheap. I feel sullied.”
He began the bashing in his monologue, telling the audience, “You’re here on a good night. So far none of our guests have canceled.”
He compared his situation to that of David Blaine hanging upside down in Central Park for sixty hours saying, “They just left the guy hanging there. It’s the same thing McCain did to me last night.”
“Here’s how it works: you don’t come to see me? You don’t come to see me? Well, we might not see you on Inauguration Day,” Letterman said.
Letterman also stated that McCain wanted to delay his debate with Obama and Sarah Palin wanted to postpone her debate with Joe Biden until after Election Day. Letterman said McCain taking Palin to meet world leaders at the United Nations was like “take-your-daughter-to-work day.”
The Top 10 List was read by people from Wasilla, Alaska:
TOP 10 SURPRISING FACTS ABOUT SARAH PALIN
10. Sometimes Sarah calls John McCain “Grandpa.”
9. She stole that sexy librarian look from me.
8. Recently passed legislation to build a bridge to Funkytown.
7. Does great impressions of Tina Fey.
6. Favorite meal: moose nuggets and beaver jerky.
5. Working on “Knight Rider” spinoff about a talking snowmobile.
4. Favorite book? “Late Show Fun Facts” -– available at fine stores everywhere.
3. Once spent a week in the hospital after attempting to put lipstick on a pit bull.
2. To improve her foreign policy experience, she recently went to the International House of Pancakes.
1. Only person I know who’s not afraid to go hunting with Dick Cheney.
Sarah Palin lied again. The Washington Post reports she accepted gifts:
Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin, who has made a crackdown on gift-giving to state officials a centerpiece of her ethics reform agenda, has accepted gifts valued at $25,367 from industry executives, municipalities and a cultural center whose board includes officials from some of the largest mining interests in the state, a review of state records shows.
The 41 gifts Palin accepted during her 20 months as governor include honorific tributes, expensive artwork and free travel for a family member. They also include more than $2,500 in personal items from Calista, a large Alaska native corporation with a variety of pending state regulatory and budgetary issues, and a gold-nugget pin valued at $1,200 from the city of Nome, which lobbies on municipal, local and capital budget matters, documents show.
About a quarter of the entities bestowing gifts on the governor are represented by one of Alaska’s most influential mining lobbyists, who said in an interview that she was not involved in the tributes. The lobbyist, Wendy Chamberlain, has a relationship with the governor’s family through the friendship of their teenage daughters.
On forms disclosing the gifts, Palin, who is the Republican vice presidential nominee, routinely checked “no” when asked whether she was in a position to “take official action that may affect the person who gave me the gift,” and a spokeswoman for Sen. John McCain’s presidential campaign said the gifts had no undue influence on her.
The nerve of her. Who does she think she is–Hillary Clinton?
