I hope this will be the gift that keeps on giving. I noticed, however, that the story was but a blurb on my newspaper’s page 3A. Damn it, we’ve got to beat the public over the head with this. People need to hear that the McCain camp thinks they’re all a bunch of whiners.

Write letters to the editor. Call into talk shows. And the Obama camp needs to raise hell over this.

So what Phil is saying folks, is get off your asses and start lying, stealing, or otherwise ACQUIRING your rightful property.
Can ya see where he’s going here? Paying too much for Gas? Get some it back by either billing Exxon for “Product Testing” or just jack a few gas stations. I’d guess it depends on how many lawyers you know.

Thanks for the Pep Talk Phil!

When you’re suffering from a mental recession, what you need is Stagflatin XL.

My Photoshop skills are not that great; someone else can do much better, I’m sure.

Repeat it ad nauseum. Repeat it like, “I actually did vote for the $87 billion before I voted against it.” McCain is doomed.

Can’t want for the debates. I have ribs and beer ready.

That picture should be captioned “Old and older”.

But, am I the only one who thinks that Phil looks like Yoda? “Whiners you must not be. Use the force to mental recession overcome.”

I posted this at the end of Gary Ruppert(s) Unplugged, but I’ll post it here too:

So the Functioning Glenn Reynolds Robot linked fawningly to Gramm’s nonsense. This is the same Instapundit who has devoted a truckload of Hehs and Indeedilydoos to conservatives running with the Bittergate storyline. But Gramm? He’s just telling the trooth!

Robotlvr then goes on to note that a McCain supporter thought that these comments were…how shall we say…not really politically smart? This marks the first time the “objective” Reynolds has criticized McCain since, shit, December?

I will also note that Reynolds has stopped posting creepy, inappropriate pictures of female students. We’re training him, folks. Slowly, but it’s happening. Heh indoozily doo.

“I think Freddie and Fannie equity may be toast, which means the government will simply take over both, as [it] can’t let $5 trillion in mortgages vaporize.”

Isn’t a government takeover (ie, nationalization) what socialists do? Why is an administration committed to free market principles and the Invisible Hand (which lately seems to be around our throats) even considering such heresy?

Way OT, but did everyone hear that Rove has fled the country? The subpoenas were about to bite – finally.

His excuse is that it was a long-planned trip, but that has already been debunked.

The crooks are starting to flee. I wonder if their Swiss bank accounts can be impounded?

At this rate I see McBush just forfeiting the election – unless President Cheney pulls an October Surprise™ (trademark of the repiglican party)

“Nation” is a synonym for “political leaders.” Check your conservadictionary.

Will the October surprise be a terrorist attack or a bombing campaign on Iran? Place yer bets!

A terrorist attack that is faked by our government and blamed on Iran as a pretext for the bombing campaign should be double, triple if the attack happens during the democratic convention.

I like this little dig from the Post article (my emphasis).

Gramm “does not speak for me. I speak for me. I strongly disagree,” McCain said during a press availability here, which took place at the same time Gramm was wrapping up a discussion with the Wall Street Journal editorial board about the candidate’s economic program.

Ouch.

My emphasis is only in my mind! Like our political leaders’ current economy troubles. Mental, all mental.

Pink: I vote terrorist attack. If it hadn’t been for 9/11 these thugs would never have dared try the shit they’ve gotten away with.

C-Span callers were discussing a constitutional provision whereby the president can call off elections and continue in office in the event of famine, war, etc. Don’t know exactly what that’s about, but several mentioned it and none of them sounded particularly whacky.

At this rate I see McBush just forfeiting the election – unless President Cheney pulls an October Surprise™ (trademark of the repiglican party)

Well, I’m beginning to have a very, very bad feeling that we’re about to get a July Surprise. With Omert getting ready to go down in October, and the Bush Junta crashing & burning, can anyone doubt that some sort of horrorshow is coming soon?

War with Iran

But the jitters have been increased by the political calendar in Washington and Jerusalem. From a US perspective, if the Bush administration is to strike, it probably has to do so before the general election campaign moves into high gear this autumn. The possibility – many would say likelihood – that the next President will be the Democrat, Barack Obama, who favours negotiation with Iran, only heightens the urgency for anti-Iran hawks.

In Jerusalem, a corruption scandal could bring down the Mr Omert’s government in September. This is another reason for Israel, if it is determined to go ahead, to act sooner rather than later, even alone and without the explicit collaboration of the US

I liked this little tidbit in the Post story:

Over the past year, Michigan, with an 8.5 percent overall unemployment rate, lost 68,900 jobs.
McCain is hoping to put the state into play, but on Thursday, in this Detroit suburb, his efforts ran into a wall. He said repeatedly that he understands how much the Michigan economy had declined.
But the 100 or so in the crowd sat on their hands throughout most of McCain’s speech, especially during his remarks about the need for free trade — a policy that is generally reviled in manufacturing areas.

What a place to dredge up that old phrase! They sat on their hands, bitches! They didn’t clap, or even just wave ’em around. Take that Oldie! The Post is pulling out their Nineteen-Aught-Seven Stylebook for your speeches!

C-Span callers were discussing a constitutional provision whereby the president can call off elections and continue in office in the event of famine, war, etc.

This seems to be becoming an election-year tradition. But I do agree the only surprise about the October Surprise will be what it is, not that it will happen.

I don’t think an attack on Iran would be that easy a sell these days, though I’d hardly bet the farm on that. I really doubt a terrorist attack / suspending of elections would do the Powers a whole lot of good. With the majority of the military, National Guard, and mercenary corps tied up in Iraq, wouldn’t they have a hard time making sure martial law could stick?

I should like to point out that the quote you excerpted, “let the whiners eat goddamn cake,” does not actually exist.

I am aware of all . . . yadda yadda yadda. Damn, I’m tired of it already.

“Become a nation of whiners.”

Say it over and over, in Gramm’s cornpone accent; it’s fun!

(If you can’t locate a good Gramm inflection, go with a Tim McCarver. That’ll work, too.)

I don’t think an attack on Iran would be that easy a sell these days,

Because this administration has shown such a high regard for selling anything. All they care about is can they get away with it. Nancy Pelosi says “Yes. Impeachment is off the table.” Going to be a long scary summer.

It’s hard to see them pulling off an attack on Iran unless it were really close to the election, like say, the day before. The minute such an attack goes down, the price of gas will go to $10 a gallon. The Iranians certainly have the ability to shut down the Straits of Hormuz to the point that worldwide oil supply is seriously disrupted.

Javafascist makes a good point above–this “administration” (always use irony quotes with that word, btw) certainly doesn’t give a crap about public opinion. But isn’t that the point of an “October surprise”? To turn the election?

As I lay in bed, half awake, this morning I did what I do every morning – listen to NPR. I had to start chuckling when they introduced Carly Fiorina as “former HP CEO who advises McCain on economics.” No mention of Phil Gramm who, until a day or two ago, was ID’d as McCain’s economic advisor.

Oh boy oh boy oh boy I can’t wait ’til she says we need to spy on the Senate or something.

SamfromUtah: There’s still plenty of Blackwater for the rest of us – but I don’t think they’d actually declare martial law. That might wake people up, and it’s important that most people continue to think everything is normal.

I would be more thinking a terrorist attack – even if it didn’t work as it was supposed to – would create a reasonable pretext for why McCain managed to squeak out a Diebold-aided win.

I’m not so much worried about the martial law thing. I think they might just attack Iran because they want to do it. (I know, it’s hard for the rational mind to grasp, but this is really how they think!) More likely, though, they’ll let Israel do the initial war-making and then go join in defense of our ally.

Cheney and Co. don’t give a rat’s ass about “selling” war with Iran, and I don’t think they care about the consequences, which will be horrific for the entire planet. I can actually think of some advantages for the neocons in having a global depression. It’s obvious the U.S. is going to have far-reaching economic problems for the forseeable future; if the EU and others have problems as the result of a conflagration in the ME, the cons might look at that as a leveling of the playing field, mightn’t they?

I hope I’m just being paranoid, but I’m actually afraid in a practical sense, where before it was more of a speculative “what would happen If . . .” sense. Things seem to be snowballing, one awful event after another.

My definition of a gaffe is when I politician gives his real opinion on an issue, when it would be smarter not to. Gramm made a gaffe.

Either way, likelihood is that the next president will be the one to finally sew up the Supreme Court – I don’t count on Obama to appoint anything less than a neocon in moderate clothing (he supported alito at first, remember?) – and then, when the last bits of separation of powers have been effectively neutered, that’s when things will get interesting.

But a day after a top McCain economic adviser dismissed the nation’s struggles as a “mental recession,” the presumptive Republican presidential nominee’s message landed with a thud, as workers sat in stony silence.

To be fair, this tells us nothing about the appeal of the message itself. Friends, it’s John McCain. His “message” could be Rodney Dangerfield’s from the end of Caddyshack (“Hey everybody! We’re all gonna get laid!”) and he could deliver it at a Natty Ice soaked frat party and I don’t think he’d get anything more than one isolated, nervous laugh and a couple charity claps.

It should be pointed out that Phil Gramm is arguably the one person most responsible for both the mortgage crisis AND the high price of gasoline.
(via the “Commodity Futures Modernization Act of 2000”)

Liberals and old style workers wedded to the industrial past should listen to the laws of economics and get with the post industrial, symbol manipulation world. Value is created digitally, not by making anything. IYOu all need to go back to school and retrain yourselves, and then take a few chances, otherwise the free market is not sorry for you. Read the parable of the talents in the Bible.

This, my friends, is the crux of right-wing ideology: the idea that non-rich people are entirely to blame for any misfortunes they encounter.

Especially other non-rich people. It’s the ones with even less than you who are screwing you out of your crumb.

C-Span callers were discussing a constitutional provision whereby the president can call off elections and continue in office in the event of famine, war, etc. Don’t know exactly what that’s about, but several mentioned it and none of them sounded particularly whacky.

An *existing* constitutional provision? Far as I know, there isn’t one, unless they’re grounding it in the President’s (apparently limitless) Article II executive powers.

Brad has a mattress? Typical east coast rich elitist. Here in the Heartland we sleep on the dirt floor. Our money is safely buried in a Folgers can out in the back forty.

Worst parody SowellFan ever.

(Which isn’t necessarily a criticism, you know.)

Read the parable of the talents in the Bible.

That’s my favorite reality show: America’s Got Talents!

TC: Yes, an existing provision.

The real problem with being a fake Sowell apologist is that there is no way you could be as laughable as Thomas Sowell himself.

Candy–

To be fair, the Register has important things to report on–such as the Corndog Kick-Off, Dallas County voting against new hog lots and the new i-Phone.

I also see Niko Case is going to be playing at the Hoyt. Now there’s a show I’d like to see…

Stay classy, George

Bank with a credit union.

Collective ownership and tight restrictions on investment make them virtually immune to these kind of speculative market disasters.

Color me unsurprised by L’Affaire de Gramm because we’ve known for a long time that he’s a major league asshole. Also unsurprising but more grating than Gramm’s comment is John McCain’s continued inability to be the least bit funny.

That ambassador to Belarus line was the lamest “joke” I’ve heard in quite a long time. It seriously caused me to have trouble going to sleep last night. McCain’s attempts at humor just don’t fall flat, they crash through the ground and go right down the fucking mineshaft. I think the reason Reagan is so revered by the Republicans is that he’s their only guy since Lincoln that had an ounce of humor.

McCain’s attempts at humor just don’t fall flat, they crash through the ground and go right down the fucking mineshaft.

Yes, but he’s great to have around if you need to clear the room.

“Cheney and Co. don’t give a rat’s ass about “selling” war with Iran, and I don’t think they care about the consequences, which will be horrific for the entire planet.”

They don’t actually need to start an actual war, the sabre-rattling is already having the desired effect: $146 a barrel and the sky’s the limit for the speculators.

MzNicky, there is no such constitutional provision. Does that mean that I’d put it past the Bushies? Of course not. But they don’t have the constitution to back them up. There is absolutely no provision for postponing or canceling elections.

Anyone else want to store their life savings under my mattress?

Fuck no. You think I trust you with my life savings? Actually, you’re okay, it’s just that there is ample room under my own mattress for the three eighty-seven (mostly in nickels) that I have left after investing in a pre-order copy of Life in Cold Blood on DVD. Nobody spoil the snake episode for me; I missed it during a bad bout of clusters.

Sometimes the old Jokes are the ones you are really gonna need .
Sometimes it is not the brilliant humour in times of needing a really old Joke .
Sometimes you need a really old Joke

I saw the same thing Candy did in my putrid local Gannett rag, only maybe worse. The headline on their 3-graf AP “newsbrief” was:

‘Whiners’ remark
draws McCain ire
Good St. John: he’ll protect us from the bad guys in his own campaign.

BTW, Brad, I think the best definition of ‘gaffe’ was the one Mike Kinsley gave after the Trent Lott/Strom Thurmond dustup. He said it’s when someone in Washington inadvertently says what they really think.

I think Freddie and Fannie equity may be toast

No shit. Anybody look at the charts?

I suppose that if they can’t ratfuck Social Security into oblivion, and not from lack of trying, they’ll settle for tanking the FannieMae corner of the New Deal. Then they’ll have the American Taxpayer bled dry reimbursing their buddies for any poor decisions they made.

Charming.

Oh, and of course, they’ll label anybody calling bullshit on all this a whiner.

“Shut up and spread your ass-cheeks. Just think how good it’ll feel when I stop raping you.”

“Good luck dispwning this fool, St. BBQ.”

Since I’m Aware Of All Internet Traditions, I have to ask whether this was intentional…

Yep, Snarl, my local rag’s a Gannett rag as well. Sadly, the Des Moines Register used to be a Pulitzer Prize winning paper. When Gannett bought it they swore up and down they wouldn’t mess with it. Well, it’s taken over a decade, but it’s now pretty much indistinguishable from USA Today, except that the editorial board is still quite liberal. Thank the FSM in his noodly glory.

We get shit for national news and even stinkier shit for international news. Have to go to the foreign press for any real news. And none of said real news is the least bit reassuring.

We really are fucked, aren’t we?

Yes, but he’s great to have around if you need to clear the room.

Thanks, but I have farts for that. They don’t try to run for President while lying like a bad rug or try to rob me blind.

If somebody could dig up a photo of McBush hugging Let Them Eat GrammCrackers, that would be the icing on Marie’s cake.

The only thing better would be a group hug of McBush, PuppetBush, and Gramm all together.

Of course, if somebody dug up a photo of Gannon and Rove together, as long as their poses were artful and not just pornographic, it would really be swell.

Our money is safely buried in a Folgers can out in the back forty.

Shhhhhh . . . stop giving away Teh Heartland’s best money management secrets!

They can afford coffee? Elitists!

Cathy, I think they probably will attack Iran. And when the economy crashes, they can say Social Security and Medicare are no longer affordable and eliminate them.

Inconstant Reader: Yeah, I never heard of it either. As I said, it was callers to CSpan this morning.

So then, if there’s no constitutional provision for postponing elections, there’s no constitutional proscription against it either, I assume?

Well, to dickhead cheney, that’s an open door you can drive a combine through…

mikey

John McCain has no lips. What’s with that? I mean, did his eevullll Vietnamese captors force him to eat his own lips?

Just wonderin’.

Qetesh-less Alison (and, having recently lost my beloved Willi, all sympathy and due respect to you):

Many men have no lips. The actor Kenneth Branagh, for example, and the rock star known as Sting. This is inexcusable, of course, but in John McInsane’s case, probably not necessarily the fault of the Vietnamese.

Carly Fiorina…

You’d think MadJack woulda looked a little harder for a bidness person who wasn’t run out of town on a rail…

A little late, but:
Will the October surprise be a terrorist attack or a bombing campaign on Iran? Place yer bets!

Got a $20 bet w/ my SO– he doesn’t believe we’ll attack Iran before Bush is out of office. So, so naive.

I still think that an effective October surprise, in terms of helping McBullshit get elected, would be to suddenly ratchet tensions with Iran way down. The “risk premium” portion of the oil price might evaporate, putting gasoline and home heating oil price in decline. In turn, this could significantly reduce the demand projections for biofuels leading to an easing of world grain prices and a decline in food prices. If the Fed were to make moves to strengthen the USD at the same time, that could amplify these effects in the US.

That would be the smart thing to do. It’d be even smarter to do it, say, mid-August, so that consumer price declines would be noticeable by the time of the Democratic Convention and even more substantial by the time of the Repub Convention. Then, by Halloween, if it still looks like McStinky is gonna lose.on Nov. 4th, they could do the attack Nov. 2nd, when everybody is still dazed and confused from the sugar buzz and the time change.

This, of course, assumes that they really care that McDoodyhead gets elected and that they’re smart.

Heh.

I have a feeling we are going to be seeing a lot of Blackwater in our very own neighborhoods…. sure, sure, it’s really easy:
continue escalating rhetoric with Iran and winking at Israel
oops, there was an ‘accident’ in the Gulf of Hormuz
darnit, now we’re at war!
well, gas prices can only go up, we’re AT WAR
$10 gasoline and there will be gas riots
Ta daaaaa!! Blackwater to the rescue!!!
well we can’t possibly hold an election with all this domestic turmoil, Bush better stick around, just TO BE SAFE
Hmmm, better control all of these gas stations, since that’s where the trouble starts
Ok, I just need your clearances from Homeland Security, ma’am, and the reason for your trip, and I’ll be happy to let you buy five gallons.

Interesting, nervous little meme rolling around here: namely, why McCain might win.

Of course you liberals will claim it will be because of Diebold / false flag terrorism / teh dum Murrican voters, and yet – I do see the anxiety.

Why are you worried, liberals? Anyone who took his family to a racist church with his family for decades, whose spouse is openly hateful towards whites, whose friends include unrepentant domestic terrorists (the good kind, mind you, on the Left, not the horrible rightist domestic terrorists) and convicted felons – why, such a person is the perfect liberal candidate! Surely the American people must recognize the superiority of liberals and their candidate – right?

You aren’t convinced, liberals, which is why you go after McCain with such fervor. And even so…. you worry…..

I have to wonder how long Gramm will be associated with McCain’s campaign, if the UBS stuff gets any smellier.

Is this going to end as the punchline to one of those jokes about the difference between crook A and crook B — both would sell their own grandmother but crook A would deliver?

“Inconstant Reader said,

July 11, 2008 at 22:45

MzNicky, there is no such constitutional provision. Does that mean that I’d put it past the Bushies? Of course not. But they don’t have the constitution to back them up. There is absolutely no provision for postponing or canceling elections.”

I think that the presidential directive noted below is what people are talking about. It’s pretty scary. I didn’t put the whole document in the comment, just google the title and you’ll get the whole thing. (I have it in Word, but I’m not computer smart enough to make a link, sorry).
The directive leaves the ’emergency’ pretty open:

White House News

NATIONAL SECURITY PRESIDENTIAL DIRECTIVE/NSPD 51
HOMELAND SECURITY PRESIDENTIAL DIRECTIVE/HSPD-20