John McCain, Drill Baby Drill, and the Law of Unintended Consequences

Remember when John McCain was agitating the right wing masses with chants of “Drill baby, drill?”

Oh yeah, he quickly gave lip service to alternative energy sources – a sort of kiss before sending alternative energy to the gibbet with a hooded executioner. The emphasis was clearly on getting all the filthy fossil fuel we could out of the earth and sending it up the chimney for the enrichment of oil interests that were backing mostly the candidates of the right.

Here’s a reminder if you need it, but keep reading after you watch.

Now, from the New York Times, comes this:

HOUSTON — States dependent on oil and gas revenue are bracing for layoffs, slashing agency budgets and growing increasingly anxious about the ripple effect that falling oilprices may have on their local economies. 

The concerns are cutting across traditional oil states like Texas, Louisiana, Oklahoma and Alaska as well as those like North Dakota that are benefiting from the nation’s latest energy boom 

“The crunch is coming,” said Gunnar Knapp, a professor of economics and the director of the Institute of Social and Economic Research at the University of Alaska Anchorage.

Right-O John. The oil’s gushing like water and it’s the oil producing states that are getting screwed.

Of course, in a way everybody’s getting screwed, even as cheap oil for as while produces some prosperity. With oil selling for less than – well certainly less than bottled water – the impetus to turn to alternative fuels has gone up the chimney. So you can expect the auto makers to sell more SUVs this year and fewer fuel-efficient cars. You can expect the solar and wind industries to wither. And eventually, when somebody tightens the oil spigot, everybody’s screwed and we’ll all be right back to where we were a few years ago.

One way to ameliorate the situation at least a little bit – and to get some desperately needed infrastructure repairs financed at the same time – would be to slap cheap gasoline with a five cent, or maybe even a ten cent federal gasoline tax.

With a Republican Congress? I have to be kidding, right?

Right. So we might as well all lie back and enjoy getting scewed. Long live St. Ayn. Forget I said anything, kiddies. Go back to your economics textbook. You know the one I mean. “Atlas Shrugged.” The current situation gives new meaning to the title. 

Cross posted at No More Mr. Nice Blog

I just got back from Paris and the news makes me want to puke

This is what comes from what I see in
the newspapers, not from French food.

Hey, I had a perfectly nice time in Paris. I ate runny, stinky cheese. I ate deliciously creamy butter. I ate baguettes by the basketful. I ate pommes frites. I ate extremely fatty liver with the consistency of velvet. I ate  meat that was doing the butterfly stroke in deep pools of obscenely rich sauces. 

And yet I came home weighing two pounds less than when I left. You can chalk that one up to alluring Parisian streets that almost grab you by the collar and demand to be strolled, and to nearly perfect weather that made the strolling easier. 

Walking around looking for the next place to eat evidently works off more calories than living on dry chicken breasts, or blowing a couple of hours every week in a stinking, sweaty health club. Call it the Crank Diet.

But when I get home, what do I find?

Thanks, Lindsey Graham, for ruining everything

I found the same old same old. Let’s start with Republicans like John McCain and  Lindsey Graham frothing at the mouth to demand we put “boots on the ground” in Syria to “defeat” a bunch of thugs in ISIL. 

Unfortunately, what “boots on the ground” is really code for is “American dead bodies on the ground.” You don’t commit troops to combat without significant numbers of them getting killed, some of them getting gravely wounded, some of them sustaining lifetime psychological wounds. 

None of those troops will be Lindsey Graham. And guaranteed, with the kinds of wars we’re fighting these days, there’s no victory at the end of the conflict

Personally, I’d rather see the U.S. track down and capture the sick-o who did the beheadings of their innocent victims. President Obama took out Osama bin Laden. We can take out this creep, too. Evidently, we and the Brits already have a good idea of who the hooded man with the knife is. 

So sniff him out. Hunt him down. And while I usually oppose capital punishment strenuously, I wouldn’t go into paroxysms of grief if, in the course of some special forces operation to capture the sick bastard, his own head should accidentally happen to fall off. The same goes for his bosses.

A nation of busybodies

Then there’s the business of throwing people off athletic teams for abusing their significant others and their kids, and spending hours of television time discussing it. Hey, don’t get me wrong. I am strongly – very strongly – opposed to either spousal abuse or child abuse. But we seem to be enlisting the wrong people to do the law enforcement. 

Spousal abuse, child abuse, and rape for that matter, are felonies. They should be investigated by the police. 

When credible evidence of who perpetrated such crimes is found, the police should make arrests and prosecutors should prosecute. The guilty would lose their player status simply by virtue of being in prison. 

The same, by the way, goes for college campus sexual abusers. It’s not the business of private institutions, whether sports franchises, or sports leagues, or universities,  to investigate, try, prosecute and punish felonies. When you get amateurs doing this work – and make no mistake, college panels and football commissioners are amateurs – they’re bound, sooner or later, to get it wrong, hurt innocent people, and probably exacerbate the problem. Let’s stop being a nation of busybodies and just call the cops whenever an assault happens.

Justice delayed is, uh…

Who said anything about justice?

Speaking of cops, what’s with the cop who shot Michael Brown in Ferguson, Missouri, on August 9th? I’m writing this on September 19th, for the love of Mike! If anybody but a cop went to Ferguson and shot somebody dead, the case would be investigated, an arrest made, the perp charged with the crime and bail set, all likely before sunset. In this case, you’ve got the city of Ferguson dealing with the problem by handing out comment cards. So here’s my own comment:  I want to vomit a second time.

Okay, okay, a small hurrah

If there’s any good news, it’s that Scotland voted not to secede from the Brits. Hip hurrah. Listen, the first I heard of this was two days before the voting began. I have no brief either for or against either the Scots or the rest of the Brits on this. My concern was, and still is, that secession might be contagious. That concern wasn’t at all mitigated when Reuters ran a story saying that one in four Americans are open to their own secession.

I thought we fought a civil war over this. Now what? Do we have to put “boots on the ground” in Texas, too? 

Or maybe we should just go ahead and let Texas secede. But at the same time, we should build a wall on their border with us, impose a tariff on their imports, strictly limit or even prohibit immigration of Texans to America, cut Texas out of the U.S. power grid, and in general treat them with the hostility we generally reserve for, say, Cuba.

Okay, so I’m feeling cranky to be home from Paris and back in the office. You got a problem with that?

When the going gets tough, the mavericks turn into jackasses

Looks like maverick John McCain is about to become ex-maverick John McCain in an effort to keep on being Senator John McCain.

Turning his back on some of the key things he stood for only a year or so ago, he's now bending with the wind on, for starters, immigration reform.

This is the guy who once put up with abuse as a POW? His spine seems to have turned to jelly.

John McCain is attempting to sell his soul to the devil. Woe to America if he succeeds.

It’s an old story that gets told in many ways, but the plot is always pretty much the same.

Some person, in search of wealth, or glory, or love, or vast unfettered power, sells his soul in exchange for what he wants.

He bargains away morality, decency, and civility. And then becomes a helpless tool of a devil until he is whisked off to hell.

Such is the story of John McCain.

Once, or at least we are told so, John McCain was a man of honor. Once, at least on some issues, he stood firmly on principle.

Once, his word was trusted.

But then John McCain decided he needed to be President. That personal feeling of need became more important to him than anything. More important than the truth. More important than the future of the United States. More important than his own highly touted honor.

So John McCain lies about his own record, claiming he is a "maverick" — a baldfaced lie from a man who voted with the President 90% of the time to claim.

John McCain directly or through the people working to get him elected lies constantly about his opponent, Barack Obama. McCain and his running mate Sarah Palin incite mob violence and skinhead assassination plots by falsely implying that Obama is a terrorist, or some unstated-but-unimaginable thing worse.

John McCain sews seeds of doubt and hatred in a society that Barack Obama is attempting to bring together.

McCain lies about big things like the economy and the war in Iraq. He lies about inconsequential things like Obama’s heritage. He repeats lies. And repeats them. And repeats them again — all in a desperate sell-your-soul attempt to win the Presidency.

It is a presidency that in the hands of John McCain will create a living hell for most Americans.

It will be a hell plagued by wars, terrorist attacks, the end of the successful Social Security and Medicare programs, increasingly unaffordable health care for most Americans, simultaneous inflation and recession, the U.S. Government's financial collapse, forest and wildlife dieoffs, polluted water supplies, police intrusion into the homes of peaceful Americans, and eventually, as Sarah Palin’s power grows, even the death penalty for first degree murder meted out to hapless young rape victims who dare to abort the babies of their rapists.

But McCain’s deal with the devil only can work if you stay home and fail to vote for Obama.

Please, on Election Day remember this: your vote for Barack Obama will do more than help him become President. It will also save America from a living hell.

Give Barack Obama your vote and let McCain and Palin go to hell by themselves.

"Help, I’m on trial for capital murder! Get me the dumbest representation you can find!"

Actually, none of the people shown above ever came close to a law degree. Which in a way is part of my point. Bear with me through a few hypothetical questions:

If you were in trial for your life on a bogus murder charge, would you want a lawyer who only got into law school because of family connections, and who graduated despite miserable grades — most probably with the help of those same connections?

Yet America has twice “hired” George W. Bush to be President of the United States — a life-and-death matter connected to national security, the economy, the ability of future generations of Americans to survive in this world, and more.

That’s the same George Bush who was a Yale legacy and got a “low pass,” from the Harvard Graduate School of Business, most probably because of who his father and grandfather were, rather than his embarrassingly lackluster showing.

Suppose you needed brain surgery. Would you say, “Hey, this is a matter of life or death. Get me a surgeon who was such an irresponsibly wildass student that he graduated fifth from the bottom of his class in medical school?”

Well, if you wanted someone who “knows” national security, economic policy and diplomacy — matters arguably as important to your health and future safety as good brain surgeon — would you ask for the guy who graduated fifth from the bottom of his class at the United States Naval Academy? That would be John McCain.

McCain's grades at Annapolis were "marginal." He drew so many demerits for breaking curfew and other disciplinary issues that he graduated fifth from the bottom of the Naval Academy class of 1958. Despite his low class standing, and no doubt because of the legacy of his family of famous Admirals, McCain was leap-frogged ahead of more qualified applicants and granted a coveted slot to be trained as a navy pilot.

Suppose your house for mysterious reasons suddenly was in danger of collapse. Would you pick up the phone and call for a house engineer, insisting on one who had to go to five different second and third-rate colleges to get a degree — in a subject other than engineering?

Well, the economy is collapsing and if John McCain gets elected President at the age of 72 and anything happens this cancer survivor who isn’t making full disclosure of his medical records, your President will be Sarah Palin.

Palin attended such highly regarded (ahem) institutions as Matanuska-Susitna College (one term); North Idaho College (three terms) Hawaii Pacific University (one term) and the so-so University of Idaho (total of five terms) before she finally got her degree in journalism. Perhaps that helped her get a job as a sportscaster, but she surely didn’t learn very much in her journalism classes about international relations and policy, or economics, or history, or even — odd, somehow for a journalism major — the name of a single newspaper.

Barack Obama, on the other hand, attended highly-regarded Occidental college for two years and then earned his B.A. from prestigious Columbia University, where he majored in International Relations.

He received his Juris Doctor law degree from Harvard University, where he also had the prestigious job of Editor of the Harvard Law Review. (Ask any practicing lawyer.) And he graduated magna cum laude — the highest honor for scholarship in his class.

He got this education without any legacy or family connections.

He is the author of two books on government policy and his own personality history. He taught law at the prestigious University of Chicago law school.

So, with the economy and national security hanging in the balance, with your ability to make a living hanging in the balance, with your 401(k) hanging in the balance, with your ability to keep your health insurance hanging in the balance — with all that, do you once again want to hire the dumbest guys in the room?

Or will you wise up and vote for somebody with the smarts to save this nation from disaster — Barack Obama?

Yeah, let’s deregulate everything. How about starting with traffic regulations? Hungry for a flesh-and-steel sandwich?

What caused the subprime market meltdown?

“Greed,” says John McCain.

“Greed,” echoes Sarah Palin.

Yeah, they say, and we gotta get those greedy, conniving, evil, predatory Wall Street lenders and show 'em what for.

Give me a break!

John McCain—deregulate, baby, deregulate—seems never to have met an economic problem that deregulation (and perhaps a few more tax cuts for rich corporations and individuals) couldn’t fix. After all, “market forces” balance everything out after a while. Right?

Small problem: “Market Forces” are a hanging judge. And the judge is currently hanging the entire economy of the United States from a very tall tree.

Of course the Wall Street guys were greedy. Greed is as American as apple pie. But blaming greedy bankers and predator lenders is like blaming a bullet for shooting you. Greed and predation is what they do. Regulating greed to keep it under control and thwart predatory behavior is what governments are supposed to do.

It’s deregulation that
shot the economy dead

It’s the function of government to protect us from the market manipulations that are a byproduct of rampant greed. Just as it used to protect us from greedy usurers. People used to go to prison for charging the kind of interest rates the banks are getting on credit caards now.

Marketplace regulation is no more onerous than government traffic regulations that help to shield us from highway traffic accidents. In fact, imagine that highway traffic accidents were the major campaign issue now.

People are still getting killed with a 65 MPH speed limit? Tell yuh what. Let’s deregulate speed and eliminate all speed limits. Get rid of those speed limit signs. Get rid of those rumble speed bumps. Get rid of that radar.

Even more people are getting killed with no speed limits? Easy fix. Just get rid of the highway patrol.

Still more people getting killed? Well, let’s take the dividers out between the eastbound and westbound lanes so that cars can go in any lane, any direction they want. And just to encourage “innovative” driving, we’ll give a tax break to anybody who takes a spin on the Freeforall Highway.

The “gotcha” doofus
will strike again

I should interrupt this rant to mention that some doofus with his finger on the “gotcha” button shoots me either an e-mail or a post every time I discuss this subject, reminding me that Bill Clinton signed the repeal of the Glass-Steagall act, one of the more important regulations that used to protect us.

Well, yes Clinton did—when it was attached to other legislation that he really needed and it all got shoved down his throat by mischief-making Republicans. And if Republicans are so offended now by its repeal, why didn’t they reinstate it during the six years they controlled both houses of Congress and the White House? And why didn't John McCain complaint about it once in those eight years?

There's no point in
bailing out the boat if you
don't fix the leak

Bailing out the banks will do us no good at all if once the bankers are bailed out (or even before that) they can jump into their 500 horsepower Greedsters and go roaring down the highway again.

But of course, I never met a Republican—John McCain and Sarah Whatzername most certainly included— who could think ten seconds ahead.

Oh, for those of you who are interested in such things, the Direct Marketing Association— those wonderful folks who brought you spam and junk mail—are holding their convention this week.

And just take a wild guess what they’re complaining about.

The birdbrains who are pecking America to death. Part 2.

Back in May, before the election heated up, I posted a piece called “Pecked to death by birdbrains.” I was railing against the U.S. Post Office. That was nothing compared to what’s going on today.

Now I have to rail against my fellow citizens — a nation overwhelmingly of birdbrains about to pigeon step in single file off a cliff.

As I write this, the stock market is failing. Our savings institutions are trembling on the brink of collapse. The newspapers are beginning to write stories about potential runs on banks, something that hasn’t happened since the Great Depression of 1929, which threw our nation into ten years of abject poverty.

Right now, Americans are still dying in Iraq, while the Taliban is regaining territory in Afghanistan, and Iran may be futzing around with a nuclear bomb.

And how are Americans reacting to this? According to the polls, we’re drifting from favoring Obama to favoring the know-nothing McCain-Palin ticket. Which essentially means four more years of mindless Bush policies that got us into this mess in the first place.

We’re talking, folks, about two people who know zilch about what affects stock prices, less than zilch about banking, and squat about how to deal with the mess we’re in today.

Denial of on-the-record facts

John McCain recently denied he said he didn’t know much about economics. If he truthfully believes his denial, he’s also suffering from Alzheimer’s Disease. Here, Senator McCain, is the truth:

Actually, the quote came from a 2005 piece by Stephen Moore, in which McCain said: “I’m going to be honest: I know a lot less about economics that I do about military and foreign policy issues. I still need to be educated.”

McCain also said this, per a December 2007 Boston Globe article: "The issue of economics is not something I’ve understood as well as I should. I’ve got Greenspan’s book.”

He’s “got” a book? One book, by one at least partially discredited economist? And on that, assuming he ever reads it, he’s going to base policies that could help the United States survive hard times or drown in a sea of red ink? He's going to get an economic education when he gets around to it, and meanwhile sink the rest of us if he gets an F? Or even a C minus?

What McCain, Palin and Bush are for is “less government.” Except, it was “less government” — the elimination, for example, of the Glass-Steagall Act — that sent the banks and brokerage firms of America reeling toward a round of disaster that hasn’t been equaled since, but may be equaled again shortly.

The U.S. Government lacks the money to pay off all the FDIC-insured bank accounts that will become worthless along with the banks that hold those deposits. Yet John McCain, who may or may not have gotten around to reading one not-entirely-trustworthy book on economics, wants to cut taxes as a cure all for everything from low housing prices, to collapsing banks, to failing brokerage houses, to troubled automobile companies to — well, to warts, for all I know.

But wait, there’s more!
Like starting a nuclear war!

Georgia invades South Ossetia. So Russia invades Georgia. And suddenly, we’ve got Bush-McCain-Pallin responding to this near-nuclear situation by pouring gasoline on the fire and encouraging NATO membership for Georgia. This would require us to invade Russia. And you know what that means in terms of nuclear war.

Kaboom!

McCain-Pallin agree with Bush that we should surround the Russians with NATO nuclear missiles, right in the countries that border them. When the Russians tried the same trick in Cuba back in 1962, we wouldn’t stand for it. The event was called the “Cuban Missile Crisis” remember? We nearly risked World War III to get the Russians out of a neighboring country. Why should the Russians stand for it when we wouldn’t?

We’re heading for a meltdown — financial, international, diplomatic, nuclear. When it comes, most of the people reading this won’t be alive long enough to get past the next sentence.

But America “feels good” about the McCain-Palin continuation of the Bush program of national suicidal idiocy.

P.T. Barnum and the
North American Birdbrain

P.T. Barnum, the father not only of the three-ring circus but also of the theatrical con job once said that, “Nobody ever went broke underestimating the intelligence of the American people.”

But today’s North American Birdbrain exceeds anything even P.T. Con-em could have imagined.

The one thing I don’t have to worry about is this: When your bank collapses and your city explodes, you won’t come running to me. The reason?

Both of us will be nothing but a small, radioactive cinder.

A pit bull with lipstick? This is what pit bulls do to babies. What ‘till you see what a McCain-Palin mad dog administration does to your family.

The photograph was published some time ago in The Baltimore Sun. It shows what a pit bull did to a baby.

The Republican party has declared Sarah Palin to be “a pit bull with lipstick.” 

Don’t you believe it. Truth is, Sarah Palin is Senator McSame’s lap dog, his More-Of-The-Same-Dame:

"Pit bull" image with
no-change lap dog politics

• Same unchanged deference to lobbyists who have secretly been writing the laws for their well-heeled clients instead of the American people. Republicans  talk a good game about "country first." But what they're really doing is putting profits for their greedy corporate donors and lobbyists first and the rest of America behind the eight ball.

• Same unchanged disregard for any proposal that will really fix the unemployment mess.

• Same unchanged disinterest in America’s rotting infrastructure which only the government can fix.

• Same blithe disregard for any measures that would really protect the environment.

• Same emphasis on cutting taxes for corporations and billionaires. Meanwhile, they want to tax your healthcare benefits.

• Same unchanged hatred for the kind of government regulation that used to prevent messes like the subprime mortage meltdown until Republicans repealed the regulations.

• Same unchanged lack of a meaningful proposal that would get every American citizen who wants it some form of affordable healthcare coverage.

• Same unchanged endless war in Iraq.

• Same unchanged financial responsibility that is digging a deeper and deeper grave for the United States of America, as foreign powers grab up our national wealth and laugh all the way to the bank.

McCain will make today's
bad situation even worse

A McCain-Palin administration will not only continue the situation but worsen it, lowering the already low international regard for the United States which has destroyed our worldwide leadership and which will keep us oil-dependent for many more years (That’s what “drill-drill-drill” is really-really-really all about. Making money-money-money for the swimming-in-profits oil companies while diverting major efforts from solar, wind and other energy sources.)

Ever see lipstick
on a real pit bull?

Yeah, sure — McCain is for “change.”

He’s about as much for change as a rabid four-legged pit bull will convince you it’s a hockey mom if someone paints lipstick on its drooling jowls.

Meanwhile, although she has finally — finally! — scheduled one measly press interview with Charlie Gibon, Sarah Palin has thus far refused to hold any full-court national press conferences where Americans can learn the answers to the questions we have on our minds instead of just the answers Republicans want to give us.

Maybe Sarah thinks it’s cute as a pit bull that she wants America wants to vote for her without knowing anything about her.

Well, here is one of the few things we do know about the woman who John McSame says will help him create “change.”

Sarah's shady college record?
Let's shed some light on it.

Sarah Palin thus far has offered no explanation of why she went to five different (mostly second-rate) colleges in six years before she got her four-year degree. In the absence of Palin’s willingness to divulge facts, we’re free to speculate on this national political figure. So permit me a few crankily speculative question:

• Despite her ability to make a fine speech, is Sarah Palin such a scholastic dimwit that she managed to flunk out of college one or more times?

• Was she caught cheating on exams or upsetting somebody else’s lab experiment so she’d come quit higher on the curve one or more times?

• Did she have one or more mental breakdowns?

Did she have to drop out of college (and — heaven forbid! — have an abortion because she was pregnant?)

The colleges themselves are forbidden by law to divulge their records. So we’ll just have to wait and see whether the Republicans and Sarah will share their secret information.

Barack, dude: If you want to win this one don't get sidetracked by an Alaskan barracuda

Dude, I know it isn't easy, what with the Republicans trying to refocus attention from the real issues in this campaign to their nomination of a "hockey mom" who's evidently under some kind of criminal investigation for abuse of power in office. 

I know that raises questions as to whether McCain and the people around him have either the integrity or the competence to vet a cow in a milking barn, much less a vice-presidential candidate who's a heartbeat away from a doddering old dude with a history of cancer.

But when it comes down to pulling that lever for you (or making an x, or stabbing a chad, or touch-screening your name) only one thing matters.

As a Democrat who built a successful economy before the Republicans wrecked it kept reminding himself, "It's the economy, stupid."

So dude, keep reminding people that with or without Barracuda Sarah (who evidently, in violation of the law, fires civil servants if they're not political hacks) the Republicans want to kill Social Security. The Republicans want to kill Medicare. The Republicans want to kill your job, your income and your future.

The Republicans want to screw over the average American by cutting taxes for the rich again and meanwhile running up an even bigger national debt for our children – all this while the rest of America tries to hang on to our houses, pay off our mortgages and college loans, and hang on to our jobs (if we still have a job that hasn't been "outsourced" to India or China.)

Dump McCain by voting for Barack and we also get to dump the war that's draining your tax money and pouring it into that leaky sieve called Iraq instead of into medical care and infrastructure and job creation for America.

Dump McCain and America has a chance. And that hockey mom will be free to go back to Alaska and ask the criminal lawyer she's hired to defend her how her case is going. 

Hey man, I've just got back from almost three weeks of vacation. And whaddya know? I'm still cranky.

Answer quick, John McCain: You have a goose that lays golden eggs. You should A) Kill and eat the goose B) Smash the eggs C) Drill for oil

It’s becoming clear that we Americans have a unique talent for ruining ourselves and our nation. It didn’t used to be this way. But the Republican Party and their know-nothing candidate, John McCain, seem hellbent on driving this country’s economy off a cliff.

Drilling our way to national ruin

Case in point: McCain’s contagiously stubbornly ignorant insistence that we can drill our way out of current high gasoline prices by drilling for small amounts of oil that won’t come to market for about ten years anyway – meanwhile endangering with pollution our coastlines and unspoiled wilderness of Alaska.

Bob Herbert, one of the more sensible op-ed columnists at the New York Times, sums it all up here.

Was P.T. Barnum
America’s greatest genius?

The McCain mission for economic suicide keeps chanting, “We have to drill here and drill now. ... Drill here and drill now. " More and more Americans are falling for this con, thus demonstrating P.T. Barnum’s observation that at least in America, “There’s a sucker born every minute.”

Meanwhile, golden opportunities – hard times always lay golden eggs for those who look for them – are falling into the hands of this nation’s competitors. We could have a new and highly profitable industry manufacturing wind generators. Instead, orders for these high tech energy machines that generate power essentially for free after they are installed are going to other nations, from Denmark to China, while McCain’s backward policy keeps demanding we pump for oil.

And because we keep spending our money on oil, we’re showering other nations with a gusher of our own cash – not only nations like Saudi Arabia, that pump the oil, but also nations like China, from whom we keep borrowing more and more money because our own has less and less value thanks to all the oil we consume.

How about buggy whips, John?

John McCain’s yearning to somehow find a few drops more of oil is about as forward thinking as a huge Congressional appropriation to save the buggy whip industry. Oil is a backward technology. It’s time to move on, before the rest of the world eats what’s left of our lunch.

But John McCain thinks – and perhaps he’s right, suckers – that he can win a presidency by yelling “Drill, drill, drill!”

If that’s our solution, we’re dead, dead, dead. And when our economy goes, so will our living standard, our colleges and universities, our technology, and our national defense.

Attention all attention-seekers. Stop climbing the New York Times’ new office building. Climb this instead.

I’ve been meaning to rant about this for some time now, but you know, it’s summer and I’ve been lazy.

Well, enough with all the procrastination. And besides, more than enough bloggers (not to mention Paris Hilton) have been rightfully pointing out what an idiot John McCain is, not to mention the idiots who surround him. There's no percentage in my wasting breath on more of the same.

McCain, McShmane.
How about those building climbers?

So instead of slamming the too-easy-to-slam McCain, here’s a gratuitous sneer for all those dudes who may put a newspaper out of business by diverting the company’s capital from publishing newspapers to protecting their physical flanks from dingbats who like to climb buildings.

It hasn’t happened once. It hasn’t happened twice. It’s happened three times: Idiots with a penchant for idiocy have noticed that the Times’ new headquarters on Eighth Avenue in Manhattan seem just perfect for climbing.

Perhaps that’s because the architects surrounded the building with bars that trigger thoughts of jungle gym in juvenile minds. (Picture)

The pursuit of splat-iness

At any rate, the climbers keep climbing, endangering pedestrians and passers by, not to mention news gatherers going in and out of the building. And the Times keeps having to modify the building to discourage climbing and the big splat that one of those climbers will make one of these days.

Let’s take these climbing attempts for what they are. The perpetrators are not only guilty of suicidal idiocy. They’re not only recklessly endangering people on the crowded streets below.

Their actions also constitute an attack on the solvency (and therefore the freedom) of the press.

Yo, climb this

Look, Dumbo, if you want to climb a challenging building, go climb the Washington monument. It looks a lot harder. You’ll stand out better against one of its plain granite facets. And if the police don’t shoot you off it, you’re more likely just to fall in front of a throng of tourists, all of them holding cameras.

This will assure you of a posthumous You Tube moment, plus your constitutionally guaranteed 15 minutes of fame.

Get out of New York and go for it, fella.

Mystic evil fortune teller curses John McCain and Bob Novak with powerful psychic ding

It’s been a while – almost a year and a month, in fact – since this blog last paid a visit to Mme. Galzogorist, the fortune-telling seer on one of Manhattan's grittiest commercial blocks. She's the one who has the power to dispense psychic dings. A psychic ding is the kind of curse that causes less-than-loveable people to feel severe mental anguish.

Or to look stupid.

So when I checked out the TV news recently, and heard about John McCain whining about Barack Obama's foreign travels, I figured Mme. Galzogorist had to be behind it.

Right I was. Here’s a transcript of my latest interview with my local fortune teller, mystic, seer, and bad mojo witch.

CRANK: Good to see you again, Mme. Galzogorist.

MME G: Watch where you’re walking. Don’t step on the dog.

CRANK: Certainly. I’ve come to ask you…

MME. G: Or the cat.

CRANK: Let me get right down to it. Did you give John McCain a psychic ding?

MME. G: Well I certainly didn’t give him a psychic dong. That guy has absolutely nothing that could point this nation out of the war, out of the economic mess we're in, or even out of his own tangled verbal underwear.

CRANK: Why are you taking it out on the poor senator?

MME G: Because he’s a whiner. He whined, whined, whined that Barack Obama had never visited Iraq. Waa waa waa! Then Obama goes to Iraq and McCain whines, whines, whines about Obama’s traveling. I also sense rumors that McCain's sore at Obama getting so much press coverage. I mean, what did he expect would happen? McCain asked for it and he got it. Lie down in dog poop, wake up smelly. He has no right to complain. So I dinged him.

CRANK: Did you ding McCain on the economy, too?

MME G: McCain dings himself on the economy every time he opens his mouth. Not to mention looking like an idiot when he tries to explain the history of the surge. His campaign theme song ought to be a takeoff on that 1958 doo-wop song.

Don’t know much about history
Don’t know ‘bout the economy
Don’t know much about a science book
Don’t know much about the French I took…

You can find all the original lyrics and download them for a Republican ring tone just by clicking on this link. Come to think of it, that could be George Bush’s theme song, too. Or the full verbatim text of the Republican platform.

CRANK: So do you think Obama’s going to win the election?

MME. G: Situation is cloudy. Ask again later.

CRANK: Why has Obama slipped in the polls?

MME G: I could give you a smart-aleck answer, such as, “Americans have an infinite capacity for voting against their own self-interest and wishes.” But all I’ll say officially is, “Situation is cloudy. Ask again later.”

CRANK: Did you also ding Bob Novack, the syndicated columnist?

MME G: You mean the guy who outed an active CIA operative, Valerie Plame, endangering the lives of CIA assets? If you’re talking about his hit-and-run of a pedestrian with his sports car in the nation’s capital, and his claim that he simply didn’t notice hitting a guy so hard that the poor victim ended up with casts on his neck and back, nah, I didn’t cause that ding. It was the pedestrian who dinged Novack’s Corvette, by allowing himself to get hit-and-run by Novack. Vroom vroom.

CRANK: How big is the ding?

MME G: I don’t know. But if Novack put the poor hit-and-run victim in the hospital, I imagine the ding is bigger than a dime. Somebody ought to go out and take a picture of the car before the damage disappears like, oh, a few million incriminating White House e-mails. Where are the paparazzi now that we need them?

CRANK: Will you be dinging any more politicians before the November elections. Say, by causing one of them to make a major gaffe?

MME G: Situation is cloudy. Ask again later.

CRANK: Thank you, Mme. Galzogorist.

MME G: Watch out! How many times do I have to tell you – don’t step on the cat!

"Shallow, incurious, indifferent to the facts"

For a moment I thought I was reading about George Bush. But no, the nouns attached to all these adjectives in the headline were "John" and "McCain."

My friend Underbelly has some interesting thoughts about John McCain, George W. Bush, what makes them similar and what makes them different. I recommend that you spend a few minutes here, reading his short essay about what does – and doesn't – make John McCain the worst kind of "old fogey."

Do we really need or want another intellectual dud in the White House?

Thanks, Republican economics, for all the poverty – and keep cheerleading for it, John McCain. By the way, I love your dumb hat.

With John McCain essentially promising four more years of the Bush economy, with maybe some draconian budget-cutting measures thrown in to "reduce the deficit," it might be worth taking a look at some recent poverty numbers.

These come from an e-mail sent to me a few days ago by New York State Senator Liz Kreuger. She gets her information from a report from The New York Women's Foundation. It has to do with women but trust me, men and entire families are getting sucked into the same poverty hole.

• In 1989, 87.2% of women lived above the poverty line, but by 2005, only 83.4% lived above the poverty line.

• Today, 15.2% of New York's women live below the Federal Poverty Threshold ($19,806 for a family of four; two adults and two children), and 26.8% of all female-headed households with children live below the poverty line.

Kreuger adds:

The dire economic situation for women in New York and the downward trend are not isolated problems. Poverty creates ripple effects to th detriment of our entire state, impacting whole families, particularly impacting vulnerable children, elderly family members and whole communities.

Mind you, we're talking not about a long-declining rust belt state. This is happening in filthy rich, billionaire-loaded, $15 million luxury apartment-filled New York State. As the middle class slowly sinks into poverty while the super rich grow ever more super and richer, what does John McCain have to say about the economic policies that have brought us here?

Well, root around on his official website and you'll find him supporting heartwarming policies like these:

• He'll make it harder to raise taxes. Umm, he forgets to mention he's talking mainly about taxes on the rich. Warren Buffet, the billionaire investor, has complained that his secretary pays more of her income in taxes than he does.

• McCain will keep the tax cuts for millionaires on their capital gains and dividends. You're a poor jerk who only has $40,000 in a CD? Sorry bub, no tax break on bank interest for you.

•But McCain will cut the corporate tax rate 10% (thus shifting more of the burden to wage earners.)

•He'll also institute "pro-market health care and Medicare reforms." You don't know what that means? It means getting you out of Medicare and into an HMO with the disguising title "Medicare Advantage." Whatever they call it, it's an HMO. Did an HMO ever lower your health insurance rates?

I'd keep on going, but I'm almost ready to puke. Obama may have his faults, but if you don't vote for Obama what you're likeliest to get – if you're still part of the middle class by the time the next presidential term comes around – is impoverished.

P.S. What's with the dumb hat McCain is peddling on his website? Does he want to make us feel like we're all his kids? What's he trying to tell us? If he's the dad, who's the mom? I don't know about you, but I've never been in the same birthing room with Cindy McCain.

He’s against privatizing Social Security. No, uh, he’s for it. Nope, against it. No, for it. Against it. For it. Against it. For it.

If John McCain becomes President of the United States, Social Security is as doomed as the buggy whip industry. His tool will be that old dirty trick “privatization” – a process that will do for Social Security what private insurance has done for medical care in this country.

Here’s the latest horror, from a May 15th posting on The Carpetbagger Report:

Asked about the change, McCain rejected his own campaign’s Social Security policy. “I’m totally in favor of personal savings accounts…. As part of Social Security reform, I believe that private savings accounts are a part of it — along the lines that President Bush proposed.”

When reminded that his campaign website says something completely different, McCain said his site would be changed. Two and a half months later, the site remains the same. As a result, McCain and his campaign have taken completely different positions on the issue, with the candidate embracing the same policy pushed by Bush, which Americans rejected overwhelmingly.

Makes you wonder whether Alzheimer’s has already set in.

“Well, I will if you will. But if you won’t I won’t. But if you will and I’m not nominated, or if I’m nominated and you’re not nominated, or…

Politico.com reports that John McCain has taken a step toward accepting public financing in the general election.

The Politico article also reports:

Last year, McCain pledged to participate in the public financing system if he won his party’s nomination and the Democratic nominee did the same. 

The vow came in response to similar positioning by Democratic presidential candidate Barack Obama. The Illinois senator subsequently has backed away from committing to the program, however, as it has become clear his record-setting fundraising operation likely will be able to bring in significantly more than $84 million for the November general election.

There are more potential eye-crossing, headache-inducing permutations inherent in this one than I care to shake a rattlestick at. For example: Barack wins the Democratic nomination, and then backs off from campaign financing because he realizes he has more dough in the till than McCain and can beat McCain’s pants off by using contributed money...

Or Barack accepts campaign financing, but then McCain gets a huge infusion of mega-cash from panicked corporate donors who fear Obama might lower the boom on their predatory ways of doing business...

Or both accept campaign financing, but then so-called “independent” advertisers start supporting the candidates with so-called “issue ads.” You know the kind of thing I’m talking about: “Don’t stand for it. Tell Barack Obama to stop oppressing one-eyed widows who want to wear water wings...”

Or Hillary beats Obama in the primaries and lobs so much money at McCain that he’s crushed by a tidal wave of meaningless emotional advertising...

Or vice-versa. Or the other vice-versa

Or the Dems go into a deadlocked convention and the delegates pick Biden or Edwards as their presidential candidate, totally bollixing up the Republican plans for a negative advertising campaign aimed at Obama or Clinton...

Or…

Please stop me. I’m giving myself a headache.

Feeling good? Too bad! It’s time to start worrying again. Here are six nightmare scenarios to help ruin your sweet dreams.

All of us who count ourselves as Democrats are getting a tetch too comfortable. All of us who want to toss George Bush back into his Crawford brush…all of us who see light at the end of the gloomy economy...and peace at the end of the Iraq quagmire…all of us had better take a deep, deep breath.

Remember, Murphy’s Law roars back into operation whenever you let your pessimism take a nap. If anything can go wrong, somebody is already plotting how to make it happen. And somebody else with offices on K Street is already lobbying for it.

So here are a handful of bone-chilling scenarios (Guaranteed: all of them straight off the top of my cranky head) to keep you pacing the floor tonight.

1. The Democrats win the election. But George Bush declares martial law, announces that for some reason or other the election process was illegal, and appoints himself “Interim President for Life.” Troops occupy the streets to put down any dissent. Dissidents "disappear" to dungeons abroad and are later found in mass graves. Hey, you say that only happens in third world countries? And what world does our nation’s growth in the fields of government cronyism, torture chambers, inflation, poverty rates and shrinking the economy make us these days?

2. Ralph Nader draws just enough votes from the Democratic presidential candidate for John McCain to win. It is later determined that Nader’s campaign was funded all along by Republicans, arch-conservatives and neo-conservatives who realized that their only hope of victory was Nader denouncing them while running for office. I mean, who else is funding Ralph? Certainly not Democrats.

3. New York’s Mayor Michael Bloomberg decides to run for president, after off-and-on flirtations with the idea. (See Nader, Ralph, above.) [NOTE: In a deliberate effort to confound and confuse The New York Crank, Mayor Bloomberg announced, the very evening that this post got posted, that he will not be a candidate for president. Immediately, New York 1, the CNN local news cable station, began speculating that he's running for vice president. Go figure.]

4. The reason we haven’t seen an Al Qaeda attack recently is that Osama Bin Laden was caught several years ago and is being held incommunicado in Guantanamo. Three days before the 2008 election, George Bush in a last-minute attempt to undo a Democratic sweep, will announce Bin Laden’s capture.

5. Al Qaeda hasn’t attacked us in the United States since 2001 because its leaders have been following Napoleon’s advice never to interrupt the enemy when he is making a grave mistake. Our grave mistakes under the Bush Administration include destroying the morale of our armed forces, stretching the nation’s defenses thin, wrecking our own economy, and sabotaging our goodwill abroad. When we get a rational president who begins improving the economy, restoring civil rights, pulling us out of the hopeless quagmire in Iraq and uniting the nation, then Al Qaeda will attack. Loud gloating will be heard from under a shady tree on a mountain bike trail in Crawford, Texas.

6. On his last day in office George Bush will issue a blanket pardon for himself – and for every member of his administration – for any and all crimes discovered or yet uncovered, ranging from corruption, to cover up, to destroying government property, to contempt of Congress. And more.

Anything else disturbing your dreams? Feel free to send in your nightmares.

Repulican corruptocracy? You ain’t seen nothin’ yet. Check this story out.

Hey, don’t get upset. All the story involves is a Congressman (left) indicted for “wire fraud, money laundering and other matters in an Arizona land swap scam that allegedly helped him collect hundreds of thousands of dollars in payoffs.”

Oh yeah, it also involves an Arizona U.S. attorney general who had the temerity – the utter temerity! – to look into this criminal matter. This got him fired. Fired by whom? Fired by Alberto Gonzales, the Bush-appointed U.S. Attorney General who had to step down after it became clear he was running his office like the patronage office of a crooked city councilman in East Podunk.

Oh, and one last thing. The indicted Republican Congressman at the heart of this scandal is Rick Renzi who is a co-chairman of presidential candidate John McCain’s Arizona “Leadership Team.” (Details here.)

With leaders like Renzi, does anyone have any questions about the kind of leadership America would get from John McCain?

Don’t shoot me, dude. It’s only a cranky question.