Day: June 27, 2008

McCain Calls Jimmy Carter a “Lousy President”

Trish

Don’t care what you say — this is not how a potential president talks about a former president. From the transcript of the interview in the Las Vegas Sun.

McCain’s action plan on the economy: “I don’t know, but we may have to do more…The housing crisis continues to deepen.”

(On nuclear waste)

If Yucca Mountain passes all of those tests that need to be passed…but reprocessing is vital, reprocessing has got to be part of it…Senator Obama is against reprocessing, against offshore drilling….he’s against everything. The status quo is fine? No.

(But what about what your ally, Lindsey Graham says about more plants: “If you close Yucca, where do you put the waste?” Isn’t that a good question?)

Reprocessing. Isn’t that a good answer? That’s what the Europeans are doing? Have you seen that? Yeah, flash—that’s what the Europeans are doing. Hello?

(But Carter gave up on reprocessing, you know why he did that then?)

Yes, because Carter was a lousy president….This is the same guy who kissed Brezhnev…

O.K., now he’s pissing me off. Carter was the first president I could vote for, but not until he was up for re-election. Carter is brave, principled, almost unerringly right about everything, and…not a hot-head.

(What about [Harry] Reid saying you are temperamentally unsuited to be president and have an explosive temper and everyone knows it?)

That’s not unexpected for Senator Reid….He comes up to me all the time and wants to work with me. On the floor, he doesn’t seem to be that concerned about it. You cannot make a record like I have accomplished legislatively…and get things done if you have some kind of a problem…..Harry didn’t mind asking me to go to dinner with him and to a a fight a couple of years ago. The only difference is I paid for my tickets; he didn’t pay for his…That was rich.

Note to McCain: Any response to inquiries about whether you are really an asshole that begins with smearing the person who suggested it, and ends with the phrase, “That’s rich” is ill-advised. But then, so is being clueless on one of the greatest problems in our country.

(On the foreclosure bill in Congress)

It is imperfect but I am also saying, and I may not have said this a month ago, we may have to do more.

(Like what?)

I don’t know, but we may have to do more…The housing crisis continues to deepen…

Can I get a “duh” someone? Amen.

Quote du Jour

Buck Banks

If you talk to God, you are praying; if God talks to you, you have schizophrenia. If the dead talk to you, you are a spiritualist; if God talks to you, you are schizophrenic.

— Thomas Szasz (1920- ), Hungarian psychiatrist and academic

Crist Gets ‘Terminator’ Smack-Down in Miami

Buck Banks

It’s like the old Charles Atlas ads where the big, muscle-bound bully of the beach kicks sand in the weakling’s face and makes off with his girl. Only in this case, the apparent injustice was well deserved.

Yesterday, Florida Gov. Charlie Crist probably expected a repeat of last year’s cheerleading session from California Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger at the wrap-up of the climate-change summit in Miami. Instead he had a climate change of his own — from warm to frigid.
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Here’s how the Miami Herald reported it:

California Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger, the one-time Terminator actor, was in more of a separator mode Thursday in Miami as he joined in the battle against global warming.

He praised most of the environmental efforts of fellow Republican Charlie Crist, but firmly separated himself from Crist’s recent support of off-shore oil drilling.

”Politicians have been throwing around all kinds of ideas in response to the skyrocketing energy prices, from rethinking nuclear power to pushing biofuels and more renewables and ending the ban on off-shore drilling, and it goes on and on the list,” Schwarzenegger told a luncheon crowd of at least 500 at Crist’s second summit on climate change.

Then he added, “but anyone who tells you this will bring down our gas prices immediately and or anytime soon is blowing smoke.”

According to our local NPR station, Crist wrapped up the closing ceremony with alacrity, and took no questions from the media following his public spanking.

10 Things to Know about Charlie Black

Jon Ponder

Charlie Black, John McCain’s senior adviser, made news earlier this week when Fortune Magazine editor David Whitford reported that Black told him “with startling candor” when asked how a terrorist attack inside the United States would affect the campaign,”Certainly it would be a big advantage to [McCain].”
“He’s very folksy, but he’s tough. Charlie will pat you on the back one moment, stab you in the back the next.”
— An anonymous friend of Charlie Black
Keith Olbermann has been reporting on this story all week on his MSNBC news hour, in part to make that point that if a Democrat had made a similar gaffe, the Beltway punditocracy would have been in high dudgeon, demanding the adviser’s head on a pike and lambasting the candidate for associating himself with such scum.

Longtime political junkies know that Charlie Black was among a handful of angry young rightwingers who remade the Republican Party after the debacle of Richard Nixon’s resignation. Along with Roger Stone, Terry Dolan, Lee Atwater, Karl Rove and George Bush Jr., he is one of the inventors of today’s GOP attack machine, a style of media-driven slash and burn politics that can be traced to the establishment by Black, Stone and Dolan in 1975 of a political action committee that raised millions from conservatives using deceptive direct-mail advertising and spent the money on TV ads that slimed Democrats.

Black, one of the most successful lobbyists and political strategists of the Reagan and Bush eras, has backed his share of losers over the years, too. But even when he has bet on the wrong horse, he has always landed on his feet — which may explain why John McCain needs Charlie Black this year much more than Black needs McCain.

Here are 10 things to know about Charlie Black:

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