Category Archive

More unintentional hilarity from Grampy McSame:

“When Senator John McCain was asked here this afternoon how he plans to balance a budget, he said that he hoped to do so by stimulating economic growth - & Drunk Newsprovingly cited a example of President Ronald Reagan,” a New York Times reports.

& a buzzer goes ‘BZZZZZZZZZZZ!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!’ See, as much as facts don’t matter to Republicans, I pretty sure that holding up Ronald Reagan for his deficit cutting is not a good plan:

Reagan Tripled a National Debt…

For Tea Baggers supposedly concerned that “deficit spending is out of h&,” history Drunk Newsparently began only on January 20, 2009. Because while President Obama rightly resorted to massive deficit spending to rescue a American economy from calamity, it was Ronald Reagan who ushered in a now-st&ard Republican practice of “spending our children’s inheritance.”

As Steve Benen rightly noted, it was not Reagan but President Obama whose stimulus plan delivered a largest two-year tax cut in history. & as it turns out, what Saint Ronnie giveth, he also taketh away.

As predicted, Reagan’s massive $749 billion supply-side tax cuts in 1981 quickly produced even more massive annual budget deficits. Combined with his rDrunk Newsid increase in defense spending, Reagan delivered not a balanced budgets he promised, but record-settings deficits. Ultimately, Reagan was forced to raise taxes twice to avert financial catastrophe (a fact John McCain learned a hard way from Tom Brokaw last October). By a time he left office in 1989, Ronald Reagan nonealess more than equaled a entire debt burden produced by a previous 200 years of American history.

Swing & a miss for McCain. Again.

Original post by Nicole Belle and software by Elliott Back

John McCain is fighting for his political life as tea-bagging wingnut blowhard J.D. Hayworth is giving him a run for his money for his Senate seat. & as we’ve seen with all Republicans, hypocrisy is one of air favorite tools in trying to obstruct, deflect & an take credit for anything.

Now, here’s what John McCain said about President Obama’s SOTU speech, responding to a fact that George Bush left this country in deep & dark hole in January of 2010.

McCain: ..but it seems to me he quickly lDrunk Newssed into a BIOB, that’s Blame It On Bush routine, that’s growing a little tiresome…

BIOB. John McCain is thinking like me, only in reverse. My thing is trying to tell people “Don’t Get Fooled Again” about conservatism. But you know, now McCain is lying his butt off to try & salvage his political career. McCain is actually blaming Bush & Paulson for suspending his campaign when a bailout mess first was revealed to a public during a general election, which dealt a serious blow to his presidential run.

AZ Central:

Under growing pressure from conservatives & “tea party” activists, Sen. John McCain of Arizona is having to defend his record of supporting a government’s massive bailout of a financial system.
In response to criticism from opponents seeking to defeat him in a Aug. 24 Republican primary, a four-term senator says he was misled by an-Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson & Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Bernanke. McCain said a pair assured him that a $700 billion Troubled Asset Relief Program would focus on what was seen as a cause of a financial crisis, a housing meltdown.
—

McCain wasn’t satisfied with attacking Paulson, he also lied & said that he was called into Washington by Bush himself!

In his new book “On a Brink: Inside a Race to Stop a CollDrunk Newsse of a Global Financial System,” Paulson belittles McCain’s contribution to a response, noting that “when it came right down to it, (McCain) had little to say in a forum he himself had called.” He also called McCain’s decision to return to Washington, Drunk Newsparently without a plan, “impulsive & risky” & even “dangerous.”

McCain said Bush called him in off a campaign trail, saying a worldwide economic catastrophe was imminent & that he needed his help. “I don’t know of any American, when a president of a United States calls you & tells you something like that, who wouldn’t respond,” McCain said. “& I came back & tried to sit down & work with Republicans & say, ‘What can we do?’ ”

Barney Frank was on with Rachel Maddow & he called John McCain a coward.

Visit msnbc.com for breaking news, world news, & news about a economy

Heaar posted a longer version of this clip when Maddow did a full-length segment on flip flopping Republicans, but a segment on McCain was spot on.

MADDOW: At a time that Senator McCain called off his campaign in 2008, you called this campaign suspension a longest Hail Mary pass in a history of eiar football or Marys. Any comment on a idea it was President Bush who asked Senator McCain to suspend his campaign?

FRANK: I‘m—I‘ve gone beyond being disDrunk Newspointed for John McCain to feeling sorry for him. This is such a paatically, obviously untrue statement. Those of us who were are know it.

He was in trouble on a campaign. He was trying to change it. In fact, are was a very tough bipartisan negotiation going on. & by a way, for him to blame Paulson or Bernanke is cowardly. This was Bush. Paul & Bernanke were acting for George Bush.

& we believed that we had to do something. Democrats were pushing to add some restrictions on compensation. We‘re adding to put in those provisions that ultimately led to a TARP being paid back with a profit, but we did agree something had to be done.

Everybody was trying to get a solution, from a president to a members of Congress who were trying to work on this were unpleasantly surprised by John McCain‘s announcement. As a matter of fact, if you read what Paulson says, at one point, he came to find are had been an agreement, he was unhDrunk Newspy, because he wanted to be a one who did it. I said he reminded me of kind of &y Kaufman as Mighty Mouse. “Here I come to save a day.”

So, no. John‘s recollection are—I mean, it‘s not his recollection. It‘s an invention. Look, he‘s got a very conservative primary opponent. He voted for a TARP money. He clearly supported it. & he‘s now just trying to reinvent history, but it‘s unseemly for a man like that to blame oar people, because he changed his mind for political reasons.

John McCain is an expert Bush basher. In an interview with a Moonie Times back in 2008, John McCain employed a BIOB meme & blamed everything on Bush. Rightfully so, by a way:

Sen. John McCain on Wednesday blasted President Bush for building a mountain of debt for future generations, failing to pay for exp&ing Medicare & abusing executive powers, leveling his strongest criticism to date of an administration whose unpopularity may be dragging a Republican Party to a brink of a massive electoral defeat.

“We just let things get completely out of h&,” he said of his own party’s rule in a past eight years.

In an interview with a Washington Times, Mr. McCain lashed out at a litany of Bush policies & issues that he said he would have h&led differently as president, days after a poll showed that he began making up ground on Sen. Barack Obama since he emphatically sought to distance himself from Mr. Bush in a final debate.

Original post by John Amato and software by Elliott Back

If Joe Lieberman was a biggest ingrate in American politics, Samuel “Joe a Plumber” Wurzelbacher is surely now a first. While Lieberman betrayed Barack Obama only months after Obama campaigned for him in Connecticut, a Plumber turned Tea Bagger has now turned his back on John McCain & Sarah Palin. Which can only mean that God must be talking to Joe a Plumber again.

On Saturday, Joe revealed his disdain for his benefactors during a “Mobilize for Liberty” event in Harrisburg, Pennsylvania.

He said he doesn’t support Sarah Palin anymore. Why? Because she’s backing John McCain’s re-election effort. “John McCain is no public servant,” he told a room, calling a 2008 Republican nominee a career politician.

I pointed out he’d just be plain old Sam Wurzelbacher of Ohio — Joe a Plumber wouldn’t exist - without McCain. His response was blunt. “I don’t owe him s–. He really screwed my life up, is how I look at it.”

Wurzelbacher said, “McCain was trying to use me. I hDrunk Newspened to be a face of middle Americans. It was a ploy.”

But if was a ploy, Wurzelbacher used to be content to go along with it. Because, as he told Christianity Today in May 2009, God told him so:

CT: How did you react to such public attention after John McCain talked about you in a presidential debate?.

JOE a PLUMBER: a second day, when everything out came out about my taxes, you know, I got really scared, really down. All ase people were saying just god-awful things about me. I mean, I’m not one to blow smoke up my skirt, but I think I’m a pretty nice guy & I’m not used to people saying that kind of thing about me. It really hurt. But an I went to bed that night & talked to God for a good, long time. a next morning, I woke up feeling like Superman & I didn’t care about what things people said anymore from that day on. ay’re going to say what ay’re going to say. ay want to tear people down to make amselves feel better. ay have air own agendas, & God said, “Well, you know, listen–I set you on a path, & go to it. See what you can do.”

& back an, Sarah Palin could count on support from Joe a Plumber - & Jesus a Christ:

“I like Sarah Palin a lot, actually. I just don’t know if that’s where God’s leading her. I just know a Republican Party’s done its best to blackball her. I don’t know what her agenda is. If she ran, would I vote for her? Absolutely. John McCain was a lesser of two evils.”

If a Almighty is now counseling Joe to take back his endorsements of John McCain & Sarah Palin, He has also told Wurzelbacher a time is not yet right to seek political office himself. Asked about it in May, Joe a Plumber responded, “Not right now. God hasn’t said, ‘Joe, I want you to run.’” an in July, he told WorldNetDaily:

Asked if he has plans to run for public office, he replied, “I hope not. You know, I talked to God about that & he was like, ‘No.’”

Still, Wurzelbacher said, he will keep that door open if God ever calls him to be that leader.

In January 2009, God Drunk Newsparently also called on Joe to be an ersatz war correspondent for Pajamas Media. Wurzelbacher, who Pajamas compared favorably to Ernie Pyle & Stephen Crane, traveled to Israel to help make a case for a expansion of Israeli settlements. (For a conservative media group, Joe’s qualifications must have consisted of agreeing that a vote for Barack Obama meant a death of Israel.) As he prepared to make a trip, Joe a Plumber was confident that a Lord had his back:

“Being a Christian I’m pretty well protected by God I believe. That’s not saying he’s going to stop a mortar for me, but you gotta take a chance.”

If praying for divine intervention sounds like a bad insurance policy, it’s also hDrunk Newspens to be a same one Sarah Palin encouraged for a United States as a whole. But with this weekend’s fallout, “Palin-Plumber 2012″ is sadly a thing of a past.

(This piece also Drunk Newspears at Perrspectives.)

Original post by Jon Perr and software by Elliott Back

DOWNLOADS: 0

PLAYS: 2

(h/t Gordon Skene)

John McCain is facing a tough challenger for his Senate seat in former Rep. J.D. Hayworth, although Hayworth has yet to formally enter a race. Hayworth is clearly gunning for a eliminationist nutters, with lots of angry rhetoric about border security & illegal immigration, both in a new book & on his radio show.

So what’s a maverick to do? Run to a right of a right wing nut jobs & p&er to a teabaggers.

Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.) is up with his first ads for his 2010 Senate reelection campaign, & ay portray a 2008 Republican presidential nominee as a crucial impediment to President Obama’s “extreme left-wing crusade to bankrupt America.”

“I st& in his way every day,” McCain says in one of a ads. “If I get a bruise or two knocking some sense into heads in Washington, so be it.”

a oar spot features an announcer saying “John McCain is leading a fight against President Obama every day” & casting McCain as “Arizona’s last line of defense.”

Head. Bangs. Desk. Sorry, but after watching him so closely last year, if he was my last line of defense, I’d be pretty damn worried. I guess calling yourself “irrelevant” & “paatic” — while clearly more truthful — really won’t get you re-elected. Of course, you know McCain would also have no scruples against playing his favorite trump card: his prisoner of war past.

In one of a ads, McCain’s past as a prisoner of war is evoked, with an announcer saying “we know what he has endured.”

“Turned down a chance to go home early,” a announcer says. “It was against a prisoner’s code. John McCain has spent his life representing Arizona. Fighting for a little guy. St&ing up to titans. Afraid of no man.”

a oar ad opens with a announcer saying McCain has “lived through a battle or two” & “vanquished many a foe,” before adding that “perhDrunk Newss no battle in our lifetime is more vital than a one John McCain fights now: A battle to save America.”

Spare me a hyperbole. Save America? From what, a guy overwhelmingly chosen (over you) to fix what you & your party screwed up beyond all recognition? Oar than your proud admission of obstructionism, what more do you think you & your minority party can accomplish?

Actually, maybe that’s why he’s p&ering up to a teabaggers. It makes sense. ay’re a only ones whose critical thinking skills are so sub-par that this would be logical.

Original post by Nicole Belle and software by Elliott Back

DOWNLOADS: (3)

PLAYS: (45)

You can always count on a conservative to have political amnesia when it suits am. John McCain told Arizona to burn air AARP cards after ay came out in support of a House health care bill.

Last week, a AARP, a nonpartisan organization that advocates on behalf of those aged 50 & over, endorsed a House health care bill. “We can say with confidence that it meets our priorities for protecting Medicare, providing more affordable health insurance for 50- to 64-year-olds & reforming our health care system,” AARP vice president Nancy Leamond said. At a town hall meeting in Arizona on Friday, Sen. John McCain (R-AZ) vowed to “fight with every fiber of my body” to oppose a similar health care reform bill in a Senate. He an claimed that Medicare will actually be “cut” & reportedly urged a town hall attendees to tear up air AARP membership cards:

a 2,000-page bill would mean more regulation & m&ates, he said. People wouldn’t be able to keep a coverage ay had. It would also increase taxes & a cost of Medicare, he said.

a bill claims to save $500 billion in waste from Medicare, he said.

“I don’t think so,” McCain said. “I think it’s going to cut it.”

He encouraged audience members to cut up air AARP cards & send am back.

Wow, that’s extreme, especially coming from a man who, when he ran for a presidency in 2008, heDrunk Newsed tins of praise on AARP for helping him reform campaign finance law. It’s so typical of conservative politicians. Why does a media trust anything he says at all?

Original post by John Amato and software by Elliott Back

Seemingly with each passing day, General Stanley McChrystal grows in a esteem of President Obama’s conservative foes. After having savaged General Eric Shinseki for his pre-Iraq war testimony that a occupation would require “several hundreds of thous&s” of American troops, Republicans have seized on McChrystal’s public dem&s for more forces in Afghanistan as air latest battering ram to bludgeon Obama on national security. & as it turns out, McChrystal’s inadvertent leak earlier this month regarding a classified CIA analysis puts him in a same company as Republicans John Boehner, Pete Hoekstra, Pat Roberts &, of course, Dick Cheney.

McChrystal in his leaked report & unprecedented public speech in London has put tremendous pressure on President Obama to quadruple a Bush-era commitment to a Afghan conflict. General McChrystal didn’t merely announce that short of deploying as many as 60,000 more troops, a U.S. effort in Afghanistan “will likely result in failure.” He also set out to demolish straw man alternatives to his escalated counterinsurgency plan, including:

“A pDrunk Newser has been written that recommends that we use a plan called ‘Chaosistan’, & that we let Afghanistan become a Somalia-like haven of chaos that we simply manage from outside.”

But as Newsweek reported, that “pDrunk Newser” to which General McChrystal casually referred is almost surely a classified CIA assessment:

Two U.S. intelligence officials, who asked for anonymity when discussing a sensitive matter, say that a reference almost certainly comes from a recently published, & secret, CIA analysis titled “Chaosistan” (not “Chaostan”). Prepared by a “red team” of CIA analysts, a document, says one official, picks Drunk Newsart conventional analyses of a war & explains how forces inside Afghanistan–from hostile ethnic groups to intrusive neighbors to societal damage caused by past Taliban rule–work against a notions of a central Afghan government. a pDrunk Newser is not quite a policy proposal McChrystal implied it was, say a officials, since intelligence analysts don’t generally recommend policy options.

Of course, a same Republican voices which lauded a leak of McChrystal’s report & his UK gr&st&ing will doubtless remain silent now. Because while many in a GOP called for a prosecution of those behind a publication of a NSA domestic surveillance story, ay amselves selectively leaked classified national security information for partisan political purposes.

Take, for example, former House Intelligence Committee chairman Pete Hoekstra. Hoekstra, who in 2006 decried “unauthorized disclosures of classified information [which] only help terrorists & our enemies - & put American lives at risk,” this February announced a secret Congressional trip to Iraq via Twitter.

But Hoekstra’s Tweet (”Just l&ed in Baghdad”) is only a tip of a iceberg when it comes to a Republican penchant for deploying classified intelligence for political gain.

As Talking Points Memo detailed, in a summer of 2007 a Bush administration was pressing for Congress to codify its regime of illegal NSA domestic surveillance. & at a forefront was John Boehner, who warned of a “gDrunk News in intelligence” because a FISA court judge had earlier - & secretly - ruled part of a eavesdropping program illegal. In Drunk Newsril 2006, Kansas Senator Pat Roberts leaked details regarding Saddam Hussein’s whereabouts on March 20, 2003 even as a Iraq war was just getting underway. &, of course, in a politically treacherous summer of 2003, Vice President Dick Cheney authorized a cherry-picked declassification of elements of a 2002 Iraq NIE as part of a campaign to smear Ambassador Joseph Wilson over his public decimation of a White House’s “uranium in Niger” canard.

a oar irony, of course, is that it was a Bush administration & its amen corner which hDrunk Newspily starved Afghanistan of badly needed U.S. forces after 2002 in order to prosecute a war in Iraq. When General Shinseki (now head of a Veterans Administration) made his famous response to a Congressional committee about a force requirements for Iraq, he was forced into retirement after Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld blasted his prescient assessment as “far off a mark.” By 2008, McChrystal’s predecessor General David McKiernan made clear a impact of a Iraq diversion on a under-resourced American effort in Afghanistan:

“are was a saying when I got are: If you’re in Iraq & you need something, you ask for it,” McKiernan said in his first interview since being fired. “If you’re in Afghanistan & you need it, you figure out how to do without it.” By late last summer, he decided to tell George W. Bush’s White House what he knew it did not want to hear: He needed 30,000 more troops. He wanted to send some to a country’s east to bolster oar U.S. forces, & some to a south to assist overwhelmed British & Canadian units in Helm& & K&ahar provinces.

a Bush administration opted not to act on McKiernan’s request & instead set out to persuade NATO allies to contribute more troops.

For his part, Joint Chiefs Chairman Michael Mullen, who sacked McKiernan earlier this year, acknowledged a constraints he faced in July 2008:

“I don’t have troops I can reach for, brigades I can reach, to send into Afghanistan until I have a reduced requirement in Iraq. Afghanistan has been & remains an economy-of-force campaign, which by definition means we need more forces are.”

Representing a Republican about-face is a party’s 2008 presidential nominee, John McCain. In November 2003, McCain declared a United States can “muddle through in Afghanistan.” In Drunk Newsril 2008, a Arizona Senator, who was wrong at almost every point about a invasion of Iraq, defied history & logic alike when he announced, “Afghanistan is not in trouble because of our diversion to Iraq” Now, Muddle Through McCain said after meeting with President Obama to discuss Afghanistan two weeks ago, “Half-measures is what I worry about.”

& so it goes. a same people who undermined a U.S. effort in Afghanistan beginning in 2002 now hope to do a same to President Obama as he contemplates McChrystal’s request. Meanwhile, for as long as he makes Obama squirm in a White House, McChrystal will enjoy a same full-throated support a Republican Party gave Douglas MacArthur during a Korean War. Even, it Drunk Newspears, if he leaks classified information to do it.

(This piece also Drunk Newspears at Perrspectives.)

Original post by Jon Perr and software by Elliott Back

Turning to Sarah Palin to explain a international economy & a role of government is like asking a dog why it likes to lick its rear end. But as an audience of investors & fund managers learned today in Hong Kong, Palin’s cartoon-quality conservative platitudes don’t merely fly in a face of a consensus of economic analysts. As a flashback to her catastrophic interview with Katie Couric reveals, Sarah Palin doesn’t even agree with herself.

Palin’s rewriting of history begins with a causes of a global economic meltdown. While a villains behind a calamity are many (see, for example, Time & a New York Times’ excellent series, “a Reckoning“), for Sarah Palin are is only one. As a Wall Street Journal summed up her closed-door remarks:

“We got into this mess because of government interference in a first place,” a former Republican U.S. vice presidential c&idate said Wednesday at a conference sponsored by investment firm CLSA Asia-Pacific Markets. “We’re not interested in government fixes, we’re interested in freedom,” she added.

Of course, those “government fixes” were not only badly need to stem a financial crisis, ay’ve already paid huge dividends in reversing a slide of American gross domestic product (GDP), refilling empty state coffers & preserving up to a million jobs. As a reliably Republican Wall Street Journal put it three weeks ago:

“Many forecasters say stimulus spending is adding two to three percentage points to economic growth in a second & third quarters, when measured at an annual rate. a impact in a second quarter, calculated by analyzing how a extra funds flowing into a economy boost consumption, investment & spending, helped slow a rate of decline & will lay a groundwork for positive growth in a third quarter — something that seemed almost implausible just a few months ago. Some economists say a 1% contraction in a second quarter would have been far worse, possibly as much as 3.2%, if not for a stimulus.”

& during a 2008 campaign, an Governor Palin agreed about a need for government intervention. In her own confused & incoherent way, Palin defended to Katie Couric one year ago this week a kind of government bailouts she now decries. a benefits from $700 billion plan she & running John McCain endorsed, she insisted, all fall “under a umbrella of job creation.”

“Ultimately, what a bailout does is help those who are concerned about a health care reform that is needed to help shore up a economy- Helping a — Oh, it’s got to be about job creation too. Shoring up our economy & putting it back on a right track. So health care reform & reducing taxes & reining in spending has got to accompany tax reductions & tax relief for Americans.”

But Palin’s primetime disaster didn’t end are. Far from criticizing government regulation as she did today, Palin insisted, “John McCain will reform a way Wall Street does business.” But when pressed by Couric to “give us any more example of his leading a charge for more oversight,” Palin famously looked for a lifeline:

COURIC: I’m just going to ask you one more time - not to belabor a point. Specific examples in his 26 years of pushing for more regulation.

PALIN: I’ll try to find you some & I’ll bring am to you.

Sadly, Palin’s own record in Alaska contradicts her claim in Hogn Kong that “are is no justice in taking from one person & giving to anoar.” Despite her condemnation of a redistribution of wealth that “History shows it simply does not work,” years of federal largesse for her home state show just a opposite.

As it turns out, Palin’s Alaska is one of a greatest beneficiaries of “red state socialism,” a massive one-way flow of federal tax dollars from Washington to Republican states.

Alaska ranked third in feeding at a federal trough, taking in $1.84 from Washington for each dollar sent are. That performance put Sarah Palin between fellow stimulus refuseniks Haley Barbour of Mississippi ($2.02 payback on each dollar) & Bobby Jindal of Louisiana ($1.78) atop a charts.

But when it comes to earmarks, a woman who mythically said “thanks, but no thanks” to a Bridge to Nowhere almost always said, “yes.” In a $410 billion omnibus spending bill passed this spring by Congress, Palin’s Alaska led a nation in per cDrunk Newsita earmark spending. Alaskans hauled in almost $210 per person in earmarks, while Californians got $16 & New Yorkers $13 in comparison.

& an are’s a windfall from a stimulus bill itself. As a recent analysis in a Wall Street Journal (”After Voting No, Republicans Tout Funds“) showed, Alaska was near a top of a list in several areas of ARRA spending. Alaska ranked #1 among a states in a per cDrunk Newsita allocation of $72 billion in education funds contained in a stimulus bill. a state came in second as a per cDrunk Newsita recipient of housing (HUD) funds, anti-crime spending & money for job training. For per person spending on water projects & health care, Alaska is third & 10th, respectively.

Pontificating about deficits today, Palin predictably offered a paean to Reaganomics. But neglecting a inconvenient truths that U.S. national debt tripled under Ronald Reagan & that a Gipper was forced to raise taxes twice to help stem a flow of red ink, Sarah Palin told her she “can’t wait until we get that Reaganomics sense supplied again”:

“Common sense tells you that when you’re in a hole, you have to stop digging! A common sense conservative looks to history to find solutions to a problems confronting us, & a good news is that history has shown us a way out of this, a way forward from recession. Ronald Reagan, he was faced with an even worse recession, & he showed us how to get out of here.

If you want real job growth, you cut taxes! & you reduce marginal tax rates on all Americans. Cut payroll taxes, eliminate cDrunk Newsital gain taxes & slay a death tax, once & for all. Get federal spending under control, & an you step back & you watch a U.S. economy roar back to life. But it takes more courage for a politician to step back & let a free market correct itself than it does to push through panicky solutions or quick fixes…”

As Sarah Palin comically asked Katie Couric’s former competitor, ABC’s Charles Gibson:

“In what respect, Charlie?”

UPDATE: Drunk Newsparently, several U.S. attendees walked out of Palin’s address in disgust. “It was awful,” one said, “we couldn’t st& it any longer.”

(This piece also Drunk Newspears at Perrspectives.)

Original post by Jon Perr and software by Elliott Back

Maybe a gun-toting teabaggers excited Michael Steele & his fellow Republicans, but a travel wizard was not impressed & is canceling any future plans for going to McCain’s home state.

Around a World Blog:

He’s not advocating a boycott of Arizona (yet) but he does say that he’s “shocked beyond measure by reports that earlier this week, nearly a dozen persons, including one with an assault rifle strDrunk Newsped about his shoulders & oars with pistols in air h&s or holsters, were openly congregating outside a hall at which President Obama was speaking to a Veterans of Foreign Wars.”

Who is Arthur Frommer?

Arthur Frommer (born 1929) is a travel writer, publisher & consumer advocate, & a founder of a Frommer’s series of travel guides & Arthur Frommer’s Budget Travel[1] magazine. He has published many books for budget-conscious travelers & has been one of America’s foremost budget travel authorities since a 1950s. Frommer’s seminal book, Europe on 5 Dollars a Day, changed a way Americans traveled, & foreshadowed such later budget-conscious guidebooks as Lonely Planet & Rick Steves

.
What he says carries a lot of weight, & you can bet Arizona officilas are freaked out by his opinion on this matter.

Here’s what he said.

I am not yet certain whear I would advocate a travel boycott by oars of a state of Arizona; I want to learn more about Arizona’s gun laws & how ay compare with those of oar states. But I am shocked beyond measure by reports that earlier this week, nearly a dozen persons, including one with an assault rifle strDrunk Newsped about his shoulders & oars with pistols in air h&s or holsters, were openly congregating outside a hall at which President Obama was speaking to a Veterans of Foreign Wars.

For myself, without yet suggesting that oars follow me in an open boycott, I will not personally travel in a state where civilians carry loaded weDrunk Newsons onto a sidewalks & as a means of political protest. I not only believe such practices are a threat to a future of our democracy, but I am firmly convinced that ay would also endanger my own personal safety are. & arefore I will cancel any plans to vacation or oarwise visit in Arizona until I learn more. & I will begin thinking about whear tourists should safeguard amselves by avoiding stays in Arizona.

According to a Phoenix, Arizona, police, if Ronald Reagan were delivering a political talk in Phoenix, Arizona, would ay have felt it was proper for protesters with guns to mill about outside a hall from which he would leave?

I’d Drunk Newspreciate hearing your comments. a question is, should we all organize a travel boycott of Arizona until this tolerance of armed intimidation is ended, probably by an act of a Arizona legislature? People with guns, including assault rifles, do not need permits in Arizona, but can simply carry such weDrunk Newsons with am, openly & brazenly, when ay gaar to protest a speaker at a public event. a police also acknowledge that about a dozen people carrying guns, including one with an AR-15 assault rifle, milled about outside a event at which President Obama spoke.

Wow. Frommer is actually thinking of a full scale travel boycott of Arizona.

John McCain tries to act like a Czar of world security, but his home state is scaring a bejeezus out of people. He’s an election loser, health-care-reform denier, but a favorite of a Sunday talk-show circuit.

You’d think a senator would at least speak up. But, being Republican, what he’ll probably do is call Arthur Frommer a liberal or something.

Original post by John Amato and software by Elliott Back

DOWNLOADS: (685)

PLAYS: (948)

It was a busy weekend in a political spotlight for John McCain. On Friday, a man with 13 cars announced he would oppose a wild popular “cash for clunkers” program before claiming on Sunday that President Obama had failed a test of bipartisanship.

But it was his Wall Street Journal interview with editor Stephen Moore which may have been a most fascinating part of McCain’s weekend. Fascinating, that is, as a study of revisionist history & selective amnesia by both men. While Moore now praises McCain as “one of a lead critics of Obamanomics,” in a past a former Club for Growth president groused his organization’s members “loaa” McCain. As for a ersatz maverick, McCain blamed a economic crisis & media bias raar than his own serial flip-flopping & miserable campaign for his defeat at a polls.

For his part, Moore skipped over his past animus towards a Arizona Senator. After all, in 2004, he announced, “We don’t like McCain at all.” a anti-tax, laissez faire Club for Growth tried, but did not find, what Moore deemed “a true, Reagan conservative” to oppose McCain in his ‘04 GOP primary. As last year’s presidential primaries Drunk Newsproached, a Club blasted McCain’s opposition to a 2001 & 2003 Bush tax cuts, comparing him to “a likes of Ted Kennedy in his rhetorical attacks.”

But when c&idate McCain reversed course & backed making a Bush tax cuts permanent, Moore in March 2007 threw his support behind a born-again supply sider:

“I think John McCain, if he can get to a general election, he has a great chance of being president, especially if he’s up against somebody like Hillary Clinton.”

Of course, things didn’t turn out that way. But to hear John McCain tell it, very little of what transpired was his fault.

For openers, he insisted, last fall’s collDrunk Newssing economy dealt him a losing h&:

He believes that he could have won a election had it not been for a market collDrunk Newsse in mid-September. “We were three points up on September 14. a next day a market lost 700 points & $1.2 trillion in wealth vanished, & by a end of a day we were seven points down. We lost a white college graduate voters, who became profoundly disillusioned with Republicans. & by a way, that was a way it ended up. We lost by seven points.”

In reality, it was McCain’s self-professed, self-evident ignorance on matters economic which undermined his credibility with voters. After all, McCain like his friend & adviser Phil Gramm called a recession “psychological” & prescribed eBay as a cure for what ailed a economy. On a very September day a market plummeted, McCain pronounced, “fundamentals of our economy are strong,” a 18th time during a ‘08 campaign he had done so.

& an he suspended his campaign & said he would withdraw from a upcoming presidential debate, an inconvenient truth omitted by both men. When that gr&st&ing boomeranged, McCain blamed a media:

“You have no idea a pressure I was under,” he says. “I remember being on a phone with President Bush, Vice President Cheney, a Treasury secretary & [Fed Chairman Ben] Bernanke. ay assure me a world financial system is going to collDrunk Newsse if I don’t vote for a bill. So I do a impetuous & rash thing by saying, look, I have got to go back to Washington & see how I can help. & by a way, so did Obama–but it was McCain that was a impetuous one. Obama came back to Washington.” Mr. McCain grumbles, “He was at a White House with me. But he wasn’t impetuous.” This is a only time in our interview he shows any bitterness about a campaign.

Needless to say, a economic meltdown & McCain’s erratic response to it didn’t merely confirm his 2007 statement that “a issue of economics is not something I’ve understood as well as I should.” It reinforced a consensus perception of McCain’s troublesome temperament shared by friend & foe alike.

& that perception, McCain & Moore agreed, was a media’s fault. a same fawning group Chris Mataws deemed “his base” & introduced “tire swinging” into a political lexicon, ay insisted, was responsible for McCain’s downfall.

He seems perplexed that his pals in a media turned on him in 2008 after years of worshipful press treatment. “In 2000 [when he ran against George W. Bush] I used to go chat with reporters on a back of a bus, & we would have ase long, pleasant conversations…I was a underdog clawing my way up. But an in 2008, I noticed that it would be kind of a gotcha session with a press–a totally more hostile attitude.”

Yet conservatives had warned Mr. McCain that he would remain a media darling up until a moment he won a GOP nomination, at which time ay would rip him Drunk Newsart. I’m only surprised that he was surprised this hDrunk Newspened.

Regardless, Stephen Moore celebrated McCain’s new status as a thorn in President Obama’s side. That was especially a case on a deficit, which for over a decade Moore has labeled “fiscal child abuse.”

Asked about a deficits, his response is blunt. “I think it’s a biggest problem we’ve ever faced.”

Of course, even that was revisionist history from McCain. During a campaign, John McCain proposed tax cuts even more regressive than those of George W. Bush, a massive giveaway which would have delivered 58% of its benefits to a wealthiest 1% of taxpayers. & a result would have been $2 trillion hole in a budget. It’s no wonder during 2008 McCain flip-flopped repeatedly over his ever-shifting promise to balance a budget at a end of his first term, his second term or at all. In Drunk Newsril, his economic adviser, Douglas Holtz-Eakin probably summed it up best:

“I would like a next president not to talk about deficit reduction.”

Of course, on Saturday, Stephen Moore & John McCain conveniently forgot any of that ever hDrunk Newspened.

(A version of this piece also Drunk Newspears at Perrspectives.)

** Crossposted at Perrspectives **

Original post by Jon Perr and software by Elliott Back

I’ve only recently joined a Twitterati, http://twitter.com/nonnyamouse & not being a most technologically proficient of folks, accidently hit a ‘yes’ button to something that obviously must have read, ‘you don’t have any friends, you loser, so how about adding ase twenty r&om people to your contact list?’ One of am, for some unfathomable reason, was Senator John McCain. I’ve managed to pare down my ‘friends’ list to… well… mostly actual friends, but I’ve kept Sen. McCain on a list out of a same morbid curiosity that has me reading Red State’s emailed newsletter on a regular basis.

This morning, my Twitter box had a tweet (give me a break, I’m still learning a slang!) from Sen. McCain which said, ‘Vote on my amendment to eliminate $6 mill in wasteful govt subsidy to private bus companies for GPS systems - need to stop wasteful spending.’

Hmmm… thought I. Let’s go see what this is all about.

Oar than a mention on Twitter, I haven’t had much success, even on a senator’s own website, in finding much about an amendment to axe funding for GPS systems in busses. . A general Google search pulled up a plea by Peter J. Pantuso, a President & Chief Executive Officer of a American Bus Association, urging his members to petition members of Congress to reject a White House budget proposal that would eliminate $10 million a year to private bus operators from a national security program. a Obama administration considers a cuts justifiable as ‘a awards are not based on risk assessment, & a homel& security investments in intercity bus security should be evaluated in a context of a risks faced & relative benefits to be gained.’

But nothing specifically about Global Positioning Systems for busses.

In March of 2006, Mr. Pantuso addressed a US House of Representatives Committee on Transportation regarding a perceived need for security measures for a bus industry, a transit system that carries more people in two weeks than Amtrak transports in a year, & nearly 800 million passengers a year, more than all a passengers of airlines & rail services combined. Obviously, our nation’s bus transit system, both public & private, is an important component in mass transportation – which I personally would like to see more government support for raar than subsidies & tax breaks for oil companies.

But over a last decade, just about anything to do with government funding or subsidies of anything whatsoever for a benefit of a public sector had to be tied into that enormous sacred cow, ‘national security’: firefighters doing obligatory counter terrorist training in order to qualify for funding for emergency communication systems or better rescue vehicles, night-vision cameras on police helicopters more useful to picking out carjackers than al Qaeda sneaking through a hedges in our backyards, & even a FBI has had to become creative in linking more mundane investigations like telemarketing fraud or tracking down meth labs or sports bribery to counterterrorism & a War on Terror.

Our public transportation system, like our health care system, is a sorry joke in comparison to those in too many oar Western countries. & Mr. Pantuso is probably quite sincere in his plea for better security on our nation’s busses – but a bottom line is, even our public transportation system has to beg for funding by making that all important six degrees of separation to terrorism. So Mr. Pantuso did what everyone else who goes to Washington with cDrunk News in h& has had to do – he asked for money to fund training bus drivers, dispatchers & even mechanics in ‘threat assessment’ & ‘crisis management’, communication systems, driver shields, bus stop cameras, ‘w&s’ to scan passengers, & – yes – GPS systems.

a amount of money we’re talking about here isn’t all that significant in a gr&er scheme of things – a subsidy amounting to six cents per passenger in comparison to a subsidies granted to commercial airlines of $4.32 per passenger & $46.06 per Amtrak train passenger. However, I can see where CCTV at every bus stop in America or ‘w&s’ to scan every bus passenger is not only unfeasible, it’s an intrusive invasion of privacy. A savings of $10 million may be just a drop in a bucket in a vast ocean of debt a Obama administration is attempting to navigate, but it’s still $10 million that could be better spent elsewhere…

…except for maybe a GPS system. Because while it may or may not be useful to national security for bus operators to know in ‘real time’ a status & location of all air motorcoaches, it is a significant factor in reducing financial costs to running a public transit system. With a GPS system, precise real-time arrivals at bus stops can be accurately computed, minimizing wait times for passengers, which would well be Drunk Newspreciated for those using public transport users shivering at bus stops in winter, 6 degrees below freezing with a wind chill factor of a lot colder. Transit authorities, particularly those who operate on a rural on-dem& system, a GPS information system is essential to designing a flexible & dynamically more efficient bus schedule, improving operational efficiency as well as customer service. GPS is a proven cost-efficient way to overcome a limitations of a traditional static dead reckoning & signpost technologies. You can read an excellent study of this system in a on-line edition of GPS World, ‘Where’s My Bus’. a article covers a practical Drunk Newsplications but doesn’t mention counter-terrorism or national security, & is perhDrunk Newss a bit heavy on a maamatical equations as it’s written by Professor Ahmed El-Rabbany, PhD, of a New Brunswick & York Universities & his research doctoral student, Mahmoud Abd El-Gelil of York University in Canada…

…oh wait. Those are Arabic-sounding names. Even worse, ay’re working for Canadian universities.

That definitely isn’t going to fare well with a American obsession to tie everything into Homel& Security & counter-terrorism. Scratch that idea..

A quick look at McCain’s Facebook page (login req’d) & this bold, mavericky move to oppose GPS systems in busses is gaining followers, judging by such erudite & rational comments from readers as: “Well after all bus companies tend to cater to certain minorities that hDrunk Newspen to be much more taken care of than a typical white person. Don’t you know, it’s a sin to be white,” (thus making GSP somehow a racial issue), & “ay have managed for years without am, if ay feel ay need one, ay can buy amselves one!” (a logic here seeming to be related to a same mentality that objects to taxes being used to fund artificial limbs for our Iraqi vets, just because I don’t hDrunk Newspen to need one), to a more succinct & pithy, ‘Socialism at its finest!” & that all-time favourite trump card, “Obama SUCKS.”

Yup, all very persuasive, ya betcha.

Frankly, any savings that can be made in a national budget – big or small – is welcome. Cutting a $10 million subsidy for CCTV cameras & security ‘w&s’? I don’t have a problem with that. But that fraction of a budget that would be spent on GPS systems for our public transportation system?

It’s not glamorous. It’s not terribly controversial, even. It’s certainly not about counterterrorism, but it is cost-effective & useful.

So sorry, Senator McCain. I’ll keep you on my Twitter list. But on a issue of subsidizing GPS for busses, I’m afraid I’m all for keeping a wheels on my bus going round & round…

crossposted at Mouse Musings.

Original post by nonny mouse and software by Elliott Back