Fun with John and Cindy

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In the main stream media, they have this “equal time” thing. And we spend a lot of time here talking about everything on the Democratic side, obsessively watching the poll numbers move, gearing up for the convention, and the election just 4 months away.

But I think perhaps we should spend a little time on John and Cindy. I’ll try to make sure that there are numbers…..

The first number is the cost of a gallon of gas. If YOU know how much gas costs, you’re miles ahead of the Republican nominee.

Yesterday was a bad, bad day for John and Cindy. SO bad, I barely know where to start.

HHHMMM

Let’s start with the disclosure that Cindy likes to spend several hundred THOUSAND dollars a month on credit cards. Sure, she makes about $30 million a year, and good suits do cost several grand a pop, and having so many houses you can’t remember to pay all your property taxes every year is tough, but $500,000 in ONE MONTH?!?!?! Although it helps to explain how 2/3 of the American economy is consumer driven. I’m trying to ferret out an actual copy of one of the Amex bills, but it’s harder than I thought. And in the issue of full disclosure, I have a lot of friends who’ve gone $20 - $30 grand in one month by charging a car to Amex – but that was just for the Frequent Flyer miles. And that’s just one car every few years. I consider myself reasonably intelligent, but I can’t figure out how one can find the time to charge so much stuff AND be on the campaign trail so much. I understand that there are some really high ticket items, but normally coke deals and weapons deals are cash transactions…

Cindy also has to spend a lot of time working a computer for John, who doesn’t know how to use one.




And then, there’s the McCain Southern Strategy. For most of us, this means the states of the Confederacy but for John, this means South of the US border. Down in Columbia yesterday, he was interviewed by ABC and ONCE AGAIN said he claimed he NEVER SAID he knew nothing about economics. John has denied knowing about economics at least 4 times that I’ve seen tape on, and denied it an equal number of times. Question to mull over the July 4th weekend: is it that John doesn’t remember that he doesn’t know anything about the economy?

Hat tip to Thad Cochran. He’s the Mississippi Senator with the safe Republican seat (as opposed to Roger Wicker who has the UNSAFE seat in Mississippi). Back in January, Cochran, who has known John for about 30 years said:

"The thought of his being president sends a cold chill down my spine. He is erratic. He is hotheaded. He loses his temper and he worries me."

So now we know why John didn’t go for the “regular” Southern strategy. McCain is only up by 6 in MS, with 6% undecided and it’s still 125 days to the election. (I know, I know, no one thinks this state is competitive but me, then again, no one believed me in May when I said the NY-13th was going Democratic…)

McCain needed to shake up his campaign staff yesterday. When you check out the picture, let me know who Steve Schmidt reminds you of. Think TV, think movies, think Sci-Fi, and get your votes in.

It’s hard to know what made him come to this. Personally, I was very happy with the people who brought you McCain looking like a lump of cottage cheese on a bed of lime Jell-O AND decided he should make a major speech the night people thought Hillary would concede. Bad planning, bad execution. I WANTED to run against that team.

The same team that brought you Phil Gramm, one of the architects of the great foreclosure debacle of 2008, and the McCain economic plan AS the economics guru. (OK, I guess that answers my question from before – John doesn’t know economics because he learned them from Phil, who earned his PhD not from Harvard, not from Wharton, not from the London School of Economics, but from the University of Georgia, and then went on to teach at Texas A&M.)

As an aside, Phil is on the Board of UBS. Tuesday, the Justice Department walked into Federal Court for the ability to serve UBS with a summons to determine which Americans are hiding assets with UBS. Should be interesting. And as an aside, the UBS PAC gave almost $100k to McCain. Now, UBS wasn't the largest contributor, that was Merrill Lynch, followed by Citicorp, but it's still real money.

The team that keeps firing people not just for being lobbyists, but lobbyists for juntas and dictators. (Yes, that includes Burma, and the Iriwaddy Delta is STILL a disaster area.) For more fun with John, check out this oldie but still a goodie.

And because we do love to come full circle in these things, there is a second, less publicized shake-up over at the McCain campaign – they’re firing staff because they don’t have enough money. So, one circle is “and this constant message change, staff shake-up, and money problems worked SO WELL for Hillary Clinton earlier this year.” The other circle is that if you look at the fund raising information (12% of which is “undisclosed”) Cindy AS ONE PERSON spends a substantial amount compared to what ALL AMERICA gives to John.

(Picture from Jethro Soudant)