Sep 21st, 2008 at 5:24 pm
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September 21st, 2008 at 5:34 pm
When I look at Palin I see evil incarnate. We must stop this evil woman. Elect Obama now!
September 21st, 2008 at 5:40 pm
Ugh, not this shit again. Why does this matter? Yes, it’s nice to get back at the GOP identity-politics guys for the shit they pulled against Kerry, but come on.
- One is a collectible Jeep
- One is for his daughter, a Prius hybrid
- Three are more aptly described as fancy golf-carts
It’s not like you actually care about the amount of cars a person owns – especially when four of them are very reasonable ways of reducing fuel consumption (the golf carts and the Prius). And if this is an environmentalism thing, then it’s probably better to refer to the McCain family’s penchant for flying around Arizona since it’s “the only way to get around”.
September 21st, 2008 at 5:54 pm
a shot of the MS BUD plates and car is needed
September 21st, 2008 at 5:57 pm
Ugh, not this shit again. Why does this matter? Yes, it’s nice to get back at the GOP identity-politics guys for the shit they pulled against Kerry, but come on.
It matters because very few Americans can afford *one* car these days.
Last week, McCain tried to use Obama’s fundraiser in Hollywood as an indication that, once again, he’s the elite. When McCain pulls that sort of BS, he practically invites this kind of spotlight onto his personal wealth. In as much as McCain is one of the biggest hypocrites walking the planet these days, it matters that he be exposed to the full extent possible.
September 21st, 2008 at 6:04 pm
socctty’s right, the number should be adjusted down to 8. That’s much better. (of course, when we make that adjustment, socctty’s environmental call out goes away too, darn it)
September 21st, 2008 at 6:12 pm
The sky is falling! Haven’t you heard?! And we’re worried about John McCain’s cars? We’re going to need to sell John McCain’s cars to China so we don’t all become their indentured servants for life! It’s panic time!
September 21st, 2008 at 6:17 pm
What a laugh. It’s like he has one car to please every social, political and age group type in America, so he can tell everybody he meets he’s “just like them” – except that he’s got 13 fucking cars altogether!
It’s like if Imelda Marcos would say try to show she’s just plain folks because one of her 500 pairs of shoes is a ratty old pair of Keds.
socctty, you’re politically clueless. McCain is trying to pin the Wall Street mess on the greed of the guys who work there. Yet what percentage of those greedy guys do you think have 13 cars?
September 21st, 2008 at 6:28 pm
If you read the Newsweek article, it manages to get in a little innuendo against Obama, raising the specter of the scary black man, when It mentions that the car before his current one was “once 50 Cent’s preferred ride.”
September 21st, 2008 at 6:33 pm
Jake Says:
September 21st, 2008 at 5:57 pm
It matters because very few Americans can afford *one* car these days.
Really? That’s amazing, considering how many cars I see being driven around.
September 21st, 2008 at 6:52 pm
fitty cent a scary black man? shoot, he cleared something like 400 million last year when Vitamin Water sold to CocaCola. He could take all of McCain’s little cars and grind em up into those tooth things. He’ll be one of the fellows lined up to buy back the scrubbed up and nicely priced MBSs after the govt gets everything reorganized.
September 21st, 2008 at 7:07 pm
Obama may only have 1 car, but I heard it’s Muslim. And Bill Ayers something something.
September 21st, 2008 at 7:13 pm
socctty, does the fact that three of these vehicles are more “aptly described as fancy [bubbled-shaped] golf-carts” really refute the charge that McCain is an “elitist”, in your view?
September 21st, 2008 at 7:27 pm
I love the way Matt believes that owning 13 cars is somehow relevant – but a 20 year relationship with a wacko like Wright isn’t.
Class Warfare at its finest.
September 21st, 2008 at 7:31 pm
Hey, all Obama did was serve on a committee with the dude.
The Palins declared their ideological commitment to outright treason, by joining up with and promoting the Alaska Independence Party, whose party goal is to actually destroy the United States of America, and whose founder was murdered in a plastics explosives deal ‘gone bad’.
But, yeah, I guess if one of the Republican candidate is literally in favor of destroying the United States, it just isn’t relevant.
September 21st, 2008 at 7:32 pm
fitty cent a scary black man? shoot, he cleared something like 400 million last year
Then, in the world that those code words were aimed at, he’s doubly scary.
September 21st, 2008 at 7:54 pm
Technically, John McCain owns only one car. As usual, most his toys are provided to him by his wife.
September 21st, 2008 at 8:15 pm
A lot of money and a shortage of imagination.
I like the Prius and the little electric ones but the redundancy and incongruity of this fleet puzzles you. Why a late model Cadillac *and* a Lincoln? And where does that Honda (a good car mind you) fit in? I understand that you might want a full size pickup to tow and haul but as far as I know he doesn’t work in construction and if you’re going to tow and haul with the family why not just a capable SUV?
On the other hand the paucity of newish high-end European cars makes you think he (or at least whoever writes the checks) is smart enough to understand that pricey new cars aren’t a bright way to spend one’s cash but you kind of thought that the reason guys of his age became flyboys was for the babes on the beach and cruising sloshed in the convertible. It’s close to a half-century later and this one is nostalgic not for the topless t-birds or the hypothetical Maserati 3500 spyder his father could probably have set him up with through the proverbial dealer friend in Miami Beach but a Willy’s jeep; if he was a Democratic would he own a USPS truck?
September 21st, 2008 at 8:18 pm
I bet John McCain would have loved to own even a singe NEV Gem electric back when he was locked up in ‘Nam. Are you insulting his service to our nation?
September 21st, 2008 at 8:19 pm
I wouldn’t give the slightest damn how many cars McCain had, not even for momentary amusement, if this weren’t the candidate and the Party attacking Obama as being elitist because he wasn’t afraid of green leafy vegetables.
September 21st, 2008 at 9:08 pm
Linus Says:
September 21st, 2008 at 8:15 pm
A lot of money and a shortage of imagination.
I like the Prius and the little electric ones but the redundancy and incongruity of this fleet puzzles you. Why a late model Cadillac *and* a Lincoln? And where does that Honda (a good car mind you) fit in? I understand that you might want a full size pickup to tow and haul but as far as I know he doesn’t work in construction and if you’re going to tow and haul with the family why not just a capable SUV?
The overlap is probably because he spends time in so many different places. I would guess people in his situation all have lots of overlap in the cars they use, with several practical sedans.
And do you really think he is hauling his family around at this point? It’s not like he has a bunch of kids living with him.
September 21st, 2008 at 10:30 pm
socctty, you’re politically clueless.
Oh, this is about politics, not reality. Sorry, I thought this we were interested in ideas, not pointing fingers and crying elitist.
Of course it’s politically inconvenient for McCain to have thirteen cars. But this is a pretty silly thing to harp on. Isn’t jetting around Arizona a bigger deal, a more “elitist” thing to do? Americans like cars, they can relate to a penchant for them. The houses thing hit hard since so many people are having their homes yanked out from under them. Cars? Not so much.
I understand Democrats are licking their chops at this sort of thing after the shit John Edwards caught, and the shit that John Kerry caught, and that through this perspective it’s “only fair” that McCain be criticized for these things. But in the end I think these sort of things land with a thud, since a lot of Americans can probably see themselves owning these sorts of things if they were that rich, too. And it’s especially a useless thing to sling about seeing as how McCain is walking around with the “typical Republican” noose hanging around his neck. That seems to me to be the softer target.
Yes, it’s elitist to have thirteen cars, in the “rich people enjoying being rich” definition of elitism. That’s not really how the elitist tag got to be such a poisonous one, though.
It’s when people started using it against their political enemies to paint them as condescending and knowing-what’s-best-for-you. And you know what? You could probably make that case against John McCain. But pointing out that he has thirteen “cars”, three of which are really just fancy golf carts, one which is in fact his adult daughter’s Prius, and another which is a collector military vehicle, doesn’t exactly make the case. It just says “look, he’s rich!” Of course he’s rich, he’s a US Senator. It doesn’t exactly come as a surprise to people.
All Americans want to be rich; no one really resents someone else for having money. They do resent someone for acting as if they are better than you just because they have a bunch of money, though. It’s when that case is made that the “elitist” tag sticks. And yes, McCain has some teflon on him with respect to this issue because he made a career of the military.
Or, you know, you can just go around screaming “elitist” at the top of your lungs, thereby validating the altogether stupid idea for decades to come, and encouraging both parties to field Palins and Bush 43s every four years.
Having thirteen cars doesn’t make you an elitist. Jay Leno has how many cars? And people mostly like him he makes them laugh; they can relate to him through humor. However acquiring the wealth that afforded you thirteen cars at the expense of the public does make you an elitist. Having thirteen cars and coming off as if everyone else is lazy and dumb because they don’t have thirteen cars is elitist. If you’re going to bang on the thirteen cars thing, at least take the next logical step and tell us why it’s outrageous.
September 21st, 2008 at 10:43 pm
Wow, 13 cars! Except, when you look beyond the WaPo’s spin you find there are some things they forgot to highlight.
In non-car news, MattY has still not updated this post in which he helped the WaPo lie for BHO:
yglesias.thinkprogress.org/archives/2008/09/
life_begins_at_conception_and_ends_at_death.php
Even TP itself has posted an update:
thinkprogress.org/2008/09/03/palin-mccain-mothers
And, in other non-car news, here’s a partial list of just some of BHO’s lies .
September 21st, 2008 at 10:44 pm
Just to add on to that a little bit…
It’s not that McCain had seven or eight or ten or twelve houses. No one really cared about that. It’s that, while people are losing their homes at alarming rates, John McCain couldn’t even bother to remember how many he owned – and that there was audio of this that got played ad nauseum.
The fact that he didn’t even know how many he had was more egregious than the fact that he had seven houses. Every presidential candidate from this point forward isn’t going to sell all but one of their houses two weeks before forming an exploratory committee, but they will be well aware of how many homes they own. The voting populace can understand a guy owning that many houses, they can even understand him having a few of them as investment homes than he rents out to other people. But they can’t understand how someone loses track of such a thing.
That sort of connection is what needs to be made about this car thing. Otherwise, it’s just people trying to stir up resentment of another person’s wealth – and hypocritically so, since many of you were no doubt decrying how silly it was to fault John Kerry for being wealthy four years ago.
September 21st, 2008 at 11:16 pm
Who gives a shit how many cars McCain has? We’ve got a much bigger $700 billion fish to fry. Sideshow crap like this now is just going to play into GOP hands as they try and steal our money and give it to their pond scum Wall Street pals.
September 22nd, 2008 at 12:20 am
So, of the so-called 13 cars, three are golf carts. Now we’re down to 10. We know one belongs to his daughter. Let’s consider he also has two sons in their early twenties and another daughter who’s about 17. So we are talking six cars left for John and Cindy (one of which is a collectible they likely never drive). Considering they’re presumably spread across seven houses, this doesn’t seem too bad.
September 22nd, 2008 at 1:18 am
What’s more important is that McCain doesn’t actually know how to drive any of them. He’s always had a driver since marrying Mrs. McCain II.
September 22nd, 2008 at 1:31 am
while we’re talking about the cars, what about the $273,000 McCain pays for household help? that one seemed to have slipped right by, but it just resurfaced in these new video spots:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NrEZdLsS7Eo
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iz4Z6L4u8E4
hilarious.
September 22nd, 2008 at 5:09 am
socctty, huff and puff all you want, it won’t dismiss the charge one bit. if you need someone to explain to you why owning so many cars makes a presidential candidate “out of touch” with ordinary americans, you’ve got bigger problems. reasonable people don’t need to argue about the significance of this.
just thinking. if electric cars don’t count, then mccain owns 10 but obama owns just 1/2 a car. in other words, one candidate owns 20 times more cars than the other!! ahaha, mccain is doomed!!
September 22nd, 2008 at 10:08 am
By the way, the semi-relevant point is that McCain has been implying in Michigan that he exclusively buys American brands. But the Prius, Honda, VW, and Cindy’s Lexus suggest otherwise. Although on the third hand, again it appears Cindy is actually calling the shots, so maybe McCain just meant something like, “On those few occasions when Cindy lets me pick the car, I pick American cars.”
September 22nd, 2008 at 11:35 am
So, McCain’s P.O.W. response was referenced ealier in the thread, but I think the better joke is as follows:
When John McCain was a P.O.W. in the Hannoi Hilton he didn’t even have bucket seats, or custom rims, or even an optional leather interior. How dare you question his service?
September 22nd, 2008 at 3:30 pm
>That’s amazing, considering how many cars I see being driven around.
You have heard, banks have a bunch a bad loans on the books, right? It’s not all mortgages.
Given how documentation-free so many mortgages have been, I expect car loans would be even more free of proof of the possibility of repaymnet.
December 12th, 2008 at 8:33 am
Like Bravo’s “Project Runway,” there is just no way to fake your way through “Top Chef.” Can’t sew? Nina Garcia will run you off the runway. Can’t brunoise an apple? Start packing those knives. Contestants on these shows either
March 1st, 2009 at 7:05 pm
March 12th, 2009 at 11:53 pm
If you have to do it, you might as well do it right
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