Sep 15th, 2008 at 1:40 pm
Hurting Workers’ Feelings
Apparently, John McCain wants us to believe that questioning the state of the economy is a form of insulting American workers:
This by way of contrast, I suppose, by actually insulting American workers by insisting that they’re too lazy or inept to pick lettuce for $50 an hour:
Just remember, just because you can’t do it doesn’t mean the fundamentals aren’t sound.
41 Responses to “Hurting Workers’ Feelings”
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September 15th, 2008 at 1:42 pm
You’re right, Matt. He should tell people the economy is about to crash and that they should close out all of their accounts immediately.
September 15th, 2008 at 1:47 pm
John McCain says Sarah Palin knowns more about energy than “anyone in America.”
LMAO LMAO LMAO LMAO LMAO LMAO
Sarah Palin says Alaska produces 20% of the U.S. energy, when in fact it is less than a fourth of that.
LMAO LMAO LMAO LMAO LMAO LMAO
This is a case of one lie disproving another lie, which I find amusing.
McCain/Palin thought process:
1. I am not a very intelligent person and I don’t know much the issues.
2. Americans, by and large are ignorant and will believe anything I say.
3. I KNOW! I’ll just say whatever comes to mind that sounds good at that exact moment without regard for accuracy or truthfullness and the stupid American people will never know the difference. They’ll even start to believe me if I repeat stuff.
4. I bet I’ll even have idiots log onto to blogs (cough…E. O’Neil…cough) and try to argue my lies for me.
5. Boy, it really is a good thing the American people are so stupid otherwise I’d never get elected.
September 15th, 2008 at 1:48 pm
Bush was awesome at pretending the economy was strong. McCain’s just a cheap understudy.
September 15th, 2008 at 1:53 pm
McCain has plans for your Social Security money. He wants to invest it with Merrill Lynch or with Lehman Brothers, but he can’t seem to find them right now. If you run into those guys, will you have them get in touch with him?
September 15th, 2008 at 1:54 pm
He should tell people the economy is about to crash and that they should close out all of their accounts immediately.
Implying that the possible options are limited to either “denying a problem exists” or “advocating complete panic” is what is known as the “False Dilemma Fallacy.” Here is a link to a description:
http://www.nizkor.org/features/fallacies/false-dilemma.html
In fact, the Nizkor.org site has a list of 42 common logical fallacies–
http://www.nizkor.org/features/fallacies/
–and given the general tenor of discussion on this blog today, it might well be more efficient to rebut certain commenters by Nizkor Fallacy Number.
September 15th, 2008 at 1:56 pm
Then it’s a good thing America’s unemployment is so low.
“Lie to me, JOhn! Lie to me!”
September 15th, 2008 at 1:58 pm
It’s a little late for John McCain to start pretending he has any respect for the American worker. Mr. “No American would pick lettuce for $50 an hour” and his “nation of whiners” buddy Gramm need to get lost.
I’d just like to point out that $50 an hour is, like, twice what a coal miner makes. How out of touch is McCain that he thinks people wouldn’t pick lettuce for $50 an hour?
http://www.bls.gov/oes/current/naics4_212100.htm
http://www.payscale.com/research/US/Job=Coal_Mine_Worker/Hourly_Rate
September 15th, 2008 at 2:05 pm
If restaurants put their menus on a Teleprompter McCain would starve.
September 15th, 2008 at 2:06 pm
Re O’Neal’s comment “You’re right, Matt. He should tell people the economy is about to crash and that they should close out all of their accounts immediately.”
———–
O’Neal was probably criticizing people for shorting Lehman back when it was $50 dollars a share –oh, 4 months ago. Criticizing people For “spreading false rumors”. heh heh heh
You guys might want to see some more of what Nouriel Roubini was saying this morning. He notes that (a) a lot of deposits are NOT insured by FDIC and (b) FDIC only has $50 Billion to cover $1 Trillion in assets. He urges Congress to replenish FDIC’s coffers because he sees a slow motion run occurring on US banks. And a severe downside for stocks over the next 2 years.
See http://finance.yahoo.com/tech-ticker/article/56994/Top-Economist-Americans-Should-Worry-About-Bank-Deposits-if-Congress-Doesn‘t-Act?tickers=LEH,MER,BAC,AIG,WM,%5EDJI,%5EGSPC
But McCain and Bush say the fundamentals are strong. Because they don’t want all those Republican Middle-Class voters realizing just how badly they’be been fucked.
During the 2000 campaign, Bush said “there’s some people you can fool all the time –and those are the ones you want to focus on.”
People thought he was joking.
He wasn’t.
September 15th, 2008 at 2:08 pm
McCain sounds defensive in that CNN clip, which doesn’t help since what he is saying is absurd.
September 15th, 2008 at 2:18 pm
In that first clip, I think he’s on the right track when he says that it’s not the fault of the American workers, that the problems of the economy are a result of greed on Wall Street. The part where he’s wrong is where he doesn’t take the next logical step to calling for more regulation on Wall Street. McCain and Palin both use populist rhetoric, but have no policy ideas to go along with them.
For example, in the 9/11 forum, McCain would extol the importance of service for 5 minutes, but then say he doesn’t think there’s anything the government can do to foster it. Great. Who cares what you think about service if it doesn’t affect your policy ideas (or lack thereof)?
I guess that’s why they’re Mavericks.
September 15th, 2008 at 2:28 pm
I think they are cleverly(?) redefining “fundamentals” so any negative talk about the “fundamentals” is an attack on the Great American Worker and the Great American Innovative Spirit rather than an honest admission that we have some deeper structural problems in our finance sector.
How handy too, because a conversation of whose fault it is that several huge institutions are failing would certainly be uncomfortable territory. However, we know EXACTLY how to deal with negatoids who just can’t accept America’s Greatness.
September 15th, 2008 at 2:29 pm
1) Look at the most actives on NYSE:
AIG -down 53 percent
Bank of America –down 18 percent
Washington Mutual –down 19 percent at $2.20 a share
2) Plus look at Wachovia : down 20 percent. That’s in addition to the 70 percent they had already fallen in the past year.
3) Although we shouldn’t complain about Wachovia — what used to be their equity is what is now funding this web site. hee hee hee
From http://biz.yahoo.com/ap/080915/wachovia_mover.html?.v=1
“Wachovia’s current problems result mostly from its $25 billion purchase of mortgage lender Golden West Financial Corp. in 2006 at the peak of the housing boom. It thus inherited a deteriorating $122 billion portfolio of Pick-A-Payment loans, Golden West’s specialty, which let borrowers skip some payments.”
4) And who sold Golden West to Wachovia? And what did he do with the money?
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sandler_Family_Supporting_Foundation
September 15th, 2008 at 2:36 pm
I think they are cleverly(?) redefining “fundamentals” so any negative talk about the “fundamentals” is an attack on the Great American Worker…
I don’t think this is an effort to redefine so much as a case where McCain just doesn’t know what he’s talking about, so he’s making stuff up and he got caught.
Either that, or I was misguided in the notion that “fundamentals” referred to things like employment rates, consumer confidence, rate of capital investment, worker productivity growth, etc etc.
September 15th, 2008 at 2:46 pm
It is only “clever” if it works, and I doubt it will work. The most basic problem is that “the fundamentals of the economy” is a dry, technical-sounding phrase, and it makes no sense McCain would use such a phrase if he had actually intended to be singing the praises of the American worker. Indeed, that is why this clip slips into absurdity: he is trying to say something like, “the American workers–those are the fundamentals of the economy”, but that is an obvious mashing together of two different ideas.
September 15th, 2008 at 3:07 pm
Sorry McCain you can’t snake your way out of this one. Everyone knows you weren’t talking about workers. If you were, why didn’t you just say, “the workers of our economy are doing a good job!” More lies………..
September 15th, 2008 at 3:08 pm
50$ an hour is $104,000 a year at 40 hours a week. I know a lot of people that would pick lettuce for a job if it paid that well. I bet Americans would line up to do that job for $20 an hour, but what we won’t do it for is $2 an hour. For somebody like McCain, he wouldn’t pick lettuce at any price because he married an incredibly wealthy heiress.
September 15th, 2008 at 3:27 pm
You stupid liberals panic about nothing. The truth is our economy is incredibly strong and thriving compared to when the Sun swells into a red giant and roasts all life off the planet. Liberals. Hmpf.
September 15th, 2008 at 3:31 pm
Jordan, you insensitive ass! He can’t pick lettuce! He was a POW! He can’t even eat lettuce because he can’t operate a fork!!
September 15th, 2008 at 3:34 pm
Emerson FTW!
September 15th, 2008 at 3:34 pm
Jesus Christ. He can’t utter even the most banal platitudes without looking down at his notes.
September 15th, 2008 at 3:40 pm
“Apparently, John McCain wants us to believe that questioning the state of the economy is a form of insulting American workers.”
As Dr. Phil says, you can’t change what you don’t acknowledge.
Obama/Biden ‘08
September 15th, 2008 at 3:47 pm
2 thoughts:
Why is the federal reserve spending all the money on supporting Wall Street and its cronies if the Dept of Labor and the Small Business Administration are really the agengies dealing with the “Fundamentals or …” ? Should we not be concerned that the non fundamental agencies are gettinga much larger share of taxpayer resources ?
Does Sen McSame have any of these fundamentalists on his team or just the failed captains of industry (Fiorina) and the Lobbyists ?
Oh my! Did I just insult Lobbyists ?
September 15th, 2008 at 3:53 pm
Maybe he has Bush Syndrome, where he can’t bring himself to talk about something that doesn’t interest him in the slightest. Ask Bush about education or the environment and you get a rambling, ungrammatical response; ask him about war or punishment and he is almost eloquent.
September 15th, 2008 at 3:58 pm
McCain’s “best workers” rhetoric is little bit frightening, because the same sort of argument worked for years when it came to the war in Iraq. It’s not as effective these days, but if you don’t think victory is possible and your name is not Gen. David Petraeus, you get accused of not supporting the troops or not having enough faith in our armed forces.
September 15th, 2008 at 4:16 pm
Hey, O’Neal, I thought you told me last night things had “stabilized”.
over 500 points off the DOW? Fuck me with a pointed stick.
No wonder Obama’s been taking a dive in the campaign.
What fool would want to be President and have to grab this falling tanker of shit?
Oh, well there is a silver lining. All those millions of Middle class Republicans out there are suddenly wondering why that broken beer bottle is stuck up their ass — and how to extract it.
Maybe Sean Hannity and Fox can explain to them that if they ignore it, it will go away.
September 15th, 2008 at 4:39 pm
Tip: every time a Dem hack points to McCain’s lettuce issue, direct them to this.
Or these:
24ahead.com/blog/archives/005141.html
24ahead.com/blog/archives/005553.html
Or this guy, sounding suspiciously like MattY:
24ahead.com/blog/archives/007042.html
For a foreign twist from the Democratic Party’s favorite government:
24ahead.com/blog/archives/003121.html
24ahead.com/blog/archives/005653.html
I’d provide more but there are too many links.
September 15th, 2008 at 6:18 pm
Don Williams, you seem awfully happy to see the turmoil in the markets. I hope you don’t lose your job or house in the panic you’re trying to promote.
The failure to resolve the A.I.G. situation led to the late-session sell-off. Perhaps it will be resolved over-night and cause a rally, but who knows? The markets are nervous, but not suicidal, as the Democrats would want.
Let’s talk about Obama and the $140K he’s taken from Fannie and Freddie’s PACs. Why are Fannie’s last two crooked CEOs among his top economic advisers?
September 15th, 2008 at 6:26 pm
Jordan, you insensitive ass! He can’t pick lettuce! He was a POW! He can’t even eat lettuce because he can’t operate a fork!!
I had no idea that he was a POW, I guess it’s because he doesn’t use it for political gain. That settles it, I’m voting McCain/Palin so we can all be POWs and learn how to field dress a moose.
September 15th, 2008 at 7:50 pm
So, basically, it’s “You can’t do it my friend,” vs. “Yes we can!”
I like our odds.
September 15th, 2008 at 7:53 pm
We saw this with Iraq: when the reality of the epic failure of Republicans policy becomes completely irrefutable, they respond to anyone who makes the obvious observations that things have gone all pear-shaped by snarling “Yeah, well, I guess you’re HAPPY about that!”
The Tinkerbell Theory, adapted from foreign policy to domestic. Clap louder, Don Williams, or it’s your fault!
Why do you hate the troops and/or workers?
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