“There’s no question about it. Wall Street got drunk. It got drunk and now it’s got a hangover. The question is, how long will it sober up and not try to do all these fancy financial instruments?”
Setting aside the fact that George Bush is the last person who should be making jokes regarding alcohol or the economy, if Wall Street was drunk, guess who was the bartender?
Sen. John McCain’s campaign on Tuesday distanced its foreign policy adviser from a longtime Republican fundraiser who paid the adviser $130,000 when he was a lobbyist.
The payments by Texas businessman Stephen Payne to McCain adviser Randy Scheunemann, ending in 2006, were largely for lobbying Congress and executive branch agencies on energy issues, according to records filed with the Senate.
McCain’s presidential campaign says that Scheunemann did not lobby McCain on any issue relating to Payne, who is caught up in a controversy over whether he sought to sell White House access to a prospective business client.
How does McCain claim to be a different type of politician that can bring about change when his campaign continues to churn out more stories like these that remind us all of same old-same old? If McCain really cared about campaign finance and ethics reform, why would he permit such an individual to be so closely linked to him?
One of McCain’s main arguments about why he should be President and not Senator Obama is that his long experience in Washington has given him better judgment. Between Scheunemann and Phil Gramm, McCain has shown a strong lack of judgment regarding those who would have high level cabinet positions in a McCain administration.
Supporters of maverick Rep. Ron Paul who are organizing a rally as an alternative to the Republican National Convention are moving their crosstown event to a larger venue.
The Rally for the Republic featuring Paul — the Texas conservative failed in his bid to win the GOP nomination for president — is scheduled for Minneapolis’ Target Center, home of basketball’s Minnesota Timberwolves.
It is too bad Paul didn’t get a better look from Republican voters. Anyone that desires a maverick that engages in straight talk (sound familiar?) got the raw end of the deal.
“Military, economic, political and all the benchmarks that we said that the Iraqi government had to meet. They haven’t got them all, but the fact that the government is functioning effectively, the economic situation is improving dramatically, the Iraqi government now has control of the major cities of Mosul, Basra and Sadr City as well as Baghdad…. Do they have a lot more to go? A distance to go? Yes, and it’s very fragile. It can be reversed. But they’ve succeeded.”
Translation: Mission Accomplished!
Senator McCain is fond of telling voters that it is he, not Senator Obama, that will be the most effective candidate to bring about change, which is interesting considering as a longtime member of the Washington establishment, that means there is something wrong with the job he has done.
When you see the picture below, does change come to mind? And didn’t Bush’s father and his former national security adviser strenuously oppose our current policy in Iraq (which has been defended so agressively by McCain)? If McCain is to win this election, it would behoove him to get on the same page with the people that support him.
Subscribe
Editor Joshua Rosenstock at the National Press Club.
Editor Joshua Rosenstock on NBC.