You mean the character it took for John McCain to be named as part of the “Keating Five?” You remember the Keating Five, don’t you Fred? Those were the five Senators who were involved in the Savings and Loan scandal of the late 1980’s. A lot of character there Fred. But Fred then continued:
Now our opponents tell you not to worry about their tax increases. They tell you they are not going to tax your family. No, they’re just going to tax “businesses”! So unless you buy something from a “business”, like groceries or clothes or gasoline … or unless you get a paycheck from a big or a small “business”, don’t worry … it’s not going to affect you.
Uhmm, no Fred, this is what is known as a lie. The Obama platform is not about taxing “businesses.” It is about REPEALING the irresponsible Bush tax cuts for those making over $250,000 per year. The larger point however is that the current state of affairs is horrendous and prices for clothing, gas and groceries are through the roof BECAUSE of the failed policies of the Bush administration, which John McCain embraces. I know it is hard for McBush to realize these things when he believes that you are not rich unless you make over five million dollars per year and cannot remember how many homes you own. Once Thompson was done, the GOP Convention was dragged to a screeching halt by Droopy Dog Joe Lieberman, the Judas of today’s Democratic Party. Insisting that he was putting country over party, Lieberman continued his recent trend of pretending to be a Democrat, while clearly shilling for the other side. He peddled the talking points on Palin and McCain in his usual droning style; grinding the convention to end for the day.
So what do we take out of the first day? The clear strategy of the GOP is to try their best to pretend that John McCain is not McBush, when it is clear to everyone else that he is. They tried misdirection and outright distortion to wave the flag is vigorously as possible at the masses and hope that the sound bites stick more than the facts. The facts apparently are something that are not that important to Team McCain as it is now being reported that McCain’s vetting process of Palin occurred all of one day before she was chosen and consisted of one 70 question survey. Never mind that there are many things they ignored or were oblivious to; such as her seeming to believe the Pledge of Allegiance was created by our founding fathers; but there appears to be far more serious issues. Palin just hired a lawyer to defend accusations of ethical violations, has a 17 year old pregnant daughter despite running on “family values” and abstinence only philosophies, and has appeared to have changed her political opinions on several issues key to the “maverick” nonsense they are peddling to the American voters. Just one month ago, Karl Rove dismissed Governor Tim Kaine as a Vice Presidential candidate for Obama because he had only been a Governor for three years and before that was Mayor of only the 105th largest city in America. Now Rove is facing Palin who has been Governor for less than three years and was Mayor of a City smaller than Nantucket. Problem? You betchya.
So Day One began with the GOP trying to minimize George Bush to avoid the obvious, which is that McCain is simply more of the same. It peaked with a red meat message from Fred Thompson, which was deliberatively misleading and designed to drape the flag over John McCain. It ended with Joe Lieberman, trying to appeal to independents and Democrats to jump on the bandwagon he has chosen. What is lost in all of this of course is the truth. The truth is that this nation is facing perilous economic times, of which John McCain intends to do nothing about but continue the same failed policies that got us into this mess to begin with. The truth is that the war in Iraq needs to end and our troops need to come home. John McCain has said 100 years in Iraq would be fine with him. The truth is that McCain nominated a woman woefully unqualified to be Vice President and now has to have his minions try their level best to pretend that it is “panic” on the side of those who merely ask the sensible questions of the woman who would be one heart attack away from running this country. One of the Republican representatives said of tonight, “it is not about issues, it is about our candidate.” You got that right. It cannot be about issues because when this comes down to the issues, John McCain loses hands down. So the only thing they have left is to wrap God and the flag around their candidate and throw stones at Barack Obama. They are left with deception on the issues and deception on their guy. They trotted out John McCain as the maverick he never truly was and certainly has not been for the past eight years. In the end, no matter how much patriotism and red meat they tried, all they were left with was McBush; four more years of the same. We just cannot afford that anymore.
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