23/6's Blog
The McCain campaign's "Obama is a Muslim" platform sure is catchy. Bet you think that Steve Schmidt is one shrewd guy to make that the campaign's overarching message.
Well you're wrong. Steve Schmidt is just a puppet. The real architect of McCain's campaign is some guy named Andy Martin, a self-described "colorful person" who back in 2004 sent around an "Obama is a Muslim" press release . Recent weeks show that the message in that release has been embraced by John McCain as the core ethos of his candidacy.
Let's take a look at Andy Martin and learn exactly who it is that McCain is allowing to guide his ship:
CREDENTIALS: Graduated law school, but blocked from the Illinois bar after a psych evaluation found "moderately severe character defect manifested by well-documented ideation with a paranoid flavor and a grandiose character." Well, he did say he was colorful.
EXECUTIVE EXPERIENCE: Ran for president twice, in 1988 and 2000. No need to check Wikipedia. Those runs were unsuccessful.
CONGRESSIONAL EXPERIENCE: attempted to run for Congress in Connecticut. Paperwork for one of his campaign committees included as its purpose: "To exterminate Jew power." Clearly, this committee did not achieve its goals. (I mean, look around!)
CONNECTIONS: according to the New York Times, "He has left a trail of animosity -- some of it provoked by anti-Jewish comments -- among political leaders, lawyers and judges in three states over more than 30 years." Take out the anti-Jewish stuff, and this sentence could be about John McCain's relationship with his own party.
JAIL-TIME: Funny you should ask. Yes! Andy was jailed in Florida in a case involving a physical altercation.
MEDIA COVERAGE: Has filed so many frivolous lawsuits that he was once the subject of an hour-long episode of the news-program "48 Hours." He's famous!
OPINIONS ABOUT THE JEWISH PEOPLE: He has some. In a motion filed in a 1983 bankruptcy case, Andy called the judge "a crooked, slimy Jew who has a history of lying and thieving common to members of his race." In another motion filed that year he wrote, "I am able to understand how the Holocaust took place, and with every passing day feel less and less sorry that it did." It is not clear whether his bankruptcy filing was successful.
It certainly sounds like Andy Martin would not be the man to give voice to the dominant strategy of John McCain's campaign. He's ruffled quite a few feathers in his time, and made a lot of enemies. But we have a word for that kind of rabble-rouser. It's "Maverick." Well, "barely employed, chemically imbalanced anti-semite" works also. But there's some Maverick in there too, you betcha there is.
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John McCain has taken off the gloves. And not just because it's easier to take his pills that way. He played the Bill Ayers card, and so the Obama campaign has countered with the Charles Keating card, creating a website , complete with a 13 minute documentary about the scandal. The problem with the Keating card is that it doesn't involve blowing stuff up. Nor does it even involve the usual GOP scandal element: gay sex. It's purely financial. Will it break through? Maybe not, but some have speculated that the reason the Obama camp went with it was just to goad John McAngry into becoming even angrier and, who know, go into some kind of Vietnam flashback or something during the debate and trying to frag Obama.
So what really happened during the Keating Five? And why is John McCain such a bad leader that he can't even get his own scandal named after him? It's all in our 23/6 Keating Five FAQ...
So what does five mean?
Five? It's a number. What are you doing?
Sorry, wasn't sure how far back we were supposed to start.
Not that far.
Okay, what's the Keating Five refer to?
The Keating Five were five U.S. Senators involved in a corruption scandal in the late 1980's.
So it's not a boy band?
No.
Are you sure?
Yes.
That's weird, because I'm pretty sure they're a boy band.
Well, you're wrong.
We'll just have to agree to disagree on that one, Ivy League.
What?
You went to college. So that makes you stupid, stupid.
You've been watching Sarah Palin.
You betcha.
Don't say that again.
So where's the "Keating" come from?
Charles Keating was the chairman of Lincoln Savings and Loan, in Irvine, California. Deregulation in the early 80's allowed them to invest in junk bonds.
Good. Regulation is bad! That's what Sarah says!
But the junk bonds went south and the Lincoln began failing.
Just like Sarah says, we need more regulation!
The Federal Home Loan Bank Board began investigating Lincoln in 1986. Keating reached out to five senators to get them to pressure the FHLB to stop the investigation.
So was the Team of Mavericks involved?
Who?
McCain. He's part of a Team of Mavericks.
Ah. But aren't maverick's supposed to be loners? Isn't that kind of the whole idea of being a maverick?
Don't try your gotcha thing with me.
Yes, John McCain was involved. McCain attended two meetings between regulators and some of the five senators.
What's wrong with that?
The regulators said they felt pressured by the Senators to soft-peddle the investigation. Plus, McCain had also taken $112,000 from Keating and McCain's second wife Cindy and her father in law had invested $359,000 with Keating in a shopping center. The McCains had also taken 9 trips paid for by Keating. This made it look like a quid-pro-quo.
What language you talkin'?
Latin.
Isn't that the language of terrorists?
No.
Well I've never spoken it and I'm not a terrorist.
QED.
What?
Nevermind.
So what happened to The Maverick?
Lincoln collapsed, costing the taxpayers $2 billion.
Wow, seems like a bargain.
And 23,000 people lost their life savings.
Minorities need to manage their finances better.
Who said anything about minorities?
Well, they do.
You've been watching Fox, haven't you.
I like to hear all sides.
In any case, in the hearings, McCain was reprimanded by the Senate Ethics Committee for "poor judgment."
You know what poor judgment is?
What?
Palling around with terrorists.
Don't start.
[Wink]
What are you doing?
Being authentic. Sending your readers a wink. [Wink]
Stop it.
It's what we do in Alaska.
You've never been to Alaska.
Alaska is a state of mind. And I live there now.
How is it there.
A little boring.
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Inappropriate Hottie Rundown: Stars of the Smear Campaign!
Thirteen years and one day after he got away with murder, OJ Simpson was convicted of armed robbery and conspiracy to kidnap. The Guardian's Caroline Davies speculates that Americans are not rioting in the streets because we are, among other things, "consumed by the economic crisis."
Well, let's not forget to thank the one man who made this peaceful conviction possible: Barack Obama. The Senator has freed African-Americans of the obligation to defend OJ just because he's black. In 2008, people of color can shout from the mountain top, "Barack Obama is black. OJ is just a dick who murdered two people!"
It's kind of like how women don't feel compelled to defend Sarah Palin because we have Hillary Clinton.
Thanks, Barack!
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Debate Training: Biden Learns What Makes Girls Cry
The Daily Thing Wrong with John McCain
The Thinkable Has Happended: Casting Notice for Sarah Palin Porn
Based on her debate with Joe Biden on Thursday night. we can predict with confidence that this woman will be president one day. Sarah Palin answered questions incorrectly or not at all, without shame. She combined the intellectual confidence of Rhodes Scholar with the intellect of a University of Idaho drop out.
Remember when Paris Hilton's sex tape was released? We thought Paris would be embarrassed and humiliated? Maybe stop being such a dumb, rich slut. Instead, she redeemed herself on SNL and began a film career. Soon after came Britney's crotch, then Lindsay's- neither of them embarrassed. Sarah Palin's debate performance was the political equivalent of Paris Hilton's sex tape. She should be humiliated by it, but she's not.
Which is why Trig needs to be rescued.
That little baby is the cutest thing on earth. Yet, Sarah Palin keeps dragging him onstage when he should be asleep because he activates the hormones of "the base." We can't be silent any longer. Give him to us. At 23/6, Trig is as loved as his mother is despised. Let us raise Trig. We don't want to be president. We promise Trig will never have to drool through another John McCain speech. We will raise him as our own and probably turn him into our best comedy writer.
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Debate Training: Biden Learns What Makes Girls Cry
The Daily Thing Wrong with John McCain
The Thinkable Has Happended: Casting Notice for Sarah Palin Porn
The world is finally going to get a big helping of Sarah Palin on Thursday, instead of the five-minute morsels we've gotten so far, mostly in Katie Couric's 49-part ongoing interview series. What's been released so far has convinced many people that Palin is, basically, crazy. She's driven Andrew Sullivan so insane that if he hears one more quote by her, he might just turn straight.
But we have a different theory -- the only one that really makes any sense. What if -- just hear us out -- Palin's not stupid , but incredibly brilliant? (And no, this isn't the beginning of a classic New Republic piece). After some extensive investigation, we've concluded that Palin is, in fact, practicing some kind of long-form, post-modern mind game on the country.
Just compare her to the gold-standard of post-modern literary genius, David Foster Wallace. That's right, DFW. Those who are thinking Palin shouldn't be on GOP ticket are right -- she should be getting a MacArthur grant and teaching at Brown. Here you're making fun of her with all your hipster friends and she's punking you by turning the campaign into a performance art homage to "Infinite Jest."
The pattern is undeniable...
Palin:
...it's
very important when you consider even national security issues with
Russia -- as Putin rears his head and comes into the airspace of the
United States of America, where do they go? It's Alaska. It's right
over the border.
Foster Wallace:
Here
Lord, like many stellar statistics-wonks, shows a bit of an Achilles'
heel imagination-wise, but he's got a good five or six years of
Eschaton precedents to draw on. A Russo-Chinese border dispute goes
tactical over Sinkiang. An AMNAT computracker in the Aleutians misreads
a flight of geese as three SOVWAR SS10's on reentry.
Palin:
Well,
there is a danger in allowing some obsessive partisanship to get into
the issue that we're talking about today. And that's something that
John McCain, too, his track record, proving that he can work both sides
of the aisle, he can surpass the partisanship that must be surpassed to
deal with an issue like this.
Foster Wallace:
Have
a father whose own father lost what was there. Have a father who lived
up to his own promise and then found thing after thing to meet and
surpass the expectations of his promise in...
Palin:
...it's
got to be about job creation, too. Shoring up our economy, and getting
it back on the right track. So health care reform and reducing taxes
and reining in spending has got to accompany tax reductions.
Foster Wallace:
Saying
this is bad is like saying traffic is bad, or health-care surtaxes, or
the hazards of annular fusion: nobody but Ludditic granola-crunching
freaks would call bad what no one can imagine being without.
Palin:
...we've got to look at that as more opportunity. All of those things under the umbrella of job creation.
Foster Wallace:
...Penn's arational lobbing at an Israel that at the summit was explicity placed under AMNAT's nutual-defense umbrella.
Palin:
...and
trade -- we have got to see trade as opportunity, not as, uh,
competitive, um, scary thing, but one in five jobs created in the trade
sector today.
Foster Wallace:
...yet
the financial communities demand a balanced federal budget. The Reserve
Board all but insists on a balanced budget, out balance of trade with
the handful of nation's we're still trading with requires a stable buck
and so a balanced budget
Palin:
Oil of coal, of course, is a fungible commodity and they don't flag, you know, the molecules where, where it's going to.
Foster Wallace:
'Clinkers,'
he said instantly. 'From klinker low German and klinckaerd old Dutch,
to sound, ring, nominated to substantive around 1769: a hard mass
formed by the fusion of the earthy impurities of like coal, iron ore,
limestone.
Read more from 236.com :
Happy Palin Day!
The GOP is pretending that they didn't know about VP debate moderator Gwen Ifill's upcoming book about Obama, while Ifill says they did. Meanwhile, Gwen either fell or was pushed down a flight of stairs and will moderate from a wheelchair. Can PBS spin the GOP's complaints into a "Republican Attack on the Disabled"? Who knows? With all this drama, did Gwen even have time to come up with questions? In case she didn't, we came up with a few of our own:
- Is North Korea east or west of South Korea?
- If Kitty Dukakis is raped and murdered, should Michael pay for the rape kit?
- Who tried to kill me last weekend?
- Do you get your news from the Bible?
- Do you believe that Noah saved two moose during the Flood, and if yes, why it ok for you kill to them?
- Who is older, your opponent or your running mate?
- If you lose, will your pastor put a spell on me?
- Regarding The View- which co-host is a ridiculous partisan who should be fired- Elizabeth Hasselbeck or Joy Behar?
- Complete this sentence, Trig is my ___________
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