Fine Dining In Savannah, Georgia!!!

GOP October Surprise Has Arrived!!!

WASHINGTON, DC - In a shocking reversal, the Alien has switched his endorsement from Barack Obama to John McCain.

With major implications for the U.S. presidential election, political kingmaker the Alien has changed his endorsement amid furor. Both political camps are buzzing about the implications, as the Alien has correctly predicted the winning president in every election for the past 28 years.


Ongoing investigation points to Cindy McCain as being the cause for this historic shift in allegiances.

Uncovered photos suggest that in a last ditch effort to help her husband’s failing campaign, Cindy McCain seduced and then blackmailed the Alien for his endorsement.

At a recent McCain rally, inside sources say Cindy McCain disappeared with the Alien after sharing several champagnes with the notorious intergalactic lightweight. Ms. McCain’s alien-like good looks and natural blood temperature of 54 degrees Fahrenheit may have proved too much for him to resist as she reportedly put her cyborg husband into sleep mode and worked her charms.

This is not the first time the Alien, who sources say is no prude, has been in political “hot water.” During the 2004 election he was photographed in a hot tub with Laura Bush and Teresa Heinz Kerry. As the Alien is now married with children the release of these photos could be devastating for him.

What impact this news will have on the election has yet to be determined. Swing state voters, who will decide this election, have the highest rate of alien abductions and UFO sightings and are known to vote in accordance with supernatural forces.

McCain Cuts & Runs

Republicans John McCain and Sarah Palin were scheduled to make an appearance in Quakertown, PA Tuesday, October 28, but due to a little rain and cold weather decided to leave his supporters out in the cold when he cancelled his appearance without notification. If McCain can't even run a campaign that is respectful to his constituents, how does anyone expect him to run a nation? Story here at morningcall.com

Monday With McCain

"Across this country this is the agenda I have set before my fellow prisoners. And the same standards of clarity and candor must now be applied to my opponent."---Bethlehem, Pennsylvania, Oct. 8, 2008 (Watch video clip)

Monday With McCain

"Sure. Technically, I don't know." --asked if the U.S. is in a recession, "60 Minutes" interview, Sept. 21, 2008

McCain's Campaign Manager Was Paid $2 Million To Defend FannieMae & FreddieMac Against Stricter Regulations

From internationalheraldtribune.com:

Senator John McCain's campaign manager was paid more than $30,000 a month for five years as president of an advocacy group set up by the mortgage giants Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac to defend them against stricter regulations, current and former officials say.

McCain, the Republican candidate for president, has recently begun campaigning as a critic of the two companies and the lobbying army that helped them evade greater regulation as they began buying riskier mortgages with implicit federal backing. He and his Democratic rival, Senator Barack Obama, have donors and advisers who are tied to the companies.

But last week the McCain campaign stepped up a running battle of guilt by association when it began broadcasting commercials trying to link Obama directly to the government bailout of the mortgage giants this month by charging that he takes advice from Fannie Mae's former chief executive, Franklin Raines, an assertion both Raines and the Obama campaign dispute.

Incensed by the advertisements, several current and former executives of the companies came forward to discuss the role that Rick Davis, McCain's campaign manager and longtime adviser, played in helping Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac beat back regulatory challenges when he served as president of their advocacy group, the Homeownership Alliance, formed in the summer of 2000. Some who came forward were Democrats, but Republicans, speaking on the condition of anonymity, confirmed their descriptions.

"The value that he brought to the relationship was the closeness to Senator McCain and the possibility that Senator McCain was going to run for president again," said Robert McCarson, a former spokesman for Fannie Mae, who said that while he worked there from 2000 to 2002, Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac together paid Davis's firm $35,000 a month. Davis "didn't really do anything," McCarson, a Democrat, said.

Davis's role with the group has bubbled up as an issue in the campaign, but the extent of his compensation and the details of his role have not been reported previously.

McCain was never a leading critic or defender of the mortgage giants, although several former executives of the companies said Davis did draw McCain to a 2004 awards banquet that the companies' Homeownership Alliance held in a Senate office building. The organization printed a photograph of McCain at the event in its 2004 annual report, bolstering its clout and credibility. The event honored several other elected officials, including at least two Democrats, Governor Edward Rendell of Pennsylvania and Representative Artur Davis of Alabama.

In an interview Sunday night with CNBC and The New York Times, McCain noted that Davis was no longer working on behalf of the mortgage giants. He said Davis "has had nothing to do with it since, and I'll be glad to have his record examined by anybody who wants to look at it."

Asked about the reports of Davis's role, a spokesman for McCain said that during the time when Davis ran the Homeownership Alliance, the senator had backed legislation to increase oversight of the mortgage companies' accounting and executive compensation. The legislation, however, did not seek to change their anomalous structure as private companies with federal support.

The spokesman, Tucker Bounds, also noted that the Homeownership Alliance included nonprofit organizations like Habitat for Humanity and the Urban League. "It's not controversial to promote homeownership and minority homeownership," Bounds said. More than a half-dozen current and former executives, however, said the Homeownership Alliance was set up mainly to defend Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac by promoting their role in the housing market, and the two companies paid almost the entire cost of the group's operations.

"They were financed largely, possibly exclusively, by Fannie and Freddie," said William R. Maloni, a Democrat who is a former head of industry relations for Fannie Mae. "We thought it would be helpful to have someone who was a broadly recognized Republican to be the face of the organization, and that person became Rick Davis." Maloni added, "Rick, for that purpose, turned out to be quite good." (Several executives said Davis's compensation was not unusual for the companies' well-connected consultants.)

The federal bailout of the two mortgage giants has become an emblem of what critics say is the outdated or inadequate regulatory system that allowed the financial system to slide into crisis this summer.

At the time that Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac recruited Davis to run the Homeownership Alliance in 2000, they were under new pressure from private industry rivals and deregulation-minded Republicans who argued that the two companies' federal sponsorship gave them an unfair advantage and put taxpayers at risk. Critics of the companies had formed their own Washington-based advocacy group, FM Watch. They were pushing for regulations that would deter the companies from expanding into new areas, including riskier and more profitable mortgages.

Davis had recently returned to his lobbying firm from running McCain's unexpectedly strong 2000 Republican primary campaign, which elevated McCain's profile as a legislator and Davis's as a lobbyist.

"You can say what you want about free-market distortions, but people like the system because it gets them into houses cheap," Davis said to Institutional Investor magazine in 2000, adding that he would run the advocacy group out of his Alexandria, Virginia, lobbying firm.

The organization also hired Public Strategies, a communications firm that included former Bush adviser Mark McKinnon. Davis wrote letters and gave speeches for the group. In April 2001, he sent out a press release headlined, "It's Tax Day — Do You Know Where Your Deductions Are? For Most Americans, They're in Your Home."

But by the end of 2005, Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac were recovering from accounting problems and re-examining costs, former executives said. The companies decided the Homeownership Alliance had outlived its usefulness, and it disappeared.

Scoreboard: John McCain-13.....Barack Obama-1

Uber-Patriot John McCain has a big lead in the vehicles-owned category. McCain and stepford-wife Cindy own 13 vehicles, 4 of which are foreign made. Barack Obama owns one car, a 2008 Ford Escape hybrid. Courtesy newsweek.com

The Man Who Would Be King...Of The United States

John McCain demonstrated again on Tuesday that he was telling the truth about not knowing much about the economy. For a man concerned about protecting the average American from Wall Street greed, he seemed not to know who plays what role.

During a speech Tuesday in Tampa, FL, McCain repeatedly referred to the Securities Investor Protection Corporation, the corporation that “return[s] customers’ cash, stock and other securities” if a brokerage goes bankrupt, and is known as the SIPC — as S-P-I-C. Watch it here.

It’s possible that McCain misspoke (twice!) in rattling off what he called “the alphabet soup” of regulators, but the error appeared both times in the prepared text released by the campaign. Which raises the question: does John McCain have any idea about what he’s talking about or is he just reading what is put in front of him?

Moving past the verbal gaffe, the more serious problem is that John McCain and his advisors don’t seem to know what SIPC is. In today’s speech, he said:

Too many firms on Wall Street have been able to count on casual oversight by regulatory agencies in Washington. And there are so many of those regulators that the responsibility for oversight is scattered, unfocused and ineffective. Among others, we’ve got the SEC, the CFTC, the FDIC, the SPIC and the OCC. But for all their big and impressive sounding names, the fact is they haven’t been doing their job right, or else we wouldn’t have these massive problems on Wall Street. At their worse, they’ve been caught up in Washington turf wars instead of working together to protect investors and the public interests. And we don’t need a dozen federal agencies doing the job badly — we need the best federal agencies to do the job right.

The problem is, SIPC is not a regulator. Don’t take my word for it, though. Check out the SIPC’s own web site, which states “Though created by the Securities Investor Protection Act (15 U.S.C. §78aaa et seq., as amended), SIPC is neither a government agency nor a regulatory authority. It is a nonprofit, membership corporation, funded by its member securities broker-dealers.”

What a dumb shit...

Monday With McCain

"I'm John McCain, and I approved this message."---at the conclusion of an ad falsely accusing Barack Obama of promoting sex education for kindergarten children

Monday With McCain

You know that old Beach Boy song Bomb Iran. Bomb bomb bomb, bomb bomb Iran---John McCain singing to tune of Barbara Ann, at campaign stop, answering question about what to do with Iran, April 18 2008.

Monday With McCain

Maybe that's a way of killing them. ---responding to a report that $158 million in cigarettes have been shipped to Iran during Bush's presidency despite restrictions on U.S. exports to that country, Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, July 8, 2008

I Always Have To Laugh...

...when I see the Republican stalwarts talking about their "conservative revolution." Take the following from Cal Thomas, who certainly provides a laugh-a-minute:

"Which of the principles articulated by Ronald Reagan, and the conservative revolution he led, does the GOP believe has failed? Lower taxes? Reduced spending and smaller government? Self-reliance? Strong defense? Defeating our enemies so they will fear and respect us, instead of appeasing them in hopes that they might like us? If such principles remain valid, why don't more Republicans articulate them?"


Uh, when did the Republicans give us "smaller" government? During the Republican "revolution," government authorities were given much more power than before. Our prison population in the past two decades has grown from about 300,000 to more than two million, mostly because of the failed Republican Drug War that Ronald Reagan initiated.

Thomas has supported the war in Iraq, which is responsible for much of the growth in spending. Is Thomas against torture, the decimation of habeas corpus, or the way that Americans have been creating havoc abroad?

No, in the end, being a Republican is about the power of the American state and nothing else. Thomas has been the cheerleader for the Leviathan State for many years, and he is not about to change now.

Cal Thomas is such a dickhead.

Read Cal's column here.

An Army Of One. Really.

Bush administration policy never ceases to amaze me. If you disagree with the invasion of Iraq, you are labeled as "unpatriotic." But if you wear an American flag lapel-pin, affix an "I Support The Troops" magnet to the back of your vehicle, or vote Republican, you are decidedly a "patriot." How sad it is that there are people in the United States that actually fall for this new form of fascism.

The September 12, 1938 edition of The New York Times carried an often, misquoted statement by Professor Halford E. Luccock of Yale Divinity School:

When and if fascism comes to America it will not be labeled "Made in Germany"; it will not be marked with a swastika; it will not even be called fascism; it will be called, of course, "Americanism."

So it was of no huge surprise to The Minutiae King when reading how desperate the Army is to find new recruits. Department of Defense records indicate that the number of new recruits with criminal records has increased by 65% in the last three years. Showing no regard for the mental, physical, or familial situations of those serving in Iraq and Afghanistan, the Bush administration has increased the length of a tour of duty from 12 to 15 months. So it was with much sadness to read where one brave soldier, Sgt. 1st Class David L. McDowell was killed in Afghanistan on April 29, 2008 while on his seventh deployment--yes, his seventh--since 2003. Yes, an Army of one, being stop-lossed over and over and over and over and over...

Recruiting felons. Keeping military families seperated for years at a time.

So much for George Bush, the head of the Republican party, espousing himself as being supportive of military families. And Republicans as being the party of "family values."