Wednesday, September 17, 2008

What Matters May Finally Matter?

As I write this the NYSE fell 451 points today, it fell 500 on Monday.

Mega financial institution Lehman Brothers filed for bankruptcy and is having a large part of its assets bought by the British Bank, Barclays. It was last trading at $.13/share. A year ago it was over $60/share.

AIG, one of the largest insurers in the world, is the latest of $800 billion of bailouts from the Federal Government this year, with an $85billion loan guarantee.

All of a sudden, 'lipstick on a pig' doesn't seem so important.

I watched some of the 7th season of the West Wing over the historically rainy weekend we had in Chicago. This is the season there was a fictional Presidential election that has many similarities to this campaign.

One line struck me that I heard the fictional Republican Nominee Senator Arnold Vinnick who was almost written as McCain.

"Years I've been looking forward to this campaign. I never imagined it would look like this."

My guess is that John McCain deep down,, thinks the same thing.

- He wants to really talk straight and rip his party, but has to do so in a way to keep his party together. He can't afford to aggravate the 20% out there who still believe in George Bush. Why? Because those 20% could be the difference in the election if enough of them stay home.
- He is now the second most wanted and interesting figure on his own ticket. He made a VP selection in order to perform a publicity stunt instead of taking who he really wanted, a true Maverick pick like Joe Lieberman or Tom Ridge.
- Not to mention his VP continues to lie about her record with regards to bridges, teleprompters, EBay, and many other things when nearly every independent analyst says she is not being truthful.
- She also is now not cooperating with an investigation about abuse of power that she said for months she would.
- He has seen his campaign lie a little, lie a lot, and then lie some more. The "Straight Talk Express" is no more. He has mostly ads, that have nothing to do with issuers. He ran an ad quoting the non-partisan group, FactCheck.org, that FactCheck.org said was inaccurate.

And then reality hits this week. Bankrupctys, billion dollar bailouts, and already around 800 points off the NYSE.

Rightful fear, anger, and concern have hit the nation.

None of the bullshit and Republican smokescreen matter. Worse for McCain, his team made 'lipstick' the issue in the week leading up to this.

In non-scary times, that may work. With 401k's becoming 200.5k's in three days, spending money on 'lipstick' falls very flat.

"The fundamentals of the economy are strong," said John McCain after a 500 point drop on Monday.

In response he gets hammered by Obama, Biden, and virtually anyone with a brain and his response...

The "Fundamentals" of the economy he now claims, means the American worker and saying the economy is weak means that workers are weak.

Well the problem with this statement, just like his bullshit righteous indignation over 'lipstick on a pig',,, is that John McCain repeated this statement many other times. McCain has used the 'fundamentals' statement no less than 22 times. If you don't believe me see the video below.

Again, where's the Straight Talk?

Presidential campaigns are very fluid. The last two weeks, McCain was killing, but it set him up for a fall. This week Obama is winning each day.

Right now,, the voters are less concerned with who they 'relate to' or who they want to BBQ with.

With any luck, we'll stay focused on the issues, let the winner of this election be the one who has the best ideas.


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