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Election 2008 McCain Obama Politics The Web and Technology

Fun Fact About McCain #7: McCain Will Destroy the Internet as We Know It

McCain will destroy the internet as we know it.

A bit of an exaggeration. But McCain, opposes net neutrality, one of the core technological foundations of the internet – and essential to its growth according to everyone from Google to the inventor of the world wide web. Without net neutrality, the internet will end up like this.

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Economics Election 2008 McCain Obama Politics

Fun Fact About McCain #6: Deregulation

McCain has been an impassioned deregulator, and thus bears responsibility for the banking crisis we are in now.

Not exactly. While McCain has always voted in favor of deregulation, he has never been impassioned about the economy until the market tanked. As one prudent individual said, “I certainly don’t fault Sen. John McCain for these problems. I do fault the economic philosophy he subscribes to.”

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Election 2008 McCain Politics The Clintons

Fun Fact About McCain #5: Bad Blood with Hillary?

John McCain has a history of bad blood with Hillary Clinton.

Half true. Yes, McCain told a joke in poor taste back in the 1990s about Hillary Clinton, Janet Reno, and Chelsea; and yes, by John McCain’s rules of interpreting the phrase “lipstick on a pig“, he called her a pig quite a few times; and yes, he has laughed along with the crowd during the primary when Hillary was called a “bitch.” But they seem to get along well. So – I guess Hillary is a tough woman who doesn’t take the McCain’s insults seriously.

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Election 2008 McCain Politics

Fun Fact About McCain #4: Smears

[digg-reddit-me]McCain has “hired to run this campaign” “the very people” who smeared McCain in the infamous 2000 primary in South Carolina against Bush (as Joe Biden has claimed.)

Actually True. Or at least McCain has hired some of them. ABC News reported that McCain hired Tucker Eskew and the firm that made the Swift Boat ads he criticized in 2004. From denouncing to hiring smear artists – that’s change you can believe in.
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Election 2008 Foreign Policy Iraq McCain Obama Politics The Opinionsphere

Yglesias: Bush pressured Maliki to revise the withdrawl date to bail out McCain

Matt Yglesias points out that according to statements by Iraqi Prime Minister Maliki made only in Arabic, Bush had pressured him to change the withdrawl date from 2010 to 2011 “due to political circumstances related to the [U.S] domestic situation.”

In other words, Bush pressured Maliki to revise the withdrawl date, putting American military lives at risk, in order to bail out McCain. Pathetic.

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Election 2008 Foreign Policy McCain Politics

Fun Fact About McCain #3: Temper Tantrum in Nicaragua

McCain once attempted to strangle someone on a diplomatic mission.

Seems True. McCain denies it, but Republican Senator Thad Cochran remembers McCain’s volatile presence while negotiating with the Sandinistas in Nicaragua.
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Election 2008 McCain Politics

Fun Fact About McCain #2: Attacking The Character of His Opponents

[digg-reddit-me]John McCain has a history of calling his political opponents motives and patriotism into question.

Very true. Just ask:
Some deserved it. Some didn’t. Either way, it’s a pattern.
Categories
Election 2008 McCain National Security Obama Politics The Opinionsphere

Fun Fact About McCain #1: Panicking in a Crisis

[digg-reddit-me]John McCain has a history of over-personalizing and overreacting during crises – which has led a number of top former military officials and others who know him to voice concerns about McCain’s fitness.

True. Between McCain’s taunting of Putin and his scapegoating of SEC chief Cox, he has shown this tendency several times in the past month.
  • As one general said, “I am a little worried by his knee-jerk response factor. I think it is a little scary. I think this guy’s first reactions are not necessarily the best reactions. I believe that he acts on impulse.”
  • As another said, “One of the things the senior military would like to see when they go visit the president is a kind of consistency, a kind of reliability…McCain has got a reputation for being a little volatile.”
  • Conservative columnist and curmudgeon George F. Will wrote of McCain’s reaction to the current financial crisis: “Under the pressure of the financial crisis, one presidential candidate is behaving like a flustered rookie playing in a league too high. It is not Barack Obama…[The more one sees of McCain’s] impulsive, intensely personal reactions to people and events the less confidence one has [in him] …It is arguable that McCain, because of his boiling moralism and bottomless reservoir of certitudes, is not suited to the presidency. Unreadiness can be corrected, although perhaps at great cost, by experience. Can a dismaying temperament be fixed?”
  • A Republican Senator stated, “The thought of his being president sends a cold chill down my spine. He is erratic. He is hotheaded. He loses his temper and he worries me.”
Categories
Election 2008 Humor Obama Politics The Opinionsphere

Bartlet’s Advice

President Bartlet speaks to presidential candidate Obama:

Four weeks ago you had the best week of your campaign, followed — granted, inexplicably — by the worst week of your campaign. And you’re still in a statistical dead heat. You’re a 47-year-old black man with a foreign-sounding name who went to Harvard and thinks devotion to your country and lapel pins aren’t the same thing and you’re in a statistical tie with a war hero and a Cinemax heroine. To these aged eyes, Senator, that’s what progress looks like. You guys got four debates. Get out of my house and go back to work.

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Election 2008 Humor McCain Politics Videos

SNL Skewers McCain

SNL takes on McCain’s deceptive advertising. The best exchange comes after the line reader reads one of the new ads: “Barack Obama has fathered two black children in wedlock.”

McCain: My friends, I must say that reminds me of an attack that Bush made on me in 2000.

McCain aide: He won that election, right?

McCain: I’m John McCain and I approved this message.

Al Franken, the former SNL writer and current candidate for Minnesota Senator, suggested the idea for this piece to SNL’s head writer last week.