John McCain is not only a shouting lunatic who at one point advocated bombing Iran, but he is a corrupt powermonger who is deep in the pockets of lobbyists.
So, without further ado, Week 1.
What's wrong with John McCain?
1. Oratory skills
I didn't think it was possible to find a worse orator than George Bush, who can usually be likened to a fevered monkey guarding a stash of bananas. However, John McCain, on the eve of Barack Obama's victory, decided he would go head to head with the presumptive Democratic nominee, and delivered a quite "moving" speech. In front of a pea-green background, giving his skin a lovely "zombie-green" tone, he proceeded to "smile" much like a child molester, and gave one of the most substanceless speeches during, not just this race, but this decade. McCain began to list Obama's policies, stating without much emphasis, "That's not change we can believe in," after each one. No explanation, no substance, just... uninspiring, unemphatic rhetoric.
An inspiring man, straight from "The Bride of Chucky"At the exact same time McCain was rallying his seven or eight supporters (Who you can hear distinctly as being a very small crowd), Obama drove a packed arena in St. Paul wild, the very same arena that will be used for the Republican National Convention.
Is anyone else predicting the end of days for the Republican Party?
Youtube link:
And if you watch the video, it even leaves Fox News, the conservative propaganda machine, completely fucking speechless. Completely unbelievable.
2. Not only domestic corruption, but OFFSHORE corruption
Two weeks ago, MSNBC (http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/24844889) reported that Phil Gramm, McCain's national campaign co-chair and presumptive Secretary of the Treasury, "was being paid by a Swiss bank to lobby Congress about the U.S. mortgage crisis at the same time he was advising McCain about his economic policy."
The New York Times, however, has more.
So basically, the people lobbying McCain are trying to use him as an accessory in mass tax fraud which cost the US government $300 million in revenue. And the person who's lobbying for them is a part owner and just happens to be the guy McCain wants as treasury secretary.Under pressure from the authorities, UBS is considering whether to divulge the names of up to 20,000 of its well-heeled American clients, according to people close to the inquiry, a step that would have once been unthinkable to Swiss bankers, whose traditions of secrecy date to the Middle Ages.
Federal investigators believe some of the clients may have used offshore accounts at UBS to hide as much as $20 billion in assets from the Internal Revenue Service. Doing so may have enabled these people to dodge at least $300 million in federal taxes on income from those assets, according to a government official connected with the investigation.
(snip)
The case could turn into an embarrassment for Marcel Rohner, the chief executive of UBS and the former head of its private bank, as well as for Phil Gramm, the former Republican senator from Texas who is now the vice chairman of UBS Securities, the Swiss bank's investment banking arm. It also comes at a difficult time for UBS, which is reeling from $37 billion in bad investments, many of them linked to risky American mortgages.
There's more from Newsweek:
So, more corruption.McCain's campaign is already distancing itself from some of Gramm's other work for UBS: his involvement in attempts to sell financial products known as "death bonds," which BusinessWeek described last summer as one of "the most macabre investment scheme(s) ever devised by Wall Street." Not long after joining UBS, the Houston Chronicle reported, Gramm helped lobby Texas officials, including Gov. Rick Perry, to sign on to a UBS proposal in which revenue would be generated for a state teachers' retirement fund by selling bonds, whose proceeds would in turn be used to buy annuities and life-insurance policies on retired teachers. UBS would advance money to the retirement fund, then repay itself, compensate bondholders and pocket profits when insurance companies paid off on retirees who died. According to a banking-industry source, who asked for anonymity when discussing a sensitive matter, Gramm was involved in efforts to pitch similar UBS products to other financial institutions.
Gramm's office declined NEWSWEEK's request for comment.
And John McCain says he doesn't have any lobbyists on his staff...
Unfortunately, that's about it for last week, next post should come on Sunday.
