defeat evil! end greed!

"Evil must be defeated!" -- John McCain 8/16/08

"Enough is enough! We're going to put an end to greed!" -- John McCain 9/17/08

It's inspiring to know that John McCain has a plan to end greed. I just hope it doesn't distract him from his mission to defeat evil. Either way, it has to kick the shit out of whatever Barack Obama's got on the docket, with his empty words and pie-in-the-sky promises.

America's choice is clear. Barack Obama, a messianic egomaniac who thinks he's, like, our savior or something, or John McCain, who will defeat evil and put an end to greed.

John McCain will not only take on special interests and Washington insiders, he'll
fundamentally alter human nature. And without raising taxes, either. He'll lead us to a sort of martial nirvana where all other emotions are replaced with patriotism, and turn the United States into a shining, selfless, bipartisan cross between heaven and Sparta.

Indeed.

Dude’s going to end greed on Wall Street. Cool. And defeat evil. (Does that mean Vista is toast?)

On Monday morning, in the face of the bankruptcy of Lehman Brothers and the fire-sale acquisition of Merrill Lynch by Bank of American, John McCain declared:

“The fundamentals of our economy are strong.”

That didn’t go over really well. By Tuesday morning, he had backtracked:

"Well, the economy's in crisis."

Dude was on a roll. Also on Tuesday he declared:

"We cannot have the taxpayers bail out AIG or anybody else."

(You probably suspect what’s coming next.)

By Wednesday morning he was supporting the bailout of AIG:

“[T]here are literally millions of people whose retirement, whose investment, whose insurance were at risk here.”

Last March, he told the Wall Street Journal:

“I’m always for less regulation. … I am a fundamentally a deregulator.”

In May he added that we cannot have, “more federal regulation, more government control of the economy."

And in July, when a report showed that the nation had shed 62,000 jobs the month before, McCain issued a statement warning: "We cannot . . . increase regulation."

Yesterday he said, “We need strong and effective regulation …We need to change the way Washington and Wall Street does business.”

[His running mate (what’s her name?) said last week, "[T]oo often government is often the problem." Last night, appearing under the blistering spotlight of FOX News’ Sean Hannity, she affirmed, "Government can play a very, very appropriate role in the oversight.”]

On Tuesday, McCain’s top economic advisor, Douglas Holz-Eakin asserted that McCain’s chairmanship of the Senate Commerce Committee in the ‘90’s had resulted in the telecommunications revolution:

At a briefing for reporters yesterday morning, Douglas Holtz-Eakin held up his BlackBerry in an attempt to prove that his boss, the former chairman of the Senate Commerce Committee, has economic know-how.

"He did this," Holtz-Eakin informed them. "Telecommunications of the United States is a premier innovation in the past 15 years -- comes right through the Commerce
Committee -- so you're looking at the miracle John McCain helped create, and that's what he did."

That would appear to have been more of a diplomatic achievement than a victory for the American economy, as the Blackberry is made by the Canadian company, Research In Motion. (Fortunately, Al Gore had by that time already invented the Internet.)

Obama responded:

Before a crowd of roughly 14,000 residents of Las Vegas, … Sen. Barack Obama, D-Ill., Wednesday evening continued to mock Sen. John McCain, R-Ariz., as out of touch on the economy.

Proceeding through a litany of what he perceives to be McCain missteps, Obama mentioned that McCain had recently "bragged about how, as chairman of the Commerce Committee in the Senate, he had oversight of every part of the economy. Well, all I can say to Sen. McCain is … nice job."

Tuesday wasn’t a very good day for McCain. One of his chief flaks on the economy, former H-P CEO Carly Fiorina was asked:

"Do you think [Sarah Palin] has the experience to run a major company, like Hewlett Packard?"
"No, I don't," responded Fiorina.

And she is an expert on not being able to run H-P.

Later in the day, Fiorina “clarified” her statement:

"Well, I don't think John McCain could run a major corporation, I don't think Barack Obama could run a major corporation, I don't think Joe Biden could run a major corporation."

Apparently, this didn’t help. The McCain camp made it clear that Ms. Fiorina would no longer be a spokesperson for the campaign.

[On Monday, Sarah Palin “blasted corporate executives who leave their company with a ‘golden parachute’ and pledged to ‘stop multimillion dollar payouts" to CEOs’. Carly Fiorina walked away with $45 million, including a $21.4 million severance package when she was dismissed by Hewlett Packard in 2005.”]

It hasn’t been a great week for McCain so far.

And he still has to defeat evil and end greed.