Before I get into the story, let me tell you that I am still having problems with this darn computer. I'm thinking that maybe it has an evil gremlin in it and that it has gone stupid on me! If you only knew. That being said, I'm looking at a post over at DailyKos from 174winchell concerning some of McCain's comments about small town America and those comments from Senator Obama which the media, Clinton, and her side-kick McCain seem to be so concerned about.
Here's the story.
So, John McCain is now the people's man. He tells his audience at the Associated Press annual meeting in Washington, DC that he thought Senator Obama's statement about small town America is "elitist", and went on to give a little history lesson on small town America. But I've got a history lesson for John McCain, yes, and an economics lesson as well, just so he knows...
It's silly season again in American politics.
As Senator Obama recently described it, it is season again for "fake controversies". It's that season of holier-than-thou, I-am-in-touch-and-you-are-not chicanery again, and our two veterans of Beltway politics-as-usual are busy doing their thing the best they know how: the pot calling the silver spoon names.
Hillary Clinton, who has been a first lady for over 30 years, never had to step into a grocery store to buy her own quart of milk or head of cabbage for over 30 years, never had to pull up at the gas station and pump her own gas, is now speaking for small town America. Ambassador Clinton from small town, PA is telling the rest of us who is and who's not in touch.
But that's not what this diary is about. This diary is about John McCain. Straight-backed, irritable, aloof and distant, suspicious and superstitious, quirky wacky son of an admiral and grandson of an admiral who nonetheless wants us to believe that he's more in touch with small town America than small town America itself.
When called on his campaign's running claim that Obama is elitist, McCain gave his AP annual meeting audience this little lesson on small town America:
Referring to Americans who survived the Great Depression and defeated Nazi Germany during World War II, McCain said: "They were not born with the advantages others in our country enjoyed. They suffered the worst during the Depression." But, he said, they did not "turn to their religious faith and cultural traditions out of resentment." On the contrary, he said, "their faith had given generations of their families purpose and meaning. . . . And their appreciation of traditions like hunting was based on nothing other than their contribution to the enjoyment of life."
http://www.latimes.com/...
Already his campaign manager Rick Davis has handed out a threat to the Democrats:
McCain's campaign meanwhile started using the Obama remarks in a fund-raising appeal. "If Barack Obama is the Democrat nominee in the general election, the American people will have a clear choice between two different visions: Sen. Obama's liberal, elitist philosophy and John McCain's faith in the small-town values that continue to make America great," campaign manager Rick Davis wrote in an e-mail to supporters.
But there's a couple of crucial things that John McCain and his campaign are forgetting about small town America, the Great Depression, and surviving World War II. Beside the many things that they're forgetting about John McCain's policy promises and record on the plight of small town America, and I'm going to remind him.
One:
Small town America did not survive the Great Depression because of religion and faith or so-called cultural values. It survived the Great Depression because a liberal, Democratic President, Franklin Delano Roosevelt stepped in and provided the most generous Fed bailout of the economy and the work force since Reconstruction through the New Deal and most importantly, through the Works Progress Administration. Under the WPA, the Federal Government directly provided employment for millions of Americans who'd fallen on hard times by embarking on huge construction, education, and revitalization programs across the country, thus helping Americans to earn and pull themselves out of the bogpit that a rabid and unregulated market had thrown them into.
John McCain, on the other hand, wouldn't even commit to helping millions of hard working Americans who're losing their dearest and most important possession, their homes. Instead he called them "irresponsible". Until Johnny Come Lately made his late-late turn around, he thought that any Federal help for small town America is liberal, big government and wrong. And now he wants us to believe he has "faith" in their values.
Two:
Small town America pulled itself through World War II not through God and Guns, but because, again, the same liberal, Democratic President, FDR, ran a war economy that provided jobs at home in the armament industry for millions of Americans. Obama always speaks of how his grandmother worked on a military plant to sustain her family. That war economy provided jobs at home.
Contrast John McCain Bush's war in Iraq. I want John McCain to name me one person in small town America who has benefitted from the war that he and his friend George Bush have spent $450 billion dollars waging in Iraq for five years!
And I'm not advocating war for jobs, but the World War, which was a just war if any war is just, also created jobs at home for millions of families whose main bread earners were on the battlefront in Europe or Japan. McCain's war, on the other hand, has simply drained the economy, dragged us into debt, and destroyed our confidence.
Three
But even more importantly, while liberal Democrat FDR provided jobs for small town America making American armaments on American soil, what did John McCain do recently? He opened the door for the $35 bilion tanker deal that was handed to European Aeronautic Defense and Space Company, costing us thousands of jobs that could have gone to small town America.
And what is worse, the EAD deal that sent a $35 billion American contract abroad was brokered by lobbyists working as advisers for Senator McCain's campaign.
WASHINGTON — A co-chairman of Senator John McCain’s presidential campaign and other top campaign advisers and supporters were lobbyists for the European Aeronautic Defense and Space Company, part of a group that beat out Boeing for a $35 billion contract to build aerial refueling tankers for the Air Force.
Boeing, which has filed an appeal with the Government Accountability Office, is expected to focus at least in part on Mr. McCain’s role in the deal, including letters that he sent urging the Defense Department, in evaluating the tanker bids, not to consider the potential effects of a separate United States-Airbus trade dispute.
Obviously John McCain doesn't recall his history, and that it was a liberal that helped small town America pull through the Great Depression and World War II. And obviously he doesn't understand economics like he's admitted, yet he wants to be President so he can run the world's largest economy further into the ground.
And clearly John McCain doesn't care that it is deals and policies that he has supported that have destroyed hope in small town America, handing contracts to foreign companies, taking jobs away from American workers, bleeding little towns of young men and women who ought to be in college learning a trade so that they can help their families rather than be stuck in a rut in Iraq.
John McCain talks about "enjoyment of life" in small town America. Guess who's out touch!
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