Why Not McCain?- 3

John McCain and the mainstream media are unabashed enthusiasts of John McCain's "straight talk." Here is YouTube video of some straight talk the campaign of the Arizonan (that is where most of his homes are) is reluctant to publicize. Thanks go to smitheus of dailykos, who credited the site's blogger paulVA . He writes that he was at this April, 2006 union conference and apparently the video was only recently made available.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=x_jMmiiWsdQ&NR=1)

Here is the transcript of the remarks:

John McCain: "I don't think I need to tell you that there are jobs that Americans will not do. I don't think I have to tell you that there are ... the backbone of our economy...
Audience members: "Pay them the right wages."
John McCain: "You know I've heard that statement before. Now, my friends, I'll offer anybody here fifty dollars an hour if you'll go pick lettuce in Yuma this season and pick for the whole season. So, ok, sign up! Ok, when you sign up, you sign up, and you'll be there for the whole season, the whole season, ok, not just one day. Because you can't do it, my friend."

Though field hands don't work a 9 to 5 schedule, five days a week, 50 weeks a year, we'll use those numbers to add some perspective. Forty hours a week at fifty dollars an hour would be two thousand dollars a week. Figure in the fifty weeks a year and you make $100,000 a year, paltry to a man married to someone worth nearly $100 million as chairwoman and heiress to a beer distributorship, but awfully good for most of us.

And lest we forget: this contempt for the American worker is coming from a fellow who believes that $5,000,000 barely qualifies an individual as "rich," an advocate of a guest worker program, and one of the two primary Senate sponsors of "comprehensive immigration reform."

Saint McCain

The Sunday, 8/17/08 edition of CNN's Reliable Sources started with a fairly lengthy segment speculating on the sex life of a former Presidential and Vice-Presidential candidate from North Carolina. This makes even more ironic, and loathsome, comments made on the next segment- about the presidential forum hosted by Reverend Rick Warren the previous evening at his megachurch in California- about a current Presidential candidate from Arizona. Here is the relevant part of the transcript:

PASTOR RICK WARREN, SR. PASTOR, SADDLEBACK CHURCH: What would be, looking over your life -- everybody's got weaknesses, nobody is perfect -- would be the greatest moral failure in your life? SEN. BARACK OBAMA (D-IL), PRESIDENTIAL CANDIDATE: What I trace this to is a certain selfishness on my part. I was so obsessed with me and, you know, the reasons that I might be dissatisfied, that I couldn't focus on other people. SEN. JOHN McCain (R-AZ), PRESIDENTIAL CANDIDATE: My greatest moral failing -- and I have been a very imperfect person -- is the failure of my first marriage....

MASON: I don't know. I mean, I think McCain really did something extraordinary the way he answered that question, Howie. He addressed an issue that the campaign has been having a hard time figuring out how to deal with. They've wanted to confront it, it's out there on the Internet, it's something that Democrats are trying to use against McCain. So he put it out there, he acknowledged it. And he sort of inoculated himself against it. I think that's really going to help him. ...

KURTZ: Right. McCain has acknowledged that he was not faithful in his first marriage, but not necessarily before a national television audience.

Howie Kurtz is right! John McCain has acknowledged that he was not faithful in his first marriage, though not before a national television audience. And he still hasn't. The video played by CNN has the Senator saying "My greatest failing- and I have been a very imperfect person- is the failure of my first marriage."

"The failure of my first marriage." The cause of course, McCain did not acknowledge on this telecast, which would suggest that Julie Mason was merely awe-struck when she referred to "something extraordinary the way he answered that question," which the campaign is bravely "trying to confront" which the evil (unnamed) Democrats are "trying to use against McCain."

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I think McCain's behavior during his first marriage is reason 101 of 100 reasons to vote against him. But in a program in which a former presidential candidate (who has admitted his affair) is excoriated, it seems odd to congratulate a current presidential candidate- who has never admitted living nine months with first wife Carol Shepp while dating Cindy Hensley- for acknowledging a failed marriage which is on the record and undeniable.

Keep This Man Away From The Web!

It's one thing to be proud of one's wife, but not in the manner of offering her up for a beauty pageant (video is of the bikini competition), as John McCain did at the Miss Buffalo Chip Pageant. And so it was that at the annual motorcyle rally in Sturgis, South Dakota John McCain read from a prepared script:

I was looking at the Sturgis schedule, and noticed that you had a beauty pageant, so I encouraged Cindy to compete. I told her [that] with a little luck, she could be the only woman to serve as both the First Lady and Miss Buffalo Chip.

Jim Caples at espn.com paints a provocative picture of the pageant:

Buffalo Chip has a reputation for that sort of thing. It holds a Miss Buffalo Chip contest every night, which is essentially a topless beauty pageant. And occasionally bottomless, too. During a drenching rain Wednesday night, the contest broke up into smaller groups and one woman wound up dancing naked on a bar top. Her boyfriend/husband saw her and angrily dragged her away as she struggled to put her pants back on and muttered something about how, "It's only this one week a year."

There is much consternation in liberal blogs that John McCain has little familiarity with the Internet. There should not be.

Mrs. John McCain To Media: Drop Dead

What do the Kerrys, Clintons, and Obamas have in common? The Clintons, who file jointly, released to the public their tax returns for tax year 2007, as did the Obamas, who also file jointly. Teresa Heinz Kerry, who filed separately from husband John, released her returns for tax year 2003.

Cindy McCain is chairwoman of, and heir to, the family-owned Hensley & Co., the nation's third largest Anheuser-Busch distributor, and distributor of other brands of beer. She has not made her tax returns public and when asked in April if whe would release her returns if husband John becomes President, replied "no." On Thursday's "Today" on NBC, Mrs. McCain stated "You know, my husband and I have been married 28 years and we have filed separate tax returns for 28 years. This is a privacy issue. My husband is the candidate." (Senator McCain's federal tax return for 2007 indicated income of $405,409 and $84,460 in taxes paid.)

As heiress to her late father, Cindy is believed to own a majority of Hensley and therefore is worth at least $100 million. Further, as cbsnews.com has reported, Mrs. McCain: 1) may share with John possessions she didn't inherit; b) owns with her husband a condominium , assessed at $847,800 in Arlington, Virginia; c) alone or with her children, owns also Anheuser-Busch stock, two condominums along the California coast worth a total of at least $3 million and Arizona investments in rental medical offices and a parking lot; d)has property worth nearly $1.8 million near Sedona, Arizona, which includes a two-story cabin (where her husband rencently held a barbecue for reporters) and 15 acres owned by her family's trust; e) a real estate partnership in her name.

Campaign spokeswoman Jill Hazelbaker assures us "Senator McCain very rarely, if ever, drinks alcohol," a personal rectitude that may conflict with his political interests:

Hensley executives are among the Arizona senator's top career givers. The Anheuser-Busch PAC has given McCain's campaigns at least $19,500 over the years. McCain's campaign fundraisers include Robert Delgado, Hensley's president and chief executive officer; Andrew McCain, the company's chief financial officer and John McCain's stepson from his first marriage, to Carol Shepp; and August Busch III, chairman of Anheuser-Busch's executive committee. Anheuser-Busch in 2006 gave $25,000to the International Republican Institute, a pro-democracy group chaired by McCain.

McCain's campaign still taps Hensley assets: His presidential campaign paid at least $227,000 last year to a limited liability company in which his wife and children are invested, King Aviation, for use of its private jet, according to campaign finance reports.

If we are lucky, the mainstream media will pursue this story to determine whether Cindy McCain (or her husband) has something to hide, or whether it is a simple matter of contempt for the American people, an elitist attitude by a member of the corporate elite married to an elitist Senator. Or instead the media will ignore the story in its self-anointed role as apologist for John McCain.