What's That Whining Sound Coming From Under "The Straight Talk Express"?

The Geezer made E.T. walk the plank and he's gone, thank God, he's gone. Nothing is too good for the man who gave us Enron, the Government Pension Offset (that rips off ⅔ of my Social Security monthly check), and the deregulation of mortgage lenders. May E.T.'s heartlight actually be acid reflux to the end of his miserable days. Goodbye E.T., don't let the door hit you in the ass on the way out. If this is (fair & balanced) political bitterness, so be it.

[x NY Fishwrap]
McCain Co-Chairman, Under Fire, Steps Aside
By Larry Rohter

Former Senator Phil Gramm resigned late Friday as a co-chairman of Senator John McCain’s presidential campaign, capping a day filled with controversy for Mr. McCain, the presumed Republican nominee.

“It is clear to me that Democrats want to attack me rather than debate Senator McCain on important economic issues facing the country,” Mr. Gramm said in a statement issued by the campaign. “That kind of distraction hurts not only Senator McCain’s ability to present concrete programs to deal with the country’s problems, it hurts the country.”

Mr. Gramm, a multimillionaire banker, has been under fire since last week, when he dismissed concerns about the troubled economy by referring to “a mental recession.” He also said the United States had become “a nation of whiners,” a remark providing fodder for Democrats to portray Republicans as out of touch with the concerns of ordinary Americans.

Since the start of his campaign, but particularly since the onset of the most recent economic turmoil, Mr. McCain has been struggling to convince voters of his ability to manage the economy, an area he has acknowledged in the past as a weakness. Mr. Gramm, in addition to being a close friend, helped design his economic program and, until last week’s gaffe, was being mentioned as a possible treasury secretary in a McCain administration.

Democrats quickly criticized Mr. Gramm’s blaming them Friday for his resignation. “The question for John McCain isn’t whether Phil Gramm will continue as chairman of his campaign, but whether he will continue to keep the economic plan that Gramm authored and that represents a continuation of the polices that have failed American families for the last eight years,” said Hari Sevugan, a spokesman for the campaign of Senator Barack Obama.

The Gramm resignation followed a series of sharp exchanges between the two parties about Mr. Obama’s long-anticipated trip abroad, including expected stops in Iraq and Afghanistan. In remarks in Michigan and in an advertisement made public Friday, Mr. McCain accused Mr. Obama of neglecting his responsibilities and suggested that he was undermining the war effort.

When initially asked Thursday about Mr. Obama’s trip, Mr. McCain described it as long overdue but also welcome. But he began almost immediately to step up his criticism, a process that continued Friday, when he took part in a town-hall-style meeting at the General Motors Technical Center in suburban Detroit.

The session was intended to be about energy independence and an electric-powered car that General Motors is developing. But when Mr. McCain’s positions on the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, and the possibility of conflict with Iran, were questioned, he responded by attacking Mr. Obama and seeking to justify his support for the Iraq war, which Mr. Obama says was unnecessary and fought on false pretenses.

“Every intelligence agency in the world believed Saddam Hussein had weapons of mass destruction,” Mr. McCain replied, adding that the Hussein government had also violated human rights. He then quickly shifted to the need to persevere, saying he expected attacks by Al Qaeda in Iraq “so they can erode support for the al-Maliki government” during the American election campaign.

“We will come home with honor and victory, and it will be dictated by facts on the ground,” he continued. “We have succeeded, and I am confident we will win victory, and that is all contingent on our commitment to making sure we withdraw according to conditions on the ground.”

In a speech at a fund-raising luncheon in Detroit, Mr. McCain also implicitly criticized Mr. Obama in suggesting that his trip to Iraq — the schedule for which remains undisclosed, partly for security reasons — might be at hand.

“I am sure,” Mr. McCain added, “that Senator Obama is going to arrive in Baghdad in a much, much safer and secure environment than the one that he would have encountered before we started the surge.”

The McCain campaign also infuriated the Obama camp with the new advertisement, which accused Mr. Obama of “voting against funding our troops” and said he was abandoning his original positions on the war “to help himself become president.”

Bill Burton, a spokesman for Mr. Obama, described the ad as “patently misleading,” and campaign officials issued a phrase-by-phrase rebuttal.

Those salvos were preceded by an interview, published Friday in The Kansas City Star, in which Mr. McCain suggested that Mr. Obama might be a socialist. At a campaign event in Kansas City on Thursday, Mr. McCain accused Mr. Obama of having the “most extreme” voting record in the Senate. When The Star asked about the comment, he said Mr. Obama had taken positions “more to the left than the announced socialist in the U.S. Senate, Bernie Sanders of Vermont.”

The reporter then asked Mr. McCain if he thought Mr. Obama himself was a socialist. “I don’t know,” Mr. McCain answered. “All I know is his voting record, and that’s what people usually judge their elected representatives by.”

[Lawrence (Larry) Rohter (pronounced roy-ter) is a 1971 graduate of the Georgetown University School of Foreign Service. He studied politics and modern Chinese history at the Columbia University School of International and Public Affairs and East Asian Institute. Rohter covered Latin America for more than 25 years, serving as Mexico City bureau chief for the Times as well as Newsweek's Brazil correspondent and Latin America bureau chief. Rohter currently reports on national politics for The Times.]

Copyright © 2008 The New York Times Company

Get an RSS (Really Simple Syndication) Reader at no cost from Google. Another free Reader is available at RSS Reader.