Make-believe Maverick, John McCain

Wow. I always thought he was better than this, but clearly John McCain is a different person altogether – a flip-flopper, a mysogenistic, womanising opportunist who will say whatever he thinks will push his cause (himself) forward the farthest. The article has many quotes from people who worked with him, trained with him, flew with him and were POWs with him. Even his friends were critical. Bad tempered, foul mouthed, self-serving were phrases that often came up in relation to him.

Sebastian Bourdais robbed by disgusting Ferrari Stewards idiocy

You have to be sorry for Frenchman Sebastian Bourdais, four-times winner of the US Champ Car series and latest victim of the flatulent FIA Stewards’ Ferrari favouritism at Japan’s marvellous Fujiyama circuit.

Bourdais was in a battle for position on the track with Ferrari’s Felipe Massa, who had seriously cocked up his race in Japan with one error after another. Bourdais did everything correctly, he was outside of the pitlane area, he was on the inside of the corner, and was next to the metal barrier on his right side when Massa drove up on his left, and proceeded to try to drive straight through Bourdais as if he didn’t see him as he aimed for the apex of the corner without any regard for the car which was already in that position.

Of course, Massa hit the side of the Toro Rosso and span, losing point scoring places as a result. As Massa slowly made some places up, the TV screen announced that the incident between him and Bourdais would be investigated “after the race.” Meaning when the TV cameras had gone and the potential for bad PR on the main evening news had dissipated and they could work out which penalty to apply to Massa without hurting his World Championship chances.

In the end, they decided to penalise the innocent man who was driven into. There must be some rule giving a more severe penalty to someone receiving their second stop-go penalty in the same race (he had already driven into the side of Hamilton on Lap 1) so they couldn’t give Massa a second drive-through penalty. Because he had finished in 8th, and the 9th placed man (and a few others) were all within a few seconds of him at the finish because of his most un-World Championlike driving the stewards couldn’t give him a penalty because that would mean taking away a single point from him. Never mind they’d already taken a race win away from Lewis Hamilton in Belgium when they last fiddled when Rome was burning. So, they had to blame someone for the accident, and that left Bourdais.

After all, he was clearly at fault because Massa span and Massa never spins! Cough, cough, don’t mention Silverstone or the first two races of 2008… Oh, and of course, Massa doesn’t make mistakes either – it’s not his fault he continually drives into other cars… after all, he is half blind.

Bourdais carried on to finish in a fine 6th, one place ahead of his team mate, Monza winner and latest wunderkind, Sebastian Vettel. But after the penalty, he was demoted to 10th place!

The politics of this are interesting. First of all, Bourdais is French, the only French driver in F1 at the moment, and the FIA offices are in Paris. Ferrari is Italian, and I think most mediterranaean types would not have complained much about Ferrari favouritism from the FIA stewards before, since it was always “Les Anglais, Les Rosbifs” who were being penalised previously. Oh, and Frenchman Jean Todt, erstwhile head of the Ferrari F1 team is rumoured to be being groomed to be the next FIA president after Max Mosley retires next year. Oh yes, and Bourdais has the audacity to have made his name in the US, where F1 has no glowing reputation to uphold to such an extent that they won’t even be going to Canada in 2009 – so they feel safe to treat Bourdais shabbily as they think there will be no come back.

Ferrari, the clowns of Singapore, are clearly continuing to disintegrate and the only question left is will the FIA follow the sinking ship down proclaiming to all and sundry that it was the iceberg’s fault all the while?

PS Spaniard Alonso won. In a French team. What should have been a great news story, is now just an also ran to yet another Ferrari fiddle. Poor Alonso. Poor Bourdais. Poor Formula One.

PPS Is Max Mosley’s man the financial link between Ferrari money and the FIA Stewards‘ Ferrari favouritism?

Just when the US needs everyone to pull together, Republican Partisanship prefers mud slinging

To anyone who’s been off-planet for the last year, the world is experiencing some turmoil at the moment. financial markets are in chaos, politicians are in panic. Houses, jobs, and savings are being lost. Just when people need to pull together, the failed and failing Republicans enter attack mode, slinging mud, spreading untruths, misinformation, and fear. They offer nothing positive.

McCain looks more and more desperate as he diverts from his previously credible persona into just another weak charactered Republican Attack Dog, looking like he is fearful of losing and greedy for nothing but power and perhaps willing to try fight dirty to ensure he gets it. In the process he is not only nailing his colours to the Bush mast, he is allowing his reputation to be tarnished by the same methods and people responsible for ruining that of President Bush.

I noticed this change just after he had trounced all the more right wing Republican nominees in the race to become the GOP candidate. He won not because he was like them, but because he was different to them. But as soon as the Republican conference was over, his strategy took on a turn for the worse: divisive, negative, aggressive, patronising, weak. Clearly, their money and influence got to him. Fear-mongering took over, as fear can do with weaker personalities.

Then there’s the McCain money scandal in the savings and loan business from the 1980s where his lack of sound judgement as one of the “Keating 5” was made official. Sarah Palin’s many gaffes and her character attacks on anyone who has been taught by or met a certain Illinois Professor over the last 21 years again point to his erratic judgement. He picked her, or at least agreed to have her as his running mate. I can’t help feeling he was manouevred into that one though. Still, he does have a weakness for a pretty face, doesn’t he?

Yet again McCain’s judgement came into question.

Then there’s this sudden morphing from decent guy into greedy millionaire so obsessed with making up for his past mistakes or disclosures in his time in the military that he is willing to sacrifice everything else for it, even at risk to the health of his country.

You no doubt remember his assertion in the First Presidential debate that in order to pay for the recently passed $700bn financial relief package he would cut spending on everything else. But not the military. That would be sacrosanct.

Well, sometimes leadership is not about keeping the things you love, it’s about giving some of them up.

Increasingly, it is clear that McCain and Palin are two one-track ponies: McCain = Military, Palin = Alaska. Isn’t the US a little bit more complex than that?

I’ll close with something less serious though……seen first on The Eclectic One.

Biden 51% – 36% Palin (Poll)

So who won? Well, certainly the moderator lost. Very lightweight performance from her. But the debate wasn’t about her. It was about Palin and Biden.

Sarah Palin did a lot beter than expected, but did she do well enough? I don’t think so. She’d been well coached, but mostly talked about energy. To my mind she showed that the McCain-Palin ticket is McCain (defence) Palin (energy). Full stop. Period. Neither of them seem to know anything about the economy, and as someone once said, “it’s the economy, stupid!”

On the other hand, Biden actually moved the Obama-Biden ticket forward. He advanced the message, he was positive, he got the policy message across. He looked Presidential, she did not. I could really see Biden replacing Obama, but if Palin replaced McCain I’d have to wear brown trousers. I mean Biden answered the questions, and well. He was warm, charming, friendly, effective, knowledgable, funny and even got in a nice joke about the Bridge to Nowhere. According to the CNN response ticker he got a higher vote from women voters than did Palin. Seems Palin is only good with men because she turns on the sex button which doesn’t work with women.

There were a lot of questions Governor Palin didn’t have an answer for. So, she either waffled on – and boy, can she talk, talk, talk (about nothing) – or she fell back on Alaskan oil. Meanwhile, Biden didn’t make any mistakes, he answered the questions, he won on Healthcare, Iraq, beating Al Qaeda, the economy, regulation of Wall Street, tying McCain to Bush and Cheney. He did a good job for his boss.

Palin did well for herself, but didn’t really add anything to McCain’s campaign message. At least she didn’t dry up this time, perhaps why 84% of watchers thought she did better than expected, and 64% thought Biden, who was expected to win anyway, did better than expected.

I’ve been trying to work out who “won” and so I’ve been trying to remember the main points each made. For the life of me, I can only think of one issue that Palin talked about really: energy from Alaska. Biden however got a load of stuff into my brain: he explained the healthcare plan of McCain succinctly and even when Palin said something about it, Biden’s previous words on the subject rang in my ears to point out how wrong she was; he explained the problem with the Iraq strategy of McCain and Bush, tying McCain not to Bush over this issue, but even more damagingly to Dick Cheney who he described as “the most dangerous Vice President”. The response group loved that. And he really nailed McCain to Bush’s economic mess.

At the end of the day, that’s what people vote on: do they feel better now or not? With Bush sponsored high oil prices, Bush sponsored foreign wars in the wrong places, and Bush sponsored deregulation of Wall Street, people are looking for something different, someone reliable. And John McCain, sorry, you and Palin aren’t it.

How patronising is David Davis?

Did you see the piece on The Tories by Martha Kearney on BBC’s This Week program? In it she did a mini piece with David Davis. What a patronising fop! He irritated the heck out of me, and that was before he even said anything. Well they do say actions speak louder than words…

Maybe Congressmen are so rich they don’t need a rescue package

A friend of mine who is into these things spent some time researching the wealth of America’s national politicians. The poorest was a multi-millionaire.

We all know that John McCain is so rich that he owns so many houses he actually didn’t know how many he had when asked. And these aren’t small houses either – after all he’s reputed to be worth $100 million. But maybe my friend’s findings might shock you.

Are they so rich they actually don’t mind if there is no credit in the system? They clearly don’t need to borrow any money. They may even have forgotten the kinds of things borrowed money can be used for. You know, buying a car when your old one finally breaks, tiding your small business through a bad patch or investing in better equipment for growth, allowing your kids to go to College, spreading out the ups and downs of uneven spending throughout the year, and so on.

I guess a Congressman pays cash for everything. Thing is, hardly anybody else in America or Britain does. America is so in love with debt that the whole country borrows more and more each year from predominantly Communist China and fundamentalist Saudi Arabia, home of all of the 911 bombers plus a few other places. The Republican Administration is just as bad, running a record budget deficit of mammoth proportions.

Why? Well, one suspects the NeoCon Bush government was more intent on looking after the financial interests of their millionaire friends than they were in keeping debt levels down. In fact, they welcomed rising consumer debt because this allowed consumers to continue living in a dreamworld where they were surrounded by goodies, gadgets and glitz at a time when their economy was in fact becoming weaker and weaker. This illusion of wealth is what is deflating right now. Assets we thought were worth a lot, are falling rapidly in value – because of the credit crunch, the inability to obtain credit to oil the wheels of the world economy.

Of course we want to punish these guys who earned millions as they enabled illusion to grow upon illusion. Of course it is wrong that people are paid $50 million a year for working no harder than a struggling single parent or large family breadwinner does.

But this rescue package is not designed to give those people more money, it’s designed to allow us to not lose anymore.

Those congressmen and women who voted against the package should be kicked out of office right now, because they are clearly too rich to empathise or care for ordinary people. They seem too stupid to work out the problem, too selfish to think of others before themselves, too greedy to think of giving up politics, and too gutless to do what’s right, rather than just what will get them elected.

Keep the ones that see sense, and throw out those who were against the bill. November’s election isn’t that far away…