AIG executives went on luxurious retreat one week after receiving $85 billion bailout.
AIG executives went on luxurious retreat one week after receiving $85 billion bailout.
Today, the House Oversight Committee discovered that, just one week after the federal government bailed out insurance giant AIG, company executives went on a retreat to a luxury resort. The executives spent nearly $500,000 on manicures, facials, pedicures, and massages, among other things. During a hearing today, Rep. Elijah Cummings (D-MD) asked, “Have you heard of anything more outrageous?”:
CUMMINGS: Let me describe for some of you the charges that the shareholders, taxpayers, had to pay. AIG spent $200,000 dollars for hotel rooms. Almost $150,000 for catered banquets. AIG spent $23,000 at the hotel spa and another $1,400 at the salon. They were getting manicures, facials, pedicures and massages while American people were footing the bill. And they spent another $10,000 dollars for I don’t know what this is, leisure dining. Bars?
Watch it:
The Gavel has more details of the total bill, including a copy of the invoice documenting AIG’s luxurious retreat.
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Top McCain Aide: ‘If We Keep Talking About The Economic Crisis, We’re Going To Lose’
Top McCain Aide: ‘If We Keep Talking About The Economic Crisis, We’re Going To Lose’
Last month, when two of Wall Street’s major financial institutions collapsed, Sen. John McCain (R-AZ) declared that he “still” believes that “the fundamentals of the economy are strong.” Since then, McCain’s handling of the crisis has at times appeared incoherent — such as flip-flopping on his support of regulation and claiming he would have fired chairman of the SEC, which the president doesn’t have the constitutional authority to do.
As a result, the McCain campaign has issued a new strategy: just don’t talk about the economy and instead attack Sen. Barack Obama’s (D-IL) character — as a top McCain aide explained to the New York Daily News:
“It’s a dangerous road, but we have no choice,” a top McCain strategist told the Daily News. “If we keep talking about the economic crisis, we’re going to lose.”
Indeed, on Saturday, the Washington Post quoted another top McCain adviser acknowledging that McCain needs to shift away from the economy:
“We are looking for a very aggressive last 30 days,” said Greg Strimple, one of McCain’s top advisers. “We are looking forward to turning a page on this financial crisis and getting back to discussing Mr. Obama’s aggressively liberal record and how he will be too risky for Americans.”
Even McCain’s top surrogate Sen. Joe Lieberman (I-CT) last week noted that talking about the economy is bad for McCain, saying that passing the bailout package “will be good for John McCain” because “it will get people back to comparing the two candidates free of a sense of crisis that may make them want to turn against Republicans.”
Aside from his disparate and muddled handling of the financial crisis in the past few weeks, perhaps there is another reason McCain wants to shift the conversation away from the economy: his policies mirror those of the unpopular President Bush. As Sen. Sherrod Brown (D-OH) noted yesterday on ABC’s This Week, McCain “wants to continue the policies we’ve seen in the last eight years.”
In short, at a time when the economy is the number one issue facing voters, McCain’s message to voters is: Stop whining and start focusing on attacking Obama.
Barnes: ‘I don’t care about mental health parity.’
Barnes: ‘I don’t care about mental health parity.’
Included in the massive $700 billion bailout bill Congress passed and President Bush signed today is a bipartisan mental health parity provision that gives employees the same treatment rights for mental illness as for other physical ailments. “Congress has given hope to the millions of Americans and their families who live with mental illness,” said Sen. Chris Dodd (D-CT). But last night on Fox News, the Weekly Standard’s Fred Barnes coldly dismissed the measure, saying “it doesn’t belong” in the bill:
BARNES: I don’t care about the mental health parity, and some of the other things that don’t belong in there. On the other hand, we have a crisis, and we need to do something.
Watch it:
More details on the Mental Health Parity law here.
McCain’s confession: ‘I love to bash the media all the time.’
McCain’s confession: ‘I love to bash the media all the time.’
On Wednesday, Sen. John McCain (R-AZ) said that he “do[es] not complain about the media” even though he and his presidential campaign have been doing nothing but complaining about and attacking the media in recent weeks. Yet one day later, during a town hall meeting yesterday in Denver, McCain confessed that not only does he attack the media, but he enjoys it:
MCCAIN: I do believe that there are many occasions where the nature of the media is to exaggerate things and perhaps not be as accurate as we would like them to be. […] I love to bash the media all the time.
Watch it:
Now that McCain has let the truth out, perhaps reporters shouldn’t be expecting an invitation to the next McCain family barbecue.
McCain: ‘I Do Not Complain About The Media’
McCain: ‘I Do Not Complain About The Media’
Yesterday during an interview with Fox News’s Carl Cameron, Sen. John McCain (R-AZ) astonishingly claimed that he has not had any complaints with the way the media is treating him or his campaign:
MCCAIN: I do not comment on the media treatment of me or Sarah. Complaining about something we are doing voluntarily that we want to do and get done I think would just not be productive. […] But I do not complain about the media and I will not complain because that’s not appropriate for me to do so and frankly it doesn’t do me any good if I did.
Watch it (beginning at 1:15):
Anyone paying any attention to anything in recent weeks knows that this claim is beyond absurd. In fact, McCain himself just recently railed against “gotcha journalism” when CBS News’s Katie Couric asked about Sarah Palin’s recent claim that the U.S. should “launch cross-border attacks from Afghanistan into Pakistan to, quote, ‘stop the terrorists from coming any further in‘” — a position that McCain opposes and Sen. Barack Obama (D-IL) supports.
The McCain campaign has been waging a well-known and well-documented war against the media for what they consider to be biased coverage. Some of the battles:
– McCain adviser Nancy Pfotenhauer blasted a recent interview Couric conducted with Palin as “a series of trapdoor questions.”
– Top adviser Steve Schmidt accused the media of being “on a mission to destroy” Palin by displaying “a level of viciousness and and scurrilousness” in pursuing questions about her personal life.
– Schmidt attacked a New York Times article about how Palin was vetted before becoming the Republican vice presidential nominee as “a complete work of fiction.”
– Schmidt said of the Times: “This is an organization that is completely, totally 150 percent in the tank for the Democratic candidate. It is an organization that has made a decision to cast aside it’s journalistic integrity to advocate for the defeat of John McCain.”
– During her speech at the Republican National Convention, Palin hit the media, saying “if you’re not a member in good standing of the Washington elite, then some in the media consider a candidate unqualified for that reason alone.”
– McCain himself recently canceled an interview with Larry King because a CNN reporter conducted a challenging interview with campaign spokesman Tucker Bounds.
– The McCain campaign demanded that the media treat Palin with “deference.”
Also, just today, McCain complained that PBS’s Gwen Ifill would be moderating today’s Vice Presidential debate because she is writing a book that is perceived as favorable to Obama.
McCain now wishes ‘they hadn’t picked’ Gwen Ifill to moderate VP debate.
McCain now wishes ‘they hadn’t picked’ Gwen Ifill to moderate VP debate.
Yesterday, Sen. John McCain (R-AZ) said that he has “confidence that Gwen Ifill will do a professional job” moderating the Vice Presidential debate despite the fact that she is writing a book called “The Breakthrough: Politics and Race in the Age of Obama.” “I think she will do a totally objective job,” McCain said. Yet this morning on Fox News, McCain changed his tune:
MCCAIN: Listen, frankly I wish they hadn’t picked a moderator that isn’t writing a book favorable to Barack Obama, I mean let’s face it. […] Frankly I would imagine that there’s other people out there who aren’t writing a book that’s going to be on inauguration day favorable to Senator Obama but that’s life.
Fox’s Gretchen Carlson even reminded McCain that he had previously said, “[S]he’ll be fair.” But now McCain says, “I have to have confidence” in Ifill, adding, “Look life isn’t fair.” Watch it:
McCain: ‘I Always Aspire To Be A Dictator’
McCain: ‘I Always Aspire To Be A Dictator’
Discussing the Wall Street bailout yesterday during an interview with the Des Moines Register editorial board, Sen. John McCain (R-AZ) said the failure of Congress to act is “just not acceptable.” Then — presumably making an attempt at humor — McCain added that, if only he were a dictator, then the bill would be just right:
MCCAIN: I just want to make a comment about the obvious issue and that is the failure of Congress to act yesterday. Its just not acceptable. […] This is just a not acceptable situation. I’m not saying this is the perfect answer. If I were dictator, which I always aspire to be, I would write it a little bit differently.
Watch it:
McCain also complained that “people can’t reach across the aisle, you know we give poison speeches” — a seeming reference to House Speaker Nancy Pelosi’s (D-CA) so-called “partisan” floor speech on Monday that House Republicans cited for the bailout bill’s failure. Many of his House GOP colleagues, however, have since walked away from blaming Pelosi’s speech.
But less than one minute later, McCain said, “[L]et’s not point the finger of blame for a while,” despite the fact that he himself blamed Sen. Barack Obama (D-IL) for the bill’s failure.
But McCain isn’t the first U.S. government official to dream of dictatorship. President Bush has said on at least two occasions that a dictatorship “would be a heck of a lot easier.”
Schmidt criticizes Obama for refusing to applaud ‘victory’ in Iraq.
Schmidt criticizes Obama for refusing to applaud ‘victory’ in Iraq.
Yesterday on NBC’s Meet the Press, Sen. Barack Obama’s (D-IL) chief strategist David Axelrod noted that during Friday’s presidential debate, Sen. John McCain (R-AZ) “never once mentioned the middle class.” In response, McCain’s top adviser Steve Schmidt noted that Obama never said “victory” regarding the “wars this country’s fighting.” Later, host Tom Brokaw noted that Gen. David Petraeus — whom McCain has called “one of the great military leaders in American history” — also refuses to use the word “victory” regarding Iraq. Schmidt then walked back his original comment slightly, saying the United States is “on the edge of victory.” Watch it:
Also during the segment, Schmidt falsely claimed that McCain “called for the firing of Don Rumsfeld.”
Transcript: Read the rest of this entry »
McCain Blames Earmarks For The Current Financial ‘Difficulties’
McCain Blames Earmarks For The Current Financial ‘Difficulties’
When talking about the economy, Sen. John McCain (R-AZ) regularly resorts to talking about one of his favorite subjects: pork barrel spending projects known as earmarks. “The first big-spending pork-barrel earmark bill that comes across my desk, I will veto it. I will make them famous, and you will know their names,” McCain constantly says.
During an interview with CBS’s Katie Couric yesterday, McCain said that the current financial crisis “is of the utmost seriousness and a crisis of enormous proportions.” But sticking to his mantra, McCain strangely cited earmarks as “one of the major reasons why we’re having difficulties”:
McCAIN: [W]e’ve got to take tough decisions and one of them is government spending by the way. One of the major reasons why we’re having difficulties is we let spending get completely out of control — earmark and pork-barrel projects. Senator Obama asked for over $900 million in earmarks pork-barrel projects, that’s not part of the answer thats part of the problem.
Watch it (starting at 8:55):
But of course, earmarks have very little to do with the current financial crisis — one that is actually rooted in bad mortgages and crashing credit markets. But that doesn’t seem to stop McCain from thinking it does. In fact, this isn’t the first time McCain has blamed earmarks for seemingly unrelated calamities:
– Hurricane Katrina: “[McCain] places ’some of those responsibilities on the Congress of the United States, which funded pork barrel projects that were not only not needed and certainly not as important as some of the projects that were needed [in New Orleans]”
– Minnesota Bridge Collapse: “The bridge in Minneapolis didn’t collapse because there wasn’t enough money,” McCain told reporters while campaigning in Pennsylvania. “The bridge in Minneapolis collapsed because so much money was spent on wasteful, unnecessary pork-barrel projects.”
McCain was forced to walk back his comments on the Minnesota bridge after the state’s Republican Gov. Tim Pawlenty said “citizens should not jump to conclusions about the bridge collapse.”
McCain also likes to say that eliminating earmarks will balance the budget but, in fact, that would do little to balance the budget — let alone save the entire economy. But as McCain himself has said, “economics is not something I’ve understood as well as I should.”
Undocumented workers ‘will be linchpin’ in Hurricane Ike cleanup efforts.
Undocumented workers ‘will be linchpin’ in Hurricane Ike cleanup efforts.
The Houston Chronicle reports today that “Hurricane Ike’s destruction is sparking one of the largest rebuilding efforts the state has seen in decades but at the same time is highlighting a thorny facet of the region’s labor force: A lot of the recovery work will be done by illegal immigrants“:
Homeowners have already turned to day laborers — many of whom are undocumented — to help clear brush, tent roofs and repair other storm damage. Contractors have hired them to rebuild or restore businesses and the city