After a short vacation, BernieHund returns to some real issues on the campaign trail.  Penelope has escaped Saturday Night Live and has showed up on the campaign trail again.  This time, Penny, twisting her hair and her torso is mumbling about the number of houses each candidate owns.  “You have one ‘frickin’ house and I have four that I live in and nine, maybe ten.  I have more houses than anyone else in the world.”

Well, the “frickin’ mansion” refers to is Barack Obama’s house that the McCain campaign is quick to point out has been linked to convicted felon, Tony Rezko.  That’s an old story and now has little impact on most of us and little substance to back it up.

On the other side of the trail, the Obama campaign, tired of being called elitist, has pointed out that John McCain and family own nine houses.  So, does that make John and Cindy the winner of the elitist contest?

Not according to McCain spokesman Brian Rogers who referred to Barack Obama’s home. 

“It’s a frickin’ mansion. He doesn’t tell people that. You have a mansion you bought in a shady deal with a convicted felon.”

No longer news, the Rezko connection and the “frickin’ mansion” are old news, history.

In an effort to offset the impact the nine or so houses owned by Penelope McCain…. ah, Cindy McCain and John Boy… have had on the “elitist” strategy, Rogers tried to minimize the number.

“The reality is they have some investment properties and stuff. It’s not as if he lives in ten houses. That’s just not the case,” Rogers said. “The reality is they have four that actually could be considered houses they could use.” [emphasis added]

Oh, gosh darn it!  The McCain’s aren’t elitist!  They only have four houses they live in.  Sad, isn’t it?  And to think he would understand the foreclosure issue.

But, Rogers added

“This is a guy who lived in one house for five and a half years — in prison,” referring to the prisoner of war camp that McCain was in during the Vietnam War.

Let’s play the sympathy card for the hero again.  We all are well aware of McCain’s service to the country and the fact that he got shot down over Nam.  Enough already. 

And to finish up, Rogers made his last stab at the elitist Obama by saying,

“In terms of who’s an elitist, I think people have made a judgment that John McCain is not an arugula-eating, pointy headed professor-type based on his life story.”

Well, it’s getting down and dirty… and Silly Season is in full swing. 

But, Rogers last comment about the elitist “pointy headed professor-type” brings me to this point.  Would we prefer a President who is an intellectual or one that got into the Naval Academy because his father was an admiral and then graduated fifth from the bottom of the class?  Someone needs to tell Rogers that we have had enough dumb Presidents.  If education makes someone an elitist, well, let’s all vote for the elitist.  At least he has a brain!

And, when are we going to get over the arugula thing?  It’s just frickin’ lettuce.
 

The “Celeb” ad from McCain and the chide about the $520.00 shoes McCain wears from the Obama campaign have brought me to the point of nausea.  There are issues that are far more important than what kind of shoes John McCain wears, or if Barack Obama likes arugula.  Quite frankly, none of us are going to walk a mile in McCain’s $520.00 shoes and none of us are going to sit down to soup and salad with Obama.  So, please tell me why the campaigns think we really care about those little tidbits.  If the economy had not been flushed down the toilet, if we, the citizens, could afford to pay the high price of gas and buy every item on our grocery lists, if all our sons and daughters were safely at home instead of prosecuting wars in Iraq and Afghanistan maybe we would have the time and inclination to care about the eating habits of one candidate and the designer shoes of the other.

It’s time to get back to the real issues, please.  Has anyone noticed that Exxon had another record profit quarter?

Record earnings for the world’s largest publicly traded oil company have become almost as predictable as the surge of gasoline prices at the pump in recent years, and for the second quarter income rose 14 percent, to $11.68 billion.

It was the highest quarterly profit ever for any American company, as Exxon made nearly $90,000 a minute.

That’s just one issue.  I’m not against profit.  But, as Americans are paying record gas prices at the pump, it seems a little odd that Exxon is also earning record profits on Wall Street.

So, energy is just one issue.  There are others.  But, so far this week we have heard about one candidate’s favorite dining experience and the other’s favorite Italian shoes. 

Both candidates have shown a total disrespect for the intelligence of the American voters and a lack of understanding of the concerns and issues before the people.  If neither have anything more important to say that what has been reported this week, perhaps both should suspend their campaigns and donate their “campaign chests” to the American people.  Let us eat arugula and buy a pair of shoes.

For the high-minded John McCain, who has always claimed to put principle above self-interest, his real character may be beginning to show.  Unfortunately, we have seen the down and dirty of the right in many recent elections.  Given that McCain cannot seem to get a leg up on Barack Obama on the issues, he has decided to show his other side, the side that plays to win by any means necessary, including unwarranted personal attacks.  We haven’t even endured the party conventions and it seems we have already seen the limbo dance begin.  McCain, how low can (and will) you go?  Apparently, John McCain believes the end will justify the means.  And, the bar is lowered.

The television ad from the McCain campaign insinuating that Barack Obama is single-handedly repsonsible for the rise in gas prices is so far fetched that only those who still read the Brothers Grimm to their children at bedtime could appreciate it. 

The negative ad is so far fetched that the ultra-conservative right will be hard pressed to take it seriously.  It is almost laughable.  But, if it was intended as a dig at Obama it fell short of its mission. 

Feeling the need to draw attention to his campaign, since it is apparent to all that McCain has nothing of substance to say on the issues in light of recent events, McCain has now attacked Obama’s character.  This latest attack followed the Bush administration’s time horizon theme for Iraq.  Senator McCain seemed to have been left out in the cold on that one, as the Bush administration policy is catching up with Obama’s long time position on withdrawing troops from Iraq.  And, McCain is scrambling to catch up, saying that 16 months would be okay with him.  Of course, McCain says his withdrawal is conditioned by events on the ground.  And, didn’t Obama say that his plan was flexible based on ground events, although not nearly as flexible as the 100 years McCain once offered?

At the same time Obama has suggested two brigades be sent to Afghanistan as soon as possible.  Not to be outdone, but a little later, McCain suggested three.  McCain’s policy position seems to be catching up with Obama’s as well.

Then, Senator McCain did what he said he wouldn’t do.  He attacked Barack Obama personally.

“It seems to me that Obama would rather lose a war in order to win a political campaign,” McCain said Tuesday in New Hampshire, a line he’s been using regularly since.

That was low, even according to some Republicans.  But, that’s what the right does when it is losing ground.  We’ve seen it before and we will see it for the next three and a half months.  It’s nice to know this is the high ground McCain and his campaign planned to take.  They seem to be sticking to the plan.

Talk about a week that should not have happened to anyone, much less the presumptive Republican nominee for President of the United States.  This was it for John McCain.  If he gained any votes this week, they have to be sympathy votes.  Hell, I’m one of those old white women who isn’t supposed to vote for Barack Obama, but if I had ever entertained the notion of casting a vote for John McCain (and I haven’t), that idea would have evaporated this week.

McCain started his week off visiting the the GOP’s daddy, George 41.  The picture of McCain and Papa Bush getting out of 41’s golf cart at the Bush compound in Kennebunkport, Maine made me think of… and forgive me for this one… the old men and the sea.  Nothing against 41… he was better than 43… but McCain needs to surround himself with young people occasionally.  It’s a shame when we begin to feel that we need to check the obits for political news before we look at the rest of the New York Times. 

By sharp contrast, the Change We Can Believe In machine pulled off an energetic week of fast moving appearances, straight talking and straight walking through the Middle East to Europe.

Perhaps, the Republican National Committee or John McCain’s campaign has given up.  That’s the only reason they could have designed his weekly schedule to look like a parody of Obama’s trip.  I swear, it is too bad for all of us that SNL is in reruns for the summer.  They have missed some great material.

By Wednesday McCain was shopping with a mother and her two children and giving an interview beside the dairy case in the market.  The very idea of that makes me think of those old ads with the man in the plaid jacket hyping mattresses in B-grade television commercials.  Of course, by McCain’s own admission all the A-grade journalists were jockeying for seats on Obama’s plane.  I’m not knocking the press that remained in the States.  However, it seems that McCain considers them less than optimal, passing out ID’s that were labeled “JV.”

When asked about Obama’s speech in Berlin, McCain expressed an interest in speaking before a large crowd in Europe, but only as President of the United States.  Oh, please.  That is assuming a lot.  First, McCain would have to be elected President.  (Tell me that isn’t going to happen!)  Then, he would have to learn to speak before a crowd, something that has eluded him to date, even with three teleprompters running simultaneously at eye level and directly in front of him.  Maybe it isn’t speaking that trips him up.  It could be reading.  Let’s assume that McCain could be elected, could learn to speak or read well enough to make it sound like a real speech.  Now for the real question.  Where are 200,000 people willing to stand in the street and listen?

That brings us to the New York Times rejecting his essay this week.  Although McCain has been published in the NYT on several occasions, when he needed to respond to Barack Obama’s Op-Ed piece from the previous week he could come up with nothing new.  And, let’s face it, to put it bluntly, the New York Times is a “news” paper, not a history text.  Nothing new.  Nothing published.

As Obama prepared to walk onto the platform to deliver his Berlin speech,

 Mr. McCain had a bratwurst lunch with the owner of a car dealership and other local business people at a German restaurant in Columbus.

Oh, by the way

The campaign’s choice of restaurant was consistent with the Republican National Committee’s decision to run anti-Obama advertisements in Berlin, N.H.; Berlin, Wis.; and Berlin, Pa.

I told you this was SNL material.  Not enough?  As Barack Obama heads to Paris to meet with President Sarcozy, John McCain’s campaign countinues the parody.

… at an appearance with Lance Armstrong, the cyclist and cancer survivor, on Thursday night, … Mr. McCain could not resist a swipe at the throngs of journalists accompanying Mr. Obama. “My opponent, of course, is traveling in Europe, and tomorrow his tour takes him to France,” Mr. McCain said with Mr. Armstrong at the Columbus event, according to his prepared remarks. “In a scene Lance would recognize, a throng of adoring fans awaits Senator Obama in Paris — and that’s just the American press.”

Get it?  Obama heads to Paris on his tour and McCain pulls out the man known for the “Tour de France,” Lance Armstrong.  Well, McCain had said in an interview earlier in the week that he had something planned for Thursday evening.  And, Lance Armstrong was it!  Whew!  Can’t stand too many more of these big surprises.  (No disrespect intended for any cancer patient or cancer survivor.)  But, the timing for the appearance couldn’t have been better timed.

McCain was supposed to talk about the economy this week, and energy and healthcare.  But, all the news blips have been McCain talking about Obama’s trip, all too often with a bitter tone and sharp tongue that may be telling us more about John McCain’s attitude and temperament than he wishes us to see.  Whatever happened to grace under fire?

For weeks McCain has been insisting that Obama go to Iraq and Afghanistan before discussing foreign policy.  Obama took up the challenge and has rubbed McCain’s face in it.  But, McCain didn’t need Obama to make him look less than the expert on foreign policy.  McCain did that for himself.

Mr. McCain repeated a mistake by referring to Czechoslovakia, a nation that has not existed since 1993, and got into a tangle after an interview with CBS News over whether he was historically correct in saying that the troop escalation began before the Anbar Awakening movement in which Sunnis joined forces with American troops to fight the insurgency in Iraq.

Let’s not forget that foreign policy is McCain’s strong suit.  Now, it appears that Obama is trumping him on that, too.  Maybe McCain should have stuck to the economy… ah, but he has admitted that he doesn’t know much about that, and once said that he had read Wealth of Nations as his economic study guide.  Nothing wrong with that book, but why bother?  The economic woes we are experiencing are mostly psychological anyway.

And, what about all that economic talk McCain was going to do this week?  Well, according to one of his advisers, Mark Salter

“I think he’s getting his message out — go look at some of the local press and the local TV packages,” Mr. Salter said. “It’s John McCain on energy and the economy.”

Well, yeah… but… let’s just look!

(On Thursday in Pennsylvania, The Times Leader in Wilkes-Barre prominently featured Mr. McCain’s comments in the state on Social Security; The Morning Call in Allentown covered Mr. McCain’s stop at the grocery store, including his remarks that $4-a-gallon milk was putting a strain on American families.)

According to the NYT

On Friday, Mr. McCain is to move beyond domestic milk prices and meet with the Dalai Lamain Aspen, Colo. — Mr. McCain called the Tibetan spiritual leader “a transcendent national role model” — and then he will head home for a weekend at his Arizona retreat near Sedona.

I know McCain must be worn out after this week.  He needs a weekend at the Arizona retreat.  He probably should have stayed at home this week.  The rest of us certainly need a break from him.  Besides, we need our rest before we meet Obama at the airport when he returns home.