Applesauce » How many houses does McCain own?

How many houses does McCain own?

August 21st, 2008 at 11:17am Pat Cunningham

Gee, I thought it was 10 or 11, but it’s only seven. Poor guy!

But he’s probably not too downhearted about it, because he doesn’t know for sure how many homes he owns. He’s got people who keep track of that stuff for him. Don’t you?

(Oh, Jeeves! Click on that arrow so we can watch the video, would you? I hope it’s not another commercial for that insufferable elitist Barack Obama.)

[kml_flashembed movie="http://www.youtube.com/v/vpmFd25tRqo" width="425" height="350" wmode="transparent" /]

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21 Comments Add your own

1. sawmpy | August 21st, 2008 at 12:28 pm

well and Obama thinks there are 57 states, so whats your point?
2. Optimistic1 | August 21st, 2008 at 12:46 pm

Barrack himself characterized his own million + dollar home purchase fiasco involving Tony Rezko “Boneheaded”. Does he really not see ads like this having a worse bite on the way back around for him? It may be different if Mr. Obama didn’t live in a multi-million dollar home himself, but he does. Obama was pretty fuzzy on the deatils of his own transaction if your selective memory will go there. McCain may be rich, but I haven’t seen any bad judgement as far as the details of purchases as of yet, have you?

Face it, any of these guys are a bit out of touch with reality. I know when my wife and I go to Hawaii, we typically stay in an 8 million dollar home. It is just the way of the “Common Man” isn’t it?
3. Pat Cunningham | August 21st, 2008 at 1:06 pm

Sawmpy: You’re about three months behind the curve on that “57 states” crap. It was a slip of the tongue as Obama was counting up the states and territories that held Democratic primaries and caucuses. Actually, the real number was 56. Even this guy, who says he’s no fan of Obama, understood the situation:
http://michael.coxfam.org/index.php/2008/05/25/barack-obamas-57-states/

Do you really think that an honors graduate of Harvard Law School doesn’t realize there’s only 50 states? Are you that obtuse? I could understand if you looked askance at the intelligence of guy who finished near the bottom of his class at Anapolis, but really….

Besides, we’re talking about a guy who doesn’t know how many freaking homes he owns. How weird is that?
4. Pat Cunningham | August 21st, 2008 at 1:14 pm

Optimistic1: You say you “haven’t seen any bad judgement [on McCain’s part] as far as the details of purchases as of yet.” But have you seen any bad judgment or falsehoods regarding his marriages? You might want to check this (which, by the way, will soon be a featured post here at Applesauce):
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ChIX-XHlZFw&eurl=http://www.jedreport.com/
5. Optimistic1 | August 21st, 2008 at 1:58 pm

Both are human and both have had bad judgement. On the real estate thing, I think Obama is asking for trouble and your diversion proves that to me.

I have issues with McCain and his first marriage. He did call it his largest mistake, Carol is supportive of his candidacy, and he has been married for 28 years to Cindy so I wouldn’t say he is a player. Clinton and others have proven cheating is fine, even in office and in those cases your side is amazingly understanding that it is a right wing attack (DNA and Perjury aside). Why the hang up on McCain?

Am I more qualified than you Pat as far as judgement goes because I have no divorces in my closet? Of course not.
6. Pat Cunningham | August 21st, 2008 at 2:36 pm

Obama’s “asking for trouble” on the real estate thing? That’s why I’ve come up with a diversion? Actually, the Obama people are riding this thing like a hobby horse. There are Obama surrogates doing events today about the house thing in 16 states. Read all about it:
http://www.dailykos.com/storyonly/2008/8/21/122444/424/748/571841
7. Jason C | August 21st, 2008 at 3:30 pm

Did everyone forget the Keating Five Savings and Loan scandal that involved the McCains? Not only did McCain have his own bonehead moment by having the private meeting with regulators on Keatings behalf, that got the other people in trouble, but Cindy was involved financially and their families all vacationed together a lot.

No, I think the ad is simply about McCain being old and feeble-minded.
8. Optimistic1 | August 21st, 2008 at 3:57 pm

You diverted on this blog, not them. I am saying it could very well come back around and bite him. I have been wrong before, but so has Axelrod. Time will tell.

Speaking of diversions, did you notice Obama catch himself on the Saddleback interview when he very carefully tiptoed through saying Clarence Thomas was too inexperienced for the massive task of Supreme Court Justice? Looked like he caught the irony of his comment mid sentence. Please, let this man speak frankly more often off of the prompter.

Jason, I did forget about it as McCain was cleared by ethics committee and it was 19 years ago. Obama’s Buddy Rezko was convicted in 2008, little more damaging because of timing and admission of guilt on Obama’s part in my opinion. I know ALL these guys have the sweetheart deal thing going on at some level with their buddies, that’s the problem with politics.
9. Ross Calloway | August 21st, 2008 at 4:26 pm

Oh yeah. Give us some more of the class envy card please.

The Obama campaign is turning out to be one of the most shallow of campaigns ever. Far surpassing John Kerry’s for saying nothing.

I want to hear how he is going to stimulate the economy by raising taxes, and how inflating my tires, which are already at the correct pressure, will equate to all the oil drilling possible, making it unnecessary to drill at all. I want to hear him say how taxing our oil companies by 18 billion dollars and more will bring down the cost of gas at the pump. How about a little substance?
10. LD | August 21st, 2008 at 4:43 pm

Seriously, you do lose count of these kind of things after six. We really should give McCain, a former POW, a break on this one.
11. Fred Flintstone | August 21st, 2008 at 4:55 pm

Typical Republican Response, “ I Don’t Recall “ !

What is it about Republicans
It seems that the more Inept, Senile, Corrupt or just plain Stupid one of their Candidates are ….

The more they love him !!!

Could it just be a case of personal identification

“Hey Maw, He say’s the same stupid stuff I say, He must be real smart”
12. Mike Carroll | August 21st, 2008 at 5:33 pm

I have been a bit out of touch with Applesauce this past week and will be next week as well, but after a quick read I think I smell a whiff of panic on the part of the Obamabots.
13. Pat Cunningham | August 21st, 2008 at 5:50 pm

That ain’t panic, Mike. That’s seizing the moment, exploiting opportunity. It’s giving the McCain camp a taste of its own medicine. It’s called politics. If the shoe were on the other foot, the McCain camp would seize the moment as well. This issue helps Obama counter the notion that he’s the elitist. The Obama camp had a TV ad out on this thing in record time, and the controversy was the top story on two of the three network newscasts this evening, and was the second story on a third network. Issues like this can be pivotal in a campaign. Remember when the first President Bush expressed unfamiliarity with supermarket scanners during the 1992 campaign? That story hit home with ordinary folks. No, Mike, exploiting this issue isn’t a sign of panic. It’s just politics. The McCain camp thinks it’s going to counter this thing by dredging up the Rezko matter, but that dog won’t hunt. Even the Republican Chicago Tribune said as much last January. Besides, the Rezko thing is somewhat complicated. There’s nothing complicated about McCain not knowing how many houses he has. Joe Sixpack can grasp the weirdness of that. Another thing: The McCain camp says Obama had a real estate deal with a convicted felon. NOT TRUE. He hadn’t even been indicted. It’s roughly analagous to Don Manzullo taking contributions from special interests connected to Jack Abramoff. When Abramoff was subsequently indicted, Manzullo gave the money back or to some charity or whatever. The panic you sense, Mike, is among McCainiacs. They know what this issue can do to their guy.
14. Fred Flintstone | August 21st, 2008 at 5:59 pm

McCainiacs

I Like that
15. Menlo Bob | August 21st, 2008 at 8:16 pm

Obama was an honors graduate at Harvard? Not hard when 91% of your graduates receive honors. On the other hand it’s much better than McCain’s poor showing at Annapolis.
16. Pat Cunningham | August 21st, 2008 at 9:25 pm

Bob: Regarding Obama and Harvard, as I understand it, the grade-inflation problem at undergrad Harvard does not pertain at Harvard Law. Obama didn’t attend Harvard undergrad. He went to Columbia, where he majored in poli sci with a specialty in international relations and attained a GPA of 3.8. At Harvard Law, he was president of the Harvard Law Review, his GPA was 4.0, he graduated magna cum laude, and he later taught constitutional law at the University of Chicago for 11 years. The dude is bright, no matter how you slice it.
17. Craig Knauss | August 21st, 2008 at 9:30 pm

“Obama was an honors graduate at Harvard? Not hard when 91% of your graduates receive honors. ”

Really? And what is that based on? What’s your source?

The original comment was about honors earned AT Harvard, not BEFORE Harvard. My guess is that 91% of engineering students at U of Illinois were also honors students BEFORE they entered Illinois. I know for a fact that it was much harder to earn them afterwards.
18. Menlp Bob | August 21st, 2008 at 9:40 pm

And was very successful in not leaving a paper trail. Similarly, efforts are underway to prevent reporting on the records of the Chicago Annenberg Challenge, which was started by William Ayers who tapped Obama to lead it. Nixon didn’t think like this
19. Menlp Bob | August 21st, 2008 at 9:45 pm

CK–it was based on a comment by Sauce.
20. sawmpy | August 22nd, 2008 at 12:04 pm

‘Questions for Obama’ by George F. Will

‘Senator, concerning the criteria by which you will nominate judges, you
said: ‘We need somebody who’s got the heart, the empathy, to recognize what
it’s like to be a young teenage mom. The empathy to understand what it’s
like to be poor, or African-American, or gay, or disabled, or old.’ Such
sensitivities might serve an admirable legislator, but what have they to do
with judging? Should a judge side with whichever party in a controversy
stirs his or her empathy? Is such personalization of the judicial function
inimical to the rule of law?

. Voting against the confirmation of Chief Justice John Roberts, you said:
Deciding ‘truly difficult cases’ should involve ‘one’s deepest values, one’s
core concerns, one’s broader perspectives on how the world works, and the
depth and breadth of one’s empathy.’ Is that not essentially how Chief
Justice Roger Taney decided the Dred Scott case? Should other factors-say,
the language of the constitutional or statutory provision at issue-matter?

. You say, ‘The insurance companies, the drug companies, they’re not going
to give up their profits easily when it comes to health care.’ Why should
they? Who will profit from making those industries unprofitable? When
pharmaceutical companies have given up their profits, who will fund
pharmaceutical innovations, without which there will be much preventable
suffering and death? What other industries should ‘give up their profits’?

. ExxonMobil’s 2007 profit of $40.6 billion annoys you. Do you know that its
profit, relative to its revenue, was smaller than Microsoft’s and many other
corporations’? And that reducing ExxonMobil’s profits will injure people who
participate in mutual funds, index funds and pension funds that own 52
percent of the company?

. You say John McCain is content to ‘watch [Americans’] home prices
decline.’ So, government should prop up housing prices generally? How? Why?
Were prices ideal before the bubble popped? How does a senator know ideal
prices? Have you explained to young couples straining to buy their first
house that declining prices are a misfortune?

. Telling young people ‘don’t go into corporate America ,’ your wife,
Michelle, urged them to become social workers or others in ‘the helping
industry,’ not ‘the moneymaking industry.’ Given that the moneymakers pay
for 100 percent of American jobs, in both public and private sectors, is it
not helpful?

. Michelle, who was born in 1964, says that most Americans’ lives have
‘gotten progressively worse since I was a little girl.’ Since 1960, real per
capita income has increased 143 percent, life expectancy has increased by
seven years, infant mortality has declined 74 percent, deaths from heart
disease have been halved, childhood leukemia has stopped being a death
sentence, depression has become a treatable disease, air and water pollution
have been drastically reduced, the number of women earning a bachelor’s
degree has more than doubled, the rate of homeownership has increased 10.2
percent, the size of the average American home has doubled, the percentage
of homes with air conditioning has risen from 12 to 77, the portion of
Americans who own shares of stock has quintupled . Has your wife perhaps
missed some pertinent developments in this country that she calls ‘just
downright mean’?

. You favor raising the capital gains tax rate to ‘20 percent or 25
percent.’ You say this will not ‘distort’ economic decision making. Your tax
returns on your 2007 income of $4.2 million show that you and Michelle own
few stocks. Are you sure you understand how investors make decisions?

. During the ABC debate, you acknowledged that when the capital gains rate
was dropped first to 20 percent, then to 15 percent, government revenues
from the tax increased and they declined in the 1980s when it was increased
to 28 percent. Nevertheless, you said you would consider raising the rate
‘for purposes of fairness.’ How does decreasing the government’s financial
resources and punishing investors promote fairness? Are you aware that 20
percent of taxpayers reporting capital gains in 2006 had incomes of less
than $50,000?

. You favor eliminating the cap on earnings subject to the 12.4 percent
Social Security tax, which now covers only the first $102,000. A Chicago
police officer married to a Chicago public-school teacher, each with 20
years on the job, have a household income of $147,501, so you would take
another $5,642 from them. Are they undertaxed? Are they rich?

. This November, electorates in four states will vote on essentially this
language: ‘The state shall not discriminate against, or grant preferential
treatment to, any individual or group on the basis of race, sex, color,
ethnicity or national origin in the operation of public employment, public
education or public contracting.’ Three states- California , Washington and
Michigan -have enacted such language. You made a radio ad opposing the
Michigan initiative. Why? Are those states’ voters racists?

. You denounce President Bush for arrogance toward other nations. Yet you
vow to use a metaphorical ‘hammer’ to force revisions of trade agreements
unless certain weaker nations adjust their labor, environmental and other
domestic policies to suit you. Can you define cognitive dissonance?

. You want ‘to reduce money in politics.’ In February and March you raised
$95 million. See prior question.
21. Fred Flintstone | August 22nd, 2008 at 1:46 pm

TO: Swampy Swamp a Blog

Yea thats it, Swamp a blog with cut and paste