GOP delegate Gabriel Nathan Schwartz, 29, of Denver, had a bad Republican Convention. Hours after Gov. Palin gave her speech Mr. Schwartz thought he’d picked up a lovely lady at his hotel bar. He invited her back to his room, she made some drinks and he took his clothes off. And thats all he remembers. His lady friend had robbed him.
The haul included a $30,000 watch, a $20,000 ring, a necklace valued at $5,000, earrings priced at $4,000 and a Prada belt valued at $1,000, police said.
Only a GOP delegate and/or member of a boy band would be rocking stuff like that. But what kind of character is this Schwartz’s fellow?
In an interview filmed the afternoon of Sept. 3 and posted on the Web site LinkTV.org, Schwartz was candid about how he envisioned change under a McCain presidency.
“Less taxes and more war,” he said, smiling. He said the U.S. should “bomb the hell” out of Iran because the country threatens Israel.
Asked by the interviewer how America would pay for a military confrontation with Iran, he said the U.S. should take the country’s resources.
“We should plant a flag. Take the oil, take the money,” he said. “We deserve reimbursement.”
A few hours after the interview, an unknown woman helped herself to Schwartz’s resources.
Asked what work John McCain did as chairman of the Senate Commerce Committee that helped him understand the financial markets, the candidate’s top economic adviser wielded visual evidence: his BlackBerry.
“He did this,” Douglas Holtz-Eakin told reporters this morning, holding up his BlackBerry. “Telecommunications of the United States is a premier innovation in the past 15 years, comes right through the Commerce Committee. So you’re looking at the miracle John McCain helped create and that’s what he did.”
As is being point out this is not true for a number of reasons, not the least of which is that the company that actually did invent the Blackberry is Research in Motion. Which is Canadian. And, as Ezra points out:
Indeed, it remains an odd argument if you take the kind interpretation and assume Holtz-Eakin was talking about the regulatory environment McCain helped craft. The Blackberry was developed in a different country with a different regulatory environment.
Because McCain is a loyal man who sticks up for his staffers he responded to Holtz-Eakin’s claims by…throwing him under the bus:
Senior aide Matt McDonald said that the senator “laughed” when he heard the comment.
“He would not claim to be the inventor or anything, much less the BlackBerry. This was obviously a boneheaded joke by a staffer,”
If you’re looking for a good time search Twitter for #invented and see what people are coming up with for what they invented. I invented happiness and laughter. Now if McCain had invented the iPhone…..
“We need to go on offense. Our theme is that Barack Obama is too old for the job and that the public needs a younger, more vigorous brand of leadership. OK, here are some scripts we’re looking at.”
“Wait, wait, wait. Wait. Do you need time off? I can give you a few days. Take some time. You’ve earned it.”
“No, Senator. If you’ll just look at these scripts –”
“Steve, April Fool’s Day is seven months off. You want me to say Obama is too old to be president and I’m not?”
“Yes.”
“I’m younger than Obama?”
“Not younger, exactly. More youthful. You have more, um, youthiness. What is 72? That’s just a numeral. Same two digits as 27. It’s ink on a driver’s license. You have the adventurous spirit of youth. You’re the innovator, the reformer. You may be older in years. You’re older technically. But you’re younger in qualifications. That’s the age that really matters. Qualificationswise, you’re entering your prime, and you have the experience to prove it. You’re like Reagan, although you’re even younger, though not technically.
Michelle Malkin, you are a delight. You’ll recall that earlier, Paul Mirengoff of Powerline took Convention analysis to new heights with his genius evaluation of Senators Obama and McCain post-speech behavior. Malkin, not to be outdone, see’s Mirengoff’s analysis and raises: she see’s an important difference between the Senators based on…..how they laid their roses at a memorial at Ground Zero. Here’s Malkin:
It’s a small gesture, but gestures matter at the hallowed grave site of so many murdered innocent Americans.
Barack Obama flings a memorial rose at Ground Zero like he’s a kid tossing pennies into a fountain at the shopping mall — or a spectator tossing flowers at a bullfight.
He doesn’t know what he’s doing.
(Clueless NYC Mayor Michael Bloomberg copies him.)
By contrast, John McCain and his wife kneel and gently, somberly, place their roses down at the foot of the 9/11 tribute.
Tons of you e-mailed me about this. Here’s the vid for the rest of you who didn’t see it. It’s a telling cultural and generational distinction between these two men vying to be commander-in-chief of our nation
She then goes on to provide, I kid you not, two, count’em, two different videos of this. Am I crazy or is this most definitely not “a telling cultural and generational distinction between these two men”? Not to mention, what does Malkin even mean by “cultural” in that sentence? I get generational because McCain’s really old.
Heaven forbid you should think I’m being unfair to Ms. Malkin so here’s the dramatic video evidence, provided by Malkin herself. Judge for yourself.
In recent weeks, John McCain has shown that he is willing to go into the gutter to win this election. His campaign has become nothing but a series of smears, lies, and cynical attempts to distract from the issues that matter to the American people. But as Barack Obama said earlier this week ‘enough is enough.’ We will respond with speed and ferocity to John McCain’s attacks and we will take the fight to him, but we will do it on the big issues that matter to the American people.
Sarah Palin and the McCain campaign have been getting some attention of late (though not nearly enough) for their propensity for lying about things. Its quite a talent they have. Most of the coverage has focused on Palin’s lie about “stopping” the “Bridge to Nowhere”. This is almost worth another post so maybe I’ll whip one up in a bit but needless to say Palin was for the bridge until Congress stopped the earmark and then as Governor, Palin kept the money and spent it on other things. Palin’s repeated this lie 27 times now (and counting). But the Bridge to Nowhere lie isn’t my favorite Palin lie, the eBay one is.
During her convention speech, and pretty much every time she’s opened her mouth since, Palin bragged about putting the Alaska state plane on eBay. This is supposed to prove that she’s sooooo anti-government spending, etc.. Palin is always (sometimes) careful to say she “put it on eBay” rather then “sold it on eBay” and why is that? You probably guessed the answer already: because the plane didn’t get sold on eBay. Here’s the Washington Post:
In fact, the jet did not sell on eBay. It was sold to a businessman from Valdez named Larry Reynolds, who paid $2.1 million for the plane — shy of the $2.7 million purchase price — according to news reports at the time. Reynolds contributed to Palin’s campaign in 2006.
So the jet didn’t sell on eBay and the state lost $600,000 on the sale to a Palin contributor. Good to know. I wonder what Senator McCain, Mr. Straight Talk Express himself, has to say about the plane on eBay story:
“You know what I enjoyed the most? She took the luxury jet that was acquired by her predecessor, and sold it on eBay — and made a profit!”
I bet he did enjoy that! Too bad, as illustrated above, he’s completely wrong on pretty much all counts.
This is ugly stuff. And this is an ugly person. There’s clearly no level of sleaze this guy won’t stoop to to win this election. And let’s be frank. He might win it. This is clearly a testing time for Obama supporters. But I want to return to a point I made a few years ago during the Social Security battle with President Bush. Winning and losing is never fully in one’s control — not in politics or in life. What is always within our control is how we fight and bear up under pressure. It’s easy to get twisted up in your head about strategy and message and optics. But what is already apparent is that John McCain is running the sleaziest, most dishonest and race-baiting campaign of our lifetimes. So let’s stopped being shocked and awed by every new example of it. It is undignified. What can we do? We’ve got a dangerously reckless contender for the presidency and a vice presidential candidate who distinguished her self by abuse of office even on the comparatively small political stage of Alaska. They’ve both embraced a level of dishonesty that disqualifies them for high office. Democrats owe it to the country to make clear who these people are. No apologies or excuses. If Democrats can say at the end of this campaign that they made clear exactly how and why these two are unfit for high office they can be satisfied they served their country.