Obama to McCain: ‘America already has one Dr. Phil’

July 10, 2008

You can’t give Barack Obama a slow, hanging curve, right over the middle of the plate, and expect him not to swing.

“One of his top economic advisors, former Sen. Phil Gramm, said that we’re merely in a ‘mental recession.’ That’s what he said,” Obama said, smiling. “Said we’re in a ‘mental recession.’ He didn’t say this, but I guess what he meant was it’s a figment of your imagination, these high gas prices….

“Sen. Gramm then deemed the United States, and I quote, a ‘nation of whiners.’ Whoa. Now, this comes after Senator McCain recently admitted that his energy proposals for the gas tax holiday and the drilling, will have, quote, ‘mainly psychological benefits.’

“I want all of you to know that America already has one Dr. Phil. We don’t need another one when it comes to the economy…. This economic downturn is not in your head. When people are out there losing their homes, and property values are declining, that’s not a figment of your imagination — and it isn’t whining to ask the government to step in and give families some relief.”

It’s one thing to go on the attack, but I’ve long felt one of Obama’s great strengths as a candidate is his ability to use humor, and frankly, mockery, to drive his point home. He’s not mad at McCain and Gramm; he just thinks they’re ridiculous.

And then, of course, there was McCain’s response.

“I don’t agree with Senator Gramm,” McCain told reporters. “I believe that the person here in Michigan that just lost his job isn’t suffering from a ‘mental’ recession. I believe the mother here in Michigan and around America who’s trying to get enough money to educate their children isn’t whining. America is in great difficulty. We’re experiencing enormous economic challenges, as well as others. Phil Gramm does not speak for me; I speak for me. So, I strongly disagree.”

Go ahead and watch both clips, turn down the volume, and take a guess which one is having a better day.

As for the substance, Gramm may not speak for McCain, but McCain has brought Gramm in as his top economic advisor, and there’s been speculation in Republican circles that Gramm would be a leading candidate for Treasury Secretary in a McCain administration. McCain admits that he’s ignorant about economic matters, and also admits he relies on Gramm’s guidance on the issue. His comments, in this sense, are hardly irrelevant.

As far as McCain speaking for himself, I agree — which is why it’s important to remember that McCain’s been describing our economic downturn as “psychological” for the entire year.

So, the man McCain is using for his economic advice & acumen…doesn’t represent his opinion on financial matters?

He wants the sort of name recognition – the cache, if you will – Gramm provides him…evne though Gramm’s utterings are ridiculous and you’d look foolish to agree with them…but not foolish for soliciting them in the first place?

What’s next, hiring the guys from Jackass or the Tokyo Shock Boys to warm up McCain’s crowds, then be surprised and aghast by the amount of testicle-related pranks they perform on stage? When you hire people to do exactly what it is that they do, and you hire them BECAUSE of what they do, don’t act surprised – AND DON’T CONTINUE TO HIRE THEM – when you disagree with what they do!

File under “U” for “Uhhhhh-DUHR-hay!”

  • I wonder if McCain might still make Gramm Secretary of the Treasury. His humorous ambassador to Belarus answer didn’t actually rule anything out.

  • BRILLIANT!!! I just hope the media picks up the “America already has one Dr. Phil” line, and that it becomes one of the signature lines of the campaign. After the “inventing the Internet” meme of 2000, this is beautiful retribution . . .

  • McCain doesn’t merely “admit” he relies on Gramm on economic issues. He literally has had Gramm answer questions in his place in either townhalls or pressers!

    Can someone find a video clip of McCain letting Gramm answer a question on his behalf (it’s out there, I’ve seen it)?

    And then mash that video up with McCain saying “he doesn’t speak for me”.

  • I have no sympathy for McCain. He’s an embarrassment to the electorial process. If you thinks he looks bad now, imagine being president for a year, how wasted, weary and worn out ,…and ineffective he would become. Age does make a difference in such a high stress, high pressure job. It wears out young men, it devastates the elderly.

    McCain will say whatever is expedient but his campaign has tied itself in knots over the economy. He doesn’t really have a clue and can’t even figure out what the details of his own plan mean. It’s just pathetic. McCain as president should really only bring laughter not serious consideration.

  • It’s time to start a list of shining star Republican idiots like Phil Gramm and start betting which one McCain will hire next. Obama’s response is a nice quick one, but this theme of the “mental recession” has enough documentation already to go a long ways. I could hardly believe when McCain first said that drilling the coasts would provide “psychological relief”. Some continued coverage of this would be great for Obama, but then who would provide that?

  • Great pushback.

    Even better would be for the Obama campaign to remind voters — and reporters — that much of the current financial crisis, especially in the housing market, is largely the fault of none other than Phil Gramm.

    It’s not just that he’s dimissing the pain many people are feeling. He’s the one who caused it in the first place.

  • McCain sounded like he was about cry out of frustration.

    How does Nelson put it? Hah – Hah!!

  • RE: McCain Looking Bad

    How about a commercial that shows a handful of past Presidents with Before and after photos. How they looked on the 1st day in office and how they looked on the way out. McCain looks today like he is already on the way out.

  • McCain is a daffy old man who has lived a life of economic privilege and entitlement. As we look at his scholastic record it is pretty easy to see that he took his inherited position at the naval academy for granted and didn’t work very hard, landing near the very bottom of his class. He was reckless as a young pilot and that is part of the reason why he became a POW. However he was a high profile and entitled POW so that gave him a career in politics.

    McCain calls himself a person of integrity but isn’t that just what Bush called himself? He may be likable but so was Bush at first, at least that is what the press said. It is critical that every aspect of McCain’s record is scrutinized because it isn’t pretty, and neither was Bush’s record.

    If George W Bush’s life had been examined a little more closely by our so called free press, I think the outcome of the last eight years might have been much better. Let us hope for a more serious vetting process this time. I pray to God that we don’t have to suffer through another term of incompetence veiled in the entitlement of the privileged.

    America needs someone who has had to struggle a little, someone who is smart enough to rise to the top because of his own merit. After all our president should represent all of us, not just the few who are the self appointed American aristocracy

  • “We have nothing to fear but fear itself.” — FDR

    There is nothing inherently wrong with a politician or president referring to psychological issues affecting people who are also enduring an economic downturn. So, lauding Obama for calling McCain Dr. Phil because he talks about measures that bring psychological relief is short-sighted.

    Fear has driven the voting choices of those selecting Republican candidates. It would be smart for Obama to consider the psychological issues behind the economics. But, apparently Obama doesn’t think highly of psychology. Another reason to believe he is not the right person to elect as our leader in troubled times. I hear echoes of his rejection of mental distress as a valid reason for abortion, echoes of his derision of Clinton’s emotion during the campaign. I wouldn’t have thought it, due to Obama’s “nuanced complexity” but maybe the guy isn’t very comfortable in the realm of feelings of any sort.

    Telling people to suck it up isn’t any better as a solution than complaining that Republicans are pandering to psychological feelings of voters or playing on their fears. Feelings are real and everyone has them. You don’t have to be Dr. Phil to understand that feelings have consequences.

    Just when I start to think I am making too much of a fuss about Obama’s unfitness, he says or does something monumentally stupid, like this.

  • This just in: Phil Gramm says he was talking about France, not the U.S., and that he said, “a nation of winos,” not whiners. There goes the liberal media again, twisting a great Amurrican’s words.

  • McCain’s only chance to even put a dent in this—and it’s a snowball’s chance in the infernal regions, at that—is to openly fire Gramm.

    I’m waiting to hear the words from McWhiny himself.

    *insert chirping-crickets soundtrack of you choice here*

  • Is Barack taking comedy lessons from Jon Stewart or what? That man is freaking beautiful.

    FYI, I’ve searched the internuts high and low to find Mary’s identity. You’ll be blissfully satisfied to note I’ve finally discovered the *real* Mary.

    Madcow Tourist Info

    Beware: Madness is addictable.

  • I care deeply about psychological issues, Mary. And that’s why I’m asking my top fundraisers not only to help retire Hillary’s debt, including paying back your imaginary contributions to her campaign, but also to set you up with the best mental health treatment money can buy. Your approval is just that important to me.

  • You ain’t kidding, -daze. I came here to post almost exactly what Mary posted, only mine was less crazy-ass.

    My favorite line was this: “Just when I start to think I am making too much of a fuss about Obama’s unfitness…”

    Yeah, just when you were doing that, Mary. Damn his timing, huh?

  • “There is nothing inherently wrong with a politician or president referring to psychological issues affecting people who are also enduring an economic downturn. ”

    There is when they essentially try to refer to the economic issue as all in people’s minds, as Gramm/McCain essentially tried to do. The fact that McCain had to play defense today, means it was not a good day for him.

    I would say Obama’s comments demonstrate very clearly he’s more in tune with what people are going through far more than McCain ….

    “Another reason to believe he is not the right person to elect as our leader in troubled times.”

    Based on your many posts here, I would speculate that you’ve long made up your mind long ago. But I’d say you’re going to have to try a lot harder to convince many who post here that they should suddenly turn around and consider someone else besides Obama.

    BTW – I took Obama’s Dr. Phil comment as a reference to Phil Gramm, not John McCain. Gramm was attributing people’s apprehensions about the weak economy as psychological, when in fact they are quite real and physical to many Americans. And as McCain’s economic advisor, you’d think he’d know better. Obama picked up on that and ran with it.

  • and apparently, Mary approves of spending billions of dollars on environmentally-risky long-term projects that encourage, rather than resolve, our dependence on finite resources so long as there is a short term upside to our “feelings.” After all, they are real, and everyone has them.

    oddly, though, Mary seemed unduly peeved with Obama for voting for FISA. what if the uninformed general public “feels” safer with the FISA compromise passed, Mary? would that make you approve of Obama’s vote? and after 9/11, poll after poll showed that a majority of Americans wanted to lash out and kick someone’s ass, even if it s Saddam’s. So if it makes us feel better we can all sing along with McCain and bomb bomb bomb Iran, right?

    i know I feel better already.

  • I agree with everything Obama is saying. I do wonder, however, if sarcasm is the best tool for a presidential candidate. Comedian absolutely. Class clown yes. President – I don’t know. Steve likes it, I know. But if the Republicans are trying to brand Obama as an elitist, is sarcasm the best tool? Doesn’t it reinforce the sense of superiority, the elitism??

  • Let’s not forget that nearly all of John McCain’s economic “plan” (and I’m using that term loosely, seeing how it has no number details) was formed by Phil Gramm.

  • scarything @ 13 muttered:

    There is nothing inherently wrong with a politician or president referring to psychological issues affecting people who are also enduring an economic downturn.

    Sure—why not? It worked so well for that other Republican guy——–Hoover. Tell me again, scarything—how did that work out for him? And you actually try to cover the comparison up by quoting FDR?

  • Their apprehensions are, by definition, psychological and in the mind. That’s what an apprehension is. Their bank balances and the costs of necessities and their mortgages rates are not psychological and not in their mind.

    Obama loves word games. Of course people are going to be upset when their finances seem out of control and they struggle to pay their bills. BOTH situations exist and are real, the reality of economics and people’s reactions to that reality (a psychological state).

    Deriding McCain’s attempts to provide measures that would give psychological comfort to people is the same as deriding Clinton’s similar measures to give psychological comfort. Obama hasn’t changed his mind about that. It is more of the same. I think Obama fundamentally lacks empathy for psychological distress. There is a pattern emerging of statements that trivialize or denigrate people’s feelings.

    Here is a big example — remember when Obama tried to describe the frustration of lower income white folks who were struggling with loss of jobs in small towns in PA and he referred to them as clinging to guns and religion? He came across as cold and unempathetic and backtracked in a hurry. This is more of the same attitude.

    When Bush failed to visit Katrina but went about his merry vacation while people drowned and starved, would it have made any difference if he had done his fly over sooner or made a public statement sooner? No, because Bush himself had no impact on that disaster. However, he could have given psychological comfort to everyone by being an empathetic person immediately, and perhaps better decisions would have flowed from that empathy. Obama is showing himself to be similarly callous about the financial disaster afflicting a lot of people. If he cannot show more empathy, he will continue to have difficulty attracting these voters. Deriding Dr. Phil for his psychological measures isn’t going to demonstrate that Obama cares about more than his own election.

    That’s why this was an exceptionally stupid ploy. And you adolescents are laughing and saying “burn” and “good one” as if making snappy comebacks were all the presidency is about.

  • Mary @ 13:
    I’m not generally one to post, but I frequently read CBR and have been amazed at your observations. While I like to see differing viewpoints, and feel that everyone who has a good argument should voice it, I can’t help but notice that your responses are generally twisting the meaning or context of EVERYTHING Obama does. I’ve never seen anything like it.

    In your post (above), you state that there is nothing wrong with a politician or president referring to psychological issues affecting people. I agree – in general, no, there’s nothing wrong with that. However, if they are using the psychological only resolution (i.e, gas tax holiday, offshore driling) as a remedy to this nation’s problems, then that’s a farce – ESPECIALLY when it does not resolve the issue and only serves to line the pockets of the oil companies. We need real solutions, which by their very nature would resolve the psychological issues.

    Then you go off on the assumption, stated as fact, that apparently Obama cares nothing about psychology. That’s quite a strech. To support your statement, you say:
    “I hear echoes of his rejection of mental distress as a valid reason for abortion, echoes of his derision of Clinton’s emotion during the campaign. I wouldn’t have thought it, due to Obama’s “nuanced complexity” but maybe the guy isn’t very comfortable in the realm of feelings of any sort.”

    To the contrary, Obama’s actions are exatly the opposite. Can you provide an example (a truthful one) in which Obama derided Clinton? Can you honesetly say that Clinton never derided him? What do you mean by mental distress as a valid reason for abortion??

    And when did OBAMA tell people to “suck it up”????? Isn’t that what McCain and Gramm are essentially saying with they reduce the economical problems as strictly ‘psychological’. I’m really confused by this statement of yours.

    And yes, you are making too much of a fuss about Obama. If you have a real argument, say it. But it’s obvious you just don’t like the guy and have a distorted view about everything he says.

  • i’d say “let phil gramm keep talking,” but damn – every time i’ve heard the man interviewed i can barely understand his mush-mouthed texas accent. he’s truly more unintelligible than the late, unlamented jesse helms.

  • I dunno lynn, when I see Obama speaking like this, I’m always amazed by the way he connects with the crowd. I think this is Obama at his best, and it doesn’t really come off as nasty like McCain’s particular brand of sarcasm. He’s a great speaker and I think this is a perfect example of that.

  • Doesn’t it reinforce the sense of superiority, the elitism??

    Normally I’d be laughing my ass off from that suggestion but I simply refuse to be uppity!

  • -daze, you obviously haven’t been paying attention to what I am concerned about.

    Yes, I object to his FISA vote but I posted once on that issue, only to point out that Clinton voted right on it, not to complain about Obama’s vote. You all did that for me.

    I have been loudest about a number of other issues that few people here seem to care about at all. Why talk about FISA when everyone else already recognizes his error on that one?

  • Elbows, the problem with looking at crowd reaction is that the crowd is self-selected for its enthusiasm. They are all Obama true-believers. This is no different than looking at one of Bush’s town halls and noticing that the crowd all seem to love him. Why wouldn’t they? Anyone going to the effort of attending one of these events is in the bag already.

    There is also a crowd dynamic. Movies are more fun to see in theaters or with other people because people feed off each other’s reactions. If you have enough people around you who are enthusiastically positive about Obama, you will react the same way. Try cheering for the opposite team on the wrong side of a basketball court, or attend a Billy Graham crusade and resist the exhortations to stand up and sing or come to the altar or participate in call and response. The dynamic creates the appearance of support even when someone might be more tentative. That’s why they hold rallies — it whips up enthusiasm among those who must go out and do canvassing, etc. Polls are much better for temperature taking on an issue.

  • Mary’s absolutely right; psychological comfort that McCain offers is much more likely to be successful in alleviating Americans’ problems than any number of economic that Obama is likely to offer, since everyone knows there’s cold comfort in numbers.

    Next on McCain’s psychological health agenda for the nation: a health plan which replaces doctors and hospitals with peripatetic faith healers. It would make people feel good and be a great deal cheaper (not to mention faster: a single touch will do wonders) than the fancy-schmancy chemo- and radiation therapies.

  • Re 26:

    “Obama loves word games. Of course people are going to be upset when their finances seem out of control and they struggle to pay their bills. BOTH situations exist and are real, the reality of economics and people’s reactions to that reality (a psychological state). ”

    Then why is John McCain distancing himself from his chosen economic advisor Phil Gramm’s remarks? I suspect McCain is doing that because Gramm said about about Americans and many of their economic plight – ‘we have become a ‘nation of whiners.’ McCain is backtracking because he probably realized – just like pretty much everyone else – that what Gramm said was not very smart.

    (And as a side note, it’s been documented that it goes beyond that – Gramm truly should know his comments weren’t very smart. Indeed, he’s been a part of some of the very things that have messed up the economy over the last few years).

    Obama’s reaction was not only humorful, but underscored a major point – telling people that “we have become a ‘nation of whiners.'” underscores how truly out of touch McCain and his team (and policies) truly are to help the many who are in a dire financial state right now.

    That you seem to harp on Obama’s choice of words, and not Gramm’s rather unwise remarks, demonstrates either you don’t understand the issue, and/or that you’ve never gotten over the fact Obama is the Dem’s presidential candidate for 2008.

    “Deriding McCain’s attempts to provide measures that would give psychological comfort to people is the same as deriding Clinton’s similar measures to give psychological comfort.”

    Pointing out that someone’s policies aren’t going to work isn’t deriding them. You don’t seem to get that. For example when Obama criticized McCain’s gas tax holiday idea. It wasn’t a very good idea (neither was Clinton’s). However, it did sow the seeds of doubt about a candidate – in this case I think that was the issue that really sealed Clinton’s chances. And I would say it was a turning point about McCain as well.

    “Obama tried to describe the frustration of lower income white folks who were struggling with loss of jobs in small towns in PA and he referred to them as clinging to guns and religion?”

    You know, this comment and your reaction to that issue I think says a lot more about you than Obama.

    “When Bush failed to visit Katrina but went about his merry vacation while people drowned and starved, would it have made any difference if he had done his fly over sooner or made a public statement sooner? No, because Bush himself had no impact on that disaster.”

    You are either being obtuse or willfully deceptive, because your last statement here is patently false:

    http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/11627394/

    Video shows Bush got explicit Katrina warning
    President, Chertoff were clearly told of storm’s dangers numerous times.

    As the President, it’s his job to ensure that the right people are in place to protect the nation. Hurricane Katrina demonstrated to the vast majority of Americans that it wasn’t his priority.

  • It’s good that the McCain team is coordinating their talking points, as John McCain’s been talking about how the problems with the economy, gas prices, energy, et al, and his proposals to solve them, are ‘mostly psychological’, for months now.

    Alternative energy? McCain will harness the power of the subconscious, store it in a science-contest-prize battery, and use it to power your new ‘horseless carriage’.

    Go McCain!

    http://www.womenforjohnmccain.com/

  • Deriding McCain’s attempts to provide measures that would give psychological comfort to people

    Did you really just describe blithely characterizing people’s financial concerns as whining psychosomatica as “attempts to provide measures that would give psychological comfort to people”? Did you really? Would you also call rudely dismissing the hunger pangs of the starving “a comforting attempt to fill empty bellies”? How about scoffing at the injuries of our soldiers in Iraq? Is that “healing our nation’s protectors” to you?

    Someone needs some psychological comfort here pronto.

    Why talk about FISA when everyone else already recognizes his error on that one?

    Why indeed, when you warmly approve of the bill and your guy would have voted for it if he could have bothered to show up in the Senate?

  • Mary must be incredibly, physically strong. I can’t imagine carrying around that much stupid on a day to day basis.

    What Dr. Phil does on his show might make interesting tv, but it’s shitty psychoanalysis. If you think Dr. Phil spending 12-20 minutes on peoples’ problems, making a knee jerk observation & thinking he’s helping people, that it is actual beneficial psychotherapy without actual in-depth psychoanalysis to back it up & undo the damage being humiliated on tv causes then you are…oh, wait, you really are stupid. My mistake.

    What Gramm is doing is just as stupid – listening to a nation in near-panic and offering knee-jerk snap-out-of-it “advice” in leiu of actually helping people. If anything, it’s worse, because he’s actually discounting peoples’ emotional state, saying they have no right to feel their feelings. Gramm’s the guy in denial telling the world “no, YOU’RE wrong.” In other words, your patron saint.

    Obama’s comments were in reaction to that sort of blithe, arrogant, surface-scratching psychoanaysis Gramm is engaging in & Dr. Phil makes a living performing. NOT real psychology/psychiatry, NOT people who seek help for mental health and NOT people genuinely hurting in this economy. To say otherwise makes you stupid or a liar. Pick one but not both. Don’t be greedy.

    One day it’d be nice if youanswered the question you’re ducking like a team mascot at an angry-dad-with-baseball-bats convention. You say Obama has yet to prove his patriotism. What can he do…FOR YOU…to prove he’s sufficiently patriotic? Besides turning into a white woman named Hillary?

  • Besides turning into a white woman

    The white part is operative; the woman part is window dressing. She’s voting for a Mc, but it sure as hell isn’t Cynthia McKinney.

  • the problems …. are ‘mostly psychological’

    Same could be said about you, Christina.

  • Christina’s just having a little fun at the Women for McCain’s expense.

    I wonder, though, how much of the MSM will pick up that McCain’s been shilling this “psychological” line himself for ages.

    And crickets chirped…

  • Funny spoof site, Christina. I adore the Stepford Wives stock photo in the banner.

  • My bad, Christina. Having my daily brew plus I’m also a refusenik about clicking to anything McCain.

  • I can’t imagine carrying around that much stupid on a day to day basis.

    That “Mary” persona isn’t stupid. It’s a very clever sociopath. I think on Salon it calls itself jebldmm.

  • What Gramm is doing is just as stupid – listening to a nation in near-panic and offering knee-jerk snap-out-of-it “advice”

    Which makes he and McCain a perfect pair: Gramm’s only mistake was going for “snap out of it” (or in this case “America – stop whining”) instead of “stop the bullshit.” That McCain surely would have approved of.

  • MsMuddled, @42,

    Like you, I wouldn’t have clicked on Christina’s site (and for the very same reasons), if a trusted TCBR commenter (Edo) hadn’t checked out — and recommended — it. But now, I have it bookmarked and visit daily for a dose of sly giggles. And I wish more people did read it… I would, especially, love to see some comments from the Insane Fake Professor (under whatever guise) and -daze there and even some of the males (like Dale and TAIO). It’s, definitely, a site worth cultivating (though I can’t say I’m altogether impressed by the “gear”. Sigh… I guess I’m too old to appreciate the full value of crude)

  • These upcoming debates between Obama and McCain are going to be great. McCain is just going to get pwned! This will be great TV. I predict it here!

  • Am I the only individual on the entire planet who’s wondering why Mary—who claims to be a teacher, by the way—doesn’t know that “apprehension” is not only a verb; is not only an adjective—but is also a noun to define the physical act of seizure?

    People feel “physically apprehended” by the events surrounding them—and their families, and their friends, and their neighbors and fellow countrymen, by the way—when they lose their jobs, or their hours are cut back, or when their homes are in default, or when their health benefit runs dry, or when their children are hungry. It isn’t a mere form of psychosis, as Mary would have us all believe. It isn’t make-believe, as her newfound lord and savior, John McCain, would have us all believe.

    It is as physically real as the sunrise in the morning, and the stars at night.

    The only “figments of the imagination” I see in this are the Marys of the world—the frauds, the pretenders, the charlatans, the snake-oil peddlers, and the political scam-artists who are constantly working to perfect their “2 + 2 = 5” pedagogy.

    Fortunately, many of us know where that pedagogy comes from—and just as fortunately, many of us have the courage to stand up against it.

  • Hey – give Mary a break. I think she’s wrong and I love these Obama moments when he ridicules the stupid old man, but everybody’s entitled to their opinion.

    Mary – the American general election is all about entertainment and rarely (sadly) about real issues. Posturing over substance. Give Obama his due – a bright, young, articulate guy with a real chance pass the presidency to a new generation.

    He wants to change things. I don’t know if he will (I don’t know if he can) but I’m willing to give him a chance. Consider carefully the alternative.

    You sound like a clinton supporter. If so, you’ve got to let it go.

  • Polaris, “Mary” would get a break if she were posting her beliefs in good faith. But “she” isn’t real, you know. That’s why she can legitimately claim so much authority on the subject of political psychology.

  • You’d think after all this time I would have stamped out my naivete. Do we have some info on the real identity of Mary ?

  • Does it matter? Its’ opinion is worthless to anyone with the ability to think and reason. It’s just fun knocking down her idiocy, lest any newbies think she makes points for any reasons other than accidental.

    It claims to think we’re all knee-jerk Obama supporters, without ever admitting that it’s a knee-jerk Obama hater. By going out of its way to automatically negate any Obama point, stretching the limits of his meaning or outright lying about his talking points, it comes across like a spurned lover, looking for fault even when there isn’t because as far as it’s concerned, if it’s not happy, nobody deserves to be happy, certainly not the very person that made it unhappy in the first place.

    Or, more than likely, it was always a McCain supporter looking to cause agita. The flip side to that brilliant plan is, it succeeds in making Obama supporters look smarter, and McCain supporters look borderline-OD’ing on stupid pills.

  • There were two elements to this story which several commenters above conflated: (1) Gramm’s remarks and (2) the characterization of several of McCain’s measures as giving psychological relief to those struggling financially (e.g., gas tax holiday). People responding above talked about (1) when I was talking about (2).

    Also, note that McCain’s response to Gramm’s remarks shifted halfway through the event as public reaction developed.

    My comment about Obama’s remark about Gramm, calling him Dr. Phil, is unaffected by any of this. If Obama cannot see the value of giving psychological relief — to individuals not to America’s problems — then he is callous. No one, not even McCain, believes that the gas tax holiday will fix our energy crisis. And you call me stupid? These sorts of comments are entirely non-responsive and seem to serve no purpose other than to complain about McCain. Again, my problem with that is the intellectual dishonesty of manufacturing complaints when there are so many valid ones on low hanging branches, just waiting to be picked.

  • An intense discussion, full of emotional discourse and serious insight. Makes you wonder how the current moron got to the WH.

    Twice.

    Keep it up Mary, whoever you are. It keeps us all on our toes

  • Again, my problem with that is the intellectual dishonesty of manufacturing complaints

    Damn it, my irony meter just went to 11 and busted again. I wish to hell I’d gotten the service contract on this.

  • Yes, Mary you’re stupid, or maybe you’re so brilliant we just can’t keep up (don’t get your hopes up on that one). First of all, I don’t see how Gramm calling us a nation of whiners helps, unless you’re the type of thunderdolt who thinks Dr. Phil yelling at rebellious teens, embarrassing them on national TV and in front of a screaming audience, is “helping” them psychologically. Wouldn’t be surprised if you did, but then again, with all the borderline brain-dead things you’ve said, I wouldn’t be surprised if you thought you could cure homosexuality either. Gramm helped cause the very problems he says do not exist, and then complains about the people complaining about them. You’re really so dim you can’t see the conflict of interest? (Answer: Yes. Yes, you are)

    Second of all, the so-called psychological assistance McCain thinks his policies will help Americans, is tantamount to putting a band-aid on a severed leg. Obama is talking about offering people real help, not a two-minute “you know what your problem is? Well here’s a solution” pep talk. You think making people feel better about their shitty lot in life is the same as making them better? Go tell the fat chick who couldn’t get a prom date what a great personality she has and see if that makes her feel better or worse. Or you could invest the time in helping her, make it easy for her to get a nutritionist, make healthy food more affordable, get her bona fide therapy that will help her improve her self-esteem and introduce her to a better class of people who aren’t so shallow. Guess which solution is more analogous to McCain and which is more analogous to Obama?

    Seriously, I’ve seen monkey with the flu with more on the ball than you.
    BTW, what does Obama have to do…FOR YOU…to convince you he’s patriotic? Besides turning into a white woman named Hillary Clinton (or a white man named John McCain)?

  • 28 mellowjohn

    ” every time i’ve heard the man interviewed i can barely understand his mush-mouthed texas accent.”

    Believe you me, he’s not the only one down here that talks like that, and, would you believe, a lot of them support English Only?

    • Comments are closed.