McCain advisor calls economic "slowdown" a Mental Recession, says US is a Nation of Whiners.

[ErinBerin84]

Well, I have to admit that I agree with the Nation Of Whiners thing, haha. Not about the economy though, that is warranted. Wait a second...these remarks are disparaging Americans. This is Un-American!


http://www.politico.com/news/stories/0708/11658.html

Gramm calls slowdown 'mental'

By MIKE ALLEN | 7/10/08 9:40 AM EST


Former senator Phil Gramm, a top economic adviser to Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.), referred to the economic slowdown as "a mental recession," and referred to the United States as “a nation of whiners.”

The comments, in an interview with The Washington Times, could hurt the campaign’s efforts to convince working-class Americans that McCain feels their pain.

Democrats immediately condemned the remarks as “callous,” and quickly began working to gain widespread attention for them.

The Democratic National Committee issued a statement titled: “Out of Touch Much, Phil.”


The Times said Gramm said he expects a McCain administration would inherit an economy “weighed down above all by the conviction of many Americans that economic conditions are the worst in two or three decades and that America is in decline.”

The Times quoted him as saying: “You've heard of mental depression; this is a mental recession. … We have sort of become a nation of whiners. …

“You just hear this constant whining, complaining about a loss of competitiveness, America in decline. … We've never been more dominant; we've never had more natural advantages than we have today.”

Karen Finney, the Democratic National Committee’s communications director, said: “What John McCain, George Bush Phil Gramm just don't understand is that the American people aren't whining about the state of the economy, they are suffering under the weight of it — the weight of eight years of Bush-enomics that John McCain and Phil Gramm have vowed to continue.

“How dare john McCain and his advisers so callously dismiss the challenges the American people face? No wonder voters feel john McCain is out of touch, he and his campaign don't even understand the everyday issues Americans are dealing with.”



Politico asked McCain for comment and will add when we receive it

[bunnies]

1. I suspect that this will be a HUGE problem for McSame.

It'll make that whole bitter thing look like joke. Wow.

[sshan2525]

2. What a douchebag.....

Yeah Phil, It's all mental. That's why I'm imagining gas costs $4.00 a gallon and my groceries have gone up 20% in a year and my heating will go up 30% this winter and when I haven't been laid off I've been forced to take jobs that pay me about 75% of what I made 10 years ago. If I could only reach through this screen and get my hands around this asshole's neck.........

[opihimoimoi]

3. Hey, his Pub Party has a reputation of being Whiners and BS Spinners

[predfan]

4. Karen Finney nailed it..............we've been 8 years in a leadership vacuum.

After 9-11 Americans asked how to help, and were told to go shopping. Instead, the public donated so much blood much of it had to be destroyed because of a lack of storage capacity.

It's not just us who are tired of Bush.........watch Obama go through Europe like a rock star.

( If Gramm want's to hear true whining, tell him to discuss the Inheritance Tax with some of his buddies...........)

[jefferson_dem]

5. But Obama didn't filibuster FISA...Obama didn't filibuster FISA...Obama didn't filibuster FISA...

...

[Enrique]

6. remember the uproar over Obama's "bitter" quote?

it dominated the media for like two weeks.

Same will happen with this, right?

[pdxmom]

7. Translation: Me and my fat cat cronies are doing just great, and all

you little peons need to shut up and take it.

[ErinBerin84]

8. can we also use this as an opportunity for the Dems to point out how McCain was

eating cake with BUSH during Hurricane Katrina, although he lied and said that if he had been anywhere near air force one, he would have forced them to go on the plane and go there himself? And bring up all of the legislation that he voted against for Hurricane Katrina relief, even though he denies it and the press lets him get away with it?

[sufrommich]

9. It's allll in your head. There is no recession,

It all just self inflicted hypnotism on a grand scale.

[ladjf]

10. In light of the fact that there has been an almost permanent

coup d'etat, the Republicans would be very lucky if whining is all that the American people do.
Mass demonstrations and riots might actually be more appropriate.

[PVnRT]

11. But of course, Barack is the uppity elitist negro

Of course, I don't expect anyone in the media to pick this story up, so the GOP will continue to flog that idiotic meme.

[Zynx]

12. Why does he hate Americans so much? He must be a terrorist!

[nancyr]

13. How repulsive.

Let us eat cake and whine.

[HughBeaumont]

14. "Foreclosure Phil" can phuck oph.

http://www.motherjones.com/news/feature/2008/07/foreclosure-phil.html

Who's to blame for the biggest financial catastrophe of our time? There are plenty of culprits, but one candidate for lead perp is former Sen. Phil Gramm. Eight years ago, as part of a decades-long anti-regulatory crusade, Gramm pulled a sly legislative maneuver that greased the way to the multibillion-dollar subprime meltdown. Yet has Gramm been banished from the corridors of power? Reviled as the villain who bankrupted Middle America? Hardly. Now a well-paid executive at a Swiss bank, Gramm cochairs Sen. John McCain's presidential campaign and advises the Republican candidate on economic matters. He's been mentioned as a possible Treasury secretary should McCain win. That's right: A guy who helped screw up the global financial system could end up in charge of US economic policy. Talk about a market failure.

Gramm's long been a handmaiden to Big Finance. In the 1990s, as chairman of the Senate banking committee, he routinely turned down Securities and Exchange Commission chairman Arthur Levitt's requests for more money to police Wall Street; during this period, the sec's workload shot up 80 percent, but its staff grew only 20 percent. Gramm also opposed an sec rule that would have prohibited accounting firms from getting too close to the companies they audited—at one point, according to Levitt's memoir, he warned the sec chairman that if the commission adopted the rule, its funding would be cut. And in 1999, Gramm pushed through a historic banking deregulation bill that decimated Depression-era firewalls between commercial banks, investment banks, insurance companies, and securities firms—setting off a wave of merger mania.

But Gramm's most cunning coup on behalf of his friends in the financial services industry—friends who gave him millions over his 24-year congressional career—came on December 15, 2000. It was an especially tense time in Washington. Only two days earlier, the Supreme Court had issued its decision on Bush v. Gore. President Bill Clinton and the Republican-controlled Congress were locked in a budget showdown. It was the perfect moment for a wily senator to game the system. As Congress and the White House were hurriedly hammering out a $384-billion omnibus spending bill, Gramm slipped in a 262-page measure called the Commodity Futures Modernization Act. Written with the help of financial industry lobbyists and cosponsored by Senator Richard Lugar (R-Ind.), the chairman of the agriculture committee, the measure had been considered dead—even by Gramm. Few lawmakers had either the opportunity or inclination to read the version of the bill Gramm inserted. "Nobody in either chamber had any knowledge of what was going on or what was in it," says a congressional aide familiar with the bill's history.

McClown sure knows how to pick 'em. Meg Whitman, Chainsaw Carly Fiorina and now this dickhead.