Friday, August 22, 2008

The unknown houses of John McCain, by gimleteye

Someone has the keys to John McCain's houses. They must have keys. Who has them? Do you know where the keys to your houses are?

Listen: there a lot of calls to the mainstream media along the lines of; much ado about nothing. On the contrary, the ownership society was a big enough deal for the Bush White House and the development industry to gin up the biggest housing bubble in US economic history.

You have to be pretty far above daily concerns of a homeowner, not to know how many houses you own.

And put the shoe on the other foot: what if Barack Obama had been asked the same question and given the same answer as McCain. Would this have been a non-story in the mainstream media? John McCain wasn't photographed windsurfing; he was caught with his pants down on the issue most fundamental to Americans: what do they own and what do they owe.

John McCain doesn't know the answer to either of these questions. Well, maybe he does today. But if you think John Kerry looked foolish windsurfing, what do you think about John McCain not knowing how many houses he owns?

This is no ordinary dust-up because these aren't ordinary times. Some observers have no hesitation saying that housing markets are in the worst crisis since the Great Depression. We've said it for over a year, here in Miami -- where the housing boom had its political origins in wetlands and farmland.

As the nation rolls toward the voting booth, we can point out with confidence that this housing market implosion has never been about "subprime" mortgages, which is exactly what Bush administration spokespersons said a year ago.

Every single category of debt is under pressure; school loans, credit cards, cars, and -- yes-- homes where middle-class Americans suddenly find themselves under water with their home equity value.

Now you would imagine that American voters would ask their presidential candidate who owns seven homes-- or is it eight?-- how he can relate; first of all, to the depth of our economic crisis and what exactly his prescriptions are and do they, for instance, include the nationalization of the US banking industry, or just Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac or also Lehman Brothers and Bear Stearns.

Or will our economic problems be solved by simply declaring a time horizon-- as the Bush administration now claims for withdrawal from Iraq-- that at some indeterminate point in the future all will be well for the homeowner facing inflation, fuel costs through the roof, and equity that no longer exists?

If Obama had declared he doesn't know how many homes he owns, his opponents would be howling that the man is too inexperienced and too reckless with his own money to be president.

The matter of how many homes John McCain owns is relevant. It is time for him to come clean: what are his monthly mortgage payments and who has the keys to his houses?

Type the rest of the post here

16 comments:

Anonymous said...

Obama does not know how many States America has...He said 57...
Now that is pathetic!

Anonymous said...

This is George Bush Senior all over again, who didn't know products were scanned in stores. He was out of touch with us regular folks and so is John McCain.

swampthing said...

A house is not a home, unless there is someone living there.

A brain is not a mind, unless there is cognitive thought.

This is the mulatto millennium, get used to it.

Anonymous said...

McCain does not have mortgages!

What about McCain leaving his wife when she had cancer? What happened to that story?

Anonymous said...

not cancer:

But there is another Mrs McCain who casts a ghostly shadow over the Senator’s presidential campaign. She is seldom seen and rarely written about, despite being mother to McCain’s three eldest children.

And yet, had events turned out differently, it would be she, rather than Cindy, who would be vying to be First Lady. She is McCain’s first wife, Carol, who was a famous beauty and a successful swimwear model when they married in 1965.

She was the woman McCain dreamed of during his long incarceration and torture in Vietnam’s infamous ‘Hanoi Hilton’ prison and the woman who faithfully stayed at home looking after the children and waiting anxiously for news.

But when McCain returned to America in 1973 to a fanfare of publicity and a handshake from Richard Nixon, he discovered his wife had been disfigured in a terrible car crash three years earlier. Her car had skidded on icy roads into a telegraph pole on Christmas Eve, 1969. Her pelvis and one arm were shattered by the impact and she suffered massive internal injuries.

When Carol was discharged from hospital after six months of life-saving surgery, the prognosis was bleak. In order to save her legs, surgeons

had been forced to cut away huge sections of shattered bone, taking with it her tall, willowy figure. She was confined to a wheelchair and was forced to use a catheter.

Through sheer hard work, Carol learned to walk again. But when John McCain came home from Vietnam, she had gained a lot of weight and bore little resemblance to her old self.

Today, she stands at just 5ft4in and still walks awkwardly, with a pronounced limp. Her body is held together by screws and metal plates and, at 70, her face is worn by wrinkles that speak of decades of silent suffering.

For nearly 30 years, Carol has maintained a dignified silence about the accident, McCain and their divorce. But last week at the bungalow where she now lives at Virginia Beach, a faded seaside resort 200 miles south of Washington, she told The Mail on Sunday how McCain divorced her in 1980 and married Cindy, 18 years his junior and the heir to an Arizona brewing fortune, just one month later.

Anonymous said...

more:
Carol insists she remains on good terms with her ex-husband, who agreed as part of their divorce settlement to pay her medical costs for life. ‘I have no bitterness,’

she says. ‘My accident is well recorded. I had 23 operations, I am five inches shorter than I used to be and I was in hospital for six months. It was just awful, but it wasn’t the reason for my divorce.

‘My marriage ended because John McCain didn’t want to be 40, he wanted to be 25. You know that happens...it just does.’

Some of McCain’s acquaintances are less forgiving, however. They portray the politician as a self-centred womaniser who effectively abandoned his crippled wife to ‘play the field’. They accuse him of finally settling on Cindy, a former rodeo beauty queen, for financial reasons.
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/femail/article-1024927/The-wife-John-McCain-callously-left-behind.html

Anonymous said...

Anyone know where all these homes are?

Geniusofdespair said...

Good question:

According to the Wall Street Journal:
Condo in La Jolla, Calif. - worth more than 1 million
Two Condos in Coronado, Calif. - one 2.7 million, the other unavailable
House – Sedona Ariz. - Value about $1.1 million
Two Condos in Phoenix – Combined Value over $2.2 Million
Condo in Arlington, Va. - Worth $847,800

Looks to be about 8 or 9 million.

Anonymous said...

McCain, who has portrayed Obama as an elitist, is the son and grandson of admirals. His wife, a beer heiress, is worth $100 million. Obama was raised by a single mother who relied at times on food stamps, and went to top schools on scholarships and loans. His income has increased from book sales since he spoke at the 2004 Democratic convention.

Anonymous said...

Just so we are clear: visiting your grandmother while vacationing in Hawaii, the state where you were you were born - elitist.

Meeting the millionaire heiress daughter (who you will soon begin an affair with and divorce your first wife and then go on and buy a ton of houses) in Hawaii and then going on and honeymooning in Hawaii – not elitist.

Anonymous said...

What has been said about McCain's three eldest children by Carol? Where are they & what is their status??

Anonymous said...

Last time I checked McCain EARNED everything he has - Dems always seem to struggle with achievement

Geniusofdespair said...

He earned his wife's multi millions that she had before she met him?

Anonymous said...

and so WHAT! There is nothing wrong with that. Who gives a rats ass how many houses they have. You know what? How many houses does John Kerry and his wife have, what about the Kennedy's? Biden, how many properties does he have? Romney, how many does he have? Bush, how many does he have?

Dumbocrats are in deep doodoo, and they know it. Now with I need more hair Biden, its gotten worse.

Geniusofdespair said...

last person: The reader above said:

Last time I checked McCain EARNED everything he has -

I was responding to the above which was an incorrect statement.

I don't give a rat's ass how many houses he has either. I give a rat's ass that he DOESN"T KNOW how many houses he has.

Anonymous said...

What about Bama not knowing how many States in our union. He said 57. Do you care?