John McCain Is A Stooge Of Big Oil  

The SMH reports that Obama is starting to take some shots at John McCain's energy policy (which seems to consist of first sucking up to Exxon and co to try and hang onto the oil habit for as long as possible, and second of subsidising the construction of lots of hugely expensive radioactive waste generation facilities in the hope that they will keep the other backward looking part of the energy sector afloat a little longer) - McCain is 'stooge' of oil giants: Obama.

Barack Obama has branded John McCain a stooge of profit-soaked US oil giants, as the White House rivals duelled on high gasoline prices and energy policy exactly three months from election day. Celebrating his 47th birthday, the Democrat launched a stinging counter-attack after the Republican McCain had last week cast him as a vacuous celebrity unfit to lead at a time of gathering crisis.

Unveiling a new energy plan, Obama promised a 10-year, $US150 billion ($A161.43 billion) drive to cut US "addiction" to oil from global hotspots like the Middle East and Venezuela. "Breaking our oil addiction is one of the greatest challenges our generation will ever face," Obama said in Michigan, the general election battle ground state which is home to the crippled US auto industry. "It will take nothing less than a complete transformation of our economy."

The Illinois senator proposed a windfall tax on big oil firms to bankroll a $US1,000 ($A1,076) per family rebate to help defray soaring energy costs.

After McCain's media onslaught of last week, Obama also hit back with his own new advertisement claiming the Arizona senator was "in the pocket" of oil firms basking in record profits. "After one president in the pocket of big oil ... we can't afford another," the ad said, in a reference to President George W Bush, a former oil executive.

Obama's plan calls for an expanded use of "clean coal", solar energy, windpower, the development of new biofuels, cuts in consumption, and the creation of five million new jobs in the "green energy" sector.

Grist reports that McCain's energy policy has been formulated in some alternative reality - McCain says he trusts Big Oil over energy and economic experts.

John McCain said today that he believes what Big Oil says about the amount of oil still available in the United States' outer continental shelf, rather than estimates offered by energy experts, economists, and the government's Energy Information Administration.

A questioner in the crowd at the National Urban League conference in Orlando, Fla., asked the Republican presidential candidate about reports that offshore drilling would reap no benefit for consumers for at least a decade, if even then.

"I don't agree," McCain replied. "In fact I met with oil executives just a few days ago in California ... and the fact is that we can, using existing facilities, expand our oil production within months, according to these executives."

McCain continued, "In my view and that of oil company executives that I've talked to -- the people that actually do it, not those that comment on television, but those that actually do it -- we could, in a very short time, have a beneficial effect as we bridge the gap between our dependence on foreign oil and becoming energy independent."

"So I disagree with those experts and I've talked to the actual people that do the work, that are in the business that say within months and certainly within a very short time, we could have additional oil supply for this nation," he said. "So we ought to drill now."

Maybe the oil execs who spoke with McCain should check in with the American Petroleum Institute. The industry association states up front that opening the outer continental shelf for exploration wouldn't result in bringing new oil to market for five to ten years.

I'm quite chuffed to see that the upcoming US election has finally lured Billmon out of hiding, bringing joy to barflies everywhere, with a post at Daily Kos (the Whiskey Bar remains closed, unfortunately) looking at the long history of john McCain flip-flopping on every conceivable issue. You'll be glad to know he no longer supports flying the Confederate flag over war memorials, for example, and that he was sorry about accepting bribes (and getting caught) during the last great US banking disaster - The Great White Hope.

McCain’s primary talent has always been his ability persuade simple-minded people (i.e. his media cheerleading claque) that he is flipping or flopping as a matter of great personal principle and at great possible cost to his political career – even as he has used his various flips and flops to climb the greased pole and become the presidential nominee of his party.

I’ll leave out McCain’s early career as a professional ex-POW and passionate enemy of Vietnamese Communism (to be replaced, later, by a noble, magnanimous belief in reconciliation -- at about the same time the GOP business lobby decided that diplomatic and trade relations with Vietnam would actually be really cool.) I’ll also leave out McCain’s financially expedient (and therefore politically expedient) divorce and remarriage to a wealthy beer heiress. No one knows the human heart, etc. I wasn’t following politics in those days anyway.

But I was around, and following congressional politics rather closely (by which I mean professionally) when McCain first popped up on the political radar screen in 1986 during the so-called Keating Five scandal. In exchange for various regulatory favors, Keating, a wealthy and politically, um, generous, S&L executive, turned himself into the special friend of a bipartisan group of sleazebag Senators, with five in particular, including McCain, reaping most of the benefits. By modern standards (i.e. Jack Abramoff’s and Ted Steven’s standards) it was actually pretty tame stuff, but it was considered a big deal at the time.)

In a sense, the scandal marked the birth of the McCain "brand," because unlike the other four of the Five, he stood up in the Senate and more or less admitted he was guilty (not nearly as guilty as the others, he hastened to point out – but still, he felt bad about what he had done.) This went over really big with the media ("Senator admits guilt" outranking even man bites dog on the news-o-meter.)

Now, if you go back and look, you’ll see that if Keating didn’t comp McCain as generously and vigorously as he did the other four, it was probably because McCain was a very junior senator at the time, with relatively little influence to peddle. But it wasn’t because Honest John was shy about accepting the favors that were offered him. If John McCain had a problem with the way lobbying (i.e. legalized prostitution) was being done in Washington, you definitely won’t find it in the record of the Keating investigation. McCain’s fit of Puritan self-righteousness (or political calculation, depending on your view) came after the fact, once he’d already been caught. And yet, from that single Senate speech sprang the shoot that eventually grew into the sturdy tree of John McCain’s media image.

You have to admit it was a neat trick: Happily accepting the naughty goodies while they were being handed out, but then winning brownie points for admitting he took them – after the world had already found out he took them. But that’s precisely what McCain did. He’s never looked back since.

The lesson he learned, I think, is that pseudo-candor (truthiness) usually trumps the genuine article (McCain was way ahead of his time on this) And so he hasn’t hesitated to flip and flop shamelessly if (and these are the key points) it is in his interest and he thinks he can get away with it.

McCain pretty much disappeared from view in the late ‘80s and early ‘90s – the Dems controlled the Senate, the Cold War (his signature issue) was winding down and the Defense budget (his primary source of legislative goodies to dispense) was being cut. The big issues back then were the budget deficit and the economy, and McCain’s never been able to conceal the fact that he doesn’t give a rat’s ass about either of them. ...

In 2005 and early 2006, as things DID go south in a big way for Shrub, McCain stepped up his public criticisms -- but at the same time moved behind the scenes to reassure the GOP party establishment (particularly the religious fundamentalist wing) that he could be team player. He even went down to Lynchburg and kissed the ring of Jerry Falwell (a.k.a. the "agent of intolerance.)

In public and his private media love sessions, McCain spoke out against torture (with the inevitable reference to those POW horrors he doesn’t like to talk about even while he’s talking about them.) Privately, he worked with the Cheney Administration on a compromise that would shift all torture-related program activities to the CIA and absolve everybody involved of any legal culpability. Publicly, he moved to distance himself from his GOP colleagues and their pork barrel ways (grandstanding all the way). But that didn’t stop him from campaigning for some of the worst offenders in the fall, collecting political chits he knew he would need for his second presidential run.

After the congressional elections resulted in a Democratic House and Senate, McCain must have realized that if the Democrats and the Jim Baker wing of the GOP succeeded in liquidating the Iraq fiasco forthwith, his political and foreign policy reputation would be left in shreds. So he backed the "surge" – but again, left himself a later out, if necessary, by publicly questioning whether a gang as incompetent as the Cheney Administration would be able to see it through. ...

And so it’s finally dawning, even on some members of his media "base" (ever the hapless clowns in our political theater of the absurd ) that McCain isn’t quite the straight-talking, straight-shooting military man of honor they thought he was. The White Knight has morphed into the Great White Hope – the GOP machine’s last, desperate chance to avoid the mortal humiliation of being defeated not just by a Democrat, not just by a liberal, but by a liberal Democratic black man.

Some of the suckers are even starting to suspect McCain’s been lying about them, too. Despite the cozy chats on the Straight Talk Express, the Arizona barbeque weekends, the cheerfully misogynist jokes and the teary-eyed moments when John tells one of his patented POW stories – despite, even, the donuts with sprinkles – he isn’t actually their friend at all. In fact it’s pretty obvious he despises them almost as much as he despises a system that forces him to pander both to them and to the voters.

It wasn't a one off post, as he soon followed up with First time as tragedy, second time as farce.