The Hawaii bit:
“Does a guy who made more than $4 million last year, just got back from vacation on a private beach in Hawaii and bought his own million-dollar mansion with the help of a convicted felon really want to get into a debate about houses?
Despite the fact that Obama is from Hawaii, do these idiots really think Hawaii is an exotic vacation? As Kevin Drum noted the other day, people who eat sack lunches every day in California and are decidedly middle and lower-middle class vacation there, and it is hardly “exotic.” But putting aside all that, you know who else went to Hawaii?
Those well known elitists- the Brady Bunch. In 1972.
Elitists! Although they did have a maid.
*** Update ***
Do we have any musically inclined baritones in the audience? If so, go to work:
Seven-House John
Every morning at the Senate, you could see him arrive.
He stood 5 foot 8, weighed 245.
Ferragamo shoes, cost 500 bucks,
And everybody knew you were out of luck with Big John.Big John
Big John
Seven-House JohnNobody seemed to know where John called home;
Not even him, when you asked him all alone.
”I really don’t know how many houses I’ve got,
But all them furriners oughta be shot!” says Big John.
He partied while the storm swamped New Orleans,
Always ready to fight, and to act real mean.
If you want a change in the way this country’s run,
Big John will call you names, saying, “Reach for your gun.” – Big JohnBig John
Big John
Seven-House JohnOld John thinks you’re poor if you don’t make a killin’
And only middle class till you reach five million.
Multiple houses, multiple planes,
Multiple positions, that’s John McCain.
Calls himself a maverick, like he’s his own man,
But right there on his flank is the “W” brand.
Kissed up to the crew that slandered his name,
And even hired ‘em on to help run his own game – Big John.Big John
Big John
Seven-House JohnThere came the day when the bottom fell out,
When the economy cracked and folks started to shout.
Mortgage foreclosures, and the banks a-failing,
But John says the country is in for smooth sailing.
For the people whose houses are on the block,
Old John’s got just one solution in stock –
Give the rich another tax-break, and your troubles are fixed,
What’s losing a house, when you’ve got another six? – Big John.Big John
Big John
Seven-House JohnNow I don’t want to call him a worthless old twit,
Out of touch at home, and lacking in wit,
These few words are enough about this man,
‘When it comes right down to it, he ain’t worth a damn.’ – Big John.Big John
Big John
Seven-House John© 2008 Ed Drone & Bob Clayton
jake
ED & BC need a recording contract STAT.
Bra-fucking-vo!
Catpain Haddock
No, but they assume the average voter is stupid enough to think that. Hell, a good portion of the electorate has never been out of their home state!
johnosahon
John, add this to your post, according to mccain obama is in the middle class, he ONLY made $4 million, which is BELOW the $5 million mark to be rich in mcRich’s book.
Church Lady
Where the heck are these “lower middle class” people vacationing in Hawaii staying? When we went ten years ago (extended family trip), it was expensive as hell. Hotel – expensive. Airfare from the middle of the country to Maui -really expensive. Food – wondered how people who lived there could afford to eat.
Incertus
The equivalent, if you live in Florida, is going to the Bahamas, which you can do from Fort Lauderdale for a hundred bucks if you just want an overnight trip. Sounds all fancy and exotic to someone from Arkansas, and it probably is for them, but for some of us it really isn’t.
But it’s those people in the middle of the country, for whom a vacation in New Orleans in exotic, that McCain’s camp is trying to connect to with this, and I’m afraid he just might pull it off.
Tax Analyst
As someone who occasionally dabbles in song parody writing, I give this one 7 “Thumbs Up”…one for each of Big John McCain’s houses.
The next media polling question should be, “One a scale of 1-to-10, how ‘Out of Touch’ is John McCain?”
Tim (The Other One)
Nice Brady Bunch reference John. Glad to see you’re not part of that elitist Partridge Family tribe.
Tim (The Other One)
Nice Brady Bunch reference John ! Good to see you don’t buy in to that Partridge Family elitist b.s..
zzyzx
But…. but…. but….
HE WAS A POW!!!!!
Tim (The Other One)
I hate wordpress
Tim (The Other One)
I hate wordpress and the feeling is mutual.
Tlaloc
Uh, if a good portion of the electorate hasn’t been out of their home state, isn’t it a fair guess that a hawaiian vacation does in fact sound pretty swank to them (discounting the ones who live in Hawaii of course)?
Perception and reality have fuck all to do with each other during election season advertisements.
DR
uh… he did NOT have any help from Rezko. That’s been debunked so many times it hurts.
Ted
It’s not that hard. My only trip to the state was to Maui for my brother’s wedding. I make what would probably be described as the high end of “lower middle-class”, ie not much. $3100 got me two tickets from the Midwest, a “3.5 star” condo for 6 days, and a rental car. Yeah, the prices of everything there are ridiculous. To save money, I got groceries and cooked some meals in the condo’s kitchen instead of going out for breakfast and lunch every day. Freed up drinking and partying money.
Of course, I had to finance the trip, but it wasn’t difficult.
Krista
That song needs to be recorded and played everywhere, and forwarded to everybody’s email lists. Too funny.
The Holywriter
I will say this, houses should be the least of things the two candidates should be sparring about.
Jake
Drudge is reporting that McCain plans to hit back HARD in a new ad.
Look for it to point out that 4 is less than 7, GODDAMNIT! And did you know that John McCain was a POW?
Rommie
You know where else those Snobby Brady’s went on vacation? The Grand Canyon, in Arizona. Elitist rugrats…
Zuzu's Petals
And as someone pointed out elsewhere, there are no private beaches in Hawaii. None.
wasabi gasp
Agreed.
I’d prefer if they sparred about whether Obama is a salad-eating unpatriotic anti-christ muslim elitist Hawaiian born foreigner.
Obama doesn’t want to have an honest debate about that, though.
George Prager
First there was Arthur “Two Sheds” Jackson
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HLjS3gzHetA
Now there’s John “Seven Homes” McCain!
dbrown
A line in the song needs to included the fact that its his wife’s money that supports his life style – he is self made man in that he earned this money the old fashion way, he prostituted himself …
neil
Well, Cokie Roberts sure thinks Hawaii is “exotic”. She was sniffing like an offended School Librarian over it last Sunday. And Hawaii is elitist too. Probably because it has palm trees.
That must mean that Florida and California are exotic and elitist too, right?
Svensker
Um, Obama’s from Hawaii, there are no private beaches in Hawaii, since Cindy’s racking up $450K American Express bills monthly I don’t think they should be pointing at big income as a disqualifier, and a million dollars doesn’t buy much of a mansion in places like LA, Bellevue, SF, NY or Chicago. A nice house, yes, but a mansion? Not so much.
Big Lame John.
I’m loving it.
Mike G
Too bad he wasn’t like McCain, born in a traditional heartland soul-of-America place like…er…Panama.
a guy who made more than $4 million last year
Obama made his money through his own efforts. He’s not rich according to McBush’s Rick Warren speech, if his memory stretches back that far.
And he didn’t marry a sugar mama like St. POW. There has to be an ’emasculated’/’kept man’ meme that can be pounded at chauvinistic Repigs to point out that McCain lives large off his wife’s money. Not very manly-provider-like.
When this meme is exhausted, let’s start on his age and mental acuity — which is a legitimate concern when you are aiming for the most demanding job in the world. Sugar-coat it with “He’s not the man he used to be”, which undermines his POW self-sainthood as well. The video clip of him falling asleep during State of the Union would be a good start. We don’t need another lazy, disengaged chief executive.
Pug
My father was an elitist truck driver from California.
He vacationed in Hawaii.
montysano
Meh….. IMHO, the whole McCain-Has-Ninety-Eleven-Houses attack line is ill-advised, because, let’s face it, the Obamas are wealthy. The Obamas are elite. That’s fine by me; I have no problem with success, and I sort of want the elite at the helm of the State. So now it’s just a matter of degree, of how wealthy someone is compared to someone else. It’s a deadend street. Hannity and the Boyz are batting this one away with no problem.
If BO can’t hang the Bush legacy around McCain’s neck and make it stick, he’s fucked. IOW, if the average American dimwit doesn’t understand that he’s undergone an 8-year ass-raping, then BO has a big problem. Sadly, I think BO has a big problem. I hope I’m wrong. But when the lamest presidential candidate in memory, the successor to the most despised American in recent memory, is polling dead even with the likes of BO, then I think we’re far gone down the rabbit hole.
superfly
Um, didn’t John and Cindy meet in Hawaii? and wasn’t she on vacation when they met (I think he was “working” as a naval liaison on a stop over to China)
Did he forget this too?
nightjar
More drivel. You are aware Obama was born in Hawaii and still has kin there, including his grandma who raised him and who he went to visit. But your concern with Obama appearances is touching. and about as sincere as a troll can be.
Jay B.
Now we’re going to debate about the costs of actually going to Hawaii and whether or not that makes one an elitist? Good Jesus.
Tens of thousands of fat, intemperate Americans manage to squeeze their fat asses onto tour busses in Provence and Tuscany every year — it doesn’t make them Bill Gates. Sure, it’s expensive. But it ain’t unusual.
LanceThruster
Mike Brady: You want me to pay for televison when we already get it for free? You must think I’m some kind of idiot!
Lance Link
There has to be an ‘emasculated’/’kept man’ meme that can be pounded at chauvinistic Repigs to point out that McCain lives large off his wife’s money. Not very manly-provider-like.
Gigolo John?
Brachiator
Hawaii hasn’t been exotic since Elvis made “Blue Hawaii” (1961) or wholesome teen stars Fabian and Shelley Fabares appeared in “Ride the Wild Surf” (1964), not to mention tv shows like “Hawaii Five-O” or “Magnum P.I.”. And many people have traveled to Hawaii as beach bums, tourists, military personnel, students. The average American has a pretty good idea of what Hawaii is like, even if he or she has never been there.
It would be one thing if Obama had gone to a mansion that he owned in Hawaii, or if he were seen scooting around on a yacht, but he went home to vacation and to visit friends and family.
Where a wealthy Republican, like Dubya, has to work hard at the pretense of being an average guy, Obama was never seen to be doing anything that was excessively extravagant.
The GOP smear machine can’t do much here because an attack fails to pass a common sense test. No one but a GOP goofball would think that you could make something really negative about Obama going to visit his grandmother. You would either have to be truly foolish. Or Cokie Roberts.
Downpuppy
5’8″?
Maybe in his platform shoes.
maxbaer (not the original)
But, they didn’t have a butler. Brian Keith did, though. Now that sumbitch was an elitist.
Tlaloc
Duh, and I didn’t say anything about Obama. What I did was make a simple observation, one that would seem to be true. And like a good little binary thinker you immediately tried to figgure out whether that fit the “with me” or “against me” bin better.
You don’t have to operate on a stimulus response level.
nightjar
Pure Gibberish. Troll on.
Tlaloc
Other than going to Harvard and being the editor of the law review then launching into a stratospheric political carreer that took him from nobody to serious presidential candidate in approxiamtely a month. Yeah.
Look of course Obama’s an elitist. So McCain. So is every other Senator and representative and president you can name. Okay maybe Kucinich isn’t. That bastard’s some kind of cosmic joke, like the platypus.
but other than representative Leprachaun they’re all rich, all elitist and all divorced from any world you or I inhabit. They just are. So yes it’s stupid for McCain to call Obama elitist as if it were a difference between them. It’s also stupud for Obama supporters to pretend he’s not elitist.
Can we let this dumb line of attacks go now?
Tlaloc
I poke you with this stick and you move left. Poke you on the other side and you move right.
Like I said, you don’t have to operate on such a predictable level, but obviously you can choose to.
Scott H
John McCain might be 5 foot 8 if he has lifts in those $500 loafers.
LiberalTarian
You know, there are people out there who save money to go on a nice vacation.
When people used to go on vacation. Cuz they had good jobs.
My mom went to Hawaii with a friend of hers who had never been anywhere … that was a big deal to them. Cokie Roberts can kiss my lilly white butt. My mom go to Myrtle Beach??? That’s pretty exotic for Montana folk.
And, how exactly is going to Hawaii that much different from going to Disneyland, the apparent destination of all parents who really love their children? How do people afford that????
They charge it silly.
Conservatively Liberal
I think the McCain problem is that he is jealous Obama made his money and he didn’t marry into it like John did. Obama and his wife own their house and McCain is just a lap toy for his wife in her many houses.
Poor former POW, current Senator and presidential candidate John McCain. He ain’t rich, his wife is! He ain’t elite, his wife is! He ain’t a former drug addict who stole to feed his drug habit, his wife was!
Ed Drone
Be our guest! If we weren’t busy just now (a rare enough situation, alas), we’d do it, but we are, so we ain’t.
(Did that make any sense?)
Ed
Brachiator
Achievement is in itself elitist? Damn, you gotta be seriously stoopified to try to foist off such nonsense.
Psst. Turn off the tv and make sure you don’t watch none of them there Olympics. There’s elitists jumpin’ around all over the place.
Out here in California, we’ve got a representative whose home had been foreclosed. I guess she didn’t get the memo that once she got elected, she automatically became a fabulously wealthy member of the elite.
McCain and his Republican handlers picked up the ball and tried to run with it. It’s really up to them to let it go.
CJ
B
Consider it done! I have a friend who is working on a video for these most excellent lyrics right now. Stay tuned!