Headline at Politico :

McCain forcefully rebukes Gramm

Oh really? It’s nice that McCain is willing to “rebuke” those comments, why hasn’t he rejected or denounced them? Phil Gramm has said other things I disagree with too, yet I’m still waiting to hear if John McCain is willing to rebuke or dismiss or reject or denounce those comments as well. Does John McCain secretly agree with everything that Phil Gramm has said that I find objectionable? When if John McCain going to finally cut his ties with Gramm?

I really think we need to spend the next month talking about this.

Seriously though, Kos is totally right about this. John McCain has said numerous times that our economic problems are “psychological”. A competent press corps that actually dug deeper than “he said, she said” trivialities would recognize the pattern in McCain’s various statements on the economy and have the guts to ask him “Do you think the American people are hallucinating when they see higher gas prices, rising unemployment, and declining home values?”

John McCain is having a townhall-by-telephone for Virginians tonight at 7:00 pm ET. Anyone with a Virginia area code—and maybe people with unidentified area codes—should be able to call in and possibly ask him a question. As far as I know questions aren’t screened, and everyone has an equal chance of being called on.

Here’s how it works:

Dial: 1-877-850-4146
Passcode: 84831

These are a few questions I’d try to ask if I were from Virginia:

1. Iraqi leaders are now saying they want a timeline for the withdrawal of US troops. If you become president, and the elected Iraqi government has decided it wants all US troops to leave by a certain date, will you commit here and now to following their wishes?

2. Phil Gramm, one of your top economic advisors and your close political friend, said yesterday we are having are “mental recession” and that we’ve become a “nation of whiners.” You’ve just said Mr. Gramm doesn’t speak for you on this. If he doesn’t speak for you on the economy, why is he one of your top economic advisors?

3. You’ve just said about Social Security that “it’s terrible to ask people to pay in to a system that they won’t receive benefits from.” Do you know that, according to the Social Security Administration’s projections, even if the trust fund is exhausted in forty years, recipients will STILL get higher benefits than retired people today get? [If YES: Then why are you claiming young people today will never get any benefits?] [If NO: Why are you talking about Social Security if you don’t understand anything about how it works?]

4. You’ve said that you have a strategy to capture Osama bin Laden, but it’s something that can only be done in secret by the president. Instead of waiting to be president yourself, why haven’t you just told President Bush what your strategy is?