"Aware of the Internet," Computer Non-User McCain Touts eBay as Recession Cure
By Jon Perr Monday Jun 23, 2008 9:45am
Two weeks ago, Huffington Post reminded Americans that John McCain by his own admission doesn't know how to use a computer. Now, McCain campaign aide Mark Soohoo reassured voters that "John McCain is aware of the Internet" and "You don’t actually have to use a computer to understand how it shapes the country."
No doubt, as with so much that for his public policy pronouncements, John McCain didn't let his ignorance get in the way of speaking out. As it turns out, back in April the self-described computer "illiterate" proclaimed eBay was the answer to poverty and recession in the United States.
Earlier this year, the Politico's Mike Allen (video here) asked the GOP presidential contenders whether they used a PC or Mac. In his response, McCain revealed that when it comes to high tech devices large (like private jets) or small (like personal computers), he is dependent on his beer heiress wife:
"Neither. I'm an illiterate that has to rely on my wife for all of the assistance I can get."
But just because John McCain doesn't know how to connect to eBay doesn't mean he doesn't have connections to eBay. As it turns out, former eBay CEO Meg Whitman is not only a senior adviser to John McCain, but plays ventriloquist with him when it comes to the economy.
During his now-forgotten "Forgotten Places" tour two months ago, McCain told an audience in Inez, Kentucky, "You have a right to expect us to show as much concern for helping you create more and better choices to make for yourselves as we show any other community in America." And one of those better choices, according to John McCain, is to become a seller on the auction site, eBay:
"Today, for example, 1.3 million people in the world make a living off eBay, most of those are in the United State of America."
Ebay's Whitman couldn't have put it better herself. In fact, she put it almost exactly the same on way on CBS 60 Minutes in March. As she told Lesley Stahl:
"We have about - around the world, about 1.3 million people make most, if not all, of their living selling on eBay."
That John McCain, who more than once admitted his limited knowledge of the economy, would parrot one of his most senior campaign aides is unsurprising. But that he would cite eBay as the way forward for a community where 37% live in poverty and 40% of the wage income comes from mining seems remarkably callous, even by McCain's standards. No doubt, tens of thousands off people make a good living as eBay sellers. As eBay's Whitman told CBS' Stahl, "people can supplement their income from several thousand dollars a month to...I think our top seller on eBay grosses $20 million." But for a country slipping into recession and facing the loss of thousands of good paying manufacturing jobs in a rapidly globalizing economy, a high-speed Internet connection and an eBay virtual storefront is hardly a substitute. As American workers confront increasing insecurity due to competition in China, India and elsewhere, John McCain apparently believes they should follow in the footsteps of Whitman's legions who earn their living selling "high tech electronic equipment, maybe it's audio equipment, maybe it's Barbie dolls, maybe it's collectibles, or a certain niche of collectibles, of coins, of china." Instead building products and offering services for the world, McCain's Americans should just sell stuff to each other. And when all else fails for distressed homeowners, McCain's Americans should just join the rapidly growing ranks of those:
"Doing what is necessary -- working a second job, skipping a vacation, and managing their budgets -- to make their payments on time."
Of course, John McCain isn't speaking from personal experience when it comes to either computers or financial hardship. (As it turns out, one of McCain's 8 homes - the one with "remote control window coverings" - is now up for sale.) Knowing even less than Ted Stevens ("series of tubes") or George W. Bush (who "clicks around" on "the Google"), John McCain nonetheless offered the Internet as the answer for Americans struggling to make ends meet.
boosh did the same thing.
“Neither. I’m an illiterate that has to rely on my wife for all of the assistance I can get.”
Yeah, she's a pro at cutting and pasting.
internet awareness. not to be confused with awareness of all internet traditions.
BaScOmBe hearts Lara Logan @ 1:
He's called her a trollop. Does that mean she excels at 'c*nting and pasties?'
I'm sure ebay is glad to have that endorsment
Uh Mel...
Before you start scatting
You better see where your mike scatted to.
What is ebay's health care policy for those who sell their 1970's baseball cards ?
So if we all have less money, and no new jobs are coming to replace them, we can go through our attics and sell our shit to . . . who? on eBay? So now we all have the same less amount of money and we go selling our shit to each other on eBay. Money is moving, but in addition to selling our shit to each other we have to pay our mortgages, whose rates are going up for those of us duped into an ARM, and our power bills for those of us not yet on solar, wind, or geothermal, and our food bills. And gas because our grocery stores where we get our food are not close enough to walk to.
McCain is really exposing the intellectual fraud of trickle-down economics with this stupidity.
Wait! I'll go spend my dwinding eBay funds on lottery tickets! One in a million chances means that 300 people will win the lotto this week! Woohoo! Only 299,999,700 more to go!!!
Looks like McCain his getting ready to "fist pump" someone in the photo.
He does know about the tubes that are the intar-web....right?
McCain...like Reagan without the excuse of Alzheimer's and like GWB without the excuse of the coke and alcohol.
Why do Yard Sales hate America?
Jesus. There is no way this senile bufoon can be president.
McCain is VERY strange. He throws out ignorant solutions to huge problems America is facing. He doesn't care AND hasn't even thought about the problems. He's like someone who claims he's qualified to be a brain surgeon but didn't go to medical school.
Maybe when you're being supported by a millionnaire, you occupy such a rarified strata that there ARE no problems, and those who have them just didn't make the right choices like you did. IOW, it's their fault and nobody needs to be concerned about people with self-inflicted problems.
woody, tokin librul @ 5:
OUCH!!!
QUICK...find a late life photo of Charlie Chaplin and tell me that he couldn't be a twin of McCain (or vice versa)!!!! GOOFY...but Chaplin was a genius and McCain...NOT SO MUCH!!!
Like the new 300 million to the winner of the giant leap battery idea. Like the battery people are holding out on developing a trillion dollar idea for a measly 300 mil. One thing I noticed is that repugs think offering huge amounts of tax dollars to people always works. As to ebay being the answer I am quite sure Mrs. ebay thinks everyone need sit
Clean House will save America!!!
Dancer @ 17:
Charlie was handsome and endearing, McC*nt not so much.
That reminds me of Pat Boone in Roger & Me, who thought that Amway was the answer to Flint's unemployment.
Pete @ 18:
offering huge amounts of tax dollars to people DOES always work! ask blackwater and KBR/Haliburton.
At least he didn't tell us that pawn shops can save our economy.
Let them eat cake.
Kansaskowboy @ 10:
Elisabeth Hasselbeck ?
ok we know McCain ias a douche
big fucking deal
what about FISA
i am still worked up about the bullshit obama is pulling and i want to hear more from C&L about it
are YOU going to be as silent as obama is?
Pete @ 18:
Like paying off the Iraqis not to kill each other or the Afghanis to turn their neighbors in for rewards even though they aren't guilty of anything. We all can see how well that worked out.
He really doesn't know how to use a computer??!! I find that hard to believe. How, on god's green earth, can you be a U.S. Senator without a computer??
Ebay aside, is he that out of touch with us average folks? It boggles the mind. Is this common in Washington?
If that's true, Washington really, really, really is out of touch with the rest of us.
Charles @ 21:
Well at least an Amyway distributor can eat any unsold LOC when times get tough.
e-bay might very well be a model for goopers. It is or has become a free market jungle with opportunity mixed with tons of predators. There is minimal protection but lots of chances to get fleeced. I guess thats the part McCain likes.
What a creepy photo. He's about to sock the photographer. And Johnny, please try a tooth brush.
John McCain went to an expensive prep high school and then to the Naval Academy, then on to the military. I don't think he retired from the military before marrying Cindy, right? If that's true, then it's likely that McCain has never, ever looked for a job, or worked a job other than a military officer, in his entire life.
To paraphrase an old maxim, "It'll be a great day in America when the Dept. of Defense has to raise money on E-Bay, and our schools are fully funded."
The bankruptcy of the 'Reagan Reaction' has attained complete fruition, and it's apparently spoiling on the vine.
or a party that doesn't use computers they sure get a lot of our information through them! Just imagine how scary it'll be when they hire someone who does.
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Oh, "beer heiress wife". I didn't realize that's where her money was from.
So maybe that's what he meant about "I'll veto every beer?"
Still not sure what it meant, but that's got to be a clue!
BaScOmBe hearts Lara Logan @ 22:
HMMMMMMMMM so you think that's working?
Yup...married Cindy in May 1980, retired from the Navy in 1981, ran for Congress immediately.
Speaking of economic depressions- The Return of Smoot Hawley protectionism.
http://globaleconomicanalysis.blogspot.com/2008/06/trade-wars-health-car...
The U.S. International Trade Commission ruled that domestic steel pipe makers are being harmed by competition from China, a decision that will lead to tariffs of more than 100 percent on imports of that product.
The decision, in a 5 to 0 vote, marks the first time the U.S. will impose duties to compensate for tax breaks and other government subsidies to Chinese competitors.
"This marks a fundamental shift in U.S.-China trade relations," said Gilbert Kaplan, a lawyer for U.S. pipe makers. "It's the first time we've confronted their subsidies by putting duties on imports."
Two types of tariffs will apply to the Chinese pipe: countervailing duties, used to counter subsidies, will average 37.2 percent; and anti-dumping duties, to compensate for goods sold overseas at prices below those at home, will be 69.2 percent on 31 of the largest producers. Other companies face higher duties.
Under the direction of Senator Reed Smoot of Utah, the Republican party drafted the Fordney-McCumber tariff act in 1921 with an eye to increasing domestic firms' market share. Weakening labor markets in 1927 and 1928 prompted Smoot to propose yet another round of tariff hikes.
One thousand twenty-eight economists in the United States, organized by Paul Douglas, Irving Fisher, James TFG Wood, Frank Graham, Ernest Patterson, Henry Seager, Frank Taussig, and Clair Wilcox, signed a petition asking President Hoover to veto the legislation (New York Times, 5 May 1930). Automobile executive Henry Ford spent an evening at the White House trying to convince Hoover to veto the bill, calling it "an economic stupidity.
Retaliation began long before the bill was enacted into law in June 1930. As it passed the House of Representatives in May 1929, boycotts broke out and foreign governments moved to raise rates against United States products. In May 1930, Canada preemptively imposed new tariffs on 16 products that altogether accounted for around 30% of U.S. exports to Canada. Imports plunged two thirds from $4.4 billion (1929) to $1.5 billion (1933), and exports fell from $5.4 billion to $2.1 billion—in both cases, far more than the 50% fall in Gross Domestic Product.
Unemployment was at 7.8% in 1930 when the Smoot-Hawley tariff was passed, but it jumped to 16.3% in 1931, 24.9% in 1932, and 25.1% in 1933
Although Smoot-Hawley did not cause the great depression, it did make it much worse.
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what an insightful and informative post
posts like this make C&L look bad
marko @ 26:
“We have about - around the world, about 1.3 million people make most, if not all, of their living selling on eBay.”
Only a rich person would see Ebay the way McCain does. In order to make a living selling things on Ebay one has to have something to sell in the first place. Many folks that have had their homes foreclosed on or have lost their jobs in this economy are selling their remaining belongings just to survive.
I'm kinda leary of eBay now... With McCain's endorsement it feels like when you grandpa tells you that Nirvana is good band. I never listened to Nirvana again.
More proof that McGrampa is simply and clearly out of touch with reality.
What else is there to know about raw naked power?
They say . . "this is what we are doing to you today, and tomorrow" and people bend over and take it.
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Is he on acid? Even power sellers on Ebay rarely make above $10K / year there.
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what an insightful and informative post
posts like this make C&L look bad
You are such a phony. Go to Red State and check out some real "insightful" shit on the Obama's. It is a bad photo. There's nothing wrong having fun with the old man. We can't be politically high minded 24/7 like you....[Deleted, Site Monitor]
It's really nothing unusual. I knew top tech execs in the 90's who didn't even use their computer 98% of the time.
eBAY??? How about getting out and mowing lawns with a borrowed lawn mower? That's what a couple who rang my doorbell yesterday are doing. They explained they'd just lost their jobs and were hoping to get enough work to pay the rent.
Guess I should have told them they'd be better off selling stuff on eBay. Maybe they don't have a computer, though.
O/T: Sen. John McCain sported a bandage atop his head after a run-in with an automobile rooftop
He's really is the spitting image of incompetence of herr dubyah.
Alex @ 38:
I believe that he worked for her Daddy while running for Congress and maybe for a short time before.
As for asking KBR and Blackwater, I think we can assume that it works well as long as you don't need to use whatever they are producing. If they are screwing up, how would we ever know? If on the other hand they are making batteries, we'd know immediately.
Ol' Johnny might not be aware there is a not-so-incipient revolution among eBay sellers as they are rebelling against eBay's new policies that favor large, "Buy it Now" sellers over the small, mom and pop operations. What a surprise he'd be shilling for eBay given those policies.
As to his computer illiteramacy, even my 78 year old father can work a computer. Granted, it's a Mac and AOL but he can still send his own email. Doesn't need one of "his girls" to do it for him...
McCain is also an expert on battery technology and on off-shore drilling platform resistance to hurricanes. Perhaps there are other things he's not an expert on, such as whether the surge "is working" or what victory and surrender mean. Conversely, you may not need to be an ex-prisoner of war or shop in Iraqi market to know that leaving that war zone will jump start our economy.
Pete @ 18:
Not to mention paying Iraqis and Afghans with our tax dollars to sell us "enemies".
I wonder if anyone will give out the percentage of stolen goods, counterfeit goods and scams. Since ebay does it's best to eliminate any talk of monitoring or verification of the sellers, you have to figure it is the biggest fence ever made. And this kind of person is advising the candidate?
caveat emptor
Meg Whitman, founder of E-bay has been named as a dark horse candidate for the Vice Presidential slot in John McCain's 2008 presidential bid in case you wonder why McCain is "plugging away".
I wonder if McCain knows what Craigslist is? I bet he thinks its Larry Craig's list of potential airport men's room encounters.
Joe O. @ 58:
Actually, parts of it are.....sort of.
Whens McCain-MSM going to talk about this stuff instead of feeding the public a load of horseshit?
(June 18) RBS (Royal Bank of Scotland), one of the largest banks on the planet, warned of dire pending economic conditions, advising clients “to brace for a full-fledged crash in global stock and credit markets.”
A guy who has never had a job for one day of his life telling people to make a living on eBay .... sweet jeebus what happened to the US?
To bastardise the late, great George Carlin, not only is McCain full of shit, but the shit he's full of wasn't even originally his shit to start with! Dick Cheney and Karl Rove made the same observation in 2004 and 2007.
http://garthvh.com/post/2007/06/10/Karl-Rove-and-Dick-Cheney-on-eBay.aspx
The only question remaining is whether all three were squatted under the bull's sphincter at the same time, or whether Rove recycled Cheney's regurgitated bullshit, then proceeded to regurgitate it again for McCains perusal.
Either way, I feel quite ill after typing that...
J.
dumbass caveman!!!
Yellow Elephant Safari @ 59:
Is that where you have to think vertically, not horizontally?
You CAN make a fortune selling on the internet, provided the item has an "image" of the virgin Mary or some other religious icon on it. I have a t-shirt with a sweat stain that closely resemble Jesus Christ himself.
“We have about - around the world, about 1.3 million people make most, if not all, of their living selling on eBay.”
Allowing burglars, pickpockets and car thieves access to a wider market with a smaller cut in profits then a traditional fence would take.
earl @ 61:
Like George Carlin said, "this country is finished, it's been going down the tubes for a long time. People have have been bought off with gadgets and gimmicks, cell phones that make pancakes, no one ever questions anything."
I see McCain is once again recycling the neocon crap.... Cheney used this same crazy line years ago to convince people how great the economy was.....
"That's a source that didn't even exist 10 years ago," Cheney said, according to the Associated Press. "Four hundred thousand people make some money trading on eBay."
Cheney didn't elaborate as to how many of those folks might make a sustainable living doing so.
Democratic vice presidential candidate John Edwards responded that Cheney's comments show how "out of touch" he and President Bush are with the economy.
unemployed @ 65:
I have one that has drool on it. Want to trade?
The only people making money on ebay are the owners. Have you seen the fees they charge lately to sell stuff? And then they double-fee you if you use PayPal. Ebay is a neo-con wet dream - get everyone to give up their stuff and then tax the living #$%& out of them in the name of "fees" and the "free market". Tools like Grandpa looooooove ebay!
How is eBay the answer to poverty and recession? Is eBay going to write economic policy, lower gas prices, house the homeless, buy groceries and pay unemployment?
I am guessing that McCain must have an amazing staff in his Senate office.
Well for fucks sake then lets nationalize the beer industry and let the mccains make a living selling homemade beer coasters on e-bay!
McSame knows the internets exsists, wow I'm impressed!
Haven't had the time to read them all, but I would love for Johnny-Boy to tell us how people who can barely afford their groceries are supposed to get their hands on the technology to make EBay selling possible.
Digital Camera
Computer
Internet Connection
Etc.
I guess it means he doesn't read Crooks and Liars.....
eBAY .... and Katrina "worked out quite well" for the people of NOLA ---- where do these freaks come from?
Senile John McCain calls for nation wide strike; says, we should all quit our day jobs and start selling on E-bay.
Terrible @ 73:
Someone mentioned boycotting whatever Beer company she makes her $$$ from ...
seems like a perfect idea.
Faxe (10%) all the way!
I remember a couple years ago Cheney trying to claim that the economy was really better than had been reported and using 'all the money people are making on Ebay' as one of his key points.
Bitter Bud Hussein @ 70:
Ebay helped our business stay afloat last year and earlier this year when business came to a standstill...but JUST barely, the posting fees, or whatever, they charge ya for everything they can...
Ron @ 69:
Want to throw in my jocky shorts with the shit stain that looks like gwb?
Got it at one of his photo ops.
Vote for the punch drunk candidate!
He's only a little harder to understand than Mohammed Ali.
unemployed @ 65:
If you got the image of some long haired bearded dude in your t-shirt sweat stain
How do you know it's not Tommy Chong?
Wonder if this old fool knows what electricity is.
Maybe John can help George answer that age old question "Is Stupid a viable alternative to either Liberal or Conservative"?
E-Bay: Yeah, right. Take that "Yard Sale" sign off the front lawn, and sell your dreck on E-Bay! That's the ticket. Really, wtf's the difference b/t "making a living" off perpetual yard sales (which many communities prohibit) and E-Bay? This is a good thing? Anyone know the average net take of an E-Bay seller? The mean? Yeah, yeah, some are doing OK; most I am certain are not.
fastfeat @ 55:
You've got it I was thinking something along those lines as well, not mention 50 mil for bin Laden
marko @ 26:
definatly , we might get heath care if we sell out the constitution, hold on im sure they can think of a better reason to sellout!
Having billionaire Meg Whitman as his puppetmaster is perfect. She made a fortune on an auction business that squeezes the little people for every nickel and dime ebay can get, and its a business that has raked in untold millions/billions off fraudulent sales of fakes, ripoffs, bootlegs, and pirated goods.
ebay has used the court system to absolve itself of all responsibility for connecting legitimate buyers with crooked sellers, even when copyright violations are screaming in its face. ebay pockets the money stolen from innocent buyers by wormy sellers.
Meg Whitman, former finance co-chair for millionaire Mitt Romney: perfect.
Yeah, that's the ticket. Just keep tossing us these predatory billionaires to help rip the heart out of our Constitution and turn it into a sales contract that protects Almighty Corporations.
The likes of Meg Whitman and John McCain: A match made in heaven for Controlled Media and the wealthy elite...and a hellish nightmare for 99+% of all other US Americans.