The John Sydney McCain Memorial Crappie Award

Time for another edition of the award for political flip-floppery that every politician dreads even being considered for, much less receiving.

Apparently, the plaque that commemorates this award, with its real mounted Crappie, becomes "aromatic" rather quickly, distracting the staffers who work in the offices where the winners so proudly display it. :)

There was a spirited competition for the award this week, with John McCain, the namesake of this thoroughly uncoveted award, making a run for it.

From an article about the candidates' personal cars, in the latest edition of Newsweek magazine -

"I've bought American literally all my life and I'm proud," McCain said in the interview with Detroit's WXYZ-TV.

Then the article goes on to list the McCains' *fleet* of vehicles -

"There's a 2005 Volkswagen convertible in the garage along with a 2001 Honda sedan. Otherwise, there's a 2007 half-ton Ford pickup truck, which might come in handy on the Sedona ranch; a vintage 1960 Willys Jeep; a 2008 Jeep Wrangler; a 2000 Lincoln; and a 2001 GMC SUV. The McCains also own three 2000 NEV Gem electric vehicles, which are bubble-shaped cars popular in retirement communities."

In addition to the imported VW convertible and the Honda sedan listed in the paragraph, the article mentioned another import, a Toyota Prius, that was purchased for the McCains' daughter. There's yet another import, a Lexus, that's used by Cindy McCain, but that one doesn't count because it is registered to her family's beer distributorship.

I would love to go on about how McCain's flip flop on American-made products and jobs for American workers, but in this week's finned follies competition, this is nothing but "normal" campaign hyperbole.

(And for the sake of giving this week's award to the person I wanted to award it to anyway, I'm going to ignore McCain's spinal cord-shearing flip flop on regulation of America's financial markets this week. During the yet-to-be-penned election post-mortems, this past week will go down as the point when the McCain campaign succeeded in locking his "I'm a maverick. Trust me!" wool over America's eyes or as the point where America finally realized how full of Crappie McCain really is. Check back in a month and a half for an update. :) )


The second and more serious contender for the award was President George W. Bush. He and his Treasury Secretary, Henry Paulson, are pushing a plan to bail out Wall Street that will cost taxpayers to the tune of $700 billion.

This is after a year during which Bush spent most of his time opposing and threatening to veto any plans to help out Main Street homeowners dealing with the mortgage crisis.

I'd speak (at length! :) ) about how Bush's concern for those facing financial stress seems to be directly proportional to their tax bracket, but since he actually broke down and signed a mortgage relief act, the Wall Street bailout isn't quite a flip flop of "crappie" proportions.


Nope, this week's award goes to another regular contender for the award, Congressman John "Calgon, take me away" Shadegg.

First, he spent most of August bloviating in an empty House chamber, "protesting" the failure of Congressional Democrats to pass a measure authorizing more oil drilling near America's coasts.

So when the House considered a measure to do just that, did Shadegg support it? He decried the bill as a Democratic "hoax" and voted against it.

For that shameless flip flop of the "reverse one-and-a-half somersaults with a twist" variety, Congressman John Shadegg reels in this edition of the John Sydney McCain Memorial Crappie Award.

For more Southwestern finned follies, check out Desert Beacon in Nevada for a possible Sunday Morning Deck Bass sighting.


Later!