McCain: Hiring new teachers — Pork; Missiles — “wonderful”

by David Safier

This is almost too much to believe from McCain — though I should have realized long ago, nothing is too much to believe from McCain.

In the debates, McCain was asked about his opposition to extending unemployment benefits.

Oh no, he replied,

. . . we want to extend unemployment benefits, but we want them paid for, because there are so many things that the Democrats lard onto it, whether it be for hiring new teachers or other programs, so they keep adding onto it to force us to vote yes. [emphasis added]

Hiring new teachers is lard. It's pork. I guess all those new teachers would just sit around in the faculty room sipping martinis all day, since McCain doesn't mention the possibility that those new teachers would actually step into classrooms and teach our children.

All those lard-y things cost money, but tax breaks to corporations? They . . . well, I'll let John explain.

What I would do is to give our small businesses a tax break. I would tell the corporations which are very important, like Intel and Raytheon and others in our state, we’ll cut the corporate tax rates so that you won’t have to send jobs overseas. We’ll continue… I’ll continue to support the military and our bases and the men and women who are there and the thousands of employees, including our people over in Mesa that make the Apache helicopter and down at Raytheon that make these wonderful missiles and Intel that’s doing such a great job in employing so many people that I’ve supported for so many years. [emphasis added]

Where to start? After giving lip service to "small businesses," McCain moves over immediately to very, very big businesses.

One business, Raytheon, lives on government contracts. Why does it need to pay the government less of the money it gets from the government? It makes my head spin just trying to figure that one out.

And Intel just had the most profitable quarter in its history, I believe. That means, what? It needs tax breaks?

McCain just can't just say we need missiles for our defense. No, that's not good enough. He says Raytheon makes — hello Dr. Strangelove! — "these wonderful missiles."

These wonderful missiles.

(I can't figure out how to embed the minute-and-a-half video of McCain's answer. You can find it here.)