For John McCain, Hating On Trial Lawyers More Important Than Equality & Fairness
By Nicole Belle Monday May 12, 2008 2:00pmThink I'm kidding? What kind of man goes after a 14 year old girl like this just because she's wearing a t-shirt?
Sen. John McCain, at a town hall event held Wednesday in Michigan, singled out a girl wearing a t-shirt critical of him and challenged her to ask him a question. She asked about the Ledbetter Fair Pay Act, which would have corrected the Supreme Court's destructive ruling in Ledbetter v. Goodyear: "I was wondering Senator McCain why you had the opportunity to vote to give equal rights to women equal pay [but] you didn't show up to vote and you said that if you did you wouldn't support it."
"This question should be on the minds of millions of working women who may face pay discrimination during their careers," said Kathryn Kolbert, president of People For the American Way. "Senator McCain had the perfect opportunity to embrace equal pay for equal work, but he instead parroted talking points fed to him by corporate lobbyists. It's pretty clear from his response that he's more concerned about the rights of big corporations than those of everyday Americans."[..]
On Tuesday, Sen. McCain came out in full support of President Bush's right-wing Supreme Court nominees, the very justices who found in Ledbetter that employees must file a complaint within 180 days of first falling victim to pay discrimination in order to be compensated. "But that's unrealistic and unreasonable," said Kolbert. "Employees who receive discriminatory pay typically don't learn about it until many months or years later, if at all. And a single discriminatory act can have repercussions that last years - throughout a career and into retirement."
"John McCain says the Fair Pay Act wouldn't help women," said Kolbert. "I'd like to see him tell that to Lilly Ledbetter. And I'd like to commend that young woman for standing up to John McCain at such a young age and asking the kind of substantive question that the media so rarely does."
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Some of the best anti-lawyer jokes I've heard were told to me by lawyers.
What would a spoiled heiress and her gold-digging husband know about job equality.
mcfuckhead to women of America
go back and put on your burkas.
mcfuckhead the elitist fascist candidate.
equality = i am gop, i am better than you
Leave it to a 14 y/o girl to do what the corporate press refuses to even comtemplate.
listen to the idiots cheer when he mentions trial lawyers. Do these people even know what a trial lawyer is? do the know that McCain uses trial lawyers? do they realize that if they ever had something bad happen to them and it was the fault of another party they would have to get a trial lawyer to handle their case?
That's republicans for you...so stupid they cheer the reference without knowing the meaning. I guess that's why they can be fooled by bumper-stickers.
4 woodguy Says: Leave it to a 14 y/o girl to do what the corporate press refuses to even comtemplate.
great observation! it takes a child to show adults they are doing it wrong!
That's true. I once worked for a Fortune 500 pharmaceutical company that would fire people for telling other employees what their pay was. The practice was and is still common, of course, to keep their unfair pay practices hidden.
Saw this on Feministing the other day -- and can you believe McCain actually bragged about this incident on The Daily Show???
http://feministing.com/archives/009154.html
I didn't link because I'm dumb.
It took a lot of guts for the girl to stand up and ask her question, esp. when singled out by McCain. He goaded her.
I wanted to know if the "more articulate" person there was going to ask a question but instead "excused" the young woman because of her age. this was puzzling.
so the fact that trial lawyers benefit outweighs the need for equal pay. hmmm.
Boy, is he ever full of crap!
And his response was? Come on, don't leave us hanging.....
I wonder what the old buffoon thought about "trial lawyers" threatening to sue networks for running the "100 years" spot, that featured *gasp* McCain saying stuff.
To the Democrats that plan on voting for Mccain because they don't like the nominee that was picked, this is what you're going to get. Is this ok with you? The question was asked by a 14 year old who will have to put up with somebody you voted for!
McCain has an empowering message of Republican Ethos: People should work hard and they will be rewarded.
Or they can just cheat on their wife with an heiress worth 100 million.
I'm against McCain, and think he's dead wrong on this issue for all the reasons in the article, but I do have to give him credit for giving her the opportunity to speak, and for even giving her a chance for a follow up.
Were I the person to whom the brave teen deferred for a follow-up after the InSane sycophants yelped in ecstasy at the thought of sticking it to trial lawyers, I would simply have asked, "Could you explain the mechanism by which you think an equal-pay law would unjustly enrich lawyers? That is, how exactly would the law hurt common people by making lawyers rich?"
I'm sure he has no idea what he's talking about. I would have loved to debate the Senile Saint in a debate on this topic.
In all honesty, I had little problem with the ruling, since congress can easily fix the problem.
And it forces members of congress to pick a side, between workers or corrupt corporations. We know what side McCain is on, now.
-The Political Jerk
6 Dahgrostabphri Says: 4 woodguy Says: Leave it to a 14 y/o girl to do what the corporate press refuses to even comtemplate.
great observation! it takes a child to show adults they are doing it wrong!
__________________________________________________________________
Lolitas?
His explanation of the incident was a LIE to Jon Stewart. She did not say he discriminated against women, she asked why he didn't stand up for equal rights for women and skipped the vote, and said it he had bothered to show, he would have voted against it.
I think she handled her business well for a child of her age. The adult who took the mic for the follow-up was a total chickenshit and most likely crushed this little girl with her response. This was obviously someone the girl thought was better informed and more acticulate than herself, and would ask McCain for a better accounting of himself. Instead she shrugged her shoulders and tried to make the child look foolish for daring to ask the question.
What a terrible response. What makes this clip worse are the idiots cheering his idiotic response. It reminds me of how GWB answers tough questions by giving nonsensical answers with the Republican bobbleheads lapping it up. Disgusting
2 Jan Says: What would a spoiled heiress and her gold-digging husband know about job equality.
Yeah, I bet she's as roomy as a mine shaft.
Grampa Golddigger has some nerve!
I wonder after the speech was done did he call her the "C" word? I think ole Mccranky was bitchslapped by a girl.
As for the rule that every company has about is not telling what your pay is good/bad because it helps the company cheat on pay and pay raises now the corporations use it to screw the employees.
Way to go rethugs
Maybe it's just me but, perhaps someone could point out to the chimpanzees in the audience that laws such as the Lebetter Fair Pay Act would make it unecessary to use trial lawyers to obtain fairness and equity in the workplace.
McGrampaBullshit is in North Bend WA today, speaking at an Environmental Round table today.
Sweet. He just called Seattle the City of Satan. Funny. We never think of it as Cheney's town.
GENEhUSSEIN214 @ 24:
So does denying women fair pay in such a manner as to make lawsuits impossible.
Yeah, he really showed that 14yr old. What a man.
You are dealing with social darwinists. Get to know them Nicolle. They believe that the 'bottom' is where a 'loser' belongs.
He doesnt believe in a world view in which cooperation, collaboration, compromise and civility rule. He believes in winner take all. And he believes that the collective will of the people (government) has no role in protecting the people. He sees that as anti-competative.
People need to come to understand that what he describes as 'competative' is predation.
Its worth noting that people that espouse 'competition' never allow 'competition' within their own families. Within their own families cooperation is expected. That is, competition is reserved for the 'family' behavior with 'others' - them and us. They have difficulty embracing the larger family of man. They are separate.
(unedited - I'm out of town consulting)
all that hooting and screaming. you'd think they took the loyalty oath.
I worked for a big American corporation for 2 years. We could lose our jobs for discussing our salary with anyone. It was part of our "agreement". And we didn't know who the snitches were, so it was never talked about. But everyone was dying to know.
OMG-- the braindead zombies clap and cheer.
When candidates like McCain spout talking points like "people want choice in their health care and free market provides those choices" or "people want us to win in Iraq and now we are on the verge of winning, the last thing we should do is pull out" or "a law requiring equal pay for women would only help trial lawyers" leads me to think that is a majority of American voters believe that crap in this day and age maybe we will get exactly the government we deserve.
Did mccain threaten to take his belt off?
RayC @ 32:
No we didn't. We got the government the Supreme Court selected for us, and Diebold helped engineer for us. That is not the government we voted for.
Robin @ 15:
Have us as a country fallen so low in standards, that when someone exercises something that should be expected in a democracy: the free exchange of words seeking information with those seeking public office. Is now not seen as the norm but as an special occasion?
Somehow somewhere we took the wrong turn as a country, and if we do not pay attention and do our civic duty as citizens in a democracy, a similar post in 4 years time will surely read as: "How magnanimous of king McCain for not chopping the head off that insolent bolshevik brat."
Dahgrostabphri @ 5:
...true...also, you can't have defense attorneys (for the corporations) unless you have plaintiff's lawyers suing in the first place..."1 attorney in town goes broke, 2 attorneys in town get rich"..neither gives a shit about anything except their fees.
bitter Edwin Hussein @ 31:
"Yay!!! McGigolo just shot down a 14 year old! He's still got it!!!"
Leslie [Hussein] @ 34:
Unfortunatedly, I have to disagree: we have the government we deserve.
All that it takes for evil to happen is for citizens to do nothing, and that is exactly what has happened: Americans just sat down, and did what they do best: look the other way and act all shocked when the point they have so hard tried to ignore is pointed at them.
In many other countries there would have been revolution after the 2000 selection. Americans need to understand that democracy is not an spectator's sport and that voting is only part of the civic duties.
Conservative ideology + equality + liberty does not add up.
Why do right wingers hate America?
Dahgrostabphri @ 5:
In all honesty, GOPers have been voting for the most part against their own interests for the better part of over a century. I don't expect them to change, they are the proverbial whore who is all too happy to get screwed and who is too stupid to know that she is not the one supposed to pay for the screw.
It is just part of their playbook:
1 - Divide and conquer: find someone or something to focus the hate enough to vote against their interests.
2 - Present the proverbial carrot (aka the American Dream): find something the idiots can expect to achieve if they shut up, do as they told and don't rock the boat.
That is why you will see West Virginia and Kentucky for example vote in droves for McCain, because well the uppity negro sure does not now his place (see tactic #1), and they are certain that any day now they will win the lottery and they sure don't want to have to pay too many taxes on their hypothetical McMansion (see point #2).
And meanwhile, they get to miss that for the most part... poor white people have more in common with poor black people than with the rich asshole republican peddling the hate bullshit. And, chances are that they will never win the lottery so they should concentrate on the problems facing them right now: shitty economy, crappy schools, non existent health care, no prospects for future, etc. Rather than focusing on something that may or may not happen...
GOP - Grand Old Pappies
Asking McGrandpa the tough questions in an open forum! Give that girl a medal!
Wow...these repugs want to rip away every last shred of progress in the last 100 years...
Not on my fuckin watch...
ckerst @ 27:
She should consider herself lucky. In the past, his preferred method of silencing 14-year-old girls was to drop a bomb on them from 35,000 feet.
miss_kitty @ 25:
See, there's the double standard. Obama "slanders" rural folks and we never hear the end of it. But McCain disparages a great American city and the media don't bat an eye. Happens all the time.
andrew @ 36:
as a trial lawyer I take great umbrage with your remarks. Do I care about fees? Of course; I can't do everything (in fact, with student loans, I can't afford to do much) pro bono. Is it the only thing I care about? Absolutely not. I wouldn't be in this business if I didn't care about righting wrongs and helping people being dicked around by big business and their insurance companies.
I used to like McCain...now all I see is a bitter, feeble old man who'll say anything and kiss up to the worst segments of his party--(the same segments we was often at odds with when he supposedly still had his integrity)--to get elected. Pathetic!
Why does McProlapsedRectum hate working women and children?
2 Lawyers walking down the street. An incredibly nice looking women walks by. The first lawyer says to the second one, "Boy, would I like to screw her". The second lawyers says, "Really? Out of what?".
Rusty Shackleford @45-
See, there’s the double standard. Obama """“slanders”"""" rural folks and we never hear the end of it. But McCain disparages a great American city and the media don’t bat an eye. Happens all the time.
FIFY!
('cause you can't put too many quotation marks around the word when used in that context :D ).
Married into a den of Republicans. I had to listen to the in-laws complain about lawyers. Then one of their sons was in an accident (not his fault) and they had to use one to get his medical bills paid and car repaired. Oh, yeah, THAT was my day! (he's O.K. by the way). They never bring it up, but I know they still only like lawyers when they need one.
What he meant to say was "My wife's a rich c*nt and doesn't care about equal pay for women and neither do I"!
Hey McSame -- just how many of your asshole colleagues in Congress are "trial lawyers"? You ignorant putz.
Grandpa longs for the old days. When women wore big hats, long skirts and did the chores.
Exceptin for his wife. She's just a rich c*&t to him.
I think he actually thought he would embarrass that 14 yr old by handing her the mic and asking her to make a comment. Just because he didn't like her t-shirt. She is so much smarter than McCain and came up with a brilliant question that he fumbled with answering. He is one royal jerk.
He keeps making commercials (though he still may not realize it) for people's groups that they can use to show just how much he hates any individual group. His, "Dear, dear friends". He will soon have everyone except lobbyists hating him. It will be a good indicator come election time of just how many people are willing to vote for organized crime in November.
McVomit is ripping off Roosevelt whenever he uses the "My Friends" line. Roosevelt used it to great effect back when he was saving the country from a republican depression, and a republican world war instigated by W's grand daddy and his german friends....
WOW! Good job young lady. And this will be sure to be included as talking points in any upcoming Presidential debates - McSameasBush saying women shouldn't get equal pay because it ultimately just helps trial lawyers.
Oh, okay. I get it. (Huh?)
OK, here's my favorite lawyer joke:
A guy goes into a bar and starts drinking heavily. After he's totally sloshed, he turns to the patrons and yells to no one in particular, "All lawyers are ASSHOLES!!!"
A guy in the back stands up and says, "Hey! I resent that remark!"
The drunk then asks, "Why! Are you a lawyer?"
To which the guy in the back responds, "No! I'm an asshole!"
Thank you, I'll be here all night, don't forget to tip the waiters and bartenders.
I like to think I'm assholier than thou.
trial lawyers are only hated on by the rethugs when the lawyers are representing the little guy. When they are representing corporations suing other corporations, they are "corporate counsel" or "attorneys".
Here's the most important question that needs to be asked:
Why did a presidential candidate see fit to call out and embarrass a 14-year-old girl over a T-shirt? At what point will it be okay for us to say out loud that this guy is unstable?
This is about the tenth clip of McCain I've seen where he's exhibited this kind of petty behavior.
@#20: empty minds always think alike.
@#33: I shudder to think what would've happened if the girl brought up high number of sexual assaults in the military (see Crooks and Liars)
@#39: Because they hate our freedom. Isn't that what they say about the terrorists overseas on the news?
@#53: He also liked the days when coloreds couldn't eat in the dining area of restaurants and Asians only ran massage parlors in Chinatown, or brothels that he likes to frequent (See his book)
@#62: It won't be the last either. Heaven forbid if Graeme Frost were asking questions about SCHIP to him.
What a Man! Picks on a 14 year old girl and gets his Ass kicked!!
BTW is it just me, or do I constantly hear ol John's dentures whistling at the end of almost every sentence?
The most annoying thing about Grampa McCain is he whistles when he talks. It is a high-pitched noise which pains me every time and I doN't think I could stand hearing it for four years.
Boy, that's what we need. A President that can really whoop a 14 year olds ass. He's the old fart that yells to get out of his yard, what and old coot.
ken martin @ 23:
Wouldn't it been great if the 14 year-old girl asked McRepublican why he called his wife a c*nt, and would it be OK if she called he mom by the same word?
The Dude @ 35:
Perhaps not a special occasion, but it's pretty damn refreshing.
That woman the kid handed off was the biggest coward in the room. Apologizing by pointing out the kid's age? Hey lady, she'll be draft age by the end of the next term.
I won't comment on McCain's answer because the video is edited.
when threatened with responsibility and accountability...
BLAME TRIAL LAWYERS
http://www.ageofautism.com/2008/05/omnibus-autism.html
empy @ 19:
I hope that wasn't her mother. I'm sure that kid lost a bunch of respect for the cowardly adult in her life. Girl, don't listen to that sorry excuse for a grownup--you did a good thing and you did it well. It's not your fault you were betrayed, but let this be a lesson...if you want something done well, most of the time it's best that you do it yourself.
(after watching the video) mccain is such a frigging tool.
i started reading "nixonland" this morning after having read excerpts of it elsewhere in the intertubes. it is wonderfully written for those of us with a low tolerance for the dry and scholarly. rick perlstein is to be congratulated.
i was born in 1957 and so i was only eight years old when watts burned in 1965 and eleven when nixon was first elected, sixteen in 1973. although i was somewhat concious of what was going on, my knowledge of current events was pretty thin, as i think is true of most people in my age cohort. i think the trap people in my age group fall into (i did) is believing that just because you were what could be considered a concious person at the time that you have more than a vague understanding of what was going on i was certainly completely unaware of watts in 1965. i was only vaguely aware of the civil rights legislation, although the concept of, desire for and acknowledgment of equality had most definitely completely soaked into my core beliefs.
after just the first chapter i am already shocked, and unnerved, by some of the things rick perlstein details (goldwater republicans).
even if you believe you have an understanding of our history from 1965 to 1973, READ THIS BOOK. i don't think reading it is going to make any of us feel better about what is going on now and the prognosis for the future, but i like to think that it's always better to know than not.
a trial lawyer @ 46:
Exactly. Let's save our disdain for the corporate lawyers, shall we? They are the ultimate sellouts.
footnote:
when i say "vaguely aware," i do not mean to imply that in my later teenage years i did not become aware of some of the key civil rights legislation, i had, but by that point it was "ancient history." america had done the right thing. everyone i knew just collectively turned their back and moved on, as if how things were at that moment, the mid/late '70s now, was how it had always been. there was no more segregation. the viet nam war was over. watergate and nixon had been tidily wrapped up and tucked under the bed. i certainly never understood, or could have even conceived, what was going on with the republican party, the cultural hysteria that they were ginning up and its consequences.
would that there had been someone to murder that baby ("reborn" republicanism) in its bed.
Anonymous Hussein Says: empy @ 19:
His explanation of the incident was a LIE to Jon Stewart. She did not say he discriminated against women, she asked why he didn’t stand up for equal rights for women and skipped the vote, and said it he had bothered to show, he would have voted against it.
I think she handled her business well for a child of her age. The adult who took the mic for the follow-up was a total chickenshit and most likely crushed this little girl with her response. This was obviously someone the girl thought was better informed and more acticulate than herself, and would ask McCain for a better accounting of himself. Instead she shrugged her shoulders and tried to make the child look foolish for daring to ask the question.
I hope that wasn’t her mother. I’m sure that kid lost a bunch of respect for the cowardly adult in her life. Girl, don’t listen to that sorry excuse for a grownup–you did a good thing and you did it well. It’s not your fault you were betrayed, but let this be a lesson…if you want something done well, most of the time it’s best that you do it yourself.
---------------
when the girl started to hand the mike to the woman, i thought i heard booing from the audience. it looked to me like the woman declined to take the opportunity because of the audience's reaction to an adult being handed the mike.
and how could anyone have really responded to such an utterly stupid response from mccain? any such response would lead down a long convoluted explanation of (a) the fact that the result of the work of those trial lawyers would be fewer people getting screwed by corporations (because guess what, men, that 180 day rule applies to you too) and (b) the brazen hypocrisy of the republicans eschewing legal remedies for people injured by corporations while they use the courts (with the assistance of trial attorneys) to try to further their destructive agenda (ledbetter, the recent nonsense calling for churches to challenge the irs in court, etc, ad nauseam)
This video makes me madder than hell.
1. He picked on a girl. Him=Strong position, Her=Weak position. He did it to embarrass her, nothing else. He knew exactly where she was going, and he chose that battle because he thought he could strongarm her easily. Fucking asshole.
2. The adult she handed the mic to should be hanging her head in shame. Forget the politics about it, when a child is being attacked and asks for help, a real adult does not turn on her. Fucking coward.
3. Talking about it on Jon Stewart was the lowest of the low. Not only did he misrepresent her opinion, he belittled her again and took a victory lap for the "Goliath" stance he took against her embattled "David" position. Fucking sleazy bully.
God I hate John McCain.
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