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Vol. CCLII, Live Free! or Die No. 22 The New Hampshire Gazette First Class U.S. Postage Paid July 25, The Nation’s Oldest Newspaper™ • Editor: Steven Fowle • Founded 1756 by Daniel Fowle Portsmouth, N.H., Permit No. 75 2008 PO Box 756, Portsmouth, NH 03802 • [email protected] • www.nhgazette.com Address Service Requested The Fortnightly Rant Thinking the Unthinkable, Part Two* John McCain’s 2008 presiden- over a fence, will help us sleep. tial campaign got an auspicious Old And In The White House? kick off last year in Portsmouth’s First and most obviously, photogenic Prescott Park, a mere there’s the math. half-mile from this newspaper’s If elected, John McCain would squalid headquarters. The Naval be 72 when he takes the oath of Shipyard across the river gave the office. Ronald Reagan was a rel- candidate, a former Naval aviator, atively youthful 69, but by the a suitably militaristic backdrop. A time he was hauled before the sizeable mob of New Hampshire Tower Commission in 1986 to residents provided a respectable- explain his minions’ shenanigans, looking audience. Protestors and he could hardly remember any- other scruffy undesireables were thing. Considering the responsi- safely penned up out of camera bilities of the office, Reagan’s Al- range. Whole phalanxes of prop- zheimer’s is hardly an excuse that erly-credentialed media worker would work in McCain’s favor. It bees, representing all the most is simply inconceivable that any profitable national news orga- opposing party could let the Re- nizations, were on hand. Half publicans win the next election a dozen satellite trucks were with a candidate as ancient as parked near the pier to pass their McCain. observations on to the rest of the Wait … We almost forgot. The He’s a Republican. They talk all Mrs. Enron Loophole Gramm was said to have been a world. opposing party is composed of the time about morals, so they Gramm’s wife is Wendy Lee likely choice as McCain’s Secre- All that was in marked con- Democrats. We’re screwed. don’t have to live by them. We’re Gramm. A Wellesley-educated tary of the Treasury, but he seems trast to this past Monday night. McCain vs. Women screwed. economist, she headed the Com- to have blown that gig with re- When McCain’s campaign plane The Census Bureau says there Funny Money Man modities Futures Trading Com- cent loose talk about Americans landed in Manchester, “there was are 4,528,605 more women than McCain makes no secret of his mission in the late 1980s and being in a “mental depression,” just one reporter and one pho- men in the U.S. This may not ignorance about economics. In- early 1990s. Like many Repub- and a “nation of whiners.” tographer waiting,” the Union work in McCain’s favor. Some stead, he makes self-deprecating licans, she is allergic to federal These days powerful people Leader’s Scott Brooks reported female voters may be turned off jokes about it, following up with regulation. can rob, cheat, and steal to their the next day. Had it not been for by his treatment of his first wife, the standard reply—that is what Less than a week before Bill heart’s content—but they’d bet- the Republican party’s favorite Carol. She faithfully waited for economic advisors are for. Until Clinton was sworn in as presi- ter watch what they say. After paper, their presumptive nom- her husband during his five years quite recently, McCain’s top eco- dent, and probably expecting to Gramm’s incautious remarks, inee’s arrival here would have of captivity in Vietnam. While nomic advisor was former Sena- be replaced soon, Mrs. Gramm McCain promptly threw him gone unheralded. he was gone she suffered perma- tor Phil Gramm (R-TX). used her position to exempt En- under the wheels of the Straight Such a forlorn reception would nent injuries in a car accident. Gramm was the driving force ron from federal regulation in Talk Express. seem an encouraging omen for Six years after his return, while behind the modestly-named trading of energy derivatives. Although McCain has “dis- those Americans who fear that still married to Carol, McCain Gramm-Leach-Bliley Finan- Five weeks later, in a startling tanced himself ” from Gramm, another Republican term in the began an adulterous affair with cial Services Modernization Act. coincidence, Enron made her a he has given no sign he’ll repu- White House would drive our his current wife Cindy, a former It repealed the Depression-era member of the board. She served diate the man’s desperado eco- ship of state onto the rocks for cheerleader and the daughter of a Glass-Steagall Act barring bank on the audit committee—mean- nomics. good. The next president seems wealthy Phoenix beer baron. He holding companies from own- ing she had access to all the sor- Non-Citizen McCain bound to appoint at least one, was 43, she was 25. That already ing other banks. That maneuver did details of the company’s Can no one spare us from this and quite possibly two Supreme looked bad enough. On July 11, opened the door to the complex crooked schemes. irascible old coot? America’s last Court justices. Even the law- the Los Angeles Times added this financial chicanery that resulted In a startling development, best hope may be Gabriel J. Chin, abiding ought to find the pros- new wrinkle: court documents in today’s sub-prime mortgage the University of California sued a professor of constitutional law pect of that power in Republican show that McCain’s “divorce was crisis. Gramm and her cohorts. The at the University of Arizona. hands unnerving. granted April 2, 1980 … [but he] Mr. Enron Loophole University received $168 million. McCain was born in the Pan- Between the Obamamania obtained an Arizona marriage li- Gramm is also personally re- Of that, only $13 million came ama Canal Zone in 1936, bring- phenomenon on one hand, and cense on March 6, 1980, while sponsible for the blandly-named from Enron’s directors. Insur- ing up the question of his eligi- the burden of McCain’s political still legally married to his first Commodity Futures Modern- ance companies coughed up the bility for office. The Constitution baggage on the other, it seems wife.” ization Act of 2000. He slyly at- rest. says that “[n]o person except a improbable, if not impossible, The New York Times reported tached this curious bit of legisla- Still Going—For Your Wallet natural born Citizen … shall be that any such shipwreck could in February that during his 2000 tion—which had somehow been One might think that af- eligible to the Office of Presi- be in our future. Judging from campaign, McCain’s friendship exempted from the usual com- ter such illustrious careers, the dent.” Ted Olson and Lawrence state by state polling, on Tuesday with an attractive female lobbyist mittee hearings—to a vast ap- Gramms would be retired, living Tribe, the Hannity & Colmes of Obama was leading McCain by half his age so alarmed his own propriations bill right before it comfortably in a suite of federal jurisprudence, jointly declared 312 electoral votes to McCain’s advisors that they intervened to was voted on. It passed, and Bill prison cells—but then one would in March that McCain met that 199. keep the two separate. In May Clinton signed it into law six be hopelessly naive. standard. Earlier this month, But the election was not held a book was published relating a days later. Phil Gramm is now a Vice however, Prof. Chin published Tuesday. And despite repeated 1992 incident in which McCain, The Act legalized speculation Chairman at the Swiss bank a more rigorous examination of pronouncements that McCain’s in front of reporters, called his in energy futures markets. It has UBS AG, the second-largest the statutes, and concluded that campaign is dead, the candidate wife a “trollop,” then used an- since become better known by bank in Europe. Last month the he did not. He cited a Supreme has yet to lie down. other term so vile the editors of the nickname, the “Enron Loop- New York Times reported that Court decision which held that How is McCain unelectable? the Oxford English Dictionary hole.” Within months of its pas- UBS was being investigated by unincorporated territories like Let us count the ways. Perhaps wouldn’t print it. Just this past sage the now-defunct corpora- the FBI. The Feds suspect them the Zone were not part of the the answers, like sheep leaping week a news story published in tion which gave it that name was of helping 20,000 U.S. citizens U.S. “for constitutional purpos- the Tucson Citizen in 1986 re- using its provisions to squeeze hide their wealth to avoid pay- es.” A 1937 law granted citizen- * Yes, we have used this headline before. surfaced, describing McCain $40 billion from consumers in ing taxes. A report by the Senate ship in cases like McCain’s, but On November 30, 2007, it ran over a rant surveying the field of Republican primary telling a joke involving a wom- the state of California. Homeland Security and Gov- did so eleven months too late. If candidates. (What a quaint and innocent an, an ape, and rape. No, it’s no This may seem like a mas- ernmental Affairs Committee the Democrats find the spine to time that was … Fred Thompson! Rudy use—women just won’t vote for sive accomplishment for one recently estimated the total an- push it, the question could end Giuliani! Ron Paul!) Now that the GOP has settled for the formerly-loathed McCain, McCain.