McCain falsely claims his surrogate Meg Whitman was the ‘founder’ of EBay.
By on Oct 27th, 2008 at 1:30 pm
McCain falsely claims his surrogate Meg Whitman was the ‘founder’ of EBay.
Sen. John McCain (R-AZ) frequently touts former EBay CEO Meg Whitman as someone he goes to for economic advice, even floating her as a possible Treasury Secretary. In his statement on the economy today, however, McCain incorrectly claimed that Whitman was the “founder” of EBay:
And next to him is a person well known to most Americans, Meg Whitman, the founder of EBay. I often like to repeat, 12 years ago, there was five employees, and now 1.3 million people around the globe making a living off of EBay.
Watch it:
As Huffington Post notes, “Whitman joined eBay as CEO in 1998, three years after it was founded by Pierre Omidyar, a Barack Obama supporter.”
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Another day, another lie for the Blinky and Winky campaign
October 27th, 2008 at 1:32 pm.
A Blackberry moment…
.
October 27th, 2008 at 1:32 pmYeah, and the VP is in charge of the Senate. So what?
October 27th, 2008 at 1:39 pmMcDepends never lets anything like the truth get in the way of his campaign.
October 27th, 2008 at 1:39 pmAww, give McCain a break, his memory is not as good it was back when he discovered America a few centuries ago.
October 27th, 2008 at 1:41 pmWell bfd.
October 27th, 2008 at 1:41 pmAl Gore invented the intra-nets.
He also called her a job creation machine the day EBay announced 10,000 layoffs. Why should blinky get something right now?
October 27th, 2008 at 1:42 pmSo why doesn’t anyone in the msm ever call him on these statements?
October 27th, 2008 at 1:45 pmHow many narratives fuel the McCain campaign? It seems John & Sarah are headed “to infinity and beyond!”
October 27th, 2008 at 1:47 pmDetails, details, details. I’m still waiting for McCain to announce that Santa Claus and the Easter Bunny are close personal friends of his.
October 27th, 2008 at 1:48 pmAnd given what a pain in the ass Ebay has become for sellers and buyers alike, there’s probably a ‘heckuva job Meggie’ around somewhere looking for a microphone.
October 27th, 2008 at 1:48 pmThat’s why John McCain is such a maverick: he never lets reality get in the way of his story!
October 27th, 2008 at 1:49 pmSh*t, this ain’t nothing! McCain, on a daily basis claims that he is qualified to become our next president and that the brunette bimbo from Wasilla is qualified to be vice president. *the audience roars with laughter*
October 27th, 2008 at 1:50 pmHe doesn’t know; he truly doesn’t know.
October 27th, 2008 at 1:50 pmBy itself, this misstep would not matter to me at all. However, Senator McCain does this sort of thing all the time. He pushes half-truths when he has time to research things. I understand this was not an attempt to provide misinformation but, at this point, everything he pushes seems to be misinformative. And he gets away with it.
October 27th, 2008 at 1:50 pmWhen you have nothing to stand upon as you try to present yourself as a viable candidate, you resort to lies, half-truths, and just made up stuff.
The media has done a better job with fact-checking than they have in the past (although that’s damning with faint praise), but I think in their desire to ‘create’ a horse race, they let the most outrageous stuff slide by.
If the media decides the race is over, then watch all this stuff come out, when it really doesn’t matter anymore.
October 27th, 2008 at 1:56 pmAnd you do notice that Whitman has not CORRECTED him. Apparently, she has ambitions to run as governor of California in 2010. Silence, no doubt, in exchange for help from the RNC for that race. I wonder when Pierre Omidyar is going to speak up. Maybe McCain isn’t mentioning the actual founder of E-Bay, since he’s Iranian-American, and was born in France.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pierre_Omidyar
October 27th, 2008 at 1:57 pmThis is not the only false statement… he also claims falsely that “1.3 million people around the globe” are “makin’ a living off of ebay.” Making a living? Don’t think so… maybe making a sale now and then. Besides, who compares the number of employees one year to the number of customers 12 years later?
October 27th, 2008 at 2:00 pmsuziq Says:
————————————————————–
So why doesn’t anyone in the msm ever call him on these statements?
Could it be that the msm aren’t well informed enough to challenge him?
Or maybe they don’t want to get thrown off the “Straight Talk Express”.
October 27th, 2008 at 2:00 pmMeg Whitman can help McCain list his life and career on E-Bay week after next.
October 27th, 2008 at 2:01 pmAnyone got a Sarah Moosehunter beanie baby for my collection?
Meg Whitman can help McCain list his life and career on E-Bay week after next.
While she’s at it, she can put Failin’ Palin’s “borrowed” wardrobe on EBay, too. It’ll bring in lots of money as an historical artifact.
And lots of dirty old republican men will pay a fortune for a pair of panties and a bra — especially it they are unwashed.
October 27th, 2008 at 2:07 pmSorry for taking this off-topic, but Bob’s comment tripped a thought for me:
if the Vice-President is “in charge” of the Senate, then Republicans can’t complain about the “Democrat” Senate, right? I mean, Dick Cheney’s in charge of it, so any legislative failures are on him.
October 27th, 2008 at 2:07 pmUncle Fester Lurks Says
Details, details, details. I’m still waiting for McCain to announce that Santa Claus and the Easter Bunny are close personal friends of his.
His supporters are of the right mind frame to believe the fairy tales as well , ever try having an honest discussion with people who believe in the rapture or are against evolution because all you will ever need to know has been written in the bible by semetic nomads thousands of years ago and must ALL be ABSOLUTELY and literally true.
October 27th, 2008 at 2:09 pmThe fact that Jesus spoke mostly in parables is lost on the evangelical community as are the many contradictions between the gospels and the rest of the Bible.Reason has no place in this world view only blind faith no matter how absurd the doctrine !
Just tell us the earth is really flat , the heavens revolve around our little axis mundi ,and global warming and evolution are a hoax …. and we’ll let Galileo out of his house.
October 27th, 2008 at 2:14 pmHa! He’s not as old as the Old Ones! Why, his outer skin isn’t even fully calcified!
October 27th, 2008 at 2:17 pmhttp://www.theonion.com/content/video/cindy_mccain_claims_she_s_just
What would be really newsworthy would be if McCain got something right for once.
October 27th, 2008 at 2:19 pmYea, and Carly Fioina did great things for Hewlett Packard. And Phil Gramm did great thing for de-regulation. And Palin knows more about energy than anyone in the world. And there are no lobbyist running his campaign. By the way, where is Charlie Black? Oh, I forgot, he is a maverick and a POW dontcha know.
October 27th, 2008 at 2:27 pm“McCain’s Answer for Poverty? eBay!”
During, McCain told an audience in Inez, Kentucky in April, “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.”
October 27th, 2008 at 2:35 pmWhen has a Republican ever let facts get in the way of lies?
Never.
Republicans love their liars.
October 27th, 2008 at 2:36 pmIs it too much to ask that the McCain campaign do a little fact checking before they add something to his stump speeches?
October 27th, 2008 at 2:41 pmOh wait – they did fact check — they used the same screening that they used on Sarah Palin.
Let’s sell Sairhead on E-Bay!
October 27th, 2008 at 2:45 pmI’ll start the bidding here with my 2 cent bid…
No reserve, free shipping!
October 27th, 2008 at 2:53 pmMcCain knows some people will believe his lies and never question it. It worked for Bush/Cheney so why not McCain/Palin.
October 27th, 2008 at 3:24 pmUp next on the Winky and Blinky campaign– photoshopped video of Obama roasting puppies and babies!! Gonna go put on my hip-waders because the GOP bull is getting pretty damn deep
October 27th, 2008 at 3:38 pm“there was five employees” ???
It’s “there were five employees” you idiot!
October 27th, 2008 at 4:05 pmDumb Questions:
Has McCain ever sold anything on EBay?
Has McCain ever bought anythihng on Ebay ?
What about Palin (and don’t try to pass off that airplane that didn’t sell on ebay) ?
What is the median income of Ebay Sellers from EBay ?
October 27th, 2008 at 4:29 pmA couple more facts about ebay are that Meg Whitman exercised around $160 million in her stock options, then retired from active service there, leaving the site to John Donahoe, who has systematically destroyed the site. Their stock share price is down around 50% or more in the last year. They have lost literally thousands upon thousands of sellers, by one estimate 100K in 6 months. Ebay is shucking the rank and file ‘common folk’ who built & depend on the site to supplement income for such things as medicine and clothes for their children (Because ebay was something “stay at home”, elderly and disabled people could do) in favor of large, corporate sellers, and the site has been under various levels of boycott since Feb 08. They have raised fees for the sellers, while calling them fee decreases. The new rules and changes to the site are nothing less than insane.
October 28th, 2008 at 4:52 amClearly they are leaving a great deal of bad news out of the picture when they mention Meg Whitman and ebay. It has earned nicknames now such as “greedbay”