Phil Gramm and his friends agree: they never had it so good (that's the amazingly
lifelike Wendy Gramm third from right)

McCain's guru:  "Stop whining"

By David Bloviator with
National Political Correspondent Magnolia T. Hearst in Vail

VAIL, Colo. – Former Senator Phil Gramm, now serving as John McCain's chief economic adviser, has told the nation that things are going fine and urged his fellow Americans to "suck it up" and "stop whining."

In an address to the Wilderness Oil Drillers for McCain Committee meeting held at this Colorado resort, Gramm told his fellow grandees that "from where he stands, things look just fine with the economy."

He noted that despite recent increases in the price of jet fuel, he counted over 50 private jets at the Vail Airport, which had been used to ferry the industrialists from the summer inferno of Texas to the cool, dry mountain air of the Colorado Rockies.

"Hell, we live in a country where we can afford to charter a jet just to bring in the hundred three-pound lobsters we're tearing into now," Gramm told the appreciative audience. "Where else could that happen?"  [The sixteenth birthday party of the daughter of a Russian oligarch? – Ed.[

"Let's face it – for real Americans like you and me, things have never been so good," Gramm told the well-fed plutocrats. "And you never looked so good.  And with all the plastic surgery your trophy wives have invested in, you better look good."

Asked where his own spouse, scary former Bush Administration apparatchik and asleep-at-the-wheel Enron director Wendy Gramm, was, Gramm said she was on her lecture tour promoting her new book: "The Collapse of Enron: It was all the Liberals' Fault."

"But don't worry, my faithful assistant Alexandra Dupré will take good care of me. At these prices she better," joked the former failed Presidential candidate.

In a more serious vein, Gramm lambasted "extreme left-wing Socialists" like Democratic nominee Barack Obama and his former opponent, Sen. Hillary Clinton, for spreading the myth of economic distress.

"If times are so tough, how come I have to pay some wetback a hundred bucks just to mow my lawn and clean my pool?"  Gramm asked, perhaps rhetorically. When I was growing up, my daddy used to pay some n****r 90 cents an hour and he was damn glad to get it."

"There's nothing wrong with this country that hard work and effort won't fix. You don't hear my good friend Mitt Romney complaining about his health insurance. That's because he's worked for everything he's got." [Except for his upbringing, paid for by his millionaire industrialist father. – Ed.]

"And I haven't met anyone worried about losing his house.  John McCain's got seven of 'em, and he's not worried," Gramm said.

Gramm blamed the mortgage crisis on the feckless working class trying to live above their station. "Who said they could buy homes in Bailey Park? What's wrong with Pottersville?" he asked.  [Nollie, confirm quote – Ed.][My husband your boss says confirm it yourself – M.T.H.]

Gramm said the American economy remained the strongest in the world. "If times were so tough, you'd be able to buy a decent house in Vail for less than eight million. Trust me, you can't."

The former Senator urged his audience to open their checkbooks for John McCain. "If that Socialist Obama gets elected, you can kiss those lowered tax rates on high incomes and capital gains goodbye. It's pay now or pay later."

Reached for straight talk on his campaign plane, reports Political Editor David Bloviator, Sen. McCain denied knowing anyone by the name of Phil Gramm. Confronted with a statement made two weeks ago confirming that Sen. Gramm was his "economic guru," McCain chortled: "That was then, and this is now." His statement was regarded by the traveling press corps, including yours truly, as a fully adequate and amusing explanation, rather than a pitifully bald-faced effort to explain away yet another embarrassing campaign flip-flop.