When you complain about paying $4.00+ a gallon for gas and can’t afford health care, food, the mortgage or vacations, you are being “mental” and “whining”. That according to McCain’s economic guru, and one of the key players in this mortgage crisis (as well as husband of someone closely tied to the Enron scandal), Phil Gramm.

“You’ve heard of mental depression; this is a mental recession,” he said, noting that growth has held up at about 1 percent despite all the publicity over losing jobs to India, China, illegal immigration, housing and credit problems and record oil prices. “We may have a recession; we haven’t had one yet.”

“We have sort of become a nation of whiners,” he said. “You just hear this constant whining, complaining about a loss of competitiveness, America in decline” despite a major export boom that is the primary reason that growth continues in the economy, he said.

So being unable to feed the family is whining? These are the Republican values we hear so much about, and the values John McCain embraces. Starving kids, homeless families and people unable to receive medical care. Just ashame we don’t all have multi-millionaire wives.