McCain Never Knew Us

Many commentators forget Mr. McCain received 55% of the white vote. The tactic to trash and to defame people of color was a great success. The winning Republican strategy would have been simply to get more white people out to vote.Instead, they relied on fear-mongering great stuff for paranoids and racists, but poor coin for a person who has lost his job and his home.The final blow came from the fall of Lehman Brothers. This catastrophe for the rich inspired McCain to suspend his campaign. He did not understand the 98% of us who lack a substantial stake in the system.

In the 21st Century Nations Do Not Invade Nations

In the 21st century Nations Do Not Invade Other Nations
McCain
I hate the gooks McCain admits
“I hate the gooks. I will hate them as long as I live,” – John McCain, when asked about his continued use of the racial slur, “gook.”
The American occupation of Afghanistan and Iraq doesn’t count as an invasion, because “Gooks” populate these so-called nations. As sub humans do not qualify as citizens in a sovereign state, they can be bombed until they die or go away.
“We are all Georgians,” McCain says. He means, “We are all white people.”
McCain’s racist warmongering boils down to the Red Menace and the Yellow Peril. Three generations have absorbed these slogans as mothers’ milk.
Obama is toast.

How Obama Became Acting President

How Obama Became Acting President
Frank Rich, NYTimes

IT almost seems like a gag worthy of “Borat”: A smooth-talking rookie senator with an exotic name passes himself off as the incumbent American president to credulous foreigners. But to dismiss Barack Obama’s magical mystery tour through old Europe and two war zones as a media-made fairy tale would be to underestimate the ingenious politics of the moment. History was on the march well before Mr. Obama boarded his plane, and his trip was perfectly timed to reap the whirlwind.
He never would have been treated as a president-in-waiting by heads of state or network talking heads if all he offered were charisma, slick rhetoric and stunning visuals. What drew them instead was the raw power Mr. Obama has amassed: the power to start shaping events and the power to move markets, including TV ratings. (Even “Access Hollywood” mustered a 20 percent audience jump by hosting the Obama family.) Power begets more power, absolutely.
The growing Obama clout derives not from national polls, where his lead is modest. Nor is it a gift from the press, which still gives free passes to its old bus mate John McCain. It was laughable to watch journalists stamp their feet last week to try to push Mr. Obama into saying he was “wrong” about the surge. More than five years and 4,100 American fatalities later, they’re still not demanding that Mr. McCain admit he was wrong when he assured us that our adventure in Iraq would be fast, produce little American “bloodletting” and “be paid for by the Iraqis.”
Never mind. This election remains about the present and the future, where Iraq’s $10 billion a month drain on American pocketbooks and military readiness is just one moving part in a matrix of national crises stretching from the gas pump to Pakistan. That’s the high-rolling political casino where Mr. Obama amassed the chips he cashed in last week. The “change” that he can at times wield like a glib marketing gimmick is increasingly becoming a substantive reality — sometimes through Mr. Obama’s instigation, sometimes by luck. Obama-branded change is snowballing, whether it’s change you happen to believe in or not.
Looking back now, we can see that the fortnight preceding the candidate’s flight to Kuwait was like a sequence in an old movie where wind blows away calendar pages to announce an epochal plot turn. First, on July 7, the Iraqi prime minister, Nuri al-Maliki, dissed Bush dogma by raising the prospect of a withdrawal timetable for our troops. Then, on July 15, Mr. McCain suddenly noticed that more Americans are dying in Afghanistan than Iraq and called for more American forces to be sent there. It was a long-overdue recognition of the obvious that he could no longer avoid: both Robert Gates, the defense secretary, and Adm. Mike Mullen, the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, had already called for more American troops to battle the resurgent Taliban, echoing the policy proposed by Mr. Obama a year ago.
On July 17 we learned that President Bush, who had labeled direct talks with Iran “appeasement,” would send the No. 3 official in the State Department to multilateral nuclear talks with Iran. Lest anyone doubt that the White House had moved away from the rigid stand endorsed by Mr. McCain and toward Mr. Obama’s, a former Rumsfeld apparatchik weighed in on The Wall Street Journal’s op-ed page: “Now Bush Is Appeasing Iran.”
Within 24 hours, the White House did another U-turn, endorsing an Iraq withdrawal timetable as long as it was labeled a “general time horizon.” In a flash, as Mr. Obama touched down in Kuwait, Mr. Maliki approvingly cited the Democratic candidate by name while laying out a troop-withdrawal calendar of his own that, like Mr. Obama’s, would wind down in 2010. On Tuesday, the British prime minister, Gordon Brown, announced a major drawdown of his nation’s troops by early 2009.
But it’s not merely the foreign policy consensus that is shifting Obama-ward. The Texas oilman T. Boone Pickens has now joined another high-profile McCain supporter, Arnold Schwarzenegger, in knocking the McCain nostrum that America can drill its way out of its energy crisis. Mr. Pickens, who financed the Swift-boat campaign smearing John Kerry in 2004, was thought to be a sugar daddy for similar assaults against the Democrats this year. Instead, he is underwriting nonpartisan ads promoting wind power and speaks of how he would welcome Al Gore as energy czar if there’s an Obama administration.
The Obama stampede is forcing Mr. McCain to surrender on other domestic fronts. After the Democrat ran ads in 14 states berating chief executives who are “making more in 10 minutes” than many workers do in a year, a newly populist Mr. McCain began railing against “corporate greed” — much as he also followed Mr. Obama’s example and belatedly endorsed a homeowners’ bailout he had at first opposed. Given that Mr. McCain has already used a refitted, hand-me-down Obama campaign slogan (“A Leader You Can Believe In”), it can’t be long before he takes up fist bumps. They’ve become the rage among young (nonterrorist) American businessmen, according to USA Today.
“We have one president at a time,” Mr. Obama is careful to say. True, but the sitting president, a lame duck despised by voters and shunned by his own party’s candidates, now has all the gravitas of Mr. Cellophane in “Chicago.” The opening for a successor arrived prematurely, and the vacuum had been waiting to be filled. What was most striking about the Obama speech in Berlin was not anything he said so much as the alternative reality it fostered: many American children have never before seen huge crowds turn out abroad to wave American flags instead of burn them.
Mr. McCain could also have stepped into the leadership gap left by Mr. Bush’s de facto abdication. His inability to even make a stab at doing so is troubling. While drama-queen commentators on television last week were busy building up false suspense about the Obama trip — will he make a world-class gaffe? will he have too large an audience in Germany? — few focused on the alarms that Mr. McCain’s behavior at home raise about his fitness to be president.
Once again the candidate was making factual errors about the only subject he cares about, imagining an Iraq-Pakistan border and garbling the chronology of the Anbar Awakening. Once again he displayed a tantrum-prone temperament ill-suited to a high-pressure 21st-century presidency. His grim-faced crusade to brand his opponent as a traitor who wants to “lose a war” isn’t even a competent impersonation of Joe McCarthy. Mr. McCain comes off instead like the ineffectual Mr. Wilson, the retired neighbor perpetually busting a gasket at the antics of pesky little Dennis the Menace.
The week’s most revealing incident occurred on Wednesday when the new, supposedly improved McCain campaign management finalized its grand plan to counter Mr. Obama’s Berlin speech with a “Mission Accomplished”-like helicopter landing on an oil rig off Louisiana’s coast. The announcement was posted on politico.com even as any American with a television could see that Hurricane Dolly was imminent. Needless to say, this bit of theater was almost immediately “postponed” but not before raising the question of whether a McCain administration would be just as hapless in anticipating the next Katrina as the Bush-Brownie storm watch.
When not plotting such stunts, the McCain campaign whines about its lack of press attention like a lover jilted for a younger guy. The McCain camp should be careful what it wishes for. As its relentless goading of Mr. Obama to visit Iraq only ratcheted up anticipation for the Democrat’s triumphant trip, so its insistent demand for joint town-hall meetings with Mr. Obama and for more televised chronicling of Mr. McCain’s wanderings could be self-inflicted disasters in the making.
Mr. McCain may be most comfortable at town-hall meetings before largely friendly crowds, but his performance under pressure at this year’s G.O.P. primary debates was erratic. His sound-bite-deep knowledge of the country’s No. 1 issue, the economy, is a Gerald Ford train wreck waiting to happen in any matchup with Mr. Obama that requires focused, time-limited answers rather than rambling.
During Mr. McCain’s last two tours of the Middle East — conducted without the invasive scrutiny of network anchors — the only news he generated was his confusion of Sunni with Shia and his embarrassing stroll through a “safe” Baghdad market with helicopter cover. He should thank his stars that few TV viewers saw that he was even less at home when walking through a chaotic Pennsylvania supermarket last week. He inveighed against the price of milk while reading from a note card and felt the pain of a shopper planted by the local Republican Party.
The election remains Mr. Obama’s to lose, and he could lose it, whether through unexpected events, his own vanity or a vice-presidential misfire. But what we’ve learned this month is that America, our allies and most likely the next Congress are moving toward Mr. Obama’s post-Iraq vision of the future, whether he reaches the White House or not. That’s some small comfort as we contemplate the strange alternative offered by the Republicans: a candidate so oblivious to our nation’s big challenges ahead that he is doubling down in his campaign against both Mr. Maliki and Mr. Obama to be elected commander in chief of the surge.

Campaign Content

Campaign Content
Television is the opiate for children and newspapers wrap fish bones superbly. The concept of content only emerges during FCC license renewal hearings.
Republicans know that quantity trumps quality.
Nobody cares about content. The candidate can say anything so long as he appears Presidential AND down-to-earth, as he is saying it.
If the voters wanted a civics lesson, they would have paid attention in the tenth grade.

McCain Fingers Obama for Assassins

McCain Locates Obama for Assassins

Reuters

Reuters reports that McCain shared details of Obama's trip to Iraq at a fundraiser:

Republican presidential candidate John McCain said on Friday that his Democratic opponent, Barack Obama, is likely to be in Iraq over the weekend.

The Obama campaign has tried to cloak the Illinois senator's trip in some measure of secrecy for security reasons. The White House, State Department and Pentagon do not announce senior officials' visits to Iraq in advance.

"I believe that either today or tomorrow -- and I'm not privy to his schedule -- Sen. Obama will be landing in Iraq with some other senators" who make up a congressional delegation, McCain told a campaign fund-raising luncheon.

I Dare McCain to Ape His President

On the same day, President Bush and Federal Reserve Chief Ben Bernanke gave two very different assessments of where the US economy is going. Bush was Mr. Positive while Chairman Bernanke's testimony forewarned of the pain to come. Read excerpts from the two takes below.

Bush:

President Bush said Tuesday the nation's troubled financial system is "basically sound" and urged lawmakers to quickly enact legislation to prop up mortgage giants Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac. He also called on the Democratic-run Congress to follow his example and lift a ban on offshore drilling to help increase domestic oil production.

Amid soaring gas prices, the toughest real estate market in decades, falling home prices and financing that's harder to come by, Bush said: "It's been a difficult time for many American families." But he also said that the nation's economy continues to grow, if slowly.

Bush said that despite the woes of Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac and the recent government takeover of California bank IndyMac, U.S. depositors should not worry because their deposits are insured by the government up to $100,000

HuffPost

Oil Market Manipulation

Who let the oil market be manipulated?

For anyone who believes that speculation by energy traders explains at least a portion of the run-up in oil prices, the announcement that the Commodity Futures Trading Commission is investigating oil market "manipulation" is welcome news. Maybe, at long last, we'll get some clarity on this mystery. Speculation likely does not explain the entirety of $130-a-barrel oil, but it's reasonable to assume that some sort of shenanigans are going on behind the scenes.

But for How the World Works, the most interesting tidbit in the Wall Street Journal's coverage was the news that the CFTC had "reached an agreement" with Intercontinental Exchange Inc., the operator of ICE Futures electronic exchange.

As I've harped upon in this space on numerous occasions, trading on ICE is not, as the Journal delicately puts it, "subject to the same CFTC reporting requirements as Nymex [New York Mercantile Exchange] trading." Which means energy traders can do what they want under cover of darkness, and regulators are none the wiser. But "ICE will now provide daily information on large trader positions in its oil-futures markets, divulge more details on market participants and notify the CFTC when traders exceed position limits."

To which, all I can say is finally! It's not like nobody knew this was a problem. For background information, interested readers are referred to two lengthy government reports, "The Role of Market Speculation in Rising Oil and Gas Prices: A Need to Put the Cop Back on the Beat," and "Excessive Speculation in the Natural Gas Market," published in 2006 and 2007, respectively. To allow some commodity trading exchanges to operate without oversight while others must report what's going on is an open invitation to traders: "Manipulate me, pretty please."

Of course, this didn't happen by accident. I wrote about this yesterday, and I wrote about it the day before yesterday, and I'm seriously considering writing about it every single day until the next election for the presidency of the United States is decided. The freedom of energy traders to operate on exchanges such as ICE without having to report their activities to the U.S. government is directly attributable to the husband-and-wife politicking of Phil and Wendy Gramm. That's right, Phil "top-economic-advisor-to-John McCain" Gramm. If speculation has pushed up oil prices, Phil Gramm is at least partially responsible.

― Andrew Leonard

McCain Lies Poorly

McCain Invents ‘Facts’ as he Goes Along

Arianna Huffington, HuffPost

This week brought yet more proof that John McCain's grasp of his signature issue -- the war in Iraq -- is less than firm. "I can look you in the eye and tell you [the surge] is succeeding," he told a town hall crowd. "We have drawn down to pre-surge levels." Only we haven't. There are currently 155,000 troops in Iraq; there were 130,000 before the surge. He also announced that Mosul is "quiet" -- even though earlier that day three suicide bombings rocked Mosul and a nearby town, leaving 23 dead. The day before, McCain mocked Obama for declining to accompany him on a trip to Iraq, saying: "We've got to show him the facts on the ground." Which facts are those, Senator -- the ones you're making up as you go?

Would Goldwater Have Voted for McCain?

By Sam Stein, HuffPost

John McCain is prone to tout himself as a "Goldwater Republican," the inheritor of a party and ideology that his Senate predecessor from Arizona, Barry Goldwater, helped shape decades ago.

But Goldwater's own family members say that, if the family patriarch were alive today, he would be sour on McCain and shudder at the kind of conservatism that the current GOP nominee is proposing.

"I don't know if he would recognize the Republican Party today," Alison Goldwater Ross, a registered Democrat and granddaughter of the 1964 GOP presidential candidate, told The Huffington Post. "I'm sure if we were to raise his ashes from the Colorado River... he would be going, 'What? This is not my vision. This is not my party.'"

Such bewilderment, Ross offered, would extend to McCain, the man who took over Goldwater's seat in the Senate in 1987 and currently is the GOP standard-bearer. The two Arizonans clashed on several occasions during their political careers. Goldwater, as documented in "Pure Goldwater," a book by the Senator's son Barry Jr., was depressed and angered by McCain's involvement in the Keating Five scandal. Later in his career, a rift developed between the two after McCain used Goldwater's name -- without his permission -- for fundraising purposes.

"My grandfather felt that he was deceived by McCain," she said. "Because he looked at McCain and said, here was this young guy who has a lot of potential in the Republican Party, who is coming through the ranks, and then he pulled something like this. My grandfather had to ask, 'Is this something I want to be close to?'"

McCain Battles the Man He Was

Arianna Huffington, HuffPost

Still think John McCain is the straight talking reformer of 2000? This week, huge chunks of that facade fell away. His multi-layered lobbying problems sent the reformer chunk tumbling. His one-two rejection of agents of intolerance John "Hitler Was Doing God's Work" Hagee and Rod "Islam is Anti-Christ" Parsley, whose endorsements he actively pursued, revealed the calculation behind his faith-based outreach -- and down came the straight-talk stucco. And his refusal to join the 75 Senators who voted for the new GI Bill (or even show up for the vote), transformed his endless talk of honor, duty, sacrifice, and owing our troops a debt we can never repay into hypocritical dust. No matter who the Democrats nominate, it's increasingly clear McCain's toughest foe in 2008 will be the man he used to be.

Is McCain Dying? Death as a Controlled Media Event

McCain Restricts Medical Report

HuffPost

John McCain is scheduled to release 400 pages of medical records this Friday, after having promised to release the records for more than a year. Doing so on the Friday before Memorial Day makes this look like a classic document dump. To make matters even more controlled, McCain will only allow a limited number of media outlets to view the records.

McCain Backer Claims Hitler Served God's Will

Sam Stein, HuffPost

John Hagee, the controversial evangelical leader and endorser of Sen. John McCain, argued in a late 1990s sermon that the Nazis had operated on God's behalf to chase the Jews from Europe and shepherd them to Palestine. According to the Reverend, Adolph Hitler was a "hunter," sent by God, who was tasked with expediting God's will of having the Jews re-establish a state of Israel.

Going in and out of biblical verse, Hagee preached: "'And they the hunters should hunt them,' that will be the Jews. 'From every mountain and from every hill and from out of the holes of the rocks.' If that doesn't describe what Hitler did in the holocaust you can't see that."

He goes on: "Theodore Hertzel is the father of Zionism. He was a Jew who at the turn of the 19th century said, this land is our land, God wants us to live there. So he went to the Jews of Europe and said 'I want you to come and join me in the land of Israel.' So few went that Hertzel went into depression. Those who came founded Israel; those who did not went through the hell of the holocaust.

"Then god sent a hunter. A hunter is someone with a gun and he forces you. Hitler was a hunter. And the Bible says -- Jeremiah writing -- 'They shall hunt them from every mountain and from every hill and from the holes of the rocks,' meaning there's no place to hide. And that might be offensive to some people but don't let your heart be offended. I didn't write it, Jeremiah wrote it. It was the truth and it is the truth. How did it happen? Because God allowed it to happen. Why did it happen? Because God said my top priority for the Jewish people is to get them to come back to the land of Israel." (Listen to the audio below.)

The sermon, which was first posted by Bruce Wilson on his site, Talk To Action, adds another element to Hagee's controversial stance on the state and history of Israel. It also may provide a new round of political headaches for McCain who has admitted that seeking out Hagee's endorsement was a mistake, but still declared himself "glad to have" it.

A spokesman for Hagee confirmed the authenticity of the remark, which can be found at around the 1:08 mark of his sermon "Battle For Jerusalem."

Since McCain secured the endorsement, both his campaign and Hagee have been pressed to explain a series of derogatory remarks the Reverend made about the Catholic Church, including his reference to the institution as "the Great Whore."

Hagee has since apologized for those remarks. But his interpretation of the role of the Nazis could be harder to dismiss, in part because McCain and Sen. Barack Obama are expected to compete heavily over the Jewish vote come the general election, in part because McCain has said he admires Hagee's commitment to Israel, but mainly because similar theories have found their way into much of the Reverend's writings.

As Wilson notes, in his 2006 book "Jerusalem Countdown", Hagee proposed the theory that "anti-Semitism, and thus the Holocaust, was the fault of Jews themselves -- the result of an age old divine curse incurred by the ancient Hebrews through worshiping idols and passed, down the ages, to all Jews now alive." He also wrote that "Most readers will be shocked by the clear record of history linking Adolf Hitler and the Roman Catholic Church in a conspiracy to exterminate the Jews."

Hagee is considered, in many political circles, to be one of the most passionate and strident supporters of Israel. He has spoken at AIPAC conferences and leads the evangelical group Christians United for Israel. But his views of the country, while possibly shared by others in the evangelical community, can be, at times, startling. Holding to the belief that Armageddon will come to earth following the reestablishment of the Kingdom of Israel, Hagee has advocated an aggressive war against Iran and has opposed any Israeli military withdrawal from the West Bank.

McCain, at least in the public record, has sought to thread the needle with the Hagee association: distancing himself from the controversial comment while reaping the political benefits of the Reverend's endorsement. Appearing on ABC's "'This Week" in late April 2008, McCain criticized Hagee's past remarks on the Catholic Church, but said that, "I admire and appreciate his advocacy for the state of Israel, the independence of the state of Israel."

World Watches McCain Lobbyist Scandal

The McCain Lobbyist Scandal
Huffington Post
UPDATE: John McCain's chief strategist Charlie Black isn't losing any sleep about his firm's involvements with some of the worst dictators and human rights abusers in the world. Responding to a MoveOn video seeking to have Black removed from McCain's campaign, the lobbyist-turned-adviser had this to say:
"I'm not ashamed of anything the firm did," McCain adviser Charlie Black says of his days as the principle in one of Washington's most influential lobbying firms. "If they want to use it to fire up the left wing, well, that's fine."

Black is referring to a campaign by liberal watchdog and political groups to pressure McCain into dumping Black, now a top McCain campaign strategist. Today, MoveOn's political action fund released a video accusing Black of lobbying "for some of the world's worst tyrants."
ORIGINAL POST: John McCain just can't get a handle on his lobbyist connections. Ben Smith at Politico reports:
John McCain's campaign asked a prominent Republican consultant, Craig Shirley, to leave his official campaign role and released a new conflict of interest policy Thursday after a Politico inquiry about Shirley's dual role consulting for the campaign and for an independent "527" group opposing the Democratic presidential candidates.

Shirley, a conservative public relations veteran, doubled as a consultant to McCain and to the group Stop Her Now, a 527 group barred from coordinating its activities with presidential campaigns. He is not currently on the McCain campaign's payroll, but would also step down from his role on McCain's Virginia Leadership Team, a McCain spokesman, Brian Rogers, said.
"If you're working for a 527 involved in the presidential race, you won't have a named role in our campaign," said Rogers.
Under the new policy, a copy of which was provided to Politico, "no person with a McCain Campaign title or position may participate in a 527 or other independent entity that makes public communications that support or oppose any presidential candidate."
Marc Ambinder confirms the new effort by the McCain camp to scrutinize its lobbyist advisers:
This morning, according to two Republicans with direct knowledge, Rick Davis, the campaign manager, e-mailed to McCain's entire staff a memo entitled "McCain Campaign Conflicts Policy" -- Effective Today" that includes a questionnaire asking about previous professional activities.

One of the questions asks: "Have you ever been a registered lobbyist at either the Federal or State level?" Another asks: "Have you ever been a registered foreign agent? A third asks staff members to list all of their previous lobbying or foreign government clients.
All staff members are required to submit the form to McCain's campaign counsel, Trevor Potter and his staff, for their review.
Employees who lie about their affiliations will be fired. The new conflicts policy prohibits campaign staffers from being "registered lobbyist or foreign agent, or receive compensation for any such activity."
Despite his reputation as a government reformer, conflicts of interest are nothing new to the McCain camp. Today USA Today is reporting on yet another land swap deal that McCain secured for a major donor which netted his supporter a profit far exceeding market value.
Sen. John McCain secured millions in federal funds for a land acquisition program that provided a windfall for an Arizona developer whose executives were major campaign donors, public records show.

McCain, who has made fighting special-interest projects a centerpiece of his presidential campaign, inserted $14.3 million in a 2003 defense bill to buy land around Luke Air Force Base in a provision sought by SunCor Development, the largest of about 50 landowners near the base. SunCor representatives, upset with a state law that restricted development around Luke, met with McCain's staff to lobby for funding, according to John Ogden, SunCor's president at the time.
The Air Force later paid SunCor $3 million for 122 acres near the base. It was the highest single land transaction of the private lots purchased by the government -- three times the county's assessed value and twice the military's estimated value. SunCor also donated another 122 acres. Alan Bunnell, a spokesman for SunCor's parent company, Pinnacle West Capital, said the donation was meant to minimize the company's tax bill and enhance the value of adjacent property it owns.
The new policy has already claimed one lobbyist who advised McCain, energy policy adviser Eric Burgeson:
McCain's former energy advisor joined the firm of Barbour Griffith & Rogers in Washington in 2006 after serving as the chief of staff at the Department of Energy. Burgeson's energy clients include Southern Company, which operates electric utilities and nuclear-power plants in the Southeast.

''Eric leads the firm's energy practice utilizing his domestic and international energy policy expertise and network of policy decision makers,'' the firm's website states.
But despite renewed scrutiny, the new policy is unlikely to to cut short the career of McCain's chief political adviser Charlie Black, who is a notorious lobbyist with connections to several unsavory dictatorships. Campaign Money Watch has penned an open letter urging the removal of three lobbyists/adivsers, including Black, who have or currently represent regimes know for committing human rights abuses. Meanwhile, MoveOn.org has published a short video of his most nefarious clients, and is seeking Black's ouster from the McCain camp.
John McCain says we're fighting in Iraq to plant "the seeds of democracy," but the firm of his "chief political adviser" Charlie Black made millions lobbying for the world's worst tyrants...

...Ferdinand Marcos, who executed thousands of his own citizens in the Philippines...
...Zaire's Mobuto, who publicly hanged his opponents and looted his country's vast mineral wealth...
...and rebel leader Jonas Savimbi, a mass murderer, who covered Angola with landmines.
Charlie Black said he didn't do anything wrong. John McCain should tell Black he did. Call John McCain and tell him to fire Charlie Black.

Hillary is mad, McCain a Fool

Gore Vidal Hillary is Mad McCain a Fool

Gore Vidal, FirstPost.co.uk

The American writer Gore Vidal has launched a withering attack on the Republican presidential candidate John McCain - "I've never met anyone in America who has the slightest respect for him" - and says he prefers Barack Obama to Hillary Clinton for the Democrats, despite his friendship with Bill and Hillary, claiming her never-give-up strategy is "more or less insane".

"I'd always rather liked her," said Vidal, talking to Melvyn Bragg for Sunday night's South Bank Show on ITV. "She's a perfectly good lawyer... But this long campaign, this daily search for the grail, has driven her crazy."

Vidal said it had taken time for him to warm to Obama. "I liked the idea of him, but he never managed to get my interest. I was brought around by his overall intelligence - specifically when he did his speech on race and religion." In Vidal's opinion, "he's our best demagogue since Huey Long or Martin Luther King".

Asked whether Obama has a similar charisma to that of John F Kennedy, whom Vidal knew because he was related to Jackie Kennedy, the writer responded: "I never believed in Jack's charisma," adding that JFK "was one of our worst presidents". He said Obama was better educated than Kennedy and would come to the presidency with real experience as a senator. "Jack never went to the office - he wanted the presidency and his father [Joseph Kennedy] bought it for him."

Vidal, who has recently returned home to the States after spending 30 years living in Italy, was asked by Bragg whether Obama could beat McCain in November. "You could beat McCain!" he replied. He called the Arizona senator a "goddamned fool" who enjoyed the privilege of a private school education and managed to come bottom of his class, and then "smashed up his airplane" and became a prisoner of war as a result, an incident he has been busy trying to parlay into his being a war hero.

"[McCain] was on television talking about mortgages," said Vidal, "and it was quite clear he does not know what a mortgage is. His head rattles as he walks."

FIRST POSTED

Desperate McCain Asks Us for Ideas

McCain excludes Malkin from blogger conference calls.

Amanda, HuffPost

Sen. John McCain’s (R-AZ) campaign has begun an effort to reach out to both liberal and conservative bloggers, perhaps attempting to repair the senator’s past slights against new media. However, one blogger upset at not being included in the project is Michelle Malkin, who yesterday complained that she wasn’t invited to take part:

Yesterday, I learned that several far left-wing blogs were invited to participate in The Maverick’s blogger conference call session (it’s part of that Big Vision Thing). I e-mailed McCain’s New Media guy, Patrick Hynes, asking if I could participate in the next blogger conference call.

After all, McCain said yesterday he’ll “listen to any idea that is offered in good faith and intended to help solve our problems, not make them worse” and “will set a new standard for transparency and accountability” and “will work with anyone, of either party, to make this country safe, prosperous and proud.”

If he’s willing to take questions from hostile liberal bloggers, why not take some from conservative bloggers who represent substantial readerships with dissenting views on how best to make this country “safe, prosperous, and proud?” I’ll keep you updated.

As Malkin herself would say, “Boo-freakin-hoo.” (HT: Atrios and TBogg)

McCain Digs Deeper Grave

Arianna Huffington, HuffPost

Appearing on The O'Reilly Factor, McCain told O'Reilly, "I voted for Bush in 2000 and 2004."

But on the way to that unequivocal refutation, his unconscious mind jumped up, started waving its hands and yelled: "Not so fast!"

O'REILLY: Did you vote for President Bush?

MCCAIN: Of course not. I campaigned all over this country for him.

A Hamas official told an interviewer last month that the group approved of Obama's candidacy. Friday, McCain said the group's opinion is relevant -- despite Obama's characterization of that opinion as a "smear."

"It's very obvious to everyone that Senator Obama shares nothing of the values or goals of Hamas, which is a terrorist organization," McCain said. "But it's also fact that a spokesperson from Hamas said that he approves of Obama's candidacy. I think that's of interest to the American people."

Gramps Makes Mess Media Tidies Up

Arianna Huffington, HuffPost

Second Update: McCain and Me: Hero Worship Dies Hard (But When It Does...)

Update: Through a spokesperson with the colorful name Tucker Bounds, McCain has denied telling me he didn't vote for Bush in 2000. "It's not true," Bounds told the Washington Post, "and I ask you to consider the source."

My sentiments exactly -- because John McCain has a long history of issuing heartfelt denials of things that were actually true.

He denied ever talking with John Kerry about his leaving the GOP to be Kerry's '04 running mate -- then later admitted he had, insisting: "Everybody knows that I had a conversation."

He denied admitting that he didn't know much about economics, even though he'd said exactly that to the Wall Street Journal. And the Boston Globe. And the Baltimore Sun.

He denied ever having asked for a budget earmark for Arizona, even though he had. On the record.

He denied that he'd ever had a meeting with comely lobbyist Vicki Iseman and her client Lowell Paxon, even though he had. And had admitted it in a legal deposition.

And those are just the outright denials. He's also repeatedly tried to spin away statements he regretted making (see: 100-year war, Iraq was a war for oil, etc.).

So, yes, by all means, "consider the source."

Original Post: At a dinner party in Los Angeles not long after the 2000 election, I was talking to a man and his wife, both prominent Republicans. The conversation soon turned to the new president. "I didn't vote for George Bush" the man confessed. "I didn't either," his wife added. Their names: John and Cindy McCain (Cindy told me she had cast a write-in vote for her husband).

The fact that this man was so angry at what George Bush had done to him, and at what Bush represented for their party, that he did not even vote for him in 2000 shows just how far he has fallen since then in his hunger for the presidency. By abandoning his core principles and embracing Bush -- both literally and metaphorically -- he has morphed into an older and crankier version of the man he couldn't stomach voting for in 2000.

McCain's fall has been Shakespearean -- and really hard to watch for those, like myself, who so admired and even loved him. His nobility and his true reformer years have given way to pandering in the service of ambition.

But a large portion of the electorate hasn't noticed the Shakespearean fall. How else to explain The 28/48 Disconnect -- wherein only a die-hard 28 percent of voters still approve of Bush, but 48 percent say they'd vote for McCain, who is running on the "more of the same" platform?

The thing is, these voters clearly still think of McCain as the maverick of 2000, a straight shooter who would never seek the embrace of a man he couldn't bring himself to vote for, nor accept the regular counsel of Karl Rove, the man behind the vile, race-baiting attacks on him during the 2000 campaign.

And the main reason for The 28/48 Disconnect is the mainstream media's ongoing membership in the John McCain Protection Society. They too continue to party -- and report on McCain -- like it's 1999.

Look at the slack they cut him after his infamous stroll through a Baghdad market was revealed as an utter sham. James Frey was eviscerated for far less. Or the slack they cut him after his repeated confusion of Sunni and Shia. Or the slack they cut him when his promise to run a "respectful" campaign ran aground on his sleazy attempt to connect Barack Obama and Hamas.

Every time McCain screws up, the media jump all over themselves to make it better, as if grandpa had said something embarrassing at the dinner table and it needed to be smoothed over as quickly as possible.

The latest example came late last week when the Straight Talk Express hit an oil slick and skidded off the road. Click here for the blow by blow, but, in short, McCain implied that Iraq is essentially a war for oil, then tried to take it back, explaining that he was actually talking about the first Gulf War, then, when pressed, denied that he was actually talking about the first Gulf War.

And, by and large, the media gave him a pass. Chris Matthews called the original war for oil comment "an astounding development," but most everyone else was too busy picking over the bones of the Wright/Obama carcass to give it much play.

Interestingly, McCain's mental meltdown over the reason we invaded Iraq was prompted by a comment from a McCain supporter who said he hoped a group called "Swift Boats for McCain" would be formed to help McCain in the campaign.

The gentleman needn't worry. The group already exists. It's called "the media." And they are very well-funded, and highly motivated. The Swift Boat Media for McCain are, for instance, going to make sure that we hear a lot more about the nuances of Obama's decision to not wear a flag pin on his lapel than about McCain's ideas on a little thing like the Iraq war.

Witness the reaction to McCain's repeated declarations that he thinks we should be in Iraq for "100 years." The DNC had the gall to use McCain's own words in an ad, causing McCain to flip out: "My friends, it's a direct falsification," he said, "and I'm sorry that political campaigns have to deteriorate in this fashion."

So, to review: using a candidate's own words against him is off limits, but making disgraceful insinuations about Hamas and Obama isn't.

But instead of nailing McCain on the "deterioration" of his ethics -- to say nothing of his logic and reasoning -- the Swift Boat Media dutifully repeated his talking points, as in this AP lede claiming, without reservation, that the DNC ad "falsely suggests John McCain wants a 100-year war in Iraq."

McCain tries to wriggle away from his "100 year" comment by saying that he wasn't talking about a hundred year war, but a very long term commitment of U.S. troops, like we have in Germany or South Korea. Maybe so, but the last time I looked no one was blowing up American soldiers in Wiesbaden.

The New Yorker's Rick Hertzberg, a writer who hasn't drunk the It's Still 2000 Kool-Aid, sums up McCain's Strangelovian "vision": "McCain wants to stay in Iraq until no more Americans are getting killed, no matter how long it takes and how many Americans get killed achieving that goal -- that is, the goal of not getting any more Americans killed. And once that goal is achieved, we'll stay."

The John McCain the media fell in love with in 2000 isn't on the ballot in 2008. And the proof has all but jumped up and grabbed the media by the throat: the ring-kiss of "agents of intolerance" Falwell and Robertson; the decision to make permanent tax cuts he twice voted against, saying he could not "in good conscience support" them; the campaign finance reformer replaced with a candidate whose campaign is run by lobbyists and fueled by loophole rides on his wife's jet; the hard-line stance against torture replaced by a vote allowing waterboarding; the guarded-by-a-battalion stroll through the "safe" neighborhoods of Baghdad; the use of Karl Rove as an advisor... and the embracing of the disastrous policies of a man he so abhorred he would not vote for him.

What will it take for the Swift Boat Media to realize that John McCain jumped the shark a long, long time ago?

A Democrat's Worst Nightmare

Robert Borosage, Tom Paine

Until a few days ago, David Broder was a respected Washington Post columnist. Here’s a part of what he wrote.

“Yet, in pointing to those vulnerabilities in her rival, Clinton has heightened the most obvious liability she would carry into a fight against McCain. In an age of deep cynicism about politicians of both parties, McCain is the rare exception who is not assumed to be willing to sacrifice personal credibility to prevail in any contest.”

What possibly could Broder be drinking? Has he forgotten:

• The John McCain who initially voted against the Bush tax cuts as irresponsible giveaways to the wealthy, but now embraces them, a change in position justified only by his desire to “prevail” in the “contest” for the Republican nomination?
• Or the John McCain who had the votes in his hand to outlaw the administration’s grotesque torture policies, and instead caved to support the bill that empowered President Bush to define what torture is, a flip-flop motivated only because of the potential cost of his position in the upcoming election?
• Or the McCain that went from denouncing Jerry Falwell and Pat Robertson as “agents of intolerance” in 2004 to doing exactly what he denounced—“pandering to outer reaches of American politics—by kissing their rings in the run-up to the 2008 nominating contest?

Why the utter nonsense reported as accepted fact? Here as so often, Broder, the widely respected dean of Washington punditocracy, is a mirror of conventional wisdom. And as TV host Chris Mathews notes, “The media loves McCain. We’re his base.”

But can’t reporters love the guy without drinking the Kool-Aid? McCain has now put forth an economic plan that adds an astounding $300 billion dollars a year in corporate and top-end tax cuts to a commitment to make Bush’s tax cuts permanent. This is an utterly irresponsible and fantastical posture at a moment the economy is headed into recession and the dollar is already sinking.

The commentariat will have to decide whether their affection for McCain overcomes their commitment to common sense. Their choice should be instructive. If they follow Broder, that will be the Democrats' worst nightmare.

John McCain Scuttles the Armed Forces

Brandon Friedman of vetvoice.com details the atrocity

“Yesterday VoteVets.org delivered a petition with 30,000 signatures to the office of Senator John McCain. Through that petition, we asked him to support Senator Jim Webb's new GI Bill. And less than 24 hours later, we have an answer:

"Sen. John McCain, R-Ariz., the presumptive Republican presidential nominee, seemed to give a thumbs down to bipartisan legislation that would greatly expand educational benefits for members of the military returning from Iraq and Afghanistan under the GI Bill...."

The reason for McCain's refusal to support the bill is about the most disturbing rationale one could imagine....Officials in charge of Pentagon personnel worry that a more generous and expansive GI Bill would create an incentive for troops to get out of the military and go to college.”

Some things are so vile and contemptible there is no response to them.

Many years ago I attended a lecture given by Simon Wiesenthal the famous Nazi hunter. Somebody handed out picture postcards. Depicted was an SS Officer posing for the camera his right foot on the neck of a prisoner.

An older man in the audience rose to ask Wiesenthal for one name with an address.

Today, I recalled the emotion with which he spoke.

McCain is Bush

The Clintons say that McCain has many moderate qualities that separate him from the Bush fiasco. Have Hillary and Bill taken leave of their senses?

“On the foreign policy issues that are most consequential, McCain is George Bush. They pay lip service to the same pretty concepts of internationalism and democracy in order to justify endless militarism, occupation and war. They believe the "transcendent" obligation of America is to use its military force and other resources to re-make the world in our image. The Middle East is our personal playground and controlling it will consume most of our attention and energy. We should work cooperatively with other countries whenever they are willing to support our foreign adventures.

With regard to the most complex and dangerous conflicts, they even sound almost exactly alike in their simple-minded belligerence. Here was Bush's "solution" to the Israel/Hezbollah war, spat out between food bites to Tony Blair:

What they really need to do is to get Syria to get Hezbollah to stop doing this shit, and it's over.

And here was McCain's equally insightful solution to the civil war in Iraq:

One of the things I would do if I were President would be to sit the Shiites and the Sunnis down and say, "Stop the bullshit."

The American Emperor issues moronic dictates to the world's primitive peoples, and they obey -- just as has happened for the last eight years -- and thousands-year old religious and ethnic conflicts vanish and freedom and Western democracy sprout magically in their place. As Matt Welch, author of McCain: The Myth of a Maverick, said in a February speech at the Cato Institute:

[McCain's] whole career, his life, his training, his family background has been to be a member of . . . the Imperial Class; [he's] motivated by an inspiring trust of America's governance of the world; [and] he would be the most imperial-oriented President, most militaristic President, since Teddy Roosevelt, at least.”

Glenn Greenwald, Salon.com

Note: What have the Republicans got on the Clintons?