Frank, you're forgetting one other important thing: McCain polls ahead of Obama in an electoral college matchup. He polls behind Hillary. I love the ad, but don't pretend that McCain doesn't have a stake in seeing Hillary out of the race. He'd love to add Pennsylvania and Minnesota as red states this Fall and an Obama nomination would deliver that.

From one war Veteran to another, I respect everything McCain military sacrifice, but...can this country SURVIVE under 4 additional years of whats happening now?

Can or will the average working person survive if preditory student loans continue and people like Bill Gates and companies like AT&T look to outsource because they feel there are no qualified people living in the US? Can we survive another 4 years of predatory mortgage loans and finicial bail outs without and regulations?

Yesterday I filled up my vehicle and it cost me almost 50 bucks. Bread is nearing 3 dollars a loaf. Who does not feel it where it counts the most; in their pocketbooks.

Oh and don't get me started on Cronysim, tax breaks for the rich and well connected. Nobid contracts for friends businesses, tax breaks to the likes of Exon (sp) Mobile who turn profits every quarter in the double digit billions.

Can we really afford an additional 100 years of this war?

Tell the truth, spite the Devil

If being a war vet is such a key qualification for POTUS, why couldn't McSleepy beat an inexperienced, drunken AWOL for the 2000 GOP nomination?

Mac's a one-note piano and that sound's going to get annoying real fast.

John McCain is the only candidate of any Party who can unite and lead America into a better tomorrow.

He is the only agent for real change - and change comes from within - integrity, honor and service are qualities all Americans have but often forget.

Let Hillary and Obama and the DNC play the politcis of the past. John McCain moves forward.

http://hickeysite.blogspot.com/2008/03/obamas-uncle-jere-god-damn-mother.html

HELLO EVERYONE,

A WAR VETERAN SHOULD BE APPRECIATED FOR BEING ABLE TO DIE FOR THE COUNTRY.

BUT THAT DOES NOT MEAN TO BE ABLE TO LEAD A COUNTRY!

THANK YOU

If sacrifice on a battlefield qualifies one to be president than the dead marines will just do fine.There is a leader for any given time and this time we have and need an Obama.McCain is TOO old,has partial memory lost and is a constant angry man and will lead us into more troubles home and abroad with our failing economy...

With all due respect, Sen. McCain was a fighter Pilot. Remember TOP GUN? I, for one, do not believe the personality traits that would be in a FIGHTER PILOT are the calm, reasoned, sensibilities, needed for a President. TOO MUCH of a REBEL/MAVERICK for me...

John McCain 624787

Barack (6)
Hussei (6)
NoBama (6)

Paulo

John McCain, I have five words for you.

"no country for old men"

Is that all the repubs have to offer: more war, more gridlock, gay-bashing, abortion, and fear?
Mc Cain is fighting ghosts of the past.

I'm struck that no one noticed the implication of the final line: "An American President America has been waiting for." Talk about unsubtle references to Barack Obama.

It's brilliant -- he gets to claim that he's against such attacks, but uses language that allows viewers to infer it. How does this differ from the Jesse Helms "he took your job" ad? Not by much, in my opinion.

Welcome to the Republican Attack Machine, version 2.0. Just as nasty but much subtler....

The absolute insanity of continuing a military dictatorship of this great country is what McCain offers.

After eight years of military ownership of our policies, direction and tax dollars we are left with a quagmire in Iraq, a potential holocast being planned for Iran and a never ending "War on Terror" that subsidies the military industries ad infinitum at our expense.

Continuing these policies will keep Americans cowered in the corner surrounded by big guns, nukes and controlling mad men, placing Americans at risk in every corner of the world.

War is over if you want it.
McCain does not want it.

Let Hillary and Obama and the DNC play the politcis of the past. John McCain moves forward.
Posted by: Pat Hickey
-
How? By playing the politics of the last 7 years?
I think the story of his life as a POW shows his hypocricy, not patriotism. His support of torture is immoral. By supporting it, he is saying that torture works. He has personal experience of being tortured. Therefore, the only conclusion that can be drawn from this is that he must have spilled some beans. If torture didn't work on him, then how can he say it will work on others?

John Kerry thought being a war hero would help him, and the GOP used it against him. It's time for Democrats to play just as dirty. The Bush campaign expressed doubts in 2000 of McCain's sanity after being held in captivity, bring that up. Bring up the Manchurian Candidate. Imagine if a Democrat POW were running for President. The evil, hate-filled smears the GOP would run against him. Imagine those then use them against McCain. The GOP will bring a gun to a knife fight, Democrats need to bring a cannon. (And yes I realize the mainstream media will never proclaim that smears on McCain are true the way it did with John Kerry.)

McCain = Bush = 100 Years in Iraq.
-Over 29,314 U.S. Wounded.
-Over 4,004 Military Fatalities.
Vote Obama!

McDole hasn't got a prayer. People dont' give a rat's @ss about a candidate's resume or war heroics when they're paying $4 a gallon for gas, they don't have decent health care, college tuition is unaffordabe, their house is being foreclosed, their soldiers are dying in the desert, the globe is warming, and many other problems.

To top it all off, McCain is about to be painted as the true flip-flopping rightwing neocon that he truly is. Someone out of step with the average bloke on the street.

Who knows what Obama wants?
"I serve as a blank screen on which people of vastly different political stripes project their own views."

McCain would just be a continuation of George W. Bush Policies.
Hillary would be a throwback to the scandalous nineties and a return to secrecy and opaqueness in the White House.

Obama is Lincoln. Obama is Kennedy. Obama is hope. Obama
is progress. Obama is America.

old politics by an old man

SO MANY AMERICANS .....

PLEASE VOTE McS(h)ame for:

1. $6 GAS to each VOTER
2. 100 Years of IRAQ WAR ~ 100,000 Navy Lives 10 Million IRAQIs
3. IRAN WAR
4. AGAIN SETTING UP Dictator rule PAKISTAN
5. Manufacture more DRUGS in AFGHAN and sell to VOTER's KIDS
6. $4 MILK
7. $3 EGGS
8. HOSTILE TAKEOVERS of many COPORATIONS by more ARAB FUNDED COMPANIES
9. LOOSING more CIVIL RIGHTS
10. BURNING MORE WHITE HOUSE DOCUMENTS which are Proofs
11. Terror Planning more of 9/11, Madrid, etc.
12. Again Yellow,Orange,Red Threat Levels in FOX NEWS
13. Releasing Bin Ladens Tapes week before they need FEARED KITTENS
14. AMERICAN IN CLOSET and there will be hardly any country left which is safe for American. A century back, the same American is much respected even in very same Pakistan, Iraq, Iran.
15. Yet, Evengelicals wants to VOTE and eat Bread soaked in BLOOD of Navy and Iraqis.

I wonder if the media will get around to examining McCain's part in the 1974 passage of Public Law 93-531, the forced removal of native people from their lands in Arizona to grab their mineral rights. It seems odd that they'll jump on the story of what someone's pastor says but won't reveal this theft, if not genocide.

Hello,

I am a staunch democrat from a military family... I have voted for and supported hillary clinton in every way and will continue to do so BECAUSE I KNOW SHE WILL pull this out...

As for obama... he has no business being in the senate let alone in the white house... IF THIS STUPID DNC -- Dean Pelosi ANNOINT Obama as the nominee ...NOT ONLY WILL I VOTE FOR MCCAIN I WILL VOLUNTEER IN HIS CAMPAIGN...

Why??
Because I will do everything I can to keep Obama, his "finally proud of america" wife, his "anti-america", "anti-white", "anti-sematic" preacher NO WHERE NEAR THE WHITE HOUSE...

ANd by the way I am not a white woman... I am a minority myself WHO LOVES THIS COUNTRY BEFORE ANY POLITICAL PARTY.

McCain is, at heart, a good man, I believe. And his military record is honorable.

But he has no more presidential an approach to the conditions in this country than George Bush. He is more articulate than Bush, but not by much.

The dignity and strength that Barack Obama demonstrates come from his grasp of issues, his ability to analyze and communicate ideas to his fellow adults, and his abililty to continue to look at a situation until it is understood. He communicates with intelligence as well as vision, and does his listeners the courtesy of speaking intelligently instead of pushing reactionary buttons, as this ad tries to do. He is a voice of courageous reason, not push-button fear.

As a result Barack Obama stands head and shoulders above any other candidate in the pool as a man qualified to lead the country.

Being captured and held by enemies makes you a war hero? If anything he oughta have his head examined to make sure the extreme torture didn't screw it up beyond repair. I'm thankful that McCain served in the military, but 'war hero' is far-fetched.

OMG - Let me tell you what's more valuable to John McCain than Liberty - control of a seat in OPEC. Hey Johnny, are you gonna actually catch the people responsible for terrorism in this country? Or are you just going to keep letting Osama make us look like a bunch of losers, like you're good buddy George Duhhhhhhhh! - bya has done?

McCain has passed his 'sell-by' date. If he had won when running against Bush I would have voted for him, Repub or no, but his recent stands have been soft in the head.

As much as anything else, presidential campaigns are won and lost by the media narratives that rightly or wrongly come to define a candidate. In the case of Repubican nominee John McCain, the seemingly unshakable narrative of the political "maverick" could not be further off the mark. At almost every turn, McCain in his eternal quest for the White House has reversed long-held positions, compromised core principles and swallowed his pride in order to curry favor with both the leading lights of the conservative movement and right-wing Republican primary voters. The untold story of campaign 2008 is simply that of John McCain's transformation from maverick to prostitute.

As the record shows, the selling of John McCain encompasses virtually the entire gamut of issues, foreign and domestic.

Embracing "Crazy Base World"

Closing Borders - and Minds - to Immigration
Campaign Finance Fraud
Going Over to the Supply Side on Taxes
Attention: Deficit Disorder
Let's Overturn Roe v. Wade After All
Supreme Courtship of the Right
France-Basher to Alliance Builder
A Tortured Position on Torture
A Hate-Love Relationship with George W. Bush

1. Embracing "Crazy Base World"

No development symbolically reflects McCain's descent into political whoredom more than his born-again embrace of Christian conservative leaders such as Pastor John Hagee and Reverend Rod Parsley.

In his failed 2000 primary run against George W. Bush, McCain famously branded the likes of Jerry Falwell and Pat Robertson as "agents of intolerance." During the decisive South Carolina primary, he paid a steep price for it.

So by early 2006, candidate McCain began his journey to what Jon Stewart termed "crazy base world." In May of that year, McCain delivered the commencement address at Falwell's Liberty University, where the late minister praised his former foe, "the ilk of John McCain is very scarce, very small." Confronted by Tim Russert weeks before as to whether he still viewed Falwell as an agent of intolerance, McCain grudgingly owned up to his flip-flop, "no, I don't."

In the fall of 2007, McCain's rhetorical outreach to the GOP's evangelical base assumed comic proportions. In September, he said, "The most important thing is that I am a Christian." One month later in October, the Episcopalian-turned-Baptist McCain declared, "I would probably have to say yes, that the Constitution established the United States of America as a Christian nation." (Facing a backlash from the Anti-Defamation League and others, McCain relented and acknowledged, "Yes, I believe a Muslim could be president.")

Still, the distance from Falwell's Lynchburg campus to the stages shared with John Hagee and Rod Parsley was a short one. In February, McCain declared himself "very proud" and "very honored" to have Hagee's endorsement. The End-Times Texas pastor and head of Christian United for Israel (CUFI) isn't merely an anti-Catholic bigot (he called the church "the great whore" and a "false cult system"), but an advocate of accelerating Armageddon by promoting a nuclear showdown with Iran. As for Parsley, whom McCain deemed his "spiritual guide, the gay-bashing Ohio minister said of Islam that "America was founded, in part, with the intention of seeing this false religion destroyed."

Yet McCain appears to be enjoying a free ride from his past principles into the arms of evangelical voters. While the Jeremiah Wright controversy has been portrayed by many (myself included) as challenging Barack Obama's own narrative of a united, post-racial America transcending group cleavages and identity politics, John McCain remains unscathed after selling his soul.

2. Closing Borders - and Minds - to Immigration

McCain's craven surrender to political expediency even extends to issues where he has taken a high-profile leadership role. Nowhere is his cowardice in the face of conservative GOP primary voters more pronounced than on immigration reform.

Throughout 2005 and 2006, John McCain along with Ted Kennedy (D-MA) led the Senate fight for comprehensive immigration reform combining a guest worker program, new paths to naturalization for current illegal aliens and improved border security. But despite its general popularity with Americans overall, the legislation was torpedoed by McCain's own party in Congress. (That might explain Mr. Straight Talk's March 2007 tirade against his GOP colleague from Texas, John Cornyn: "F**k you! I know more about this than anyone else in the room.")

It wasn't that defeat, but the overwhelming xenophobia of the Republicans' primary electorate that led McCain to abandon his leadership role - and principles - on immigration. As the Washington Times and Meet the Press detailed, McCain underwent a conversion on the road to the Republican National Convention in Minneapolis. As the ultra-right Times noted on January 14, 2008:

The Arizona Republican now says that, in the wake of last summer's defeat of "comprehensive immigration reform," he has "gotten the message" that the border must be secured before the status of illegals already in the United States can be dealt with.
The chilly reception McCain's immigration record received among Republican primary voters might just have something to do with his now-perpetual pledge to "secure the borders first." In January, a crowd in Michigan booed McCain as he spoke about his past views on illegal immigration. It's no wonder he grew testy the previous week when Russert dredged up McCain's 2003 assessment that "I think we can set up a program where amnesty is extended to a certain number of people who are eligible." With illegal immigration at or near the top of the list of most important issues for GOP voters in Iowa, South Carolina and Nevada, neutralizing his exposure was a priority for McCain.

3. Campaign Finance Fraud

If immigration reform is one of John McCain's signature issues, campaign finance is surely the other. And there, too, McCain decided not to practice what he preached when the politics of push came to shove.

As the Boston Globe reported on Monday, the McCain campaign violated the very laws Mr. Straight Talk was instrumental in setting up:

John McCain has officially broken the limits imposed by the presidential public financing system, according to spending reports filed last week by the campaign.

The senator from Arizona has spent $58.4 million on his Republican primary effort. Those who have committed to public financing can spend no more than $54 million on their primary bid.
For its part, the McCain camp claims that their man is no longer subject to the spending cap, despite his desperate campaign having used the prospect of federal matching funds as collateral to secure a highly questionable loan back in 2007. The Federal Election Commission has yet to grant the public financing withdrawal request submitted by the McCain team.

Given the Democrats' massive fundraising lead and that violation of the law entails the "risk of stiff fines and up to five years in prison", John McCain better hope the FEC sides with him.

4. Going Over to the Supply Side on Taxes

John McCain's gymnastic flip-flop on the Bush tax cuts ranks among his greatest acts of political contortion. What he once opposed as fiscal recklessness and a massive giveaway to the wealthiest Americans, McCain now backs as the price of admission to the Republican presidential nomination.

As McCain took his Straight Talk Express to the Florida primary, he faced the dual prospects of jitters on the economy and a desperate Rudy Giuliani making what could be his final stand in the Sunshine State. And that meant fidelity to George W. Bush's tax cuts would be paramount. Sure enough, Giuliani threw down the gauntlet, "John voted against the Bush tax cuts, I think on both occasions, and sided with the Democrats."

McCain's response is typical of his Republican primary tightrope walk. The Bush tax cuts he once labeled unfair to the middle class and fiscally irresponsible should now be made permanent.

As the laissez-faire fanatics at the Club for Growth detail, McCain is proof that evolution is reversing when it comes to the Bush tax gambit. In June 2001, McCain proclaimed his opposition to Round 1 of President Bush's treasury-financed redistribution of wealth:

"I cannot in good conscience support a tax cut in which so many of the benefits go to the most fortunate among us at the expense of middle-class Americans who need tax relief."
By December 2007, however, that message sounded more like John Edwards than Ronald Reagan, so candidate John McCain needed a different rationale. As by the National Review's Rich Lowry on Fox News if he thought it had been a mistake to vote against the Bush tax cuts in 2001 and 2003, McCain claimed in the name of fiscal discipline he would do it all again:

"No, because I had significant tax cuts, and there was restraint of spending included in my proposal. I saw no restraint in spending. We presided over the greatest increase in the size of government since the Great Society. Spending went completely out of control. It's still out of control. Wasteful earmark spending is a disgrace, and it caused us to alienate our Republican base."
Of course, the spending cuts never came from the Bush White House or the Republican Congress. But with a presidential bid in the offing, McCain decided the third time was a charm. As Tim Russert noted on January 6th, McCain not only voted for the budget busting tax cuts the third time around, but now believes they should be made permanent:

SEN. McCAIN: ...unless we cut spending then, then we are going to end up in a - the serious situation we're in today. I will cut spending. And I will continue to support making the tax cuts permanent, which I've voted already twice.

MR. RUSSERT: But you voted the third time for the tax cuts, but there weren't spending cuts.

SEN. McCAIN: Mm-hmm, mm-hmm. No, but I thought that we ought to keep the tax cuts permanent because if we had increased taxes, which that would have had the effect of, if I had voted in the other way...
In his book, The Big Con, Jonathan Chait summarized John McCain's conversion from supply-side apostate to tax-cutting zealot. In 2000, Jack Kemp proclaimed of McCain's 2001 opposition to the Bush tax cuts, "John McCain, who's a friend of mine, has done a – has made a huge mistake." By 2006, McCain had drunk the Koolade and signed on supply-side godfather Arthur Laffer to his economic team. By 2007, he mouthed the party line, "tax cuts, starting with Kennedy, as we all know, increase revenues."

5. Attention: Deficit Disorder

Of course, the corollary to McCain's kowtowing to the Bush tax cuts is accepting the massive federal budget deficits they produce.

In the run-up to the 2004 election, President Bush pompously promised to slash the deficit by half by 2009. But his sleight of hand trick, which depended both on a wildly inflated baseline deficit figure and ignoring the impact making his tax cuts permanent in 2010, collapsed last month. The faltering economy and the costs of the stimulus package are now forecast to produce $400 billion in red ink this year.

As ThinkProgress meticulously detailed, John McCain's proposed economic package would be "worse than Bush." The same John McCain who warned Tim Russert about "serious situation we're in today" has thrown budgetary caution to the winds in a proposal that even his top economic adviser admitted " will make deficits expand up front:"

Our analysis suggests that the McCain plan shares five key characteristics of Bush policies. First, it is enormously expensive, costing more than $2 trillion over the next decadeand essentially doubling the Bush tax cuts. Second, the McCain plan would predominantly benefit the most fortunate taxpayers, offering two new massive tax cuts for corporations and delivering 58 percent of its benefits to the top 1 percent of taxpayers. The Bush tax cuts provide 31 percent of their benefits to the top 1 percent of taxpayers.

Third, the McCain tax plan continues the shift of the tax burden from investment income onto earned income. Fourth, the plan not only fails to address current tax shelter problems in the tax code but in fact will lead to increased sheltering. Fifth, McCain cannot pay for his tax cuts without massive reductions in Social Security, Medicare, or other key programs that benefit the vast majority of Americans.
Of course, that message brings a smile to the face of far-right anti-tax crusader Grover Norquist, who famously said of the federal government that his goal was "to get it down to the size where we can drown it in the bathtub." Norquist, who once called McCain "that nut-job from Arizona," now praises McCain for adopting "the Americans for Tax Reform's entire agenda."

Given that McCain's fuzzy math makes George W. Bush's look like differential calculus, it should come as no surprise that the Republican nominee admitted in 2005:

"I'm going to be honest: I know a lot less about economics than I do about military and foreign policy issues. I still need to be educated."
And with the dual crises in the housing market and financial system, it's all the more frightening that John McCain recently pointed to Alan Greenspan as his mentor:

"The issue of economics is not something I've understood as well as I should. I've got Greenspan's book."

6 Let's Overturn Roe v. Wade After All

McCain's courtship of the religious right did not end with fawning embrace of demagogues he once denounced. The reliably pro-life McCain just as predictably stepped up his anti-abortion rhetoric to please his new Christian conservative masters.

As ThinkProgress documented in November 2006, McCain in the run-up to his '08 presidential bid reversed course on the issue of overturning Roe v. Wade. In 1999, the supposed maverick was supposedly concerned about the health and safety of American women:

"I'd love to see a point where it is irrelevant, and could be repealed because abortion is no longer necessary. But certainly in the short term, or even the long term, I would not support repeal of Roe v. Wade, which would then force X number of women in America to [undergo] illegal and dangerous operations."
But by 2006 with his knee-bending to Falwell and others now well underway, McCain announced he not only wanted to see Roe overturned, but supported a constitutional amendment banning abortion as well:

STEPHANOPOULOS: Let me ask one question about abortion. Then I want to turn to Iraq. You're for a constitutional amendment banning abortion, with some exceptions for life and rape and incest.

MCCAIN: Rape, incest and the life of the mother. Yes.

STEPHANOPOULOS: So is President Bush, yet that hasn't advanced in the six years he's been in office. What are you going to do to advance a constitutional amendment that President Bush hasn't done?

MCCAIN: I don't think a constitutional amendment is probably going to take place, but I do believe that it's very likely or possible that the Supreme Court should - could overturn Roe v. Wade, which would then return these decisions to the states, which I support.

STEPHANOPOULOS: And you'd be for that?

MCCAIN: Yes, because I'm a federalist. Just as I believe that the issue of gay marriage should be decided by the states, so do I believe that we would be better off by having Roe v. Wade return to the states. And I don't believe the Supreme Court should be legislating in the way that they did on Roe v. Wade.

7. Supreme Courtship of the Right

John McCain's hard right turn extends well beyond Roe and reproductive rights. Throughout the 2008 campaign, he has gone to great lengths to reassure conservatives that President McCain would put their kind of people on the Supreme Court.

During the 2005 "up or down vote" controversy over Bush judicial nominations, McCain earned the wrath of conservatives for his membership in the so-called Gang of 14. McCain, after all, was one of the leaders of the bipartisan group of 14 Senators seeking a middle ground between the Democrats' filibuster threats and Majority Leader Bill Frist's nuclear option.

(It is worth noting that some on the right, such as the National Review's Adam White and Kevin White, now laud McCain precisely because he protected the ability of Republicans to filibuster future Democratic judicial nominations. "When that moment arrives," they wrote, "conservatives will call on the Republican minority to utilize every tool in the Senate minority playbook to thwart those nominations--especially the filibuster.")

Still, McCain's greater act of apostasy came on the types of judges he himself would support on the Supreme Court bench. Earlier this year, McCain faced a firestorm of right-wing criticism when John Fund, writing in the Wall Street Journal, claimed McCain was opposed to the nomination of a hardline conservative like Justice Samuel Alito:

More recently, Mr. McCain has told conservatives he would be happy to appoint the likes of Chief Justice John Roberts to the Supreme Court. But he indicated he might draw the line on a Samuel Alito, because "he wore his conservatism on his sleeve."
In a fiery January 2008 column titled, "Is McCain a Conservative?" Robert Novak backed up Fund's account:

"Wouldn't it be great if you get a chance to name somebody like Roberts and Alito?" one lawyer commented. McCain replied, "Well, certainly Roberts." Jaws were described as dropping. My sources cannot remember exactly what McCain said next, but their recollection is that he described Alito as too conservative.
Aware of the consequences with the conservative movement, McCain was quick to proclaim his fealty to their far-right judicial ideals. As he told the National Review's Byron York:

"Let me just look you in the eye," McCain told me. "I've said a thousand times on this campaign trail, I've said as often as I can, that I want to find clones of Alito and Roberts. I worked as hard as anybody to get them confirmed. I look you in the eye and tell you I've said a thousand times that I wanted Alito and Roberts. I have told anybody who will listen. I flat-out tell you I will have people as close to Roberts and Alito [as possible], and I am proud of my record of working to get them confirmed, and people who worked to get them confirmed will tell you how hard I worked."

8. France-Basher to Alliance Builder

On foreign policy as well as domestic issues, John McCain has dumped past postures as part of his presidential quest. His amnesia regarding his past belittling of key American allies is just one case in point.

In Paris last weekend, McCain adopted what the New York Times called "soothing tones" in a "love-fest" with French President Nicolas Sarkozy. And in what his campaign billed as a major foreign policy address today, John McCain declared, "We need to listen to the views and respect the collective will of our democratic allies."

Sadly, the John McCain of 2008 seems unacquainted with the John McCain model of 2003. With his vitriolic France-bashing in the run-up to the war in Iraq, John McCain stood shoulder to shoulder with the Paris-hating purveyors of "freedom fries" and "old Europe."

As President Bush prepared to pull the trigger on the Iraq war in February 2003, John McCain was at the forefront of those browbeating the Chirac government for France's refusal to back the U.S. at the United Nations. On February 11, 2003, McCain co-sponsored a Senate resolution praising 18 European nations backing U.S. enforcement of UN demands for Saddam's disarmament and echoed Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld in thundering at the France and Germany of "old Europe:"

"The majority of Europe's democracies have spoken, and their message could not be clearer: France and Germany do not speak for Europe...most European governments behave like allies that are willing to meet their responsibilities to uphold international peace and security in defense of our common values. We thank this European majority for standing with us."
McCain's venom towards the French was on full display two days later during a speech at the Center for Strategic and International Studies. On February 13, 2003, McCain warned of "new threats to civilization [which] again defy our imagination in scale and potency" portrayed Iraq as "threat of the first order." He proclaimed that "the United States does not have reliable allies to implement a policy to contain Iraq" and pointed the finger squarely at France:

"Compare our great power allies in the Cold War with those with whom we act today in dealing with Iraq. France has unashamedly pursued a concerted policy to dismantle the UN sanctions regime, placing its commercial interests above international law, world peace and the political ideals of Western civilization. Remember them? Liberte, egalite, fraternite."
Just days later on February 18, 2003, the Australian Broadcasting Corporation's Lateline program showed a furious McCain foaming at the mouth over France:

"They remind me of an aging movie actress in the 1940's who is still trying to dine out on her looks but doesn't have the face for it."
That the American media seem to have overlooked McCain's turnabout comes as no surprise. They have yet to hold John McCain to account for a five-year reign of error on Iraq in which he had everything - Saddam's WMD, the needed U.S. troop strength, Americans being greeted as liberators, the safety of Baghdad streets and so much else - completely wrong.

9. A Tortured Position on Torture

As a prisoner himself tortured during his Vietnam captivity in the Hanoi Hilton, John McCain has been an outspoken opponent of torture by the United States during the global war on terror. But when that position put him at odds with both the Republican leadership and GOP primary voters, McCain turned his tail and fled.

With his "no" vote in February on the Senate bill to ban waterboarding by the CIA, John McCain caved in the face of yet another betrayal by George W. Bush. President Bush, after all, stabbed McCain in the back with a 2005 signing statement that defanged the Detainee Treatment Act the now-presumptive GOP presidential nominee championed in the Senate. But in his never-ending quest to appease his party's conservative base, McCain revealed that no humiliation at the hands of George Bush is too great.

Predictably, John McCain kowtowed to the White House in just his latest affirmation of a de facto Bush third term. As the Washington Post noted:

But McCain sided with the Bush administration yesterday on the waterboarding ban passed by the Senate, saying in a statement that the measure goes too far by applying military standards to intelligence agencies. He also said current laws already forbid waterboarding, and he urged the administration to declare it illegal.

"Staging a mock execution by inducing the misperception of drowning is a clear violation" of laws and treaties, McCain said.
Not according to George W. Bush. After all, it was President Bush's December 30, 2005 signing statement on McCain's amendment to the Detainee Treatment Act that made waterboarding and other acts of torture the continuing policy of the United States.

With his signing statement, Bush himself sought to create a legal basis for his administration's past and future criminality. In a nutshell, Bush signed into law a bill he had every intention of continuing to violate.

Bush, of course, had opposed John McCain's torture bill throughout the fall of 2005. But when the House and Senate passed McCain's amendment to the defense authorization bill by veto proof margins, Bush held a December 15 press conference with McCain, announcing his support for the language explicitly saying that that the cruel, inhuman, and degrading treatment of detainees in US custody is illegal regardless of where they are held.

As the Boston Globe reported, that supposed compromise lasted just as long as it took for President Bush to issue his signing statement two weeks later on December 30. When it comes to what constitutes "cruel, inhuman, and degrading treatment of detainees," the President proclaimed that he indeed would be the decider.

And despite today's protestations to the contrary ("We can't torture or treat inhumanely suspected terrorists we have captured"), John McCain has just gone along with it.

10. A Hate-Love Relationship with George W. Bush

Of course, nothing about John McCain's pining for the White House is more emblematic than his newfound love of George W. Bush.

In early March, McCain accepted Bush's endorsement at a Rose Garden press conference, describing the President as "a man who I have a great admiration, respect and affection" for. But while John McCain now is only too eager for Bush's embrace, eight years ago John McCain told him to "take your hands off me."

McCain's past hatred for George W. Bush is the stuff of legend. As Time reported in March 2000, McCain showed a visceral disgust towards Bush and his scorched earth campaign:

But many close McCain advisers think the personal rift between the two men is too wide to bridge, at least in the near term. After all, the last time Bush tried to smooth things over-at a South Carolina debate in early February-the result was less than promising. During a commercial break, Bush grasped McCain's hands and made a sugary plea for less acrimony in their campaign. When McCain pointed out that Bush's allies were savaging him in direct-mail and phone campaigns, Bush played the innocent. "Don't give me that shit," McCain growled, pulling away. "And take your hands off me."
John McCain could certainly be forgiven for his anger, given the painful memories of character assassination, smears and lies the Bush camp dished out during the 2000 campaign. After McCain's upset win in the New Hampshire primary, Bush operatives during the critical South Carolina contest phoned voters with push polls implying McCain was anti-Catholic, his wife Cindy a drug addict, and that he had fathered an illegitimate black child with a prostitute. (In reality, the McCains had adopted a baby from an orphanage in Bangladesh.) McCain even received an early version of the Swift Boat treatment, with allegations that his Vietnam War captivity in Hanoi left him mentally unstable. All of these slurs came as candidate Bush chastised McCain that he couldn't "take the high horse and then claim the low road." It's no wonder he angrily rejected Bush's feigned attempt in 2000 to bury the hatchet.

But by 2004, John McCain was looking towards his next White House run - and life after Bush. McCain's presidential ambitions let him forgive sins past in order to rebuild relations with Bush and the Republican establishment. McCain's long road back began during election 2004. McCain not only stumped for George W. Bush, but joined the chorus of the Swift Boat hacks by stating that "what John Kerry did after the war is very legitimate political discussion." (Only the previous month, McCain himself called the attacks on Kerry "dishonest and dishonorable.") Dana Perino was exaggerating only slightly when she claimed that "in 2000 and 2004, Senator McCain went on to work his tail off to help this president."

From there, the selling of John McCain's soul proceeded quickly and his Faustian bargain began to pay dividends. At the Southern Leadership Conference in March 2006, McCain used the venue to offer a full-throated support of President Bush and his Iraq policy, proclaiming "We elected him, we need him, he needs to do well and the country needs him." McCain turned his vitriol towards the President's critics, claiming that anyone who said Bush lied about WMD in Iraq "was lying." By mid-2006, McCain had secured the backing of much of the Bush financial machine.

Conclusion: The Maverick's Free Ride

And so it goes. On issue after issue, John McCain has changed gears, abandoned past positions and discarded his principles in order to garner his party's nomination for President. No disgrace is too profound, no indignity too great and no compromise too painful for John McCain to endure in his unquenchable thirst for the White House.

And to date, McCain has paid little price for selling his soul to George W. Bush and the Republican right. The media perpetuates the McCain as maverick narrative even in the face of his betrayal of American voters - and himself. While some voices, such as Kevin Drum ("McCain's Cred") and authors David Brock and Paul Waldman (Free Ride: John McCain and the Media), are now shining a spotlight on McCain's duplicitous transformation, a fawning mainstream media continues to sing McCain's praises.

We can only hope that, ultimately, McCain's chickens will come home to roost. Hopefully, as the New Republic's Michael Crowley suggested last August, John McCain will soon learn "you can't un-sell out."

Elisabeth Bumiller wrote a scathing article on the "inconsistencies" in Senator John McCain's voting record and his current positions.

WASHINGTON — Senator John McCain likes to present himself as the candidate of the "Straight Talk Express" who does not pander to voters or change his positions with the political breeze. But the fine print of his record in the Senate indicates that he has been a lot less consistent on some of his signature issues than he has presented himself to be so far in his presidential campaign.

Mr. McCain, who derided his onetime Republican competitor Mitt Romney for his political mutability, has himself meandered over the years from position to position on some topics, particularly as he has tried to court the conservatives who have long distrusted him. His most striking turnaround has been on the Bush tax cuts, which he voted against twice but now wants to make permanent. Mr. McCain has also expressed varying positions on immigration, torture, abortion and Donald H. Rumsfeld, the former defense secretary.
The article points out that McCain has reversed course on several key issues as he has tried to gain the support of the Republican base. To summarize the article:

On tax cuts...

In 2001, McCain voted against Bush's tax cuts, saying "I cannot in good conscience support a tax cut in which so many of the benefits go to the most fortunate among us, at the expense of middle-class Americans who most need tax relief." He also voted against additional tax cuts in 2003, later saying that "I just thought it was too tilted to the wealthy, and I still do."
Today, McCain wants to make those tax cuts permanent.

On immigration...

In 2005, McCain supported comprehensive immigration reform, which included a pathway to citizenship.
Now, he claims that "if his original proposal came to a vote on the Senate floor, he would not vote for it."

On abortion and Roe v. Wade...

In 1999, McCain said that he would not support overturning Roe v. Wafe "int he sort term, or even the long term," because that would "force X number of women in America" to undergo "illegal and dangerous operations."
Today, McCain has campaigned on overturning Roe v. Wade.

On his revisionist history regarding Donald Rumsfeld...

In 2004, McCain refused to call for Rumsfeld's resignation, saying that Bush "can have the team around him that he wants around him." In 2006, retired generals called for Rumseld's resignation, but McCain did not.
Now, while running for president, McCain has claimed that "I’m the only one that said that Rumsfeld had to go." The article notes that "[t]he campaign has since acknowledged that Mr. McCain was incorrect, and more recently the senator has stopped short of claiming he called for the defense secretary’s ouster."

On torture...

McCain has traditionally been against torture, citing his experience as a POW for his decision.
Now, McCain voted last month "against a bill that would require the Central Intelligence Agency to abide by the restrictions on interrogating prisoners outlined in the Army Field Manual."

In his decades in office, McCain has an average party unity score in the low 80s. Since he has campaigned for president, his party unity score has skyrocketed (link, link).

2005: 81%
2006: 76%
2007: 90%

The sharp turns on the "Straight Talk Express" listed above are sure to be a problem for him in the general election.

In comments to reporters in Jordan, John McCain demonstrated that he does not understand even the most basic of facts about his signature issue, the Iraq War.

http://blog.washingtonpost.com/the-trail/2008/03/18/a_mccain_gaffe_in_jordan.html

Sen. John McCain, traveling in the Middle East to promote his foreign policy expertise, misidentified in remarks Tuesday which broad category of Iraqi extremists are allegedly receiving support from Iran.

He said several times that Iran, a predominately Shiite country, was supplying the mostly Sunni militant group, al-Qaeda...

McCain said he and two Senate colleagues traveling with him continue to be concerned about Iranian operatives "taking al-Qaeda into Iran, training them and sending them back."

Pressed to elaborate, McCain said it was "common knowledge and has been reported in the media that al-Qaeda is going back into Iran and receiving training and are coming back into Iraq from Iran, that's well known. And it's unfortunate." A few moments later, Sen. Joseph Lieberman, standing just behind McCain, stepped forward and whispered in the presidential candidate's ear. McCain then said: "I'm sorry, the Iranians are training extremists, not al-Qaeda."
Al Qaeda in Iraq is of course entirely dominated by Sunni extremists who view all Shiites as heretics. The rise of Al Qaeda in Iraq and everything it has done there has been shaped by it's contempt for Shiites. The course of the insurgency, down to and including the "Sunni Awakening", has reflected that fanatical hostility that Al Qaeda brought to bear inside Iraq. Iranian involvement in financing and supporting Shiite militias in Iraq came partly in reaction to the rise of Al Qaeda in Iraq.

This isn't just a minor slip. This betrays a profound lack of foreign policy expertise, a shallowness so extreme that if the remark had been made by Barack Obama, say, it would have called into question his viability as a presidential candidate.

So you should expect the "serious" thinkers of the traditional media to dismiss the gaffe as 'trivial'. We are not allowed even to consider the possibility that John McCain is a foreign policy lightweight...not with all those splendid foreign policy advisers he's assembled.

McCain made the same crazy assertion later on Hugh Hewitt's program.

http://thinkprogress.org/2008/03/18/mccain-iran-al-qaeda/

Well,

this "typical white person" struggles to pay my bills and am worried if I miss a house payment if I will lose my house.

MY FAMILY AND I struggle...but we do not "DAMN THIS COUNTRY"...yes I and my family am going to support hillary in April in Penn.

BUT I WILL NEVER VOTE FOR ANYONE WHO BELONGS TO SUCH A RACIST BIGOTTED church....

Mccain has voted against Bush's tax cuts for the wealthy, and he has spoken against his party...he is more of a centrist than the left wing america-nut Obama and his wife...

And the democratic party -- if you are reading this... DON"T EXPECT US TO VOTE FOR OBAMA just because he is "democrat"...

no one in my neighborhood will HESITATE for a minute to vote for Mccain if Hillary is not the democratic nominee.

Disgusted democrat from Allentown, PA.

Obama is the kiss of death for democrats. No doubt whatsoever.

Obama is the kiss of death for democrats. No doubt whatsoever.

I notice I haven't heard crazy old man McCain say "my friends, the surge is working" very much lately....that's because Al-Sader has more control over Iraq than "the surge" does and John McCain/Bush knows that the American people now know this too.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0nqtL-P8kzo

John W McCain = Less Jobs, More War:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Y0PysDhbvwA

"John McCain 624787

Barack (6)
Hussei (6)
NoBama (6)

Paulo

Posted by: Paulo"
Ok, Paulo, here's some even neater math:

John McCain 624787

Barack (6)
Hussei (6)
OBama (5) - for parity (fairness)

McCain: 6+2+4+7+8+7= 34

Obama: 6+6+5= 17

34 / 2 = 17

Wow. Math is fun.

44 percent of Democrats, by poll, cannot stand Hillary or Obama -- 22 and 22 -- and will vote for McCain in November. Wow, you Democrats really rolled snake eyes this time out. Thank a lot. Oh, and please keep Operation Chaos going into the election so we can see with one steals the most "stupor delegates."

I agree a Veteran is to be respected, but like cries for only a President with experience, age does not prove everything.

Hillary has embellished the truth in the last few weeks, London UK Press last Sunday raised the same doubts with McCain, the Vietnamese guy who rescued McCain was treated very badly also the same occurred with his family following his death. Witnesses in Vietnam do not agree with his version of events.

Time is now for a Change! a Real Change, for John McCain his chance has come far too late. We don't want the Washington of The Past any longer, this time age and the experience they have is not what is needed, those days have gone.

Barack Obama is like Tony Blair back on 1997 when he first stood as UK Prime Minister, he told voters, "Things Could Only Get Better" - Now Barack Obama has shown he has Dignity, he has worked on the Streets of Chicago when he could have taken any high flying career, Obama brought Democrats and Republicans together in Illinois with his Health Care Plans, now is Barack Obama's Time!

I hope that John McCain will take us all the way back to his military career and to his homecoming and his return to his lovely wife. I hope that he will talke about the sacrifices his wife and children made while he was gone
Then I hope he will help us understand why he turned around and dumped his wife for his trophy wife and her fortunes,I wonder if he uses drugs, along with his wife, to cope

There is a time for eyerything and i think McCain has done well in his time.I comend him highly, but the time now is for change. Obama--- change we can believe in.

You anti-age bigots are as ignorant of history as you are of good manners. Some of the greatest leaders in the world have been as old or older than John McCain, including Winston Churchill, Charles DeGaulle, Konrad Adenauer, Golda Mier, the great Ronald Reagan and others. By contrast, some of the greatest failures have been men much younger, like Adolph Hitler, Joseph Stalin, Hideki Tojo, Neville Chamberlain and a list far too long to include.

We need not be made to be sentimental about Senator McCain's military service while the sons and daughters of America are still giving their lives in a 100 Years War in Iraq which he supports. It is their lives and the lives of innocent civilians which are being lost, not his.

Americans have never been and should never be waiting for such a pompous, self-serving politician and hot-head as John McCain.

"Frank, you're forgetting one other important thing: McCain polls ahead of Obama in an electoral college matchup. He polls behind Hillary. "

Get your facts straight. That's not true. www.realclearpolitics.com

Hello Sara_C you are jealous

Very good ad. We need a man who will stand up for us and our country. I believe that man is Senator John McCain. I'll definitely vote for him in November.

Liberal quiters are dangerous to our country. We are in a war for the survival of civilization as we know it. Obama would toss the white flag.

OBAMA
OBAMA
OBAMA
OBAMA
OBAMA
OBAMA
OBAMA
OBAMA
OBAMA
OBAMA
OBAMA
OBAMA
OBAMA
OBAMA
OBAMA
OBAMA

Danforth, may I point out that few of the politicians you just made reference to started their presidential/prime ministereal careers at age 71. De Gaulle was first prime minister at 54, Reagan first president at 69, (which didn't save us from speculations about his mental state in his second term), Churchill was first prime minister at 66. I give you Adenauer, first Chancellor at 73, and Meir, first at 71 ( though i doubt she deserves to be put in with the greats, didn't she have to resign due to public pressure?). The point is, just because you're older doesn't by itself mean anything, with this age you're supposed to have accumulated a body of work. The examples you used above had established their own parties, showed incredible political leadership and courage in times of war, leading civilians and soldiers alike. If you're going to have us take a chance on you at age 71, you need to have demonstrated something spectacular in your general body of work. Lets see if McCain has shown that he's done enough in his 71 years to deserve to be there up with the greats. And it is ironic that in calling other people out on their manners, you managed to claim the rest of us are bigots, and compared young politicians to Hitler.

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

The Keating Five (or Keating Five Scandal) refers to a Congressional scandal related to the COLLAPSE of MOST of the Savings and Loan institutions in the United States in the late 1980s.
In 1989, the Lincoln Savings and Loan Association of Irvine, Calif., collapsed. Lincoln's chairman, Charles H. Keating Jr., was faulted for the thrift's failure....... Some regulators noted the danger and pushed for more oversight, but Congress refused.. five Senators (Dennis DeConcini ,Alan Cranston ,John Glenn ,Don Riegle and John McCain ) who had received some $300,000 from Keating in the 1980s as political contributions. They later met twice with regulators who were investigating American Continental Corp., in an attempt to end the investigation. (In 1990, they would be rebuked to various degrees by the Senate Ethics Committee .) . a series of investigations by the California government, the United States Department of Justice, and the Senate Ethics Committee. The ethics committee's investigation focused on five senators: Alan Cranston (D-CA); Dennis DeConcini (D-AZ); John Glenn (D-OH); JOHN MCCAIN (R-AZ); and Donald W. Riegle, Jr. (D-MI), who became known as the Keating Five.After months of testimony revealed that all five senators acted improperly to differing degrees,The committee recommended censure for Cranston and criticized the other four for "questionable conduct.".......

Re: McCain’s new ad

We need not be made to be sentimental about Senator McCain's military service while the sons and daughters of America are still giving their lives in a 100 Years War in Iraq which he supports. It is their lives and the lives of innocent civilians which are being lost, not his.

Americans have never been and should never be waiting for such a pompous, self-serving politician and hot-head as John McCain.

Liberal quiters are dangerous to our country. We are in a war for the survival of civilization as we know it. Obama would toss the white flag.

Posted by: V Racer | March 28, 2008 3:22 PM

Thanks for the most understated, well-reasoned post in history.

Dan Nowicki, Bill Muller
The Arizona Republic
Mar. 1, 2007 10:41 AM
...............The Keating Five became synonymous for the kind of political influence that money can buy. As the S&L failure deepened, the sheer magnitude of the losses hit the press. Billions of dollars had been squandered. The five senators were linked as the gang who shilled for an S&L bandit.

As the investigation dragged through 1988, McCain dodged the hardest blows. Most landed on DeConcini, who had arranged the meetings and had other close ties to Keating, including $50 million in loans from Keating to DeConcini's aides.

But McCain made a critical error.
McCain said, he simply wanted to make sure that Keating was treated like any other constituent.

Keating was no ordinary constituent to McCain.

On Oct. 8, 1989, The Arizona Republic revealed that McCain's wife and her father had invested $359,100 in a Keating shopping center in April 1986, a year before McCain met with the regulators.

The paper also reported that the McCains, sometimes accompanied by their daughter and baby-sitter, had made at least nine trips at Keating's expense, sometimes aboard the American Continental jet. Three of the trips were made during vacations to Keating's opulent Bahamas retreat at Cat Cay................

................By 1987, McCain had received about $112,000 in political contributions from Keating and his associates.

McCain also had carried a little water for Keating in Washington. While in the House, McCain, along with a majority of representatives, co-sponsored a resolution to delay new regulations designed to curb risky investments by thrifts such as Lincoln. ..............

http://www.azcentral.com/news/specials/mccain/articles/0301mccainbio-chapter7.html

" we will never surrender" ....
ummm, well, we kind of did, in Vietnam, didn't we? I mean, we didn't call it that, but we lost the war and fled ...

and we've lost Iraq ...

call it what you will: when the war is wrong and we have lost ... eventually surrender is the only option, call it what you will.
DON'T WAGE WAR IRRESPONSIBLY!!!!

John,if lier golden child wins you will have my vote BUT HILLARY WILL WIN (GOOGLE OBAMA+REZKO+KALIDI+AUCHI) HE ALSO HAS A FREIND IN WIIIAM AYRES THE AMERICAN TERROIST ARE PRESEDENCY IS AT STAKE WAKE UP AMERICA.

"FEDERAL ELECTION COMMISSIONER SPEAKS"

624787 YES, THAT'S THE GUY. HE PUT THAT ON HIS APPLICATION FOR PUBLIC FINANCING. HE STAKED HIS HANOI HILTON ROOM# ON IT.

624787 YES, THAT IS THE VETERAN SENATOR THAT DID'T VOTE FOR VETERANS OF WAR MEDICAL TREATMENT. PROPER LEAVE BETWEEN TOURS.

624787 YES, THAT IS THE NUMBER OF TIMES, 160,000 TROOPS HAVE ASKED THE PRESIDENT AND HIS GOP VETERAN STOMPERS FOR A BREAK IN THEIR EIGHT YEAR WAR ON THE CONSTITUTION.

624787 YES, THAT ISN'T MY FATHERS MILITARY TAG NUMBER, BECAUSE JOHN MCCAIN FEELS HE WAS THE ONLY "CAPTURED" SOLDIER IN THE VIETNAM WAR.

624787 IS THE PERCENTAGE OF COST IN ARIZONA FOR HIS "KEATING FIVE" COUP DE TAU ON A MOUNTAIN FULL OF ELDERLY PEOPLE, NAMED "ESTRELLA"

624787 IS HOPEFULLY THE MINUTES LEFT IN PRISON FOR BREAKING FEDERAL ELECTION CAMPAIGN LAWS IN AUGUST OF 2007 WHEN HE STOOD AT THE PULPIT AND SAID, HE WAS BROKE AND FOR HIM TO CONTINUE HIS MASQUERADE HE NEEDED THE DOLLAR FROM A BROKE ECONOMY.

624787 IS HOW MUCH MONEY HE REALLY GOT FROM PAXSON COMMUNICATIONS AND MS. VICKI BREAK JOB ON QWEST.

624787 IS HOW MUCH STOCK THAT WAS STOLEN FROM QWEST EMPLOYEES IN ALL THOSE BACKDOOR TELECOMMUNICATIONS MEETINGS HE NEVER HAD WITH CEO OF PAXSON COMMUNICATIONS, MCI, AT&T.

624787 IS HOW MUCH MONEY HIS PASTOR "HAGEE" IS WILLING TO GIVE TO HIM TO BE THE NEXT PRESIDENT EVANGELICAL THAT NEVER GOES OR WENT TO CHURCH.

624787 IS A JUST A NUMBER.

4100 MEN AND WOMEN, WOULD LIKE THEIR NUMBERS TO FOLLOW HIS NUMBER EVERYTIME HE LOOKS THEM IN THE EYE AND SAY, THANK YOU FOR YOUR SERVICE TO AMERICA.

624787 - 4100 AND COUNTING IN MY DREAMS AT THE HANOI HILTON HOTEL, VIETNAM.

BOY THAT BACK-DOOR-DRAFT CALLED "STOP-LOSS" IS BENEFITING ME RIGHT NOW.

624787 IS HOW MUCH MONEY ME AND RICK RE NZI, RE NZI WON AT THE "CHOCTOW INDIAN" CASINOS AND BINGO WASN'T OUR GAME.

IT'S MR. 624787 TO YOU BARRACK, HILLARY.

Obama change is such a supercilious, moronic slogan. Beware of the change you so desperately want. The type of change that will ultimately imperil all our liberties --wake up you lazy Marxist losers, before you know it the Communist manifesto won't be required reading but rather the Koran. Raise up the white flag of defeat and you'll be embracing change you could never have imagined!

Obama change is such a supercilious, moronic slogan. Beware of the change you so desperately want. The type of change that will ultimately imperil all our liberties --wake up you lazy Marxist losers, before you know it the Communist manifesto won't be required reading but rather the Koran. Raise up the white flag of defeat and you'll be embracing change you could never have imagined!

I am not sure what Mr. Obama wants to change. Domestically there is nothing much he can change: Medicaid?, Medicare?, Social Security?, Welfare?. Those are fixed expenses in the budget. The economy? Presidents historically are given too much credit or blame for the state of the economy. Education? The NEA would jump all over him. Oh yes, there is one important thing he can change: nominating legislative-minded justices to the Supreme Court. In foreign policy: Terrorism?, War in Iraq/Afghanistan?, the Middle East?, Foreign oil?, China?, Russia?, Iran?, N. Korea?, Immigration?, National defense & security?, NATO?, NAFTA?, etc. These are Mr. Obama's areas for on-the-job training. We are living in a dangerous world. How would he answer the red phone at 3 A.M. ? God help him--and us!

"44 percent of Democrats, by poll, cannot stand Hillary or Obama -- 22 and 22 -- and will vote for McCain in November."

Is the above supposed to read that: a) 22 percent of Obama supporters wouldn't vote for Hillary and b) 22 percent of Hillary supporters wouldn't vote for Obama, therefore c) 44 percent of Democrats wouldn't vote for either?

Never mind that those percentages are wrong to begin with, and that polls have been shown to be inaccurate predictors of the way the primaries have gone so far -- that makes absolutely no sense.

Even *if* 22 percent of Obama supporters wouldn't vote for Hillary and vice versa, and even *if* the polls were an accurate predictor of the general election, that still means that if *one* of the two Democratic contenders wins the nomination, which one of them will (duh?), that's only *22* percent of Democrats who won't vote for the Democratic nominee.

Or maybe you were trying to say something that makes sense?

And I love that some people's strongest argument against Obama is basically, "I don't like who he hangs out with." What a lame excuse to hate someone. If that's the worst thing you can hold against him, he must have a pretty air-tight case for decency.

McCain will win. Period.