presidential candidate

You can tell McCain is really starting to worry about his chances for a White House run in 2008:

Republican Sen. John McCain (news, bio, voting record), a staunch defender of the Iraq war, on Tuesday faulted the Bush administration for misleading Americans into believing the conflict would be "some kind of day at the beach."

The potential 2008 presidential candidate, who a day earlier had rejected calls for withdrawing U.S. forces, said the administration had failed to make clear the challenges facing the military.

"I think one of the biggest mistakes we made was underestimating the size of the task and the sacrifices that would be required," McCain said. "Stuff happens, mission accomplished, last throes, a few dead-enders. I'm just more familiar with those statements than anyone else because it grieves me so much that we had not told the American people how tough and difficult this task would be."

Those phrases are closely associated with top members of the Bush administration, including the president.

It is disturbing when you think about a war veteran like McCain saying this now instead of speaking up when he should have. He is playing politics with the lives of U.S. soldiers and he use to be one. What a disgrace.

This really seems like the Bush/Gore debacle all over again:

Mexico's conservative presidential candidate Felipe Calderon declared victory on Monday in a bitterly contested election result as official returns showed him ahead of his left-wing rival.

Calderon said his lead was now "irreversible" because he had an advantage of more than 400,000 votes over Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador, the leftist former mayor of Mexico City, with almost 95 percent of votes counted.

"There is an irreversible result and it is in my favor," Calderon said in a television interview, looking confident. "The result give me a very clear victory that cannot be reversed."

Lopez Obrador, who had insisted on Sunday night he won the election by 500,000 votes, appeared more open to a possible defeat on Monday morning.

So the Conservative is in the lead by about 400,000 votes. I wonder if Bush will get Catherine Harris down there to help with the recount.

McCain is doing what he can to whore himself to the Christian right in order to gain votes in 2008:

Potential presidential candidate John McCain says he longer considers evangelist Jerry Falwell to be one of the "agents of intolerance" that he criticized during a previous White House run.

The Republican senator from Arizona will be the commencement speaker in May at Liberty University, the Lynchburg, Va., institution that Falwell founded in 1971.

"We agreed to disagree on certain issues, and we agreed to move forward," McCain said Sunday on NBC's "Meet the Press."

Not only did McCain do that, but he also started making excuses for the dirty attack on his family in the 2000 election by the Bush camp. It is obvious this man has no soul or values. Now that we know this, we should use it to make sure he doesn't get to the White House in 2008. Think Progress has more on this.

This past Sunday on Meet the Press, Condi told Tim Russert that she would not
run in 2008. The following is a transcript of the reasons for this:

MR. RUSSERT: Before you go, I'd like to read something from The
Washington Times. Headline: "Americans for Rice, a group that hopes to draft
Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice as a presidential candidate in 2008, has
paid for a 60-second ad to run in Des Moines, Iowa, on Tuesday night during
ABC's `Commander in Chief,' a new show about a female president of the
United States. Iowa, of course, traditionally holds the first presidential
contest, a caucus system. The same ad appeared in New Hampshire...during the
Sept. 27 broadcast of `Commander in Chief.' New Hampshire, of course,
traditionally holds the first presidential primary."

Would you accept a position on the Republican ticket in 2008?

SEC'Y RICE: Tim, I'm flattered that people think of me in that
way, but I think it was on your show that I said I don't know how many ways
to say no. I really am--I'm not somebody who wants to run for office,
haven't ever run for anything. I don't think I ever ran for high school
president. And I think I'm doing what I need to do, which is to try and
promote American foreign policy and American interests, the president's
democracy agenda at an extraordinary time. And to the degree that I can do
that across the world, that's what I'd better keep doing.

Full transcript here.