sen john mccain

Speaking Of Media Propaganda

On MSNBC Live, Andrea Mitchell failed to challenge Republican strategist Trent Duffy's false claim that Sen. John McCain "was one of the first to call for Secretary Rumsfeld's resignation." In fact, as his campaign itself has reportedly admitted, McCain did not call for former Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld's resignation. While McCain expressed "no confidence" in Rumsfeld in 2004, he reportedly "said his comments were not a call for Rumsfeld's resignation."

Here's the video of Mitchell's interview:

John McCain never once called for the resignation of Rumsfeld, instead he just started saying he did after it became political capital. I guess it's just another "senior moment" for the senile old man.

While The World Ponders Hillary's Comment

John McCain gets another pass from some really bad news:

A Tuesday fundraiser headlined by President Bush for U.S. Sen. John McCain's presidential campaign is being moved out of the Phoenix Convention Center.

Sources familiar with the situation said the Bush-McCain event was not selling enough tickets to fill the Convention Center space, and that there were concerns about more anti-war protesters showing up outside the venue than attending the fundraiser inside.

Got that? A fundraiser in McCain's home state can't even sell out. I would love if the media could report on this some and let the whole Hillary thing die.

Land Swapping Straightalk Style

McCain is such a straight and honest guy, really:

Sen. John McCain championed legislation that will let an Arizona rancher trade remote grassland and ponderosa pine forest here for acres of valuable federally owned property that is ready for development, a land swap that now stands to directly benefit one of his top presidential campaign fundraisers].

Initially reluctant to support the swap, the Arizona Republican became a key figure in pushing the deal through Congress after the rancher and his partners hired lobbyists that included McCain's 1992 Senate campaign manager, two of his former Senate staff members (one of whom has returned as his chief of staff), and an Arizona insider who was a major McCain donor and is now bundling campaign checks.

When McCain's legislation passed in November 2005, the ranch owner gave the job of building as many as 12,000 homes to SunCor Development, a firm in Tempe, Ariz., run by Steven A. Betts, a longtime McCain supporter who has raised more than $100,000 for the presumptive Republican nominee. Betts said he and McCain never discussed the deal

Legislating for cash in return and lobbyists! I thought McCain was against such things? Oh he is when it's other people doing it. McCain can do whatever he wants though. Doesn't that sound like someone else we know?

GOP Disaster Looms

That's not the words of some pundit or blogger, that is the word from past and present GOP leadership:

Shellshocked House Republicans got warnings from leaders past and present Tuesday: Your party’s message isn’t good enough to prevent disaster in November, and neither is the NRCC’s money.

The double shot of bad news had one veteran Republican House member worrying aloud that the party’s electoral woes — brought into sharp focus by Woody Jenkins’ loss to Don Cazayoux in Louisiana on Saturday — have the House Republican Conference splitting apart in “everybody for himself” mode.

Gingrich also has a message for them - watch going negative:

Gingrich said Republicans cannot rely on the popularity of Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.), the presumptive GOP presidential nominee, to carry them to victory in November. And he warned that attacks on Sens. Barack Obama (D-Ill.) and Hillary Rodham Clinton (D-N.Y.) and on the Rev. Jeremiah Wright, Obama’s former pastor, could backfire.

“The Republican brand has been so badly damaged that if Republicans try to run an anti-Obama, anti-Rev. Wright or, if Sen. Clinton wins, anti-Clinton campaign, they are simply going to fail,” Gingrich said. “This model has already been tested with disastrous results.”

Perhaps the Clinton campaign should have listened to Gingrich. People are tired of these sideshows in politics - they are worried about things that really affect them.

McCain Sends Jobs Over Seas To A Company His "Advisers" Lobbied For

Really - this isn't just a coincidence:

Top current advisers to Sen. John McCain's presidential campaign last year lobbied for a European plane maker that beat Boeing to a $35 billion Air Force tanker contract, taking sides in a bidding fight that McCain has tried to referee for more than five years.

Two of the advisers gave up their lobbying work when they joined McCain's campaign. A third, former Texas Rep. Tom Loeffler, lobbied for the European Aeronautic Defence and Space Co. while serving as McCain's national finance chairman.

Last week I posted that McCain was a key figure behind the contracts going overseas, instead of to Boeing, which would have supported and created 44,000 new American jobs. Now will the media stop coddling their golden child and start investigating his ties to these lobbyists, and if those ties cost America 44,000 jobs?

The Bullshit Talk Express

For someone who sure hates lobbyists, he just loves surrounding himself by them:

Presumptive Republican presidential candidate Sen. John McCain has engaged a leading GOP lobbyist to coordinate his message and travel schedule with congressional Republicans - the most concrete sign yet that the biggest battleground in the 2008 presidential race may not be Pennsylvania or Ohio or Florida's I-4 corridor but rather the floor of the United States Senate.

John Green, a founding partner of what is now Ogilvy Government Relations, will soon take a leave of absence from that firm to work as a full-time liaison between McCain's presidential campaign and Republicans in the House and the Senate, according to GOP aides on Capitol Hill and McCain surrogates downtown. Green, a Mississippi native, has strong ties in the Senate after his years of work for former Senate Majority Leader Trent Lott (R-Miss.), a vocal McCain supporter who left Congress late last year to set up his own lobbying shop.

You know what's wrong with this? The phoney phony baloney of being hypocritical about it. But I didn't say that. That's from Mississippi Governor and former RNC chair, Haley Barbour. Of course now Barbour endorses McCain, so they are BFFs again.

The Real Maverick

I love how everyone always refers to McCain as a "maverick". Is aligning himself with the GOP on a majority of issues a maverick?

Today's Washington Post gives us the answer, by the family the term Maverick was branded for:

Arizona Sen. John McCain happily donned the "maverick" mantle in 2000 as he climbed aboard the Straight Talk Express and set off on his quest for the presidency. And he's still wearing it today, if a nappier version, as he rides into Tuesday's Texas primary as the presumptive Republican presidential nominee.

A bad fit, claimed my old friend Maury -- a Maverick by birthright and a maverick by inclination.

A San Antonio human rights lawyer and former state legislator who wrote a fervidly liberal newspaper column almost until the day he died in 2003 at 82, Maury Maverick Jr. considered himself a zealot for freedom. He was proud that his family had bequeathed its name to the vernacular, but he could be downright cantankerous about what he considered the illegitimate use of the eponym.

Just as not every cola is a Coke and not every tissue is a Kleenex, not every nonconformist is a maverick, the last of the maverick Mavericks insisted. As a former Marine who served in the Pacific during World War II, he saluted McCain's military service and his bravery during years of captivity. But Maury insisted that any conservative Republican, by definition, adhered too closely to the status quo to deserve the hallowed label.

Continue reading here.

McCain's Farrakhan

There was so much talk the other night when Obama was asked about Farrakhan supporting him. I wonder if the media will now focus on McCain's endorsement problem:

Calling Pastor John Hagee a "bigot," the conservative Catholic League is calling for Sen. John McCain, R-Ariz., to denounce/renounce/reject his endorsement Wednesday.

With a Youtube link to prove his point, Catholic League president Bill Donohue said Hagee "has waged an unrelenting war against the Catholic Church. For example, he likes calling it ‘The Great Whore,' an ‘apostate church,' the ‘anti-Christ,' and a ‘false cult system.' ..."Senator Obama has repudiated the endorsement of Louis Farrakhan, another bigot. McCain should follow suit and retract his embrace of Hagee."

Today Donohue noted that former Arkansas Gov. Mike Huckabee expressed disappointment that he hadn't received Hagee's backing.

"If Senator Hillary Clinton and Senator Barack Obama were fighting over the support of Louis Farrakhan, we'd say they're nuts," Donohue said. "So what are we to conclude about McCain's embrace of Hagee, and Huckabee's lament for not getting the bigot's endorsement?"

Here is the YouTube referenced in the article:

McCain has refused to denounce (or reject) the endorsement of Hagee. So is the media saying being anti-semitic is worse than being anti-Catholic? Is that also what McCain is saying?

The Mittser's Comback?

The rumors are flying that it could be true:

Josh Romney, one of former Gov. Mitt Romney's five sons, says it's "possible" his father may rejoin the race for the White House, either as a vice presidential candidate or seek to become the Republican Party's standard bearer if the campaign of Sen. John McCain falters.

The 60-year-old Romney, who "suspended" his campaign for the GOP nomination after a disappointing showing on Super Tuesday and a week later endorsed McCain, was taking a break from politics this weekend on a skiing vacation in Utah with his wife Ann, according to his 32-year-old son.

This would turn the political world upside down. I wonder how long before the Romney's start a whisper campaign trying to pin McCain down even more? I wouldn't be shocked one bit if that happened.

More Contradict McCain's Defense

Not only do we have McCain himself contradicting his defense, now we got another person involved doing so:

Broadcaster Lowell "Bud" Paxson yesterday contradicted statements from Sen. John McCain's presidential campaign that the senator did not meet with Paxson or his lobbyist before sending two controversial letters to the Federal Communications Commission on Paxson's behalf.

Paxson said he talked with McCain in his Washington office several weeks before the Arizona Republican wrote the letters in 1999 to the FCC urging a rapid decision on Paxson's quest to acquire a Pittsburgh television station.

Paxson also recalled that his lobbyist, Vicki Iseman, likely attended the meeting in McCain's office and that Iseman helped arrange the meeting. "Was Vicki there? Probably," Paxson said in an interview with The Washington Post yesterday. "The woman was a professional. She was good. She could get us meetings."

So the New York Times article as an apparent "hit job", yet McCain is lying to defend himself? So far no one has proved the NYT article lied, but now we are getting tons of proof that McCain has lied. Can we now stop with this meme of the article being a hit job unless McCain is willing to be honest with the people?

Is The Entire McCain Fiasco Actually Helping Him?

It appears that it just might be:

Conservative media outlets rushed with surprising vehemence to defend Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.) on Thursday against a critical article in The New York Times, embracing a maverick they have often attacked.

Rush Limbaugh calls it "the drive-by media ... trying to take him out."

Laura Ingraham, another influential conservative radio host, said the Times waited until McCain was on the brink of the Republican presidential nomination and now is seeking to "contaminate" him with an article that she calls "absurd" and "ridiculous."

Amazing how much some of these talking heads wanted to smear McCain, yet when something comes out smearing him they defend him. There's a few avenues this story can take now:

The story dies down in the next couple of weeks and people just forget about it.
The New York Times gets exposed with another Jayson Blair type incident.
More evidence comes out really incriminating McCain.

It is too early in this story to tell which avenue this story goes. I highly doubt the second option happens, so it leaves it to 1 or 3. I could easily see either option happening.

BREAKING: McCain Relationship With Female Lobbyist Revealed

Oh my it looks like their big hope has some skeletons going on. The New York Times has the full story here.

UPDATE

The dirty stuff is on page 4:

In interviews, the two former associates said they joined in a series of confrontations with Mr. McCain, warning him that he was risking his campaign and career. Both said Mr. McCain acknowledged behaving inappropriately and pledged to keep his distance from Ms. Iseman. The two associates, who said they had become disillusioned with the senator, spoke independently of each other and provided details that were corroborated by others.

(emphasis added)

UPDATE #2

Well image that. Vicki Iseman (the woman in question) lobbies for the telecom industry. Funny considering McCain just voted against telecom immunity.

UPDATE #3:

Pat Buchanan on Olbderman was just trying to play this down as some New York Times hit piece. That is rather interesting considering the NYT's endorsed McCain for the Republican primary. If they wanted to hurt him in the general, then wouldn't they have sat on it for a few months?

(More updates below the fold)

Why Helen Thomas Is Great

Because she gets it:

If Americans want to continue the Iraq war, then Sen. John McCain -- the apparent Republican presidential candidate and relentless hawk -- is their man.

It seems McCain was not kidding when he said the U.S. might have to remain in Iraq for 100 years. At a town meeting in New Hampshire, McCain was told that President Bush had indicated the possibility of U.S. forces staying in Iraq for 50 years.

Read On...

Limbaugh Devotes Entire Show To Trashing McCain

I can't believe I am here defending John McCain, but this is getting to be ridiculous:

Continuing his attack on Republican frontrunner Sen. John McCain, conservative radio show host Rush Limbaugh devoted a significant portion of his radio show Monday to urging conservatives not to vote for the senator in tomorrow's Super Tuesday contests.

For weeks, Limbaugh has been on the attack against McCain, branding the Arizona senator a "liberal" an

Here's the problem I have. Rush is broadcast on public airwaves throughout the nation. He is now using these public airwaves to promote his own political agenda. Does any other candidate, Democratic or Republican, have such time on the airwaves?

Rush has also recently called Hillary Clinton a "hoe" and Barack Obama a "spade". So should this hate speech be allowed to continue on our airwaves?

Perhaps it's time for people like Jesse Jackson and Al Sharpton to stop giving a free pass to Limbaugh. While we are at it, perhaps we need the FCC and FEC to step up and start enforcing the laws and regulations.

Also someone should ask the White House why Cheney supports Limbaugh. He goes on his show all the time. Does Cheney think Hillary is a hoe and Obama is a spade? Does Cheney hate John McCain as much as Rush?

Democrats Crush Republicans In Fund Raising

This has to be a warning sign to Republicans:

Democrats Hillary Rodham Clinton and Barack Obama out-raised the four Republican presidential candidates - John McCain, Mitt Romney, Mike Huckabee and Ron Paul - $49.6 million to $42.2 million in the last three months of 2007, according to finance reports made public Thursday night.

So two of our candidates raised more than four of theirs. That is astonishing.

There is also another interesting number that came out today - how much Mitt spent of his own money:

Republican presidential candidate Mitt Romney loaned his campaign a total of more than $35 million in 2007, according to the most recent filings of campaign finance reports.