Mère d'Alors!

Or does he just assume we are?

John McCain:
"In the 21st century, nations don’t invade other nations."

Here's the video where that's the punch line. h/t to smintheus at DK.



What sort of colossal carelessness allows something so patently untrue to pass a politician's lips in public?

People actually want this empty suit for president? God, have mercy!
--the BB

McCain and support of troops and vets

via The Jed Report with h/t to John Aravosis at Americablog

Welcome To John McCain’s Women's Clinic

My mother used to speak of "cutting off your nose to spite your own face."

I think it applies to any Democrat who would consider voting for McCain in protest of one's candidate not becoming the nominee, whether one's preferred candidate was Dennis Kucinich, Hillary Clinton, Al Gore, John Edwards, or someone else.

Brave New Films brings us this glimpse into McCain on an issue of concern to many of us.



Arianna Huffington commented three weeks ago:

You'd rather vote for John McCain, a man who has a 25-year history of voting against a woman's right to choose? A man who over the last eight years that NARAL has released a pro-choice scorecard has received a 0 percent rating (in his time in office, Obama has received a 100 percent rating)? A man whose campaign website says he believes Roe v. Wade "must be overturned"? A man who has vowed that, as president, he will be "a loyal and unswerving friend of the right to life movement"?

Really?

Protest wisely and help rebuild America.

h/t to SilentPatriot at Crooks and Liars
--the BB

Ross Perot on John McCain

The Daily Mail has an article about the wife McCain dumped. Near the conclusion we read what Perot has to say about the Senator from Arizona.

But Ross Perot, who paid her medical bills all those years ago, now believes that both Carol McCain and the American people have been taken in by a man who is unusually slick and cruel – even by the standards of modern politics.

‘McCain is the classic opportunist. He’s always reaching for attention and glory,’ he said.

‘After he came home, Carol walked with a limp. So he threw her over for a poster girl with big money from Arizona. And the rest is history.’

Just thought the American people should know.

h/t to LieparDestin at Daily Kos
--the BB

Compromiso / Mentira: ¿Qué diferencia?

Promise / Lie: What's the difference?
Dengre, that pit bull of investigating intricate corruption scandals, reminds us (in great detail) that former House aide John Albaugh is cooperating in the ongoing investigations related to Jack Abramoff and his clients and politicians.

Senator John McCain has a role in this. Dengre writes:

During a November 17, 2004 Hearing on the scandal, John McCain made a promise:

"I pledge, as a member of the Committee on Indian Affairs, that we will not stop until the complete truth is told."

It was a promise—like all John McCain promises—that McCain quickly broke.

[Emphasis in the original]

Coments near the end of dengre's post:

And yet, McCain now points to his investigation cover-up of Abramoff as proof of his qualifications to be President. A serious look into McCain’s work on the Abramoff Scandal would disqualify him.
...

The lobbying system Abramoff worked in was created by a lobbyist named Charlie Black. And Black is now running McCain’s campaign.

McCain limited the Abramoff scandal to a very, very narrow scope. He collected 750,000 pages of documents and selectively used them to justify a narrow investigation.

It seems that some 742,000 pages are still being suppressed by McCain.

So much for not stopping until the complete truth is told.

Do we need another president who says one thing and does another? Aren't you tired of Orwellian "war is peace" rhetoric?

After learning that "clean air" is a euphemism for relaxed standards and "no child left behind" means no child will be spared a regime of narrow unthinking conformity, one comes to realize that when a Republican rides around in the "Straight Talk Express" the chances are you will not get straight talk at all.

--the BB

¿Qué dijo?

From Brave New Films:



I once believed he had integrity and that he stood for something, one of those rare GOP politicos I felt I could like. Pfft. Not any longer.
--the BB

Monday constitution blogging

Amendment V
No person shall be held to answer for a capital, or otherwise infamous crime, unless on a presentment or indictment of a grand jury, except in cases arising in the land or naval forces, or in the militia, when in actual service in time of war or public danger; nor shall any person be subject for the same offense to be twice put in jeopardy of life or limb; nor shall be compelled in any criminal case to be a witness against himself, nor be deprived of life, liberty, or property, without due process of law; nor shall private property be taken for public use, without just compensation.

Yes, the regular features here have become quite irregular. This morning I came across a post by NWTerriD that falls under Constitution blogging, so even though it is not Thursday....

It seems John McCain deviated from his scripted speech on constitutional issues to proclaim something erroneously. It was quickly scrubbed from most tapes but he evidently really did make the gaffe.

In a speech at Wake Forest he said:

The year 2005 also brought the case of Susette Kelo before the Supreme Court. Here was a woman whose home was taken from her because the local government and a few big corporations had designs of their own on the land, and she was getting in the way. There is hardly a clearer principle in all the Constitution than the right of private property. There is a very clear standard in the Constitution requiring not only just compensation in the use of eminent domain, but also that private property may NOT be taken for "public use." But apparently that standard has been "evolving" too. [emphasis in NWTerriD's article]

NWTerriD checked to be sure that was really what was said. Here are NWTerriD's concluding comments:

I think it's a big deal when a candidate for the Presidency of this country, who starts a speech talking about how the President must swear an oath to protect, preserve and defend the Constitution [insert emphatic hand motions here], just a few minutes later erroneously alters his scripted speech to completely change the meaning of a phrase describing what he says is one of the clearest principles enunciated in the Constitution.

Yes, there is a clear principle in the Consitution, but it is not what he said it is. Does he really not understand what eminent domain is? Did he forget, because he is tired from his hard work on the campaign trail? Who knows?

To those who have been saying that bringing up McCain's age is "ageism," or that it is beneath us as the supporters of a man who is seeking to avoid the politics of personal attack, I say, res ipsa loquitor -- one of those fancy Latin legal phrases meaning, "The thing speaks for itself." His age is a legitimate issue.

There has been much talk about John McSame representing a third Bush term and what I found even more frightening in his speech was this line:

I'm the living proof that an undistinguished academic record can be overcome in life -- or at least that's the hope that has long, long sustained me.

After W, that should scare the living shit out of us all. I'm not talking about academic elitism or saying we need brilliance in that office, only that someone who can think critically and clearly and always be learning is important.
--the BB

Everybody's got their own firebrand

Pastors we associate with are either irrelevant to political campaigns or something we should examine closely. If the latter, then we should do so even-handedly.

Btw, have you met one of McCain's endorsers?



--the BB

As though he cared - updated

Hunter writes of John McCain's tour of forgotten places and his spouting about never letting something like the government's neglect of New Orleans after Hurricane Katrina happen again.

On the day Katrina struck New Orleans, John McCain was meeting with President Bush on an Arizona tarmac in order to be presented with a cake; the occasion was his 69th birthday. In the next months, McCain used his position in the Senate to vote against Medicare relief and unemployment benefits for homeless New Orleans residents, and against investigations into what went wrong. But McCain understands the forgotten city, and McCain is alarmed by the inaction of senators such as himself, and McCain vows to investigate what went wrong so that it will not be repeated. You must believe all these things, because if you do not, you are calling into question the sincerity of a four day bus tour.

There was a time I thought John McCain had integrity and was one of the good guys among Republicans. That was a while ago.

UPDATE:
Jonathan Stein at Mother Jones writes of McCain's responses to Katrina:

That attitude was borne out in McCain's actions and votes. Forty Senators and 100 members of Congress visited New Orleans before he did; he finally got there in March 2006. He voted against establishing a Congressional commission to examine the Federal, State, and local responses to Katrina in med-September 2005. He repeated that vote in 2006. He voted against allowing up to 52 weeks of unemployment benefits to people affected by the hurricane, and in 2006 voted against appropriating $109 billion in supplemental emergency funding, including $28 billion for hurricane relief.

Shortly after the disaster in New Orleans, McCain did introduce a bill that sought to improve communications mechanisms for first-responders and authorities. The bill failed to go anywhere, and McCain later voted against other bills that had similar provisions.

h/t Truthout

This sort of all-empty-words-and-no-helpful-actions behavior is precisely what Barack Obama said ordinary folk were bitter about. Bitter? Damn skippy lots of Americans are bitter! Bitter about bullshit being shoveled our way by politicians while our quality of life degenerates and our security decreases.

Asshat.
--the BB

While y'all are obsessing over Pennsylvania....

Just remember this.



h/t to Atrios who reminded me of this.

--the BB

Academic?

MCCAIN: We can look back at the past and argue about whether we should have gone to war or not, whether we should have invaded or not, and that's a good academic argument.

Academic.

As Jason Linkins, who discusses this and other words of McCain at Huffington Post, says:

I can think of about four thousand people that will have no opportunity to attend that lecture.

Much ado has been made in the past few days about the perception of being "out of touch."

John McCain is so out of touch it is difficult to believe we are living on the same planet.

h/t to tristero
--the BB

Slow Learner

Oh dear, I fear I may wear out this graphic header very soon.

Today McCain spoke at the spot where Dr. King was killed, and he admitted that he was wrong about opposing a holiday in King's honor. Kudos for that admission. However....

McCain: I voted in my first year in congress against it. Then I began to learn. And I studied. And people talked to me. And I not only supported it, but I fought very hard in my own state of Arizona for recognition against a governor who was of my own party. ...

As Markos Moulitsas notes:

McCain was 32 when King died. He was 47 when he voted against the holiday. He claims he didn't know about MLK that entire time? That it was merely "an issue"? The reporter is right, this wasn't an issue, it was basic knowledge of American history.

And Steve Benen comments:

If McCain "began to learn" and "studied" after his opposition to the King holiday in ‘83, he was a very slow learner. Four years later, he didn’t fight against a governor or his own party; he endorsed the governor’s move to eliminate a King holiday.

Six years after his House vote he began supporting a state holiday, but still opposed a federal King holiday. Eleven years after his vote, he tried to strip federal funding from the MLK Federal Holiday Commission. Seventeen years after his vote, McCain publicly endorsed South Carolina’s right to fly the confederate flag over its statehouse.

Now, in the interest of fairness, it’s worth noting that McCain ended up, years after the fact, in the right place, and reversed himself on practically all of his previous positions. Better late than never, I suppose.

Jake Tapper of ABC News:

In Arizona, a bill to recognize a holiday honoring MLK failed in the legislature, so then-Gov. Bruce Babbitt, a Democrat, declared one through executive order.

In January 1987, the first act of Arizona's new governor, Republican Evan Mecham, was to rescind the executive order by his predecessor to create an MLK holiday. Arizona's stance became a national controversy.

McCain backed the decision at the time.

The story does not add up well. If McCain came to the right place in the end, that's a good thing. But his story of how he got there is, shall we say, questionable. Let's go back to this bit: "McCain was 32 when King died. He was 47 when he voted against the holiday. " Where the hell was he all those years? What on earth did he not know about issues of civil rights in 1983?

How out of it was he then? How out of it is he now? Or is it all a tissue of lies?

This man should not be president.
--the BB

Who's supporting the troops?

From Kagro X:

I probably should be giving you the background and the facts about what's being called "the new GI Bill," introduced by Sen. Jim Webb before getting right to the heart of the matter. I should tell you about how it updates the antiquated system of educational rewards for veterans so that they really can get a decent education paid for in exchange for their service, unlike the paltry crumbs they're offered today. And then I should reveal in a way calculated to lightly shame Senator McCain, but still leave the door open for him to save face and join in, that he has not yet joined 50 of his colleagues from both sides of the aisle who have already cosponsored this bill.

But instead, I'm going to let these Iraq veterans -- brought to you by VoteVets and Brave New Films -- do that, while I myself get right to the "straight talk," to borrow a phrase: John McCain is a lousy prick for not getting on this bill on day one.

You know it. I know it. These vets know it.

--the BB

McPhony - campaign law violation

The only way John McCain can have so much "credibility" with the media is if they have conspired to give him a pass on damn near everything.

I am proud to say I was one of the signatories on the petition urging the FEC to do something about his breaking the campaign laws.



As Jane Hamsher says at Firedoglake:

This morning at a McCain event in Alexandria, McCain was introduced as a "hero" because of his work in campaign finance reform. Right. The guy who helped to write the law now doesn't want to obey it, just because there's nobody around to enforce it (thank you George W. Bush for gutting the FEC). The McCain campaign's defense is "Obama did the same thing," but that's a crock. John McCain applied for public financing. Obama never did. John McCain was accepted into the public financing system. Obama never was. The chairman of the FEC, David Mason, says McCain is therefore still in the system and bound by its limitations, but McCain is just ignoring him.

It goes to McCain's character. He believes the law is for someone else, not for him. He's chiding Obama for not agreeing to public financing, even as he's 4 million dollars over the $54 million spending cap imposed by the public financing system.

For Thee But Not For Me. The John McCain story.

If you feel like joining in, click here.
--the BB

Center of what?

Glenn Greenwald responds to the Newsweek article on John McCain by Michael Hirsch and reminds of something we really must not forget.

The indisputable fact is that McCain, on foreign policy issues, holds views far to the Right and far outside of mainstream American public opinion. In Media World, the GOP presidential nominee is always a centrist, a new kind of Republican, a trans-partisan pragmatist, while the Democratic nominee is always just a dogmatic liberal. So in one sense, this is just par for the media course (just go read how George Bush and Dick Cheney were relentlessly depicted during the 2000 campaign).

But depicting McCain as a "centrist" is an attempt to mainstream decidedly extreme positions, and worse, it obscures and distorts one of the vital issues that ought to be decided in the election: namely, whether McCain's radical foreign policy views and war-based national security approach -- grounded in the defining Bush/Cheney doctrine -- is something America wants to continue. One can and should debate whether that mindlessly belligerent Kristol/Lieberman/Bolton approach is constructive and ought to continue. The view that we should continue to invade, bomb, occupy and control the governance of various Middle Eastern countries -- while managing much of the rest of the world -- is something the country should debate. But by no metric is there anything "centrist" about McCain's view that we should.

When queried on issues, most Americans pick options that would be considered "progressive" or "liberal" or "Democrat," which is to say that even progressive Democrats are not out on the fringe, they are where most Americans are. Folks like John McCain do not represent the American center. We should not let the GOP get away with claiming to represent whatever the current equivalent of the "silent majority" may be, and we must actively fight against the media popularizing crap like considering Genghis McCain a centrist. He's not. Glenn discusses it very well.
--the BB

Mr. Campaign Finance Reform

Dear Friend,


John McCain's campaign spending is breaking the law. He elected for public funding when his campaign was having trouble. But now that he is the presumptive nominee, he is, by his campaign's own admission, around $4 million over his legal spending limit.


I just did my part to stop McCain from breaking the law by signing the official FEC complaint against him.


Please help out by adding your name here:


Thanks!
--the BB

Courtesy of Nico Pitney

Nico has posted this at The Huffington Post with these comments:

In remembrance of the 4,000 brave men and women who sacrificed everything for us -- and the two men who would continue this great tragedy, despite the cost to our soldiers, our military, and our nation.

(Note: Since some photos of fallen U.S. soldiers are unavailable, there are duplicates.)

May the dead rest in peace and rise in glory.

May those who sent them to needless deaths be held accountable.

May those who would continue such madness be thwarted.
--the BB

Mr. Foreign Policy Expert

It's being called a "gaffe" but he has said it repeatedly and it is not an inconsequential matter. If the man on whom the foreign policy mantle has been placed by the inbred beltway pundits keeps confusing distinctions between Sunni Salafists and Iranian Shi'ites, so that he speaks, repeatedly, about al Qaeda terrorists going to Iran for training and returning to Iraq, then he either has bought one of the phony talking points and internalized it to the point where he believes it OR he's lying his ass off to keep us frightened (and Lieberman corrected him because it was just too humiliating to stand next to such bullcrap). And when hawk-talk gets too humiliating for Senator Joementum, it's really bad.

The distinctions between Sunnis and Shi'ites is pretty basic to Middle Eastern politics. I mean, it's really BIG. Granted, President Shit-for-brains wasn't too clear on it right before the invasion of Iraq, but his staff finally felt the need to tell him. For anyone allegedly in the know about MIddle Eastern concerns to be even vaguely hazy on this is a huge red flag.

Is Grandpa McCain having senior moments? Several of them on the same topic?

Would you want someone this unclear on what is happening in Iraq to be commander-in-chief? The person answering the 3 a.m. phone call?

I sure as hell don't.

His reputation is largely undeserved. Give him kudos for what he has done in the past but let's not pretend that (1) he knows what he's talking about in foreign policy or matters of war; (2) he knows anything about the economy--because he's admitted himself that he doesn't--(3) that he's any kind of straight talker (because he panders with the best of them), or (4) a maverick.


I used to believe John McCain was someone with integrity that, if there were no decent Dem choices, I might conceivably vote for. That was some time ago. I have come to see him as among the worst flip-floppers around who tossed his integrity on the ash heap when he embraced Bush and is an extremely dangerous hawk. He also has a notorious anger management problem and we do not need someone who explodes unpredictably with the code to the nuclear football.

If he's not a dunce and not yet senile, then he is deceitful. In any case, he is dangerous.

We must defeat this man in November. We do not need a third "Bush" term and the world cannot afford it either.

You may read about the "gaffe" in numerous places (though I bet it fades from the MSM within the next 48 hours):

TeddySanFran at Firedoglake (where I got the YouTube video)

John Aravosis at Americablog

A J Rosmiller at Americablog

Joe Sudbay at Americablog

Marcy Wheeler at emptywheel

Dday at Hullabaloo here and here and here. Dday comments as follows:

In the previous link on McCain's economic plan (which is basically, "Cut spending!" except for that magic defense spending which doesn't cut any hole in the budget because it's so honorable), Jared Bernstein talks about how he makes a lot of basic mistakes when talking about the economy. But that's true in foreign policy as well. He says things like "Anybody who believes the surge has not succeeded, militarily, politically and in most other ways, frankly, does not know the facts on the ground," when the commander of forces in Iraq has said the exact opposite. He has no overriding views on foreign policy from a historical perspective, engaging in the same method of taking any position that suited him at the time that has characterized his inconsistency on a host of other issues. And his war cabinet is a group of muddled thinkers who have been historically wrong about Iraq and foreign policy generally, people who say things like "Iraq has sponsored the 9/11 attacks" and that there's no evidence that the Shi'a won't get along with the Sunni and 100 other misstatements. They have no fealty to the truth and will continue to bungle around and trying to unify the whole mishigoss under the heading of "honor."

Josh Marshall discusses McCain's error here and has a 7-minute explanation of problems with McCain (clip below).


Juan Cole, professor of Mideastern history, says: "Bottom line, if you are so ignorant or confused that you think Shiite ayatollahs in Tehran are training and arming radical Salafi Sunnis to blow up Shiites in Iraq, you really should not be president."

Glenn Greenwald has a lot to say on this at Salon, including this paragraph:

The media consensus that national security is some sort of great asset for McCain is completely baseless. Just go read McCain's pre-invasion speeches and they are filled to the brim with the most extreme, gullible and false assertions about Iraq. This whole McCain Myth is predicated on the Beltway principle that anyone who supports war and cheers on war and wants to prolong the occupation of Iraq is inherently Serious when it comes to National Security, no matter how little they know and how unbroken a record of Wrongness they've compiled. And in McCain's case, the fact that he was in Vietnam 40 years ago immunizes him from having his National Security expertise questioned (though it didn't for John Kerry).

Hunter writes about it at Daily Kos.

All recent evidence has indicated that McCain has simply internalized the central Bush lesson of his war: if the facts are against your desired policy, make up new facts and continue on your way. A sufficient percentage of the population will believe it.

If you want more, I'm sure those articles will give you links aplenty to pursue.

--the BB

No, John.

From Americablog, some comments by a Republican media consultant who now speaks out against John McCain. His video above.

For nearly 40 years I have been a campaign media consultant working exclusively for Republicans. My first spot was created for Governor Ronald Reagan in 1970 when I founded Spencer-Roberts Advertising for Reagan's two top political gurus, Stu Spencer and Bill Roberts. I was 23 at the time and went on to documentary filmmaking, television news, and ultimately, back to politics, working for moderate Republicans for the U.S. Senate, House, governors, mayors, and on one of the several Dole for President campaigns.

I have always taken a low, or no, profile in campaigns, as I learned long ago not to become an issue myself. But as I approach 62, the impact of another Republican in the White House on my 9-year old daughter, my 39-year old son, and 1-year old grandson, drives me ever deeper to the radical center.

I admired and supported the John McCain of 2000, less so the John McCain of 2004. And, now I barely know the man, who he is or what he really stands for, and against.

As my medium is visual and my message, visceral, I have produced this brief video to take you to the www.NoJohn.com website.

--the BB

Profits versus people: hmm, tough choice

There is an interesting post on Sen. McCain and his relationship with First Nations at the General's. Lokywoky begins thus:

It appears that Senator John McCain has been systematically engaged in a "genocide" of sorts against the Navajo (Di'neh) People in his home state of Arizona. In order to further the interest of mining companies (Peabody Western and others) he has sponsored and passed laws to forcibly relocate thousands of Di'neh from their ancestral lands on the reservation that was guaranteed to them by Treaty in the 1870's. In order to do this, he has had the assistance of BIA lawyers who have forged signatures of Di'neh elders (most of whom do not read, write or speak English) on documents supposedly giving permission for their lands and their civil rights to be given away. John McCain has also used the divisive tactic of claiming that the Hopi Tribal Council is empowered to make decisions for the Di'neh (they do not as they are a different tribe).

Y'all know how to click if you want to read it all.
--the BB