Olbermann Slams McCain

Get a load of Olbermann's rant at McCain and his campaign.

Gotta say, we agree.

Just hang onto your hats folks! Much is about to hit the fan with McCain and his mythic story of his military service. He might should have defended John Kerry a little more than he did, when he knew damn well that Kerry was being "swiftboated."

Now the truth of McCain's lies are about to emerge. More than just we hapless independents are beginning to ask some very serious questions. We would not have had to ask those questions had McCain not run for president using this service and stories of his time in the Hanoi Hilton as a platform.


Countdown with Keith Olbermann


(In accordance with Title 17 U.S.C. Section 107, this material is distributed without profit to those who have expressed a prior interest in receiving the included information for research and educational purposes. I.U. has no affiliation whatsoever with the originator of this article nor is I.U endorsed or sponsored by the originator.)


The Nazis, Fascists and Communists were political parties before they became enemies of liberty and mass murderers.

McCain Protecting Medical Records, Big Time

Yep, I just bet he is!

We want a full battery of Psych Tests for Senator McCain. We cannot afford another unbalanced loon in the White House.

The campaign officials of Sen. John McCain, shown with Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger, R-Calif., at left, at Finelite, Inc., in Union City, Calif., Thursday, said that the high level of interest in the senator's medical records meant they had to limit access by reporters. Advisers say the campaign has been working on the release "for weeks" and is not timed to reduce the impact of whatever the records contain.

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As Americans kick off the first holiday weekend of the summer Friday, Sen. John McCain will release 400 pages of his medical records to a handpicked group of reporters who can neither photocopy nor keep the documents, illustrating the sensitivity the campaign places on the 71-year-old candidate's age and health.

For more than a year, the four-term senator has repeatedly promised to release his recent medical records, but has not yet done so.

The McCain campaign has selected a handful of news organizations to review the records today in a conference room at the Copper Wynd Resort in Fountain Hills, Ariz., near the Mayo Clinic in Scottsdale.

Reporters from all five major news networks — CBS, ABC, NBC, CNN and Fox — will be allowed to take notes from the records, as will wire reporters from the Associated Press, Reuters and Bloomberg news agencies. Just two print newspapers will be among the pool: The Washington Post and the Arizona Republic.

McCain campaign officials said yesterday that the high level of interest in the records meant they had to limit access by reporters.

"We had to do it at the Mayo Clinic and the doctors there probably didn't want 200 reporters running around," said senior McCain adviser Charlie Black. "It's not a perfect situation, but its the best available." No independent doctors will be allowed to examine the records, although McCain officials said Thursday that most networks are flying in their medical correspondents, some of whom are doctors.

The records dump comes as Americans head in to a three-day weekend, and just days after Sen. Edward M. Kennedy was diagnosed with a grave form of brain cancer. But Mr. Black said the campaign's communications director and others have been working on the release "for weeks," and is not timed to reduce the impact of whatever the records contain.

Mr. McCain, for his part, said reporters will be underwhelmed by the medical findings.

"There are going to be no surprises,” he told reporters last Friday aboard his campaign bus on a trip to West Virginia. His doctors "have told me that everything’s fine," he said.

The medical records released Friday will cover the years 2000 to 2008. In 1999, during his first campaign for president, the senator released 1,500 pages of in-depth medical and psychiatric records, some collected during a a Navy project to gauge the health of former prisoners of war. Mr. McCain spent more than five years in a Vietnam prison camp and suffers long-term effects from his incarceration: He cannot lift his arms his above shoulder height and underwent months of rehabilitation to renew flexibility in his legs.

The Mayo Clinic in Scottsdale, one of the best medical facilities in the country, was the site where Mr. McCain underwent nearly six hours after he was diagnosed with Stage 2A melanoma, a form of cancer that kills a third of sufferers within 10 years.

Doctors incised a dime-sized discolored blotch from his left temple, but also made an incision down his left cheek to remove lymph nodes in his neck, even though they later found the cancer had not spread there.

Mr. McCain left cheek is still puffy and laced with the large scar he likes to joke on the campaign trail that "I'm older than dirt and I've got more scars than Frankenstein."

Still, the candidate's age at 72, he would be the oldest president ever to take office and especially his health threaten to become campaign issues. At just 46, Sen. Barack Obama, Mr. McCain's likely opponent, is young enough to be his son, and he has highlighted his health by doffing his shirt at the beach and sprinting up and down the basketball court, all, of course, in front of news cameras.

The Obama campaign insists it will not make age an issue in the campaign, and in some ways the one-term senator faces the same danger Walter Mondale did when he sought to portray President Reagan as too old for the demanding job of president. In a memorable debate line, Mr. Reagan, 73, said of the 56-year-old Democrat: "I will not make age an issue of this campaign. I am not going to exploit, for political purposes, my opponent's youth and inexperience." On the campaign trail, Mr. McCain is a dynamo, often tiring out reporters half his age from his dawn-to-well-past-dusk schedule. Whenever age comes up during a town hall meeting with voters, he points to his 96-year-old mother, Roberta as proof that he comes from hearty genetic stock.

"If there's any question about any age problem we might have in this campaign, there's my genes," Mr McCain said at a campaign stop in Iowa in January. "Last Christmas, she went to France. She landed in Paris and wanted to rent a car. They told her she was too old so she bought one. Way to go, Mom!"

(In accordance with Title 17 U.S.C. Section 107, this material is distributed without profit to those who have expressed a prior interest in receiving the included information for research and educational purposes. I.U. has no affiliation whatsoever with the originator of this article nor is I.U endorsed or sponsored by the originator.)


The Nazis, Fascists and Communists were political parties before they became enemies of liberty and mass murderers.

McCain: The Not-So-Closet Corporatist and Enron

Teflon John would have us believe that he is a maverick, an enemy of K-street and earmarks.

He is a big, fat liar

McCain Defends 'Enron Loophole'

By Jason Leopold
May 19, 2008

Sen. John McCain says he opposes the $307 billion farm bill because it would dole out wasteful subsidies, but his chief economic adviser Phil Gramm also wants to stop its proposed regulation of energy futures trading, a market that was famously abused when Enron Corp. manipulated California’s electricity prices in 2001.

Clearing the way for that California price gouging, Gramm, as a powerful Texas senator in 2000, slipped an Enron-backed provision into the Commodities Futures Modernization Act that exempted from regulation energy trading on electronic platforms.

Then, over the next year, Enron – with Gramm’s wife Wendy serving on its board of directors – worked to create false electricity shortages in California, bilking consumers out of an estimated $40 billion.

Gramm left the Senate in 2002 but now has emerged as what Fortune magazine calls “McCain’s econ brain,” not only filling the Arizona senator’s acknowledged void on economic expertise (“I don’t know as much about the economy as I should”) but recognized as one of McCain’s closest friends in politics. The two men talk daily.

A McCain aide told me that the Arizona senator opposes the farm bill because it “rewards lobbyists” by granting rich farmers lucrative subsidies, although he would support “a reasonable level of assistance and risk management to farmers when they need America's help.”

But the aide, who spoke on condition of anonymity, acknowledged that the presumptive Republican presidential nominee also opposes the farm bill because Gramm advised McCain that he should resist its regulatory language on the energy futures market.

Democrats have dubbed that gap in energy futures regulation the “Enron loophole,” but it played a part, too, in the more recent attempt by the Amaranth Advisers hedge fund to corner the national gas market by shifting trades to the unregulated “dark markets” of the Intercontinental Exchange.

The “Enron loophole” also has become part of the debate over the soaring price of oil. Last week, a study sponsored by Sen. Carl Levin, D-Michigan, concluded that speculative futures markets were partly to blame for the surge in oil prices that have pushed gas at the pump toward $4 a gallon.

At a May 15 news conference, Levin said the skyrocketing price of oil is “not the result of supply and demand. Speculators have taken over most of the futures market."

However, the 673-page farm bill, containing the regulatory provisions on electronic energy trading, still faces obstacles amid overall concerns about the bill’s largesse to farmers at a time of rising food prices.

President George W. Bush has vowed to veto the bill, although it cleared the House and Senate by margins wide enough for an override, assuming Republicans don’t rally behind Bush and McCain, their current and future standard bearers.

Gramm and Enron

The battle over the “Enron loophole” also could draw attention to McCain’s dependence on Gramm as his chief economic adviser and Gramm’s key role in passing legislation that let Enron trade commodities on electronic platforms without federal oversight.

In 2000, with the Republicans in charge of Congress and Gramm chairing the Senate Banking Committee, the exemption on electronic trading was approved without a Senate hearing.

Internal Enron documents, which were released in 2002, revealed that the Houston-based company helped write the legislation, which was signed into law by President Bill Clinton in December 2000.

Freed from regulatory interference, Enron then used manipulative trading practices to game the California electricity market and drive up electricity prices across the state.

While California consumers were getting fleeced, the new Bush administration shielded Enron from early accusations of market manipulation. President Bush personally joined the fight against imposing caps on the soaring price of electricity, buying additional time for Enron although the company’s house of cards collapsed anyway in fall 2001. [For details, see Consortiumnews.com’s “Bush’s Enron Lies.”]

In 2006, the “Enron loophole” allowed Amaranth Advisers hedge fund to shift its trades from the regulated New York Mercantile Exchange (NYMEX) to the unregulated Intercontinental Exchange (ICE) in Atlanta.

That let Amaranth corner the natural gas market, betting that futures prices would rise. The hedge fund lost about $6 billion and imploded as natural gas prices fell to a two-year low in September 2006.

Last July, the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission and the Commodity Futures Trading Commission charged that Amaranth manipulated prices paid in the physical natural gas markets. FERC has proposed $291 million in penalties and the forfeiture of “unjust profits.”

“Unregulated markets are known as ‘dark markets’ because there is very little oversight of the trades,” said Rep. Bart Stupak, D-Michigan, chairman of the subcommittee on Oversight and Investigations, during a hearing on energy speculation last December.

By trading on the “dark” ICE market, traders can avoid the Commodity Futures Trading Commission’s rules which are in place to prevent price distortions or supply squeezes.

Stupak said trading volumes on ICE “have skyrocketed in the past three years and are now as large or even larger in some months, than the volumes traded on the regulated futures market.”

The lack of oversight “makes it difficult for regulators to detect excessively large positions which could lead to price manipulation,” Stupak said.

Advising McCain

Gramm, who is now a vice chairman of financial services company UBS, began advising McCain in 2005 when the Arizona senator indicated he planned to run for President.

Since then, McCain has adopted much of Gramm’s anti-tax, anti-regulatory agenda. Most strikingly, McCain shifted to support Bush’s tax cuts, which McCain had voted against in 2001 and 2003. He now vows that, if elected President, he would make them permanent.

Yet Gramm’s influence over McCain’s economic agenda – and the checkered political-business history of Gramm and his wife Wendy – have largely escaped media scrutiny.

Gramm received more than $34,000 in campaign contributions from Enron and served as one of the company’s key legislative allies in Washington, including his help in 2000 removing federal oversight from energy trades on electronic platforms.

At the height of the Enron scandal in January 2002, Gramm’s press secretary Larry Neal told The New York Times that Gramm did not “recall a conversation” he apparently had with Enron’s chairman Ken Lay in 2000 to discuss that Enron legislative priority.

An internal Enron e-mail dated Aug. 10, 2000, under the subject “CFTC Reauthorization” – sent by Enron’s top lobbyist Richard Shapiro to Steve Kean, Enron’s executive vice president – said the company needed to get Lay on the phone with Gramm so the bill could be passed.

“The bill is not moving quickly in the Senate due to Senator Phil Gramm's desire to see significant changes made to the legislation (not directly related to our energy language),” Shapiro said.

“Last week at the [2000] Republican Convention, I asked the Senator about the bill and he said they were working on it, but much needs to be changed for his support. More telling perhaps, were Wendy Gramm's comments that she would rather the current bill die if a better bill can be passed next year.

“What this means is that we must, at the least, remove Senator Gramm's opposition to the bill to move the process and more importantly seek to gain his support of the legislation.”

Shapiro added: “However, with less than 20 or so legislative days left, we need Senator Gramm to engage.

“A call from Ken Lay in the next two weeks to Senator Gramm could be an impetus for Gramm to move his staff to resolve the differences. Gramm needs to fully understand how helpful the bill is to Enron.

“Let me know your thoughts on this approach. I am prepared to assist in coordinating the call and drafting the talking points for a Ken Lay/Sen. Gramm call.”

Several other internal Enron e-mails briefed company staffers on the status of Gramm’s position and Enron’s lobbying of the senator. Gramm finally removed a “hold” on the bill in December 2000, reintroduced the bill under a different number, and forced a vote on it without floor debate.

It was then attached to an appropriations bill that was signed by President Clinton on Dec. 21, 2000.

California Crisis

Less than a month later, California began to experience rolling blackouts due to artificial electricity shortages which, according to documents later released by federal energy regulators, were the result of manipulative trading practices employed by Enron.

The California crisis centered on Enron’s energy trades through a new platform called EnronOnline, which had been freed from regulatory oversight by the legislation pushed by Gramm.

In April 2002, Gramm blocked an amendment by Sen. Dianne Feinstein, D-California, that would have closed the loophole that Gramm had helped open.

Gramm’s wife, Wendy, also had played a role in the anti-regulatory policies that contributed to the Enron scandal.

On Jan. 14, 1993, in the final days of the first Bush administration, Wendy Gramm – as chairwoman of the Commodity Futures Trading Commission – pushed through a key regulatory exemption removing energy derivatives contracts and interest-rate swaps from federal oversight.

That was a major financial boon to Enron, where Wendy Gramm landed five weeks later as a member of the board of directors. She also became a member of the audit committee that signed off on another one of Enron’s fraudulent schemes, partnerships that hid the company’s growing debt.

Even after Enron had collapsed in fall 2001, Sen. Gramm continued to resist congressional efforts at tightening up the rules.

In 2002, despite the accounting scandals at Enron, WorldCom and other major companies, Sen. Gramm objected to the Sarbanes-Oxley corporate reform bill designed to hold executives accountable for inaccuracies in financial reports.

Now, the Gramm family’s anti-regulatory agenda is returning via McCain’s presidential campaign.

As Fortune’s editor-at-large Shawn Tully wrote, “economic conservatives should take heart. McCain’s chief economic adviser – and perhaps his closest political friend – is the ultimate pure play in free market faith, former Texas Sen. Phil Gramm. … Most of [McCain’s] current positions are vintage Gramm indeed.” [Fortune, Feb. 19. 2008]

The first test of McCain’s commitment to Gramm’s anti-regulatory purity may come in the looming battle over the “Enron loophole” that the farm bill seeks to close.

Jason Leopold has launched a new Web site, The Public Record, at www.pubrecord.org

To comment at Consortiumblog, click here.


(In accordance with Title 17 U.S.C. Section 107, this material is distributed without profit to those who have expressed a prior interest in receiving the included information for research and educational purposes. I.U. has no affiliation whatsoever with the originator of this article nor is I.U endorsed or sponsored by the originator.)


The Nazis, Fascists and Communists were political parties before they became enemies of liberty and mass murderers.

For Obama: Good News In Purple States

Gallup's polling of 13,000 voters, released April 17, shows Barack Obama ahead of McCain in competitive so-called Purple states, as well as deep blue states. Here's the summary (link is found below).

Reading further tells you that Clinton would also better McCain in the purple states. However, it is Obama who has the larger margin in be trusty stalwart blue states. (Obama ahead of McCain by 14 points, Clinton ahead of McCain by 11.)

So all together that beats down the idea that Obama's not our electable candidate. The numbers show it's he who's the one who is more electable.

The new Gallup poll link is here.

I've also been following the Rasmussen poll numbers state-by-state for weeks now.

Turns out that in some of the states where Hillary brags she's won, Obama pulls stronger numbers against McCain than she does. Link shows graphic illustration.

Obama's general election advantage compared to Clinton shows in the paired Rasmussen polling against McCain in California [big, big prize], New Mexico, Nevada, New Hampshire, NJ.

Even in her own state, NY, Obama's margin is 1-point greater against McCain (O 51 - McC 38)than her own (C 50 - McC 38) in the Rasmussen polling. She can't claim an advantage against McCain even in the state she serves as a senator.

The numbers have changed some recently, where she now does better in Florida than Obama against McCain. And she has the edge in Missouri, a state that Obama won in the primaries.

The state-by-state summary is here at Rasmussen Reports.

(In accordance with Title 17 U.S.C. Section 107, this material is distributed without profit to those who have expressed a prior interest in receiving the included information for research and educational purposes. I.U. has no affiliation whatsoever with the originator of this article nor is I.U endorsed or sponsored by the originator.)


The Nazis, Fascists and Communists were political parties before they became enemies of liberty and mass murderers.

This Makes me Sick To My Stomach....No Joke....

....excuse me, while I puke.

High Standards at the Washington Post Op-Ed page

(updated below - Update II)

Last week, The Financial Times highlighted some of the ugly sentiment in West Virginia against Barack Obama, including comments such as "I heard that Obama is a Muslim and his wife's an atheist." The article reported that "several people said they believed he was a Muslim." It ended by quoting West Virginian Josh Fry as saying "he would feel more comfortable with Mr. McCain" than Obama because: "I want someone who is a full-blooded American as president."

In one of the most repellent columns one will ever read, syndicated columnist Kathleen Parker defended Fry's claim that Obama is something other than "a full-blooded American." Advancing an argument that Atrios guest blogger aimai aptly described as "Ein Volk, ein Reich, ein Führer!," Parker said "we now have a patriot divide" in America that "has nothing to do with a flag lapel pin . . . or even military service." Instead:

It's about blood equity, heritage and commitment to hard-won American values. And roots.

Some run deeper than others and therein lies the truth of Josh Fry's political sense. In a country that is rapidly changing demographically -- and where new neighbors may have arrived last year, not last century -- there is a very real sense that once-upon-a-time America is getting lost in the dash to diversity.

We love to boast that we are a nation of immigrants — and we are. But there's a different sense of America among those who trace their bloodlines back through generations of sacrifice.

It goes on and on like that. So according to Parker, what makes McCain a "full-blooded American," but not Obama, has to do with "blood equity," "heritage," "rapidly changing demographic[s]," and "bloodlines." She then wrote that "white Americans primarily -- and Southerners, rural and small-town folks especially -- have been put on the defensive," and that:

What they know is that their forefathers fought and died for an America that has worked pretty well for more than 200 years. What they sense is that their heritage is being swept under the carpet while multiculturalism becomes the new national narrative. And they fear what else might get lost in the remodeling of America.

Obama's grandfather fought in World War II -- for America -- and enormous numbers of people who are something other than "white Americans" have fought in one American war after the next. But never mind that. These arguments about "bloodlines" are Parker's reasons why Obama shouldn't be President and why he's not a "full-blooded American."

Today, The Washington Post has invited the very same Kathleen Parker onto its Op-Ed page to share her views on the Democratic candidates, and specifically to opine on the matter of John Edwards' endorsement this week of Obama. She abandons her White Pride argument today in favor of the important and Serious claim that Obama and Edwards are gay girls.

The Post promotes her Op-Ed on its front page this way: "Kathleen Parker: Two Democratic Pretty Boys." Here's how her Op-Ed begins:

Well, at least they didn't kiss.

I was bracing myself for the lip lock Wednesday when John Edwards endorsed Barack Obama.

That appears under the Post headline: "The Democrats Hug It Out." We then learn that "the two men exchanged a manly air-hug" when they appeared together; that "Obama and Edwards make an attractive picture -- Ultra Brite cover boys of youth and glamour"; that Edwards has a "28,000-square-foot house and $400 haircuts"; and that "Obama and Edwards look and talk pretty, but Clinton, unflinching and steely, exudes pure brawn." All of that makes Obama and Edwards too girly "to sit across from the likes of Iran's Mahmoud Ahmadinejad."

Those are some very Serious political arguments brought to us by The Washington Post from an important and Serious political commentator. As always, while everything to the Left of Marty Peretz's New Republic is too fringe and radical to be heard from, there simply is no such thing as being too far to the Right to fall off the mainstream spectrum. Is there any better proof of that than the appearance by Kathleen Parker on the Post's Op-Ed, fresh off her White Pride column, to write an Op-Ed that has little purpose other than to argue that Obama and Edwards are pretty, weak girls who wanted to hug and kiss each other?

UPDATE: Brad at Sadly, No notes a few other points about the Parker Op-Ed.

UPDATE II: Hilzoy notes that because Parker's columns are distributed by the Washington Post Writers' Group, the White Pride column by Parker noted above (Obama is not a "full-blooded American" because of his "bloodlines") "ran all over the place: in the Baltimore Sun, the Chicago Tribune, all sorts of places." So The Washington Post is distributing white supremacist cant about Obama's "blood equity" and "heritage," along with today's column insinuating that he and Edwards are pretty, girly gays who want to hug and kiss each other.

Hilzoy says of the Post: "they should be ashamed of themselves." They should, but they won't be. Then again, as uptoolate notes, accurately, in comments: "As for Obama vs. McCain, try to remember that this kind of tripe is just the warm-up act."

(In accordance with Title 17 U.S.C. Section 107, this material is distributed without profit to those who have expressed a prior interest in receiving the included information for research and educational purposes. I.U. has no affiliation whatsoever with the originator of this article nor is I.U endorsed or sponsored by the originator.)


The Nazis, Fascists and Communists were political parties before they became enemies of liberty and mass murderers.

From "Straight Talk" To "Double Talk"

McCrackers speaks with forked tongue and that is being kind. This will hardly be the last incident of this, and worse no doubt.

Friday McCain-Bashing: Double Talk Edition

Pop-Up Double Talk, Episode 2: Health Care

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Bonus double-talk: Compare this statement at TPM:

Slowly but surely, Republican presidential candidate John McCain is putting some distance between himself and unpopular President Bush.

This week it was the ill-timed “Mission Accomplished” banner that the White House hung behind Bush five years ago when Bush declared major combat operations over in Iraq.

“I thought it was wrong at the time,” McCain said in Cleveland Thursday

With this video of what McCain actually said at “the time”:

CAVUTO: … Senator — after a conflict means after the conflict, and many argue the conflict isn’t over.

MCCAIN: Well, then why was there a banner that said ‘mission accomplished’ on the aircraft carrier? … the conflict — the major conflict is over, the regime change has been accomplished.

(In accordance with Title 17 U.S.C. Section 107, this material is distributed without profit to those who have expressed a prior interest in receiving the included information for research and educational purposes. I.U. has no affiliation whatsoever with the originator of this article nor is I.U endorsed or sponsored by the originator.)


The Nazis, Fascists and Communists were political parties before they became enemies of liberty and mass murderers.

A Few Wise, Insightful Words From Digby

How To Play The Game

by dday

This is honestly the saddest news item I've seen in the whole of the Bush Administration.

So the Congress has taken the Bush Administration to court to enforce subpoenas of officials involved in the US Attorney purge. The Administration's lawyers have laid out, in an 83-page document, their opinion of the case, which (surprise) rests on the notion that the judiciary branch should stay out of a political dispute between the other two branches. And they conclude that the legislative has plenty of cards to play in such a battle against the executive.

"For over two hundred years, when disputes have arisen between the political branches concerning the testimony of executive branch witnesses before Congress, or the production of executive branch documents to Congress, the branches have engaged in negotiation and compromise," Justice Department lawyers wrote [...]

As part of their argument, the administration lawyers cited Congress' considerable leverage as the more traditional means of getting what it wants. This is from the motion:

And the Legislative Branch may vindicate its interests without enlisting judicial support: Congress has a variety of other means by which it can exert pressure on the Executive Branch, such as the withholding of consent for Presidential nominations, reducing Executive Branch appropriations, and the exercise of other powers Congress has under the Constitution.

Here's the thing. These may be Bush Administration lawyers doing the talking here, but they're absolutely right. The Congress has all sorts of tools in their arsenal to force compliance from the executive branch. They can shut down the nomination process. They can eliminate any and all expenditures for the President and staff or executive agencies. They can refuse to enact spending bills for programs and policies prized by the executive. They can constitute tribunals inferior to the Supreme Court that may investigate the executive. They can use the power of inherent contempt to try those neglecting a Congressional subpoena, and imprison them. And they can, you know, vote to remove the President from office, or all civil officers of the United States, for that matter.

There are dozens of ways for this Congress to get the attention of the President, as the Justice Department's own lawyers recognize. But of course, they won't do that. They worry about their image, their perception by the voters, what the Republican noise machine would say about them, and all the rest.

I'm certain that this reminder by the DoJ wasn't an effort to get the Democratic Congress to recognize their own power, or even an effort to get the courts to rule in their favor. It was an effort to get Republicans to recall what tools they can use in the event of a Democratic President. A committed minority in the Senate can make life more miserable for the incoming executive than this majority has ever made it for George Bush; executive power rollback is in some ways simply a matter of Congressional will. One thing is clear; the go-along-to-get-along nature of the Democrats over the past eight years will not be reciprocated.

And it's deeply embarrassing that it takes a bunch of Regent University grads or whoever they've got on the case at the Bush Justice Department to point this out.


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There Is No They There

by digby

Steve Benen points to more self-serving media navel gazing:

Harwood explained that the McCain campaign, in a move that “many Republicans would find ironic,” is pushing the line that the press is friendlier to Obama. Harwood said, “John McCain’s benefited from very friendly press coverage for many years, but he’s going to try to argue, which will have corollary benefit of rallying conservatives, if he can pull it off, of saying, ‘The press wants Obama to win. I’m pushing back, too.’”

Tim Russert added, “In 2002, John McCain referred to the press as his base.” To which Harwood responded, “They were his base.”

I guess somebody should have reminded them that the name of the show they were on is called ---Meet The Press. They are the "they" of which they speak. But then Russert spent two years pontificating on the same show about Scooter Libby pretending he wasn't a major playing in the investigation, so this isn't exactly new. He's the Village High Inquisitor, charged with ensuring that the one true conventional wisdom is adhered to for the good of all. He isn't a member of the press at all.


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We're Chillin'

by digby

I realize that a good many people think I'm living in cloud cuckoo-land, but apparently a large majority of the Democratic party is drooling and delusional right along with me:

Pushing back against political punditry, more than six in 10 Democrats say there's no rush for Hillary Clinton to leave the presidential race even as Barack Obama consolidates his support for the nomination and scores solidly in general-election tests.

Despite Obama's advantage in delegates and popular vote, 64 percent of Democrats in the latest ABC News/Washington Post poll say Clinton should remain in the race. Even among Obama's supporters, 42 percent say so.

That's not a majority endorsement of Clinton's candidacy; Democrats by a 12-point margin would rather see Obama as the nominee, a lead that's held steadily in ABC News/Washington Post polls since early March. Instead it reflects a rejection of the notion that the drawn-out contest will hurt the party's prospects. Seventy-one percent think it'll either make no difference in November (56 percent) or actually help the party (15 percent).

Those views correspond with opinions on Clinton continuing her candidacy. And in a related result, 85 percent of Democrats (including Democratic-leaning independents) are confident the party would come together behind Obama as the nominee though fewer, 45 percent, are "very" confident of it. That underscores the importance of the endgame for the party's prospects.

The second slot is one possibility: Clinton continues as the preferred choice as Obama's running mate, with 39 percent of Democrats saying they'd like him to pick her if he's the nominee. That peaks at 59 percent of African-Americans, 47 percent of Clinton supporters and 42 percent of women (vs. 34 percent of men).

I'm not necessarily endorsing the Unity ticket, but I don't see a lot of hate and division in those numbers. If nearly 60% of African Americans prefer Clinton on the ticket, it's fair to say that the party isn't irrevocably broken.

And McCain just looks sad;

In other signs of difficulties for McCain, Obama leads him in trust to handle the public's top issue, the economy, by 10 points; in trust to handle gasoline prices, by 20 points; and in trust to handle health care, by 24 points. On personal attributes Obama leads by wide margins as being better able to bring needed change, having the better temperament for the job, better empathy and a clearer vision for the future.

McCain also could suffer from the broader public discontent, generally and with George W. Bush in particular. Public disgruntlement neared a record high in this poll, with 82 percent of Americans saying the country's seriously off on the wrong track, up 10 points in the past year to a point from its record high in polls since 1973. And Bush slipped to his career low approval rating, 31 percent.

In a related result, the Democratic Party in general leads the Republicans in trust to handle the main issues the nation faces, by 53-32 percent the biggest gap in favor of the Democrats in data since 1982. The question, again, is whether that fades in Bush's wake.

It won't unless the Democrats allow McCain to be a different kind 'o Republican. It's not a big window for him, but it's a window nonetheless:

There are significant areas in which McCain can push back against Obama. After a five-year decline prompted by the unpopular president and the war in Iraq, there's been a recovery this year in Republican affiliation possibly the precursor of post-Bush politics. The change is slight but bears watching: On average in ABC/Post polls this year 28 percent of Americans have identified themselves as Republicans, compared with a 24-year low of 25 percent last year. It peaked at 31 percent in 2003.

As you can see by the numbers, the Democratic party is doing fine. They have the most exciting politician in the country running for president at a time when the opposing party is falling apart. But they should not get cocky. McCain's base, the media, will help him distance himself from Bush with everything they have and that's his best hope.

It would be wise for everyone to heed this warning:

McCain has a credible brand with the public, who see him as a maverick and a reformer. If McCain succeeds on his current path, he may be able to use his own popularity to infuse the Republicans with new life and a new narrative--the "Change Republican." The risk is amplified because there are 34 open House seats and 5 open Senate seats. Unlike incumbents, these Republican candidates--who aren't from Washington--could seize onto McCain's "Change Republican" brand and ride his coattails to a Republican comeback. Democrats could lose the House and Senate, and the White House would be out of reach.

It wouldn't be all "change." They'd combine this with the usual scare tactics and terror-mongering--tired old tactics that failed in 2006.

Lest my fellow Democratic partisans worry, I'm not giving away any secrets that the Republican strategists don't know. In the last few days, a strategy memo on this same topic has been circulated by Republican strategists.

There is a big Achilles heel to this strategy. On the issues that the public will judge McCain he is not change. McCain's tempered approaches on immigration and climate change are small bore stuff compared to the defining narratives on the war and the economy. On the issues central to voters, McCain is not change. The media pundits who think the public will view him as a maverick still don't understand this vulnerability.

In many ways the emergence of a Democratic majority rests on whether John McCain gets away with becoming a "Change Republican."

The answer is probably "no" but let this serve as notice to all of us: the ball is in our court.

The Republican party is George W. Bush --- there is no daylight. They acclaimed him as the second coming of Winston Churchill and Alexander the Great just three years ago. They put him back in the White House and then swaggered around calling Democrats neutered farm animals.

"Once the minority of House and Senate are comfortable in their minority status, they will have no problem socializing with the Republicans. Any farmer will tell you that certain animals run around and are unpleasant, but when they've been fixed, then they are happy and sedate. They are contented and cheerful. They don't go around peeing on the furniture and such."

They can run from that but they can't hide. Bush and the conservative movement he represents need to be tied around McCain's neck so tight he can't breathe.

AMEN!
.
digby 5/12/2008 04:09:00 PM

(In accordance with Title 17 U.S.C. Section 107, this material is distributed without profit to those who have expressed a prior interest in receiving the included information for research and educational purposes. I.U. has no affiliation whatsoever with the originator of this article nor is I.U endorsed or sponsored by the originator.)


The Nazis, Fascists and Communists were political parties before they became enemies of liberty and mass murderers.

Another Religious Nutjob In The McCrackers Camp

Couldn't bring my self to run the video on this site. It's not only offensive to Muslims, it is offensive to most people with more than three neurons firing. You have to see it to believe it, so click on over and get and ear and eye full of this religious extremist, who is not only dead wrong about the reasons for the founding of this country, which had nothing to do with Islam, and everything to do with intolerant knot heads like him, but he is dangerous...VERY DANGEROUS.



McCain’s ‘Spiritual Guide’ Has a Big Issue with Islam


The Nazis, Fascists and Communists were political parties before they became enemies of liberty and mass murderers.

John McCrackers: Worse Than Bush

Seems someone at Huffington Post has figured out what we have as well. These last 7+ long, appalling years have been largely about bankrupting the federal government...to save us all from "communism" I suppose and leave us at the mercy of the corporatists, who have no mercy as we all should know by now.

Ah, the pendulum doth swing. Look out rightwing, you are about to be anihilated.

By Jared Bernstein

I hold in my hand one of the most important pieces of paper in America: Table T08-0071, an analysis of candidate John McCain's tax plan.

OK, it's not really in my hand because I'm typing, but I'm looking at it carefully, and you should too. It is a table constructed by the Tax Policy Center's steely-eyed tax analysts, and it reveals nothing less than McCain's secret plan to diminish the US government beyond recognition. If he gets his way, conservatives will finally be able to say they've achieved the goal set out by Grover Norquist: to get government "down to the size where we can drown it in the bathtub."

The numbers in the table show the revenue loss to the Federal government from McCain's proposed tax cuts. In the far right corner is the 10-year total: -$5.7 trillion.

People deride the Republican candidate as "McSame," implying a continuation of Bushonomics as well as the president's foreign policy. But from the perspective of domestic policy, it's much worse. Sure, McCain extends the Bush tax cuts but that's the least of it. At $1.7 trillion they amount to less than a third of the damage.

Note also that the big ticket tax cuts-eliminating the alternative minimum tax and lowering the corporate tax-both follow on another Bush tradition of exacerbating market-driven (i.e., pre-tax) inequalities by cutting high-end taxes the most.

As I stress here , McCain's plans to pay for these tax cuts amount to filling a crater with a teaspoon of sand. Earmarks won't get you there, so he'll have to go after discretionary spending. In fact, he's already suggesting a freeze in such spending, excluding defense, of course. Sound inoffensive until you consider that we're talking about kids' health care, education, child care, training for displaced workers, environmental and labor protections, and dozens more programs that lots of people actually need and care about.

Plus, he can't fill the hole he's dug with cuts in these programs either, which leads you to the inevitable punch line of all this: his target is the entitlements, Social Security and Medicare. Those programs have always been the big enchiladas for the Norquist shock troops and they've never recovered from their Social Security privatization defeat. Well, they're back, incognito.

McCain's top economist, a number cruncher of great integrity named Doug Holtz-Eakin, responds to the Tax Policy's analysis here, and he makes a good point or two, especially regarding the way they score the AMT, but his counterpoints amount to little more than quibbles. In fact, one can't help wonder if Doug, who used to inveigh against supply-side nonsense, has been drawn to the economic dark side. When recently asked about the extent to which these numbers fail to add up, his response was: "I think what [critics] ought to do is remember that the proposals are going to engender economic growth, which is the best thing you can do for near-term budget improvement." That's pure hand waving of the type with which the old Holtz-Eakin had no patience.

This story has yet to catch the fire it should, and hopefully will, once the D's get focused on McCain and his dim vision of government. But the point born of these numbers is as simple as it is compelling:

For seven long years, we've tried entrusting our government to those who discredit it, defund it, and fundamentally disbelieve in its role, except when they seek a lucrative contract or a bailout. We gone down the road-and it is a crumbling road, with potholes and failing bridges -- where the solution to every problem is a tax cut, where critical agencies are staffed with cronies at best and opposition lobbyists at worst, where secrecy trumps transparency and cynicism rules, where budget resources are never available for expanding childrens' health care, but always there for war.

Table T08-0071 is a road map to taking us far, far deeper into this morass. We must not go there.

(In accordance with Title 17 U.S.C. Section 107, this material is distributed without profit to those who have expressed a prior interest in receiving the included information for research and educational purposes. I.U. has no affiliation whatsoever with the originator of this article nor is I.U endorsed or sponsored by the originator.)


The Nazis, Fascists and Communists were political parties before they became enemies of liberty and mass murderers.

McCain Wants Open debates? I Can't Wait!

I don't know which side is feeling more desperate: the McCain camp for having proposed the idea of a series of "unmoderated debates" throughout the summer, or the Obama camp for having seemingly accepted it.

But let's not get ahead of ourselves.

True, it's a vastly appealing idea -- the New York Times calls it "a sign of what could be an extremely unusual fall campaign"; "an idea that is by any measure unconventional" -- especially for anyone who covers politics, because the potential for impromptu, column-filling gaffes is limitless.

And then there's that civics stuff about vigorous democracy and an informed electorate, blah, blah, blah. Truth is, though, voters tune in mainly for the same reason they watch NASCAR; they anticipate a mangling collision or one of the candidates careening off the track in a blaze of smoke, fire and fury.

Yet, unfortunately, the open-debate proposal is only at the idea stage and it's not improbable that it shall remain there. The reporting says it was "floated by Mr. McCain’s advisers," so the former may not even have been aware of what was about to swirl around him, and the only indication of Obama having picked up the gauntlet was his response that it's "a great idea," which was what he said about public financing, too. So there the idea sits, and there it may stay.

Still, it is axiomatic in politics that whichever camp proposes a series of debates is the camp that has taken a good, long look at its internal polling and consequently feels desperate beyond measure -- even to the point of unleashing its candidate before voters without a script. And in this instance that camp is, happily, McCain's.

The dance then proceeds thusly: the opposing camp immediately ripostes that it's "a great idea," and, well, it'll take an even longer look at it only to assure itself that it benefits, above all others, the gaping multitudes. Don't call it; it'll call you. And that's the end of it; it's consigned to obscurity and finally oblivion.

Yet, again, in this instance it is reported only that the Obama camp believes it to be an exceedingly marvelous thing -- there was no reference to the senator needing to weigh its pros and cons, you know, for the voters' benefit. Which would further suggest the opposing camp -- Obama's, that is -- is equally nervous and therefore willing to go out on a limb to bring up some numbers or break a perceived deadlock.

But, perhaps the reporting in this instance just didn't go far enough. Maybe Obama's camp has no intention of staging "unmoderated debates" and that fact just didn't make the papers. We really don't know yet.

What we do know, however, is that somebody at McCain's HQ was nervously unhinged enough to propose such a thing, and that in itself is exceedingly marvelous.

They must be worried in Arizona.

If I were handling a candidate like, oh, let's say, Senator John McCain -- a candidate with a penchant for saying incomparably stupid things off the cuff and losing his famous temper whenever control of the situation is lost -- the last bloody thought I would ever entertain is that of propping him up on a stage for two or three months against a gleaming, handsome young intellectual and letting him rip extemporaneously. There would not be enough scotch, Valium and unfiltered cigarettes to see me through such a season.

Me either, but I would sure be willing to give it a shot! It would be far worse than Nixon v. Kennedy.

Unless, that is, I had just spent the last few days pouring over some excruciatingly painful polling results that left me -- and my candidate -- with absolutely no choice. It's either risk it, or watch the numbers go a little farther south with each passing day.

I won't play the age card. As far as I know, John McCain's mental faculties are all in working order. It's just that those faculties have never seemed to work that well -- not that the accumulating years have had any noticeable, unwanted accumulated effect. He's always had a big, uncontrolled mouth that spouts the most curiously unthoughtful things, which only now a lot of people are increasingly taking note of.

He doesn't need John Hagee, for he is, in many ways, his own Jeremiah Wright.

And may God grant us the enticing opportunity to watch him in un-moderated, uncontrolled, unscripted action, all summer long. It is this, I imagine, that Obama was thinking when he responded that it's "a great idea."

Amen!

For personal questions or comments you can contact P.M. at fifthcolumnistmail@gmail.com

THE FIFTH COLUMNIST by P.M. Carpenter

(In accordance with Title 17 U.S.C. Section 107, this material is distributed without profit to those who have expressed a prior interest in receiving the included information for research and educational purposes. I.U. has no affiliation whatsoever with the originator of this article nor is I.U endorsed or sponsored by the originator.)


The Nazis, Fascists and Communists were political parties before they became enemies of liberty and mass murderers.

GOP: The Death Sentence

John McCain is planning to run as a different kind of Republican. But being any kind of Republican seems like some sort of death sentence these days.

In case you’ve been too consumed by the Democratic race to notice, Republicans are getting crushed in historic ways both at the polls and in the polls.

At the polls, it has been a massacre. In recent weeks, Republicans have lost a Louisiana House seat they had held for more than two decades and an Illinois House seat they had held for more than three. Internal polls show that next week they could lose a Mississippi House seat that they have held for 13 years.

In the polls, they are setting records (and not the good kind). The most recent Gallup Poll has 67 percent of voters disapproving of President Bush; those numbers are worse than Richard Nixon’s on the eve of his resignation. A CBS News poll taken at the end of April found only 33 percent of Americans have a favorable view of the GOP — the lowest since CBS started asking the question more than two decades ago. By comparison, 52 percent of the public has a favorable view of the Democratic Party.

Things are so bad that many people don’t even want to call themselves Republicans. The Pew Research Center for the People & the Press has found the lowest percentage of self-described Republicans in 16 years of polling.

“The anti-Republican mood is fairly big, and it has been overwhelming,” said Michigan Republican Party Chairman Saul Anuzis.

With an environment so toxic, does McCain have even a chance of winning in November?

See Also

• Limbaugh: 'My impact will increase'
• Under Clinton's rules, Obama still wins
• Why the Obama-Clinton ticket is nuts

The McCain camp thinks so — but only if he sands down the “R” next to his name. “Nobody ever gets elected president by running on their party label,” said Charlie Black, a senior McCain adviser. “The character, the qualities, the independence — that certainly allows him to rise over the party label. It is more important than usual to rise above the party label.”

This statement seems a little at odds with the current McCain strategy. The presumptive GOP nominee has spent much of the recent campaign fastening himself to the traditional Republican brand and even to Bush himself. McCain’s views on the war, the overall economy (especially supporting the Bush tax cuts he previously opposed), the mortgage crisis and judicial appointments are hardly the stuff of a new kind of Republicanism.

McCain risks looking inauthentic and conventional to both camps if he simply solidifies his standing with conservatives and then races back to the middle to appeal to swing voters.

For now, Republicans are heartened by how well McCain sometimes does in head-to-head polling with Barack Obama, the likely Democratic nominee. But it’s silly to watch those numbers: They fluctuate and reflect nothing more than momentary feelings about the candidates, and they come at a time when public attention is fixed on the final rounds of the Democratic slugfest.

CONTINUE ON PAGE 1 2

(In accordance with Title 17 U.S.C. Section 107, this material is distributed without profit to those who have expressed a prior interest in receiving the included information for research and educational purposes. I.U. has no affiliation whatsoever with the originator of this article nor is I.U endorsed or sponsored by the originator.)


The Nazis, Fascists and Communists were political parties before they became enemies of liberty and mass murderers.

McCain Presidency? Run For Your Lives!

Author Cliff Schecter Discusses "The Real McCain" with BuzzFlash.com --

And It ain't a Pretty Picture

Submitted by BuzzFlash on Tue, 05/06/2008 - 11:53am. Interviews Where are the questions about Rick Renzi, whom he got in a fist fight with, but eventually became friends with, who served in McCain's past campaign, and who’s now received a 53-count indictment against him by the FBI? McCain kept Renzi on as a co-chair of his Arizona campaign while running for office, after the guy was being investigated for all manner of misdeeds. Or the questions about Pastor Hagee. But beyond that, he befriended the late Jerry Falwell, who blamed 9/11 on Americans. He blamed it on gays and lesbians and a variety of other groups.

-- Cliff Schecter on the Real McCain

Yes, this is the book with the sensational charges about McCain's temper that the mainstream media recently cited: 1) that back in the '90s, McCain publicly called his wife the "c" word; 2) that he regularly tells colleagues to "F" off; and 3) that he engaged in at least one punching brawl on Capitol Hill.

But the book is a lot more than titillating details on John's temper tantrums and vulgar tactlessness. It's kind of the inside scoop on Mr. Flip-flop incarnate. In fact, Schecter -- a wry informative progressive political commentator known to many on the web, television and radio -- refers to McCain's different political positions as if he were versions of Windows, only McCain doesn't get better with each version.

From a certain prism -- the one shown in this book -- McCain is more of a Frankenstein with an ingratiating streak for the media than a maverick.

Okay, so the guy doesn't know Sunnis from Shiites? Hey, that doesn't matter because McCain knows victory when he smells it, and it doesn't pass the sniff test until you kill enough of them that it doesn't matter whether they are Sunnis or Shiites.

BuzzFlash talks with Cliff Schechter about why McCain should never be president and how the media gives him a free ride.

* * *

BuzzFlash: Okay, Cliff, you wrote The Real McCain: Why Conservatives Don’t Trust Him and Why Independents Shouldn’t. First of all, you got some national publicity because of the New York Daily News article going back to an incident in 1992. We don’t want to use the word that McCain allegedly used to call his wife Cindy, but, I mean, let’s deal with the fact that you bring up a topic which is considered one of his vulnerabilities, although the mainstream media doesn’t cover it a whole lot, which is his temper.

Cliff Schecter: Yes.

BuzzFlash: What exactly is the case? You know, he claims they are isolated incidents. Is that true?

Cliff Schecter: No, nothing can be farther from the truth than that, which is often the case with McCain. What you see is not what you get, and this is just another case of that. Because his temper – I can go through numerous cases that are both publicly known and recounted to me for my book, both by on-the-record sources, off-the-record sources – a variety of them. He is what most people consider dangerous and frightening. Some people say it may be an after-effect of Vietnam. I’m not a psychologist and I can’t say whether that contributed. But this is a guy that was known for his temper in high school; his nickname was McNasty. It’s been a long-term thing with him that he enjoys degrading people. He has a very violent temper towards people when they disagree with him.

He has a vengeance streak a mile long. The only time he doesn’t take vengeance is when he sees it in his own political interest not to, like when he can have a rapprochement, like with Jerry Falwell or some people like that, George Bush obviously being a big case. But otherwise, a temper. A perfect example is what you were talking about. The Washington Post wrote an article earlier this week citing reports that came from my book – the story I broke – that he physically assaulted Congressman Rick Renzi, also of Arizona.

Fox News was the only network to ask McCain about the incident. McCain denied it. To give you an idea about the McCain people’s defense on this, later for the Washington Post article, I guess as people realized that it did happen, and that some people knew about it, they [McCain's people] admitted it and just said it wasn’t as bad as I claimed it was. You know, it wasn’t as bad as reports claimed it was. So they’ve already shown their dishonesty in talking about his temper. They’ve changed their account – within two weeks, of what happened. By next week, it’ll be: well, he did punch people but he didn’t bite anybody. You know, who knows what they’ll come up with next?

BuzzFlash: Well, he personally reacted to your book, didn’t he?

Cliff Schecter: He did, and he denied it. And I guess that’s the point I’m making is that he denied the charge [of assaulting Renzi], and that’s been proven. Because he said that I had anonymous sources and I was making it up. But now, of course, he’s had to admit that it did happen, and try to say, well, it happened, but it didn’t happen exactly the way I said. But that’s the newest line out of the McCain camp.

What you need to know about him is not only does the incident that you refer to, where in 1992, he referred to his wife with a very bad term that most of us, if we referred to our wives [in that way], we’d be sleeping under a bridge somewhere. He did it in full public view, reporters, aides – you know, I got it from three anonymous sources, all who saw it. He, of course, is denying it. Now people need to ask themselves if they believe him or they believe me. I’ve just totally raised questions about his credibility in denying an earlier charge that was proven true.

But let’s look at the rest of the record. The fact that he’s known as McNasty in high school. His uttered profanities in no particular order on the floor of the Senate, to Senator John Cornyn, a Republican, to Senator Pete Domenici, to Chuck Grassley, all Republicans. McCain made contact with Senator Strom Thurmond, a guy who was in his nineties at that time – the late Senator Strom Thurmond – and knocked him on his butt.

In some of these other cases, I spoke to a defense analyst, a guy by the name of Winslow Wheeler, who worked for Senators Domenici, Javits, Kassebaum and David Pryor – three Republicans and a Democrat. Wheeler mostly considers himself a Republican and actually believed in limiting pork barrel spending, instead of just rhetoric like John McCain. Wheeler challenged John McCain that he wasn’t doing enough to control it. McCain got him fired and went on a mission to destroy him. And he said to me that John McCain winning the presidency and having control of the IRS, the CIA and the FBI should scare every American. Senator Thad Cochran, the fellow Republican Senator of his, before he got with the [Republican party line] program, spoke the truth earlier on and said that Senator McCain being president should send a cold chill down my spine.

BuzzFlash: Well, let’s go to the media because we’ve been through this with many candidates about the issue of how political figures cultivate the press. For instance, Bush was said to have beguiled the media because he has this very fare-thee-well persona, and the back-slapping, and gives reporters nicknames. And they feel very honored by this. And, to some of us, it’s kind of astonishing that the national press corps – people, in some cases, are paid in the high six figures if not more...

Cliff Schecter: And they behave like they’re at a high school election.

BuzzFlash: Well, that they allow their reporting to be influenced by the fact that they’re being flattered and cajoled by a candidate, rather than by the issues at hand.

Cliff Schecter: Yes.

BuzzFlash: And this comes up in your book. I mean, McCain gets extremely favorable press coverage.

Cliff Schecter: Yeah, he does. And that’s an important part of why these temper stories [are appearing] now, particularly what the Washington Post did in reporting the stories, and even in quoting Senator Bob Smith – another one who’s saying that he disqualified McCain as being president – former Republican senator of New Hampshire – which is great. They went out and got reports, and they looked into what I did, and what others did. So I give the Washington Post all the credit. I give Fox News credit. But it’s still not getting out there in the manner in which it should for a guy where there are this many incidents. I’ve only named incidents of very big named people for the most part. There are all sorts of activists and others in the POW-MIA community and other places that have had to deal with John McCain and have horror stories to tell of how he treated them. So this is out there.

Now to answer your question. I would say there are three parts to it that I sort of define why the media does this – why McCain gets such a free pass.

The first part, I think, is the whole war hero thing – the fact that he served in Vietnam, the fact that he was a prisoner of war for five years and was tortured. The media has this John Wayne-type complex where most of the men who work in the media view themselves as tough guys. And they want to be working-class heroes. You hear them referring to themselves that way all the time. I’m not saying everybody’s this way. But there are many cases of this where they see something in McCain they wish they saw in themselves – a kind of courage on the battlefield. And so that’s one reason that they sort of fell in love with him.

But then after that, he’s smart – his people did two smart things. They played on that war hero background, and they built this whole straight-talk persona. They couldn’t be further from the truth. Whether it’s foreign policy, tax cuts, abortion – I could give you dates and names of things he’s flip-flopped on off the board. So [McCain's campaign] built this great false image of this guy, this Teddy Roosevelt guy who speaks truth to power, when nothing could be further from the truth. And the press has eaten that up.

And the final part, of course, is that he gives them access and gives them everything they want. Now you just brought up he invites them to the Sedona ranch, and loads them up with barbecue, and has a little bit of that back-slapping thing that Bush has. And when you combine all that together, there’s simply no doubt that that’s affected the coverage of him.

BuzzFlash: You know, it’s somewhat astonishing, you know, to us at BuzzFlash, that you could have ABC in the Democratic debate spending 50 minutes on questions like – to Barack Obama – do you believe that your former pastor loves America in his heart. And, yet the press doesn’t seem to be holding McCain accountable for Hagee endorsing him to any great degree. I mean, not with the tenacity and ferociousness that Obama’s relationship with Reverend Wright has been brought up again and again, even though, you know, this is a secondary person. And on top of it, McCain sought Hagee’s endorsement.

Cliff Schecter: That’s correct.

BuzzFlash: So my question is: why is there this double standard toward McCain?

Cliff Schecter: Well, it’s exactly – it’s those three items that I talked about. He lays it on them, and sucks up to them constantly. They’re kind of in awe of his background way before he got into politics, something he did thirty-something years ago, which has nothing to do, by the way, with his political person. As someone once said to me: you know, courage in the battlefield and courage in politics are two very different things. And John McCain has proven that.

And then this straight-talker image. Again, that’s only the beginning of what they don’t report. To get to some of the more specifics, in 1990, he said we couldn’t even think about trading U.S. for Iraqi blood in the Gulf War. He was an isolationist. He was against being in Somalia, Haiti. He attacked Bill Clinton for it. And then you find out, of course that he does a complete 180 in the late nineties. Now, anybody who takes the positions McCain did before is waving the white flag. Now he's in league with neocon advisors and he'll have us go into Iran, North Korea, Syria, the Sudan when we’re done with Iraq, whatever "done" means. Richard Pearle wrote a book about this.

In addition, tax cuts – he stood up in 2001 and said George Bush’s tax cut was a budget buster. It went disproportionately to the wealthy. It was crazy during a time of war. He said that about the tax cut in 2003, after the war with Iraq. And now he’s fighting the fight to make these very same tax cuts permanent.

And the third one I’ll give you is on abortion. In 1999, he had two interviews with CNN and the San Francisco Chronicle where he said making abortion illegal would force women into horrible operations, and we shouldn’t overturn Roe v. Wade. Now he wants to overturn it. He even indicated he would support a human rights amendment.

So those are his three issues. I could give you a lot more when you go into gay rights, and creationism, and a variety of things he’s flip-flopped on. The media should be reporting this, but instead, they love the access. They love the pursuit of the image – the tough guy and all that. And so they don’t.

And just quickly saying what you said earlier, there was a guy employed in McCain's campaign in 2000, a known white supremacist named Richard Quinn, who wrote articles for a magazine called Southern Partisan. Other articles in the magazine talked about slavery being beneficial to African Americans. And Quinn himself openly praised David Duke and sold t-shirts mocking the assassination of President Lincoln. Where are the questions about that association?

Where are the questions about Rick Renzi, whom he got in a fist fight with, but eventually became friends with, who served in McCain's past campaign, and who’s now received a 53-count indictment against him by the FBI? McCain kept Renzi on as a co-chair of his Arizona campaign while running for office, after the guy was being investigated for all manner of misdeeds. Or the questions about Pastor Hagee. But beyond that, he befriended the late Jerry Falwell, who blamed 9/11 on Americans. He blamed it on gays and lesbians and a variety of other groups.

Or right here next to where I live in Columbus, Ohio, another [McCain association] reverend is named Rod Parsley, who has pretty much freaked out and said that the United States’ mission is to destroy Islam. Where are the questions on that? The truth is that if we want to get to the association game, there’s a heck of a lot of corrupt, crazy, deranged and racist people that John McCain has spent a lot of time with. This isn’t sort of a relationship in church. This is a political relationship with these people over many, many years. And he’s not being asked the very same questions.

BuzzFlash: And he also made peace with Jerry Falwell before he died.

Cliff Schecter: Well, yeah, I said that. That was one of the big ones. Falwell sat there after 9/11 and said that it was our fault. People for the American Way, gays, lesbians, separation of church and state – pretty much everything but the Tooth Fairy, although I’m sure he would have gotten to that – had caused 9/11 to happen. It was our fault. This is a guy whose endorsement McCain sought. McCain spoke at Liberty University, went on Meet the Press and said that Falwell was a positive influence on our political process, in contrast with the year 2000 when McCain said Falwell was an agent of intolerance. And yet nothing – nothing about him. Nothing about these unbelievably insane extremist preachers McCain supported.

BuzzFlash: Well, I should also note – and we’ve noted this on BuzzFlash – that there’s a double standard with Democrats and perhaps particularly a double standard because Barack Obama’s black, and he’s got the middle name Hussein, so the right wing’s going crazy about this. But McCain doesn’t generally wear a flag pin. And yet no one seems to ask him about this.

Cliff Schecter: Because that portrays one of the biases that I was talking about of the media towards him. Because they wouldn’t even deem to question his patriotism. Heck, he served us and was a prisoner for five years. By the way, Jeremiah Wright also served in the military.

BuzzFlash: Yeah, he was a Marine. I mean, you know, at a time when blacks were not treated that well in the Army.

Cliff Schecter: Right. So, you know, I mean, of course there’s a double standard. And it’s glaringly obvious to anybody who wants to take an objective look at these so-called quotes around this liberal media, which of course is a joke. Anybody who really watches can see the media has protected McCain, has stood up for him, and dismissed any charges. Just the other day, a bunch of major media figures dismissed the Washington Post article and said: oh, everybody has a temper. Well, not everybody has a temper where they physically assault people, call people, you know, unbelievable profanities in full public view, and make the kinds of enemies McCain has. And this is the guy we’re going to trust with his finger on the nuclear button or to go to diplomatic meetings abroad?

BuzzFlash: Well, again, you know, paradise is a Beach Boys song – "Bomb, Bomb, Bomb, Bomb, Bomb Iran," as McCain sang in New Hampshire. This is not a joke, I gather.

Cliff Schecter: Bombing Iran isn’t funny. I think I’ve got a pretty decent sense of humor. I don’t find any humor in that.

BuzzFlash: We’ve occasionally seen some of his uglier sides emerge. Going back again, as you did, for the epithet that he shouted in public to his wife. But it was during the nineties, the Clinton administration, that he made the Chelsea Clinton joke about why’s she so ugly? Because she’s the daughter of Janet Reno and who was it?

Cliff Schecter: I don’t remember. I think it was Janet Reno and Hillary Clinton.

BuzzFlash: Yeah.

Cliff Schecter: He was implying a few things with that comment. He was making an unbelievably nasty and not just mean-spirited, but quite frankly, sophomoric attack on the daughter of the President of the United States. And of course, implying his wife was a lesbian.

BuzzFlash: Have there been other times, that sort of dark side?

Cliff Schecter: There certainly has. I have an account in my book of a perfect example of where you can sort of see two for one – that he’s not the reformer he claims to be, and what a vicious guy he is. When he was working on his so-called campaign finance reform, he was working with Common Cause. And the president of Common Cause at the time was Shellie Pingree, who’s currently running for Congress in Maine. And Shellie Pingree disagreed with him about how they should go forward. McCain said they should just ban these 527 groups – all these independent ads attacking people.

By the way, I also state to you another flip-flop. He’s accepted 600 grand from the Swift Boaters – a 527 group and people he called dishonorable in 2004 – that’s a little aside for you.

But at the time he was willing to just ban those groups. Shellie Pingree said that we need to push for school public finance campaigns. And they both had experience in that, because in Arizona and Maine, both of those states publicly finance campaigns. Well, McCain disagreed. Not only was he against her on reform, but he decided, instead of trying to work out differences with her, was that he’d try to destroy her. So he started lobbying board members and also calling funders, and calling her all sorts of unbelievable names, and then attacking her. Making up stories about her and trying to get her fired from her job.

The Shellie Pingree story was another story I broke, again with anonymous sources. McCain people said: oh, it’s all trash journalism. And now Mark Schmitt, who writes for The American Prospect, has come out with his name and thoroughly confirmed everything and said that he was there. I wish I had interviewed him for the Pingree story. I didn’t know he was involved in these matters back then, because I know Mark. And he has completely corroborated what I said. That was an example where McCain tried to destroy someone’s career, and ruin their reputation over the fact they simply disagreed with him.

McCain also recently went to a newspaper – I will send you this e-mail if you wish to see it, to back up my account. But I don’t want to give the name of the reporter or the name of the newspaper on the record. It’s a major newspaper in Great Britain. McCain went to them and he smeared me. He made up absolute falsehoods and lies about me. He said that I’m unstable. I’m a known liar. You know, everything you can imagine he’d do. I’m a big boy. I don’t care. I think it shows more about him than it does about me. I kind of find it funny when John McCain calls somebody else unstable. And so this is what we’ve got.

After eight years of Bush, this is what people don’t get who support McCain. If you want more of the type of smears that the Bush people did to Richard Clark and Paul O'Neill and others who dared criticize the Bush administration, when they went after them to destroy them, that is what you’re going to get with John McCain. That is the kind of vicious character he is. And that is his dark side. It’s been there since he was young. It hasn’t gone anywhere. When he got into that fight with Rick Renzi, for example, he was referring to him as boy, which he likes to do to people just to be nasty, to put people down who are younger or a station he sees as below himself. He’s just not a good person, quite frankly.

BuzzFlash: Could you apply your knowledge of McCain to something that happened this week? Here, we had the North Carolina Republican Party running this very nasty ad against Barack Obama based on the Reverend Wright association. Well, McCain said: "I totally disapprove of the ad." But they went ahead and ran it. Now there's a 'have your cake and eat it too.' McCain’s the presumptive candidate of his party. And to be really objective, you’d assume the North Carolina party would go along with their presumptive candidate. But it doesn’t seem like he did anything beyond telling the media that he objected to it.

Cliff Schecter: Right. And I’m really glad you just asked that question, Mark, because that, right there, in the essence, is John McCain. That’s been his entire career. That’s what I was talking about – his foreign policy and taxes. It’s not good enough for John McCain to just take a position. He takes it – whatever position he believes at that moment, which, by the way, changes all the time – and he stands up and moralizes, and says how he’s right and everybody else is wrong. He then goes beyond it to personally insult some people who disagree with him, question their motives, question all manner of things about them. And then he acts like he’s doing it from good reasons. He calls it bipartisanship. And, you know, he’s doing it because he’s standing up for the country. That’s why he’s wrecking this person’s reputation – that’s why. And then you find him, like you did on foreign policy or taxes or abortion, 180 degrees on the opposite side within any matter of time. On one show with Chris Matthews, he switched his position on civil unions within one TV show. He was for it. And then somebody whispered in his ear, and then he was against it. The point is that yes, he’s having his cake and eating it too.

There’s no way that this guy who would stand up and curse people out before the Senate – if he were truly angry about that ad, we’d know it. MCain's own people had an e-mail this past week saying that Barack Obama was the candidate of Hamas. This came from the guy who said he wants this to be an honorable campaign, and he’s not going to engage in character assassination. He wants to talk about issues. I’m not going to use political speech here. He’s a liar, and a serial liar. And he’s gotten away with it by creating this straight-talk image. And it’s done a disservice to our democracy, quite frankly.

People are not getting earnest information about this guy. There is no doubt in my mind – I wrote a piece about this for the Campaign for America’s Future, where I’m a guest blogger right now, about the very thing you’re talking about in North Carolina. And how obvious it is that they’re bringing up the ghosts of Jesse Helms. And John McCain is just looking the other way, because that’s what he does. He says one thing and he does another. That’s John McCain.

BuzzFlash: Okay, let me ask you two more questions. One is: when McCain went on his recent trip to the Middle East and Iraq, that we described on BuzzFlash as Joe Lieberman accompanying him as sort of the assisted living caretaker for McCain, because McCain was sort of an assisted living tourist, and Lieberman was the assisted living caretaker, because McCain didn’t seem to know what was going on in Iraq or the Middle East.

Cliff Schecter: Lieberman had to whisper to him the difference between the Shiites and the Sunnis.

BuzzFlash: Is McCain really that out of it, that he doesn’t know the difference between Shiites and Sunnis, like who’s aligned with whom in Iraq and Iran, like it just doesn’t matter? And I ask that because it seems that McCain is the embodiment, at least now, of the victory culture. Who cares who they are or what they are? We just got to win because we’re Americans.

Cliff Schecter: That’s exactly right.

BuzzFlash: Don’t bother me with the details.

Cliff Schecter: I’m really glad you’re asking the perfect questions for people that need to know what they need to know here. Because the temper is a huge issue. The fact that McCain isn’t really a reformer, and pretends to be. And has 66 lobbyists bundling for him, and his campaign manager is a lobbyist.

BuzzFlash: He’s one of the biggest lobbyists.

Cliff Schecter: Yeah, Rick Davis, his campaign manager, is a huge lobbyist. And Charlie Black, his media advisor, and then the guy who runs the Senate office, Mark Buse, is a lobbyist. And, you know, he’s done all manner of favors for people with businesses on the Commerce Committee. And he goes on and on about how much of a reformer he is. He is not. Those are two things people need to understand.

The third one I think that’s very important for them to understand is he literally is the reprise of George W. Bush when it comes to knowledge of foreign policy and economic policy. I like to call him George W. Bush that can finish reading My Pet Goat. McCain's main attitude is 'Don’t bother me with the details.' McCain’s said he’s part of the war caucus now. His stance toward foreign policy is: 'I don’t really care. They’re all bad guys, and all look the same and sound the same, and that’s all that matters.'

Same thing with economic policy. He’s admitted he doesn’t really know the American economic policy, and that’s just fine. Bring Phil Graham on board – one of the guys who’s most responsible for the housing crisis right now, according to Paul Krugman and others, for some of the deregulation he helped push through when he was a Senator from Texas, and known as a senator in the pocket of the banking industry. Of course, Graham had to go work at UBS right after he deregulated them.

So expect McCain to just turn it over. Expect him to turn over the economic policy to Phil Graham the way George W. Bush has turned it over to all manner of people on the right. And expect him to turn over his foreign policy to the Bill Kristols, and the Charles Krauthammers, and the other ignoramuses of the world who have no idea about foreign cultures, and don’t care to know anything about foreign cultures. Whether something will work or not, whether diplomacy is the best option – well, they want to grab their guns first. Of course, all the ones advising McCain have also never – unlike McCain - have never stepped before a battlefield. It’s all playing games of Risk on their computers. And that’s who you’re looking at – a guy that just has a complete lack of knowledge, you know.

On the issue of healthcare, he simply says how horrible government healthcare is. And funny that – he’s been on government healthcare his entire life. He was born to an admiral. Here’s a guy who has had government healthcare taking care of him, and well, he’s reached his seventies now. So it seems it’s done pretty well for him.

BuzzFlash: He denied that, when someone asked him about that, if I recall.

Cliff Schecter: Well, Stephanopoulos asked him, and it was an absolutely lame joke, saying, well, the government’s taken care of me for a couple of years. So he wasn’t denying it. He was playing off of what he always plays off of, which is I was in the Hanoi Hilton, so anything else I do politically therefore is acceptable and good, because I was a prisoner of war. So he didn’t really deny it. He just changed the subject. But he knows as well as anybody else knows that the very healthcare he attacks is socialist. And the "horrible" government healthcare is the healthcare he’s been happy to accept his entire life. And he probably doesn’t really know the details because he’s never needed to. When you have government healthcare given to you by your dad, and when your wife – you get to leave your first wife and marry somebody else who’s worth $100 million, you don’t need to know much about the economy. You know, he’s perfectly fine not knowing about these issues.

And that is where he will be George Bush’s third term.

BuzzFlash: Okay, the final question is – and I don’t want to get into technical details, because they’re quite lengthy. I heard Rachel Maddow talking to the legal counsel for the DNC about this. And it took about a half an hour. But you’ll know what I’m talking about. But for our readers, this is to say that there is a strong case to be made that McCain in the primaries is violating the very campaign finance laws that he holds himself out as a maverick for creating – the Russ Feingold law having to do with a loan that was made to his campaign. The DNC is trying to get the FEC to look into it, but the FEC doesn’t have a quorum. So McCain – well, McCain’s sort of getting off the hook on all this. I think the details speak for themselves. And anyone who hears the story of what the loan had to do in terms of violations of the campaign finance laws he helped to create, it’s pretty clear. And he’s being saved by the lack of a quorum. But this goes back to the emergence of him as a maverick figure because he teamed up with Russ Feingold and campaign finance reform. But, you know, there’s a strong theory, of course, you’d agree with that may merely have come out of his trying to get out of the tar that he had poured upon himself with the Keating 5 affair.

Cliff Schecter: Yes.

BuzzFlash: Most people don’t even remember the Keating 5, not that we have long memories in America for political history. But his campaign finance efforts with Feingold brilliantly seemed to bury Keating 5, so we think, oh, it must have been the Keating 4.

Cliff Schecter: Isn’t that funny how that works here?

Another thing he’s gone back and forth on numerous times is whether or not he supports public funding for campaigns. He’s either supported or not supported numerous times. As you just referred to, this current law – the campaign spending – he obviously is not paying attention to the law, and doesn’t really mind the fact that, as you said, there’s no quorum. They’re not going to do anything about it. He can get away with it. So he’s violating the very spirit and really the actuality of the law that he supported in the past. But again, this is again what he’s done. He questions other people and talks about the appearance of impropriety and then he gets in a huff about it. Again, wouldn’t that make him be questioned whether he should have his campaign surrounded by lobbyists – 66 of them bundling for him? I mean, shouldn’t that have made him question not only whether he should have been on Charlie Keating’s corporate jet back in the eighties, and had the babysitter – which is really a true story – flown to the Bahamas on the corporate jet, but also whether he should be getting government people to try and support Vicki Iseman's clients, such as telco companies.

Iseman may be spending time with Rick Renzi, whom the FBI is looking into for financial impropriety. And Blackwell, who ran for governor of Ohio, and was the Secretary of State here that suppressed votes and had an investment in the Diebold computer touch screen. Blackwell had stock in Diebold and by coincidence had them buy these very touch screen computers to be used for voting. McCain has been spending time with these characters.

George Allen, who had a number of financial and other scandals, introduced McCain at the CPAC conference recently. McCain just doesn’t live up in any way to the standards he sets for the rest of us, and the image of being a reformer.

BuzzFlash: Just one quick follow-up and we’ll let you go. In relation to the New York Times story about McCain and Vicky Iseman -- it was very interesting. The mainstream press and some of the so-called pundits on television quickly focused on the propriety of whether the New York Times was indicating an affair between Iseman and McCain, rather than, as you pointed out, the impropriety of the fact that she was a lobbyist, and he was apparently passing on favors to the industry that she represented.

Cliff Schecter: Iseman was a telco lobbyist.

BuzzFlash: And that was the bigger story, you know, in terms of improprieties. Whether or not he had an intimate relationship to her, you know, is largely, you know, irrelevant. The fact that he was that close to her, she was flying with him, and he was doing favors for her clients, was the larger issue. But that got lost in whether or not the New York Times should have printed an article that suggested there was something salacious between them when – and the New York Times did a bad job because it didn’t bring the favoritism issue up front.

Cliff Schecter: Right. The shame of the whole thing is it kind of reminds one of what happened with George Bush and the Dan Rather situation. A couple of documents – whether or not they were forged – became the focus instead of the fact that there was a year and a half of time when Bush wasn’t showing up for duty.

It’s the same thing with John McCain here. People could focus on attacking the appearance of an affair with this woman and not proving it, when the point you needed to prove was that he wrote improper letters to clients that she was working for, pressuring regulators to deregulate the cable market in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania and other places. Not to mention she was able to give him a nice earful about other clients of hers when they were flying on corporate jets around the country and going to elite parties. And that was the important part. So it’s half the battle that got lost.

I’ve got two chapters in The Real McCain about it, looking at whether McCain is really a reformer. And just like many of the things I brought up on this phone call, it really debunks the reformer image. People have forgotten the Keating 5. It was a brilliant move on the part of McCain’s people for him to be the straight talker and push for campaign finance reform and all that to try and cover up his past. But the truth is, while he was pushing for campaign finance reform, he was still behaving in the same exact way as he did when the Keating 5 situation occurred. He never changed.

BuzzFlash: Okay, Cliff Schecter, a wonderful book. And thank you for exposing the real McCain.

Cliff Schecter: Thank you so much for your time, Mark. I appreciate it.

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