MoveOn.org has compiled TEN THINGS YOU NEED TO KNOW ABOUT JOHN MCCAIN:

10 things you should know about John McCain (but probably don't):

1. John McCain voted against establishing a national holiday in honor of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. Now he says his position has "evolved," yet he's continued to oppose key civil rights laws.1

2. According to Bloomberg News, McCain is more hawkish than Bush on Iraq, Russia and China. Conservative columnist Pat Buchanan says McCain "will make Cheney look like Gandhi."2

3. His reputation is built on his opposition to torture, but McCain voted against a bill to ban waterboarding, and then applauded President Bush for vetoing that ban.3

4. McCain opposes a woman's right to choose. He said, "I do not support Roe versus Wade. It should be overturned."4

5. The Children's Defense Fund rated McCain as the worst senator in Congress for children. He voted against the children's health care bill last year, then defended Bush's veto of the bill.5

6. He's one of the richest people in a Senate filled with millionaires. The Associated Press reports he and his wife own at least eight homes! Yet McCain says the solution to the housing crisis is for people facing foreclosure to get a "second job" and skip their vacations.6

7. Many of McCain's fellow Republican senators say he's too reckless to be commander in chief. One Republican senator said: "The thought of his being president sends a cold chill down my spine. He's erratic. He's hotheaded. He loses his temper and he worries me."7

8. McCain talks a lot about taking on special interests, but his campaign manager and top advisers are actually lobbyists. The government watchdog group Public Citizen says McCain has 59 lobbyists raising money for his campaign, more than any of the other presidential candidates.8

9. McCain has sought closer ties to the extreme religious right in recent years. The pastor McCain calls his "spiritual guide," Rod Parsley, believes America's founding mission is to destroy Islam, which he calls a "false religion." McCain sought the political support of right-wing preacher John Hagee, who believes Hurricane Katrina was God's punishment for gay rights and called the Catholic Church "the Antichrist" and a "false cult."9

10. He positions himself as pro-environment, but he scored a 0—yes, zero—from the League of Conservation Voters last year.10

This is the stuff of nightmares! McCain, age 71, with Rice as his VP!

GOP strategist: Condi Rice 'actively campaigning' to be VP

On ABC's This Week, Republican strategist Dan Senor said that Condoleezza Rice has been actively campaigning to be John McCain's pick for Vice President.

Speaking of possible Vice President options for McCain, Senor said, "Condi Rice is an option. Tom Ridge is an option. Although, I think he'd have problems at the convention. Mitt Romney is an option. Condoleezza Rice has been actively campaigning for this. There's this ritual in Washington, The Americans for Tax Reform which is headed by Grover Norquist, holds a weekly meeting of conservative leaders, about 100 or 150 people. Sort of inside chattering class types and they all typically get briefings from political conservative leaders. Ten days ago, they had an interesting visit from Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice."

One has to wonder why the National Security Advisor who dropped the ball on the 9-11 attacks gets promoted to Secretary of State, becoming the WORST Sec of State in History, could be even be considered as a VP candidate. Are the rumors of her being the war chimp's mistress (second wife) to be given further credence? She should be the third person indicted for war crimes after the War Chimp and Darth. Her only post administration consideration should be finding a good defense attorney.

Fourth.

Rummy out least had the good graces to resign after the Dems won in 2006. As delusional as he most assuredly is, he is not actively seeking the VP spot on the Repug ticket.

How about McCain is Insane !!!!!!!!!

Once again, McCain confuses Sunnis with Shiites

John McCain isn't quite sure of himself on Iraq.

Last month, the Arizona senator got a whisper in his ear from Sen. Joe Lieberman, after he said that Iran was providing aid to Al Qaeda in Iraq, a Sunni group. Iran, however, is actually a Shiite nation. On Fox News Sunday, McCain also got wrong the details of an Iraqi ceasefire.

"His friend, Joe Lieberman, who was also on the trip, had to famously whisper in his ear to correct him," the LA Times writes today. "This allowed McCain's two Democratic rivals for the presidency, Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton to criticize McCain for his mistake, which came in the area that's supposed to be in his wheelhouse: national security and foreign policy."

At today's Senate Armed Services Committee hearing, McCain seems to have gotten it wrong again, when interviewing Iraq commander Gen. David Petraeus.

MCCAIN: "There are numerous threats to security in Iraq and the future of Iraq. Do you still view al-Qaeda in Iraq as a major threat?"

PETRAEUS: "It is a major threat. Though it is certainly as not as major a threat as it was say, 15 months ago."

MCCAIN: "Certainly not an obscure sect of the Shias overall?

PETRAEUS: "No, sir."

MCCAIN: "Or Sunnis or anybody else then?

Watch the video on The Huffington Post

HERE

McCain fails to vote on defeated equal pay for women Senate bill

Republican Sen. John McCain, campaigning through poverty-stricken cities and towns, said Wednesday he opposed a Senate bill that sought equal pay for women because it would lead to more lawsuits.

The bill was defeated in the Senate by a vote of 56-42.

The Senate had scheduled a late Wednesday vote on the measure, which would have made it easier for women to sue their employers for pay discrimination. Both Democratic presidential candidates, Sens. Hillary Rodham Clinton and Barack Obama, left the campaign trail and returned to Washington to vote for the bill.

McCain skipped the vote to campaign in New Orleans.

Olbermann: McCain doesn’t even play by his own ethical rules

Under the heading “Double Talk Express,” MSNBC’s Keith Olbermann reported on Monday that Sen. John McCain has twice crossed ethical guidelines laid down by his own campaign. “He’s such a maverick, he not only doesn’t play by other people’s rules, he doesn’t even play by his own rules,” stated Olbermann mockingly.

McCain has made an issue of Barack Obama’s former pastor, Reverend Jeremiah Wright, even after saying he would not do so. He also promised last year that he would not draw on his wife’s inherited fortune for his campaign, but it has now come out that he has enjoyed the use of her corporate jet at bargain rates, thanks to a loophole in a campaign reform law which he supported.

“What are the risks for McCain of trying to play Good Cop Bad Cop the Solitaire Version?” Olbermann asked Rachel Maddow of Air America.

“I think there’s kind of two risks,” Maddow replied. She explained that “the first is that his political identity evaporates. … if he becomes known as a flip-flopper,” but that even worse for McCain would be if Obama turns the tactic of guilt by association against him. “That’s not something that I think he wants to invite scrutiny on,” she stated.

Maddow suggested that if Obama wanted to go after McCain more aggressively than he has up to this point, he could easily say something like “I have no political alliance with Jeremiah Wright, I disavow his political views, he disavows my political views — but John McCain has made political associations … with extremist political figures like John Hagee and Rod Parsley.”

McInsane.
McInane.
Mc Brain Drain.
Republicans would do well to McAbstain
From McWane and disdain.

Good one, CZ....quite poetic. You should cross-post it in the Magic Carpet forum!

McCain's character issue is a bit disturbing.

Does he really respect women, especially those in power? Would he call German Chancellor Angela Merkel that unmentionable word he called his wife, especially when his temper is hair trigger?

That famed "call at 3 AM" demands a cool head. Could he be disturbed from his sleep apnea to calmly make the right commander-in-chief decision?

NO, he does not respect women. YES, he will call anyone anything if he thinks he can get by with it, and NO he is not the one I'd want to receive that 3 am call, but then neither is GEORGE, and I just hope he doesn't get one before January 20, 2009.


[url=http://www.rawstory.com/news/mochila/McCain_seeks_costly_tax_cuts_but_va_05012008.html]McCain seeks costly tax cuts, but vague on paying for them

[/url]

Republican John McCain is making promises that would cost billions of taxpayer dollars, yet he is vague about how he would pay for them.

McCain is handing around a campaign grab bag of goodies. There are little treats like a summer gas-tax holiday and new mortgages for struggling homeowners, and there are big plums like tax breaks for corporations and families with children.

The expected GOP presidential nominee has nothing on the Democrats. Hillary Rodham Clinton and Barack Obama would spend billions of dollars themselves on things like paid family leave, universal health insurance and preschool for kids.

The difference? Unlike the Democrats, McCain has made a career of trying to cut spending. He rails against spending in nearly every speech. He gets laughs by singling out silly sounding projects like a federal DNA study of bears in Montana: "I don't know if that was a paternity issue or a criminal issue."

And McCain gets attention when he says it was spending, not the war in Iraq, that cost Republicans their control of Congress in 2006.

He's as delusional as his twin, Bush!

McCain must be having trouble with his earpiece OR Cheney wasn't getting through to his 70+ year old brain.

McCain just as much as admitted that the Iraq invasion was about oil in an earlier speech. He's now having to scramble to try to explain what he said:

McCain Revisits Remarks about Oil and Occupation

In a bid to clarify his stance on the (current) Iraq war, as well as just how long he’d be “fine” with maintaining a U.S. military presence in the region, Sen. John McCain held one of those town hall meetings that are so de rigueur among campaigning politicians these days, this time in Denver, where he performed some semantic gymnastics for his audience at the Robert E. Loup Jewish Community Center.

Republican John McCain was forced to clarify his comments Friday suggesting the Iraq war involved U.S. reliance on foreign oil. He said he was talking about the first Gulf War and not the current conflict. At issue was a comment he made at a town hall-style meeting Friday morning in Denver.

“My friends, I will have an energy policy that we will be talking about, which will eliminate our dependence on oil from the Middle East that will prevent us from having ever to send our young men and women into conflict again in the Middle East,” McCain said.



He said he didn’t mean the U.S. went to war in Iraq five years ago over oil.

“No, no, I was talking about that we had fought the Gulf War for several reasons,” McCain told reporters.

Does he even know which war we're in?

[url=http://www.truthdig.com/eartotheground/item/20080521_more_of_the_same_from_mccain/]McCain’s Cuba Policy: The Same Old Stuff
[/url]

In keeping with his image as a president for yesterday, John McCain promised a crowd in Florida he would do nothing to upset the policy of isolation that has proved so ineffective in regard to Cuba. “Florida will be yours!” shouted a grateful foe of the Castro regime.