McCain Put Campaign Over Country

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Al Qaeda Endorses McCain

Make-Believe Maverick

From Rolling Stone 10/16 edition

A closer look at the life and career of John McCain reveals a disturbing record of recklessness and dishonesty

John McCain - Economic Disaster

NY Times Op-Ed: Blizzard of Lies

By Paul Krugman

Did you hear about how Barack Obama wants to have sex education in kindergarten, and called Sarah Palin a pig? Did you hear about how Ms. Palin told Congress, “Thanks, but no thanks” when it wanted to buy Alaska a Bridge to Nowhere?

These stories have two things in common: they’re all claims recently made by the McCain campaign — and they’re all out-and-out lies.

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Another Editorial: Campaign of lies disgraces McCain

St Petersburg Times
For Publication 9/14/08

This nation is facing real challenges on the economy, health care, jobs and the ongoing wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. There are significant differences between how Sen. Barack Obama and Sen. John McCain would address them. But McCain's recent campaign ads suggest the most vital issues are whether Obama wanted to teach sex education to kindergarten children and whether he derided the Republican's running mate, Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin, by talking about lipstick on a pig.

McCain's straight talk has become a toxic mix of lies and double-speak. It is leaving a permanent stain on his reputation for integrity, and it is a short-term strategy that eventually will backfire with the very types of independent-thinking voters that were so attracted to him.

-SNIP-

McCain's faux chivalrous outrage over Obama's purported insult is beneath him. He has been a serious public servant willing to say unpopular truths when he thought it best for the country, but he's more than willing in this election to put his name on campaign lies. The leader who says he would rather lose an election than lose a war now risks losing his reputation in an attempt to win the White House.

Full Editorial

5 McCain videos everyone should see

Below are five videos that present the Real McCain: an elitist out of touch with hard-working Americans; a double talker who supports a costly war in Iraq but won't support our veterans. This is the McCain everyone should know.

1. The Real McCain 2: Watch as McCain's YouTube problem became his nightmare in the video that received over 4 million views.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GEtZlR3zp4c

2. Less Jobs. More Wars: What is this 'Iraq war' charge on my bill?
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Lh-T2iGkLJY

3. John McCain vs. John McCain: Tell McCain to get off the Double Talk Express.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ioy90nF2anI

4. McCain's Spiritual Guide: The video that caused McCain to renounce Rev. Rod Parsley's bigoted endorsement.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WXZbIGJrDkg

5. Why Won't McCain Sign the GI Bill? Presenting the most blatant hypocrisy of the McCain campaign.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pK_9sI7hzAc

As Vets Take to the Streets to Protest the War, McCain Snubs IVAW at the RNC

"War hero" McCain voted against healthcare funding for veterans in 2003, '04, '05, '06 and '07. Now veterans are confronting him on his record.

McCain, Get To Work

Conservatives Filibuster Medicare Patients

On Thursday, Senate conservatives blocked a bill that would have averted a 10.6 percent cut in Medicare payments to doctors. The bill, which would have canceled a reduction in Medicare fees and increased doctor pay by 1.1 percent, passed the House last week 355-59. But the Senate failed to invoke cloture on the bill by only one vote. Sen. John McCain (R-AZ) was the only senator to miss the vote, besides Sen. Ted Kennedy (D-MA), who is undergoing treatment for a brain tumor. The bill had proposed offsetting the increased doctor pay by reducing payments to Medicare Advantage's private fee-for-service insurers, a provision opposed by the White House. In a "misleading" move, the Bush administration announced this week it had asked the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS) to delay making payments to physicians until July 15, giving the Senate time to pass another bill after the July 4th recess. Yet as Sens. Jay Rockefeller (D-WV) and Chuck Schumer (D-NY) explained, the administration was simply following existing law, and it is "misleading the public by claiming" to help ameliorate the negative effects of a legislative move it endorsed.

10 Things You Should Know About John McCain

Recently there’s been several articles about supporters of Clinton planning to vote for McCain. I think most don't fully know or understand McCain's record. So, I’d like to share a list of things that *you* should know about John McCain that were posted on Moveon.Org

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.
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.”
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.
4. McCain opposes a woman’s right to choose. He said, “I do not support Roe versus Wade. It should be overturned.”
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.
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.
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.”
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.
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.”
10. He positions himself as pro-environment, but he scored a 0—yes, zero—from the League of Conservation Voters last year.

The wife U.S. Republican John McCain callously left behind

Ted Sampley, who fought with US Special Forces in Vietnam and is now a leading campaigner for veterans’ rights, said: ‘I have been following John McCain’s career for nearly 20 years. I know him personally. There is something wrong with this guy and let me tell you what it is – deceit.

‘When he came home and saw that Carol was not the beauty he left behind, he started running around on her almost right away. Everybody around him knew it.

‘Eventually he met Cindy and she was young and beautiful and very wealthy. At that point McCain just dumped Carol for something he thought was better.

‘This is a guy who makes such a big deal about his character. He has no character. He is a fake. If there was any character in that first marriage, it all belonged to Carol.’
Read Entire Story

Game On!

23/6 has taken a very clever approach to the attacks against Michelle Obama from the right.

From now until the second Tuesday in November, every time Michelle Obama is unfairly attacked or portrayedby the media or a Republican-backed 527 group, 23/6 will remind you of this terrifying and true fact about Cindy McCain.

McCain misrepresents Obama's stand on naming Revolutionary Guard as terrorists

John McCain is attacking Barack Obama's opposition to the Kyl-Lieberman amendment, which (among other things) called for labeling Iran's Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps as a terrorist organization. McCain claims that Obama's opposition means that he also opposed calling the IRGC terrorists. We find otherwise.

Obama cosponsored an earlier bill that also called for designating the IRGC as a terrorist organization.

The Kyl-Lieberman amendment did more than just label the IRGC terrorists. Obama stated at the time that he opposed the bill on the grounds that it constituted "saber-rattling."

McCain claims that Obama must oppose calling the IRGC a terrorist group because Obama's Web site doesn't say anything about the IRGC. McCain's argument is a glaring example of the logical fallacy of argumentum ad ignorantiam.

Note: This is a summary only. The full article with analysis, images and citations may be viewed at factcheck.org

McCain's Infidelity Haunts Him on the Trail

As you'll see in this video, from a town hall meeting in Nashville, Tennessee, mixed in with platitudes about gay marriage, we get a nice little comment from this questioner on the sanctity of marriage in McCain's life--or more to the point, sanctimony.

McCain: I'd Spy on Americans Secretly, Too

If elected president, Senator John McCain would reserve the right to run his own warrantless wiretapping program against Americans, based on the theory that the president's wartime powers trump federal criminal statutes and court oversight, according to a statement released by his campaign Monday.

McCain's new tack towards the Bush administration's theory of executive power comes some 10 days after a McCain surrogate stated, incorrectly it seems, that the senator wanted hearings into telecom companies' cooperation with President Bush's warrantless wiretapping program, before he'd support giving those companies retroactive legal immunity.

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Jon Stewart Rips into McCain

The REAL McCain

McCain's 'Maverick' Myth Is the Media's Creation

The bizarre tale of how the media turned a crooked Republican into the mirage of a principled politician.

The McCain-Lobbyist Connection

The media is particularly fond of the myth that John McCain is the senatorial thorn in the side of Washington lobbyists. This myth is pervasive and it suggests that McCain is the "maverick, moderate reformer" that he claims to be. Despite all of his posturing, McCain's 2008 presidential campaign is rife with lobbyist connections.

Not only does the McCain campaign have more current and former lobbyist bundlers than any other candidate, but McCain has more current and former lobbyists working on his campaign staff than any other candidate in the 2008 presidential election. Media Matters for America has previously catalogued the extensive number of lobbyists and their deep connections to industries, such as the communication and financial industries, which McCain oversaw as chair of the Senate Commerce Committee. Click here to learn more