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March 8, 2008

Angry Boeing Supporters Target McCain

Filed under: News — Tags: , , , , — Volt @ 6:31 pm

 

Matthew Daly, The Associated Press, March 8, 2008

Angry Boeing supporters are vowing revenge against Republican presidential candidate John McCain over Chicago-based Boeing’s loss of a $35 billion Air Force tanker contract to the parent company of European plane maker Airbus.

There are other targets for their ire – the Air Force, the defense secretary and even the entire Bush administration.

But Boeing supporters in Congress are directing their wrath at McCain, the Arizona senator and nominee in waiting, for scuttling an earlier deal that would have let Boeing build the next generation of Air Force refueling tankers. Boeing now will miss out on a deal that it says would have supported 44,000 new and existing jobs at the company and suppliers in 40 states.

“I hope the voters of this state remember what John McCain has done to them and their jobs,” said Rep. Norm Dicks, D-Wash., whose state would have been home to the tanker program and gained about 9,000 jobs.

“Having made sure that Iraq gets new schools, roads, bridges and dams that we deny America, now we are making sure that France gets the jobs that Americans used to have,” said Rep. Rahm Emanuel, D-Ill. “We are sending the jobs overseas, all because John McCain demanded it.”

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Mehlman and Rove Boost McCain Campaign

Filed under: News — Tags: , , , — Volt @ 5:44 pm



David Paul Kuhn, Politico, March 8, 2008

John McCain is getting much more than President Bush’s endorsement and fundraising help for his campaign. He’s getting Bush’s staff.

It’s no secret that Steve Schmidt, Bush’s attack dog in the 2004 election, and Mark McKinnon, the president’s media strategist, are performing similar functions for McCain now.

But other big-name Bushies are lining up to boost McCain, too.

Ken Mehlman, who ran Bush’s 2004 campaign, is now serving as an unpaid, outside adviser to the Arizona Republican. Karl Rove, the president’s top political hand since his Texas days, recently gave money to McCain and soon after had a private conversation with the senator. A top McCain adviser said both Mehlman and Rove are now informally advising the campaign. Rove refused to detail his conversation with McCain.

The list could grow longer. Dan Bartlett, formerly a top aide in the Bush White House, and Sara Taylor, the erstwhile Bush political adviser, said they are eager to provide any assistance and advice possible to McCain.

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March 7, 2008

Bush’s Touch

Filed under: Toon — Tags: , , , , — Volt @ 5:26 pm

President McCain on the Right to Chose

Filed under: Toon — Tags: , , , — Volt @ 11:19 am

Passing the Torch

Filed under: Toon — Tags: , , , — Volt @ 11:15 am

March 6, 2008

Vote For McCain And This is What You Get

Filed under: Toon — Tags: , , , , — Volt @ 8:15 pm

March 5, 2008

Liberal Group Goes After McCain

Filed under: Commentary — Tags: , , , — Volt @ 7:47 pm



Jim Kuhnhenn, The Associated Press, March 5, 2008

WASHINGTON — A Democratic-leaning group financed by a major labor union and wealthy liberal activists is running ads against Sen. John McCain in Ohio and Pennsylvania, the beginning of a media campaign against the GOP nominee-in-waiting.

Called “McSame,” the ad portrays McCain and President Bush as interchangeable on key issues such as Iraq, tax cuts and health care.

The ad is the work of the Campaign to Defend America, a nonprofit organization that is among anti-war and left-of-center groups that have pledged a multimillion-dollar effort to target McCain and congressional Republicans on the consequences of the Iraq war on the U.S. economy.

The group has pledged to spend more than $1 million on the current ad campaign, which is to extend to other states. The group is buying relatively modest amounts of time compared to what presidential candidates like Barack Obama and Hillary Rodham Clinton are spending.

According to records filed with the Federal Election Commission last week, the group planned to spend only about $140,000 on the ad in Ohio.

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March 3, 2008

Campaign Financing To Date

Filed under: Toon — Tags: , , , , — Volt @ 9:45 pm

March 2, 2008

Love Your Democracy Garden…

Filed under: Toon — Tags: , , , , , — Volt @ 3:23 am

Frank Rich: McCain Channels His Inner Hillary

Filed under: Commentary — Tags: , , , , , — Volt @ 3:07 am

Frank Rich, The New York Times, March 2, 2008

Before they were sidetracked into a new war against The New York Times, the Rush Limbaugh posse had it right about John McCain. He is a double agent. Some Democrats do admire and like him. So does Jon Stewart, and so do many liberal editorial boards and card-carrying hacks in the mainstream American press. So, in fact, do many at The Times, including myself. As long as I don’t look too hard at the fine print.

You’ve got to love a guy who said a few years ago that he regretted likening Mr. Limbaugh to “a circus clown” because of all the complaints from circus clowns insulted by the comparison. “I would like to extend my apologies to Bozo, Chuckles and Krusty,” Senator McCain told a rather startled Neil Cavuto of Fox News.

What’s more, Ann Coulter and Tom DeLay aren’t entirely wrong when they bluster that a vote for Mr. McCain amounts to a vote for Hillary Clinton (or, for that matter, Barack Obama). The Arizona senator’s otherwise conservative record is closer to the Democrats on immigration, campaign-finance reform, stem-cell research, global warming, oil drilling in Alaska, waterboarding, Gitmo and, until a recent flip-flop, the Bush tax cuts. In The New Republic, Jonathan Chait concluded that Mr. McCain’s Senate votes made him “the most effective advocate of the Democratic agenda in Washington” during the first Bush term.

All of which should make Democrats more nervous than the clowns of the hard right. Might Mr. McCain so blur distinctions that he could grab enough independents to triumph? He won even among antiwar and anti-Bush voters in New Hampshire. A Mason-Dixon poll last week found Mr. McCain beating either Senator Obama or Senator Clinton in must-win Florida.

The good news for the Democrats so far is that whatever Mr. McCain’s sporadic overlap with liberals, he is emulating almost identically the suicidal Clinton campaign against Mr. Obama. He has mimicked Mrs. Clinton’s message and rhetorical style, her tone-deaf contempt for Mr. Obama’s cultural appeal, and her complete misreading of just how politically radioactive the war in Iraq remains despite its migration from the front page.

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February 29, 2008

Designated Front Runner

Filed under: Toon — Tags: , , , , , , — Volt @ 9:42 pm

Obama Backs Law Assuring That McCain Can Run For President

Filed under: News — Tags: , , , , — Volt @ 1:24 pm

Shailagh Murray,The Washington Post, February 29, 2008

FT. WORTH, Texas — Sen. Barack Obama’s campaign announced he would co-sponsor legislation introduced yesterday by his political ally Missouri Sen. Claire McCaskill to ensure that John McCain can become president, even though he was born in the Panama Canal Zone.

The issue of McCain’s eligibility was raised in a New York Times article noting the constitutional requirement that a U.S. president be a “natural-born citizen” had never been fully defined.

The McCaskill bill, submitted immediately after she scrawled it onto a notepad on the Senate floor in response to the Times story, would establish the eligibility of anyone born to a U.S. citizen who is serving overseas as an active or reserve members of the U.S. Armed Forces. The Arizona senator’s father was a Navy officer serving in the Canal Zone when McCain was born there in 1936.

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Joe Conason: John McCain’s Political Quagmire

Filed under: Uncategorized — Tags: , , , — Volt @ 10:44 am



Joe Conason, TruthDig, February 28, 2008

Within the next two weeks, the number of American troops killed in Iraq is likely to reach 4,000, assuming that the average number of fatal casualties per day remains steady. It is an arbitrary number, given meaning by the fact that the nation may briefly take notice, but a day will come in this presidential campaign when Sen. John McCain must explain what he thinks we have gained by the sacrifice of those men and women.

Anticipating that prospect must make McCain uneasy. Speaking to reporters on his campaign bus the other day, he worried aloud that unless he can persuade voters that current policy is succeeding in Iraq, “then I lose. I lose.”

Almost immediately he regretted his candor and asked for a quick rewrite. “If I may, I’d like to retract ‘I’ll lose.’ But I don’t think there’s any doubt that how they judge Iraq will have a direct relation to their judgment of me, my support of the surge,” he said. As the presumptive Republican nominee – representing the continuation of a presidency that has fallen from favor with as many as eight out of 10 Americans – McCain has ample reason to worry. His forthright support of President Bush, the war and the escalation of the past year is unlikely to endear him to independent voters who otherwise admire his maverick image and reform record. They still feel betrayed by the exaggerations and lies that led us into war. They don’t want to spend any more lives or money on this misadventure.

Against that overwhelming public sentiment, McCain insists that he can see “a clear path to success in Iraq,” with American and civilian casualties declining and Iraqis assuming responsibility for their own security. The Arizona senator evidently realizes that his recent prediction of a century-long American occupation did not go over well. “All of us want out of Iraq,” he told the Associated Press on Feb. 25. “The question is, how do we want out of Iraq.”

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The Economist: John McCain’s Obstacles

Filed under: Commentary — Tags: , , , — Volt @ 10:18 am

 

The Economist, February 29, 2008

John McCain, an enthusiastic gambler and inveterate collector of lucky charms, has the luck of the devil. For him to win the Republican nomination for president, Mike Huckabee had to beat Mitt Romney in Iowa, Rudy Giuliani had to pursue a deranged strategy, Fred Thompson had to contract narcolepsy, and the “surge” had to go well. Mr McCain has run the tables.

But will the senator’s luck outlast the primary season? The past week or so has produced some ominous signs. On January 21st the New York Times ran a story alleging that Mr McCain had a too-close-for-comfort relationship with a female lobbyist. Four days later the Democratic National Committee filed a complaint with the Federal Election Commission, suggesting the McCain campaign had violated the law on spending restraints.

The short-term damage has been limited. The New York Times poisoned its own story by nods and winks. The debate about Mr McCain’s campaign-finance behaviour is so convoluted that only lawyers understand it. The McCain campaign is now hoovering up more cash than ever, thanks to conservative rage at the “liberal media”.

Yet both stories point to a long-term problem: money, not sex. Mr McCain sells himself as a scourge of special interests and hammer of lobbyists. He also styles himself a hands-on reformer who has tried to fix America’s campaign-finance system. For a presidential candidate, this might prove the equivalent of attaching a sign to your behind saying “Kick me”.

Mr McCain is no stranger to the world of lobbyists. Several members of his staff, including his campaign manager, Rick Davis, are lobbyists. So are about 60 of the most generous contributors to his campaign. The senator is not averse to taking lifts on corporate jets. The public-finance system Mr McCain helped design is so unwieldy that even the man who invented it finds it a nightmare.

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February 27, 2008

Suddenly The Right Loves John McCain

Filed under: Toon — Tags: , , , , — Volt @ 8:23 pm

February 25, 2008

GrandPa McCain Admits That His Stand on the Iraq War Will Cost Him the Election

Filed under: News — Tags: , , , — Volt @ 9:33 pm

The Associated Press, February 25, 2008

ROCKY RIVER, Ohio (AP) — John McCain said Monday that to win the White House he must convince a war-weary country that U.S. policy in Iraq is succeeding. If he can’t, ”then I lose. I lose,” the Republican said.

He quickly backed off that remark.

”Let me not put it that stark,” the likely GOP nominee told reporters on his campaign bus. ”Let me just put it this way: Americans will judge my candidacy first and foremost on how they believe I can lead the country both from our economy and for national security. Obviously, Iraq will play a role in their judgment of my ability to handle national security.”

”If I may, I’d like to retract ‘I’ll lose.’ But I don’t think there’s any doubt that how they judge Iraq will have a direct relation to their judgment of me, my support of the surge,” McCain added. ”Clearly, I am tied to it to a large degree.”

The five-year-old Iraq conflict already is emerging as a fault line in the general election, with the Arizona senator calling for the U.S. military to continue its mission while his Democratic opponents urge speedy withdrawal.

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