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Subject: RE: BS: Popular views on McCain From: Amos Date: 28 Sep 08 - 12:41 PM For McCain and Team, a Host of Ties to Gambling SINGLE PAGE REPRINTS SAVE SHARE By JO BECKER and DON VAN NATTA Jr. Published: September 27, 2008 Senator John McCain was on a roll. In a room reserved for high-stakes gamblers at the Foxwoods Resort Casino in Connecticut, he tossed $100 chips around a hot craps table. When the marathon session ended around 2:30 a.m., the Arizona senator and his entourage emerged with thousands of dollars in winnings. HONING AN IMAGE Senator John McCain, as chairman of the Indian Affairs Committee, at a hearing in 2005 to examine accusations of misconduct made by six Indian tribes against their former lobbyist, Jack Abramoff. Mr. McCain supported tax breaks for casinos over the years, including one that helped Foxwoods in Connecticut. He has also gambled there. A lifelong gambler, Mr. McCain takes risks, both on and off the craps table. He was throwing dice that night not long after his failed 2000 presidential bid, in which he was skewered by the Republican Party's evangelical base, opponents of gambling. Mr. McCain was betting at a casino he oversaw as a member of the Senate Indian Affairs Committee, and he was doing so with the lobbyist who represents that casino, according to three associates of Mr. McCain. The visit had been arranged by the lobbyist, Scott Reed, who works for the Mashantucket Pequot, a tribe that has contributed heavily to Mr. McCain's campaigns and built Foxwoods into the world's second-largest casino. Joining them was Rick Davis, Mr. McCain's current campaign manager. Their night of good fortune epitomized not just Mr. McCain's affection for gambling, but also the close relationship he has built with the gambling industry and its lobbyists during his 25-year career in Congress. As a two-time chairman of the Indian Affairs Committee, Mr. McCain has done more than any other member of Congress to shape the laws governing America's casinos, helping to transform the once-sleepy Indian gambling business into a $26-billion-a-year behemoth with 423 casinos across the country. He has won praise as a champion of economic development and self-governance on reservations. "One of the founding fathers of Indian gaming" is what Steven Light, a University of North Dakota professor and a leading Indian gambling expert, called Mr. McCain. As factions of the ferociously competitive gambling industry have vied for an edge, they have found it advantageous to cultivate a relationship with Mr. McCain or hire someone who has one, according to an examination based on more than 70 interviews and thousands of pages of documents. Mr. McCain portrays himself as a Washington maverick unswayed by special interests, referring recently to lobbyists as "birds of prey." Yet in his current campaign, more than 40 fund-raisers and top advisers have lobbied or worked for an array of gambling interests — including tribal and Las Vegas casinos, lottery companies and online poker purveyors. ... |
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Subject: RE: BS: Popular views on McCain From: Riginslinger Date: 28 Sep 08 - 01:08 PM And why would all the gambling gurus be backing McCain? Because they know that if McCain is elected, people will have a lot more money in their pockets to take to the casinos. |
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Subject: RE: BS: Popular views on McCain From: Amos Date: 28 Sep 08 - 01:33 PM That's really silly, Rig. A |
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Subject: RE: BS: Popular views on McCain From: Alice Date: 28 Sep 08 - 01:57 PM Some candidates are running from the Bush Republican label by not using the word at all, but rather turning to the Grand Old Party (GOP) brand, but erroneously calling it the GOP Party (Grand Old Party Party). Dino Rossi, in WA, is listing himself on the ballot as GOP Party, instead of Republican Party. (Grand Old Party Party!) Just opening her mouth on a shopping trip for cheesecake got Sarah into gaffe trouble again: "Sen. John McCain retracted Sarah Palin's stance on Pakistan Sunday morning, after the Alaska governor appeared to back Sen. Barack Obama's support for unilateral strikes inside Pakistan against terrorists Saturday night, while on a stop for cheesesteaks in South Philadelphia, Palin was questioned by a Temple graduate student about whether the U.S. should cross the border from Afghanistan into Pakistan. "If that's what we have to do stop the terrorists from coming any further in, absolutely, we should," Palin said. |
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Subject: RE: BS: Popular views on McCain From: Amos Date: 28 Sep 08 - 02:43 PM "Suppose John McCain had been in the White House in October 1962, facing one of the great tests of the modern presidency. If so, we might remember that period not as "the Cuban missile crisis" but as "World War III." Fred R. Conrad/The New York Times Nicholas D. Kristof On the Ground Nicholas Kristof addresses reader feedback and posts short takes from his travels. Go to Columnist Page » As Mr. McCain demonstrated in Friday evening's debate, he is a serious foreign policy thinker who has traveled widely, and he certainly showed vision and bipartisanship in helping to repair relations with Vietnam. But it's equally clear that in recent years Mr. McCain has become impish cubed — impulsive, impetuous and impatient — and those are perilous qualities in a commander in chief. Although he is frantically trying to distance himself from President Bush, Mr. McCain, by his own accounting, would be more Bushian in foreign policy than even Mr. Bush is now. While Mr. Bush has been forced to accept more sensible policies in his second term, Mr. McCain has become steadily more of a neocon in the cowboy role that Mr. Bush played in his first term, prone to solving problems with stealth bombers rather than United Nations resolutions. Judging from Mr. McCain's own positions, he might well revive a cold war with Russia and could start a hot war with Iran or North Korea." (Kristoph, NYT) |
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Subject: RE: BS: Popular views on McCain From: Riginslinger Date: 28 Sep 08 - 09:49 PM "'If that's what we have to do stop the terrorists from coming any further in, absolutely, we should," Palin said.' That's a lot different than Obama's proposal of just simply invading Pakistan without pre-conditions. Palin will wise up real quick, I suspect, and quit responding to graduate students from Temple. One might very well be an operative of MoveOn.org. |
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Subject: RE: BS: Popular views on McCain From: Barry Finn Date: 29 Sep 08 - 12:41 AM Rigs, you have not looked at the Great Depression at all have you. Orginized Crime got it's real start & boost during the 20's & into the early 30's with the proabition era but the gambling that was not a big winner prior to the depression & probabition became the major side effect of the poverty when the depression hit. So much so that it was fought overe for the control of this quickly rising industry. It was realized very quickly by the bookies that when the economy was at it's worst that's when the poor have no hope & try all the more to gamble their way out of poverty. What the bookies knew then is a scientific fact now. Kind of like drilling our way out of our oil crsis, gambling our way out of poverty. "Palin will wise up real quick, I suspect, and quit responding to graduate students from Temple" So she needs to bite down hard on her foot so her mouth stays closed on her foot & she can't be heard, even when she does speak, great quality for a canidate. Why not just put duct take acoss her lips so we can't read them tell she gets in office & then we can find out what a lying idiot she is? It'll be to late by then, MaCain can't hide her from now till the elections though it seems aas if that's what he'd love to do, another idiot whose lost his village. "That's a lot different than Obama's proposal of just simply invading Pakistan without pre-conditions" That's not what Obama said & you know that Rig. Barry |
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Subject: RE: BS: Popular views on McCain From: Amos Date: 29 Sep 08 - 12:46 AM Rig: Why would you try to put stupid words into the mouth of someone who hasn't said them? Is that intelligent? Civilized? Humane? I'd say none of those. A |
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Subject: RE: BS: Popular views on McCain From: beardedbruce Date: 29 Sep 08 - 07:30 AM " "That's a lot different than Obama's proposal of just simply invading Pakistan without pre-conditions" That's not what Obama said & you know that Rig." Actually, he stated that he would send troops into Pakistan without that country's permission to get OBL. ANd Pakistan is a nuclear power... |
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Subject: RE: BS: Popular views on McCain From: Riginslinger Date: 29 Sep 08 - 08:41 AM "Rigs, you have not looked at the Great Depression at all have you. Orginized Crime got it's real start & boost during the 20's & into the early 30's with the proabition era but the gambling that was not a big winner prior to the depression & probabition became the major side effect of the poverty when the depression hit." I think we need a correction of history here: The 1920's were known as "The Roaring Twenties," there was no depression. Organized crime got it's start when the Volstead Act was passed, banning alcohol. When they discovered they couldn't control the use of the stuff, they legalized it. But they had a bunch of undercover buffoons on the payroll so they started passing laws against narcotics, even mild ones like marijuana. That gave the buffoons something to do, and it also kept organized crime in business. |
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Subject: RE: BS: Popular views on McCain From: Riginslinger Date: 29 Sep 08 - 08:44 AM "Why would you try to put stupid words into the mouth of someone who hasn't said them?" He [Obama] says different things at different times, depending on the group he's addressing. If some of the things he says are stupid, well... |
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Subject: RE: BS: Popular views on McCain From: beardedbruce Date: 29 Sep 08 - 08:48 AM "But when Obama said in a speech Wednesday that he would use military force to go after terrorists in Pakistan, even without President Pervez Musharraf's permission, Clinton did not join in the criticism of Obama by other Democrats. That criticism only intensified yesterday. "Over the past several days, Senator Obama's assertions about foreign and military affairs have been, frankly, confusing and confused," Sen. Christopher J. Dodd (Del.) said in a statement. "He has made threats he should not make and made unwise categorical statements about military options."" http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2007/08/02/AR2007080202288_pf.html |
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Subject: RE: BS: Popular views on McCain From: Donuel Date: 29 Sep 08 - 11:29 AM The Calin McPain campaign is doing their best to distance themselves from all their like minded friends in the white house and neo con fascist community but the best they can do so far is to blame Clinton Carter and Barney Franks. |
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Subject: RE: BS: Popular views on McCain From: Amos Date: 29 Sep 08 - 11:38 AM The actual context, as usual, puts a more reaosnable light on what Obama actually says, as opposed to what his detractors like to pretend he is saying. "Yet for Obama, who opposed the Iraq invasion, the episode offered an opportunity for him to present his approach as entirely different from those of his colleagues. In a letter to supporters titled "The war we need to win," he called for the country to "stop fighting the wrong war" and to focus on the al-Qaeda threat, which he said became a lower priority after the Iraq war began. U.S. officials rarely rule out nuclear attacks as a matter of diplomacy, preferring to keep the threat as a deterrent. Yet several foreign policy experts said Obama was essentially right: It would be unwise to target an individual or a small group with nuclear weapons that could kill civilians and worsen the United States' image around the world. Michael O'Hanlon, a Brookings Institution scholar, said Obama "clearly gave the right answer." "He's certainly right to say you would never use a nuclear weapon to get Osama bin Laden," he said. He said that if intelligence officials were able to locate bin Laden with the precision required for a nuclear attack, they would also be able to catch or kill him by more conventional means that would not signal to the world that using nuclear force is acceptable. The Obama campaign was still responding to the uproar late in the afternoon. "If we had actionable intelligence about the existence of high-level al-Qaeda targets like Osama bin Laden, Senator Obama would act and is confident that conventional means would be sufficient to take the target down," said Bill Burton, a campaign spokesman. "Frankly we're surprised that others would disagree."" (Same article, different paragraph, as cited above from WaPo) |
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Subject: RE: BS: Popular views on McCain From: Donuel Date: 29 Sep 08 - 12:34 PM McCain is now calling for letting the "LITTLE GUY' hae a seat at the table. its almpst cute the way he says it. As usual he says Obama is just in it for himself but MCain is for the country and victory and honor. |
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Subject: RE: BS: Popular views on McCain From: Amos Date: 29 Sep 08 - 12:56 PM Rig: That was a slimy evasion of your personal responsibility int he matter. A |
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Subject: RE: BS: Popular views on McCain From: Riginslinger Date: 29 Sep 08 - 01:08 PM I don't have any personal responsibility in the matter. The struggle is between MoveOn.org and the people who care. |
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Subject: RE: BS: Popular views on McCain From: Amos Date: 01 Oct 08 - 01:33 PM "Earlier this week, we learned that the McCain campaign had barred New York Times columnist Maureen Dowd from traveling on their plane, stranding her at an airport hotel in Pittsburgh as McCain's pool of reporters wended their way on without her ready skill at alliteration and musical theatre references. Since then, Dowd has had the opportunity to respond: "I had had a great relationship with John McCain for 16 years, through columns he liked and didn't like. So at first I thought it was a mistake and doublechecked with the press office. They said I was banned from both planes for 'the foreseeable future.' Then [McCain spokeswoman] Nicolle Wallace was gloating about it to reporters on the Palin plane," Dowd wrote in an email. "It was disappointing because I didn't think John McCain would ever be as dismissive of the First Amendment as Dick Cheney." (From here.) A |
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Subject: RE: BS: Popular views on McCain From: Amos Date: 01 Oct 08 - 01:37 PM "On Monday, John McCain had a truly combative meeting with the editorial board of the Des Moines Register, discussing heatedly everything from Sarah Palin to health care to the shine of his maverick brand. McCain got near anger when it was suggested that the Straight Talk Express had taken a detour, challenging the questioner to provide examples. Asked specifically about the kindergarten sex-ed ad, McCain defended it wholeheartedly. "I have always had 100 percent absolute truth and that's been my life of putting my country first. And I'll match that record against anyone's. And I'm proud of it. And an assertion that I have ever done otherwise I take strong exception n to. And you will have to provide better proof than a bill that Sen. Obama supported that clearly calls for the teaching of sex education of young children." McCain was equally as animated when asked about the qualifications of his running mate, Sarah Palin. At one point, he seemed to catch himself getting heated and deliberately backed off. "So, with due respect, I strongly disagree with your premise that she doesn't have experience and knowledge and background," the Arizona Republican said. "And, by the way," McCain said before cutting himself off and saying, "I'll stop there. I fundamentally disagree and I'm proud of her record. But you and I just have a fundamental disagreement and I'm so happy that the American people seem to be siding with me," he said. McCain dismissed Republicans who questioned Palin's experience as "Georgetown cocktail party" people who call themselves conservatives." (His temper seems to be creeping up on him, leading him to make strong, belligerent statements that are not exactly true.) |
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Subject: RE: BS: Popular views on McCain From: GUEST,Jack the Sailor Date: 01 Oct 08 - 01:47 PM McCain is starting to get really creepy. What cause does he have to be proud of Palin's record? He didn't even know here until a few days before he picked her. Did he adopt her or take her as a second wife? Otherwise her record is her own and not something McCain can take pride in. |
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Subject: RE: BS: Popular views on McCain From: Donuel Date: 01 Oct 08 - 01:59 PM You might as well insult his mother as call on a republican to take personal respondsibility. I've done it, I know. |
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Subject: RE: BS: Popular views on McCain From: Amos Date: 01 Oct 08 - 02:36 PM A bit of a sweeping generalization, there, Donuel. While I sympathize to some degree, I think even you will agree that Republicans (like any other group) come in all degrees of integrity and responsibility. A |
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Subject: RE: BS: Popular views on McCain From: Riginslinger Date: 01 Oct 08 - 11:05 PM "...the McCain campaign had barred New York Times columnist Maureen Dowd from traveling on their plane,..." It's about time that old hag started paying her own way! |
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Subject: RE: BS: Popular views on McCain From: curmudgeon Date: 06 Oct 08 - 01:55 PM There's a very thoughtful Op-Ed piece by film maker Ken Burns here. The readers' comments are not a true reflection of the NH electorate - Tom |
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Subject: RE: BS: Popular views on McCain From: Donuel Date: 06 Oct 08 - 02:00 PM Generalizations generally get everybody in trouble. Yet there are a certain brand of Republicans that even today say we need more deregulation, rich tax cuts and that the war is going swimmingly. |
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Subject: RE: BS: Popular views on McCain From: curmudgeon Date: 06 Oct 08 - 02:07 PM The link I am trying to post will not translate in the blickifier. The correct URL gets changed between c & p and making the link. Any ideas? |
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Subject: RE: BS: Popular views on McCain From: curmudgeon Date: 06 Oct 08 - 08:50 PM Since the link won't work, I'm posting the entire op=ed piece by noted historien-film maker and former John McCain supporter. , Ken Burns. It's really worth reading, especially by those who are still McCain supporters - Tom Ken Burns: This is not the John McCain NH once loved By KEN BURNS Sunday, Oct. 5, 2008 WHAT HAPPENED to John McCain? What happened to the man so many of us in New Hampshire have admired and respected for so long? The fierce bipartisan warrior, the straight talker, the maverick whose ideas nearly everyone found some common ground with now seems missing in action. He seems to have betrayed the very attributes that originally commended him to us and earned our earlier trust and support. We continue to stand in awe of his heroic service to his country during Vietnam, but now he shamelessly uses those experiences at every opportunity, as if it excuses him from having to answer any really tough questions about the economy or foreign policy. The answer to everything is not to mention his admittedly harrowing POW days. My experience interviewing heroes of war is that most prefer to deflect attention from themselves and let their record speak for itself. McCain seems to think that it buys him a permanent pass. But it is impossible to know how to fight the new wars if you are hopelessly lost in the old ones. Op-Ed Logo Click for Editorials & Op-Eds Surrounded and programmed by the lobbyists he once despised, the man who once effortlessly straddled the aisle and spoke from the heart now carefully hews to a prompter-read, soulless far-right agenda. This is a man who once denounced and purposefully avoided the politics of personal destruction, having felt firsthand its painful consequences in 2000 in South Carolina, but who now wants to win at any cost. By ridiculing his opponent's commitment to public service, he has undermined the very reason we were drawn to McCain in the first place. By trying to steal the mantle of change from the Democrats, he demonstrates only the riskiness of his shoot-from-the-hip style. That may have worked in the Senate and on the campaign trail, but it is hardly presidential. In fact, it is frightening in the extreme and bespeaks an instability difficult to reconcile considering our complicated world and its myriad problems. More to the point, he continues almost daily to demonstrate that instability and other judgmental and temperamental concerns, issues and complaints that originally brought a slew of challengers into the Republican primary contests. And in the most important decision of his candidacy, he cynically and irresponsibly chose the supremely unqualified Sarah Palin, cheapening the race as if it were some high school popularity contest or the latest "American Idol" competition. Even the most ardent true-believers among us must be privately shaking in their boots contemplating a heart-beat-away Palin presidency during these difficult times. When Putin acts up, who do you want whispering in your President's ear: Joe Biden or Sarah Palin? McCain is a man who once championed openness and fairness in government, who now wants to continue the failed policies of the current administration and who increasingly wants to make the crucial decisions of our democracy behind closed doors with the same cronies who got us into this mess in the first place. And he has shown a profound indifference to and often startling ignorance of economic affairs just as our country inches toward depression. That threatens to make him the next Herbert Hoover if he should win. And his old strong suit, foreign policy, is slipping away too, as gaffe after gaffe displays his fundamental shortcomings. I want my President to know the difference between a Sunni and Shia. John McCain does not. We in New Hampshire bear some responsibility, I suppose. Thinking we had the old McCain, we gave him a decisive victory in our primary that permitted him to vanquish those challengers. But he betrayed us. If you have to say you're a maverick in your ads, it's clear you're not. The real maverick turns out to be Barack Obama, who bucked his party's establishment and whose once-lonely positions have been adopted by nearly everyone including even the Bush administration. Nearly everyone, that is, except John McCain. So what happened to him? That's what Granite State citizens have been asking the last few months. The answer is enough to turn us blue. Ken Burns of Walpole is the director of numerous award-winning documentary films. His latest, "The War," was the highest-rated program on PBS in the last decade. |
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Subject: RE: BS: Popular views on McCain From: Donuel Date: 06 Oct 08 - 09:29 PM The current strategy is to have Palin and McCain say WHo is Obama REALLY? and then have people 10 feet away yell into the mike "A TERRORIST!" Today When Palin said "what are we going to do with Obama?" Crowe members yelled 'KILL HIM!". This is the John McCain who sees winning the hearts and minds to problem solve America's challenges by encouraging the murder of his opponent. |
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Subject: RE: BS: Popular views on McCain From: Donuel Date: 06 Oct 08 - 09:40 PM McCain has found 1.3 Trillion dollars to cut from the budget YAAAAAY Its Medicare :<{ |
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Subject: RE: BS: Popular views on McCain From: Ebbie Date: 07 Oct 08 - 01:29 AM ""...the McCain campaign had barred New York Times columnist Maureen Dowd from traveling on their plane,..." It's about time that old hag started paying her own way! " Rig You may be thinking of Helen Thomas, shootingfromthelipRig. You yourself may well be older than Maureen Dowd. But then facts don't matter all that much, do they. |
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Subject: RE: BS: Popular views on McCain From: curmudgeon Date: 07 Oct 08 - 07:54 AM McCain and Iran-Contra? |
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Subject: RE: BS: Popular views on McCain From: Riginslinger Date: 07 Oct 08 - 09:03 AM "You may be thinking of Helen Thomas, shootingfromthelipRig. You yourself may well be older than Maureen Dowd." Yes, facts matter and Helen Thomas isn't a hag! |
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Subject: RE: BS: Popular views on McCain From: Amos Date: 10 Oct 08 - 09:35 AM " "I just have to rely on the good judgment of the voters not to buy into these negative attack ads. Sooner or later, people are going to figure out if all you run is negative attack ads you don�t have much of a vision for the future or you�re not ready to articulate it." -- John McCain, 2000 Hmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmm? |
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Subject: RE: BS: Popular views on McCain From: Donuel Date: 10 Oct 08 - 09:47 AM Life is just a bowl of cherries for the rich ain't it a bitch we get the pits. |
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Subject: RE: BS: Popular views on McCain From: Donuel Date: 10 Oct 08 - 10:16 AM toon Federal Express delivery for for John McCain McCain signs A ton of bricks hit him on the head. each brick says economy. |
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Subject: RE: BS: Popular views on McCain From: Riginslinger Date: 10 Oct 08 - 11:12 AM Attack ads are the only way McCain can get the public's attention. Millions of sheep have been programed by MoveOn.org to send money to his campaign, and he's buying up the media with it. |
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Subject: RE: BS: Popular views on McCain From: Alice Date: 10 Oct 08 - 11:31 AM "Add Foo Fighters to the ever-growing list of artists angry that their music has been used by John McCain and his Straight Talk Express on the campaign trail. The Foos heard that McCain was using the band's The Colour and the Shape hit "My Hero" at rallies without ever seeking the permission from the band, their management, their record label or their publishers. "It's frustrating and infuriating that someone who claims to speak for the American people would repeatedly show such little respect for creativity and intellectual property. The saddest thing about this is that 'My Hero' was written as a celebration of the common man and his extraordinary potential," the Foo Fighters said in a statement. "To have it appropriated without our knowledge and used in a manner that perverts the original sentiment of the lyric just tarnishes the song. We hope that the McCain campaign will do the right thing and stop using our song — and start asking artists' permission in general!" You would think his campaign would have learned to get permission after all the previous infringements they committed - John Mellencamp, Jackson Browne, Heart, Boston and Eddie Van Halen. |
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Subject: RE: BS: Popular views on McCain From: Riginslinger Date: 10 Oct 08 - 02:17 PM I think I read someplace that songs can be used without the artist's permission if the rights were previously purchased by somebody else, a publisher, record label, or some such. |
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Subject: RE: BS: Popular views on McCain From: dick greenhaus Date: 10 Oct 08 - 02:34 PM Nope. You can record it, without explicit permission, by paying a fee (mechanical copyright) to the copyright holder, but it's not free to use for just any purpose. |
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Subject: RE: BS: Popular views on McCain From: Amos Date: 10 Oct 08 - 02:40 PM I think if you look a little closer, Rig, you will find that the disdain for hate speech, and a modicum of personal integrity, is what motivates most MoveOn subscribers, rather than the fomenting and demagoguery so preferred by McSame and the Mindless Shrew of the NOrth. A |
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Subject: RE: BS: Popular views on McCain From: Amos Date: 10 Oct 08 - 04:04 PM "This, of course, is not the story McCain tells about himself. Few politicians have so actively, or successfully, crafted their own myth of greatness. In McCain's version of his life, he is a prodigal son who, steeled by his brutal internment in Vietnam, learned to put "country first." Remade by the Keating Five scandal that nearly wrecked his career, the story goes, McCain re-emerged as a "reformer" and a "maverick," righteously eschewing anything that "might even tangentially be construed as a less than proper use of my office." It's a myth McCain has cultivated throughout his decades in Washington. But during the course of this year's campaign, the mask has slipped. "Let's face it," says Larry Wilkerson, a retired Army colonel who served as chief of staff to Secretary of State Colin Powell. "John McCain made his reputation on the fact that he doesn't bend his principles for politics. That's just not true." We have now watched McCain run twice for president. The first time he positioned himself as a principled centrist and decried the politics of Karl Rove and the influence of the religious right, imploring voters to judge candidates "by the example we set, by the way we conduct our campaigns, by the way we personally practice politics." After he lost in 2000, he jagged hard to the left — breaking with the president over taxes, drilling, judicial appointments, even flirting with joining the Democratic Party. In his current campaign, however, McCain has become the kind of politician he ran against in 2000. He has embraced those he once denounced as "agents of intolerance," promised more drilling and deeper tax cuts, even compromised his vaunted opposition to torture. Intent on winning the presidency at all costs, he has reassembled the very team that so viciously smeared him and his family eight years ago, selecting as his running mate a born-again moose hunter whose only qualification for office is her ability to electrify Rove's base. And he has engaged in a "practice of politics" so deceptive that even Rove himself has denounced it, saying that the outright lies in McCain's campaign ads go "too far" and fail the "truth test." The missing piece of this puzzle, says a former McCain confidant who has fallen out with the senator over his neoconservatism, is a third, never realized, campaign that McCain intended to run against Bush in 2004. "McCain wanted a rematch, based on ethics, campaign finance and Enron — the corrupt relationship between Bush's team and the corporate sector," says the former friend, a prominent conservative thinker with whom McCain shared his plans over the course of several dinners in 2001. "But when 9/11 happened, McCain saw his chance to challenge Bush again was robbed. He saw 9/11 gave Bush and his failed presidency a second life. He saw Bush and Cheney's ability to draw stark contrasts between black and white, villains and good guys. And that's why McCain changed." (The McCain campaign did not respond to numerous requests for comment from Rolling Stone.) Indeed, many leading Republicans who once admired McCain see his recent contortions to appease the GOP base as the undoing of a maverick. "John McCain's ambition overrode his basic character," says Rita Hauser, who served on the President's Foreign Intelligence Advisory Board from 2001 to 2004. But the truth of the matter is that ambition is John McCain's basic character. Seen in the sweep of his seven-decade personal history, his pandering to the right is consistent with the only constant in his life: doing what's best for himself. To put the matter squarely: John McCain is his own special interest. "John has made a pact with the devil," says Lincoln Chafee, the former GOP senator, who has been appalled at his one-time colleague's readiness to sacrifice principle for power. Chafee and McCain were the only Republicans to vote against the Bush tax cuts. They locked arms in opposition to drilling in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge. And they worked together in the "Gang of 14," which blocked some of Bush's worst judges from the federal bench. "On all three — sadly, sadly, sadly — McCain has flip-flopped," Chafee says. And forget all the "Country First" sloganeering, he adds. "McCain is putting himself first. He's putting himself first in blinking neon lights." "...(Excerpt from first link upthread to Rolling Stone) |
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Subject: RE: BS: Popular views on McCain From: Donuel Date: 10 Oct 08 - 04:10 PM bail out upsets Europe |
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Subject: RE: BS: Popular views on McCain From: Riginslinger Date: 10 Oct 08 - 04:23 PM "...you will find that the disdain for hate speech, and a modicum of personal integrity," The only hate speech we've seen so far has come from Reverend Wright, and the lack of personal integrity materialized with ACORN. |
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Subject: RE: BS: Popular views on McCain From: Amos Date: 10 Oct 08 - 04:43 PM Well, why not take of the blinders, and listen to some of McCain's recent slanders if you want a broader exposure to hatred? No sense hating just a little bit...you could go to some Palin rallies where they holler for Obama's head and call him awful names in order to solace themselves for being so absolutely misguided about basic human values and intelligence. A |
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Subject: RE: BS: Popular views on McCain From: Donuel Date: 10 Oct 08 - 04:46 PM When an individual speaks as a "we" or "We've" followed by an absurd untrue myopic claim, I think of Rig. |
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Subject: RE: BS: Popular views on McCain From: Riginslinger Date: 10 Oct 08 - 04:57 PM Well just keep thinking that way, and "WE'LL" get to the bottom of it! |
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Subject: RE: BS: Popular views on McCain From: Amos Date: 10 Oct 08 - 09:53 PM Fact Checker gives McCain two "Pinocchios" for lying about the Obama-Ayers connection. A |
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Subject: RE: BS: Popular views on McCain From: Riginslinger Date: 11 Oct 08 - 09:27 AM But Rezko is telling the truth now, and that's all that matters. |
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Subject: RE: BS: Popular views on McCain From: Charley Noble Date: 11 Oct 08 - 10:21 AM Evidently McCain is having some misgivings about how his "demonization of Obama" campaign is going. His and Palin's crowds are getting more raucous and abusive, with calls of "Terrorist!"and "Kill him!" McCain actually pulled the microphone from one woman after she called Obama "an Arab" and told her that Obama was an American, a decent human being whom he disagreed with on major policy positions. He also told someone else (who was extremely angry that "untrustworthy" Obama might become President) that Obama would make a good President, although he McCain would make a better one, and then McCain was booed by the crowd. McCain should be ashamed of himself for approving the "demonization campaign." And I hope he falls further and further behind in the polls. What a strategy for "uniting" the country! No wonder even George Will is repudiating what the McCain Campaign is doing. It is difficult to see how the McCain Campaign can win nationally by appealing to their most "base" base (wing-nuts, racists, fascists, choose your own noun). Charley Noble |
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Subject: RE: BS: Popular views on McCain From: Jeri Date: 11 Oct 08 - 10:28 AM 600 |
