Get the Facts on the Real McCain

David Brock of MediaMatters has set up a great new McCain Fact-Check site -- McCain Source.

It's a great resource. For example, did you know that McCain recently used free prison labor to set up one of his fundraisers last week?

Republican presidential candidate John McCain got a deal when his campaign rented gathering space from the city of Homewood for a private fundraiser earlier this week.

His campaign was given a discount of about 80 percent off the standard booking rate for Rosewood Hall. In September, Jefferson County Democrats rented the same facility and were charged the full rate.

The McCain campaign was charged $250 to use two rooms in the hall, which normally would book for $1,200 on a weeknight. The campaign also was given free labor from Homewood City Jail inmates to set up tables and chairs for the event, avoiding a $100 set-up fee, but did pay a standard $50 cleaning fee.

So on the one hand McCain thinks American union workers are too lazy to pick lettuce for $100,000 per year. On the other hand he loves using free prison labor to pad his bottom line. Sounds like a typical fat cat Republican.

Did you know that McCain opposes Fair Pay for Women?

John McCain has been visiting the poor lately. Appalachia, New Orleans, Rust Belt factory towns. This is a good thing, and we applaud his efforts to show compassion and interest in people for whom his actual policies are of no use whatsoever.

McCain's special It's Time for Action Tour was in the impoverished Kentucky town of Inez on Wednesday, so he was unable to make it to Washington to vote on the Lilly Ledbetter Fair Pay Act. This is the bill that would restore workers' ability to go to court in cases of pay discrimination.

But McCain was not ducking the issue. After all, this is a man who told the folks in Youngstown, Ohio - where most of the working single mothers cannot make it above the poverty line - that the answer to their problems is larger tax deductions. He is fearless when it comes to delivering unpleasant news to people who are probably not going to vote for him anyway.

So McCain made it clear that if he had been in Washington, he would have voted no because the bill "opens us up for lawsuits, for all kinds of problems and difficulties."

McCain's heiress wife doesn't have to worry about "equal pay", and who cares about the rest of America? Let them eat cake.

Or how about heartwarming campaign stories like this:

Today at a campaign event, Sen. John McCain (R-AZ) toured Miami Children’s Hospital and met with some of the facility’s young patients. As The New York Times reported, McCain heard the story of Jake, a 9 year-old child with a cleft palate. Cleft palates can be fixed with a simple operation, but as Jake’s father told McCain today, his family has been struggling to get their insurance company to cover the operation Jake needs.

While Jake’s father related his story, McCain “nodded intently” –- but failed to tell him that Jake would not get coverage under his health care plan.

It's a fantastic site. Check it out.