McCain is Older Than the Golden Gate Bridge

It looks like there's yet another anti-McCain bunch ready to join the fight. Enjoy:

ABC News Attacks Obama on McCain's Behalf

Didn't watch the debate yet, but I've heard it was an all-out attackfest on Obama by both ABC moderators and Hillary Clinton.

Here's the most to-the-point review I've read so far:

In other words, ABC had a golden opportunity to present a good debate, but decided to give us a "Gotcha Debate" full of bullshit. They have just joined CNN in that bunch.

The American public do not care about Bittergate, because the shit is true. The public don't care about Reverend Wright, because Obama did not say those words. The public don't care about who wears a flag pin, because the ones wearing it now are the worse criminals of this country ever.

The public cares about moving this country forward. They care about getting health care reform created. They care about the mortgage crisis. They care about gas prices and utility prices out of control. They care about food prices skyrocketing. They care about getting us out of Iraq and the $10B a month price tag. They care about ending this trade agreement with China.

We care about taking our country back, but none of our concerns were addressed tonight for the sake of making a primary race that is mathematically over more than it is. ABC lost a golden opportunity indeed.

Old Man McCain Is Not Serious About Global Warming

I don't have a big problem with nuclear power, although solar and wind are much more preferable thanks to the lack of nuclear waste and Chernobyl-like meltdown risks.

But any bill co-written by McCain and Lieberman is bound to be a piece of shit. Hopefully next year we can pass an Obama-Gore-Feingold global warming bill that actually does something other than give more tax breaks to polluters.

The McCain Bashing Blues

Thanks to the heated primary battle between Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton, it's a lonely time for anti-McCain bloggers such as myself. Try as I might to expose some of McCain's weaknesses to the liberal blogosphere, it is incredibly hard to break through the chatter of Obama vs. Clinton. Plenty of others, from Rachel Maddow to JedReport to OpenLeft, have expressed similar frustration about McCain's free ride up to this point.

We can't wait for Hillary to get yanked off the stage, so the real battle can begin.

But in the bigger picture, this isn't a bad thing. For Obama, he is getting a full speed warmup to the smears and attacks he'll face in November. Hillary is a better politician and candidate than Old Man McCain, so if Obama can take down her machine then he'll have a pretty good chance of taking down McCain. People seem to forgot how weak a candidate McCain really is. He's basically the Lieberman of the right, despised by 70% of Republicans for his disloyalty. Even after Romney dropped out, McCain had a tough time pulling 50% in many primaries against the likes of Mike Huckabee. He still hasn't raised jack shit as far as campaign funds (relative to Democrats), his ads suck, his speeches suck, his policies suck, and his only real asset seems to be that he fought in the War of 1812. I'm sure most Democrats would rally behind Lieberman if he somehow stole the nomination by default against a weak field, but we sure wouldn't work all that hard for him. McCain is facing the same problems.

The x-factor, of Republican Swift Boat 527 groups, is a real danger. But probably not so much as Republicans wish. Obama's already faced two months of attacks on whether he is Muslim, crazy Christian, Marxist, elitist, etc. And he is still leading McCain in the majority of polls. If we see ads full of Jeremiah Wright or actors pretending to be offended rural folks, there will be concern in the press but not so much from the Democratic campaign. Why? Because Americans have been suckered twice by Karl Rove type hatchet man politics, and all they have is a recession, a war, record gas prices, and plummeting home values to show for it. If there is any year for people to get real about how horrible the Republicans are, this would be it.

So despite our impatience to rip into John "Dole" McCain and his full embrace of Bush's policies, we are content to lay the groundwork for the fight ahead. There is lots of fertile ground here, not just in emphasizing McCain's advanced age and backwards policies, but also his bullshit regarding his so-called maverick straight talker status. There is only a matter of time before the real McCain, the war-mongering Bush-hugging flip-flopping McCain, is exposed to the independents and Democrats who currently think he is a good guy.

McCain Is Really Freaking Old

Just watched McCain on Hardball. The guy is really freaking old. If all you remember of McCain is his primary run in 2000, the guy looks like he's aged about 10-15 years since then. I can't imagine what he'll look like after 4 years in the White House, which ages people more than almost any other job.

My prediction: Old Man McCain will have at least one Bob-Dole-falling-from-the-stage type moment this election season. Either that or an overnight stay in the hospital for a "routine" medical check-up.

138

Today marks 138 days until Old Man McCain turns 72 years old.

Meet The New Republican

Same as the old Republican. If you vote for Old Man McCain, expect four more years of misery.

The Trouble With McCain

Is that you are never sure if he is just senile, just plain stupid, or both.

Today, during the question-and-answer period of Sen. John McCain’s (R-AZ) address to the Associated Press, a journalist asked McCain about torturing terrorism detainees, saying “Don’t we stand for something better?” McCain seemed to get confused, talking instead about his opposition to the torture of Americans:

I’ve made it very clear, I’ve made it very clear in my statements and in my support of the Detainee Treatment Act, the Geneva Conventions, etc., that there may be some additional techniques to be used, but none of those would violate the Geneva Conventions, the Detainee Treatment Act…And we cannot ever, in my view, torture any American, that includes waterboarding.

A few facts:

--  The question wasn't about torturing Americans.

--  We have tortured Americans before. One obvious example: Jose Padilla.

--  The Detainee Treatment Act, a disgraceful piece of legislation, stripped away habeus corpus and provided the Bush administration with immunity for war crimes, including torture.

Perhaps after McCain releases his medical records and psychological reviews we can figure out why he is so unfit to be President.

Does McCain Equal Bob Dole?

Yes.

Yet for all the hosannas being sung to him these days, and for all the waves of fear and trembling rippling through the Democratic masses, the truth is that McCain is a candidate of pronounced and glaring weaknesses. A candidate whose capacity to raise enough money to beat back the tidal wave of Democratic moola is seriously in doubt. A candidate unwilling or unable to animate the GOP base. A candidate whose operation has never recovered from the turmoil of last summer, still skeletal and ragtag and technologically antediluvian. (“Fund-raising on the Web? You don’t say. You can raise money through those tubes?”) Whose cadre of confidantes contains so many lobbyists that the Straight Talk Express often has the vibe of a rolling K Street clubhouse. Whose awkward positioning issues-wise was captured brilliantly by Pat Buchanan: “The jobs are never coming back, the illegals are never going home, but we’re going to have a lot more wars.” A candidate one senior moment—or one balky teleprompter—away from being transformed from a grizzled warrior into Grandpa Simpson.
....

For as it should be clear to anyone paying even cursory attention, McCain 2000 and McCain 2008 are very different mammals—as evinced by his toadying to Jerry Falwell, his flip-floppy embrace of Bush’s tax cuts, and his failure to offer any kind of substantial reform agenda this time around. In 2000, he was the candidate of reform, of anger, of screw the system. Now he’s the candidate of lobbyists, endorsements, and special deals with Beltway banks.”

So if McCain is no longer the bracing iconoclast he was in 2000, who the hell is he?

“I’ll tell you,” this person says. “He’s morphed into Bob Dole.”

....

A wealthy Democratic donor of my acquaintance likes to say, “Sometimes panic is the appropriate reaction.” But for Democrats, this is not that time. Judging by almost any meaningful metric, the current political topography strongly favors the party this year. Unless Obama foolishly gets shamed into accepting public financing—and trust me, the Obama people are no fools, and they have less shame than you’d imagine—he will be the proverbial Mr. Universe at the beach, kicking sand in McCain’s face when it comes to advertising and the ground game. His positions on the issues are more popular than McCain’s. He can’t be blamed for Bush’s war or Bush’s recession. He is young and vibrant and inspiring, whereas McCain is not and not and not.

And indeed, McCain’s age may prove as a big hurdle for him as Obama’s race is for him. According to Peter Hart’s polling, 29 percent of voters say that America isn’t ready to elect a president in his seventies.

McCain Is Afraid To Face Obama

If I was 100 years old, senile, confused, bad at raising money, bad at giving speeches, didn't know anything about economics, didn't know who we were supposed to be fighting in Iraq, then of course I wouldn't want to run against an energetic talented intelligent young candidate like Obama either.

Republican presidential hopeful John McCain has confided to his inner circle that Hillary Clinton may yet be the Democratic nominee, the DRUDGE REPORT has learned, a development the senator from Arizona would personally welcome!

"Look, I know something about long odds, they had me written off last summer," McCain explained over the weekend, according to a top source.

McCain would prefer to go up against Clinton in the general election, insiders reveal.

He has instructed his campaign staff to "chill out" on countering Hillary Clinton's torrent of claims and promises as primary voting comes to an end over the next 6 weeks.

McCain made the tactical decision to downplay Clinton's tale of Bosnia sniper fire, leaving some McCain staffers frustrated and perplexed.

Instead, the critical focus has been on Barack Obama. McCain's official website features 14 press releases taking on Obama since the first of the year, only 3 for the former first lady.

Elitist John McCain Tells American Workers They Are Lazy

Let's not get fooled about who the real "elitists" are in this Presidential campaign.

I'm not even going to talk about Hillary Clinton. You can find a takedown of her shamelessness and hypocrisy elsewhere. This is an anti-McCain post.  Let's talk about John McCain.

McCain Campaign Statement on Obama's "Bitter" Remarks - April 11th, 2008:

It shows an elitism and condescension towards hardworking Americans that is nothing short of breathtaking. It is hard to imagine someone running for president who is more out of touch with average Americans.

John McCain and his heiress wife are worth in excess of $100 million dollars. They own at least 8 houses. McCain repeatedly votes against the interests of American workers. In fact, he voted to abolish the minimum wage.

But that's not the worst part. John McCain, while pushing for his horrible guest worker plan (which would basically import hundreds of thousands of foreigners to take American jobs), told a group of AFL-CIO union leaders that they were too lazy to do honest work, even if they were paid an honest wage.

April 4th, 2006:

But he took more questions, including a pointed one on his immigration plan.

McCain responded by saying immigrants were taking jobs nobody else wanted. He offered anybody in the crowd $50 an hour to pick lettuce in Arizona.

Shouts of protest rose from the crowd, with some accepting McCain’s job offer.

“I’ll take it!” one man shouted.

McCain insisted none of them would do such menial labor for a complete season. “You can’t do it, my friends.”

Some in the crowd said they didn’t appreciate McCain questioning their work ethic.

"You can't do it."???

That's what McCain thinks about American workers. He thinks that even if they are offered $50/hour, they still won't do hard honest work. I don't want to get into a big immigration argument, but we all know that this is b.s. Americans will do any job, provided they are paid an honest wage.

So either McCain thinks American workers are just too lazy, or he thinks $50/hour (which translates to over $100,000 per year) is a low wage. Either way, it's clear that McCain is the one who is out of touch, elitist and condescending. I can't stand anyone who says there are jobs "Americans won't do". That's more insulting than anything Barack Obama has ever said. Period.

Let's hope Barack Obama hears about this anecdote. When he starts slamming McCain on this issue, even Republicans will have to admit this is a devastating counterpunch.

Here is the only YouTube clip I could find of the incident. It's put together by a right winger, no video of the speech, but definitely shows how exposed McCain is on this issue. Hopefully JedReport will put together a better video clip soon!