Dems Fed Up With McCain: “Angry Old Defeated Candidate”

“He is bitter and really angry,” Bob Shrum said of McCain in an interview on Friday. “He is angry at the press, which he thinks is unfair. He is angry at Obama and angry at the voters. He has gone from being an angry old candidate to being an angry old defeated candidate.”
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A maverick no more

BACK IN December, when the Boston Globe endorsed John McCain in the Republican presidential primaries, they wrote that he would conduct a campaign of “substance, not demagoguery.” they didn’t count on the other John McCain – the one who showed up for the general election. Whether in thrall to his handlers or his own ambition, McCain has abandoned respectful [...]

Recalling McCain’s Participation in the Keating Five Scandal

John McCain: Economic Disaster

New Gang of 14 won’t back McCain

At least 14 Republican members of Congress have refused to endorse or publicly support Sen. John McCain for president, and more than a dozen others declined to answer whether they back the Arizona senator. Many of the recalcitrant GOP members declined to detail their reasons for withholding support, but Rep. John Peterson (R-Pa.) expressed major [...]

Obama Could Win 40 Percent of Evangelical Vote, Says Expert

A well-connected authority in the evangelical world said in an interview this week that Democratic presidential nominee Barack Obama could get up to 40 percent of the evangelical vote. “I will not be surprised if he gets one third of the evangelical vote,” DeMoss said in the interview. “I wouldn’t be surprised if it was [...]

On to New Hampshire

A poll conducted in New Hampshire before the Iowa caucuses and released on Friday showed New York Sen. Hillary Clinton leading Obama, 32 percent to 26 percent among Democrats. It also showed Sen. John McCain leading the pack among Republicans.
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McCain’s Ties to Lobyists

A recent study by the nonpartisan Campaign Finance Institute and the liberal advocacy group Public Citizen found that McCain has more lobbyists raising funds for his presidential bid than do any of his rivals. He has 32 “bundlers” of donations who are lobbyists. Former New York mayor Rudolph W. Giuliani (R) is the closest to him [...]

Where was McCain for Woodstock Earmark Vote

The game is to contrast McCain’s heroism with Clinton as a hippie leftover, and never mind that her only student excess of the time was in seriousness. Still, McCain has bona fides here. He has been a longtime and very vocal opponent of the constituent- stuffing pork that members of both parties feed their districts.
But — surprise?— matters are not quite as the politics would have you suppose.
Thanks to Joel Achenbach of The Washington Post, who bothered to do some actual reporting — remember reporting? — we know that the Bethel Woods Center for the Arts, which opened last year and of which the museum would be a part, includes a concert pavilion and an amphitheater. And the museum would not so much celebrate Woodstock as explore its context — the baby boom, the Cold War and Vietnam War, early rock ‘n’ roll.
The center is an economic development project for a region depressed from the loss of its once-fabled resorts. New York state has put $15 million into the $100 million complex. The museum is not quite the silliness its partisan detractors imply. (And imply to the considerable annoyance of the Republican town supervisor of nearby Bethel, a booster.)
Nonetheless, this flaplet, in its small way, plays successfully to the galleries for the simple reason that Woodstock never really ended. Jimi Hendrix may have died, but the reverb hasn’t, at least not yet.
To an extent little remarked and even less remarked upon, our current social and political standoffs are rooted in the time Woodstock symbolizes. One side went to Vietnam, the other to Canada, if not always physically. One side protested the war, the other protested the protests.
College campuses were the playgrounds of counterculture activism, some ideological, more merely prankish, and the disaffected, marginalized took refuge in such bunkers as Young Republican Clubs and Young Americans for Freedom. They began coming out with the Barry Goldwater presidential campaign of 1964, the first step in a movement that became today’s doctrinal conservatism. They got angry, and even.
America’s politics today is a fight among the aging over who was right in the 1960s, but there’s good news: It can’t last. Social Security may not be a universal solvent for all grudges, but it at least softens most. Excerpt of opinion piece by Tom Teepen; Arizona Daily Star

McCain opposes use of waterboarding

Waterboarding is a form of torture no matter how it is done and should be a prohibited among U.S. military interrogation practices, Republican presidential candidate John McCain said Thursday, taking issue with GOP rival Rudy Giuliani’s recent remarks.
”Anyone who knows what waterboarding is could not be unsure. It is a horrible torture technique used by [...]