John McCain Diaries
A useful compilation of articles 

about Republican Presidential Nominee Senator John McCain

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• Michigan AFL-CIO says it will blast McCain on trade, economy -- MLive -- A Michigan labor organization plans to use a two-day visit by Republican presidential candidate John McCain to tell voters his policies would hurt workers. "John McCain ... will not likely have a government and an administration that does enough or cares enough about creating good-paying manufacturing jobs here in America," Michigan AFL-CIO President Mark Gaffney said Tuesday in a conference call with reporters. Gaffney said the union will remind its members that McCain supports right-to-work laws and international trade agreements, wants to tax worker health care benefits and already has told Michigan workers that their lost jobs are unlikely to come back.
• What McCain expects from federal judges-- LA Times -- McCain pledged to nominate jurists who believe "there are clear limits to the scope of judicial power" and who are "faithful in all things to the Constitution of the United States." Some Democratic leaders immediately denounced McCain's speech. Senate Judiciary Committee Chairman Patrick J. Leahy, a Vermont Democrat, accused McCain of pandering to the far right. Howard Dean, chairman of the Democratic National Committee, said in a statement that McCain voted for every one of President Bush's activist judges and said McCain "promises hundreds more just like them."
• Huffington on McCain: A Trojan Horse -- Huffington Post -- In Right is Wrong: How the Lunatic Fringe Hijacked America, Shredded the Constitution and Made Us All Less Safe, Huffington, editor of the popular Huffington Post blog, points out that after twice voting against making permanent Bush’s tax cuts for the wealthy, McCain now supports this boondoogle for the rich. Further, he moved from being a campaign finance reformer to a candidate whose campaign is run by lobbyists and who has flip-flopped from opposing torture to voting to allow water boarding. And as we’ve pointed out, McCain, like Bush, supports tax hikes on our health insurance, supports pay discrimination, backs bad trade deals like the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA) and pushes economic policies to help millionaires, not working families.
• What John McCain Told Me, and What it Says About How Far He's Fallen -- Huffington Post -- Through a spokesperson with the colorful name Tucker Bounds, McCain has denied telling me he didn't vote for Bush in 2000. "It's not true," Bounds told the Washington Post, "and I ask you to consider the source." My sentiments exactly -- because John McCain has a long history of issuing heartfelt denials of things that were actually true.He denied ever talking with John Kerry about his leaving the GOP to be Kerry's '04 running mate -- then later admitted he had, insisting: "Everybody knows that I had a conversation." He denied admitting that he didn't know much about economics, even though he'd said exactly that to the Wall Street Journal. And the Boston Globe. And the Baltimore Sun. He denied ever having asked for a budget earmark for Arizona, even though he had. On the record. He denied that he'd ever had a meeting with comely lobbyist Vicki Iseman and her client Lowell Paxon, even though he had. And had admitted it in a legal deposition.
• Huffington on McCain: A Trojan Horse -- Huffington Post -- In Right is Wrong: How the Lunatic Fringe Hijacked America, Shredded the Constitution and Made Us All Less Safe, Huffington, editor of the popular Huffington Post blog, points out that after twice voting against making permanent Bush’s tax cuts for the wealthy, McCain now supports this boondoogle for the rich. Further, he moved from being a campaign finance reformer to a candidate whose campaign is run by lobbyists and who has flip-flopped from opposing torture to voting to allow water boarding. And as we’ve pointed out, McCain, like Bush, supports tax hikes on our health insurance, supports pay discrimination, backs bad trade deals like the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA) and pushes economic policies to help millionaires, not working families.
• McCain's Preacher Pal Calls Catholic Church the 'Great Whore' -- Where's the Outrage? -- AlterNet -- If so, go directly to YouTube, search for “John Hagee Roman Church Hitler,” and be recharged by a fresh jolt of clerical jive. What you’ll find is a white televangelist, the Rev. John Hagee, lecturing in front of an enormous diorama. Wielding a pointer, he pokes at the image of a woman with Pamela Anderson-sized breasts, her hand raising a golden chalice. The woman is “the Great Whore,” Mr. Hagee explains, and she is drinking “the blood of the Jewish people.” That’s because the Great Whore represents “the Roman Church,” which, in his view, has thirsted for Jewish blood throughout history, from the Crusades to the Holocaust.
• McCain Gets 80% Discount; Free Inmate Labor for Fundraiser -- AlterNet -- Homewood AL Mayor Barry McCulley (R-obviously) has stepped in it with this one. He's supposed to bring requests for discounts to the City Council, but for some reason he decided to rent the McCain people a room at Rosewood Hall for $250, substantially less than the going rate of $1,200 for a weeknight event. He also provided free inmate labor to set up the tables and chairs, waiving the usual $100 set-up fee.
• McCain’s Health Care Plan: Increases Taxes, Decreases Coverage -- AFL-CIO  -- Sen. John McCain gave an address his advisers claimed would “unveil” his health care proposal —but he essentially offered the same tired proposal he’s been touting for months. Most policy analysts agree this plan won’t cut costs, won’t cover more people and won’t fix the real problems in the health care system. McCain wants to address our nation’s health care crisis by merely shifting costs around—and millions of people would pay higher health care costs as a result. McCain would tax health care benefits as income and push more people out of group insurance pools and into the often-predatory private market. In short, McCain would increase our taxes and ensure fewer of us could afford quality health care.
• How to Talk About Health Care -- AlterNet -- John McCain will be spending the week promoting his health care scheme. The crux of the plan is to abolish employer-based health insurance and throw middle class working Americans to the wolves. It is market fundamentalism at its worst. But I'm not here to talk about the policy details. I want to discuss message framing. During an election campaign, when our ultimate audience is persuadable voters, how do we talk about health care?
• McCain’s Health Care Plan: Increases Taxes, Decreases Coverage -- AFL-CIO  -- Sen. John McCain gave an address his advisers claimed would “unveil” his health care proposal —but he essentially offered the same tired proposal he’s been touting for months. Most policy analysts agree this plan won’t cut costs, won’t cover more people and won’t fix the real problems in the health care system. McCain wants to address our nation’s health care crisis by merely shifting costs around—and millions of people would pay higher health care costs as a result. McCain would tax health care benefits as income and push more people out of group insurance pools and into the often-predatory private market. In short, McCain would increase our taxes and ensure fewer of us could afford quality health care.
• How to Talk About Health Care -- AlterNet -- John McCain will be spending the week promoting his health care scheme. The crux of the plan is to abolish employer-based health insurance and throw middle class working Americans to the wolves. It is market fundamentalism at its worst. But I'm not here to talk about the policy details. I want to discuss message framing. During an election campaign, when our ultimate audience is persuadable voters, how do we talk about health care?
• Bush Made Permanent --Paul Krugman Columnist -- As the designated political heir of a deeply unpopular president — according to Gallup, President Bush has the highest disapproval rating recorded in 70 years of polling — John McCain should have little hope of winning in November. In fact, however, current polls show him roughly tied with either Democrat.  In part this may reflect the Democrats’ problems. For the most part, however, it probably reflects the perception, eagerly propagated by Mr. McCain’s many admirers in the news media, that he’s very different from Mr. Bush — a responsible guy, a straight talker....But is this perception at all true? During the 2000 campaign people said much the same thing about Mr. Bush; those of us who looked hard at his policy proposals, especially on taxes, saw the shape of things to come. And a look at what Mr. McCain says about taxes shows the same combination of irresponsibility and double-talk that, back in 2000, foreshadowed the character of the Bush administration.
• John McCain Won't Be Looking for the Union Label --OpEd News -- Don’t expect any labor union to endorse John McCain for president in the general election. The wounds from the Bush–Cheney Administration are just too deep. But, their reasons aren’t because of social justice issues that once pervaded the labor movement, but on bread-and-butter issues that have dominated unions the past five decades. “Our economy is in crisis after years of failed Bush Administration policies that Sen. McCain has adopted as his own,” says Karen Ackerman, AFL-CIO political director. McCain, says Steve Smith, AFL-CIO senior media outreach specialist, “assails working families from worker health care and safety to trade policies.”
  FREE-TRADE THEORY DOESN'T ALLAY ANXIOUS MIDDLE CLASS -- Yahoo News -- McCain is stuck with the GOP's dogmatic insistence on both free markets and a ragged social safety net, a dangerous combination for workers battered by globalization. If protectionism doesn't work, what does? Setting workers adrift without health care or pensions? Dismissing their worries as parochial and unsophisticated? The Arizona senator, like much of the nation's leadership class, is badly out of touch with the struggles of average citizens. He has been married for nearly 28 years to the heir to a beer distributorship; Cindy Hensley McCain is believed to be worth more than $100 million. And as a member of the U.S. Senate, he has excellent health insurance.
• Ignore the Corporate Media Spin, McCain is a Weak Candidate -- NY Times -- But as the doomsday alarm grew shrill, few noticed that on this same day in Pennsylvania, 27 percent of Republican primary voters didn’t just tell pollsters they would defect from their party’s standard-bearer; they went to the polls, gas prices be damned, to vote against Mr. McCain.
• John McCain and the Simple Arithmetic of Republican Economic Failure -- Huffington Post -- John McCain is a "deficit hawk"? These days, that's about as accurate as saying Donald Trump is homeless. Let's cut through the nonsense and talk about real numbers. Numbers tell a story. Especially over time. They compel us to focus on results -- success and failure. Over the short term, maybe a few years, numbers can be manipulated or give false signals. But not over decades, and not over a generation. The numbers over the past 30 years are not refutable. When it comes to creating jobs and managing the nation's finances, Democratic presidents demonstrate success while Republican presidents show failure.
• McCain opposes equal pay bill in Senate -- AP -- Republican Sen. John McCain, campaigning through poverty-stricken cities and towns, said Wednesday he opposes a Senate bill that seeks equal pay for women because it would lead to more lawsuits. Democratic National Committee spokeswoman Karen Finney said: "At a time when American families are struggling to keep their homes and jobs while paying more for everything from gasoline to groceries, how on Earth would anyone who thinks they can lead our country also think it's acceptable to oppose equal pay for America's mothers, wives and daughters?"

• Truth Vs. 'Trash Journalism': McCain's Weak Rebuttal to Damaging Allegations -- Alternet -- I just don't get where all the "outlandishness" and "hate" comes from on the McCain side. I am only a humble author trying to do my job, sharing facts that are 100% sourced. It's not like I included in my book the account of a former AP reporter who recounted to me seeing John McCain wander off into the Red Light District of Hanoi in 1996 when he was there to normalize relations with the Vietnamese. Or that it was known among reporters that he used to disappear into that part of town alone at night. I never said that in my book. And why would I? That would supposedly be "trash journalism."
• The Man Who Would Be Bush -- Alternet -- Are Americans unusually stupid or is it something our president put in the water? As millions surrender their homes and sacrifice other standards of our nation's economic and political reputation to the caprice of the Bush-Cheney imperium, a majority of voters tell pollsters that they might vote for a candidate who promises more of the same.

  Assuming that likely voters are not now thinking of yet another Republican president simply because John McCain is the only white guy left standing -- an excuse as pathetic in its logic as the decision four years ago to return two Texas oil hustlers to the White House because they were not Massachusetts liberals -- must mean that tens of millions of Americans have taken leave of their senses.

  If not the white-guy syndrome, why would even a shocking minority of Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama supporters say they prefer McCain to the other Democrat? How otherwise to explain the nation's widespread bipartisan rejection of the Bush presidency and yet a willingness to let McCain continue in that vein?

• Suspending gas tax won't ease pain at pump -- Union Bulletin Opinion -- Sen. John McCain, the presumptive Republican nominee for president, called for a summer-long suspension of the federal gasoline tax as well as other tax cuts as a way to curb the pain at the pump.
  
  The proposal is deeply flawed.
  
  Suspending the 18.4 cent a gallon gasoline tax and 24.4 cent a gallon diesel tax from Memorial Day to Labor Day would provide modest relief and only for a very short time. Over the last month gas has shot up 18.4 cents in a matter of days. If the gasoline tax is suspended that void would be filled in a matter of weeks if not days. The oil companies would reap even bigger profits.
  
  But the loss of that tax revenue would be devastating to this nation's infrastructure.

• Under McCain, Every Day Would Be Tax Day -- AFL-CIO Blog -- McCain has proposed a health care plan that would force working families to pay taxes on more than just our wages. His plan would tax our health care benefits.

   

  But while millions of us would find it harder to pay for our health benefits under McCain’s plan, the same would not be true of the top 10 insurance companies: They would rake in nearly $2 billion in tax cuts. Just five oil companies, meanwhile, would see nearly $4 billion in tax cuts.

   

  What’s more, McCain’s changes to the tax code could lead employers to drop health care benefits altogether, leaving working families at the mercy of a private health care market plagued by high costs, bias against pre-existing conditions and outright denials.. 

• Murtha says McCain too old to be president -- AP -- Murtha is 75, four years older than McCain. He says they are nearly the same age, and the rigors and stress of running the country is too much for guys their age. ''I've served with seven presidents,'' Murtha told a union audience. ''When they come in, they all make mistakes. They all get older....This one guy running is about as old as me,'' he said, drawing laughter and applause. ''Let me tell you something, it's no old man's job.''
• Democrats Sue FEC over McCain Finances -- NPR -- The Democratic National Committee has sued the Federal Election Commission, saying the commission failed in its obligation to investigate Republican John McCain's campaign finances. It's another consequence of the FEC's being nonfunctional in the midst of the biggest fundraising season in history — unable to act because it lacks the necessary number of commissioners. 
• Biden: McCain would put urgent global issues on back burner -- AP -- Senate Foreign Relations Committee Chairman Joe Biden says Republican Sen. John McCain would continue President Bush's practice of pursuing the war in Iraq at the expense of other urgent global issues. "When it comes to Iraq, there is no daylight between John McCain and George W. Bush. They are joined at the hip," Biden said in excerpts of remarks prepared for delivery Tuesday at Georgetown University.
• How McCain Promotes “Reform” Through Non-Profit Institute-- Harpers Magazine --  Senator John McCain’s ties to the supposedly independent Reform Institute have recently attracted well-deserved media scrutiny. In 2001, McCain helped found the Institute, a non-profit group whose stated mission is to advance political transparency. But the group’s real goal has often seemed to be the advancement of John McCain.
• Citizen McCain, Cont'd -- Washington Post -- Back in late February, a New York Times story revisited the question of whether McCain, who was born in the Panama Canal Zone (where his father was serving in the Navy), fit the constitution's requirement that the president be a "natural-born citizen" of the United States. 
• McCain: More Conservative Than His Image -- AP --  The independent label sticks to John McCain because he antagonizes fellow Republicans and likes to work with Democrats. But a different label applies to his actual record: conservative. The likely Republican presidential nominee is much more conservative than voters appear to realize. McCain leans to the right on issue after issue, not just on the Iraq war but also on abortion, gay rights, gun control and other issues that matter to his party's social conservatives.
•   Democrats to ask federal judge to order FEC investigation of McCain's campaign financing -- Dallas News -- A lawsuit against the Federal Election Commission, to be filed today, questions the agency's ability to review Mr. McCain's decision to opt out of the system. The Republican presidential candidate, who had been entitled to $5.8 million in federal funds for the primary campaign, decided to give up that money so he could avoid strict spending limits.
• McCain is either nuts or stupid-maybe both! -- opednews.com --  Big bro 43's Mini-me, McCain, has painted himself into a quagmire surrounded by a swamp. His career has been filled with so much hypocrisy that he has been forced to say a lot of nonsense. He can't maintain consistency. That means he is a flip-flopper which the rabid right-wing extremists hate. Let's throw some out. The first set of dueling stances are McCain's crooked role with the Keating Five and McCain's stances as an anti-lobbyist zealot--a campaign finance reformer.....

• McCain temper boiled over in '92 tirade, called wife a 'cunt' -- Raw Story --  The Real McCain by Cliff Schecter, which will arrive in bookstores next month, reports an angry exchange between McCain and his wife that happened in full view of aides and reporters during a 1992 campaign stop.The man who was known as "McNasty" in high school has erupted in foul-languaged tirades at political foes and congressional colleagues more-or-less throughout his career, and his quickness to anger has been an issue on the presidential campaign trail as evidence of his fury has surfaced.

• The Arizona hit man -- Seattle Times Opinion -- As The Washington Post reports, McCain is now "assiduously courting both lobbyists and their wealthy clients, offering them private audiences as part of his fundraising." He has more lobbyists as fundraisers than any other White House contender, and he allows lobbyists to simultaneously work in his campaign and represent business clients. In fact, the Post reported that his chief adviser "said he does a lot of his (lobbying) work by telephone from McCain's Straight Talk Express bus." Such antics have run that "Straight Talk Express" into the ditch of hypocrisy. Just look at McCain's actions on two huge issues: energy and campaign-finance reform.