Recently in John McCain Category

Glenn Reynolds notes that the McCains have $100,000+ in credit card debt: "That should enhance his credibility on the deficit."

Fair enough, I see the irony as well.

Meanwhile, over at Huffington Post, Seth Colter Walls is having a moonbattathon based on... his own ignorance of charge cards:

With news of the McCain family's six-figure credit card debt cropping up today, its not too hard to imagine a little light-hearted chuckling among middle class folks getting a look at the spendthrift habits of elites. As The Hill reported this morning, based on disclosure reports released today, Sen. John McCain and his wife Cindy owe at least $100,000 to American Express, with a "dependent child" also holding a card with a balance between $15,000 and $50,000.

So what? I travel frequently on business. I can tell you from personal experience that it's very easy to rack up $20-30 grand in a month from hotels, car rental, airfare, etc., and I don't have an enterage following me 24/7. The McCains are campaigning for the Presidency, while I'm sure the campaign takes care of some expenses directly, the fluid nature of campaigning would make using a charge card (and getting reimbursed later) necessary.

Seth continues:

But not all credit card debts are created equal. In fact, according to a prior disclosure form filed in May that was provided to The Huffington Post, a significant amount of the McCains' credit card debt is being held by American Express at an interest rate of zero percent -- making their debt a lot less like the costly credit card pitfalls facing many Americans and a lot more like the big sweetheart loans that can get national political figures in hot water.

Wow - some scoop you've got there, Seth - you've uncovered what most folks already know. The most common American Express card (indeed, the only up until a few years ago) is interest free. Not just to the rich, but to everyone.

Besides, if the McCains were getting sweetheart deals, what use would they have for a joint card at 25.99%?

This one made me laugh out loud:

Zero-percent credit card interest rates are not exclusively for the rich or well-connected, of course. But the most common offers of that kind are often capped at a few-thousand dollars and shed their zero percent rate after six to nine months

Um, no, Seth. Even a standard Gold card has no limit and no interest unless you pay late - a category which the McCains apparently fall into. Don't take my word for it, see for yourself.

There's so much low hanging fruit to pick when it comes to criticising McCain - is this really the best they can do?

I'd be remiss, especially after pointing out Democrat hyper-partisanship and dishonesty on energy policy, if I didn't also point out that our hope on the right for changing the 30 years of Democrat obstructionism is - well, disappointing. McCain, from this morning:

Although the GOP presidential candidate didn't address the question of raising taxes on oil companies, he said the companies "absolutely" should return some profits to consumers. "And they should be embarking on research and development that will pay off in reducing our dependence on foreign oil," he said.

"The point is, oil companies have got to be more participatory in alternate energy, in sharing their profits in a variety of ways, and there is very strong and justifiable emotion about their profits," McCain said.

The issue of oil company profits came up this week in the Senate, where Republicans stopped the Democrats from imposing a tax on windfall profits and taking away billions of dollars in tax breaks in response to the $4-a-gallon price of gas.

In the past McCain has indicated he would consider such a tax proposal, saying he didn't want to see companies making "obscene profits" that distort the market.

McCain would consider windfall profits taxes? Well, he said economics wasn't his strongest subject. Someone in the McCain camp please educate the Senator on the effects of raising corporate taxes on consumer prices, please. Also, I'm very disturbed by this socialist streak he flaunts when it comes to energy policy - all this "profit-sharing" doesn't belong in a country where freedom is revered.

Also, why do our politicians (and much of the population) expect OIL companies to develop alternative energy? Isn't that kind of like expecting Toro to research grass varieties that don't need mowing?

Added to his continued ANWR = Grand Canyon theme, McCain's ideas on energy are a tragic embarrassment to the Republican Party.

No, I didn't forget about the blog, just had a little too much on my plate the past couple of days. I'm getting ready for a business trip to Europe - leaving late next week for a little over a month. I plan on blogging while there, I'll be adding some photos from the trip to my usual political commentary.

In the meantime, Obama has finally cinched the Democrat nomination, congrats. His campaign released a bunch of childhood photos, here's one of Barak having fun at the beach:

I couldn't help being drawn in by the imagery - Obama, being of scant accomplishment and even less experience, has had to invoke figures from the past like JFK in his stump speeches since he lacks the political height to reach the White House without standing on the shoulders of giants.

The ease he displays in that role apparently comes from a lifetime of practice.

Not to be outdone, McCain's campaign issued a photo of the Maverick as a youngster, showing that he's been preparing for this election his entire life as well:

Not bloody likely. The Democrats who have blocked oil exploration, nuclear energy, and every other method of powering the country have clung to their flawed theories through thick and thin (mostly thin, as we're seeing wholesale damage to the economy as a result). Indeed, it's hard to find any type of energy they do support. Even wind power, popular with the local Joe-bag-'o-socialism class here in Delaware, meets heavy resistance from Democrat elitists at the federal level. One has to wonder what life for Americans would look like if Democrats in Washington took their distaste for all things energy to its logical conclusion and banned all energy sources they didn't like - something like this?

While Congress has been the real villain in the energy mess we find ourselves in, the executive branch could make an impact if the right approach were taken with Congress. Unfortunately, we have little to look forward to regardless of who wins in November. Obama would raise gas prices through increased taxation, and offers no hope at all that prices would decline through increased supply.

The nation wouldn't fare any better under McCain. McCain's "cap & trade" plan would be no less of a disaster than any similar plan advanced by the left, and he opposes increasing oil supplies. His only saving grace - indeed, his only dramatic difference from the Democrats - is his opposition to increased taxing of the American people through corporate surrogates (aka the oil companies).

An argument could be made that we may fare worse under McCain, as his legendary stubbornness would keep his administration stuck on stupid while the citizens suffer under an ever-worsening economy. Obama, on the other hand, is a political opportunist who might relent on some of his harmful agenda in response to negative polling. In other words, a weasel might be less harmful than someone guided by principle. That's a painful point to have to make, and shows just how bad things have been allowed to get in our political system.

*sigh*.

As I said above, though, Congress is the primary cause of the problem. This also means that they're in a position to correct it as well, if the pressure is high enough. It may not be possible, but there's nothing to be gained by not trying. Calls and letters to Congress are a start. In the same spirit, petitions and lobbying also make your opinions heard. If you're looking for a petition, start with Newt (H/T Don Surber):

While there are many important issues this election season, there are none that affect all Americans as much as this one. Regardless of political stripe, everyone should be joining in the effort to convince our government to stop obstructing energy independence and increased prosperity.

Spend a little time over at Newsweek and you might wonder if they have any time left over for journalism. Their left-leaning bias has been obvious in recent years, but they've finally shed any pretenses. Their current cover story is not even a news story, but a long memo to Obama with heart-felt advice on how the Messiah should run his campaign and win this fall. I'm still digesting it, but here's a little jewel from page 2 (emphasis mine):

It's also important for you not to play the race card yourself. You can't imply, or be seen to imply, that anyone who criticizes you is a racist, closeted or otherwise.

The addition of the word "yourself" is telling. Newsweek is actually suggesting that it would be bad for Obama should he play the race card himself, but it's OK through others. What others? Why, Newsweek, of course. The entire issue is devoted to the subject, and they've even developed a whole new poll just to suggest that anyone not voting for Obama just might be racist:

Even as he closes in on the Democratic nomination for the presidency, Sen. Barack Obama is facing lingering problems winning the support of white voters--including some in his own party. In a new NEWSWEEK Poll of registered voters, Obama trails presumptive Republican nominee Sen. John McCain 40 percent to 52 percent among whites.

This even as Newsweek warns Obama that "You will never get the real racists to come around." The poll itself is here, and includes a "Racial Resentment Index" based on the following list:

Disapprove of racial preferences (Q17=2)
Less qualified people hired often (Q18=1)
Whites lose out (Q19=2,4)
Gone too far pushing rights (Q20a=1)
Poor too dependent on government (Q20b=1)
Blacks responsible for own condition (Q21=2)
Disapprove of interracial marriage (Q22=2)
Few things in common with blacks (Q23=3)
Would mind if black person moved close (Q24=1)
Would be upset if daughter dated black (Q25=2,3)

It would be difficult to imagine how they could be more incendiary in their questioning.

NewsBusters notes that there's only one side of the story in the Newsweek poll:

This raises two important questions for Newsweek:

1. Why wasn't it concerned about McCain's lingering problems winning the support of black voters?
2. Why didn't it measure a Racial Resentment Index for the non-whites that participated in the poll, especially for the blacks that overwhelmingly support Obama?

Good questions. The answer is that their interest in McCain is how best to defeat him. In the same issue, Newsweek raises issues about McCain's age and health. Unable to find a smoking gun of imminent Alzheimer's or cancer, they conclude in one article:

But the eventual winner of the election—no matter who it is—should be forewarned. Roizen has assessed data on presidential health back to the 1920s and finds that the stress of the job takes a toll. "Every year in office, you age two years," he says. It's not hard to calculate the effect this would have on McCain. After two terms, his calendar age and Real Age would be right back in line.

And in another, they just go for negativism in the title: "An Answer for Every ‘Little Jerk’" Again, failing to find anything bad in the medical records, they feel compelled to insinuate that McCain's gaffe last December was directed at anyone who showed curiosity about his age and health.

It's sad that any news organization would go to these lengths to promote a political agenda. Sadder still is that this type of in-kind campaign donation posing as journalism will increase as November nears.

I promised I'd write more on John Hawkins' pronouncement on John McCain and his shifting immigration stances. And I say "shifting" only because his stance has been perceived as shifting. Personally, I now believe it never did. While there may have been some confusion as to the scheduling of McCain's agenda , the priorities have remained the same.

I share John's (and other's) distaste with McCain on the subject of immigration. It's McCain's single worst position among the conservative base, and rightly so. Anyone who saw the interviews and and watched the debates last year where the Maverick gave his pained definitions of amnesty knew then that he too was aware of that fact, and carefully tiptoeing through his answers. McCain has carefully played word games in the media with great success. And regrettably, too many folks so wanted to make lemonade from lemons that he largely went unchallenged on what has from the beginning been about amnesty and never changed.

In this, I do fault Senator McCain. His semantic games have lacked the candor and bluntness that he likes to portray as his strengths. Here he is in September last year arguing that comprehensive immigration reform isn't amnesty (skip ahead to about 2:45):

I often wonder why McCain's definition of amnesty didn't sink his bid for the nomination as soon as he said it. It's a word that has multiple meanings, "forgiveness" is not even cited as a definition by most dictionaries. His willful misrepresentation of the context and definition of the word used by the citizens to whom he responded was a disturbing blast of arrogance and condescension that should have had more folks seeing flashing red lights and hearing klaxons. Sigh.

But back to the larger point - Senator McCain's position on immigration reform shifted little when he started proclaiming that he "got the message" from the border hawks. Indeed, all that changed was the schedule. Here he is on O'Reilly describing his vision of immigration reform:

Note how he combines the issues in his answer as "immigration reform". Other than the "security first" part, how is this different from his comprehensive immigration reform from last year?

Most of the punditry and the blogosphere (including yours truly) assumed that when McCain said "security first" he meant "separately". I'm going to suggest something to you all:

John McCain always intended to resurrect the previous bill in full, with the addition of some sort of timetable and milestone provisions regarding border security to pacify the border hawks.

Assuming that the suggestion above is correct, has John McCain lied about immigration? That's a toughie. Certainly he has through omission - his campaign speeches have been long on promise regarding immigration but short on the mechanics required to carry the promise out. In fairness, McCain may have originally assumed that everyone knew that his bill would come back with the addition of the security first provision. However, over time he surely should have been been aware that folks had the wrong interpretation, and he shouldn't have let let it go this far without clarifying his position.

But go back through everything he's said about immigration since last summer - can any of you find in his words something that refutes my suggestion above? I can't.

When a myth circulates that portrays a politician in a negative light, they're quick in the attempt to dispel it. But when a myth shows them in a positive light, there's a reluctance to do so. It's a quality not unique to John McCain. But this particular myth should have been exposed in the blogosphere, and it was not. Not to pick on John Hawkins, but he was taken in like the rest of us. From his commentary at Townhall.com:

Then there's immigration, where we know McCain is just dying to put the illegal immigrants in this country on a path to citizenship. However, he has pledged to secure the border before he does that. In all honesty, with the glacier-like speed that the federal government moves, there is zero chance that is going to be completed in the next four years. Yet, as security improves, more and more illegal aliens will leave the country on their own. So even though McCain's motives wouldn't be pure, enforcement by attrition would still occur during his first term and if conservatives hold McCain to his promise, it's very possible that he wouldn't be able to implement amnesty by 2012.

If you assumed that McCain would deal with amnesty in separate legislation only after the border is secured, this was a reasonable conclusion - the clock on McCain's presidency would run out long before he could enact amnesty. This was my hope as well. But McCain never said he would enact separate bills, he simply said the border would be secure first.

So based on recent statements, and reviewing past ones, what would immigration reform look like under John McCain?

It would be a comprehensive bill. Some sort of plan to secure the borders would likely be required to be accomplished first, followed by Z-visas and path to citizenship but only after certain metrics have been met. Even if the border takes more than four years to fix, we would be stuck with the enduring and destructive legacy of amnesty. No clock-watching will change it, and having already passed the larger bill, Congress will feel free to accelerate the more harmful parts without waiting for border certification. The danger here cannot be overstated. Once amnesty is the law, any pre-conditions can be altered quickly and easily.

Back to theme about McCain and whether his recent statements expose either lies or betrayals - have we been had? Yes, we have. But McCain doesn't deserve all the blame. The assumptions of how McCain's plan would manifest itself by the punditry and the blogosphere have been nearly universally flawed in spite of the fact that McCain himself never confirmed those assumptions. We hoped that he meant the issues would be dealt with separately, and didn't want to see that he could take other paths and still keep his promise.

Like it or don't, most of us on the right should be reserving some of the anger being displayed this week for ourselves.

One of my favorite bloggers has drawn the line - he ain't votin' for the Maverick. Why?:

He's a man without honor, without integrity, who could not have captured the Republican nomination had he run on making comprehensive immigration a top priority of his administration.

I think we'll be seeing more of this - I'll have much more later today.

On the heels of attacking Republicans last week on what he called "fear-peddling" and "fear mongering", Obama misrepresents McCain's Social Security plan to a room full of seniors in order to frighten them:

"Let me be clear, privatizing Social Security was a bad idea when George W. Bush proposed it, it's a bad idea today," Obama said. "That's why I stood up against this plan in the Senate and that's why I won't stand for it as president."

Obama uses the same, tired, old politics tactic used before on this issue by his party. It's never been suggested by Republicans that all of Social Security be privatized, just a very tiny portion - yet Obama, just like the rest of the Democrat party, continues to paint it as if the plan transferred the whole ball of wax to penny stocks. But disclosing the truth wouldn't have the desired effect of fostering fear and uncertainty.

If an ordinary citizen like you or I went to a nursing home and told the residents vicious untruths about their future security and well-being for the sole purpose of frightening them, it would be characterized as cruel and terroristic, and rightly so. Yet for some reason, when a typical old-politics Democrat like Obama lies to the elderly with the intent to foment fear and panic, it's called "hope" and "change".

Unfortunately, it's the wrong one.

If you missed the O'Reilly interview of McCain last night, here's a clip where he promises virtually no help on increasing oil supply while waiting for the elusive next energy source to be developed in who knows how many years. No drilling in ANWR, and leaving production off shore up to the states - which is about the same as saying no drilling considering the constituencies involved.

I guess all we can hope for is that gas prices won't go up as much under McCain as they would under Obama. Big whoop.

Well, at least he'll give us border enforcement first, right? Um, no. Keep watching as he falls back on his comprehensive reform lines. I wouldn't be surprised if his poll numbers plummet ten points after this performance.

And folks are raising the specter of McCain losing his bearings. Shame it's not true, I think that might be preferable to his current lucidity.

Can't we get a mulligan on the primaries?

Update: While I'm loath to validate a trackback blackballing site, credit where credit is due - Allahpundit may be on to something here. Delaware, after all, is also a foregone conclusion.

One of the things polls often show is relationships between seemingly unrelated groups of folks and their views. File this one under Awesome:

If you are male and a Led Zeppelin fan, chances are you may be leaning toward voting Republican in the U.S. presidential election, according to a survey of rock radio fans released on Wednesday.

That followed for classic rock in general - but fans of 80's and 90's alternative radio liked Obama. No mention of death metal or yodeling.

Rock on, dudes.

Maybe related, or maybe not - The apparent point to this meandering story is that the Associated Press was unable to find any significant dirt on John McCain after reviewing "thousands of pages of campaign, personal finance, real estate and property records nationwide". The secondary message is that the McCain family is a beer family, which dovetails nicely with the poll above. Combine the two, and maybe we're seeing the beginnings of the customary painting of Republican voters with the flyover-country-trailer-trash brush we see every four years or so.

After all, it's easy to imagine rock and rollers as beer drinkers. Fans of Depeche Mode or Flock of Seagulls? Not so much.

Via AP/Yahoo:

DENVER - Republican John McCain launched his first television ad of the general election Friday, a spot that shows him imprisoned in Vietnam and calls him "the American president Americans have been waiting for."

As Democrats Barack Obama and Hillary Rodham Clinton continue to battle for their's party's nomination, the Republican Party's presidential pick hopes to set the tone for the campaign and start defining himself before Democrats have a chance to do it.

He's only going to run it in New Mexico for now, presumably because he doesn't want to start competing for attention with the nasty bickering from Clinton and Obama just yet. Here it is, though:

Not bad - I think it's a good start. If the Dems continue to act like children, it will make a nice contrast in tone for folks to see. He can't stay positive forever, though. When Obama finally gets past Hillary (assuming conventional wisdom pans out) he's going to go negative right away, and the DNC won't wait that long - Dean loves attack ads too much. I'm looking forward to seeing how McCain responds when the mud starts flying.

Added: Here's another small sign of things to come. Although the article linked above is about a new McCain ad, look at the picture AP (who has been in the tank for Obama for some time) chose to accompany it:

They just can't help themselves, can they?

Update: I bet AP got a few emails from the McCain campaign. The picture has now changed: