CONTENTS

CLICK ON THE BELOW UNDERLINED SUBJECTS TO BE TAKEN THERE

18. How in the World Can Senator McCain actually accuse Obama of being an Elitist when he owns Eight Houses and as little as a week ago effectively told those who were losing their Houses to go out and get a second job and that they were just unlucky and made bad decisions, but he also supported the bail out of Bear Stern...one of the architects of the Housing Crash!!!!!!!!!!

19. Is Senator John McCain Mentally Defective? Why doesn't he know how the military works in Iraq and Afghanistan. He is giving all the indications of being too old. His memory is obviously deficient.

20. What is Senator John McCain's Position on Taxes?

21. Does John McCain think that threatening Shites and Sunies will somehow put a stop to violence in the MidEast?

22. What about the dishonest "Fact Finding Trips to Iraq" where manufactured evidence is presented to the news media to prove the The Surge is Working".

23. John McCain's Health Care Plan Helps Corporate America and We Pay For It!!!!!

24. John McCain wants to spend 4 Trillion Dollars on 700 Nuclear Power Plants and stick you with the bill.

25. Is John McCain mentally defective? Did John McCain call his Wife a C_nt and a Trollop in front of reporters and aides!!!?

26. What is John McCain lying about Today?!!!

27. John McCain's 10 Out-Of-Touch Moments!

28. John McCain Wants War Against Any Religion but Christianity.

29. How John McCain Has Gotten a Free Ride From The News Media.

30. Senator John McCain Did Not Vote For Bush!!!!!! - That's His Only Redeeming feature!!!!!!!

31. John McCain wants to Talk to Hamas or has he changed his mind again!!!!! Flip Flop Express rides again!!!

32. The Questionable and Shady Ethics of Senator John McCain.

33. The Secret McCain Military Files

34. Sources

We will leave it up to the reader to determine whether John McCain has made serious errors in in judgment. John has sometimes supported a Conservative Far Right Christian position especially when it comes to Church and State issues and other times he's been rational; BUT you never know where he stands from day to day. It is apparent from the data collected, that the first amendment may be in danger from his past and future actions as well as other constitutional sections. He originally supported deregulation of banks and the SEC causing the current economic Depression.

John McCain's office stated that his position is that Certain Religions aren't "Real" religions. What is a real religion, Senator McCain? What you have been practicing? He says on the one hand that only certain Christian denominations are valid. Read the following and remember: "By their Works may they be known." This is a summary of information collected from several sources about John McCain.

(Remember it is best to investigate on your own when looking at allegations about anyone. Don't believe us, think for yourself and investigate for yourself! And remember, the First Amendment Coalition and Religious Freedom Coalition of the South East do not represent any political party nor do we recommend any political candidate, nor are we involving ourselves in the political process.)

John Sidney McCain III (born August 29, 1936) is the senior United States Senator from Arizona, the defeated Republican Party nominee in the 2008 presidential election, and an angry old man.

In the Republican Party, there are two kinds of officials: those that support the Iraq War but were too cowardly to fight in a war when they had the chance, and, much less common, those that support the Iraq War and did fight in other wars when they had the chance. McCain is the latter kind.

During the Vietnam War, McCain became a naval aviator. In a bombing mission over North Vietnam in 1967, he was shot down and badly injured. He endured five and a half years as a prisoner of war, including periods of torture, before he was released following the Paris Peace Accords in 1973. This raises the question: can one be a hero while at the same time being a a__hole. The answer, as McCain has shown, is: yes.

In 1982, McCain was elected to the U.S. House of Representatives, and in 1986, he was elected to the U.S. Senate. During his years in the Senate, McCain has essentially been an unthinking, run-of-the-mill right-winger. He managed to establish a reputation, however, as a "maverick" who often "defied orthodoxy." That this is true is testament to the high incidence of a__holes in the media, an occupation generally considered to have among the highest of APRs (a__hole prevalence rate).

In the late 1980's, McCain became one of the "Keating Five." Some have noted that this sounds like a band. And to the extent that taking payoffs from corrupt savings and loans officials, passing legislation that deregulated the industry and destroyed thousands of lives, and intervening in the investigation of said corrupt savings and loan officials is like playing music, then, yes, they were a band. A very good one.

In order to salvage his career, McCain recreated himself as a campaign-finance reformer. Because of a defect in the media, McCain succeeded. In 2002, the largely useless McCain-Feingold Act was passed.

McCain ran for the Republican nomination in the 2000 presidential election, but was defeated by another incompetent, George W. Bush. In the 2008 presidential cycle, McCain was joined in the race by a lazy Repo, a Mormon Repo, a evangelical Repo, a libertarian former gynecologist Repo and a Repo named Giuliani. After the Mormon Repo dropped out in February of 2008, McCain became the presumptive nominee.

After refusing to pick someone competent for a running mate, McCain would go on to be defeated in the largest electoral landslide in the modern era, but not before unleashing what will perhaps be the biggest political mistake in the modern era. See Sarah Palin.

Early Life and Military Career

Family Background and Early Education

McCain was born on August 29, 1936, at the Coco Solo Air Base in the Panama Canal Zone, then controlled by the United States. Both his father and grandfather were United States Navy admirals, and were in fact the first father-son pair each to achieve four-star admiral rank. Oddly, there is no similar ranking for the level of incompetency that one has reached. If there were such a system, and if it were, similarly, based on a possible total of five, McCain would be said to have achieved a four-incompetency rank.

Because McCain was born outside the United States, some mentally challenged right-wing bloggers (or, as they are known, “right-wing bloggers”) have suggested that McCain is therefore not eligible to be president. Unfortunately, they are wrong. The constitution requires only that the president be a "natural born citizen," which the First Congress said included "the children of citizens of the United States that may be born beyond sea, or outside the limits of the United States." Therefore, John McCain was, indeed, eligible to further ruin the United States by becoming its president.

Naval Training, Early Assignments, First Marriage and Children

Like his father and grandfather, McCain enrolled in the United States Naval Academy. There, he earned over 100 demerits. His reaction was that it was "bullshit."

But it was in his off-base activities that McCain truly excelled. According to one classmate, "being on liberty with John McCain was like being in a train wreck." It is unclear what being with McCain during his presidency would have been like for the nation. Unfortunately, America has no direct experience from which to draw with a president who was a temperamental son of a distinguished military man and who in college was a temperamental f_ckup who liked to party. What could possibly be so dangerous about that?

McCain graduated from the Naval Academy in 1958, ranked 894th out of 899. As historians have noted, there were five people in his class who were actually bigger f_ckups than McCain, but none of them ran for president.

McCain, commissioned an ensign, spent two and a half years training as a naval aviator in Pensacola. There he earned a reputation as a party man, drove a Corvette, dated an exotic dancer named "Marie the Flame of Florida," and, as he would later say, "generally misused my good health and youth." But at least when it came to flying, he took his responsibilities seriously.

Just kidding. He didn't care about those either -- he was a below average flyer, and couldn't be bothered to read his aviation manuals. But, as many noted partying experts have asked, what good could possibly come of reading manuals? It's not like one might have a situation in which 1.) one's plane would quit while landing and crash into Corpus Christi Bay, or 2.) be flying too low in Spain and take out some power lines, or 3.) crash while en route to Philadelphia for an Army/Navy football game.

Vietnam Operations

In December 1966, McCain was assigned to the aircraft carrier USS Forrestal, which, in 1967 was assigned to join Operation Rolling Thunder, the bombing campaign against North Vietnam. On October 26, 1967, McCain began his political career by being shot down. He was then held prisoner by the North Vietnamese for seven years. During this time, McCain was also tortured. Such barbaric treatment gave McCain a unique insight into the evil of torture. And though McCain's war injuries left him with limited mobility in his arms, he was still able to pat himself on his back throughout his Senate career for his opposition to the practice. When the Iraq War began, and reports began to appear that the United States has used torture, including waterboarding, on detainees, McCain spoke out.

But in February of 2007, even though he had become the presumptive GOP nominee for president, McCain had still not secured the enthusiastic support of right-wing goons and thugs whose sexual inadequacy has manifested in an extreme love of torture. This group is also sometimes referred to as "The Republican Party."

Therefore, when an Intelligence Authorization Bill came to the Senate floor that would require the intelligence community to abide by the same standards contained in the Army Field Manual, which bans waterboarding, McCain was faced with a choice: make a principled stand consistent with his avowed opposition to torture, or cowardly choose to abandon his principles and suck-up to the right-wing goons and thugs who sexual inadequacy has manifested in an extreme love of torture. McCain chose the latter.

As many whose views of foreign policy are not influenced by sexual inadequacy have noted, aside from the moral reason to not engage in torture, another is the reasonable conclusion that making practices like waterboarding legal also makes it much more likely that other countries will engage in the same practices on American prisoners of war. McCain's son Jimmy is, in fact, in the Marine Corps. On February 14th, 2007, Jimmy returned from Iraq, meaning that McCain's son is now safe from the increased danger of being tortured that McCain's cowardice has placed other U.S. troops under.

Return to United States

After returning to the U.S., McCain was reunited with his wife Carol, who, in a 1969 car accident, had suffered near-death injuries of her own. This had left her four inches shorter and substantially heavier. While stationed at Jacksonville, Florida, McCain began to have extramarital affairs. As he later noted, "My marriage's collapse was attributable to my own selfishness and immaturity more than it was to Vietnam..." That would distinguish it from his political career.

In 1979, while attending a military reception in Hawaii, McCain met and fell in ~~lust~~ love with a teacher from Phoenix named Cindy Lou Hensley, 17 years his junior, and the daughter of a wealthy Anheuser-Busch distributor. It is unclear whether the latter detail had any influence over McCain, but the ability to easily secure a keg of Bud -- the King of Beers, brewed by an original all natural process using the choicest hops, rice and best barley malt -- on short notice and at wholesale prices could possibly have seemed like an added enticement to someone who liked to party as much as McCain.

McCain divorced his wife Carol in 1980. McCain and Hensley were married that same year. Unfortunately, the wedding came too early to feature Bud Light, which was introduced in 1982, and is brewed with the finest ingredients for a refreshingly smooth taste.

McCain's children were not happy about the wedding and did not attend, though maybe that was because they do not like the choicest hops and best barley malt. If they feel they are too good for such things, then they do not deserve the King of Beers.

Political Career

U.S. Congressman

Now living in Phoenix, McCain set about finding work. In what would later turn out to be good practice for a senate career spent working wealthy players like corrupt savings and loan felon Charles Keating for favors, McCain got a job with his father-in-law. His title was Vice President of Public Relations, probably because it sounded more important than "Goodwill Ambeersador." Here, McCain was tasked with the tough job of schmoozing business people. It was difficult, grueling work, the sort of job that often meant spending six, or even seven hours a day at the grindstone. But it was also the sort of job McCain was uniquely qualified for.

In 1982, a seat came open in Arizona's 1st congressional district. McCain ran, and, after outspending his opponents courtesy of a $167,000 loan his wife made to the campaign, McCain eked out a win.

U.S. Senator

After Barry Goldwater retired in 1986, McCain ran for and won Goldwater's Senate seat. Once in the Senate, McCain soon got into a quarrel with Paul Weyrich. As co-founder of the Moral Majority, Weyrich was a prominent leader of the religious right, and was angry over McCain's defense of President George H. W. Bush's nominee for Secretary of Defense, John Tower, whom the religious right opposed over allegations of heavy drinking and extramarital affairs. (Huh?)

During this time, and up until his run for the presidency, McCain was often at odds with the religious right. Though, as with the issue of torture, the bravery McCain showed in Vietnam disappeared when he was forced to choose between maintaining his principles or sucking up to the worst people in the country.

Keating Five

In the late 1980's McCain finally distinguished himself in the Senate with the help of a man named Charles Keating. The Lincoln Savings and Loan, headed by Keating, had become embroiled in scandal and federal regulators were looking to shut it down and investigate. Keating, who had known McCain since the latter's days as ~~a layabout schmoozer for his father-in-law~~ the Vice President of Public Relations for the Phoenix Budweiser distributor, began looking for a way to get the government to drop the investigation.

Between 1982 and 1987, Keating had given McCain $112,000. Of course, it is possible that Keating had given McCain this money out of the goodness of his heart with no strings attached, simply out of a heartfelt love of the democratic process. It is also possible that R. Kelly just has a healthy interest in helping 16 year-old girls negotiate the rocky shoals of late adolescence.

Directly after two meetings with Keating, McCain called Edwin J. Gray, the chief of the Federal Home Loan Bank Board, which was investigating Keating, and requested that Gray ease off the investigation. Gray testified that four other Senators, all of whom were recipients of political donations from Keating, had also contacted him with the same request. These became known as the "Keating Five."

The saddest part of the entire situation, even more sad than the 21,000 mostly elderly people who had their entire life savings completely wiped out, was that it brought the appearance of conflict upon Senator McCain. As McCain said, "The appearance of it was wrong. It's a wrong appearance when a group of senators appear in a meeting with a group of regulators, because it conveys the impression of undue and improper influence."

And what a terrible impression that can be. Almost as terrible as working your ass off your entire life, little by little putting enough money away for retirement, and then right before retirement finding out your life savings has been robbed from you and instead of working to try to get your money back, your own senator is busy trying to quash the investigation.

On the positive side, the physical activity and social contact that accompany many minimum wage jobs can be good for seniors. The ones who are still ambulatory, anyway.

A "Maverick" Senator

Rightly sensing that he had disgraced himself in the Keating Five scandal and that this would hinder his chances to f_ck up the country as a hotheaded, dangerously unstable, pandering, angry, very old president, McCain set out to launder his reputation. Since the Keating Five scandal had shown him to be a financially sleazy insider, the way McCain chose to rehabilitate himself was campaign finance.

And so, in 1994, McCain teamed up with Wisconsin Democratic Senator Russ Feingold to introduce the McCain-Feingold Act, a bill that would ostensibly diminish the influence of money in politics by placing limits on so-called "soft money" donations by corporations, union and other institutions. The bill was passed in 2002 and took effect in 2003.

The effort paid off for McCain, and in just a few years the press corps, whose short-term memory falls somewhere between that of a household cat and the Rhesus Macaque monkey (Macaca mulatta), native to Afghanistan, northern India, and southern China, hailed McCain as a good government and campaign finance reformer.

How effective was the act in reducing the influence of money in politics? The answer can be found in a simple experiment that anybody can do. Try it yourself: just say the following phrase out loud: "Hey money, I want you to stop influencing politics!" There, you have now had more influence in diminishing the influence of money in politics than the "Bipartisan Campaign Reform Act of 2002 (BCRA, McCain–Feingold Act, Pub.L. 107-155, 116 Stat. 81, enacted 2002-03-27)."

An "A__hole" Senator

Far from actually being a "maverick," the one word that would accurately describe his time in public life is: "a__hole." That McCain was able to successfully make himself be thought of as a "maverick" says as much about the press as it does about McCain. That is, one cannot understand how McCain did this without also understanding the delicate psychology of the Washington D. C. press corps.

Most Washington journalists have a deeply internalized sense of self-loathing. They see themselves as cowardly, flaccid, ineffectual, impotent wimps. In this, they're not entirely wrong. They have always secretly admired the a__hole jocks who used to push them around in high school. The journalists would console themselves with the soothing affirmation that the a__holes were not as smart as they were. They were right, of course, but still, deep down the journalists secretly admired the a__holes.

Along comes John McCain -- an a__hole, but an a__hole who is nice to them, an a__hole who comes to back of the plane and jokes around with them and doesn't make them feel unmanly. Why, sometimes, it seemed as if McCain really liked them. A few years of this, and suddenly McCain's not a temperamental, dangerously unstable a__hole, he's a "maverick."

But the self-esteem issues of the weakling press notwithstanding, McCain is, in fact, an a__hole. An a__hole who wants to be the President of the United States. As an a__hole senator, he the sort of guy who says things like:

• "Only an a__hole would put a budget together like this!" (to New Mexico Republican Pete Dominici)

• "I'm calling you a f_cking jerk!" (to Iowa Republican Senator Chuck Grassley)

• "f_ck you. I know more about this than anybody in the room." (To Texas Republican Senator John Cornyn)

This is why Senator Dominici said in 2000 that "I decided I didn't want this guy anywhere near a trigger." It is presumed by this he meant the nuclear trigger.

McCain is also the sort of guy who would tell the following joke:

Q: Why is Chelsea Clinton so ugly?

A: Her father is Janet Reno.

This is the sort of humor a__holes find funny. When he told the joke, Chelsea Clinton was seventeen years old. Some say when you open an attack like this on the looks of someone who did not ask to be thrust into the public eye, you invite similar attacks in your own direction.

Accordingly, look for a photo of McCain's freakish-looking over-plastic-surgery'd wife Cindy:

In speaking about whether he had ever witnessed McCain's notorious temper problem, former Pennsylvania Republican Senator Rick Santorum said, "I don't know anybody in the Senate who hasn't. Everybody has their McCain story."

And if America elected this temperamental, dangerously unstable, angry old a__hole, America would have had its own McCain story too.

2000 Presidential Campaign

In the summer of 1999, McCain came to the conclusion that his power to f_ck up the country was too limited in the Senate. So on September 27, 1999 in Nashua, New Hampshire, McCain formally announced he was running for the presidency. The leader in fundraising, establishment party support, and expectations was another temperamental f_ckup son of a military man, Texas Governor George W. Bush.

McCain decided to skip Iowa and, on the advice his political consultant, a dick named Mike Murphy, instead went straight to New Hampshire. He traveled in a bus called "The Straight Talk Express." This is presumably because his dick consultant Murphy decided that this was a better name than the "A-Hole Limited," or the "Dangerously UnstableMobile."

On February 1, 2000, McCain won the primary with 49 percent of the vote to Bush's 30 percent. Bush was in trouble and the upcoming South Carolina primary would be crucial.

The fight between Bush and McCain in South Carolina has become known as one of the nastiest and dirties fights in American electoral history. This is especially noteworthy given the fact that, by then, the Republican Party had already established itself as a particularly sleazy institution. Bush's father, George H.W. Bush, had, in fact, won by exploiting the racist "southern strategy," begun by Richard Nixon, and built upon by Ronald Reagan and political strategist Lee Atwater, currently in hell.

Traditionally, the racist strategy was used against Democrats. The South Carolina primary was one of the few times it was used for intra-party purposes.

Days before voting, an anonymous group began a semi-underground smear campaign against McCain. Using push polls, flyers, and emails, the group claimed that McCain had fathered a black child out of wedlock. McCain does, in fact, have a dark-skinned daughter, Bridget. She was adopted from Bangladesh. (Presumably McCain would be angry if someone were to make jokes about Bridget's looks or ponder whether Bridget's father had been Janet Reno, but consistency is rarely something dangerously unstable dicks are accused of.)

This was a classic use of the GOP's "southern strategy." The Bush campaign made what is known as a "big show" in denying any connection with these attacks, and said he would fire anybody who ran defamatory push polls. As the country later found out, Bush often says he will fire any aides found to be involved in wrongdoing. This is the sort of thing that passes for a joke in Deke House.

Of those who spread the rumors, McCain said "I believe that there is a special place in hell for people like those." If by "those" he means people who try to cynically exploit racism for political gain, it appears that "people like those" will have to make room for one more a__hole. Before the South Carolina race, McCain had said the Confederate flag was "very offensive." But then, when he needed the votes of the racist thugs and goons there, McCain rethought his position, and came to the conclusion that the flag was a "symbol of heritage."

Bush was able to out pander McCain among the racists and won the South Carolina primary. McCain withdrew from the race on March 9, 2000. McCain would, however, learn a valuable lesson about pandering to right-wing religious bigots: do it early, and do it completely.

2001–2008

McCain spent the years of the first and second Bush administrations making self-congratulatory shows of "independence" from the Republican party and cultivating the weakling press to keep up his image as a "maverick." It was in these years that McCain laid the groundwork for what would be the classic McCain pattern: speak out against bad people when it doesn't matter, cowardly cave in when it does matter.

Most of the manifestations of McCain's "maverick" streak were confined to domestic policy. Like when he voted against the first of Bush's tax cuts, but later voted to extend them and then said if elected president he would make them permanent. But on foreign policy, McCain has rarely done anything but parrot his fellow temperamental f_ckup son of a military man, President Bush.

McCain considers "national security" to be one his strengths. Given the fact that he has yet to be right about any single fact regarding Iraq when it counted, this should tell you something about his prowess in domestic matters. For instance, McCain stated unequivocally that Iraq had substantial weapons of mass destruction, and that Iraq was "a clear and present danger to the United States of America." McCain also claimed that U.S. forces would be greeted as liberators by the Iraqi people.

In April of 2007, after claiming that people were "not getting the full picture" of what was going on in Iraq, McCain made a stroll through an Baghdad market. He said there “are neighborhoods in Baghdad where you and I could walk through those neighborhoods, today.” He did not mention that he was accompanied by one-hundred soldiers, three Blackhawk helicopters, and two Apache gunships.

Later that same month, McCain was asked about possible military action against Iran. His response was to sing “Bomb bomb bomb, bomb bomb Iran” to the melody of the Beach Boys' song "Barbara Ann." Though this was widely criticized at the time, it should be noted, however, that deciding foreign policy based on punning lyrics to Beach Boys songs could not, at least, result in a worse situation than the one the United States finds itself in today.

2008 Presidential Campaign

McCain announced he was seeking the 2008 Presidential nomination of the Republican Party on the February 28, 2007. He chose a venue that was perfectly suitable to his seriousness as a leader: the Late Show With David Letterman.

McCain would have been the oldest person ever to assume the Presidency at the initial ascension to office, being 72 years old and surpassing Ronald Reagan, who was 69 years old. Reagan was later diagnosed with Alzheimer's disease and there were questions of whether the disease had begun during his presidency. Though the diseases associated with old age were obviously relevant to McCain's candidacy, he was shielded somewhat from such attacks due to the fact that McCain had been known to be dangerously unstable his entire life.

With no clear front-runner in the race, McCain won the New Hampshire primary on January 8, 2008. He followed this with victories in South Carolina and Florida, after which he became the front-runner and presumptive nominee. The fact that McCain, an unstable, angry old a__hole, would find himself coasting to the nomination says much about the rest of the field he was facing. His two main rivals were Mitt Romney, a comically soulless toady whose religion, Mormonism, was once thought to be his weakness but turned out to be the only consistent fact about him, and Rudy Giuliani, who is, according to scientific studies, the most dangerous and insane man ever to run for president.

In the course of winning the nomination and attempting to unite the Republican Party around him, McCain, in accordance with the McCain pattern, reversed himself on almost every issue on which his reputation as a "maverick" depended.

Though he once called religious bigots like Jerry Falwell "agents of intolerance," he later get on his knees to ~~xxx them to completion~~ ask for their support. Though he once self-congratulatorily denounced the practice of state-sanctioned torture, he voted against making it explicitly illegal for C.I.A. interrogators. Though he once supported a common-sense immigration reform bill co-sponsored by Ted Kennedy, when asked during a Republican debate in Los Angeles whether he would vote for his own bill, McCain said, "No, I would not." Though he was once Episcopalian, McCain now identifies himself as a Baptist. Fittingly, McCain would go on to support the teaching of "intelligent design" in schools.

On February 20, 2008, The New York Times reported an affair that McCain had eight years ago with a lobbyist named Vicki Iseman, who looks strangely like McCain's wife, Cindy.

Though the media focused primarily on the sex between the then 61-year old McCain and the 33 year-old Iseman, which, really, nobody wants to think about too much, the bigger issue was the favors McCain did for his lobbyist girlfriend. McCain sent two letters to the Federal Communications Commission on behalf of one of Iseman's clients. The intercession was considered so egregious by the FCC chairman that he rebuked McCain for it.

Predictably, the response of McCain wasn't to come clean about the affair and the sleazy intervention, or even a pledge to stick to more traditional favors and gifts for his girlfriends, like fancy chocolates or jewelry, or a bath with rose petals, or just a hand-written "coupon" for a night in together. That can be fun. But instead, McCain attacked the Times and immediately used the entire episode as a fundraising opportunity in an email sent out to his gullible supporters.

In short, when McCain did not win presidency, it was not be because he failed to show the requisite cowardice in ingratiating himself to the goonish and thuggish base of the Republican party. His reputation among the press as a "maverick," however, stands forever.

During the general election campaign, McCain continued to stress his maverickism by refusing to use any of the strategies one would normally use to win a general election campaign.

While McCain and his supporters may prefer to remember his campaign as a valiant and honorable one that had moderate success considering it was conducted in the wake of the most unpopular president ever, history will most likely remember him as the dude who ran against that very famous guy that all the streets are named after.

Biggest Loser of 2010: John McCain

Excerpts from an article on huffingtonpost.com By Taylor Marsh on December 28, 2010 01:53 PM

In 2000, back when Independents weren't all that sexy, I knew quite a few people, including those in my own family, who would have voted for John McCain for President. Then came South Carolina and George W. Bush neutering this once maverick politician, helping turn him into an unprincipled lackey of the Right, exactly the kind of man he'd always abhorred.

But whatever McCain let Bush and Karl Rove do to him in South Carolina and beyond, leading to him also having to saddle up to aid the bumbling Texan to win the presidency, nothing compared to what losing to Barack Obama in '08 did to the Arizona Senator. McCain never liked Barack Obama and also never respected him, so watching him do the job he feels should have been his has not only made Sen. McCain very cranky, but it's hardened his bitterness into a fine human crust.

But McCain's humiliation wasn't complete after losing in '08.

When his reelection rolled around, McCain had to double down on flip flops, airing commercials having him say things like "build the dang fence," while trying to prove to the Tea Party crowd he was one of them. To make matters worse it wasn't working, so he had to call in a big gun.

This entailed eating a lot of crow.

In 2010, up against a tough midterm election, after a reported nightmare presidential campaign with Sarah Palin that had McCain's people leaking to the press that she was a "diva" and a "whack job," the Senator from Arizona was forced to ask Sarah to help save his Senate seat.

As Sarah Palin rolled heaping praise on Sen. McCain as he and Cindy stood behind her looking like they were both about to hurl at the indignity. His star long ago tarnished, he was now left to wonder if his entire legacy would revolve around his unleashing of the force that is Sarah Palin; the power from this clout she in turn used to awaken a simmering network of infuriated Tea Party activists, lighting a fire under them so hot that they wiped out Democrats in Congress and went on to slam the entire Republican Party, which is in the throes of an identity crisis that has yet to fully play out.

The Democratic Party is hitting their own crisis of what it means to be a Democrat, but they just don't know it yet.

At the end of 2010 John McCain then pronounced the repeal of DADT as being "a very sad day," while he also blocked a military suicide prevention bill.

Whatever kind of man Sen. John McCain was that inspired independents to praise him back in 2000, he certainly isn't today.

Of course, to be fair, the man who beat him in '08 also had many of these same independent people vote for him in 2008 that McCain had on his side in 2000, but these same people have cooled on Barack Obama, too. The President shouldn't worry, because independents are fickle and there remains no one on the Right who can take him down, at least not yet.

Juan Williams took this on directly by calling out one GOP potential presidential candidate, saying Sarah Palin "can't stand on the intellectual stage" with President Obama. Beyond the intellectual issue, Sarah Palin now has troubles that run deep, all the way back to Alaska, with her own people now having a very dim view of their former governor, though this is just the beginnings of her problems.

Palin's unpopularity in Alaska is an interesting sidebar but ultimately pretty irrelevant to a possible 2012 Presidential bid. What's more relevant is that a majority of voters in every single state we have polled so far on the 2012 race has an unfavorable opinion of her. And her average favorability in the Bush/Obama states of Florida, Ohio, North Carolina, and Virginia that are most likely essential to Republican chances of retaking the White House is 36/56.

Regardless of Independent voters, who seem to be very personality driven in their politics, where John McCain is concerned he's proven why he's not president today. He's a loser, which in 2010 was driven home like a nail through his political heart.

Oh, sure, he won reelection, but selling your soul has a price and for Sen. John McCain the sale has been finalized.

Taylor Marsh is a political analyst and veteran national political writer out of Washington, D.C.

John McCain and the Republican Party Supports Rape by Contractors!!!

I think that all homo sapiens can understand how the mere thought of an organization that receives government money through contract mechanisms being tangentially involved in setting up a fake tax shelter for a fake pimp and his fake prostitution ring of fake prostitutes can justifiably lead to lawmakers going absolutely cross-eyed with white-hot, impotent rage. But what happens when a similarly taxpayer-endowed contractor attempts to cover up employee-on-employee gang rape by locking up the victim in a shipping container without food and water and threatening her with reprisals if she report the incident? Somehow, it doesn't engender the same level of anger!

Credit new Senator Al Franken however, for introducing an amendment to the Defense Appropriations bill that would punish contractors if they "restrict their employees from taking workplace sexual assault, battery and discrimination cases to court." You'd think that this would be a no-brainer, actually, but that didn't stop Jeff Sessions from labeling Franken's effort a "political attack directed at Halliburton." Franken, of course, pointed out that his amendment would apply broadly, to all contractors, because otherwise, 'twould be a bill of attainder, right? Right?

Franken's amendment ended up passing, 68-30. Here's a list of the Senators who showed broad support for Roman Polanski by voting against it:

Alexander (R-TN)
Barrasso (R-WY)
Bond (R-MO)
Brownback (R-KS)
Bunning (R-KY)
Burr (R-NC)
Chambliss (R-GA)
Coburn (R-OK)
Cochran (R-MS)
Corker (R-TN)
Cornyn (R-TX)
Crapo (R-ID)
DeMint (R-SC)
Ensign (R-NV)
Enzi (R-WY)
Graham (R-SC)
Gregg (R-NH)
Inhofe (R-OK)
Isakson (R-GA)
Johanns (R-NE)
Kyl (R-AZ)
McCain (R-AZ)
McConnell (R-KY)
Risch (R-ID)
Roberts (R-KS)
Sessions (R-AL)
Shelby (R-AL)
Thune (R-SD)
Vitter (R-LA)
Wicker (R-MS)

ADDENDUM: It's been pointed out that the U.S. Chamber of Commerce lobbied against the Franken amendment as well:

Republicans point out that the amendment was opposed by a host of business interests, including the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, and applies to a wide range of companies, including IBM and Boeing.

I guess we must cover up crimes like rape in order to save capitalism.

PREVIOUSLY, on the HUFFINGTON POST:
Franken Gets His First Amendment Passed By Roll Call Vote

Multiple Oil Company Executives Gave Huge Contributions To John McCain's Campaign Just Days After Offshore Drilling Reversal

Excerpts from an article by Greg Sargent and Eric Kleefeld of tpelection- August 4, 2008, 12:47PM

There was a huge spike in donations to John McCain from Texas oil executives following a June 16 speech in which he reversed his longstanding opposition to offshore drilling.

In fact, no fewer than 85 Texas-based donors connected to the oil and gas industries gave $1,214,100.00 to McCain in June, with 73 percent of those donations occurring in the second half of the month. But it wasn't just Texas oil donors getting into gear. A new report, It's A Gusher, released today by Campaign Money Watch, reveals that oil executives from around the nation cheered McCain's policy reversal by opening their checkbooks.

The most egregious example? Within about a week of McCain's reversal on offshore drilling, ten Hess executives or family members from New York and New Jersey maxed out to the RNC by writing identical $28,500 checks, for a total of $285,000.

Ten senior Hess Corporation executives and/or members of the Hess family each gave $28,500 to the joint RNC-McCain fundraising committee, just days after McCain reversed himself to favor offshore drilling, according to Federal Election Commission reports.

Nine of these contributions, seven from Hess executives and two from members of the Hess family, came on the same day, June 24th, the records show. The total collected in the wake of McCain's reversal for the fund, called McCain Victory 2008, from Hess execs and family is $285,000.

We were alerted to the contributions by Campaign Money Watch, a non-partisan group that tracks campaign contributions. The contributions were given a quick mention deep in a report the group issued late last week, but with no names or other details provided. The Hess contributions are clearly newsworthy on their own.

The Washington Post reported last week that campaign contributions from oil industry execs rose in a big way in the last half of June, after McCain drew a huge amount of attention by reversing his opposition on June 16th to the federal ban on offshore drilling.

These Hess contributions, however, hadn't been reported until now, and they will give more ammo to those arguing that McCain is being rewarded by campaign contributions in exchange for pro-industry positions. Here's a table detailing the contributions:

J. Barclay Collins Hess Corp. Attorney $28,500 19-Jun

John B. Hess Hess Corp. Executive $28,500 24-Jun

Susan K. Hess Homemaker Homemaker $28,500 24-Jun

Norma W. Hess Retired Retired $28,500 24-Jun

John J. O'Connor Hess Corp. Executive $28,500 24-Jun

Lawrence Ornstein Hess Corp. Senior VP $28,500 24-Jun

John Reilly Hess Corp. Executive $28,500 24-Jun

Alice Rocchio Hess Corp. Office Manager $28,500 24-Jun

John Scelfo Hess Corp. Senior VP of Finance $28,500 24-Jun

F. Borden Walker Hess Corp. Businessman $28,500 24-Jun

Norma W. Hess is the widow of oil magnate and company founder Leon Hess, and Susan K. Hess is the wife of Hess chairman and CEO John Hess.

Neither a spokesperson for Hess nor the McCain campaign immediately responded to requests for comment. More on this in a bit.

Late Update: It turns out that $28,500 is the maximum that can be given to the RNC, but because this particular victory fund collects money via various channels, an individual donor can actually give more than that to it. I've edited out "maximum" from the headline. Obviously this doesn't change the story in any way.

Late Late Update: A Hess office manager and her husband, an Amtrak worker, each chipped in $28,000 apiece, too.!! But the Hess money was only the tip of the iceberg.

The oil money gushed in from coast to coast, with donations to McCain's victory fund from:

• Gary and Carolyn Chouest ($100,000) from Louisiana. Gary Chouest is CEO of Edison Chouest Offshore
• Stephen Chazen ($5,000) from California, who works for Occidental Petroleum
• Frederic Hamilton ($39,300) from Colorado, the CEO of Hamilton Oil Company
• Onajite Okoloko ($30,000) from Florida, the CEO of Ocean and Oil Services
• Rich and Ann Calhoon ($71,600) from Mississippi. Rich Calhoon is CEO of Pruet Oil.

These increasingly cozy ties between McCain and big oil should come as no surprise, since the Straight Talk Express is full of oil lobbyists.

Campaign Money Watch found that 33 staffers or fundraisers on the McCain campaign have earned $19.3 million in lobbying fees from at least 30 oil and gas industry corporations and associations. Just four top lobbyists for McCain -- Wayne Berman, Charlie Black, John Green, and Steve Phillips -- account for $11.5 million of that total.

Exxon Mobil, which set a record today for the largest quarterly profit by any U.S. corporation, has paid $1.26 million to lobbyists currently working on the McCain campaign.

While economists agree that offshore drilling will have no effect on gas prices for years -- McCain admitted in June that any effect would be primarily psychological -- it is an easy way to boost the already outrageous profits of these oil companies and their executives.

The long and short of it is this:

John McCain's position won't reduce gas prices anytime soon, but it will increase the oil companies' profits. These lobbyists and the donors from Big Oil may want you to believe they think John McCain is the best candidate for the country, but what is really happening is that their financial future is at stake. He's the best candidate for Big Oil. That's why the checkbooks are out.

John McCain - The Political Celebrity

John McCain helped define the phrase Political Celebrity.

He emerged as the most popular Republican in Hollywood following his 2000 presidential primary defeat, winning more screen time than the rest of Congress combined. McCain made cameos in “Wedding Crashers” and “24,” saw his memoir turned into a popular biopic on A&E, and appeared more than 30 times on late night comedy shows.

So this week, when McCain cast Obama’s celebrity as a disqualifier, it seemed like a curious turn.

Just one day before McCain released an advertisement interspersing pictures of Paris Hilton and Britney Spears with footage of Obama addressing 200,000 people in Berlin, actor Jon Voight told Variety that McCain had “many great, intelligent, talented Academy-winning actors standing by, awaiting a major press conference to show their support.”

“[The ad] is a bit ironic given that McCain has been the most pop-culture savvy Republican candidate in quite some time,” said Ted Johnson, managing editor of Variety and editor of the blog Wilshire and Washington, which monitors the intersection of celebrity and politics.

[A liberal blog noted this week that the McCain campaign had scrubbed its website of an Associated Press story from last year that described him as a “political celebrity.”

Dismissing claims circulating in the liberal blogosphere, McCain spokesman Brian Rogers said the article was removed as part of routine housecleaning of the website several weeks ago. ]

The McCain campaign continued to hammer at Obama on Friday with the release of a very sarcastic Web ad that at one point cuts to an image of Charlton Heston as Moses parting the Red Sea before posing the question: “Barack Obama may be The One, but is he ready to lead?”

The Spears-Hilton ad hits a similar note, describing Obama as “the biggest celebrity in the world.” The Republican National Committee piled on, launching a Web site Friday called Who Said It? Celebrity Edition that features a multiple-choice quiz in which people must identify whether Obama or a celebrity made certain, often vacuous, statements.

It’s a striking line of attack for McCain, who’s accepted without complaint the “celebrity” epithet from journalists for four decades.

“John’s been a celebrity ever since he was shot down,” former McCain strategist John Weaver told The Atlantic earlier this week, “whatever that means.”

Yet, like the way fresh starlets push aside aging actors, political hot shots from years past (think former President Bill Clinton, often described as a “rock star” in his day) have been overshadowed by the newest crop of talent in this election year. This sort of churning is typical during presidential campaigns, said Matt Bennett, communications director for Gen. Wesley Clark’s 2004 presidential campaign and co-founder of Third Way, a progressive policy group.

“McCain was famous for a politician,” Bennett said. “Obama has almost transcended that, and has become famous as a famous person which is why they are comparing him to Paris Hilton.”

Since 2000, Bennett went on, McCain has enjoyed “enough fame and authority and celebrity” to aid candidates and organizations with ads that simply involve him speaking into a camera.

McCain started on the public stage with the pedigree of a family whose name graces a naval ship and a Mississippi National Guard training center.

With his father serving as a top admiral, John McCain first became a household name when he was captured in Vietnam, and even more of one upon his release five years later. The New York Times featured him on its front page. He wrote an acclaimed 12,000-word, first person account for U.S. News and World Report. President Richard Nixon feted him.

Hollywood warmed to him in 2000 as he ran against one of its least favorite people, George W. Bush. He endeared himself with liberals, including Warren Beatty, by taking unconventional stances for a Republican presidential candidate, such as favoring campaign finance reform and challenging the Christian right. His open-door approach with journalists made him the darling of the media elite.

“You can definitely makes the case that McCain stands out among Republicans for his associations with Hollywood and his celebrity status,” Johnson said. “The fact that he was in ‘Wedding Crashers,’ it underscores the fact that he does have a lot of friends in the entertainment industry that Bush can’t claim.”

In the years that followed, he became a near-regular on the late-night comedy circuit, appearing eight times on "The Daily Show with Jon Stewart," 12 times on the "Late Show with David Letterman," 10 times on "The Tonight Show with Jay Leno," and three times on "Late Night with Conan O'Brien," according to imdb.com.

He hosted "Saturday Night Live" in 2002. "Faith of My Fathers" pulled in 3.7 million viewers on A&E in 2005, making it the network’s most popular program in over a year. He appeared on “24” in 2006.

And he made a brief cameo in “Wedding Crashers,” offering congratulations to the father of the bride, a senator played by Christopher Walken.

As a then-likely Republican presidential candidate, McCain’s appearance in the film stirred a mini-controversy when the Drudge Report labeled it a “boob raunch fest.” But McCain laughed it off - during a visit on Leno’s show.

“In Washington, I work with boobs every day,” McCain joked.

McCain has received support this year from boldfaced names such as SNL creator Lorne Michaels and producer Jerry Bruckheimer. But the Republican's circle is far smaller than the one around Obama, and less robust than 2000, when lifelong Democrats including Harrison Ford and Michael Douglas signed checks for McCain.

So far, Obama has raised $4.7 million from the movie, television and music industry, while McCain has received $815,000, according to the Center for Responsive Politics, a nonpartisan campaign finance group.

A liberal blog noted this week that the McCain campaign had scrubbed its website of an Associated Press story from last year that described him as a “political celebrity.”

Dismissing claims circulating in the liberal blogosphere, McCain spokesman Brian Rogers said the article was removed as part of routine housecleaning of the website several weeks ago.

But Rogers skirted the question Friday of whether he considered his candidate a political celebrity.

“John McCain is a widely respected and admired political leader in our country and the world,” Rogers said, adding that Obama is in a “different stratosphere.”

“Who else could get 200,000 people in Berlin? Those aren’t voters. Those are fans.”

The campaign, he added, was not attempting to make “celebrity” a pejorative term. “It is not a dirty word,” he said of the spot that juxtaposes Obama with Britney and Paris, calls him “the biggest celebrity in the world” and then asks, “but is he ready to lead?”

“We are celebrating his fame,” Rogers went on, “and the reality that this guy has entered Tom Cruise-type of fame.”

Bennett said the heightened sensitivity around "celebrity" was unlikely to cause a full-scale pull back from the entertainment industry by either candidate.

Indeed, on Friday night in Panama City, Fla., McCain basked in the glow of Nashville - not Hollywood - as country singer John Rich of the duo Big and Rich hosted a "Country First" concert for the presumptive nominee and debuted a new song: "Raising McCain."

Obama’s star even shines in Nashville, though - last year “Big” Kenny Alphin, the other half of the act, contributed $2300 to the Obama campaign.

The Two Faces of Senator John McCain

12. What are Senator McCain's Mafia ties?

13. Senator McCain's Family Problems