“‘Thanks for the question, you little jerk,’ he said last year to a New Hampshire high school student wondering if McCain, at 71, was too old to be president.”
From an AP article Is McCain’s Sharp Tongue Achilles Heel?
Another line from the article:
”I decided I didn’t want this guy [McCain] anywhere near a trigger.” Pete Domenici, 2000.
John McCain, Dick Cheney’s choice for president, 2008.
We have three plausible candidates remaining–Obama, Clinton and John McCain–and Obama has proved himself the best executive by far. Both the Clinton and the McCain campaigns have gone broke at crucial moments. So much for fiscal responsibility. McCain has been effective only when he runs as a guerrilla; in both 2000 and ’08, he was hapless at building a coherent campaign apparatus. Clinton’s sins are different: arrogance and the inability to see past loyalty to hire the best people for the job and to fire those who prove inadequate. “If nothing else, we’ve learned that Obama probably has the ability to put together a smooth-running Administration,” said a Clinton super-delegate. “That’s pretty important.”
NewMexiKen feels a little like this is peeking through a keyhole — but it is interesting. kahunaburger has located the Obamas’ 2006 tax return.
“John McCain: A Third Bush Term”
Democratic National Committee
Thanks to Ken for the tip.
Jill, official older daughter of NewMexiKen gave me this bumper sticker for Christmas 2006, prescient that she is.
I’ve had it on my refrigerator, but I’m thinking maybe I should actually put it on my car.
Click image for larger version.
“Pastor openly crosses the line and endorses Huckabee from his pulpit (twice). Also encourages his congregation to vote Huckabee. Guess which three-letter government agency wants to have a chat with him?”
“Under federal tax law, church officials may legally discuss politics, but they cannot endorse candidates or parties without putting their tax-exempt status at risk. Most who do so receive only a warning.” AP
Click image to enlarge.
H/T to Raymond.
Today’s caption is from Jill:
“You have to unbutton his shirt, John, if you want to nurse.”
[Email me your suggested captions for upcoming days.]
Cheers and Jeers is amusing today.
Today’s caption: “Good thing neither of us is wearing a black dress.”
[Email me your suggested captions for upcoming days.]
Obama received more votes Tuesday than Clinton AND McCain combined.
That’s the odds of a 72½-year-old white American man dying within four years — one in five.
So who’s McCain’s vice presidential running-mate going to be?
Caption: “And my running-mate will be Jeb.”
I’ve been looking around trying to settle on a way to post more about the presidential candidates — substantive stuff, not just photos of obscene hugs. I thought of doing several posts analyzing the candidates’ positions on two or three issues each, but you can go to CNN.com and find the whole thing. Maybe I should just keep doing what I do and post what I find.
And so, I found an endorsement of Obama by hilzoy at Obsidian Wings. The original has much more with many links, so you might want to just click and check it out at the source, but I found this excerpt rather impressive.
I came to Obama by an unusual route: as I explained here, I follow some issues pretty closely, and over and over again, Barack Obama kept popping up, doing really good substantive things. There he was, working for nuclear non-proliferation and securing loose stockpiles of conventional weapons, like shoulder-fired missiles. There he was again, passing what the Washington Post called “the strongest ethics legislation to emerge from Congress yet” — though not as strong as Obama would have liked. Look — he’s over there, passing a bill that created a searchable database of recipients of federal contracts and grants, proposing legislation on avian flu back when most people hadn’t even heard of it, working to make sure that soldiers returning from Iraq and Afghanistan were screened for traumatic brain injury and to prevent homelessness among veterans, successfully fighting a proposal by the VA to reexamine all PTSD cases in which full benefits had been awarded, working to ban no-bid contracts in Katrina reconstruction, and introducing legislation to criminalize deceptive political tactics and voter intimidation.
“[I]t’s not that New Mexico doesn’t count. It’s just that New Mexico CAN’T count.”
LP commenting about states that are discounted (by the Clinton campaign) and New Mexico’s failure to declare a Democratic winner one week after the caucuses.
Iowa didn’t matter because it was a caucus state, and it’s undemocratic. Same goes for every other caucus state including Maine. The only caucus state that mattered was Nevada.
Idaho, Kansas, Nebraska, North Dakota, Alaska, and Utah don’t matter because they’re small Red states that Democrats won’t carry in November.
Alabama, Georgia, South Carolina, and Louisiana don’t matter because they have black people. Expect the same spin out of DC this Tuesday. Black people don’t apparently count.
Washington and Minnesota don’t matter because they have educated white people.
In any case, Washington, Nebraska, and Louisiana didn’t matter on Saturday because everyone expected Obama to win them anyway.
Virginia and Maryland, assuming they’re won by Obama, will be a combination of the “black people” and “educated people” rationalizations. Throw a little of “Obama was expected to win anyway”, and you’ve got the trifecta.
Illinois doesn’t matter because that’s Obama’s home state. Expect the same spin when Obama wins Hawaii by double-digit margins in two weeks.
Missouri doesn’t matter because Clinton sent out a press release claiming she won it.
Colorado was a caucus state, so that leaves Delaware and Connecticut. Those are the only two states that apparently matter, giving Hillary Clinton a commanding 10-2 lead among states that matter.
Oh, and this.
If Hillary had divorced Bill (it seems she had good cause), would she be a more attractive presidential candidate, a less attractive candidate or not in the running?
If John McCain is elected president, when he took the oath next January he would be the oldest person ever to assume the office, nearly 2½ years older than Reagan was.
If Hillary Clinton is elected president, when she took the oath next January she would be the ninth oldest person to assume the office.
If Barack Obama is elected, when he took the oath next January he would be the fifth youngest person to assume the office. Only Theodore Roosevelt, John Kennedy, Ulysses Grant and Bill Clinton were younger.
McCain will be 72 years, four months and 22 days old on January 20th. Clinton 61 years, two months and 25 days. Obama 47 years, five months and 16 days.
“In its malaise, America’s right-wingers have emerged as an ancestor-worshiping cult.”
German newspaper Sued Deutsche quoted at cab drollery. The newspaper explains:
Reagan’s political mixture – military rearmament, religious renewal, radical tax cuts, including reducing government — is not a cure for current problems: The nation can no longer cope with billions more for the Pentagon, ever more fanatical Christian zeal against abortion and gays, and more tax relief for the wealthy at the expense of already impoverished communities. More of this kind of drastic remedy à la Ronald would drive the country to ruin.
John McCain was born in 1936.
Hillary Clinton was born in 1947.
Barack Obama was born in 1961.
Just sayin’.
So the people of Iowa, New Hampshire, Nevada, Michigan (sort of), South Carolina and Florida (sort of) have had a chance to vote and they have eliminated Biden, Dodd, Richardson, Kucinich, Edwards, Brownback, Hunter, Tancredo, Thompson, Giuliani and just about Huckabee, Paul and Romney.
Wasn’t that kind of them? Six states, most them arguably untypical of the larger country, and here we are left with Clinton, Obama and McCain.
Do you feel like you didn’t have much of a say?
First, John Edwards, who I believe is the most correct on issues of all the leading candidates, has left the race for president.
Two, in that family it should have been Elizabeth Edwards who became the politician and the presidential candidate.