McCain bounces back into lead in New Hampshire

Published: Tuesday January 1, 2008
http://rawstory.com/news/afp/McCain_bounce...e_01012008.html


Presidential hopeful John McCain has revived his once moribund campaign and a new poll released Tuesday shows him surging to the top Republican field in the crucial state of New Hampshire.

The Arizona senator was written off as a White House contender months ago but has steadily fought his way back in the fluid nomination race, with the 7News/Suffolk University poll showing McCain surpassing rival Mitt Romney in New Hampshire.

The survey had McCain with 31 percent to Romney's 25 percent in the northeastern state, which holds the first primary vote on January 8 in the tight nomination race.

Last month, McCain was trailing Romney by 12 percentage points and it was the first time the senator had led the Republican camp since 7News/Suffolk University started polling in March.

The Vietnam veteran was initially seen as the Republican front-runner but his campaign nearly ran aground in 2007 amid a shortage of cash and unpopular stands on the Iraq war and illegal immigration.

But McCain, 71, who had long urged more troops in Iraq, has pointed to signs of progress in the current US troop "surge" strategy as vindication of his stance and proof that he has the best national security credentials.

McCain's campaign team on Tuesday announced a new advertisement touting the senator's experience on foreign policy and national security issues while casting doubt on Romney's qualifications and judgment.

McCain has recently received some high-profile endorsements, including one from the New Hampshire Union Leader newspaper and from Democrat-turned-independent Senator Joseph Lieberman.

The 7News/Suffolk University survey of likely voters in the New Hampshire primary contest was conducted from Thursday to Monday with a margin of error of 5.65 percent for each party sample of 300 respondents.

Still tossing between McCain and John Edwards.

http://z13.invisionfree.com/THE_UNHIVED_MI...showtopic=39799

-Craig Oxley

BRITISH SIS

JOHN MCCAIN

WAS DOWN AT

BRITISH SIS'S

THE ASPEN INSTITUTE

MEADOWS CAMPUS

AUGUST 15TH 2007

------

Sen. John S. McCain and Gen. Wesley K. Clark join Aspen Roundtable Lunch Program 2003

Don't forget John Edwards:
http://z13.invisionfree.com/THE_UNHIVED_MI...showtopic=39799

Fred Thompson to Endorse John McCain?

David Knowles
AOL News
Thursday, January 3, 2008
http://news.aol.com/political-machine/2008...se-john-mccain/


Man, that was fast. GOP sources tell the Politico that when if Fred Thompson finishes poorly in tonight's Iowa Caucuses, he will drop out of the presidential race and throw his support behind John McCain. I can't help but reflect on all the stories that were written about how smart Thompson was to wait so long to get into the race in the first place. The logic went that while his rivals duked it out, Fred was slyly biding his time. Watching, calculating, practicing the lines that would flow forth in that recognizable baritone and woo the nation like magic. Well, as it turns out, maybe Fred wasn't so smart, after all:

"Without a solid third-place finish, there's no point in going on," a Thompson adviser said Wednesday. "It was an honorable race, and he turned out to be a good candidate. The moment had just passed."

A good candidate? Please.

While there are things about Thompson that I admire, his performance on the campaign trail in '07 is not one of them. There were the countless awkward appearances in which Fred seemed loathe to pose for pictures with his supporters. The revolving door of key staff positions. The last minute cancellations. The ridiculous gaffes, the most recent of which found Thompson declaring that he didn't particularly want to be your president.

Still, even after that was said and done, Thompson does have a sentimental following, and his logical embrace of the far more energetic John McCain will certainly help the latter. If tonight does turn out to be it for Thompson, here's one final sign-off from the "Tennessee Stud."

[dohtml]<object width="425" height="373"><param name="movie" value="http://www.youtube.com/v/2jYNwlhY-HI&rel=1&border=1"></param><param name="wmode" value="transparent"></param><embed src="http://www.youtube.com/v/2jYNwlhY-HI&rel=1&border=1" type="application/x-shockwave-flash" wmode="transparent" width="425" height="373"></embed></object>[/dohtml]

SMOM Papal Knight/Vatican Advisor/Vatican Le Cercle Henry Kissinger again. Kissinger is a lackie for the SMOM Papal Knights, Rockefeller family within the U.S itself controlled by the Archbishop of NY, Grandmaster, Pope and Jesuit General. -Craig

John McCain and Henry Kissinger

Published on Thursday, January 3, 2008 by The Capital Times (Madison, Wisconsin)
http://www.commondreams.org/archive/2008/01/03/6138/


Only the surreal strategists who manage John McCain’s presidential campaign would divine to top an endorsement by Sen. Joe “nothing but good news from Iraq” Lieberman with one that will give thinking Americans — and a frightened world — greater cause for alarm.

So it is that, on the heels of the Connecticut senator’s campaign swing on behalf of McCain, comes the news that the Arizona senator is making the circuit with an even more disturbing advocate for even more disturbing foreign policies: Henry Kissinger.

The former secretary of state, whose name is synonymous in the civilized world with the term “war criminal” and whose sleazy business deals have advanced the interests of dictators, has added the dubious distinction of his support to the McCain campaign. So discredited is Kissinger that when President Bush proposed him as the chairman of the 9/11 Commission, there was near universal objection.

Kissinger is not conflicted about McCain. “I believe now that he’s the best candidate to serve our nation in an extremely difficult and complicated period,” he says.

Even more frightening, for McCain it’s all about the next Cold War.

“We now face this threat of radical Islamic extremism,” says McCain. “One of the reasons I feel so strongly about America’s image in the world is because I think we’ll win this struggle the same way we won the Cold War.”

Those who amuse themselves with the notion that McCain is not that bad a player — an old political misread given new life by his position on torture — would do well to figure into their calculations the Kissinger factor. If the darkest player in post-World War II American foreign policy says a man should be president, that man definitely should not be president.

Here come the backers of CFR McCain.

Brother Eric

Obama wins the Iowa caucus and Huckabee wins. Notice how McCain is just 4th for the Republicans.

McCain: "Make it 100!"

McCain tells a crowd in New Hampshire - a state where 66% of the population is opposed to the war in Iraq - that it's "fine with me" if we're in Iraq for 100 years.

[dohtml]<object width="425" height="355"><param name="movie" value="http://www.youtube.com/v/vf7HYoh9YMM&rel=1"></param><param name="wmode" value="transparent"></param><embed src="http://www.youtube.com/v/vf7HYoh9YMM&rel=1" type="application/x-shockwave-flash" wmode="transparent" width="425" height="355"></embed></object>[/dohtml]

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vf7HYoh9YMM

So what is Huckabees connections? I can't believe Huckabee won the vote. I heard Huckabee is friends with Richard Haass the guy who wants a North American Union.

Futures markets see McCain, Obama wins

With N.H. bump, Arizona senator odds-on favorite for GOP nomination

Posted: January 4, 2008
By Jerome R. Corsi
http://www.worldnetdaily.com/news/article....RTICLE_ID=59540


Bets in the political futures markets strongly suggest the momentum Sens. Barack Obama and John McCain gained in the Iowa caucuses will carry them both to strong victories in the upcoming New Hampshire primary.

Pollster Scott Rasmussen, who relied on the markets to predict accurately Iowa wins for Obama and Gov. Mike Huckabee, told WND McCain gained the most nationally after a virtual tie for third in the Hawkeye state. Anticipating a New Hampshire victory, the markets now project the Arizona senator as the favorite to win the GOP nomination.

The Rasmussen market predictions now give Obama a 65 percent chance of winning the Democratic primary in New Hampshire and McCain a 74 percent chance in the state's Republican contest.

Intrade.com, a predictions market run out of Ireland, shows almost exactly the same results, giving Obama a 67 percent chance of winning New Hampshire and McCain a 74.9 percent chance.

"Our prediction market for Iowa turned out to be very accurate," Rasmussen said.

As WND reported Wednesday, futures contracts gave both Huckabee and Obama a 60 percent chance of winning Iowa.

In political futures markets, candidates are "bought and sold" much like commodities or stock futures.

"We did an update to our predictions market at about 10:45 p.m. last night," Rasmussen told WND, "and already the markets had shifted based on the Iowa results and were re-assessing New Hampshire and the race nationally."

Today, the Rasmussen market gives Clinton a 54 percent chance of winning the Democratic Party presidential nomination and Barack Obama a 41 percent chance.

"On the Democratic side, Hillary had been up around 65 percent likely to win the nomination," Rasmussen said. "Now, after Iowa, she lost about 11 points and is down to just a little better than a 50-50 chance to win the nomination."

The prediction market numbers went in the other direction for Obama.

"Before Iowa, Obama had about a 29 percent chance to win the nomination," said Rasmussen. "After Iowa, he gained about 12 points, so now his chance of winning the nomination is up to 41 percent in our market analysis."

Now Clinton will have to beat the odds in New Hampshire to prevent the combined effect of losses in Iowa and New Hampshire from removing her perhaps permanently from front-runner status in the Democratic race.

On the Republican side, Huckabee and McCain got a bounce from Iowa.

"Even though he came in third in the Iowa caucus, McCain was the real winner in Iowa," Rasmussen concluded. "Right now McCain is the leader in the national election, with a 32.5 percent chance of winning the Republican Party nomination."

"On the Republican side, the real loser in Iowa was Romney," he said. "On the national side, Romney lost 12 points in Iowa, so that now he is rated to have only a 14 percent chance to win the Republican nomination, when he had been at 26 percent before Iowa."

Even though Huckabee won in Iowa, the Rasmussen market puts the former Arkansas governor's chance of winning the Republican nomination at only 17 percent, behind both McCain and Giuliani, at 26 percent.

Intrade.com agrees McCain has the best chance currently to win the Republican Party presidential nomination, at 33 percent, followed by Giuliani at 28 percent, Romney at 14.9 percent and Huckabee at 15.7 percent.

On the Democratic side, Intrade.com still lists Clinton as the leader, with a 51.7 percent chance of winning the party's presidential nomination, followed by Obama with a 46.4 percent chance and Edwards a distant third, at 2.7 percent.

The McCain surge appears attributable in part to the increased focus on international politics and terrorism since the assassination of former Prime Minister Benazir Bhutto in Pakistan.

Huckabee benefited from the organization and huge turnout of evangelical Christians in Iowa. In more secular New Hampshire, Intrade.com rates Huckabee's chances of winning at less than 1 percent.

The Rasmussen market prediction is more forgiving, rating Huckabee's chances in New Hampshire at 6.2 percent.

Romney's failure to win in Iowa is likely to be repeated in New Hampshire. Intrade.com rates the former Massachusetts governor's chances at 24.5 percent, while Rasmussen predicts 22 percent.

Going into New Hampshire, Clinton is also suffering from a lack of momentum.

Intrade.com predicts she has only a 34 percent chance of winning in New Hampshire, a view shared by Rasmussen, whose market prediction puts Hillary's chances of winning at an almost identical 35 percent.

While former North Carolina Sen. John Edwards narrowly edged Clinton for second place in Iowa, the futures markets are betting he will fall to a distant third in New Hampshire.

Intrade.com and Rasmussen market predictions both give him less than 1 percent chance to win in New Hampshire.

Should Romney end up, as predicted, in a distant second-place finish in New Hampshire, he will face an uphill battle in South Carolina and Florida.

After having spent millions of his own money, the future markets are predicting Romney will fail to convince his former neighbors that his record as Massachusetts governor qualifies him to be the Republican nominee.

The Rasmussen market predictions are open free of charge to any Internet user who cares to register. A Fantasy Politics League permits registered users to create an equivalent system to fantasy sports leagues.

The Intrade.com system involves buying and selling political future contracts for money and requires registered users to place funds on deposit in order to trade.

Odds on the political futures markets change as contracts on various candidates are "bought and sold" in relation to changing dynamics in the presidential race and reported news events.

US Senator John McCain a favorite of Iowa Jews

Jan 4, 2008 12:54 | Updated Jan 4, 2008 22:59
By HILARY LEILA KRIEGER, JERUSALEM POST CORRESPONDENT
DES MOINES, Iowa
http://www.jpost.com/servlet/Satellite?cid...icle%2FShowFull


When Arizona Senator John McCain took the stage the night before the first-in-the-nation caucuses to be held here Thursday night, he thanked several fellow senators who had joined him on stage to show their support. But then he also mentioned another senator -- Joseph Lieberman of Connecticut -- who wasn't present because he was campaigning for him in New Hampshire.

McCain promotes his alliance with Lieberman, an independent senator and Orthodox Jew who campaigned in 2000 as the Democratic vice presidential nominee, to show off his bipartisan credentials, and his reference to his "favorite Democrat" before the conservative Iowa audience who had braved the cold to greet him elicited cheers. But those weren't the only Iowa voters pleased at the reference.

Iowa's statistically small but politically active Republican Jewish constituency has been pleased by McCain's relationship with Lieberman, among other things that have attracted them to the former naval aviator and POW.

"The fact that Lieberman affiliated with [McCain] brought him up with a certain quadrant of the Jewish community," said a Jewish leader in Iowa in explaining Jewish support for McCain, though he also referred to support for other candidates, including former New York Mayor Rudy Giuliani.

McCain had never been expected to win Iowa, but his numbers crept up following strong debate performances and endorsements by a string of newspapers, including the influential local Des Moines Register. He came in fourth with narrow loss to third place challenger Fred Thompson, a former Tennessee senator, who had pumped money into TV ads unlike McCain. It was close enough to boost a campaign once entirely written off.

McCain, whose popularity is building in New Hampshire, a state he won decisively when challenging George W. Bush for the nomination in 2004, is also buoyed by the fact that former Arkansas governor Mike Huckabee trounced the number two winner here, former Massachusetts governor Mitt Romney. Romney has led many polls in New Hampshire, and McCain hopes his competitor's slide will follow him to the Granite State. New Hampshire will hold the first primary vote on Tuesday.

McCain needed support from groups such as Jews, who are more open to entertaining alternatives to Huckabee and Romney. Both have focused on faith and emphasized the importance of Christian values in their campaigns. Romney gave a landmark speech in which he defended religious freedom in America following attacks on his Mormon faith, referring to his belief that, "Jesus Christ is the Son of God and the Savior of mankind"; Huckabee, who used to be a Baptist preacher, has run ads referring to his Christian credentials and often speaks on religious themes.

"The candidates that are speaking a religious language are alienating to the Jewish population," said the Jewish leader, who spoke on condition of anonymity.

He described the issue of the separation of church and state as "the number one" issue for the Jewish community, explaining, "A society that's [focused on] religiosity tends to overlook minorities, and we're a minority."

McCain also said he supported the notion that America is a "Christian nation" in an interview that raised Jewish ire, but has made religion less a focus of the campaign, and has in the past inflamed the evangelical community so supportive of Huckabee by calling some of their leaders "agents of intolerance" and other slights.

Giuliani, a Catholic, has been the least focused of the top tier candidates on religion, but he opted not to campaign in Iowa and is expected to fare poorly. He is likely to get more support from Jewish Republicans than other Iowa constituencies, however, as they tend to be more moderate.

Bud Hockenberg, a long-time Jewish Republican activist in Iowa, would not discuss which Republican candidate was most favored by Jews ahead of the caucuses, noting that just about all of the competitors had backers.

He said, though, that Jewish voters were looking for candidates who are staunch supporters of Israel, had robust national defense priorities and were committing to fighting Islamic extremism. He estimated Jewish Republicans at about 30% of the Iowa Jewish community, consistent with the number nationally.

Hockenberg said that he personally would be strongly supporting whoever won the Republican nomination.

McCain targets comeback as focus turns to New Hampshire

By David Usborne in Manchester, New Hampshire
Published: 05 January 2008
http://news.independent.co.uk/world/americ...icle3309998.ece


Mike Huckabee's private jet touched down at Manchester airport at 4am yesterday. No one on board, least of all the candidate, had slept en route from Iowa to New Hampshire. By breakfast time, Barack Obama was addressing a meeting of supporters in Portsmouth. There is no rest for the winners.

The instant switch of focus from Iowa to New Hampshire comes as the Granite State prepares to hold its primary on Tuesday, leaving scant time for the victors in Iowa to capitalise on their new-found momentum or for the runners-up in each party to regain their balance.

The stakes here for everyone could not be higher and there are no guarantees for anyone. Indeed, history shows that New Hampshire voters rarely pay much attention to the choice made by Iowans. The caucuses are peculiar to Iowa. New Hampshire, as required by tradition, now takes the spotlight, holding the first fully fledged primary in the 2008 contest. Other states follow with theirs in the weeks ahead.

Moreover, New Hampshire has a strong, but not unbroken record, of picking the candidates who emerge at the end of the process with their respective party's nomination. Thus at campaign events across the state last night, candidates were pressing their cases more furiously than ever.

Of the two winners on Thursday night, Mr Huckabee has arrived in New Hampshire the more vulnerable. Still lagging his Republican rivals in organisational heft and in cash, he also knows this state lacks the large conservative Christian constituency that helped so much in Iowa.

Playing down his appeal to the religious right last night, he said: "What we're seeing is that this campaign is not just about people who have religious fervour. It's about people who love America, but want it to be better and believe that change is necessary and it's not going to happen from within Washington."

Polls before Tuesday's primary suggest a resurgence here for John McCain, the Republican senator and former Vietnam prisoner of war who, in essence, tied in third place in Iowa with Fred Thompson. Mr McCain, who did little campaigning in Iowa, may be poised to secure a surprise win here on Tuesday. A remarkable comeback, if it happens, after months of bad numbers and dwindling campaign cash.

Indeed, the Huckabee win in Iowa was not bad news for McCain, who considers Mitt Romney, the former Massachusetts governor, his more likely rival over the longer term. For that reason, it was Mr Romney he went after yesterday, calling his occasionally negative campaign in Iowa a "little bit desperate". McCain added: "It didn't work in Iowa, I don't think it will work in New Hampshire."

A comeback, of course, is what Hillary Clinton will be hoping for after coming third, just behind John Edwards, on Thursday. Indeed, it was here in New Hampshire that her husband, Bill Clinton, gained his "Comeback Kid" moniker in 1992, even though he came second to Paul Tsongas. Mrs Clinton has led in national polls among the Democrats for months, but is neck-and-neck with Obama in this state.

Nor can she ignore Mr Edwards, who urged voters in New Hampshire last night to join him. "I am the candidate who will fight with every fibre of my being, every single step of the way, for you, for your children and for your grandchildren," he told a crowd of mostly campaign workers in Manchester.

The pressure on a deeply disappointed Mr Romney is intense. He was governor of neighbouring Massachusetts and is a part-time resident of New Hampshire. "It will be a different race here," he told reporters in Portsmouth early yesterday, taking aim at Mr Huckabee and his preacher past. "Mike had a terrific base as a minister," he contended, referring to the results out of Iowa. "He drew on that base, got a great deal of support from it. It was a wonderful strategy that he pursued effectively. I don't think that's the strategy that's going to work in every state."

A wild card for Republicans here is Congressman Ron Paul, an anti-war renegade who has an enthusiastic following in New Hampshire, fuelled by the internet and a handy amount of cash.

Have Your Say

Is America ready to elect a black president? Or will Barack Obama's colour prove to be an obstacle?

Tell us what you think. Email us at haveyoursay@ independent.co.uk or go to www.independent.co.uk/haveyoursay

CARDINAL EGAN WILL LOVE THIS

McCain: I would have started Iraq war regardless of WMD

David Edwards and Katie Baker
Sunday January 6, 2008
http://rawstory.com/news/2007/McCain_I_wou..._Iraq_0106.html


According to presidential candidate John McCain, only the handling of the Iraq war was a mistake -- not the war itself.

"It's not American presence that bothers the American people, it's American causalities," said McCain in an interview with Tim Russert on NBC's "Meet The Press" on Sunday.

The validity of this conjecture is questionable, as fifty-nine percent of Americans say the U.S. should “stick to a withdrawal timetable." But McCain said in a recent New Hampshire debate -- and reasserted as much on Sunday -- that as long as Americans aren't dying, he sees nothing wrong with US troops staying as many as 100 years in Iraq.

"What I believe we can achieve is a reduction in casualties to the point where the Iraqis are doing the fighting and dying [and] we're supporting them," McCain said.

He said it would be "hard to say" how many U.S. troops would need to stay in Iraq, but assured that they would be "out of harm's way."

When Russert asked him if, like Bush, McCain would have supported the Iraq war even if no weapons of mass destruction were believed present in Iraq, McCain seemed to dismiss the question as irrelevant.

"If frogs had wings ... we can talk about lots of hypotheticals," he said. "The point is if we had done it right, you and I wouldn't even be discussing it now."

This video is from NBC's Meet the Press, broadcast January 6, 2008.

McCain set to repeat success of 2000

By David Usborne in Manchester, New Hampshire
Published: 08 January 2008
http://news.independent.co.uk/world/americ...icle3318026.ece


John McCain's Straight-Talk Express – a not-so luxury bus – has been rattling along the highways and bi-ways of New Hampshire for five straight days from one town hall meeting to the next and seems now to be bearing the veteran candidate to a win among Republicans in the state's primary voting today.

Eve-of-voting polls show Mr McCain, in spite of being written off by pundits in the summer because of a dearth of cash and lack of voter enthusiasm, replicating his success here in 2000 when he defeated George Bush. His main rival, the former Massachusetts governor Mitt Romney, seems to be slipping.

Mr McCain, who is 71, has maintained a vigorous schedule of town hall appearances where he quickly opens up the floor to questions. With a willingness to engage in debate on any topic that arises, he seems to have won the appreciation of many Republicans as well as independents in the state.

"I was thinking about supporting Romney," Violet Despres, 77, admitted emerging from a McCain event in the picturesque town hall of Peterborough in the south of the state. Confetti stars which were dropped on the audience at its close still clung to her thinning hair. "I had been worried about McCain's health, but I liked him today. And you know what? He looked plenty healthy to me."

A win by McCain today and also, as the polls suggest, by the Democrat Barack Obama, would set up the possibility of an intriguing generational clash if both ended up being their parties' nominees. While the former is veteran of the Vietnam War, Mr Obama, at 46, represents the succeeding generation.

A Fox News poll released last night showed Mr McCain opening a seven-point lead over Mr Romney, picking up 14 points since the last Fox poll in New Hampshire in December. A CNN poll had Mr McCain opening a gap of six points.

"I don't think I've ever had a town hall meeting where I didn't try to listen to everybody," Mr McCain told a standing-room-only crowd in Salem on Sunday. "And that's why, frankly, my friends, that's why we're winning this campaign. This is what democracy is all about."

Nostalgia may also be at work. "I think a lot of people look back at McCain's 2000 run now and say, 'If only the rest of the country had listened to New Hampshire, we'd be in a better place than we are now,'" said Dante Scala of the University of New Hampshire.

Latest poll (last poll in brackets)

John McCain
Fox 34 (20)
Marist 35 (18)

Mitt Romney
Fox 27 (33)
Marist 31 (31)

Mike Huckabee
Fox 11 (11)
Marist 13 (11)

McCain 'wins' crucial US primary

Wednesday, 9 January 2008, 02:00 GMT
http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/americas/7178168.stm


John McCain has won the Republican presidential primary, according to projections from US media outlets.

Former Massachusetts governor Mitt Romney came second, US networks say.

In the Democratic race, Hillary Clinton is leading Barack Obama, the winner of last week's Iowa caucuses, by 40% to 34%, with just 23% of the vote counted.

The state secretary, Bill Gardner, has estimated that the turnout in the vote could break records, with some half a million people having cast ballots.

Candidates are aiming to build momentum before more than 20 states hold polls on 5 February, known as Super Tuesday.

Turnout up

Analysts say New Hampshire's large bloc of independents - about 45% of registered voters - could be key to swinging the primary, the second in a series of state-level votes and caucuses through which the parties choose their candidates for the US presidency.

Mr Obama, in particular, showed strong appeal at last week's Iowa caucuses among such voters, who are registered as neither Republican nor Democratic.

Two tiny hamlets, Dixville Notch and Hart's Location, traditionally the first to vote in New Hampshire, opened their polling stations at midnight giving small, early victories to Mr Obama and Mr McCain.

Most of the rest of the state began voting at 0600 local time (1100 GMT). Polls closed at 2000 (0100GMT Wednesday).

Turnout has exceeded expectations, helped by unusually mild weather for this time of year in New Hampshire.

Remember McCain goes along with the agenda of the Vatican. The Vatican wish to take you back to their Dark Ages again -Craig

McCain Favors Return to Dark Ages, Dr. Paul Demurs

Hal O'Boyle
Tuesday January 9, 2008
http://www.nolanchart.com/article1039.html


Bomber McCain recently said he would be fine with keeping U.S. troops in Iraq for 100 years or more. Except for Ron Paul, all the career politicians currently running for president, while mouthing token opposition to war, agree with McCain to a greater or lesser extent. They embrace the War on Terror as the great friend of politicians and bankers everywhere.
The WOT is the supreme public works project, an unstoppable, endless engine of growing government power. Although the notion of fighting a tactic as opposed to an enemy is a modern innovation, the promise of centuries long war is straight out of the Dark Ages.

Today we call it The Hundred Years War. At the time it didn't have a name, but it had the usual sources of imperial ambition -- greed, a lust for glory and the natural human need to boss everybody around. It also featured the destruction, suffering and death that has accompanied imperial warfare throughout history.

Unlike Imperial America's altruistic wars to spread democracy, however, at least medieval conquest tried to make some economic sense. In 1337 the French wanted their own king and Edward III of England wanted to be king of France, too. He thought there would be a profit in it. France had a lot more land and people than England did at the time. He wouldn't do nearly as well as the IRS does today, but as their king he would get a nice cut of everything everybody produced. It was the traditional imperial model, where the empire thrives on the sweat of the conquered.

(Article continues below)


America, on the other hand, runs its imperial wars as though they were huge make-work projects. We spend billions to bomb perfectly good utility plants, factories, roads, bridges and buildings to rubble. Then we spend billions to replace them better than ever. It's like hiring a vast crew to dig holes and other to follow it around filling the holes back in. The only difference being the thousands killed and wounded in the project.

Like the U.S. Army in Mesopotamia the medieval English had much early success. They whipped the French navy at the Battle of Sluys. English longbowmen at the Battle of Crécy slaughtered French knights by the thousands. After some setbacks to the Black Plague, the English archers continued an embarrassing dominance over the chivalrous knights of the French nobility for the best part of a century.

The problem was that conquest was never all that lucrative. The size and population that made France an attractive object of conquest made it difficult to occupy. Armies, like young mistresses, are expensive, high maintenance, and dangerous when cranky. Little real wealth got back to the English throne by way of taxes. And burning and pillaging is pretty much a one-shot deal that leaves everyone poorer in the end. Empires then, as now, end in bankruptcy more often than military defeat.

In the 14th century central banking hadn't been invented, so there was a limit on how much the government could steal from people. Bankruptcy couldn't be delayed, as it can be today, by sucking every last drop of wealth out of the productive economy with inflation.

As late as 1415 at the Battle of Agincourt, English archers were still slaughtering French knights. Knights were a hardheaded lot. Stuck on the idea of the cavalry charge long past the time when it still worked.

But a few years later all the French needed was inspiration from Joan of Arc and a lucky cannon shot that took out the Duke of Salisbury. Suddenly, the end of English rule in France was inevitable. England was broke and running out of archers, after a hundred years of war, England was back where it had begun but poorer and lacking the thousands of lives that had been squandered.

John McCain appears ready to commit the United States to waging a Hundred Years War in the Middle East. It's not unreasonable to expect him to inform the American people, who will be responsible for supplying the blood and money for the project, just what they can expect in return.

Ron Paul issued a press release with his ideas on the subject. Those ideas align pretty closely with my own. He pointed out that if he supports it, McCain should tell us the real costs of such an ambitious long-term occupation and what will have to be sacrificed at home. Dr. Paul observed that McCains support for hundred years war would help recruit our enemies and put current soldiers at greater risk. Surely it will.

And finally, Dr. Paul noted that the real security and prosperity interests of the United States would be much better served with an immediate withdrawal of our troops from the Mideast and foreign countries all over the world. A true pro-American foreign policy would not include the idea that we are the world's policeman.

Dr. Paul is a scholar and student of both economics and history. No other candidate can claim his level knowledge nor his commitment to truth and the principles of liberty. The chance that he will be elected president is the one long-shot chance that America has to avoid imperial bankruptcy, a police state, and medieval poverty. All of which will attend our continued trust in paper money, imperial war, and men like John McCain.

McCain, Vietnam, the NWO, & the Hero of Chi Chi Jima (Jan. 10, 2008)

Subject: McCain/POW
From: Jack H
Date: Thu, January 10, 2008
To: Editor

I'm wondering if anyone has, and if not can, confirm the stories associated with McCain having a been a POW in Vietnam.

I am suspicious, perhaps it's a gene I have, and do not believe the claims. Considering his father, and his track record since returning, I believe it far more likely he was collaborating with the enemy rather than being held by them. Or, if just being held it was to keep him out of harms way due to his father being over the Pacific fleet.

I would appreciate someone either confirming my gut feeling or correcting my suspicions.

Thanks,

Jack

***

Hi Jack,

I do recall when he was released. They made a big deal about his return and then going into politics a few years later.

McCain is an NWO shill all the way. He's been working for the Other Side all along. There's no question of that. I've always assumed that he was mind controlled while held captive by the North Vietnamese, but if his father was a big deal in the Navy, then he was programmed from childhood.

You bring up an interesting possibility about him being kept out of harm's way, but I presume that he was shot down and then captured. That could not have been planned. However, the NVA surely knew who he was and likely kept him as a barganing chip. Only the people who were in that POW camp would know whether McCain got special treatment or not.

I will remind you that NWO shills of Presidential timber do have a habit of manufacturing War Hero status for themselves. You recall how Kerry turned himself into a regular Sergeant York when he ran for President and Dubya would have had you believe that he should have been cast for the leading role in Top Gun, instead of the cocaine-snorting, AWOL, no-show weekend warrior that he actually was.

His father, GHW Bush, really takes the cake for manufacturing a War Hero status for himself. In fact, I just saw a short clip (made by the Navy in 2007) a few months ago on Public Television (Ch 28) in which Bush Sr. recounts his Hero of Chi Chi Jima fairy tale.

With a sort of 'Aw Shucks Folks, it ain't nuttin' type of demeanor, Bush tells us that his Torpedo Avenger plane was shot down "fighting" over Chi Chi Jima and he alone (sadly) managed to survive the bailout, while his two crew members didn't make it and went down with the plane. That's Bush's account of the event

Now, want to know what really happened?

There was No "fighting." and there was No battle. He was not even under fire.

Bush was on a bombing run to Chi Chi Jima, flying in close formation along with his entire squadron, when inexplicably, his plane develops smoke (from inside the cabin) and Bush, alone at the controls, quickly bails out, leaving his two crew members to crash with the plane. The entire event was witnessed by a tail gunner named Chester Mierzejewski who was flying in another plane directly in front of Bush's plane and saw everything that was taking place. I posted the follwoing description of the Chi Chi Jima bailout in an article I posted on May 20, 2007 titled: Mystery 'Person' from a September 1, 1944 Wartime Photograph (http://educate-yourself.org/cn/mysteryguest1944photo20may07.shtml)

You might also be interested in knowing that Chester Mierzejewski was a rear tail gunner in another bomber on September 2, 1944. He was flying directly in front of Bush's Avenger bomber, less than 100 feet away and looking straight back into Bush's cockpit. He had a bird's eye view of everything that happened on Bush's plane that day and after keeping quiet for 44 years, he finally went public with the real story. His account differs sharply from the heroic puff piece that you will read of our heroic shape shifter at Wikepedia

Thanks again to the efforts of Eric B, here is the reprinted text of Chester Mierzejewski's description of what happened that day:

http://thebushconnection.com/

"Chester Mierzejewski, an old war buddy of Bush, who said he was angered by the "false assertions" made by candidate Bush when describing the incident, gave a different account. After 44 years of silence, Mierzejewski, who also was awarded the Distinguished Flying Cross, told the New York Post that Bush had abandoned his crew to death when there was another choice. He said he was approximately 100 feet in front of Bush's plane as the turret gunner for Squadron Commander Douglas Melvin's plane, "so close he could see in the cockpit" of Bush's bomber. Mierzejewski's close wartime buddy was one of the two crew members in Bush's plane.

According to Mierzejewski, the squadron was in a tight formation bombing raid against a Japanese radio installation on an island reported to be heavily fortified. He saw "a puff of smoke" come from Bush's plane which quickly disappeared and was certain only one man parachuted from the plane and that it was Bush, the pilot. Mierzejewski said the Avenger torpedo bomber was engineered so that it could successfully crash land on water and that Bush doomed his own crew by bailing out and leaving the bomber out of control.

Other World War II veterans also expressed concern about Bush parachuting out of the aircraft. "He had a moral obligation to put that plane in the water in an emergency landing," Robert Flood, a former B-17 bombardier told the press. "He violated the primary rule for a captain of a multi-crew aircraft: The pilot never leaves the airplane with anybody in it

Although the heart of Bush's story about the incident remains the same, Mierzejewski is adamant Bush's account is not the truth and blames Bush for the abandonment and deaths of both men. "I think he could have saved those lives, if they were alive. I don't know that they were, but at least they had a chance if he had attempted a water landing," Mierzejewski said.

This horrible crime was perpetrated to help the young Nazi, George Herbert Walker Bush establish a false reputation for being a great American WWII hero. Hitler’s plan to take over the world was right on schedule. George Herbert Walker Bush, is not an American War Hero! He is a sabotaging nazi traitor! George Herbert Walker Bush should be tried for Treason."

Eric B.

Bush's father, Prescott Bush, also turned himself into a War hero when his official biography said that he fought in Europe from 1917-1919 during World War I Don Nicoloff wrote about Prescott's mandacity in a long article he wrote for the Idaho Observer and posted last April, 2007.

http://www.proliberty.com/observer/20070405.htm

"Prescott Bush’s numerous biographies mention his graduation from Yale University in 1917, though there is no mention of a degree. Before his graduation from Yale, yet another anomaly appears—his enlistment into the Connecticut National Guard in 1916.

The conflicting dates do not end there. While on a tour of duty in the U.S. Army from 1917-1919, Bush is credited, on August 8, 1918, with “deflecting an incoming shell with a bolo knife” and saving the lives of three allied leaders. As a result for his bravery, he “received the Cross of the Legion of Honor (from France), the Victorian Cross (from England) and the Distinguished Medal of Honor (from the U.S." Upon his return to Columbus, Ohio, in mid-1919, Bush found it difficult to explain away the concocted “war hero” story (another anomaly) and “moved to St. Louis.” [19]

Still, another story surfaced regarding Prescott Bush’s whereabouts during 1918. Having been initiated into Yale University’s secret Skull and Bones Society (some say in 1916, others claim it was in 1917), Prescott Sheldon Bush is credited with the grave robbery of the skull of Geronimo, from a graveyard near Fort Sill, Oklahoma. Though this story may only be another myth, by now it has become quite difficult to distinguish PSB biographical fact from fiction. The overlapping timelines of these stories are enough to raise a few valid questions:"

I'm amazed at what I'm hearing over KPFK (Los Angeles) concenring McCain. The Leftist Loonies who dominate that station during the day were actually saying over the air that McCain would get us out of Iraq, while the Obama and Clinton would not want the legacy of "losing" Iraq and would therefore be afraid to withdraw, thus prolonging the agony. Apparently, even Lefties can't hear McCain words or can't understand their meaning.

McCain is more pro-war than Bush is, if you can believe that's possible. .Yet, this is the guy who's going to "get us out of Iraq."

Where's Alice and that damn rabbitt when we need them?

Regards, Ken

For all that Republicans hate it, McCain may be their man

The veteran Arizona senator's popularity with independent voters could be enough to make him unstoppable

Michael Tomasky in Washington
Monday January 14, 2008
The Guardian
http://www.guardian.co.uk/uselections08/jo...2240376,00.html


How is it that John McCain appears to be the putative Republican presidential nominee? It seems to make no sense. As I noted two weeks ago, the Republicans are controlled by three factions: the neocons, who run foreign policy; the theocons, who call the shots on social policy; and the radical anti-taxers, who dictate fiscal and regulatory policy.

These groups are very powerful. They control money, troops, endorsements and media outlets. They are ultra-conservative and they brook little dissent. They should, by rights, have near-total control of the presidential nominating process. Two of these groups absolutely detest McCain. Yet he is now just a handful of victories away from locking up the Republican nomination.

Is detest too strong a word? Well, OK, I'm talking about thousands of people in these factions, so obviously feelings will vary. But the religious right regards McCain with profound suspicion (he once called certain rightwing preachers "agents of intolerance") and the anti-tax, crush-the-government crowd don't trust him as far as they can throw him (he voted against George W Bush's tax cuts). Anti-immigrant nativists abominate McCain because of his moderate position on citizenship for illegal entrants to the US.
These groups control a lot, but they don't control the voting process. And McCain is winning in no small part because in many states, Republican primaries are open to all voters, including independents, who love McCain.

This is what made him decide, when the chips were down several weeks ago and he had to determine where he'd make his last stand, to target New Hampshire, where he duly won with broad independent support. This is why he is expected to do well in Michigan tomorrow. It's another "open" primary, where anyone can vote in either party's primary. And South Carolina, which comes at the end of the week, is another state, the third in a row, where independents can vote Republican.

It's not until January 29 that we'll encounter the first major state, Florida, whose primary is "closed" - that is, in which only enrolled members of that party will be allowed to vote. But if - a big if, but a plausible one - McCain has won three in a row by then, the media will have anointed him, and the momentum may carry him through.

He could run into trouble on Super Tuesday, February 5, when 21 states hold primaries or caucuses. More than half are closed, including the two biggest prizes that day, New York and California. But even this is a piece of luck, because those aren't exactly hardcore rightwing states: they're places where McCain might do well even among Republicans only.

Those of us in Washington tend to think of the parties as Washington entities. So when I write that "the Republicans are controlled by three factions", I'm talking about the Republicans of Washington. But the primary season is a reminder that the American electoral system has little to do with Washington and is actually far more decentralised.

Whether primaries are open or closed is a question that's decided in 50 different state capitals, usually on the basis of some sort of vestigial political tradition. States that once had powerful political machines, such as New York, tend to be closed, whereas younger states tend to be open. States with more corrupt traditions tend to be closed, while states that have reform traditions are usually open. This is why McCain might be the Grand Old Party nominee. In Washington, conservatives dislike him and he, although conservative himself, dislikes them for the simple reason that he's a curmudgeon who doesn't like to be told what to do. In meetings of Senate Republicans, he sits at the back being disruptive. But Republicans and independents across the country don't know this or, if they do, think it speaks well of the man. It is in this sense that McCain, though a Washington creature for a quarter of a century, can still run as an anti-establishment candidate, relying on Republicans and independents.

So which Democrat would stack up better against this? The first instinct is to think that Barack Obama would, given his much ballyhooed appeal to independent voters, who usually make up 25-30% of the total general election vote. And the first instinct is probably right. In New Hampshire at least, according to exit polls, independents made up 42% of the Democratic primary electorate of 290,000, about 120,000 votes. Obama got 40% of that 120,000, or about 48,000 independent votes. If you do the same calculations for McCain, you find that he got 38% of about 81,000 independents, or roughly 31,000 votes.

But here's a little reported fact, overlooked perhaps because it doesn't chime with her partisan image. Hillary Clinton apparently received about 40,000 independent votes. So while she did worse than Obama among independents, she did better than McCain. So it could be that independent voters are impressed by cantankerous personalities, but only up to a point, after which policies actually matter. And on policy questions, independents are closer these days to Democrats.

· Michael Tomasky is editor of Guardian America
michael.tomasky@guardian.co.uk

John McCain

Henry Kissinger; Richard Armitage, former deputy secretary of state, covert CIA drug pipeline manager and Bush family ally; Robert McFarlane, Reagan/Bush national security adviser, Iran-Contra scandal; William Kristol, arch neocon editor of The Weekly Standard; Alexander Haig, Reagan/Bush secretary of state; George Shultz, Reagan/Bush secretary of state, Hoover Institution, Bechtel exec., "kingmaker" responsible for the vetting of George W. Bush prior to recommending him to the establishment for president; Brent Scowcroft, Kissinger associate and national security advisor to Presidents Ford and George H.W. Bush; James Woolsey, former CIA director; Lawrence Eagleburger, Sec. of State under Bush 41; William Ball, diplomat and Reagan administration Sec. of Navy; Colin Powell, Sec of State under Bush and Army officer who helped cover up the Mai Lai massacre in Vietnam.

John McCain: Media-approved liberal

Posted: January 16, 2008
By Andrew Longman
http://www.wnd.com/news/article.asp?ARTICLE_ID=59706


There are only two reasons John McCain is enjoying a resurgence in the polls.
First, the media love him as their third-best liberal Republican, and second he is the only person in the race who gives the appearance of understanding the war on terror.

Both of these are ephemera, but they are news-cycle truths.

First, we had the pro-abortion, pro-gay, socialist "Republican" the New York media had picked to foist on America's Christians. When that didn't work, the media quickly shifted to the Mormon high priest, to try to force him down Dr. Dobson's throat. The media have sneered and leered and hoped, but they've now relegated Romney to the next-time file.

Who does that leave?

The neo-pagan press prides themselves on being able to "create anybody" as a viable candidate … whether they can or not. The press is aware that their power to foist on the Christians isn't infinite, but they believe that with dedication and division, strife and denunciation, they can fracture the evangelical right and someday destroy it. So they keep trying. Having successfully ginned-up McCain in 2000, where he almost beat the openly evangelical George W. Bush, they have gone to the Straight Talk Express as their fallback plan, and they are delighted to see it's working.

One problem.

McCain is a huge liberal.

But conveniently, McCain has scored a big win by predicting how something in the war on terror was supposed to go, sticking to it against odds, and turning out to be correct. Because this gives the needed credible appearance of shoot-the-bad-guy conservatism, the media are willing to temporarily ignore that this also appears, well, "pro-war." Just so long as Johnny Mac can force the evangelicals to vote for someone who sued Wisconsin Right to Life, the left-press will give McCain a free pass on all else.

McCain called evangelical Christian leaders "agents of intolerance" and then later affirmed the anti-Christian views on "Hardball" with Chris Matthews, saying, "I must not and will not retract anything that I said in that speech at Virginia Beach. It was carefully crafted, it was carefully thought out."

Of course, the McCain-Feingold bill, also known as "No Incumbent Left Behind," sought to crush the free speech rights of a diversity of organizations. McCain calls Right to Life chapters "special interests" that need to be controlled and stripped of influence in Congress. I think he is accurate in this: Keeping babies alive is especially interesting to most people. But not only has McCain been hostile to Right to Life groups, he tried to have the pro-life plank in the Republican Platform rewritten to include exceptions.

It's worth remembering why John McCain lost South Carolina by 11 points to a candidate perceived at the time to be a truly conservative evangelical.

McCain's been pro-amnesty for illegal aliens his whole career, authoring the Senate's latest amnesty clap-trap. The McCain-Feingold mess criminalizes the speech of small organizations 60 days before elections.

He's voted for multiple gun-control laws in the Senate, voted for affirmative action quotas, and in 2002 the media was buzzing with speculation that McCain was about to bolt the GOP because he was so far left of center.

John McCain has only one thing going for him. He was right about Iraq. But is that enough to make him president? The momentary encouragement of a pro-defense person being correct about a major battle does not outweigh the decades of committed liberalism we have from John McCain. Give him his due; he'd make a great nominee for the Democrats. And that's the point. The national media's action can always be predicted: They will love and try to elect the most liberal Republican possible, because they themselves are liberals and they delight in "sticking it" to the conservative base.

A surge in votes ought not follow the surge in Iraq. Other Republicans, John, said the same things you did, and they didn't vote for gun-control laws. Others can eloquently explain the war on terror without filing punitive lawsuits against state Pro-Life chapters.

So, I'd say it's still OK to be suspect whenever MSNBC calls someone "a conservative."

McCain open to Lieberman as VP?

http://thinkprogress.org/2008/01/17/mccain...ieberman-as-vp/


The Wall Street Journal reports that, in an interview with John McCain, he “did little to dissuade” the notion that he may select Joe Lieberman as his running mate. “He’d be a great partner in any endeavor, including joining America together,” McCain said in response to a question on the Lieberman factor. “Let’s reach across the aisle, let’s work together for America. That’s what Joe Lieberman is all about.” McCain has previously said he “definitely” wants Lieberman to have a national security role in his administration.

John McCain Thinks the American People are Dumb

A.J. Fabio
Nolan Chart
Thursday January 17, 2008
http://www.nolanchart.com/article1208.html


In an interview with GQ Magazine, Presidential Candidate John McCain made quite a statement about the how he feels about the American People, and why so many of us disagree with the Police Action in Iraq. Below is an excerpt from the interview:

GQ: The polls indicate that Americans oppose this plan. Do you believe those polls? McCain: Sure. Americans are angry and frustrated.

GQ: Then how can you support sending the military on a mission that the American people don't support? McCain: Because I know what's best for the security of this nation. And if we don't show signs of success, the American public will force us to pull out.

GQ: It seems like the American people tried to force you to pull out, with their votes in the midterm elections. McCain: I think they were frustrated because we were deploying a bad strategy.


GQ: So you think the message of the midterms was about the strategy and not the war itself? McCain: No, I think the message of the midterms was that the American people didn't want any more out-of-control spending and corruption. Lieberman could never have been elected in a state like Connecticut if the message was just about Iraq.

GQ: Okay, that's fair. But if you're saying that the American people have a problem with the strategy and not the war, the polls we just talked about indicate that they don't like the new strategy, either. McCain: I think Americans don't pay close attention. They see the crawl across the screen, and they know that we've been there a long time, and they're frustrated.

To sum up: 1. McCain thinks that the American People don't support the war because we are angry and frustrated at a "bad strategy". Not because we have loved ones dying, savings accounts dwindling, and enough problems at home. 2. McCain knows what is good for you and your security. You do not know what is good for you and your security (or the security of your brother, sister, cousin, uncle, etc.) who are dying every day for a lost cause. 3. McCain thinks that the American People are dumb. We don't pay attention, and we just look at the scrolling death-toll at the bottom of our screen.

I hope that Mr. McCain is wrong about all of this, and that I'm not alone in my personal feelings about the Police Action over seas. I especially hope that Mr. McCain is wrong about the American People. It is up to us to make sure that he is wrong. Pay attention and inform everyone we meet that the Revolution has just begun!

John Mccain NOW claims he doesn't like his own AMNESTY bill!

Thursday January 17, 2008
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oyuMeuVHszQ

[dohtml]<object width="425" height="373"><param name="movie" value="http://www.youtube.com/v/oyuMeuVHszQ&rel=1&border=1"></param><param name="wmode" value="transparent"></param><embed src="http://www.youtube.com/v/oyuMeuVHszQ&rel=1&border=1" type="application/x-shockwave-flash" wmode="transparent" width="425" height="373"></embed></object>[/dohtml]

Mccain wants us all to forget how hard he worked for AMNESTY for millions of illegal aliens!

McCain the man to beat, while Giuliani wonders if Florida gamble has backfired

By Leonard Doyle in Columbia, South Carolina
Published: 21 January 2008
http://news.independent.co.uk/world/americ...icle3356217.ece


A few months ago, Rudy Giuliani was the man to beat in the Republican race. But his gamble to sit out the early caucuses and primaries and stake everything on the Sunshine State on 29 January may have backfired. "The hero of 9/11" has seen his national security mantle pass to Mr McCain, whose enthusiasm for US military adventures knows few bounds.

Increasingly seen as yesterday's man, Mr Giuliani's only hope of survival is a victory in Florida, the fourth-largest state, where he has been campaigning for months. Curiously, however, the polls show the more time he has spent there, the less support he receives.

There are major obstacles ahead for both men in Florida, most notably from Mitt Romney, the former governor of Massachusetts who won the Nevada Republican contest on Saturday. At a time when the US economy is spiralling into recession, Mr Romney has great appeal to conservatives, combining a brilliant track record as a businessman with the winning smile of a salesman. He promises to restore the US economy to health with discipline over government spending combined with tax cuts.

"Florida is the showdown state," the Republican pollster Neil Newhouse has predicted. "It's shaping up to be a microcosm of the party: part Southern, part Northern, part Republican establishment, part evangelical."

Early in the race Mr Romney's campaign was by far the most organised and he picked up an important endorsement from Florida's former governor Jeb Bush. He also spent more than $3m (£1.5m) on television ads. Then came the early blows of Iowa and New Hampshire, where he trailed in second. But with a win in Michigan, Mr Romney's campaign suddenly got back on track, as he persuaded voters that he alone had the wherewithal to revive the economy and "fix Washington".

Then there is Mike Huckabee, the former governor of Arkansas with the populist touch, who represents the fiercely devout Christian base of the party. His appeal is to the common man, now hurting in the economic downturn and feeling ignored and helpless.

"There must be room in the Republican Party for the man who carries a paint bucket or a hammer," Mr Huckabee said as he left South Carolina to take his quixotic campaign south.

Mr McCain is now in the lead in both the Florida and national polls, and Saturday's South Carolina victory is expected to give his numbers another bump. But he now faces opposition from Republicans who care deeply about issues such as illegal immigration and abortion. He has had a moderate, even enlightened approach to these issues, but has had to change tack.

If Mr Giuliani continues to fade, it is expected to benefit Mr McCain, as both appeal to the same voters by wrapping themselves in the American flag and projecting themselves as hawks in the battle against Islamic extremism at a time when the US is at war. One disadvantage Mr McCain faces in Florida is that unlike in South Carolina, independent voters cannot simply show up and participate in the state primary.

But hoping to capture the heavily Republican Cuban-American community, whose leaders are divided among the candidates, he is heading to Little Havana to make his pitch.

All Republican candidates have natural constituencies in Florida. Mr Huckabee's evangelical base is in the Florida panhandle from Pensacola to Jacksonville, the most conservative part of the state and closest to the values of the Old South. On the Gulf coast, Mr Romney is expected to appeal to the wealthier communities of retirees from the Mid West. In urban areas of Tampa and Jacksonville where there are large military bases, McCain is expected to appeal.

Mr Giuliani, the former mayor of New York, was expected to clean up among the many millions of transplanted New Yorkers, but if the predictions are correct those votes will now be distributed among the other three candidates.

On the Campaign Trail

McCain 'now Republican frontrunner'

Sun, 20 Jan 2008 22:56:53
http://www.presstv.com/Detail.aspx?id=3960...ctionid=3510203


Presidential contender John McCain has become the Grand Old Party's front man after winning South Carolina's primary, analysts say.

As the 2008 White House race heads to Florida, Senator McCain seems to have gained support among Republicans and is ready to forget his bitter defeat to George W. Bush in 2000.

"You know, it took us a while," McCain told jubilant supporters Saturday at a victory celebration in Charleston, South Carolina.

The Arizona Senator is said to have enough momentum now from victories in New Hampshire and South Carolina to make Florida a must-win.

"I still think this is very competitive," added 71-year-old McCain.

Analysts believe the outcome achieved in the deeply religious state is a major setback for former Arkansas Governor Mike Huckabee, a former Baptist minister, as well as multi-millionaire Mormon businessman Mitt Romney.

THE FIGHTER PILOT AND THE PRINCESS IN AMERICA’S PRESIDENTIAL PRIMARIES

“But McCain has the same highly inconsistent pattern as Diana in public and private behavior. In private, he is famous for a colossally ugly temper.”

By John Chuckman
1/21/08
http://www.bestcyrano.org/THOMASPAINE/?p=561


The fighter pilot of this story is, of course, John McCain, but the princess is not Hillary Clinton as some readers might have guessed. The princess in the story is Britain’s late Princess Diana.

What possible connection is there between the late Princess Diana and John McCain? Well, as it proves, there are connections of serious importance to American voters and citizens of the world.

There is today an unpleasant but necessary, excruciatingly-detailed inquiry into Diana’s death underway in Britain. It is unpleasant because no one should have every private thought and act exposed this way, but it is necessary because the Princess’s own actions and words left millions believing dark, paranoid fantasies around her death. Her remarks and notes in private about believing she would be assassinated, her batteries of obsessive telephone calls, her reported private fits of moodiness and hysteria, her going public with private marital problems – these and other events point to a person with mental instability. Detailed revelations of the inquiry come as no surprise because many sensed something more than her wonderful public charm and grace, and her family does have other such cases in its history.


McCain has all the signs of a similar personality disorder. He can be charming in public, and he has a reputation as an interesting maverick. He is sometimes bluntly truthful, as when he talked about the Religious Right in his 2000 campaign for the Republican nomination.

But McCain has the same highly inconsistent pattern as Diana in public and private behavior. In private, he is famous for a colossally ugly temper. McCain has made some absurd claims over the years, reminding me very much of Princess Diana’s whispers and notes about people in high places wanting to assassinate her, all the while smiling beguilingly in public.

Recently, McCain told us he would still have invaded Iraq, even without the excuse of “weapons of mass destruction.” He has learned nothing from all that pointless death and misery.

McCain promised voters in South Carolina that he’d hunt down Osama bin Laden, even if it took him “to the gates of hell.” And he swore he knows just how to do the job. Good Lord, if McCain knows, why has he kept it secret all these years?

“The gates of hell”? McCain in 2000 made fun of hellfire Christian fundamentalists’ role in politics, now he’s feeding them their own lines.

I think we know that Osama has long been dead, despite the CIA’s phony periodic tapes released to intensify the public’s paranoia to support the war on terror. The government hasn’t wanted to claim credit because that would make Osama a martyr. His remains are buried under a million tons of rock in the mountains that had the destructive equivalent of World War II dropped on them. And were it possible that Osama did miraculously survive, would hunting him down now be a high priority to a rational person? Two unfinished wars are underway. McCain’s promise is just one for increased destruction and horror abroad.

Recently, he told a crowd in South Carolina that the state “was, hands down, the most patriotic in the nation.” First, what does his utterance mean? Nothing, it is empty rhetoric of the worst kind. Two, keeping Dr Johnson’s dictum on patriots in mind, who cares who is most patriotic? That way is the certainty of more war. Noisy patriotism is a valued characteristic only to the brain-washed, feeble-minded, and aggressors. Three, regardless of the meaning you attribute to McCain’s statement, if you account for the historical facts, quite the opposite is the truth. South Carolina was the state that started secession from the Union at the start of the Civil War. South Carolina was also “hot to trot” back in John Adams’ day under the secret promptings of anti-federal opposition leader Jefferson. Again, in Andrew Jackson’s day, South Carolina pitched the national government into a crisis over a state’s right to nullify federal law. Jackson threatened troops to put an end to it.

Recently, too, McCain told us he would still have invaded Iraq, even without the excuse of “weapons of mass destruction.” He previously had one of his tasteless, juvenile joking sessions before reporters about bombing Iran, complete with vicious, laughing antics. The man has learned nothing from all the death and misery of Afghanistan, Iraq, and Vietnam.

McCain simply loves death and killing, just as it can be argued Princess Diana regularly flirted with death. She had deliberately turned down requests to increase the level of protection about her. She needlessly drove off on wild adventures like the ride in Paris that killed her.
After seven years of the low-grade psychopath, Bush, and the destruction on every front he leaves as his legacy, the last thing humanity needs is the smiling death’s head of John McCain as commander-in-chief.

Norman Schwarzkopf Endorses McCain

by FOXNews.com
Wednesday, January 23, 2008
http://youdecide08.foxnews.com/2008/01/23/...rses-%20mccain/


John McCain earned the endorsement of Gulf War commander Gen. Norman Schwarzkopf Wednesday.

Schwarzkopf, who with McCain in 2004 was openly critical of then-Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld over his handling of the Iraq war, said in a statement the Arizona senator “has served our country with honor in war and in peace.”

“He has demonstrated the type of courageous leadership our country sorely needs at this time. For that reason, he has my complete support,” he said.

McCain is in a tight race for the Republican presidential nomination, but most polls show him leading the pack following his wins in New Hampshire and South Carolina. He and his rivals are in Florida Wednesday ahead of the state’s primary on Tuesday.

It is not clear whether Schwarzkopf will campaign with McCain, as former Secretary of State Henry Kissinger has done.

McCain thanked Schwarzkopf in a statement, saying, “General Norman Schwarzkopf’s distinguished lifetime of service and uncommon devotion to our nation has earned him the respect and admiration of the American people. I am honored by his support.”

Don’t Be Fooled by the Myth of John McCain

by Johann Hari
January 24, 2008 by The Independent/UK
http://www.commondreams.org/archive/2008/01/23/6598/


A lazy, hazy myth has arisen out of the mists of New Hampshire and South Carolina. Across the pan-Atlantic press, the grizzled 71-year-old Vietnam vet, John McCain, is being billed as the Republican liberals can live with. He is “a bipartisan progressive”", “a principled hard liberal”, “a decent man” - in the words of liberal newspapers. His fragile new frontrunner status as we go into Super Tuesday is being seen as something to cautiously welcome, a kick to the rotten Republican establishment.

But the truth is that McCain is the candidate we should most fear. Not only is he to the right of Bush on a whole range of subjects, he is also the Republican candidate most likely to dispense with Hillary or Barack.

McCain is third-generation navy royalty, raised from a young age to be a senior figure in the Armed Forces, like his father and grandfather before him. He was sent to one of the most elite boarding schools in America, then to a naval academy where he ranked 894th out of 899 students in ability. He used nepotism to get ahead: when he was rejected by the National War College, he used his father’s contacts with the Secretary of the Navy to make them reconsider. He then swiftly married the heiress to a multi-million dollar fortune.

Right up to his twenties, he remained a strikingly violent man, “ready to fight at the drop of a hat”, according to his biographer Robert Timberg. This rage seems to be at the core of his personality: describing his own childhood, McCain has written: “At the smallest provocation I would go off into a mad frenzy, and then suddenly crash to the floor unconscious. When I got angry I held my breath until I blacked out.”

But he claims he was transformed by his experiences in Vietnam - a war he still defends as “noble” and “winnable”, if only it had been fought harder. (More than three million Vietnamese died; how much harder could it be?) His plane was shot down on a bombing raid over Hanoi, and he was captured and tortured for five years. To this day, he cannot lift his arms high enough to comb his own hair.

On his release, he used his wife’s fortune to run to as a Republican senator. He was a standard-issue Reaganite corporate Republican - until the Keating Five corruption scandal consumed him. In 1987, it was revealed that McCain, along with four other senators, had taken huge campaign donations from a fraudster called Charles Keating. In return they pressured government regulators not to look too hard into Keating’s affairs, allowing him to commit even more fraud. McCain later admitted: “I did it for no other reason than I valued [Keating’s] support.”

McCain took the only course that could possibly preserve his reputation: he turned the scandal into a debate about the political system, rather than his own personal corruption. He said it showed how “we need to drive the special interests out of Washington”, and became a high-profile campaigner for campaign finance reform. But privately, his behaviour hasn’t changed much. For example, in 2000 he lobbied federal regulators hard on behalf of a major campaign contributor, Paxson Communications, in an act the regulators spluttered was “highly unusual”. He has never won an election without outspending his opponent.

But McCain has distinguished himself most as an über-hawk on foreign policy. To give a brief smorgasbord of his views: at a recent rally, he sang “Bomb, bomb, bomb, bomb Iran,” to the tune of the Beach Boys’ “Barbara Ann”. He says North Korea should be threatened with “extinction”.

McCain has mostly opposed using US power for humanitarian goals, jeering at proposals to intervene in Rwanda or Bosnia - but he is very keen to use it for great power imperialism. He learnt this philosophy from his father and his granddad Slew, who fought in the Philippine wars at the turn of the 20th century, where he was part of a mission to crush the local resistance to the US invasion. They did it by forcing the entire population from their homes at gunpoint into “protection zones”, and gunning down anybody over the age of ten who was found outside them. Today, McCain dreamily describes this as “an exotic adventure” which his grandfather “generally enjoyed”.

Then McCain’s father, John, led the US invasion of the Dominican Republic in 1965, at a time when there was a conflict on the Caribbean island. On one side, there were forces loyal to Juan Bosch, the democratically elected left-wing President who was committed to land redistribution and helping the poor. On the other side, there were forces who had overthrown the elected government and looked nostalgically to the playboy tyranny of Rafael Trujillo. John McCain Snr intervened to ensure the supporters of the democratic government were crushed, bragging that it taught the natives “how to behave themselves”. He saw this as part of a wider mission, where the US would take over Britain’s role as a “world empire”.

These beliefs drive McCain today. He brags he would be happy for US troops to remain in Iraq for 100 years, and declares: “I’m not at all embarrassed of my friendship with Henry Kissinger; I’m proud of it.” His most thorough biographer - and recent supporter - Matt Welch concludes: “McCain’s programme for fighting foreign wars would be the most openly militaristic and interventionist platform in the White House since Teddy Roosevelt… [it] is considerably more hawkish than anything George Bush has ever practised.” With him as president, we could expect much more aggressive destabilisation of Venezuela and Bolivia - and more.

So why do so many nice liberals have a weak spot for McCain? Well, to his credit, he doesn’t hate immigrants: he proposed a programme to legalise the 12 million undocumented workers in the US. He sincerely opposes torture, as a survivor of it himself. He has apologised for denying global warming and now advocates a cap on greenhouse gas emissions - but only if China and India can also be locked into the system. He is somewhat uncomfortable with the religious right (while supporting a ban on abortion and gay marriage). It is a sign of how far to the right the Republican Party has drifted that these are considered signs of liberalism, rather than basic humanity.

Yet these sprinklings of sanity - onto a very extreme programme - are enough for a superficial, glib press to present McCain as “bipartisan” and “centrist”. Will this be enough to put white hair into the White House? At the moment, he has considerably higher positive ratings than Hillary Clinton, and beats her in some match-up polls. If we don’t start warning that the Real McCain is not the Real McCoy, we might sleepwalk into four more years of Republicanism.

j.hari@independent.co.uk

John McCain - The Manchurian Candidate?

1-25-8

Watch this video -

John McCain in "Missing, Presumed Dead"
http://www.youtube.com:80/watch?v=xBiti-ZbeO0

John McCain was the primary opposition to the Senate Select Committee on POWs. He bitterly opposed any attempt to rescue any other POWs. This is very strange since John McCain was himself, a POW.

The POWs that might have been rescued, would have been able to give testimony about the 32 propaganda tapes that John McCain made for the communists, while in Viet Nam. The 32 propaganda tapes are still "classified" so that no one can see them.



Vietnam Veterans Against McCain
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vFM1xqqTX_g&feature=related



Vietnam Veterans call John Mc! Cain a collaborator John McCain says that he would keep our soldiers in Iraq for 100 years. Would he also leave any prisoners there for the rest of their lives?



John McCain at Fox Debate EXPOSED by Ron Paul
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UsqDAafTaFc



McCain laughs, Sings Bomb Iran
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hAzBxFaio1I&feature=related



Tom DeLay: John McCain Has Done the Most to Hurt the GOP
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Bf7e7R3gSos



John McCain vs. John McCain
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ioy90nF2anI



Worst Person In The World: John McCain
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kjNUtRYkqxE



John McCain Gets Owned on Meet The Press
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ajm5JTf7jZs



John McCain- Weak on Immigration
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vs6wwg_ie6Y !



Fox Debate Pt.5 1-10-08
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MaQSV0G5Hos



McCain was bombing women in a lightbulb factory (according to Newsweek) when shot down in North Vietnam. He has never failed to defend any illegal or violent war in which the US leaders involved the citizens.

McCain has the support of Henry Kissinger (indicted in Belgium for war crimes), of Joe Lieberman, neocon rejected by Democrats in Connecticut, and other war profiteers.

The McCain Feingold bill made it possible for war profiteers to run nonstop swift boat attack ads ... a campaign to help in Bush's illegal installation in the White House.

McCain approves the Bush tax cuts for the rich which in combination with the Iraq and Afghanistan fiascos have caused trillions in deficit.



CFR / NAU & 2008 Presidential Candidates
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Vo5CZvD3-QM



McCain Celebrates CFR Anniversary
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Rz_j39LHb! Lk



Presidential Candidates For North American Union
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=f8U-k_g56RA

All this coming from a dirty stinking Knight of Malta named Patrick for christ sake haha -Craig

PJB: Why McCain Would be Worse Than Bush

Patrick J. Buchanan
Friday January 25, 2008
http://buchanan.org/blog/?p=925


In 2004, the voters of Arizona, by 56 percent to 44 percent, enacted Proposition 200, requiring proof of citizenship before an individual may vote or receive state benefits. Forty-six percent of Hispanics voted for Prop. 200, giving the lie to those who say Hispanics support the illegal invasion of their country.

Over 190,000 Arizonans petitioned to put Prop. 200 on the ballot. As it simply required proof of citizenship before receiving the benefits and privileges of citizenship, who could oppose it? Answer: the entire GOP congressional delegation, led by Sen. John McCain.

This is the same John McCain who battled the border fence and colluded with Teddy Kennedy on the amnesty bill rejected by Congress last year after a national uproar.

Bottom line: If the presidential race is between Hillary and Amnesty John, the border security battle is over and lost. As Laura Ingraham asks, “If Congress passes McCain-Kennedy in 2009, would President McCain sign it?”

For conservatives, the stakes could not be higher.

For on the great controversies, McCain has sided as often with the Democrats and the Big Media that pay him court as with conservatives.

Where President Bush has been bravest, on taxes and judges, McCain has been his nemesis. Not only did McCain vote against the Bush tax cuts twice, he colluded to sell out the most conservative of the Bush nominees to the courts.

In 1993, McCain voted to confirm ACLU liberal and pro-abortion Ruth Bader Ginsburg. But when Bush set out to restore constitutionalism, McCain colluded with Democrats who wanted to retain power to kill Bush’s most conservative nominees.

McCain helped form the Gang of 14, including seven Democrats, who agreed to block a GOP Senate from using the “nuclear option” – allowing a simple GOP majority to break a Democrat filibuster of judicial nominees – unless the seven Democrats approved. McCain thus conspired with liberals to put at risk the most courageous conservatives nominees of President Bush.

With his record of voting for liberal justices Ginsburg and Stephen Breyer, and of colluding with Democrats in their campaign to kill the most conservative Bush nominees, what guarantee is there a President McCain will nominate and fight for the fifth jurist who would vote to overturn Roe v. Wade?

In the battle over campaign finance reform, McCain colluded again. The McCain-Feingold law denies to gun folks and right-to-lifers their basic First Amendment right to name friends and foes in ads run before elections.

As for the policies that have transparently failed Bush and the nation, McCain remains an obdurate advocate.

After America has run five straight record trade deficits that have denuded the nation of thousands of factories and 3 million manufacturing jobs, McCain is still babbling on about Smoot-Hawley.

“When you study history, every time we’ve adopted protectionism, we’ve paid a very heavy price,” McCain told a Detroit paper after informing Michiganders their auto jobs are never coming back.

But what history is John McCain talking about?

Was the Tariff of 1816, which saved infant U.S. industries from the malicious dumping by British merchants after the War of 1812, a failure? Were Thomas Jefferson, John Adams, John Calhoun and Henry Clay fools to support President Madison’s tariff?

From Abraham Lincoln through Calvin Coolidge, the Republican Party – the Party of Protection – put 12 presidents in the White House to two for the Democrats, and the United States became the mightiest industrial power in history, producing 42 percent of the world’s manufactured goods.

This is failure – while Bush free trade is a success? Tell it to Ohio.

Even Hillary Clinton, whose husband enacted NAFTA with McCain’s support, has begun to question the NAFTA paradigm. Not McCain.

Where Dwight Eisenhower and Richard Nixon came to office determined to extricate the nation with honor from a war whose costs had begun to outweigh any benefit, McCain is talking about spending 50 or 100 years in Iraq.

Where Bush, by moving NATO onto Russia’s doorstep, planting bases in Central Asia and intervening in the affairs of Russia’s neighbors, has undone the work of Reagan in making Russia a friend, he sounds like George McGovern alongside the braying McCain, who can’t wait to get into Vladimir Putin’s face.

Where Bush finally cleansed his administration of neocons, if not of their legacy, a McCain candidacy is the last, best hope of a neocon restoration and new military adventures in the Middle East.

If Rudy Giuliani founders in Florida, neocons will be chanting, “Mac is back!”

The three issues that ruined the Bush presidency are this misbegotten war in Iraq, the failure to secure America’s borders from invasion and a mindless trade policy that has destroyed the dollar and left foreigners with $5 trillion to buy up America at fire-sale prices.

McCain remains an unthinking advocate of all three.

But where Bush was at his best, on taxes and judges, McCain was collaborating with Hillary. The question conservatives may face if McCain is nominated is not whom should I vote for, but should I vote.

The New York Times Endorses McCain

Friday January 25, 2008
http://www.lewrockwell.com/blog/lewrw/archives/018897.html


That, by itself, ought to be enough to disqualify him. Somehow the Times manages, in their endorsement, to discuss their reasons for opposing all the other GOP candidates still in the race except for one--odd, considering that they claim to want a candidate who has a "plan for getting American troops out of Iraq" and is not "wedded to discredited economic theories and unwilling even now to break with the legacy of President Bush." (Yes, I know it's not really odd because they'd rather ignore Ron Paul than actually engage his ideas, which are anathema to them.) They do have Romney's and Benito's numbers, though.

Oh, and to no one's great surprise, they're endorsing Hillary, too.

McCain: I don't understand economics

Fri, 25 Jan 2008 22:20:48
http://www.presstv.com/Detail.aspx?id=4033...ctionid=3510203


Republican presidential frontrunner John McCain has raised eyebrows by confessing that he 'doesn't really understand economics'.

At a recent meeting with the Wall Street Journal editorial board, the presidential hopeful said he would rely on his adviser and former Senate colleague Phil Gramm as an expert on the subject.

A source familiar with the events that took place at the meeting has confirmed the incident.

The Arizona Senator's office has not returned multiple requests for comment. The Wall Street Journal refuses to comment on meetings that take place privately with their editorial board as part of its company policy, The Huffington Post reported.

After the incident, the question arose as to whether the Republican frontrunner, who has made light of his lack of economic policy understanding, would be the right man to take charge of White House affairs.

This is while Republican hopeful Ron Paul introduced a 'comprehensive economic revitalization plan' on January 24, affirming that it could save the US from recession in the long run.

McCain to skip State of Union address

McCain Will Skip State of Union Address to Campaign in Florida

Staff
AP News
Jan 27, 2008 13:33 EST
http://www.rawstory.com/news/mochila/McCai...e_01272008.html


Republican Sen. John McCain is skipping President Bush's State of the Union address on Monday night even though Democrats Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton plan to attend.

"We'll be campaigning here," Sen. McCain of Arizona said Sunday in Florida, where he is locked in a tight campaign for the Republican presidential nomination against former Massachusetts Gov. Mitt Romney.

Sens. Clinton of New York and Obama of Illinois are battling in the Democratic primary. For Democrats, the significance of Florida's vote is diminished because the national party stripped the state of all its delegates to the nominating convention for holding its primary too early in the year.

While the GOP imposed a similar penalty, it is less harsh: the Republican winner will still get 57 delegates, half of Florida's total.

Russert to McCain: Is Bill Clinton trying to give you the 'kiss of death?

'David Edwards and Ron Brynaert
Published: Sunday January 27, 2008
http://rawstory.com/news/2007/Russert_Bill..._kiss_0127.html


Sen. John McCain bragged about "good momentum" during an appearance on NBC's "Meet the Press" on Sunday, joked about getting "endorsed" by the husband of one of the top Democratic presidential contenders, and also took aim at one of his intraparty rivals, former Massachusetts governor Mitt Romney.

"On Iraq, Russert noted that Romney recently said McCain should apologize for suggesting he espoused specific timetables for withdrawing troops," NBC News reports. "McCain was ready with a response, though, pulling out a note card and reading what he said was a direct quote of Romney calling for 'a series of timetables and milestones' known by top officials but not the public and extremists on the ground in Iraq."

Russert also played some comments by former President Bill Clinton which referred to his wife's "close" relationship with the conservative Arizona senator (the unlikely pair once even engaged in a vodka drinking contest together), and jokingly characterized it as an "endorsement" of sorts.

"She and John McCain are very close," President Clinton said. "They always laughed that if they wound up being the nominees of their party, it would be the most civilized election in American history, and they're afraid they'd put the voters to sleep because they like and respect each other."

Russert asked McCain, "Do you accept the endorsement?"

A laughing McCain apparently forgot what high office Bill Clinton once held: "I thank Senator Clinton for his endorsement."

McCain continued, "Let me just say I will have a respectful debate whether it is Senator Obama or Senator Clinton or whoever it is, but it won't be boring, it won't be boring. We're going to be talking about more or less spending, higher or lower taxes; we're going to be talking about the role of government in health care, and we're going to be talking about the struggle we're in against radical Islamic extremism. It's going to be anything but boring."

"Is he being mischievous, trying to give you the kiss of death in the Republican primary?" Russert attempted to lead McCain.

McCain responded, "I don't know. I know that he is one of the most talented politicians that ever appeared on the American scene, and I only attribute to him the noblest of motives."

This video is from NBC's Meet the Press, broadcast January 27, 2008.

[dohtml]<embed src="http://www.rawprint.com/fvp/flvplayer.swf" width="400" height="320" bgcolor="#FFFFFF" type="application/x-shockwave-flash" pluginspage="http://www.macromedia.com/go/getflashplayer" flashvars="file=http://www.rawprint.com/media/2008/0801/nbc_mtp_mccain_bill_clinton_080127a.flv&amp;image=http://www.rawprint.com/media/2008/0801/nbc_mtp_mccain_bill_clinton_080127a.jpg&amp;logo=http://www.rawprint.com/fvp/rsvidlogo04.png&amp;link=http://www.rawstory.com&amp;autostart=false&amp;lightcolor=0x557722&amp;backcolor=0x000000&amp;frontcolor=0xCCCCCC&amp;showicons=false"></embed>[/dohtml]


Excerpts from transcript:

MR. RUSSERT: Before you go, I want to show a tape of Bill Clinton, the former president, talking about you and Hillary Clinton. Let's watch?

PRES. BILL CLINTON (D-AR): (From videotape.) She and John McCain are very close. They always laughed that if they wound up being the nominees of their party, it would be the most civilized election in American history, and they're afraid they'd put the voters to sleep because they like and respect each other.

MR. RUSSERT: Do you accept the endorsement?

SEN. McCAIN: I thank Senator Clinton for his endorsement. Let me just say I will have a respectful debate whether it is Senator Obama or Senator Clinton or whoever it is, but it won't be boring, it won't be boring. We're going to be talking about more or less spending, higher or lower taxes; we're going to be talking about the role of government in health care, and we're going to be talking about the struggle we're in against radical Islamic extremism. It's going to be anything but boring.

MR. RUSSERT: Is he being mischievous, trying to give you the kiss of death in the Republican primary?

SEN. McCAIN: I don't know. I know that he is one of the most talented politicians that ever appeared on the American scene, and I only attribute to him the noblest of motives (laughs).

MR. RUSSERT: If you were the Republican nominee, and Hillary Clinton was the Democratic nominee, would you have to run against Bill and Hillary Clinton and how would you do it?

SEN. McCAIN: You know, I don't know, but I think it would be clearly a philosophical difference. But I haven't, frankly -- obviously, Senator Obama's win last night makes him very, very competitive. Senator Edwards is still in it -- active. Look, I've only won two primaries, Tim. I've got a pretty massive ego, but not quite so much as I'm planning on that yet.

MR. RUSSERT: If you don't win in Florida, what happens?

SEN. McCAIN: Oh, I think we have good polling numbers throughout the nation, and I think we go on. I think it's going to be a close race here on Tuesday, but I think we've got some good momentum. General Norman Schwartzkopf, our friend Mel Martinez, the senator from Florida, and Charles Crist --

MR. RUSSERT: So you go on after Tuesday, win or lose?

SEN. McCAIN: Oh, sure. Governor Crist and Senator Martinez, the two leading Republican politicians, are bound to give us a little bit of a boost.

MR. RUSSERT: Senator John McCain, as always, we thank you for sharing your views and be safe on the campaign trail.

SEN. McCAIN: Thanks for having me on again.

'Straight talk' from Senator McCain: More wars to come

Nick Langewis
Published: Sunday January 27, 2008
http://rawstory.com/news/2007/McCain_strai...e_war_0127.html


Speaking in Polk City, Florida, U.S. Senator and 2008 presidential candidate John McCain (R-AZ) pledges expansion of access to health care for soldiers injured physically and psychologically not only in the current war, but in wars he says are sure to follow.

This video is from CNN Newsroom, broadcast January 27, 2008.

[dohtml]<embed src="http://www.rawprint.com/fvp/flvplayer.swf" width="400" height="320" bgcolor="#FFFFFF" type="application/x-shockwave-flash" pluginspage="http://www.macromedia.com/go/getflashplayer" flashvars="file=http://www.rawprint.com/media/2008/0801/cnn_bb_mccain_more_wars_080127a.flv&amp;image=http://www.rawprint.com/media/2008/0801/cnn_bb_mccain_more_wars_080127a.jpg&amp;logo=http://www.rawprint.com/fvp/rsvidlogo04.png&amp;link=http://www.rawstory.com&amp;autostart=false&amp;lightcolor=0x557722&amp;backcolor=0x000000&amp;frontcolor=0xCCCCCC&amp;showicons=false"></embed>[/dohtml]

Remember that Buchanan is a Sovereign Military Order of Malta Papal Knight! -Craig

Buchanan: McCain win would mean war with Iran

David Edwards and Muriel Kane
Published: Monday January 28, 2008
http://rawstory.com/news/2007/Buchanan_McC..._with_0128.html


Says McCain would provoke new wars, 'he's in everybody's face'

"More wars" could prove to be the oddest of all presidential campaign slogans. Especially if it works.

Presidential candidate John McCain shocked observers on Sunday when he told a crowd of supporters, "There's going to be other wars. ... I'm sorry to tell you, there's going to be other wars. We will never surrender but there will be other wars."

MSNBC's Joe Scarborough asked old-line conservative Pat Buchanan about McCain's remarks, saying, "He talked about promising that more wars were coming. ... Is he so desperate to get off the economic issue?"

Pat Buchanan replied that McCain never used the word "promise" but simply said there would be more wars, and that from McCain's point of view, "that is straight talk. ... You get John McCain in the White House, and I do believe we will be at war with Iran."

"That's one of the things that makes me very nervous about him," Buchanan went on. "There's no doubt John McCain is going to be a war president. ... His whole career is wrapped up in the military, national security. He's in Putin's face, he's threatening the Iranians, we're going to be in Iraq a hundred years."

"So when he says more war," Scarborough commented, "he is promising you, if he gets in the White House, we'll not only be fighting this war but starting new wars. Is that what conservative Republicans want?

"I don't say he's starting them," Buchanan answered. "He expects more wars. ... I think he's talking straight, because if you take a look at the McCain foreign policy, he is in everybody's face. Did you see Thad Cochran's comment when he endorsed Romney? He said, look, John McCain is a bellicose, red-faced, angry guy, who constantly explodes."

"Not a happy message," commented Scarborough. "Not Reaganesque."


This video is from MSNBC News Live, broadcast January 28, 2008.

[dohtml]<embed src="http://www.rawprint.com/fvp/flvplayer.swf" width="480" height="380" bgcolor="#FFFFFF" type="application/x-shockwave-flash" pluginspage="http://www.macromedia.com/go/getflashplayer" flashvars="file=http://www.rawprint.com/media/2008/0801/msnbc_buchanan_mccain_wars_080128a.flv&amp;image=http://www.rawprint.com/media/2008/0801/msnbc_buchanan_mccain_wars_080128a.jpg&amp;logo=http://www.rawprint.com/fvp/rsvidlogo04.png&amp;link=http://www.rawstory.com&amp;autostart=false&amp;lightcolor=0x557722&amp;backcolor=0x000000&amp;frontcolor=0xCCCCCC&amp;showicons=false"></embed>[/dohtml]

WELCOME TO

THE PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES 2008-2012

JOHN MCCAIN



McCain wins Florida Republican Primary

Wed, 30 Jan 2008 06:04:56
http://www.presstv.com/detail.aspx?id=4093...ctionid=3510203


Sen. John McCain has won a breakthrough triumph in the Florida Republican primary, edging past former Massachusetts Gov. Mitt Romney.

The victory solidified his status as the front-runner for the Republican presidential nomination.

With 57 per cent of precincts reporting, McCain had 35 per cent of the votes and Romney 31 per cent, according to US media.

"It shows one thing. I'm the conservative leader who can unite the party,'' the Arizona senator said in a brief interview with The AP.

"It's a very significant boost but I think we've got a tough week ahead and a lot of states to come,'' he added.

McCain's victory is a seizing precious campaign momentum for next week's string of contests across more than 20 states.

Under the state party rules, the winner in Florida gets all of its 57 delegates to the Republican National Convention.

JOHN MCCAIN WINS FLORIDA

Giuliani to Quit Republican Presidential Race

by Kelley Beaucar Vlahos
Tuesday, January 29, 2008
http://youdecide08.foxnews.com/2008/01/29/...sidential-race/


Rudy Giuliani , his presidential campaign in tatters, is going to abandon his presidential race and endorse John McCain after a distant third-place loss in Florida, Republican sources told FOX News late Tuesday.

Neither campaign will confirm or deny plans for an endorsement of the Republican front-runner by his friend, the former New York City mayor, but other GOP sources say it is being arranged for Wednesday.

Giuliani has publicly said he is going to California, but conspicuously refused to answer questions about participating in Wednesday night’s Republican debate at the Reagan Library.

Giuliani will arrive in California two or three hours ahead of McCain, who will stop to refuel in Texas. McCain had planned a news conference upon arrival in the Golden State, but that is now being reviewed in order to coordinate a joint appearance, sources said.

Giuliani suffered a disappointing evening in Florida, placing well behind McCain and Mitt Romney after repeatedly vowing he would win the Sunshine State. With 92 percent of the precincts reporting, McCain won 36 percent to 31 percent for Romney. Giuliani received 15 percent of the vote.

Giuliani’s campaign team was said to have immediately huddled after the voting was tallied to decide how to exit gracefully from the presidential stage and whether to endorse McCain.

The confirmation that Giuliani — once the national front-runner in GOP nomination fight — would endorse McCain, was an acknowledgement of what many had been saying all day: that his all-or-nothing strategy to take Florida had backfired and he no longer had the money or support to wage a multi-state campaign ahead of Super Tuesday on Feb. 5.

Giuliani’s concession speech in Florida was telling.

“It’s not over until it’s over,” he started off, invoking baseball great Yogi Berra. However, the rest of his remarks suggested his future fight might be for a broader Republican win in November — rather than his own.

“Teddy Roosevelt said aggressive fighting for the right is the noblest sport the world affords,” he said. “I love competition. I never back down from a fight, but there must be a bigger purpose. Elections are for fighting for a cause.”

He went on to thank his supporters for running an “uplifting” campaign and stressed the importance of leadership, clear focus and achieving “peace through overwhelming strength.”

“The responsibility of leadership doesn’t end with a single campaign, it goes on and you continue to fight for it,” Giuliani added.

Most of Tuesday was a study in how to dodge what many perceived to be a foregone conclusion. Giuliani and his campaign continued to suggest he would march on to the Super Tuesday contests. But the double-digit loss called for recalibration — particularly after widespread news reports that his fundraising has been sapped in recent weeks.

“He’ll get out tomorrow,” FOX News analyst Bill Kristol boldly predicted of Giuliani before the Florida polls even came to a close Tuesday night.

Giuliani was having none of the speculation, even as early exit polling results painted a grim picture for his prospects, which had been riding high a year ago and seemed to sink lower with every primary contest he had strategically decided to ignore.

“We’re not dealing with hypothetical questions,” he told reporters when asked earlier in the day whether he was mulling over a retreat. “Our objective is to win. And we’re headed to California tomorrow to continue the campaign.”

Mike DuHaime, Giuliani’s campaign manager, echoed his boss’ determination, telling FOX News ahead of poll closings that “Rudy’s never listened to conventional wisdom. He’s going to so things his own way and generally he’s right.”

Despite months of targeting Florida Republicans, who are heavily populated by retirees hailing from Giuliani’s home state of New York, “America’s mayor” failed to get a toehold in any demographic Tuesday, FOX News exit polling revealed.

Instead, he saw his support divided up by two men who were considered long-shots in Florida a mere few months ago and a key expected endorsement — from Gov. Charlie Crist, who he had been courting for months — slip out of his fingers and go to McCain.

Exit polling indicated that more than 40 percent of Republican voters saw that endorsement as important to their vote.

Giuliani’s poor showing in Florida even led some to speculate that if he does not get out of the race, he may face utter humiliation in New York next Tuesday, as polls indicate that McCain is leading in Giuliani’s home state, as well in the neighboring states of New Jersey and Connecticut.

Though the actual picture of his finances won’t be known until the Federal Election Commission releases its year-end reports, Giuliani has reportedly lost his ability to raise the big money necessary to wage an effective multiple state campaign. He opted out of spending the big bucks on the nation’s first caucus in Iowa. He spent minimally in the early states of New Hampshire and Michigan and was virtually absent from Nevada and South Carolina.

With the latest campaign finance reports not due until Thursday, FEC figures ending Sept. 30 show Giuliani raised $47 million and spent $30 million. But more recent reports said his senior staff had agreed to a pay-cut in order to keep the campaign rolling, and big donors were no longer interested in lining the coffers of a candidate unlikely to win.

Looking at the 21 states that make up the Republican roster for Super Tuesday, several are located in the northeast, where moderate and independent candidates that may have been drawn to Giuliani could easily turn toward McCain.

“Many of these moderate voters in the northeastern states on Super Tuesday will likely go to McCain,” said Nina Easton, Washington correspondent for Fortune magazine and a FOX News contributor.

Analysts have been pouring over Giuliani’s flaws and missteps to map where things went wrong. Aside from his all-or-nothing strategy in Florida, he may have suffered from reports about the use of his security detail on weekend trips to the Hamptons with his then-mistress, now wife, Judith Nathan, the estrangement of his two children from his previous marriage and scandals involving close friends and associates.

FOX News’ Carl Cameron contributed to this report.

Schwarzenegger endorses John McCain

Dan Glaister in Simi Valley, California
Thursday January 31, 2008
Guardian Unlimited
http://www.guardian.co.uk/uselections08/jo...2249726,00.html


Republican front-runner John McCain snagged his second high-profile endorsement in 24 hours when it emerged during Wednesday's presidential debate that California governor Arnold Schwarzenegger will come out for the Arizona senator.
The news came shortly after former New York mayor Rudy Giuliani announced that he was ending his campaign and would support McCain on the campaign trail.

Schwarzenegger is expected to announce his support for McCain following a joint appearance by the two in Los Angeles today.

The debate, the final Republican debate before Super Tuesday next week, saw the two leading candidates sparring over the economy, their respective records, the war in Iraq and who could claim to be the most conservative.
The liveliest exchanges came towards the end of the debate when attention turned to Iraq and the allegation by McCain that Romney had expressed support for a timetable for the withdrawal of US troops from Iraq.

Talking across each other as CNN anchor Anderson Cooper tried to intervene, the two candidates gave expression to the tight race that awaits in next week's primaries.

At one point Romney interrupted McCain to chide him with the words: "How is it that you're the expert on what my position is?

Why do you insist on not using the actual quote? If this was a question it could have been raised in April or May."

McCain responded with an added barb: "I raised the question many times," he said, "of whether you have the experience to lead this country and I will continue to raise it."

Romney's charge that McCain's attacks were "Washington-style old politics" also met a stern rebuttal from McCain, who countered that, "Your negative ads, my friend, have set the tone for this campaign."

Although the exchanges did not become as heated as the sparring between the Democratic nominees in recent weeks, it served to enliven what might otherwise have been an anodyne rehearsal of policy positions.

The tiff between McCain and Romney left the other two candidates on the stage feeling distinctly left out. Huckabee, in particular, expressed his feeling of exclusion, telling moderators, "I didn't come here to umpire a ball game between these two."

When talk turned to the conservative credentials of the candidates, Huckabee pitched in to point out that he could match and possibly better both McCain and Romney.

"This is a two-man race," he said. "There's another guy down here on the far right of the table. You want to talk conservative credentials? If we're going to talk conservatism I'd like to be in on the discussion."

But that discussion too was dominated by the two leading candidates, with Romney accusing McCain of being outside the conservative mainstream.

"He's a good Republican," Romney said of McCain. "I wouldn't question those credentials at all, but there are a number of pieces of legislation where his views are outside of the mainstream ... of conservative Republican thought ... If you get endorsed by the New York Times, you're not a mainstream conservative."

McCain replied that he had also been endorsed by two newspapers in Romney's home town "who know you best".

Unlike most other Republican debates, the words Hillary Clinton were not uttered. Instead, unsurprisingly given the venue, the candidates and their interlocutors mentioned the name of Ronald Reagan with remarkable regularity.

McCain noted several times that he was a "foot soldier of the Reagan revolution", and it took Huckabee to bring the discussion down to earth.

Asked to comment on President Reagan's appointment of abortion rights supporter Sandra day O'Connor to the Supreme Court, Huckabee replied: "I'm not going to come to the Ronald Reagan library and say anything about Ronald Reagan. I'm not that stupid."