How's this for a health care plan? According to CNN, John McCain health care policy adviser John Goodman told a Dallas Morning News reporter that "nobody in the United States is technically uninsured, because everyone has access to hospital emergency rooms."

Wow, talk about clueless. And familiar. Yes, Bush said the same thing back in the summer of 2007 when he adlibbed the following: "The immediate goal is to make sure there are more people on private insurance plans. I mean, people have access to health care in America. After all, you just go to an emergency room."

This lie by the McCains about Mother Teresa was so brazen, I couldn't quite believe it myself:





You can read the story for yourself here, including the part where the McCain campaign revises their story to admit Cindy McCain never met Mother Teresa on that trip. And this story has the timeline of when they started to lie about their daughter and Mother Teresa.

You have to confess that if Michelle Obama had lied about adopting a daughter from Mother Teresa or stolen drugs from her own charity because she's a drug addict, Obama would have had no chance of winning. Yet Cindy McCain gets a free pass on all this. The double standard applied to the candidate's wives are overwhelming. No logical person can deny the hypocrisy in how these stories are covered.

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John McCain recently got in some political trouble because he couldn't remember how many houses he has (that's when you know you're really rich). What was his excuse? He was a POW! If you're wondering what the connection is, you're not alone.

Rudy Giuliani couldn't stop talking about 9/11. Now, McCain is the equivalent for his POW record. As Joe Biden would say, every sentence has become "A noun, a verb and POW."

Listen to all the different times McCain has resorted to reminding people he is a POW to get out of a tough spot:




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That's a heavy charge. McCain's POW record is the one shining moment of great courage in his record. It's what put him in the national spotlight in the first place. And the ordeal he went through was so horrific that you can't question his valor. But now, he has gone and done something that was so unnecessary -- apparently embellishing a story during his stay at the POW camps.

There was absolutely no need for this. His perseverance through five and half years of the prison camp was plenty heroic. He didn't need to add anything to it. But it looks like he did:





Here is the original ad McCain ran about this story. Here is a post with more details on this story, where you can see the whole Solzhenitsyn quote (and the possible Chuck Colson quote where it actually originated from) and get all of the background on how McCain came up with this story in 1999 and in fact might have even changed it in 2000 from it happening to another soldier to it happening to him. This is beyond the pale. You want to talk about a character issue. This is about character.

I know some of you won't believe me, but I am actually disappointed in McCain. I didn't think he would do something like this. Remember I voted for him in the 2000 primaries when I was still a Republican. He was a guy I believed in. To see him make up things about something so important and personal, it makes you lose faith in all politicians to some degree. Is there anything they won't stoop to?

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Earlier John McCain had forgotten we invaded Afghanistan. When talking to Katie Couric, he called Iraq the first major conflict since 9/11. Now, he has forgotten both wars. When upbraiding Russia for "invading" Georgia he made this classic mistake:




If Obama made half of the mistakes McCain has made on the foreign policy front, the press would have jumped down his throat as unfit to lead. How many passes is John McCain going to get?

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John McCain is an American hero, and he's always seemed like a decent man with integrity, but his noble image has started to falter with his recent mean-spirited mocking of Obama. And his mantle of competence has also faded recently as he's continued to make huge gaffes related to foreign policy (video above). He's a great man, but do we really want a guy with his finger on the button who doesn't know that Czechoslovakia hasn't existed for fifteen years?

Even after being schooled by Paris Hilton, McCain's not abandoning the "celebrity" Obama ads. They are so juvenile, it's hard to believe anyone could be moved by them, but clearly McCain's planning to keep it up.

The argument, again, is that people are excited about Obama and therefore they are ignorant. Because excitement is synonymous with stupidity, apparently?

John McCain had a well-documented series of affairs on his first wife after he came back from the war. She had been severely injured in a car accident and after cheating on her several times with several different women, John McCain eventually left her for a much younger, much richer woman.

Now, it seems like I am condemning John McCain for his actions, but actually I'm not. I wasn't in his situation and no one really knows what happens inside someone else's marriage. I think the personal lives of politicians are absolutely irrelevant, especially their sex lives.

So, I say this not to rub this in John McCain's face, but to defend John Edwards. Now that Edwards has admitted to an extramarital affair, everyone will now condemn him and say he has no political career left. I want to ask all of those people, how is Edwards' affair any different John McCain's? If Edwards is disqualified from running for office because of this, isn't McCain as well?





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As we all know, McCain ran a tacky ad comparing Obama to Paris Hilton, insinuating that he's a vapid celebrity. Well, Paris has attacked back on Funny or Die with this pretty awesome campaign ad parody. Best line: "I'll see you at the debates, bitches."

Former Republican strategist David Gergen charged on ABC's This Week that the McCain camp is using code words to tell Southerners and other white voters that Barack Obama is uppity. Watch it here:




Let's not repeat the same mistakes over and over. We don't need a president who is just like us. We need a president who is the best and the brightest among us.

Imagine if the founding fathers used this George Will test for picking their leaders? Well, Thomas Jefferson is really bright but I'm not sure I can have a beer with him, so I'm going to vote for the village idiot instead. I guess if they used the beer test back then, Sam Adams would have been in great shape.

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Republicans vote against Latino interests in America, and even more importantly, demonize the whole community as they do their immigrant bashing. Then they try to make up for it by running an ad with Spanish words and Latino music. They must think that Latinos are real suckers if they think they're going to fall for this:




Watch Other McCain Ads Here

The latest set of ads by the McCain camp against Barack Obama are comical. They have compared him to Britney Spears, Paris Hilton and Moses. I think they're doing him a huge favor. They keep showing pictures of him being cheered by huge crowds, often waving American flags.

And as you can tell from this interview that McCain's campaign manager, Rick Davis has with Andrea Mitchell on MSNBC, they are just pissed that they are not as popular as Obama. What a sad, weird way to run a campaign:




I think the only thing they are doing right in this regard is that by constantly attacking Obama, they have him playing defense and they have switched the conversation into one that is centered around whether Obama should be president. In fact, we should be talking about how the Republican have run this country into the ground over the last eight years -- and do we want that to continue for another four years? While McCain's ads are strangely complimentary of Obama in an unintended way, Obama still needs to change the topic.

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Yesterday, Isabel Wilkinson pointed out on The Huffington Post that McCain's shoes are calfskin Ferragamo loafers, which sell for $520.

The post was picked up on CNN, which observed that it doesn't do much for McCain's accusations that Obama (who wears ratty shoes and ten-year-old pants) is an out-of-touch elitist.

Given what a big deal was made of John Edwards's $400 haircut (or Bill Clinton's $200 haircut before that), it's kind of amazing that the pricey loafers aren't getting more play.

John McCain has been making a lot of outrageous claims lately, but when he said he knew how to capture Osama bin Laden, that really pissed me off. Then what's stopping you big guy? Or are you holding the country hostage by not letting us know unless we elect you president?

If you don't believe he could say something that outrageous or stupid, watch below:




One of our viewers, Mike Neva, made a very good point. McCain has accused Obama of putting politics above winning the war in Iraq. If John McCain really knows how to capture Osama bin Laden and won't tell the US government unless he is elected, isn't he putting politics above winning the war on terror?

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Obama opposes drilling in Alaska because he thinks it's a political ploy. Obama says the benefits of drilling may not be realized for five years or more.

Well, I guess politicians aren't allowed to think that far ahead, are they? Incidentally Clinton made the same argument, and that was more than 10 years ago. If we had started drilling then, we would currently be enjoying the benefits of home-produced oil, prices would be lower, and we would be that much less dependent on Middle Eastern oil.

Oil is now the fuel that drives the engine of Islamic radicalism. Remove the revenues of oil and the Muslim world would join sub-Saharan Africa as the least important part of the planet. Of course if America stops buying from them the Muslims would still sell to other countries. But who can deny that new sources of supply would reduce the global price of oil? And this would naturally reduce the surplus that is available to fund Islamic terrorism.

Currently about 40 percent of America's oil comes from domestic production, and the rest is imported. Approximately 20 percent of our oil imports are from Canada, and another 20 percent come from Mexico and South America. Africa--mainly Nigeria--accounts for another 20 percent. Remarkably, only about 15 percent of America's oil imports are from the Middle East.

What this means is that eliminating American reliance on the Muslim countries is an entirely reasonable objective. The problem is that America's oil needs are increasing, and domestic production is not keeping up. So we are becoming more dependent on imports.

McCain intends to reverse this. He's not insensitive to environmental concerns, and so rather than drill in the Alaskan wildlife reserve he intends only to drill offshore. Even so, he is being opposed by the Obama Democrats and some fanatical environmentalists. These naysayers are trying to convincing America that more oil from Alaska means no more glaciers and caribou.

This is a wild exaggeration and a false choice. And if Americans are forced to choose between lower gas prices and a few more caribou, is there any doubt how the vote would go? I think I am in the majority in saying that I don't mind caribou, but I really like my car. Caribou are nice to see but we need gas to drive out and see them.

Let's by all means drill off the coast of Alaska. At the same time, let's drill some sense into the liberal Democrats.

Postscript: More than one regular responder to this blog has commented that my percentage numbers add up to more than 100 percent, demonstrating my poor math skills. Re-read the post. It says that two-fifths of our oil comes from domestic production and the remaining three-fifths from imports. Then considering only the imports, I give the breakdown of what percentage comes from each foreign region. So there is no math error--or rather, the error is on the part of the posters, who would do well to read more carefully or enroll in basic math.