Letters to the Editor
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"gaff" noun. rough treatment for the countries etc., good.... Yes.
@ 6:35 rkr327? How ever did you do that special backdrop darkening of a '?' mark?
I read the first letter page and your First Letter. Never mind. It looks very difficult.
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USA Today: McCain campaign doesn't disclose what its "bundlers" are bundling,
http://usatoday.com/news/politics/election2008/2008-03-23-mccainlobbyists_N.htm
Telecom lobbyists tied to McCain
By Matt Kelley, USA TODAYWASHINGTON — Republican presidential candidate John McCain has condemned the influence of "special interest lobbyists," yet dozens of lobbyists have political and financial ties to his presidential campaign — particularly from telecommunications companies, an industry he helps oversee in the Senate.
Of the 66 current or former lobbyists working for the Arizona senator or raising money for his presidential campaign, 23 have lobbied for telecommunications companies in the past decade, Senate lobbying disclosures show.
McCain has netted about $765,000 in political donations from those telecom lobbyists, their spouses, colleagues at their firms and their telecom clients during the past decade, a USA TODAY analysis of campaign-finance records shows.
It's unclear how much more money those lobbyists have raised for McCain. Eighteen of them are listed by the campaign as "bundlers," which are major fundraisers. McCain doesn't disclose how much each bundler has raised — unlike Democratic presidential candidates Hillary Rodham Clinton and Barack Obama, who categorize their bundlers by the amount they raise. [...]
- - USA Today
Having his campaign (and his Senate office) run by Telecom lobbyists is actually just another example of McCain's bravery and fortitude, since he has said that dealing with those darn special interests is equivalent to torture:
http://nytimes.com/aponline/us/AP-McCain-Keating.html
McCain: I Learned From Keating Five Case
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
Published: March 23, 2008WASHINGTON (AP) -- Sen. John McCain's ethics entanglement with a wealthy banker ultimately convicted of swindling investors was such a disturbing, formative experience in his political career that he compares the scandal in some ways to the five years he was tortured as a prisoner of war in Vietnam.
''I faced in Vietnam, at times, very real threats to life and limb,'' McCain told The Associated Press. ''But while my sense of honor was tested in prison, it was not questioned. During the Keating inquiry, it was, and I regretted that very much.''
In his early days as a freshman senator, McCain was known for accepting contributions from Charles Keating Jr., flying to the banker's home in the Bahamas on company planes and taking up Keating's cause with U.S. financial regulators as they investigated him. [...]
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Enemy, Shmenemy
The reason this "mistake" is acceptable is that it supports McCains main message; he is the protector of the United States.
If the enemy is Al-Queda, Syria, Iran, Hamas, insurgents, foreign fighters, Shiite, Sunni, Saddhams ghost, or whatever, in the world McCain has created with the media, no one cares who the enemy is.
There is an enemy and McCain is fighting them. Case closed. Write it up.
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"We need for the Democratic presidential candidates to take down both McCain and the Media."
But for the first, let's wait until after the repub convention when it is too late to get someone else.
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What kind of bank?
He's got enough of that in the bank, at least with the media
Really, what kind of bank is Mr. Todd talking about? One that is engaging in sub-prime lending, no doubt. Only to these pundits could such a long history of being wrong about foreign policy issues constitute a positive bank balance.
Our system is broken when such a statement can be made. It shows that the political establishment unabashedly excludes entire viewpoints. Guys like Robert Fisk and Noam Chomsky, who got the Iraq war right and have been getting things right for decades, are, among other things, Kooks, Extreme Leftists, Marxists even (gasp!) and must Hate America for doing so and cannot be countenanced in polite company. But Uncle John, demonstrably a walking foreign policy disaster, is okey dokey!
There just cannot be fair and honest discourse in such an environment. Throw in latent (and sometimes blatant) racism and misogyny, and I'm thinking we will need a bit of luck to avoid President McCain.
PS: Don't forget that McCain admits that his strength is foreign policy and that he's weak on domestic policy. With one of the worst economic crises facing us this sort of "expertise" is just what we don't need.
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St. McCain
I'm sick and tired of the worshipful attitude given McCain. I am in no way critical of his service to our nation in the military, nor what he endured as a POW. However, the media and fellow politicians are going out of their way to ensure that no tough questions are asked of him, especially in regard to foreign policy, for which he appears untouchable.
This is ridiculous, and more to the point, dangerous. This man (if elected) would be the leader of our nation. And, as George W. Bush loves to point out as often as possible, the commander in chief of our military forces. If this blunder is indicative of his true foreign policy expertise, it has the potential to be catastrophic.
The media needs to stop handling this man with kid gloves. The decisions he could make as president would put lives at stake.
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Glenn
Please consider changing the title of this piece to "Journalists, McCain and false Iran/al-Qaida link"
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That wasn't a "stumble" just a policy not ready for prime time
It was just a momentary "stumble" that can't possibly call into question something as certain and beyond reproach as McCain's expertise and honor.
Even harder for the press to deal with is that it was not at all a stumble, but a statement of McCain policy, and that this new “deceit” (about the connection between Iran and Al Qaeda) is coming directly from the “Straight Talk Express.”
That’s why the press doesn’t want to go there. It undermines McCain’s candidacy completely – that he is engaging in the same sort of deceptions that got us into Iraq under false pretenses to get us into a war with Iran.
Leading these deceptions, as usual, is the Weekly Standard, where Thomas Joscelyn lays out the new policy more explicitly:
But McCain was right the first time. He shouldn’t have taken his statement back. And it’s the bloggers who are ignorant--not John McCain.
By taking it back, McCain is having it both ways. The press will leave him alone on this issue, while his allies at the Weekly Standard start pushing the new lies.
If we had a real press, they’d ask him if he agrees with Joscelyn’s formulation about the “connection” between Iran and Al Qaeda and whether he still believes the Weekly Standard version of Saddam’s connection to Al Qaeda. A position they still hold despite all the evidence to the contrary.
http://tinyurl.com/2qpvsv