In 2000, John McCain didn’t vote for the Republican candidate for President.

In 2001, John McCain considered leaving the Republican Party.

In 2004, John McCain considered leaving the Republican Party again, this time to be John Kerry’s running mate.

How does it feel to know that, instead of nominating a principled conservative, you nominated yourselves a political opportunist? If I were you guys, I would be suffering some serious buyer’s remorse right now.

On the front page of The Huffington Post:

ABC: OBAMA HAS MORE SUPERDELEGATES THAN CLINTON

Obama has won more states.  Obama has won more votes.  Obama has won more pledged delegates.  And now Obama has won more superdelegates. Even if you count Florida and Michigan, Obama still wins every conceivable metric of success.

The Democratic Primary has been effectively over for weeks now; this is just one more nail in the coffin.  It’s time for us to unite behind our nominee, Barack Obama, and start making the case as to why he should be the nest President of the United States.

In 1996, Bill Clinton lost the white vote to Bob Dole.  In 1996, Bill Clinton was also re-elected President.

Just putting that out there.

Wow.

Polls just closed in North Carolina and already the networks are calling it for Barack Obama.

Meanwhile, Indiana’s polls closed a half hour ago and the outcome is still up in the air. CNN has it as 57% for Clinton and 43% for Obama with 18% of precincts reporting.

More as it comes…

UPDATE: If Barack Obama’s an elitist, then so are the good people of Indiana; take a look at this exit poll result posted on Daily Kos:

Indiana:

Does Clinton share your values?

Yes 62
No 37

Does Obama share your values?

Yes 65
No 33

Let’s put this elitism garbage to bed once and for all, shall we?

And with 20% reporting, Indiana is still 57-43 Clinton-Obama.

UPDATE II: With a quarter of all districts reporting, Indiana’s percentages haven’t budged–we’re still at 57-43.

UPDATE III: CNN is showing nearly a third of Indiana’s precincts are reporting and the percentages are still 57-43 Clinton-Obama. If Obama’s going to make Indiana close, he’s going to have to start showing some movement pretty soon.

UPDATE IV: With 38% of Indiana precincts reporting, there has been some movement–now the totals are 56-44 Clinton-Obama. The start of a trend, or just some electoral static?

UPDATE V: Now CNN is showing Indiana as 55-45 Clinton-Obama. CBS has called it for Clinton but the other networks are holding off. Will Obama knock Clinton down to a single-digit victory in The Hoosier State?

UPDATE VI: CNN is showing Indiana at 54-46 Clinton-Obama with just over half of all precincts reporting. Looks like most networks were right to hold off calling this one just yet…

UPDATE VII: With 65% precincts reporting, Indiana is now at 53% Clinton and 47% Obama. In the past hour or so Obama has cut Clinton’s lead nearly in half; this is now a 6-point race.

UPDATE VIII: With 76% reporting, Indiana is now down to a 52-48 Clinton-Obama split. This is a huge blow to the Clinton campaign no matter how you cut it–IN was supposed to be her state, and for it to get so close is a bad omen in general. Tonight may very well erase any benefit she got from winning PA two weeks ago.

UPDATE IX: With 83% reporting, it’s still a 4-point spread, 52-48. Lake County–which is near the Indiana-Illinois border and where the Obama stronghold of Gary is–won’t report until 11:00 PM EST.

UPDATE X: With 91% of precincts reporting, it’s now Clinton with 51% and Obama with 49%. Even if those are the final percentages this will represent a huge coup for Obama. If he manages to win Indiana it will be an even bigger blow to Clinton, particularly considering the significant negative press he’s received since PA.

Stay tuned…

UPDATE XI: 92% in, still 51-49. Obama is down by more than 20,000 votes, but many of the outstanding areas are his strongholds. Will this be the straw that breaks the camel’s back? Even if Obama doesn’t pull out a victory, tonight will still be remarkable. Conventional wisdom said that working-class Indiana was Clinton’s–Obama wiped her lead out in a matter of days, despite several bad news cycles. If nothing else, tonight will be a testament to Obama’s ability to weather bad press and come out better in the end.

UPDATE XII: Kos brings us this line from Tim Russert:

Russert: Hillary Clinton has cancelled all her morning appearances.

That’s perhaps the most telling part of this. Despite her campaign’s spin, Clinton knows this is a huge blow to her Presidential ambitions. She’s far behind in the popular vote and the delegate count; being handed a humiliating defeat in what was widely considered a safely-Clinton state puts the Democratic nomination that much more out of reach.

Still 92% reporting, still 51-49.

UPDATE XIII: 95% of precincts are reporting. It’s still 51-49, but now Obama is behind by only 16,609 votes. In other words, the last 3% closed the gap by about 4,000 votes.

FINAL UPDATE: With 99% of the precincts remaining, it’s still 51-49. Clinton won Indiana, but by the slimmest of margins–out of 1.25 million votes cast, her margin of victory is just over 22,000 votes. That’s a less than 1% victory.

Indiana wasn’t supposed to be close–the last Pollster composite showed Clinton winning The Hooser State by more than 4%. In other words, despite weeks of bad press, Obama managed to whittle Clinton’s sizable lead to basically nothing. In addition, he picked up a sizable number of delegates by winning NC in a landslide.

The Democratic primary, for all intents and purposes, has been over for weeks now. But perhaps tonight will be the night that finally cements this fact into the DC conventional wisdom. Personally, I hope it does.

Media Matters is taking the media to task for their hypocritical treatment of Cindy McCain.

As I wrote a few days ago, the media heaped huge amounts of scrutiny–and scorn–on Theresa Heinz-Kerry in 2004 due to the role her wealth played in her husband’s Presidential campaign.

Now–just four years later–the media can’t seem to muster the same skepticism when it comes to Cindy McCain.  McCain is an heir to the Anheuser-Busch brewing fortune, which is worth well over $100 million.  In addition, Anheuser-Busch was one of John McCain’s biggest and earliest supporters–he owes much of his political career to their financial support.

This is just another sad, shameful case of “It’s okay if you’re a Republican.”  A Democratic Presidential candidate gets massive amounts of scrutiny for benefitting from his wife’s personal fortune, while a Republican Presidential candidate who does the same gets barely any notice.

When is the shameful double standard going to end?

Today brings us this headline from Think Progress:

McCain Aides Say Hagee Endorsement Was The Result Of ‘Poor Vetting’

More:

McCain’s aides attribute the Hagee controversy to poor vetting. But even some Republicans (not affiliated with the campaign) privately wonder how the pastor’s extreme views slipped through without notice. McCain personally wooed Hagee for more than a year.

[...]

Are we really to believe that neither Mr. McCain nor his camp knew anything then about Mr. Hagee’s views? This particular YouTube video — far from the only one — was posted on Jan. 1, nearly two months before the Hagee-McCain press conference. Mr. Hagee appears on multiple religious networks, including twice daily on the largest, Trinity Broadcasting, which reaches 75 million homes. Any 12-year-old with a laptop could have vetted this preacher in 30 seconds, tops.

John Ashcroft. Alberto Gonzales. Donald Rumsfeld. Michael Brown. Tom Ridge. Michael Chertoff. Dick Cheney.

After eight years of a President who surrounded himself with some of the worst advisers in Washington, I’d like a President who will take the time to actually vet someone before adding them to his/her inner circle.

Is it too much to ask for someone who wants to become leader of the free world to spend a few minutes actually looking up the people he/she relies on for guidance? Or are the American people supposed to accept overwhelming incompetence from our government?

John McCain is not fit to be President of the United States. America can’t take four more years of George-Bush-style government. We just can’t.

Feingold writes a letter to the Government Accountability Office inquiring about the Pentagon’s in-house propaganda outfit.

Excerpts:

The Pentagon is free to air its views on any military operation but it should do so openly.
Potential covert production of press materials by the Defense Department would
undermine full and open public debate on one of the most important matters facing this
country, the war in Iraq. Such debate is essential to our democracy.

According to the article, the documents suggest that the Pentagon supplied retired
officers serving as analysts for several major American broadcasters with private
briefings with Sec. Rumsfeld, talking points in anticipation of appearing on TV, and
commercial airfare. Allegedly, the Pentagon discouraged the analysts from publicly
describing the nature of their relationship with the Pentagon. This clearly violates the
spirit, if not the letter, of the law.

Basically, the Pentagon supplied pro-war, pro-administration retired army officers to news outlets for the purpose of providing what was advertised to the public as unbiased analysis of the war in Iraq.  On-air, these officers’ connections to the Pentagon was undisclosed, and the American people were misled into thinking they were getting analysis based on field expertise, not political bias.

We know the Republicans sold their war to the American people with lies; we just didn’t know how far and how deep those lies went.  Now, at least, we have a little more of the whole picture.

Mickey Kantor’s words–if they are what they appear to be–are going to cause some trouble…

Can this primary just end already?

UPDATE: Already this video’s veracity is being called into question. The original source for it appears to be War Room, the documentary about Bill Clinton’s 1992 campaign. The part in question is this, about 4:15 in:

If you turn the volume up, the first subtitle is clearly wrong–there’s an extra syllable there; it sounds like Kantor is saying “those people are shitting.” As for the second line, though, the subtitle seems to reflect what he says.

You could argue that he’s not talking about the people of Indiana; that’s possible, since the topic at hand is the polls, not necessarily the states. A few people who heard it also claim to hear the name “Charlie Black” in Kantor’s whispering (Black was George H.W. Bush’s spokesman at the time) after the supposed slur. But as far as I can tell, the subtitle appears to be accurate.

UPDATE II: D.A. Pennebaker–an ally of the Clintons and the director of War Room–says the video is a fake.

Here’s Atrios’ take on it:

I’m not going to try for a complete transcript, but basically Kantor gets polls from Indiana. They’re close. He says even if they don’t win the White House has got to be shitting themselves. Then what I think he says is something along the lines of “how would you like to be beaten by a worthless white n*****,” presumably meaning Bill Clinton himself and referencing the Bush I campaign team’s likely view of Clinton.

A.J. is right:

While right-wing pundits furiously try to spin Rev. Wright’s comments as speaking for anyone other than Rev. Wright, it’s vital that progressive observers and commentators remember that their machine will do anything — anything — to confuse people and divert attention from the failures of conservative governance. On the economy, on values, on social policy, and, perhaps most of all given the current situation in Iraq, on foreign affairs.

Our policies in Iraq — not to mention places like Pakistan, Indonesia, Somalia, Iran, North Korea — make America and the world a more dangerous place. Expert upon expert and report after report say so, and they’re correct. The right wing wants to tie this common-sense argument to controversial figures so they can marginalize ideas along with individuals, and it’s a smear tactic that can be devastating if people don’t stand up and identify it for what it is. They’re not making substantive critiques, they’re using the politics of destruction and distraction.

The politics of destruction. The politics of distraction. That’s what fuels the Right-Wing Noise Machine–conservatives know that if the election hinges on the issues, they’ll lose. So they try to distract the American people, paying ‘gotcha’ and distracting us from the very real problems we have to face every day.

This is why the right is pushing Wright above the fold day after day:

Bush — not Wright or Bill Clinton — is voters’ main concern

[...]

According to the poll, 73 percent of respondents disapprove of Bush’s handling of the economy and 81 percent believe the United States is in a recession.

[...]

What is your preference for the outcome of this year’s congressional elections––a Congress controlled by Republicans or a Congress controlled by Democrats?

Republican-controlled Congress ……34

Democrat-controlled Congress ……..49

And then there’s this:

The current data show that the most commonly mentioned characteristics about McCain are that he is “too old,” that he is a “good man”/”likable,” that he would give the country more of the same/be another George W. Bush, that he had a good military background, and basic dislike of him.

Interestingly, enough, “Good military background” has actually dropped from 11 percent to 8 percent. His age and the George Bush connection are quickly overshadowing his military service.

The politics of distraction give us headlines like this one:

While Malkin & Co. Continue Endless Circle Jerk On Wright, Deadliest Month Of 2008 In Iraq Gets Worse

The stakes in this election are the highest they’ve been in decades. The economy’s in ruin. Our foreign policy is in shambles. Our military is stretched to the breaking point. Gas prices are at record highs. America is in the midst of a health care crisis. Our deficit is the highest it’s ever been. Our enemies are stronger and our defenses are weaker. We as Americans face some of the biggest issues and the toughest battles of our times; we can’t afford to be distracted.

As I’ve said time and time again, Republicans can’t govern. They controlled all three branches of our government for years–we saw the effects of Republican control, and they were disastrous. They can’t win on the issues, so the GOP fires up the Right-Wing Noise Machine to distract us from the issues and focus us on trivial, pointless nonsense.

This time we can’t afford to fall for it. This time we can’t afford to fall for the politics of distraction. This time we have to stand up and tell them that this will not be tolerated. This time we must stand up and change our country for the better, and we will not let these right-wing charlatans stand in our way.

Enough is enough. Once and for all, enough is enough.

UPDATE: Bob Cesca nails it:

Have You Left No Sense Of Decency?

If the corporate media had been as diligent about watchdogging President Bush as they have been about watchdogging Reverend Wright, it’s very likely we wouldn’t have invaded Iraq.

If the corporate media had spent as much time exposing the obvious flaws and grotesque inequalities of Reaganomics throughout the last 30 years as they’ve spent on Wright, we wouldn’t necessarily be staring into the maw of another depression.

If the corporate media were as diligent about debunking the lies surrounding Iran’s so-called nuclear program as they’ve been about Wright, there wouldn’t be such a sense of inevitability in terms of attacking — or entirely obliterating — Iran.

[...]

So I have to ask the appropriate network executives the familiar yet appropriate question: Have you no sense of decency at long last? Have you left no sense of decency?

John McCain and George W. Bush’s Iraq war: 5 years down, 95 years to go.

Shorter John McCain: I am all in favor of pay equity for women just as long as I don’t actually have to do anything about it.

UPDATE: Also, there’s this:

McCain has topped both candidates, missing a staggering 58 percent of his votes during the 110th Congress, according to the Washington Post’s congressional votes database.

To put this in perspective, McCain has now missed more votes than Sen. Tim Johnson of South Dakota, who suffered a brain hemorrhage in December 2006 and was unable to return to the Senate until fall of last year. McCain has now missed nine votes more than Johnson.

John McCain can’t be bothered to even show up to the Senate anymore; how can we trust him to do any better as President?

The last thing America needs is another Bush term, another out-of-touch President who spends more time going on vacations than solving America’s problems.

Tonight’s outcome won’t change the election, but the margin of victory will determine how the delegates are distributed.

From CNN.com, 8:37 PM EST:

_________________________________________________

UPDATE: From CNN.com, 8:51 PM EST:

_________________________________________________

UPDATE II: MSNBC and FOX News are both calling it for Clinton. A Clinton win is expected, but what matters is her margin of victory–if she doesn’t get at least 60% of the vote, PA’s delegates will be split nearly evenly, leaving Clinton more than 150 pledged delegates behind Obama.

UPDATE III: CNN has also called it for Clinton, but the gap is narrowing.

From CNN.com, 9:04 PM EST:

____________________________________________________

UPDATE IV: Now we’re back to where we were 20 minutes ago.

From CNN.com, 9:12 PM EST:

___________________________________________________

UPDATE V: From CNN.com, 9:22 PM EST:

___________________________________________________

UPDATE VI: From CNN.com, 9:39 PM EST:

___________________________________________________

UPDATE VII: Up then down and up again…

From CNN.com, 9:49 PM EST:

__________________________________________________

UPDATE VIII: From CNN.com, 10:05 PM EST:

___________________________________________________

UPDATE IX: From CNN.com, 10:17 PM EST:

____________________________________________________

UPDATE X: From CNN.com, 10:29 PM EST:

___________________________________________________

UPDATE XI: From CNN.com, 10:59 PM EST:

____________________________________________________

UPDATE XII: From CNN.com, 11:27 PM EST:

____________________________________________________

Tonight is the Pennsylvania primary.  No, it won’t be the end of the primary season and no, it won’t decide the Democratic nominee.  Now, I’m not saying that PA doesn’t matter–any time American citizens go out and make their voices heard, it matters–but I am saying that PA won’t be the deciding factor.

At this point, though, Hillary Clinton can’t win.  She can’t win more states than Obama.  She can’t win more pledged delegates than Obama.  She can’t win more votes than Obama.  And she’s not going to be able to convince the Democratic superdelegates to overthrow the entire primary and throw the nomination to her.  As I said weeks ago, the Democratic primary is over; Barack Obama is the nominee.

Let’s face it, a Clinton victory is expected tonight.  She began the year with a 20% lead over Barack Obama, which has been whittled down to somewhere in the neighborhood of a 5% to 10% lead.  After tonight, Clinton will say that Obama shouldn’t be the nominee because he can’t win swing states or large states like PA, and that PA is key to any Democratic victory.  But that’s a nonsense argument–the dynamics of a Clinton-Obama race are far different than the dynamics of an Obama-McCain race, and just because you don’t win a state in the primary doesn’t mean you can’t win that state in the general.

But her campaign is in the red, and she’s bleeding support.  The longer she stays in, the more damage she’ll do–to Obama, to the Democratic Party in general, and to her own reputation.

So don’t expect any surprises tonight.  Expect Obama’s delegate lead to basically stay the same.  Expect the rhetoric we’ve heard before–from both camps–to be repeated.  And expect everyone to ignore the fact that Clinton has no chance of winning and to turn their focus onto the next big primary state.

Surprise surprise, one of the wealthiest men in the Senate has a lot of money:

For 2006, Senator McCain paid $72,771 in federal income, alternative minimum, and self-employment taxes (LINES 57 and 58) on taxable income of $215,304 (LINE 43), which is a 33.8% tax rate. View

For 2007, Senator McCain paid $84,460 in federal income, alternative minimum, and self-employment taxes (LINES 57 and 58) on taxable income of $258,800 (LINE 43), which is a 32.6% tax rate. View

McCain earns upwards of $200,000 a year, putting him far above what most Americans make. In fact, John McCain’s taxes are higher than most American’s yearly salaries.

And that’s just his own income–McCain’s wife Cindy is an heir to the Anheuser-Busch brewing fortune, worth well over $100 million. The McCains have eight homes together, and John often flies around on private jets. In other words, this is just the tip of the iceberg when it comes to John McCain’s wealth.

In 2004, the media savaged John Kerry for his wife’s wealth, portraying him as an upper-crust, out-of-touch aristocrat. Will they apply the same standards to John McCain, or will this be another sad, shameful case of IOKIYAR?*

* “It’s OK If You’re A Republican”

UPDATE: Also keep in mind that Cindy McCain hasn’t released any of her tax returns, so we don’t know exactly how much wealth she has (or where she invests it). But there’s no question that John McCain might not have even had a political career–let alone a Presidential run–without his wife’s inheritance:

Nearly 30 years before John McCain became the Republican presidential nominee, he worked in public relations at his wife’s family company.

Within a few years of marrying Cindy Hensley, the daughter of a multimillionaire Anheuser-Busch distributor, John McCain won his first election. He was new to Arizona politics and fundraising in the 1982 House race, and his campaign quickly fell into debt. Personal money — tens of thousands of dollars in loans to his campaign from McCain bank accounts — helped him survive.

Anheuser-Busch’s political action committee was among McCain’s earliest donors. Cindy McCain’s father, James Hensley, and other Hensley & Co. executives gave so much the Federal Election Commission ordered McCain to give some of it back. McCain’s campaign used Hensley office equipment such as computers and copiers, and Cindy McCain personally paid some of the campaign’s bills.

The campaign gradually reimbursed Hensley for use of its equipment and Cindy McCain for her expenses. The loans — described initially by John McCain as coming from him and his wife — caught the eye of the FEC, which repeatedly questioned him about them; spouses are held to the same donation limits as everyone else.

John McCain owes his Presidential campaign and–most likely–his entire political career to his wife’s money. Without it, who knows whether or not he would have even gotten elected, let alone become a Presidential candidate.

Kerry got attacked for benefiting politically from his wife’s money, even though he became a Senator long before he married Theresa Heinz. So why isn’t McCain being attacked for benefiting politically from his wife’s money, especially since it’s an intrinsic part of his entire political career?

Just wondering.

Recently, John McCain has promised to eliminate all Congressional earmarks, no questions asked.

Sounds like a good plan to eliminate wasteful spending, right? Wrong. As it turns out, there are some important programs that are paid for with earmarks.

Like military aid to Israel and Egypt:

Some observers define earmarks in a more limited way, identifying only provisions that direct spending for items not requested by the Administration or in excess of levels proposed for activities or countries. Although many Foreign Operations earmarks fall within this more narrow definition, congressional directives specifying spending amounts that are the same as shown in the Administration’s illustrative listing for country distributions also are regarded as earmarks. Annual earmarks for economic and military aid to Israel and Egypt are examples of such directives.

Earmarks also pay for military housing:

The Congressional Research Service analysis counts not only the [military] family housing units added by Congress as earmarks but also those requested by the Pentagon and the White House.

CRS identified $6.6 billion in spending in the 2005 Military Construction Appropriation bill associated with earmarks. This included 205 units at Fort Huachuca at a cost of $41 million and 250 units at Davis-Monthan Air Base at a cost $48.5 million—both in McCain’s home state of Arizona.

So either McCain is going to cut aid to Israel, military housing, and other important programs that are funded by earmarks (all to pay for his corporate tax cut), or he’s going to break his campaign promise.

As Politico’s Ben Smith says, “That’s one thing about spending cuts: Much harder when you get to the details.”

McCain can’t even be bothered to read his own plan–how is he supposed to be President, again?

Last night’s ABC debate was pretty much a travesty:

In perhaps the most embarrassing performance by the media in a major presidential debate in years, ABC News hosts Charles Gibson and George Stephanopolous focused mainly on trivial issues as Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama faced off in Philadelphia.

Wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, the health care and mortgage crises, the overall state of the economy and dozens of other pressing issues had to wait for their few moments in the sun as Obama was pressed to explain his recent “bitter” gaffe and relationship with Rev. Wright (seemingly a dead issue) and not wearing a flag pin while Clinton had to answer again for her Bosnia trip exaggerations.

Then it was back to Obama to defend his slim association with a former ’60s radical — a question that came out of rightwing talk radio and Sean Hannity on TV, but delivered by former Bill Clinton aide Stephanopolous. This approach led to a claim that Clinton’s husband pardoned two other ’60s radicals. And so on.

More time was spent on all of this than segments on getting out of Iraq and keeping people from losing their homes and other key issues. Gibson only got excited when he complained about anyone daring to raise taxes on his capital gains.

And then there’s this:

[Radical right-wing radio host Sean ] Hannity, who for months has been aggressively pushing a story about Barack Obama’s connections to a former member of a radical anti-Vietnam 1970s organization called the Weather Underground, interviewed Stephanopoulos on his radio show on Tuesday, where he pressed the ABC host to ask Obama about this

[...]

In the debate last night, Stephanopoulos asked a question that mirrored almost word-for-word what Hannity pressed him to ask

This is ridiculous. There are so many issues facing the American people today–Iraq, the economy, health care, global warming, the mortgage crisis–yet the political press wastes it’s time focusing on trivial nonsense. These wealthy, influential pundits don’t have to deal with the rest of the issues we all have to deal with, so the jettison the important policy-based issues in favor of trivial, culture war nonsense.

We’ve spent eight years suffering under a President who–eight years ago–showed that he was completely incompetent, but who the press fawned over because of his regular-old-guy schtick. Haven’t we learned anything since 2000??

I want a President who can fix our country. I don’t care about their pastors, I don’t care about their bowling scores, I don’t care about what they drink or eat, I don’t care about which sports teams they like, I don’t care if they hunt or fish or not. I care about if they can solve our nation’s problems.

When is this nonsense going to end?

UPDATE: Well, it’s not all bad:

Sen. John McCain yesterday offered sweeping rhetoric about the economic plight of working-class Americans, promising immediate assistance even as he spelled out a tax and spending agenda whose benefits are aimed squarely at spurring corporate growth.

In a speech billed as the most comprehensive summary of McCain’s economic vision to date, the candidate proposed to eliminate the alternative minimum tax, slash corporate income tax rates and offer a grab bag of other business breaks. His most direct proposal for relief to working-class voters was a call to suspend the federal gasoline tax for the summer driving season.

[...]

As the U.S. economy slides toward a possible recession, McCain has struggled to find the right pitch for his economic proposals. When he first suggested the government should not rescue speculative lenders or reckless home buyers, he was greeted with withering criticism from Democrats who accused him of insensitivity in the face of a housing crisis. When he tacked to the left to suggest he did favor government intervention, he was called a flip-flopper.

[...]

But much of what he detailed was a corporate special pleader’s dream: a cut in the corporate income tax rate, from 35 percent to 25 percent, a proposal to allow businesses to write off the cost of new equipment and technology from their taxes, a ban on Internet and new cellphone taxes, and a permanent tax credit for research and development.

He promised to remove the “myriad corporate tax loopholes that are costly, unfair and inconsistent with a free-market economy,” but he offered no specifics.

Isn’t it sad when the media taking a politician to task is the exception, not the rule? Then again, when you’re John McCain, the rules don’t apply to you…

Progress Media USA–the independent progressive organization headed by Media Matters for America’s David Brock and Democratic strategist Paul Begala–is out with their first ad, called ‘Out Of Touch’:

More from Talking Points Memo:

The ad, called “Out of Touch,” will be running on cable beginning tomorrow and can be seen in D.C. on CNN and MSNBC — which is to say, it’s a small buy aimed at an insider audience of potential future donors, political operatives, and the like.

With the Democratic primary dragging on, progressives are going to have to tell the truth about McCain on their own.  Personally, I’m glad groups like Progress Media USA are out there to set the record straight.

I just can’t understand how any Democrat can support Hillary Clinton anymore.

The latest line of attack coming from her campaign is–get this–that Barack Obama is an elitist.

That’s right, Hillary Clinton is using one of the most tired, overplayed but ubiquitous right-wing smears against a fellow Democrat. Thankfully, her attacks aren’t playing well among Democrats in Pennsylvania, but it’s still a dangerous line of attack.

Back in 2000, the right-wing tried to portry Al Gore as a nerdy, intellectual elitist. Back in 2004 they tried to do the same to John Kerry; Kerry was born to a middle-class family on a military base in Colorado, while George W. Bush was born into one of the wealthiest, most poweful families in America. Yet it was Kerry–not Bush–who got painted as elitist. More recently, the right-wing tried to portray John Edwards as elitist; John Edwards, who was born into a poor southern family, who was a self-made man who earned every single cent he ever had in his life.

If anyone in this Presidential election is elitist, it’s not Barack Obama. Obama went from being a low-paid community organizer and part-time professor to being a state senator and then a U.S. Senator; the only major source of income he’s ever had were his bestselling novels. Hillary Clinton and Bill Clinton have both penned bestselling novels of their own, and I’m sure Bill’s speaking fees alone have provided the Clintons with more income than most Americans hope to earn this year.

But then there’s John McCain.

You might not know this, but John McCain is one of the wealthiest man in the Senate. His wife, Cindy McCain, is the heir to the Anheuser-Busch brewing fortune, a family inheritance worth hundreds of millions of dollars. In fact, Anheuser-Busch was one of McCain’s earliest and biggest political supporters. What does this mean? Well, for starters, McCain and his wife own no fewer than eight houses.

Take a look for yourself:

Budweiser, then NASCAR’s official beer, is brewed by Anheuser-Busch Cos. Inc., whose products have made Cindy McCain and her family a fortun

[...]

The McCains’ marriage has mixed business and politics from the beginning, according to an expansive review by The Associated Press of thousands of pages of campaign, personal finance, real estate and property records nationwide. The paperwork chronicles the McCains’ ascent from Arizona newlyweds to political power couple on the national stage.

As heiress to her father’s stake in Hensley & Co. of Phoenix, Cindy McCain is an executive whose worth may exceed $100 million. Her beer earnings have afforded the GOP presidential nominee a wealthy lifestyle with a private jet and vacation homes at his disposal, and her connections helped him launch his political career — even if the millions remain in her name alone. Yet the arm’s-length distance between McCain and his wife’s assets also has helped shield him from conflict-of-interest problems.

[...]

Within a few years of marrying Cindy Hensley, the daughter of a multimillionaire Anheuser-Busch distributor, John McCain won his first election. He was new to Arizona politics and fundraising in the 1982 House race, and his campaign quickly fell into debt. Personal money — tens of thousands of dollars in loans to his campaign from McCain bank accounts — helped him survive.

Anheuser-Busch’s political action committee was among McCain’s earliest donors. Cindy McCain’s father, James Hensley, and other Hensley & Co. executives gave so much the Federal Election Commission ordered McCain to give some of it back. McCain’s campaign used Hensley office equipment such as computers and copiers, and Cindy McCain personally paid some of the campaign’s bills.

[...]

Cindy McCain’s assets go beyond the family beer company.

She and her children own a minority stake in the Arizona Diamondbacks. The professional baseball team’s chief executive, Jeff Moorad, and former majority owner Jerry Colangelo are McCain fundraisers. Red Sox pitcher Curt Schilling, a former Diamondback player, appeared in a New Hampshire campaign advertisement for McCain.

Assets held by Cindy McCain alone or with her children also include Anheuser-Busch stock; two condominiums along the California coast worth a total of at least $3 million and Arizona investments in rental medical offices and a parking lot, according to property records and John McCain’s latest financial disclosure reports.

John McCain has seven ch1ildren: two stepsons and a daughter from his first marriage, and two sons, a daughter and an adopted daughter from his second. McCain’s financial disclosure reports do not identify the children who share assets with Cindy McCain.

Arizona is a community property state, so McCain may share possessions his wife didn’t inherit, such as their primary home. Cindy McCain, through a family trust, sold the family mansion in Phoenix for $3.2 million and bought a $4.6 million Phoenix condo in 2006. The couple may also jointly own a condo in Arlington, Va., assessed at $847,800. McCain’s campaign and Hensley declined to say whether the couple has communal property.

John McCain held a barbecue recently for reporters at a two-story cabin near Sedona, Ariz., that sits on 15 acres owned by his wife’s family trust and a real estate partnership in her name. The property includes four single-family homes and is worth nearly $1.8 million.

If anyone’s an elitist in this election, it’s John McCain. The sad thing about Hillary’s misguided attack is that McCain is now echoing her remarks, trying to portray a self-made man like Barack Obama as an elitist. But at the end of the day, John McCain will fly home to one of his eight houses on his wife’s corporate jets.

It’s time for Hillary Clinton to drop out; at this point, she’s throwing fuel on a fire that’s going to be hard enough for we Democrats to fight as it is.

Cross-posted at Daily Kos

Recently, Barack Obama went to a Pennsylvania bowling alley; during the campaign stop he bowled 7 frames and scored a 37. In other words, he made a typical campaign stop, met some voters and had a good time.

Unfortunately, that’s not how the media saw it:

Deriding Obama’s score, [MSNBC's Joe] Scarborough said: “You know Willie, the thing is, Americans want their president, if it’s a man, to be a real man.” He added, “You get 150, you’re a man, or a good woman,” to which Geist replied, “Out of my president, I want a 150, at least.” After guest Harold Ford Jr. said that Obama’s bowling showed a “humble” and “human” side to him, Scarborough replied, “A very human side? A prissy side.”

And then there’s this:

On Hardball, discussing Sen. Barack Obama’s bowling performance at a campaign stop, Chris Matthews said to MSNBC political analyst Michelle Bernard, “You know, Michelle — and this gets very ethnic, but the fact that he’s good at basketball doesn’t surprise anybody, but the fact that he’s that terrible at bowling does make you wonder.” While showing the video of Obama’s bowling, Matthews asserted, “[I]t isn’t the most macho form there.”

And this:

Discussing Sen. Barack Obama on the April 1 edition of MSNBC’s Hardball, host Chris Matthews asked Sen. Claire McCaskill (D-MO): “Let me ask you about how he — how’s he connect with regular people? Does he? Or does he only appeal to people who come from the African-American community and from the people who have college or advanced degrees?” Earlier in the show, referring to Obama’s bowling performance at a March 29 campaign stop at Pleasant Valley Lanes in Altoona, Pennsylvania, Matthews teased the segment with McCaskill by asking, “[C]an Obama woo more regular voters — you know, the ones who actually do know how to bowl?”

Now, I’m an avid bowler and I’m terrible on the basketball court. But if you had to choose which of the two sports was more macho, I’d have to go with basketball, hands down. And when it comes to basketball, Barack Obama excels:

(Obama’s in the green jersey, number 23. Yeah, he misses the free throw, but he puts up an excellent shot and does a great job on defense).

Seriously, though, this is the kind of nonsense we’ve come to expect from our media. Time after time, conservative pundits try their hardest to portray Democrats as weak, feeble, effeminate, etc. They portrayed Al Gore as a nerdy, know-it-all adademic; they portrayed John Kerry as an effeminate, wealthy playboy.

Putting aside the irony that rich pundits with massive national audiences pretend to know anything about regular Americans, people like Scarborough and Matthews matter. Their take on the news influence a lot of people; they have the potential to move public opinion and even change people’s votes. What we’re seeing with the bowling strategy is the conservatives’ favorite strategy–death by a thousand cuts. They create a meme about a Democratic candidate, then they repeat it as often as possible to reinforce it in the minds of voters.

This is how ridiculous our political discourse has become. Pundits ignore the issues, they ignore the things real Americans actually worry about, instead obsessing over a Presidential candidate’s bowling score. The American people are suffering, but our lazy political press inside their D.C. bubbles wastes their time attaching over-inflated significance to Barack Obama’s 7 frames of bowling.

I mean, haven’t we learned our lesson from George W. Bush? Haven’t we learned that idiotic, fake-significant culture war garbage like bowling scores or what kind of coffee you drink or who people want to have a beer with isn’t the best judge of who would be a good President?? After 8 years of George Bush–the guy everyone wanted to have a beer with–you think the press would look more a candidate’s record, or their positions, or anything else of actual substance. Are we going to have to suffer through the same media nonsense this time around, resulting in (at l east) 4 years of disastrous Republican governance?

When is this nonsense going to stop, once and for all?

Pollster shows Hillary Clinton leading Barack Obama in Pennsylvania, 40.2% to 51.4%.

But SurveyUSA shows Clinton’s lead shrinking from 19% to 12% in the span of three weeks. Rasmussen is even more ambitious, showing Clinton now leading Obama by just 5%.

There’s also this quote from Congressman Emanuel Cleaver (D-MO):

“If I had to make a prediction right now, I’d say Barack Obama is going to be the next president. I will be stunned if he’s not the next president of the United States.”

And Rep. Cleaver is a Clinton supporter.

Also, there’s this:

Hillary Telling Local Media In Future Voting States That Obama Wants Race To End

Followed by:

Obama: Hillary “Can Run As Long As She Wants”

Oops. Seems like Clinton isn’t telling the truth.

So, since John McCain has all that foreign policy experience, what does he think of the recent violence in Iraq?

McCain ‘Surprised’ by Iraq Developments

[...]

As he launched a tour here designed to highlight his family’s long tradition of military service, Senator John McCain said Monday that he was surprised by the latest turn of events in America’s current war in Iraq.

“Maliki decided to take on this operation without consulting the Americans,’’ Mr. McCain said on his campaign bus as it rolled through downtown Meridian, saying that the move showed independence but that he had expected the military to focus on Mosul.

“I just am surprised that he would take it on himself to go down and take charge of a military offensive,’’ he said. “I had not anticipated that he would do that.’’

You have got to be kidding me.

71 years old. 25 years of Washington experience. 5 trips to Iraq. And John McCain couldn’t have predicted that the government’s crackdown on Mahdi Army members would lead to the collapse of their tenouous, self-imposed ceasefire? Especially since the Mahdi Army is known for starting violent insurrections against the government?

McCain didn’t even entertain it as a possibility? Even I–a 21-year-old college student–considered what would happen if Al-Sadr’s ceasefire ended, all the way back in December.

So John McBush has no judgment and his much-touted experience doesn’t seem to be worth anything. What, then, makes this guy fit to be our next President?

I’ve been sitting on this post for a long time. Mainly, I didn’t want to call the election too early; I wanted the democratic process to play out and run its course.

At this point, though, the reality is undeniable.

I know a lot of Clinton supporters, and they’re all great people. Smart, engaged, passionate, hard-working Democrats through-and-through. And I know the situation they’re in—I know what it feels like to know that your candidate is losing. I know what it’s like to dig your heels in, to vow to stay in to the bitter end, to sit and wait for every last single vote to be counted and until every last bit of hope is gone.

But it’s time. It’s time to face the facts and acknowledge that Hillary Clinton will not be the Democratic nominee. It’s a painful realization—it would be painful for me if I had to acknowledge that Obama would not be the nominee—but it’s necessary. We have to do this.

Let’s look at how Clinton could—or could not—become the nominee.

(All delegate calculations use Slate’s Delegate Calculator)

• Hillary Clinton wins enough pledged delegates to win the nomination, and thus the superdelegates won’t matter.

This outcome is impossible at this point. Even if Clinton wins every remaining primary with 100% of the vote, she’ll have 1821 pledged delegates to Obama’s 1413. No matter what, the superdelegates will end up choosing the nominee.

• Hillary Clinton wins enough pledged delegates to take the lead, and the superdelegates go along with the popular vote and give her the nomination.

Even if Clinton wins every remaining primary with 60% of the vote, she’ll still trail Obama by 42 pledged delegates. It’s obvious that Clinton won’t win every remaining primary, let alone with a 20% margin of victory.

And there’s Clinton’s problem. No matter how the rest of the primary turns out, she’ll still trail Obama in terms of pledged delegates.

Now, the superdelegates are free to vote how they please. But barring the massive, unprecedented collapse of the Obama campaign, they’re not going to throw her the nomination.

See, if they give the nomination to Obama, he’ll have a certain measure of legitimacy—he won the popular vote, which is why the superdelegates supported him. If the superdelegates were to give the nomination to Clinton, they would be directly contradicting the will of the Democratic electorate, and there would be a massive backlash. The superdelegates know this, and they’re going to do everything they can to avoid that backlash.

The argument that the superdelegates can give the nomination to the loser of the popular vote is inherently undemocratic. It assumes that the electorate are idiots, and that we need elites to protect us from selecting the ‘wrong’ candidate. We are the Democratic Party, and the heart of democracy is that the people decide, right or wrong.

Should Clinton drop out? Yes. She can’t win, and all she’s doing now is hurting Barack Obama and the Democratic Party. Yes, the long primary means that our base, our activists and our donors are more engaged than ever, and that we Democrats are paying attention to states that almost never get any attention. But those benefits will only go so far, and I think we’ve reached the limit. At this point, Clinton will have to retract a lot of her statements and eat a lot of crow once this is all said and done, and some of her attacks on Obama have left lasting damage.

Some people may allege that I’m saying PA, NC, KY and the other states who haven’t voted don’t matter. No, of course they matter—people voting, participating, and letting their voices be hears always matter. But what I am saying is that they won’t choose the nominee, just like no other state to date has chosen the nominee. That’s just a fact.

This has gone on long enough. Obama is the only one who has any realistic paths to the nomination; Clinton’s paths are all based on assumptions, unrealistic expectations, or outright ludicrous scenarios. It’s time for us to get together and focus our efforts on the real threat to America: John McCain and his supporters in the media.

We already know Joh