An Egg Is To A Voter, As Christine Quinn Is To That Frying Pan

Speaker Quinn has changed her mind about term limits twice in the last three years. Now that it suits her political ambitions, she is in cahoots with the Mayor to help give him another term as Mayor despite the will of the people that term limits all New York City elected officials. So try not to get fried like this egg down below and fight back against Bloomberg, Quinn and the fourteen others on the Council that are trying to extend term limits.

McCain Bombs On The View, Lies About His Lies

There was no singing about Iran today when John McCain went on The View to face the primarily female crowd. The choice of Sarah Palin didn't help much either and despite having a friend in Elisabeth Hasselbeck as a co-host, he got grilled on an assortment of issues. Mentioning his wish to overturn Roe v Wade elicited a round of boos from the crowd. Whoopi then took his "strict constitutionalist" line to a logical conclusion and wondered out loud what would stop the court from overturning amendments that abolished slavery. Then to top it all off, he blatantly lied that he's never flip-flopped on an issue and challenged anyone to refute that.

Well ThinkProgress was ready to hit that bullshit right out of the park:

The flip-flop document notes that McCain has changed his position even on the four areas he cited — spending, climate change, the war in Iraq, and torture of prisoners:

SPENDING: The McCain campaign has said that it will balance the budget by the end of McCain’s first time. But chief economic adviser Douglas Holtz-Eakin said McCain would balance the budget by the end of his second term.

CLIMATE CHANGE: In 1999, McCain opposed lifting the ban on offshore drilling, saying that it was just the “special interests in Washington” that advocated it. In 2008, McCain announced that “there are areas off our coasts that should be open to exploration and exploitation.”

IRAQ CONDUCT: He said in 2004 that Donald Rumsfeld was doing “a fine job” and was “an honorable man.” But by 2008, McCain was arguing that he was “the only one that said Rumsfeld had to go.”

TORTURE: In 2005, McCain pushed President Bush to sign a bill that would prohibit “cruel, inhuman or degrading treatment or punishment” of anyone in U.S. government custody. But in 2008, McCain voted against the Intelligence Authorization Bill, which requires the intelligence community to abide by the same standards as articulated in the Army Field Manual and bans waterboarding.

See our full document here. Steve Benen has compiled another flip-flop list here.

See the thing is, McCain thinks he can just absolve himself of everything he's ever said up until the moment he goes on The View, or at one of his town hall events and without a doubt at the upcoming debates. He'll lie about anything and do so with one of those fake smiles on his face. To him it is all about putting out a narrative, regardless of the facts. That is why we on the left (center and right are free to do so as well) must combat his lying from one moment to the next. With that litany of lies, we can craft it into a narrative of our own, one of truth and honest to goodness muckraking that exposes the campaign McCain has run and ultimately the type of President he would become.

Bloomberg Reminded Of His Own Pro-Term Limits Remarks

From three years to three months ago, Mayor Mike Bloomberg was vociferously for keeping New York City's term limits on the books, despite the talk coming from the city council that wanted to change things back to the way things were. Interestingly as his second and final (according to the law as it is now) term is coming slowly to it's conclusion, the Mayor is changing his tune. Well, one group is out to remind him and all New Yorkers about what he's said to the press and the public in the last three years.

From New York for Term Limits:

Daily News, 11/23/05

Mayor Bloomberg denounced some City Council members’ calls to extend their term limits through legislation as an anti-democratic “outrage” – noting voters twice approved the eight-year limit law.

“While it may be that that the City Council has a right to override them, deliberately saying to the public, “We don’t care what you think,” I would use the word disgraceful,” Bloomberg said yesterday.

“The cynicism that that would engender towards city government is not something that this city needs,” the mayor added.

“The public wants term limits, and if that’s what they want, we should all learn to live with ‘em.”

New York Post, 7/19/06

Mayor Bloomberg declared yesterday that he’d oppose any effort to put a third referendum on the ballot to change the law, which obliges city elected officials to pack it in after two terms.

“I think the public has spoken twice and they’ve spoken quit clearly. I don’t know that you should keep shopping for a different answer,” the mayor said.

“The public shouldn’t be bothered continuously with the same question.”

And there are so many more quotes at their website. Bloomberg should be reminded over and over again of his past words, because they ring true. Whether you agree or disagree with term limits in NYC, it was the voters that enacted the law...and it should be the voters who decide to change it back, not to be done in a backhanded way by the Mayor and Council.

Huckabee Thinks Romney Flip-Flops Too Much

Huckabee may think that Romney is too much of a flip-flopper, but that sounds like a perfect match for McCain:

Even Club For Growth Is Getting Tired Of McCain's Antics

No matter where you are on the political spectrum, one quality that is good to see in a candidate is to know where they stand on an issue. So times must be rough for the McCain campaign if conservative groups like Club for Growth is getting worried about their prospects.

McCain Hearts Oil Industry Money

And for his positions on offshore oil drilling, the oil industry hearts him back:

McCain Backpedals On Homophobia And Adoption

John McCain has literally flipped his position dozens of times on a whole host of issues...and he isn't going to fail us this week. Two days ago McCain emphatically stated that only a man and a woman can adopt and raise a child. It was a classic GOP maneuver that throws red meat to the rabid base while insulting tens of thousands of people simultaneously who have a lifestyle that McCain does not approve of. However, a lot of people found this to be insulting, so what did McCain do?

From Yahoo News:

On Tuesday, as criticism of McCain's comments spread, his campaign elaborated on the candidate's views.

"John McCain could have been clearer in the interview in stating that his position on gay adoption is that it is a state issue. ... He was not endorsing any federal legislation," a campaign statement said.

"Sen. McCain's expressed his personal preference for children to be raised by a mother and a father wherever possible," the statement added. "However, as an adoptive father himself, McCain believes children deserve loving and caring home environments, and he recognizes that there are many abandoned children who have yet to find homes. John McCain believes that in those situations that caring parental figures are better for the child than the alternative."

So it wasn't a complete flip-flop, but definitely a major backpedaling effort to calm down the outrage of those that were offended. The statement though is hardly believable because you never know what will come out of his mouth next. Two days ago he sounded solid in his homophobia, today he gave some ground. Of course, this display of compassion should fool no one, it only raises the "pandering candidate" alert.

George Bush Flip-Flops On Golf For McCain

Aww, poor George, He's been so good with abstaining from golf for the troops and now he's gonna rebreak the streak. His tireless sacrifice for our brave soldiers overseas is coming to an end for a purpose though. What's that purpose you ask? Well to keep our troops in Iraq for a hundred years or more!

From ThinkProgress:

The DC Examiner reports that next Monday, Bush’s parents will be hosting a high-dollar golfing fundraiser for Sen. John McCain (R-AZ) near their home in Kennebunkport, ME:

According to a solicitation sent by the McCain camp, for the low, low price of $5,000, you can play a round of golf at Cape Arundel Golf Course, Bush’s home course.

“Both President Bush and Governor Jeb Bush will be stopping by to greet the foursomes,” the missive promises. “The course is reserved for this private group, and VIPs will be visiting during your round of golf. This event is a great way to end a weekend getaway, and we would be honored if you can attend.”

It’s unclear what Bush will do while everyone else is ignoring the war and golfing. Perhaps he’ll ride around in golf carts or simply make swinging motions with his arms.

Nah, I think he'll be golfing right alongside those that can afford a $5,000 for a round on the greens. Now that his knee has healed for the most part since he injured it (at the same time he "gave up" golfing) he should be raring and ready to break out the clubs for John "McSame" McCain.

McCain Flips And Flops On Immigration

McCain may be great at playing to different audiences with answers that they want to hear, but there is a problem when your answers conflict with your own words time and time again. McCain may say he understands the Internet without using it, but clearly he has no idea how YouTube works in society.

John McCain Can Add NIMBYism To His List Of Tricks

John McCain: Continuing to say one thing and then something completely opposite as long as the audience at the moment needs to hear (in McCain's mind) something they like, even if it isn't true. Now we can add NIMBYism to his YouTube problem.

Cafferty Calls Out Flip-Flopping McCain

Although most of the media is slow to wakeup to the realities of John McCain's flip-flopping, some like Jack Cafferty are getting it....and sharing it with their audience. By November, everyone will know the real McCain:

CNN Catches McCain's Flip-Flopping On The Environment

The media is having trouble keeping its love affair with McCain afloat when the candidate commits so many gaffes, so many blunders and flips his position with the change in direction of the wind. Kudos to CNN for pointing out his inconsistent remarks about oil, gas and the environment.

McCain: Against The Estate Tax After Being For It

The mavericky Maverick is at it again, making a reasoned adjustment switching flip-flopping his position on the estate tax. While he was just another Senator he bucked his party, sounding like he had common sense and speaking out against the small fraction of people that wanted to do away with a tax on estates that are worth millions and billions of dollars. Now that he is running and trying to hold on to the conservative base, his views are-a-changin'.

From Crooks and Liars:

McCain used to see through this nonsense.

“In his 1906 State of the Union Address, President Theodore Roosevelt proposed the creation of a federal inheritance tax . Roosevelt explained: ‘The man of great wealth owes a peculiar obligation to the State because he derives special advantages from the mere existence of government.’ Additionally, in a 1907 speech he said: ‘Most great civilized countries have an income tax and an inheritance tax. In my judgment both should be part of our system of federal taxation.’ He noted, however, that such taxation should ‘be aimed merely at the inheritance or transmission in their entirety of those fortunes swollen beyond all healthy limits.’

“I agree with President Roosevelt, and I remain opposed to full repeal of the estate tax.”

That is, until he became the Republican presidential nominee. Now, McCain finds the estate tax offensive.

“Another of my disagreements with Senator Obama concerns the estate tax, which he proposes to increase to a top rate of 55 percent. The estate tax is one of the most unfair tax laws on the books, and the first step to reform is to keep it predictable and keep it low. After a lifetime building up a business, and paying taxes on every dollar that business earns, that asset should not be subjected to a confiscatory tax.”

Why, it’s almost as if McCain were some kind of flip-flopper or something. Heaven forbid.

Maybe Teddy Roosevelt was just another red communist who wanted to penalize all those "hard working" Americans who have millions of dollars socked away. Why would Obama want to be in favor of stripping elite families of a portion of the wealth they didn't earn. Earning a living is a terrible thing when you can just be born or marry into it.

McCain Gets "Mavericky" On The Fourth Amendment

John McCain talked on Tuesday about how he disagreed with the President to try and convince his critics that he won't be Bush's third term. He backed that up with dissing a Bush fundraiser for Congressional candidates (not money for him of course). Political theater aside, John McCain really is another George Bush. He wants to continue his tax cuts, his wars and now he wants to continue shredding the Constitution by making it a-ok to illegally wiretap American citizens without a warrant.

From The NY Times:

WASHINGTON — A top adviser to Senator John McCain says Mr. McCain believes that President Bush’s program of wiretapping without warrants was lawful, a position that appears to bring him into closer alignment with the sweeping theories of executive authority pushed by the Bush administration legal team.

In a letter posted online by National Review this week, the adviser, Douglas Holtz-Eakin, said Mr. McCain believed that the Constitution gave Mr. Bush the power to authorize the National Security Agency to monitor Americans’ international phone calls and e-mail without warrants, despite a 1978 federal statute that required court oversight of surveillance.

Mr. McCain believes that “neither the administration nor the telecoms need apologize for actions that most people, except for the A.C.L.U. and trial lawyers, understand were constitutional and appropriate in the wake of the attacks on Sept. 11, 2001,” Mr. Holtz-Eakin wrote.

And if Mr. McCain is elected president, Mr. Holtz-Eakin added, he would do everything he could to prevent terrorist attacks, “including asking the telecoms for appropriate assistance to collect intelligence against foreign threats to the United States as authorized by Article II of the Constitution.”

I guess in their minds, Article II trumps the Bill of Rights, especially the one that prohibits "unreasonable searches and seizures." Just like under George Bush, Article II trumps everything, including the checks and balances system set up to prevent the President from becoming too powerful. Our Congress has failed recently to rein in George Bush's abuses of the Constitution, but now it is the people's turn to ensure that another Bush-like Presidency with John McCain does not occur. This year the people want change and there is nothing to believe in when you have John McCain up in front of an audience....unless perhaps if they were a bunch of telecom executives.

McCain's Flip-Flops Can Only Lead To More Flip-Flops

John McCain came out with avengance against the DNC's ad showing McCain claim we could be in Iraq for a hundred years. The problem with him attacking the ad is that the DNC used his own words, so it is kinda hard to refute something that you actually said on camera. McCain knows that it looks bad to a nation sick and tired of war that he wants more war. The big problem for McCain is that the truth of what he wants to do is unexplainable to someone with common sense, so he tries to manipulate what he means. That translates into more lies, and more of a demand to clarify everything that comes out of his mouth.

From MSNBC:

First, if McCain doesn't envision a 100-year American front-line combat presence in Iraq, how long is he willing to keep U.S. forces in that role? So far, all he has said is that the United States should withdraw only if it concludes that the Iraq mission is unachievable or when it has achieved success, which he defines as the establishment of "a peaceful, stable, prosperous, democratic state."

McCain hasn't said how long he would keep fighting to reach that demanding goal. Sen. Lindsey Graham, R-S.C., one of McCain's closest Senate allies, recently said he thinks that McCain would maintain current U.S. troop levels in Iraq through his entire four-year presidential term if military commanders recommended that course to maintain stability there.

McCain has not said when, but he has pledged that Iraqi units will eventually assume the major combat responsibility. That prompts the next question McCain should address: What would then become the mission for the U.S. forces he wants to maintain in Iraq? McCain hasn't specified. But he has suggested that their job would be to deter external aggression, much as in South Korea where our troops "served as a buffer against invasion from North Korea."

Of course South Korea is nothing like Iraq. That would be like comparing grapes to watermelons. McCain's assertions are based on false premises, so every explanation he gives is shaky from the start. The "maverick" is trying to hold together arguments from the Bush Administration that have no credibility in real world. What Bush has going for him is that he is not running for re-election, what McCain has going against him is that he is trying to run as Bush to be elected. In 2008, that is not going to work for the great majority of Americans that feel George Bush was the worst President ever.

Doubletalking McCain On Torture

Senator, actions speak louder than words:

McCain: Against Tax Cuts For The Wealthy Before He Was For Them

Sound confusing? Try to hear it from the horse's mouth:



And notice at the end how he corrects himself, "But I support tax cuts, and I have never supported -- I do not support tax increases, and the effect of not making them permanent would have the effect of a tax increase."

What Beach Are You Sitting On McCain?

Another great job by the Dem Rapid Response for hitting McCain with the worst political weapon imaginable......the truth.

McCain's "Hypocritical Flip-Flop Express" Continues To Chug Along

I would never have imagined writing about John McCain for my last post in 2007. I thought this guy was dead in the water back in June. Now he is re-surging faster than George Bush can shred the Constitution. Of course the easy answer for this is because Republican voters hate all their choices and are leap-frogging from candidate to candidate. Remember when Fred Thompson was all the rage, or Mike Huckabee way back in mid-December?

Well anyways, I also remember McCain going into this mess back in late 2006 and he was being described as the "eventual nominee" much as Hillary was up until a month or two ago. My my how things can change in Presidential politics. So being the re-up and coming contender, it seems McCain is still up to his old tricks. Those tricks being saying one thing, even doing one thing, then turning around and doing the opposite.

From The Washington Post:

McCain began his anti-special-interest drive two decades ago after he and four other senators were accused of trying to influence bank regulators on behalf of donor Charles Keating, a savings and loan financier later convicted of securities fraud. The Senate ethics committee said McCain had used "poor judgment" but also said his actions "were not improper" and did not merit punishment.

Ever since, McCain has made high ethical standards a hallmark of his public persona. In his 2002 memoir, he wrote that "money does buy access in Washington, and access increases influence that often results in benefiting the few at the expense of the many." Just this month in Detroit, he told reporters that he had "never done any favors for anybody -- lobbyist or special interest group -- that's a clear, 24-year record."

Nonetheless, a recent study by the nonpartisan Campaign Finance Institute and the liberal advocacy group Public Citizen found that McCain has more lobbyists raising funds for his presidential bid than do any of his rivals. He has 32 "bundlers" of donations who are lobbyists. Former New York mayor Rudolph W. Giuliani (R) is the closest to him with 29 lobbyist bundlers, followed by Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton (D-N.Y.) with 18.

McCain's campaign has also been guided by lobbyists. Davis, the campaign manager, is a former lobbyist who represented major telecommunications companies. The campaign's senior adviser is Charles R. Black Jr., chairman of BKSH & Associates, which represents drug companies, an oil company, an automaker, a telecommunications company, defense contractors and the steel industry, among others.

Not only is he guided by K Street, he likes to talk tough about another flip-flopper, who I would like to call King Flip-Flop, or Mitt for short. Romney is also going after his impromptu protege as he feels threatened by the Senator from Arizona.

It really is anyone's game...on both sides, but at least Democrats aren't playing tricks like these. I wonder who came up with that holiday card.

Bush Flip-Flopped On Iraq Invasion

We already know that Cheney thought it would be a bad idea to invade and occupy Iraq, but now it seems that his monkey George Jr. had the same sentiments. Back in 1997, George offered the same excuses for his father's decision to leave Iraq quickly as Darth Vader did a few years before. Will the President have a response to this newly-spotlit information (besides saying "9/11"), and do reporters have the strength to ask the question?

From Editor and Publisher:

"There are a lot of Americans (who say), 'Why didn't you go get him?'" Bush told the Express-News back in 1997, according to Christenson. "Well, I'm confident that losing men and women as a result of sniper fire inside of Baghdad would have turned the tide of public opinion very quickly," Bush added.

Bush said efforts to ferret out Saddam from his many Baghdad hideouts would have transformed the battle from a desert conflict to an unpopular "guerrilla war," Chistenson recalled.

He added: "Neither Bush nor his son expressed regret in the 1997 interviews over the failure of U.S. forces to pursue and destroy the Iraqi army's Republican Guard."

I don't care if they regret it or not, I want to hear an explanation, that can be interpreted in the reality-based community. As Christenson's article goes on to say, the Bush Administration's excuse for the turn-around is 9/11, so we can forget about rationality here.