To be fair to McCain, if I had that many homes worth that much money, I wouldn’t be able to comprehend what is going on in today’s housing market either.

If you’ve ever heard John McCain talk about his time in a POW camp in Vietnam, or read his 1999 book, Faith of My Fathers, you’re likely aware of a story in which McCain tells of being interrogated and in lieu of naming his actual squadron mates he lists the defensive line of the Green Bay Packers at the time. Not just any Packer team, but the team that won the first Super Bowl. To be precise, here’s what he writes in the book:

Once my condition had stabilized, my interrogators resumed their work. Demands for military information were accompanied by threats to terminate my medical treatment if I did not cooperate. Eventually, I gave them my ship’s name and squadron number, and confirmed that my target had been the power plant. Pressed for more useful information, I gave the names of the Green Bay Packers offensive line, and said they were members of my squadron. When asked to identify future targets, I simply recited the names of a number of North Vietnamese cities that had already been bombed.

This is a story that he not only wrote about in his book, but has told it publicly several times and was even documented in a 2005 movie of the same name. This story has time and time again been a mainstay of McCain’s biography, but has been told by him numerous times to support his opposition to torture, noting that he gave false information under pressure.

McCain, however, must have hoped that no one would catch him playing the game of underhanded politics when, while campaigning in Pittsburgh on the 9th of this month, a local TV reporter asked him what he first thinks of in relation to Pittsburgh. His response? “The Steelers really made a huge impression on me, particularly in my early years.” He then continued blowing hot air out his ass saying, “When I was first interrogated and really had to give some information because of the physical pressures that were on me, I named the starting lineup – defensive line – of the Pittsburgh Steelers as my squadron-mates!”

So that’s how you’re going to play it, McCain? Stabbing your fond history with the Packers in the back? Next time you’re in Wisconsin, I hope one of our local reporters has the chutzpah to throw this back in your face and watch you flop around for an answer.

Just kidding, don’t worry. That’s just the name of this awesome new video you should spend the next three minutes of your life watching:

Most of the following McCain ad is garbage that you can ignore, but watch extremely closely at about the 25 second mark and try to identify the shirt that the woman shaking John McCain’s hand is wearing.

Did you catch it? If you did, you’re probably chuckling to yourself right now if not actually laughing out loud. If you didn’t, she’s wearing an Obama campaign shirt. Someone clearly wasn’t paying close enough attention when they put that commercial together. If this is the level of effort they are putting in to their campaign ads, I can’t wait to see what else we have to look forward to.

Still straining to see it? Here’s a freezeframe:

The President is currently in Israel. In part, he is there to celebrate the 60th Anniversary of the State of Israel, but in part he is there to help along the Middle East peace process between Israel and the Palestinians. I have no issues with anyone visiting there for either of those reasons, but his true motivations behind the latter of the two reasons is nothing short of despicable. Everyone would like for there to be peace in Israel, but his motivation is quite different from most.

George W. Bush is poised to leave office in January 2009 as one of the worst United States Presidents in history, if not truly the worst. He, along with the help of his cronies (read: Dick Cheney, Donald Rumsfeld, Karl Rove, et al), has abolished many of the basic constitutional rights we take for granted, has led us in to an unjust quagmire of a war, helped lead oil prices to an all-time high, has greatly abused and extended executive power, has created a devastatingly huge national debt, is leading us in to a recession, and countless other atrocities, many of which should have earned him an impeachment (if only the congress had a spine).

Back on topic, if our President truly did care about establishing peace between the Israelis and Palestinians, he likely would have attempted to negotiate peace sooner than his absolute last year in office (of an eight-year term, none the less) and he probably would have visited Israel more than a total of two times. This is not an attempt on his part of establishing peace in the Middle East. It is an attempt at salvaging the shattered remains of his legacy and hoping he can be remembered for something other than the various failures I listed above. He is desperately hoping that real peace between the Israelis and Palestinians happens before he leaves office, so he can claim responsibility. Whatever the opposite of a Nobel Peace Prize is, he deserves it.

Not too long ago, John McCain proposed a gas tax “holiday”. Essentially, the 18¢ federal gas tax will be lifted for a period of time to, in theory, save Americans money. The only problem with this is that most economists don’t think this will work. Decreased price will increase demand, thus raising the price of gas. That’s how capitalism works. Then, once the gas tax is over, it will end up higher than when it started. On top of that, if it does save the average American any money, it will only be about $25. Not much. So this isn’t really the best idea, but that’s what can be expected when it comes to Republicans and taxes.

What makes this all interesting is that now Hillary is following suit (insert pantsuit joke here). She has already taken campaign strategies straight out of the republican playbook, so why not borrow McCain’s tax proposals? I am failing to see how exactly she is the “more electable candidate”, as her supporters would like me to think, if she just copies what the Republican candidate proposes. What baffles me even more than her recent republican tendencies, is that fact that the media is acting as if she came up with it. The very second she opened her mouth in favor of McCain’s gas tax suspension, mainstream media somehow developed selective amnesia about who had actually proposed it and declared it Hillary’s Gas Tax Holiday.

Thankfully, Barack Obama has the chutzpah call a gas tax holiday exactly what it is, a “classic Washington gimmick”. Plenty of his opposition will come back and say he voted for a suspended gas tax in Illinois when he was a state senator. What’s his response to this? “I voted for it. Then six months later we took a look and consumers had not benefited at all. I learned from a mistake.” A politician who is willing to admit his mistakes and subsequently demonstrate he has learned from them by taking the risky step of opposing a tax cut (no matter how fool heartedly it may be) is exactly what this country needs in our next President.

He obviously hasn’t endorsed Hillary, or for that matter McCain, but in watching him continuously harm the Obama campaign with every new word he utters, one has to wonder what his true motivation is. Or, more likely, I’m looking for deeper meaning out of someone simply attempting to stretch out their 15 minutes.

A tie or a loss for Hillary Clinton in Pennsylvania this past Tuesday would have more or less forced her out of the race, allowing Barack Obama to finally mount a national campaign, with the support of the DNC and other pro-Democratic groups, against John McCain and the Republican Party. Alas, this did not happen. Everyone (even the media!) knows that Barack Obama is going to walk out of the convention with his name on the ticket. He has won more states, he has more of the popular vote, he is leading her in pledged delegates, and none of the remaining primaries are going to change that. By winning Pennsylvania with a 10 point lead, Clinton has gotten the ego boost that she so desperately needed to convince herself and her supporters that it is worthwhile to stay in the race through the convention. No one quite knows what this will mean, as there hasn’t been a brokered democratic convention since the 50s, so this should be interesting.

I forsee an Obama/Clinton ticket to reunite an increasingly divided party and defeat McCain.

It’s all over the news that Mark Penn has resigned (been forced out? fired?) as Chief Strategist for Hillary Clinton’s campaign because of his professional ties supporting a Columbian trade deal that Hillary opposes. Basically, her campaign differed in position from his real job as CEO of Burson-Marsteller, a Public Relations firm. Well, they fired him, he’s no longer involved in the campaign, so the conflict of interest is over, right? Wrong.

What else could you expect from a campaign strategist who specializes in spin, than more spin. Sure, he’s no longer the “Chief Campaign Strategist”, but he is still one of her top advisers and his company, Burson-Marsteller, is still doing the polling for the Clinton campaign. I could be wrong, but that sure doesn’t sound like getting fired. It sounds to me like he just had to step back in to the shadows a bit for fear of hurting the campaign that he has orchestrated. This fact seems to be something that mainstream media has been leaving out and instead going forward with the “he’s fired, lets move on” story. For lack of a better term, that’s complete bullshit. If you’re going to fire someone for a conflict of interest, fire someone for a conflict on interest. Don’t keep them on the payroll in a similar capacity and change their title to look less important.

If we’ve learned anything from Karl Rove and George W. Bush, it’s that sleazy campaign tactics do, in fact, get you elected. I just hope that it is too little too late for Hillary to sleaze her way in to the Whitehouse.

I sadly gave up hope several months ago that Al Gore would be our next president, but the candidate who I’ve chosen to throw my support behind, Barack Obama, has once again earned my respect and admiration by being the first Democratic candidate to say that he would ask Al Gore to play a large role in his presidency to help come up with a solution to the climate change problems facing our country and our world.

In his words:

I will make a commitment that Al Gore will be at the table and play a central part in us figuring out how we solve this (climate change) problem.

Why Hillary Clinton doesn’t seem to think climate change and our country’s debilitating dependency on oil are issues worth talking about is beyond me.