John McCain Pander Bear?

This week in the very same week when George W Bush signed the Bi-Partisan GI Bill, he
stated that John McCain was a part of this coming into effect. GIVE ME A BREAK. John McCain voted against it. Check out this April note and you will find that even as he "supported the troops" he was once against them receiving benefits that they have more than earned!

McCain, Military Oppose Expanding GI Bill
Presidential Hopeful Believes Legislation Would Hurt Military
By Z. Byron Wolf
April 14, 2008

Sen. John McCain, R-Ariz., the presumptive Republican presidential nominee, seemed to give a thumbs down to bipartisan legislation that would greatly expand educational benefits for members of the military returning from Iraq and Afghanistan under the GI Bill.

McCain indicated he would offer some sort of alternative to the legislation to address concerns that expanding the GI Bill could lead more members of the military to get out of the service.

Both Democratic presidential candidates — Sens. Barack Obama, D-Ill., and Hillary Clinton, D-N.Y., — have signed on as co-sponsors, and the bill has gained bipartisan support from 54 senators on Capitol Hill in addition to Webb. A vote on the proposal is expected before the summer.

But the bill, which would dramatically increase educational compensation for American troops, has run into some unexpected resistance, both at the Pentagon and now from McCain, who has remained silent on the issue, saying he had not studied the bill close enough.

John McCain Doesn't Know the Price of Gas/Can't Remember the Last Time He Bought Any

Chris Kelly (Huffington Post)
John McCain kind of stepped in it the other day, here in California, but luckily no one noticed. He was being driven from John Wayne airport to a fundraiser, and he took a quick call from Martin Wisckol of the Orange County Register. Wisckol asked him a series of softball questions so tedious McCain's driver had to crack the window so the breeze would keep him from passing out, but then this

WISCKOL: I'd like to ask you a couple questions suggested by voters here. They're not reporter-type questions.

McCAIN: Sure. It'd be a pleasure.

WISCKOL: When was the last time you pumped your own gas and how much did it cost? 


McCAIN: Oh, I don't remember. Now there's Secret Service protection. But I've done it for many, many years. I don't recall and frankly, I don't see how it matters. I've had hundreds and hundreds of town hall meetings, many as short a time ago as yesterday. I communicate with the people and they communicate with me very effectively.


... I'm going through a tunnel... ... bzzzzzzzztttttt bzzzzzztttttt...I'm gonna lose you... bzzzztttttt... bye!

No, I added that last part.

Okay. A few things here.

1) John McCain doesn't know what gas costs, because the Secret Service protects him from finding out, possibly because they're afraid the knowledge will kill him. Not a healthy man.

2) John McCain isn't an elitist or a big government bureaucrat. He's a maverick who has certainly pumped his own gas at some point in his life, perhaps during the single 18-month period when he wasn't in the navy or in congress, but was living off his wife.

3) It doesn't matter. How do we know it doesn't matter? Because John McCain says it doesn't matter.

4) John McCain may not know what gas costs or when he last pumped any, or performed any other act not connected to politics or outpatient care, but he's had hundreds of town hall meetings, many as short a time ago as yesterday. Which somehow answers questions about gas prices, but it's not clear exactly how.

5) John McCain communicates with people and they communicate with him very effectively.

6) John McCain is an excellent driver. Dad lets him drive slow down the driveway every Saturday.

7) Fifteen minutes to Wapner.


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Asking a politician about groceries is a dusty old trick. Mitt Romney doesn't know what Saran Wrap costs, and why should he? Unless it's important to the image he's trying to build, as a regular guy, or at least someone who gives a shit.

But some gotcha questions do matter.

For instance, back in 1999, when Andy Hiller had this exchange with then-Governor George W. Bush:

HILLER: Can you name the president of Chechnya?"

BUSH: No, can you?

HILLER: Can you name the president of Taiwan?

BUSH: Yeah, Lee.

HILLER: Can you name the general who's in charge of Pakistan?

BUSH: Wait, wait, is this 50 questions?

HILLER: No, it's four questions of four leaders in four hot spots.

BUSH: The new Pakistani general, he's just been elected -- not elected, this guy took over office. It appears this guy is going to bring stability to the country and I think that's good news for the subcontinent.

HILLER: Can you name him?

BUSH: General. I can name the general. General.

HILLER: And the prime minister of India?

BUSH: The new prime minister of India is -- no. Can you name the foreign minister of Mexico?

HILLER: No sir, but I would say to that, I'm not running for president.

BUSH: What I'm suggesting to you is, if you can't name the foreign minister of Mexico, therefore, you know, you're not capable about what you do. But the truth of the matter is you are, whether you can or not.


You'd think that the candidacy was over at "I can name the general. General," but it turns out it wasn't. These questions might not have mattered. (Pakistan? Come on! As if the president really needs to know about Pakistan!) What was important was the way the candidate answered.

Which was like a belligerent dick.


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As opposed to John McCain on the question of pumping his own gas. Who comes off as a floundering panderer who's lost a step.


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I'm not even sure Martin Wisckol was trying to play gotcha with John McCain. I think he was fishing for a colorful anecdote. If you read the rest of the interview, you'll see he certainly didn't ask any other questions that couldn't be answered by a press release.

John McCain has spent the last three months -- since he floated his gas tax holiday -- pretending to care about the cost of driving. He should have had a slightly better answer than "I've had hundreds of town halls."

He knows it, too. Which is why he panics after a few more questions, when Wisckol is trying to wind things up.

WISCKOL: Thank you very much for taking the time to talk with me.

McCAIN: Thank you. It's a pleasure.... Hang on just one second. I think the last time that I ... I've been on the campaign trail for so long I don't remember when I last filled up my own gas tank, but I certainly did for many, many, many years and I understand the difficulties and challenges that it poses for the people of California and my home state of Arizona. I thank you, my friend.


And the name of the general is General.

Take the Challenge........Bush compared to McCain.

McCain lies like a rug.......

Why does a "Veteran HERO" refuse to support the GI Bill created by Vets for Vets?

John McCain's "Spiritual Guide"

McCain's justice-Conservative activism gone wild

By Geoffrey R. Stone (Chicago Tribune)
May 7, 2008

Sen. John McCain's speech on Tuesday on the role of judges in our constitutional system might very well qualify as one of the most ignorant statements ever made by a presidential candidate on this important subject.

McCain complained that sitting judges and justices systematically "abuse" the federal judicial power by issuing "rulings and opinions on policy questions that should be decided democratically." McCain, seeking the Republican nomination for president, is apparently blissfully unaware that the vast majority of current federal judges were appointed by Republican presidents and that seven of the nine sitting U.S. Supreme Court justices and 12 of the last 14 Supreme Court justices were appointed by Republicans. As Pogo once said, "We have met the enemy, and he is us."

McCain also seems stunningly unaware that the justices he simplistically lauds as "judicial passivists" are nothing of the sort. William Rehnquist, Antonin Scalia and Clarence Thomas, and more recently John Roberts and Samuel Alito, have consistently voted to invalidate laws at a record clip, most notably holding unconstitutional a broad range of laws regulating commercial advertising, limiting corporate campaign expenditures and authorizing affirmative action programs to enhance educational diversity—to say nothing of Bush vs. Gore. This is not strict construction and it is not judicial restraint. It is conservative activism gone wild—in judicial robes. McCain just doesn't understand.

Even worse, McCain mocks the lifetime tenure of federal judges and assails what he scorns as liberal "judicial activism." Interestingly, McCain confidently invokes the framers of the Constitution as authority for his claim that what we need in this nation are more judges who will exercise "self-restraint." But after chiding Sen. Barack Obama, a Democratic presidential contender who actually knows something about constitutional law, McCain betrays his complete lack of comprehension of the U.S. Constitution and of the goals and concerns of those who crafted it.

A fundamental challenge facing the framers of our Constitution was how to restrain intolerant, self-interested, and prejudiced majorities in order to ensure that they would not run roughshod over the rights and liberties of minorities. As James Madison observed, "the greatest danger" to liberty was to be found "in the body of the people, operating by the majority against the minority."

Early in the constitutional process, Madison expressed skepticism about the value of a Bill of Rights. As a practical matter, he simply did not see how a Bill of Rights could "provide any check on the passions and interests of the popular majorities." Indeed, "experience teaches the inefficacy of a bill of rights on those occasions when its control is most needed," for "overbearing majorities" tend simply to ignore these "parchment barriers." In a governmental system in which the majority can have its way, Madison asked Thomas Jefferson, "What use . . . can a Bill of Rights serve?"

In a letter back to Madison, Jefferson (who was in Paris at the time) extolled the role courts could play in enforcing a Bill of Rights. Jefferson urged Madison to consider "the legal check" which the Constitution "puts into the hands of the judiciary," a "body, which if rendered independent . . . merits great confidence for their learning and integrity."

Shortly thereafter, when Madison presented the Bill of Rights to the first Congress, he echoed Jefferson's argument, contending that if these rights are "incorporated into the Constitution, independent tribunals of justice will consider themselves . . . the guardians of those rights; they will be an impenetrable bulwark against every assumption of power in the legislative or executive; they will be naturally led to resist every encroachment upon rights expressly stipulated for in the Constitution by the declaration of rights."

The "solution" to the seemingly insoluble dilemma of how to enforce the guarantees of the Bill of Rights against the "overbearing majorities" that would inevitably control the legislative and executive branches was thus, in part, the third branch—the judiciary, which could serve as "an impenetrable bulwark" against majoritarian encroachments on the fundamental liberties of political, social, religious, economic and other minorities.

Unlike McCain, the framers fully understood that lifetime tenure was not a mere perk of office, but an essential condition of the American constitutional system. The hope was that life tenure would insulate judges from the need to curry favor with the prevailing political majority, and thus free them to act on principle.

As John Adams affirmed, for judges to be able to undertake this solemn responsibility, they must be firmly independent of the other branches of government and must hold "their positions by a permanent tenure in no way dependent upon the will and pleasure of the executive." Without that independence, Adams added, it would be absurd "to look for strict impartiality and a pure administration of justice, to expect that power should be confined within its legal limits, and right and justice done." A critical insight of the American constitutional system was the recognition that judges needed independence not only from the executive and the Congress, but, in Madison's words, from "the people themselves."

During the ratification debates, Alexander Hamilton passionately argued that constitutional limits could "be preserved in practice no other way than through the medium of the courts of justice," and he maintained that "the courts were designed to be an intermediate body between the people and the legislature, in order, among other things, to keep the latter within the limits assigned to their authority." The "independence of the judges," he reasoned, is "requisite to guard the Constitution and the rights of individuals from the effects of those ill humours which the arts of designing men . . . sometimes disseminate among the people themselves." Judges, he insisted, have a duty to resist invasions of constitutional rights even if they are "instigated by the major voice of the community."

The truest aspirations of American constitutionalism are embodied in the decisions of the Supreme Court in cases like Brown vs. Board of Education (declaring racial segregation unconstitutional), Gideon vs. Wainwright (guaranteeing a person accused of crime the right to counsel), Reynolds vs. Sims (insisting on one person/one vote), Harper vs. Virginia Board of Elections (prohibiting the poll tax), and Frontiero vs. Richardson (protecting women against unconstitutional discrimination). The framers understood that our nation needs judges and justices who protect the rights of the minorities, the oppressed and the downtrodden, not judges and justices who abuse the Constitution in order to protect the interests of commercial advertisers and corporate political contributors.

To paraphrase McCain, "the moral authority of our judiciary depends" not on false promises of "judicial restraint," but on real promises of judicial wisdom—the sort of wisdom that Jefferson, Madison, Adams and Hamilton banked on when they drafted our Constitution.

Geoffrey R. Stone is a University of Chicago law professor.