[UPDATE: Made the Rec List! Thank You everyone!]

John McCain's campaign is becoming a "target rich environment."

The latest attack levelled by the Three Stooges John McCain's crack campaign staff is that Barack Obama is soft and hypocritical on genocide. [More after the jump]

The last few days have seen former RNC eCampaign director, webmaster for Bush-Cheney '04, and former Giuliani '08 advisor Patrick Ruffini hitting Barack Obama hard on his campaigning initiatives overseas, particularly with regard to the Germany event and the flyers printed By Obama for America.

In a recent post on the subject, Ruffini calls out Obama as arrogant, saying:

The sea of Germans drummed up by the Obama campaign will be used as props to tell us Americans how to vote, and the campaign isn't trying to pretend otherwise. That's breathtakingly arrogant, and par for the course for Barack Obama.

This is one of those issues that John McCain regularly gets a pass for in the media. Yet, it so reeks with greed and hypocrisy that it makes me want to knock my head against the wall a few times every time I hear it.

Last year, Republican presumptive nominee Senator John McCain earned a total of $23,157 from Social Security benefits, or approximately $1,930 per month. The amount is near the maximum benefit allowed under the federal program. (benefits are determined by age at retirement)

Even after calling the program "a disgrace," McCain reportedly accepts and cashes each and every one of his monthly checks; despite having the option to refuse all benefits. (according to B.J. Jarrett from the Social Security Administration)

Hey, everyone, here is to ABC's excellent reporting.  This is just a short diary because all I want to do is to bring to light two things:

1.  ABC's excellent reporting, I will excerpt some relevant 'graphs below.

2. McCain and his campaign's amazing chutzpah accusing Obama time and again of things that he himself is guilty of.  We are only used to the media blissfully giving him a pass and continuing to use their talking points against Obama.  ABC is first, let us see if anyone else starts holding McCain's feet to the fire, as they do with Obama all the time!

 If you ever want to see why this nation is totally screwed with the GOP at the helm, then look no further than this little gem from the AP.

Crossposted at Ich Bin Ein Oberliner.

Pointing out politicians' personal flaws and hypocrisies is too easy. Lazy, really. Petty, you might say. But, this recent statement by John McCain got a little under my skin. Here's the quote, from The New York Times (h/t Tristero and TP):

Q: President Bush believes that gay couples should not be permitted to adopt children. Do you agree with that?

Mr. McCain: I think that we’ve proven that both parents are important in the success of a family so, no I don’t believe in gay adoption.

( cross-posted at my personal blog 43-Ideas-Per-Minute )

The question comes to me more often than not - why is honesty punished while 'pretending' to be so is rewarded?

Pretty simple question that can be used in varous situations.

This time, we see the question manifest itself at the time of Tony Snow's death.  

It is not suprising in the least that many conservative blogs have - and will continue to use - the occassion of his death to besmirch, smear, and do everything but deficate on anyone and everyone with opposing political viewpoints who don't stop what they are doing and say something positive about the man.

You see, this is where conservatives and everyone else differs.

To me, there is no schadenfreude quite like the schadenfreude of seeing right wingers piss all over each other, or over themselves, as the illusion of their moral and intellectual superiority gets shattered. Such is the case with the shattering of the Reagan stamp of approval for McCain, given Nancy Reagan's siding with McCain's poorly treated ex-wife. Further delights are to be had in examining, up close, the realization, by the public, of the many hypocrisies to be found here.

With all of the talk about Phil Gramm's and by extension, McCain's campaign's comments about Americans being a bunch of whiners, most are focusing on the outrage as far as a reaction goes.  But the truth is, there is a large segment of Americans that ARE whiners.

That segment would be, ironically enough, republicans.

Think of an issue - think of the incessant whining on right wing talk radio, think of the direction of the debate and discussion over the past decade (or even more), and we can see just how much Gramm's comments ring true.

Who can forget some of the classic whining moments that prove Gramm's point?

Wayne Besen, in an entertaining and provacative editorial in the Falls Church News, points out what is obvious to most of us -- the "pro-family" American Family Association is anything but.

In the editorial, Besen points out that in their single-minded, anti-family quest to deny GLBT families marriage equality, they are ignoring many real, relevant issues that are having a far more pressing impact on the same "traditional American families" they are purporting to defend.

*Cross posted at The Thorn Papers. Y'all come by now.*

Un-friggin-believable. Does no one, an image consultant or anyone like that, survey these plans and say, "Hey, y'all will look like the most horrible, hypocritical oligarchs imaginable if you do this?" And then, who releases the menu, and the fat-cat portrait? Or is the answer more simple: they are simply entirely disconnected from the world at large and/or don't give a flying shit?

In any case, the UK Daily Mail brings this report from the G8 Summit, where world leaders are discussing the global food crisis...while sitting down to an 18 course dinner, which followed a six course lunch:

I was browsing snopes today out of boredom, and came across the politics page.  Naturally, rumors on our current candidates piqued my interest.  It was particularly interesting that Obama has 23 rumors listed, of which two are true, while our distinguished opponent has but four, of which three are true.  One among these stood out.  Around the time in 2004 when all the rumors floated about the Arizona senator as Kerry's running mate, he said, and later himself corroborated, the following:

OMG! OMG! OMG!
This is from Hillary Clinton's debate with Rick Lazio in 2000:

CLINTON: My opponent is wrong. I have said many times that I can support a ban on late-term abortions, including partial-birth abortions, so long as the health and life of the mother is protected. I’ve met women who faced this heart-wrenching decision toward the end of a pregnancy. Of course it’s a horrible procedure. No one would argue with that. But if your life is at stake, if your health is at stake, if the potential for having any more children is at stake, this must be a woman’s choice.

According to Clinton supporter dhonig, this is secret code. You see, it doesn't mention the health of the fetus, so this is Clinton's sneaky anti-choice way of saying that you can't have a late-term abortion if you have an anencephalic fetus!

Of course, this position wasn't a problem for dhonig when his candidate held it and campaigned on it. But then again, for the TalkLeft crowd, It's Okay If You Are Clinton.

The British Newspaper the Times Online is reporting that the Bush administration gave $20 million dollars to an ultra leftist terrorist group in Columbian known as FARC (Note to media - these people are actually far left and are hundreds of miles to the left of 99% of Daily Kos and the Democratic Party).

In exchange, several hostages were freed, including 3 Americans.

I have not seen this posted but thought it relevant to the whole Gen. Clark dust-up. I have watched as pundit after pundit has attacked Gen Clark for "attacking McCain's military service" or when they don't use that canard they talk about how McCain NEVER talks about his military service. Well, this Meet The Press interview shows quite the opposite. http://www.youtube.com/...

So the McCain campaign is upset at that Wes Clark said, "I don't think riding in a fighter plane and getting shot down is a qualification to be president.''

Just one problem.  Ezra Klein points outthat John McCain routinely says the same thing himself:

When folks ask him about his war heroism, he's even got a stock reply: "It doesn't take a great deal of effort to get shot down," he laughs.

Hmmm.  Does this mean that John McCain needs to reject John McCain's denigration of John McCain's service?

The state of Iowa has been hit with a double-barreled gut punch in the month of June.  Multiple days of torrential rainfall in June triggered massive flooding considerably worse and further-reaching than the historic floods of 1993.  As of yesterday, 77 of Iowa's 99 counties were declared Presidential disaster areas.  Making matters worse, the nation's top corn-producing state has lost nearly 20% of its corn crop on a year where corn prices are soaring due to increased demand.  It's hard to even appreciate at this point the magnitude of the negative effect that the events of June 2007 will have on the state of Iowa.  With all that said, lawmakers and special interest demagogues in the state of Iowa are holding firm in their insistence that the current state of crisis has to take a backseat to a more pressing concern....being as cruel as possible to Iowa smokers as quickly as possible.  The statewide smoking ban passed into law barely 60 days ago is to be foisted upon us strictly on schedule on July 1, with the whole state distracted from solving its real problems by the mass confusion surrounding the monstrous ban.

Here is a link to a huffington post from a few days back from Joseph Palmero:

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/...

It says, amongst other things that:
"The producers should be careful when poking fun at Obama not to provide fuel for the right-wing slime machine. Poke fun at Obama all you want, but do it in a way that also reveals the Republicans’ mendacity and hypocrisy."

Come again? While I may be an Obama supporter no politician is without their faults. In my opinion The Daily Show can't be relied upon to trump up Obama and put down McCain in some partisan way - nor should it be. Thats not to say that its always going to be balanced, but The Daily Show's purpose is to go after media and politicians for their absurdity and to call them on their BS.

I don't think its constructive to give instructions to Jon Stewart et al on how to manage their show to highlight Republican hypocrisy. In light of that, I wanted to see what people at KOS think about this issue and I've posted a few recent clips that go after Barack Obama.

Check them out and weigh in with how YOU feel about the Daily Show and humor that pokes fun at Obama: