jerseyhoya wrote:You just quoted three news articles about the same exact vote for which McCain had a legit explanation for voting the way he did, after already wrapping up the nomination so he didn't really have to pander to the right wingers, and then something from a partisan left wing blogger.

I posted all 3 because some people have problems with the NYTimes... multiple sourcing usually isn't a reason for criticism. Do you have any comments on the substance of the links?

And do you have any comment about the substance of the last link, like, you know, the fact that the law they trumpeted actually gave the president all the power he needed to do what he wanted. Or the Detainee act?

Just wondering if you have any criticisms of the substance rather than my posting style? Or maybe I'm just an East Coast elitist who wears fancy suits, gets $400 haircuts, and doesn't know how to clear brush.

jeff2sf wrote:I read those same things at the time... color me unconvinced.

It's a lot of noise about gotcha politics. McCain would not torture and does not believe in it.

Ok, so you are unconvinced. But is it fair to say that I may have come by my opinion honestly and maybe I don't deserve to be told that I'm acting like a sheep if I don't come to the same conclusion as you? I mean, I think there's some decent evidence for my position.

No, ONE VOTE, ONE VOTE where he gave legit explanations for his vote does not change the man's position as one of the best advocates against torture in America.

jeff2sf wrote:No, ONE VOTE, ONE VOTE where he gave legit explanations for his vote does not change the man's position as one of the best advocates against torture in America.

Um, it wasn't just one vote. You obviously didn't read the links.


And I'd like to know his legit reasons. I'd post them, but it would be funnier if you posted his tortured explanations. They sound very Bush administration-like.

Monkeyboy wrote:Nevermind that he supports such wars.

Monkeyboy wrote:And frankly, McCain's votes supporting Bush's policies on torture and illegal rendition have taken away any right for him to act like the good soldier, IMO, but that's a separate issue, one which I know you don't want to hear about because you already have your mind made up about it, like most people do when it comes to McCain and torture.

If McCain loses statements like these are why he'll lose. The idea that John McCain wants to at war isn't true any more than it is that Barack Obama wants to be at war. Obama wants to increase the number of US troops fighting the Afghan insurgency, but he has avoided people thinking he's pro-war. The Democrats have been able to reframe McCain as wanting Americans to die for 100 years and the idea has stuck.

John McCain does not now nor has he ever supported torture. In the articles Monkeyboy cites there's no indication what "extra measures" are. McCain has never wavered that torture produces bad intelligence and that it sets up Americans to be tortured overseas. He knows this because he was tortured overseas and did provide bad intelligence.

When McCain was sponsoring the torture bill most forms of torture were banned. McCain couldn't get all forms banned because of the threat of fillibuster and Presidential veto. He compromised. It's how bills get passed. The guy gets on Bill O'Reilly, a hero to people he needs to vote for him, and tells O'Reilly that he's wrong on torture. Yet the Democrats have framed McCain as in favor of torture. McCain has done nothing to counter that.

John McCain is the same as he was in 1999. I don't think he's changed is position on any issue. In 1999 people didn't know him. He stood up to Bush. So people decided he believed the opposite of what Bush believed. It wasn't true. Since then every compromise that McCain has made to get bills passed has been scrutinized by those on the left and right. It's not easy when both sides are against you. McCain has been defined by them.

Four-term U.S. Sen. Frank Lautenberg has a 47%-38% lead over his GOP challenger, former Rep. Dick Zimmer, according to a new Quinnipiac University poll released early this morning. But 54% of voters say that the 84-year-old Lautenberg is too old to serve another term, and his 46%-35% job approval rating is his lowest disapproval in twelve years.

Quinnipiac is probably the best pollster of Jersey. Lautenberg isn't going to break 55%, but we aren't going to win either.

Warszawa wrote:Senate Republicans block taxes on oil majors - Democratic plan to tax windfall profits of large oil companies blocked

Breaking news: Elections to be held this November!

Trying to find an economist who thinks a windfall-profits tax is a good idea is like searching for a climatologist who thinks global warming is caused by trees. Such a tax unfairly targets the oil industry, which is already amply taxed and whose profits aren't far out of line with other U.S. industries when considered as a percentage of sales. It also would discourage oil companies from investing in new supply, which is precisely what happened when Congress imposed a similar tax in 1980. The result might be even higher oil prices.

LA Times

Of course, they also rip the GOP, but still, it's nice that people are ripping the windfall profits tax, which is at least as dumb of an idea as the gas tax holiday.

It's pointless.

jeff, I hope you're right but I have to grant that some of McCain's votes and statements over the last couple months have me questioning the absoluteness of his stand against torture. Maybe it's me, but I don't get why it's okay to have CIA operatives use "enhanced" techniques but not regular military personnel. (Is it a union thing?)

And while it isn't exactly the same question, these shameful flip-flops of his about the Executive SuperduperPowers don't support your case either.

Warantless wire-tapping

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.
...
Although a spokesman for Mr. McCain, the presumptive Republican presidential nominee, denied that the senator’s views on surveillance and executive power had shifted, legal specialists said the letter contrasted with statements Mr. McCain previously made about the limits of presidential power.

In an interview about his views on the limits of executive power with The Boston Globe six months ago, Mr. McCain strongly suggested that if he became the next commander in chief, he would consider himself obligated to obey a statute restricting what he did in national security matters.

This is an enormous disappointment to me. One of the biggest reasons I preferred McCain to his Republican opponents was that as a longtime legislator, he seemed to have a fuller grasp of checks and balances than, certainly, an unhinged lunatic like Il Douche or a power-hungry weasel like The Mittster. That's less clear now.

The most disturbing thing about McCain has always been his severe case of "Potomac Fever." Granted that everyone who runs for president trims their views for some reason or another... but McCain's wholesale flip-flops should pretty clearly put the lie to this whole "maverick" persona he's crafted. His whole career can be divided into his pure-conservative period through 1999, his screwing-with-Bush period (1999-2003), and his desperate attempts to walk in Bush's shadow (2004-current). Here's one short list of the flip-flops.

Yet he's so utterly convinced of his integrity (as are the fellating brigade of pundits who adore him) that any attempt to point out these reversals elicits a temper tantrum reminiscent of Bush himself. Obama is accused of arrogance and I have no doubt the guy has a truly world-class ego, but he's not even in McCain's league in terms of self-regard.

On a lighter note, this is a fun site to screw around with. I've got at least one scenario where it ends in a 269-269 tie: McCain wins MI, OH, FL and MO, Obama wins PA, VA, WI, IA, CO, NM and NH, and everything else goes as expected.

And one last point about the Clintons and Nixon: the new and improved enemies list! My favorite is the dude with the French name saying "there's no list," and then the references to the list throughout the rest of the article.

Re: 269-269, I've read stuff about Obama possibly winning the NE congressional district based in Omaha (Nebraska doles out EVs by congressional districts). That would open up a whole other set of tie scenarios.

Dajafi,
I just don't understand why impugning McCain's integrity is a path you want to go down. You're NEVER EVER going to vote for a Republican for national office. Ever. So it's pretty likely that most of what a Republican does is going to piss you off. But here, you've got a great man, a great senator who has been offered up by the Republican ticket and instead of attacking him on issues, you talk about his belief in his greatness and fellatio and all that crud. If you think his gas tax holiday was just an awful, terrible idea as I do, then go for that, but this idea that he wouldn't immediately upgrade the integrity of the Executive Office 100 fold is crazy. I'm with the Economist, for once, America got it right. We've got two fantastic candidates to vote for, but one, Obama, is just that much better.

I think LaExile far more eloquently defended McCain than I did. Life is about compromise, McCain could have just gone with the Republican ticket on the torture thing in 2006, but he, Hagel and Warner stood up and said this isn't right, and brokered a better deal. Was it perfect? Of course not, but it was better then if he hadn't stepped up.

Speaking of compromise, I think this link from Sully speaks volumes. Being a centrist doesn't mean you vote the other party's line a la Zell Miller. It means you reach out, and McCain does that better than anyone, even Obama (though I'm optimistic Obama can and will get better). In the end, reaching out though isn't about giving the other party all or even half of what they want (nor would you want that if you're a fan of Obama, otherwise you'd have an agenda so watered down as to become indistinguishable from a Republican's), it's about finding some places for common ground and recognizing those.

http://andrewsullivan.theatlantic.com/t ... ma-bi.html

jeff, I don't think there's necessarily a contradiction between my pointing out McCain's hypocrisies and your countering that he's a good practitioner of political compromise. Your contention that he'd raise the integrity of the executive branch 100-fold strikes me as correct... though that's incredibly faint praise given the Current Occupant and what he's done.

I'm just pointing out that reports of McCain's unshakable integrity are, at the least, greatly exaggerated. His el foldo on wiretapping appalls and frightens me; I want the clearest possible repudiation of the Bush/Cheney unitary executive theory, and this flip-flop backs off from that. (You'll remember this was my single biggest problem with Clinton; I didn't trust her with all that power, considerably less than I would McCain.) Are you okay with his wiretapping position?

As far as "reaching out," I think the point Sullivan quoted (which I'd read a couple days ago--I follow his stuff pretty closely) is valid, but also the point someone (steagles?) made about the prospects for compromise in the last two congresses and Obama's "failure" to do so. His work with Lugar on non-proliferation and leadership on ethics reforms is pretty good; even better is the stuff he did in the Illinois legislature, which also was Republican-controlled for a chunk of his time there but less viciously polarized than the U.S. Senate in the last few years.

McCain was against torture, until he was for it.

McCain was for substantive campaign finance reform, until he was against it.

McCain has changed his views on immigration policy, the religious right, you name it.

He presents himself as virtuous beyond reproach, yet is married to an alcohol empire heiress and surrounded by lobbyists.

He tries to be all things to all people.

He is, as a Republican campaign operative would term it, a flip-flopper. And I hope the Democrats hammer him with that label for the next five months.

Service in Vietnam or not, John McCain has chosen the wrong side. Conservative Republicans have had ample chance to govern this country and shown themselves be thoroughly unsuited for the task.

That is why he deserves to beaten this fall, whether he was a heroic prisoner of war or not. And after the way John Kerry was treated in the last election, I really don't care to hear about McCain's war record. Sauce for the goose ...

Loose nukes is not exactly a hard position to get behind. I haven't met someone who actually is for loose nukes. It's like supporting the idea that children are our future. McCain does stuff that ENRAGES people on the right.

Anyway, I'm done. Not because of the usual immature "I'm dones" that sometimes get issued on here talking about baseball or politics, but more because I can't believe I've had to spend an hour on this site over the last day defending the guy I'm NOT voting for. I could end up being labelled a concern troll or something, and who needs that.

Laexile wrote:

Monkeyboy wrote:Nevermind that he supports such wars.

Monkeyboy wrote:And frankly, McCain's votes supporting Bush's policies on torture and illegal rendition have taken away any right for him to act like the good soldier, IMO, but that's a separate issue, one which I know you don't want to hear about because you already have your mind made up about it, like most people do when it comes to McCain and torture.

If McCain loses statements like these are why he'll lose. The idea that John McCain wants to at war isn't true any more than it is that Barack Obama wants to be at war. Obama wants to increase the number of US troops fighting the Afghan insurgency, but he has avoided people thinking he's pro-war. The Democrats have been able to reframe McCain as wanting Americans to die for 100 years and the idea has stuck.

John McCain does not now nor has he ever supported torture. In the articles Monkeyboy cites there's no indication what "extra measures" are. McCain has never wavered that torture produces bad intelligence and that it sets up Americans to be tortured overseas. He knows this because he was tortured overseas and did provide bad intelligence.

When McCain was sponsoring the torture bill most forms of torture were banned. McCain couldn't get all forms banned because of the threat of fillibuster and Presidential veto. He compromised. It's how bills get passed. The guy gets on Bill O'Reilly, a hero to people he needs to vote for him, and tells O'Reilly that he's wrong on torture. Yet the Democrats have framed McCain as in favor of torture. McCain has done nothing to counter that.

John McCain is the same as he was in 1999. I don't think he's changed is position on any issue. In 1999 people didn't know him. He stood up to Bush. So people decided he believed the opposite of what Bush believed. It wasn't true. Since then every compromise that McCain has made to get bills passed has been scrutinized by those on the left and right. It's not easy when both sides are against you. McCain has been defined by them.

"The Feinstein Amendment would have accomplished all of these objectives, but Senator McCain voted against it, presumably because he wishes that the CIA be permitted to continue the use of other of its enhanced techniques, apart from waterboarding. Those techniques are reported to include stress positions, hypothermia, threats to the detainee and his family, severe sleep deprivation, and severe sensory deprivation. Senator McCain has not explained which of these he thinks are not torture and cruel treatment, nor which he would wish to preserve for use by the CIA. But if the President does as he has promised and follows Senator McCain's lead by vetoing this bill, the CIA will continue to assert the right to use all of these techniques -- and possibly waterboarding, as well."

Actually, it looks as though "enhanced techniques" WERE discussed and, frankly, they all sound torturous to me. That said, I do not believe that John McCain supports torture.

John McCain has never been for torture. He continually speaks against it. He believes the CIA has to have certain latitude, but that doesn't include torture. John McCain remains committed to campaign finance reform. That he isn't championing it right now isn't a flip flop. McCain's views haven't changed on immigration. He realizes America won't go along with his guest worker program until after the border is secure. He remains committed to the guest worker program. John McCain has never flip-flopped on abortion. He has a 100% pro-life voting record. He has said, however, that he believes abortion is a state issue because there is nothing in the Constitution about it. McCain remains anti-ethanol. That's why he wouldn't campaign in Iowa before the Caucuses. McCain has never opposed tax cuts. He, however, doesn't support tax cuts without the requisite spending cuts. He has voted for tax cuts 72% of the time. Sometimes the bills or the timing doesn't make sense.

The closest you can get to flip-flopping is McCain courting the religious right, you name it. He has been critical of them in the past. He has come to realize that even if he doesn't agree with them, they are still voters. So he brings them his message. His message doesn't change when he courts the religious right. Since he still has a message they dislike the religious right is infuriated by this. How can he expect their votes if he won't go conservative with his positions?

John McCain's voting record isn't something that can be summed up in a sound bite. He actually examines bills rather than just mailing in his vote. Because, on some issues, he is neither far left or far right, he might vote yes on a bill on an issue and then no the next time. Barack Obama votes Democratic Party line. So his votes can be summed up simply. That makes him an easy sell. The Democrats know if they keep pushing McCain as a flip-flopper they'll win. They're doing a good job of that.

traderdave wrote:"The Feinstein Amendment would have accomplished all of these objectives, but Senator McCain voted against it, presumably because he wishes that the CIA be permitted to continue the use of other of its enhanced techniques, apart from waterboarding. Those techniques are reported to include stress positions, hypothermia, threats to the detainee and his family, severe sleep deprivation, and severe sensory deprivation. Senator McCain has not explained which of these he thinks are not torture and cruel treatment, nor which he would wish to preserve for use by the CIA. But if the President does as he has promised and follows Senator McCain's lead by vetoing this bill, the CIA will continue to assert the right to use all of these techniques -- and possibly waterboarding, as well."

Actually, it looks as though "enhanced techniques" WERE discussed and, frankly, they all sound torturous to me. That said, I do not believe that John McCain supports torture.

The techniques are reported to be those. Are they? Shouldn't we know that before making a judgement? Does the truth count or just what people want to believe? Senator McCain does need to explain what he does approve of and how it's not torture. We should wait until then to make a judgement. He shouldn't be let off easy on this issue. If he is supporting "enhanced" techniques they will clearly have to not be torture or he is being inconsistent and has no place to stand on the issue. John McCain's stances may not be extreme either way on many issues he needs to give detailed explanations of where he stands. We shouldn't let him off easy. He's running for President. It's way too important.

Now on fivethirtyeight.com: Will Carroll's Candidate Health Report

McCain had a problem yesterday with the teleprompter. But if only for family-business reasons, he won't be vetoing anyone's beer. (Insert "you can have it when you pry it from cold, wet hands" joke.)