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POPS McCain And The G.I. Bill As this helpful Boston Globe piece explains, the original bill was curtailed during the relative peace of the 1980s, capping benefits at just under $10,000 per year. The new bill, which Webb introduced with Chuck Hagel and Frank Lautenberg and which John Warner has cosponsored, would raise the cap on the benefit to match the cost of the most expensive public university or college in any given state.
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POPSMcCain's Hot Air: Chris Horner
situation — and that his EPA will implement something faster than anything the EPA has ever done before. Which is another way of describing his vow today to give the economy up to two years to bring emissions back down to 2005 levels. He says that the free-ride granted to most of the world proved the undoing of these “Protocols”. The fact that none of the parties which promised emission reductions have any clue how to actually reduce emissions, and therefore are not doing so, would seem to me to be a more central feature in Kyoto’s failure. First, McCain’s conceit in this speech and in his global-warming views generally are impervious to changing evidence: the problem of man-made climate change is real, bad, and here now. Second, McCain’s ultimate goal for “doing something” is, at best, unclear. He says “The goal in all of this is to assure an energy supply that is safe, secure, diverse, and domestic.” It has failed in Europe. He tries to elide this fact, but fails.
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POPSMcCain’s Assault On Reason: Dr. Roy W. Spencer So, here we are with bad science ready to support bad policy decisions that will lead to bad economic times ahead, and no presidential candidate who is willing to ask the hard questions. While we hate to be pandered to by politicians, in this case I can only hope that they really are pandering — that this is hot air and not prospective policy.
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POPSRon Paul Supporters Plan Public Revolt In the last three months, Paul's forces, who donated $34.5 million to his White House effort and upward of a million total votes, have, as The Ticket has noted, been fighting a series of guerrilla battles with party establishment officials at county and state conventions from Washington and Missouri to Maine and Mississippi. Their goal: to take control of local committees, boost their delegate totals and influence platform debates.
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POPSBob Barr Plans To Enter Presidential Contest As Libertarian and says federal authorities have seized powers not granted by the constitution, and believes US forces should be brought home from Iraq. The Libertarian Party stands for non-interference by the US government in the personal and business lives of Americans, and advocates lower taxes, a smaller government and more individual freedom. The 59-year-old said he was not concerned about the prospect of damaging McCain, possibly among conservative voters whom the Republican candidate has had trouble courting. Independent and third parties have faced a tough task in modern US election history of breaking the dominance of the Democratic and Republican parties, though several candidates have played a spoiler role. Many Democrats still blame consumer advocate Ralph Nader, who has already announced a 2008 run, for depressing former vice president Al Gore's vote in 2000, and helping George W. Bush to capture the presidency.
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POPSBattle Of the Proxy Incumbents Fiction can be fun! Ultimately though, this fanciful bit of twaddle is unlikely to stick, what with McCain's voting record so thoroughly refuting it. And in a lot of ways, that's too bad. If only we could look back at McCain's votes and comments on the wildly effective investment income tax cuts and find a man who embraced pro-growth fiscal policy as eagerly as Bush, we might be better assured of the continuity of certain beneficial policies that Obama so laments.
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POPSObama & Hamas: McCain Camp Responds: Andy McCarthy We understand why Senator Obama doesn't want to engage in a debate over leadership and judgment with John McCain, but the American people demand that debate take place. Just today, the president of Iran, whom Senator Obama wants to meet with unconditionally, called the state of Israel a 'stinking corpse.' Iran is the paymaster and state sponsor of Hamas. In his victory speech this week, Senator Obama stated that 'wisdom' is meeting with our enemies, including Iran's Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, North Korea's Kim Jong Il, Venezuela's Hugo Chavez and Cuba's Raul Castro. John McCain couldn't disagree more. Rather than giving tyrants and dictators the prestige of meeting with an American president, John McCain will instead meet with the champions of human freedom around the world and opposition leaders fighting for liberty
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POPSBarack Obama Smarter Than A Fifth Grader? I guess Barack Obama will ease up on the old-geezer remarks about John McCain. If John McCain, 71, got the different militia groups in Iraq confused during a trip earlier this year, you can blame it on his advancing years, as the Democrats are so quick to point out. But what’s Obama’s excuse at age 46? Who doesn’t know we have 50 states? And there’s a difference between 100,000 and 100,000,000. Early signs of senility? Or is it more evidence that Obama is not a stickler for details. It might be time for Obama to stop calling McCain an old man. texasfred.net
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POPSA Conservative Crisis Of Followership: David Frum So, 2008 is not 1988. The problems are different and so must the solutions be. The Reagan themes do not carry the power they once did. The conservative voting majority is not a majority any more. To compete and win this year Republicans have to adapt and change, not revert and revive. The country has changed since 1988. Polls capture a shift to the left on economic issues. The once decisive tax issue has faded altogether, and no wonder: 80 per cent of Americans now pay more in payroll taxes than in federal income taxes. Americans care less about taxes than healthcare and fuel prices, issues where Republicans offer few solutions and speak with something less than passionate urgency. Americans are expressing a new pessimism about upward mobility and their children’s chances of leading a better life – an understandable reaction to the stagnation of median wages since 2000. Even on the signature issue of the war on terror, Americans are turning away from Republican ideas.
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POPSIs Four Months+Three Weeks Enough Experience? In contrast, John McCain's 26 years in Congress, 22 years of military service including 1,966 days in captivity as a POW in Hanoi now seem more impressive than ever. At 71, John McCain may just be hitting his stride.
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POPSSupreme Court Judges: Judge, Not Legislate But just as McCain has asked voters to check his opponents' track record, a glance at his is heartening. McCain, unlike a number of fellow GOP senators, voted in favor of Ronald Reagan's failed nomination of Robert Bork to the Supreme Court. And as National Review Online's Jim Geraghty notes, McCain characterized as "a largely unknown quantity" George H.W. Bush's nomination of Justice David Souter — who now usually votes with the high court's liberal contingent. We know that Sens. Clinton and Obama want the federal judiciary to be a liberal quasi-legislature. McCain this week committed himself to buttressing the federal courts' integrity as what they were meant to be: nonpolitical tribunals, dedicated to upholding the Constitution.
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POPSNo Gas Price Relief In Sight Global demand will continue to increase, not just through the summer, but forever. The only answer is to increase supply (domestically if we can't get it on the global market) while continuing investments in research and development and upgrades to our aging infrastructure.
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POPSRepublicans Assail Ethanol Production But Mr. McCain and others said those rules should be suspended to put more corn back into the food supply for animal feed, and to encourage farmers to plant other crops.
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POPSMcCain-Jindal? Another McCain staffer called my attention to this finding in the latest Fox News poll: McCain led Obama in the straight match-up, 46 to 43. Voters were then asked to choose between two tickets, McCain-Romney vs. Obama-Clinton. Obama-Clinton won 47 to 41. That reversal of a three-point McCain lead to a six-point deficit for the McCain ticket suggests what might happen (a) when the Democrats unite, and (b) if McCain were to choose a conventional running mate, who, as it were, reinforced the Republican brand for the ticket. As the McCain aide put it, this is what will happen if we run a traditional campaign; our numbers will gradually regress toward the (losing) generic Republican number.
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POPSDNC Chairman Joe Andrew Is Urging Clinton Supporters To Switch May 1, 20 Dear Friends: I have been inspired. Today I am announcing my support for Senator Barack Obama for President of the United States of America. I am changing my support from Senator Clinton to Senator Obama, and calling for my fellow Democrats across my home State of Indiana, and my fellow super delegates across the nation, to heal the rift in our Party and unite behind Barack Obama. The hardest decisions in life are not between good and bad or right and wrong, but between two goods or two rights. That is the decision Democrats face today. We have an embarrassment of riches, but as much as we may love our candidates and revel in the political process that has brought Presidential politics to places that have not seen it in a generation, we cannot let our family affair hurt America by helping John McCain.
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POPSBarack Obama's Worst Nightmare On Media Tour The poll shows Clinton beating Republican candidate John McCain, 50 percent to 41 percent, in a potential matchup, while Obama would be tied with McCain, leading 46 percent to 44 percent. Among the white voters polled, Clinton received 43 percent to McCain's 48 percent, while Obama landed only 38 percent to McCain's 51 percent. David Axelrod, Obama's chief strategist, appeared clearly worried about Wright's affect on his candidate's campaign. "We don't have any control over Reverend Wright," Axelrod told The Times of London. "There's not a thing we can do about it. "Obviously, I don't think we would have encouraged him to go on a media tour."
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POPSPresidential Bid By Georgia Ex-Congressman Instead of siphoning votes from Sen. McCain (R-Ariz.), Barr said that his support would come from “disaffected Republican voters, Ron Paul supporters and independent voters and Democratic voters who believe in a strong message of civil liberties.” To him, both the Republican McCain and Democratic Sens. Hillary Rodham Clinton (N.Y.) and Barack Obama (Ill.) fail to offer “a real choice” in November, especially on his No. 1 issue, reducing the size of government. Of course, there’s the chance that Barr’s campaign won’t make much of an impact. “I can’t imagine Bob Barr or any other Libertarian candidate making any difference in this election,” said Charlie Cook, editor of the Cook Political Report. “This is likely to be a massive-turnout election, which will wash out the impact of fringe candidates on either end of the spectrum.”
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POPSCongress Is Full Of Bold-Faced Liars What’s the only thing worse than Republicans on a spending spree? Democrats on a spending spree. Or maybe Republicans on a spending spree when they know the Democrats are going to take the heat. Either way, your representatives in Washington D.C. are a bunch of dirty filthy liars. Take the time today, right now, to write to your representatives and let them know how you feel about what they are doing. They still need our votes to get elected, so what you say really does matter to them. How can the people who are supposed to be running the country on our behalf do such a crappy job and lie about it when the facts are so obvious. In 2004 the Democrats took control of congress promising to fix the earmark problem. Instead of fixing it, they are doing their best to outdo the spending of the Republican controlled congress before them. This isn’t a partisan problem, it’s a problem all Americans need to be aware of, and take action to fix.
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POPSA Maverick Climate Policy For example, in Phase I of the European Union's Emissions Trading Scheme, which started three years ago, a huge misallocation of emissions quotas led to a collapse in the price of carbon from $40 to 40 cents. At that price, there was no incentive to reduce emissions, which is why Phase I was an abject failure. Even a functioning cap could have only a limited effect on emissions. Energy-intensive industries would have every incentive to move their operations to countries without carbon controls, like China. As a result, McCain's plan would cause a net reduction not of greenhouse gas emissions, but of American jobs. The Arizona senator's plan might not shrink emissions, but it will surely grow government. (and raise billions of dollars) McCain does not offset this increase in government revenue with tax cuts elsewhere in the budget, so government would get bigger. He has said that he wants to promote "green jobs," and indeed he would be doing so, by adding green bureaucrats.
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POPSBill To Open Refuge To Drilling If Crude Hits $125 "The goalposts of what's reasonable have moved quite a bit lately," Halff said. "One hundred and twenty-five dollars is just $15 away. It doesn't sound quite as farfetched as it did a few months ago." But environmentalists say they're confident that Murkowski and Stevens simply don't have 60 votes in the Senate to overcome a filibuster that would allow the bill to be heard. It's equally unlikely that a Democratic-led House of Representatives would even consider hearing the legislation, said Myke Bybee, a spokesman for the Sierra Club. "No amount of oil and no amount of money is worth despoiling the Arctic Refuge," Bybee said. "I don't think there's support for opening up a special place like the Arctic Refuge at any cost, at any amount of oil or at any cost of oil."
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POPSRomney Joins McCain On Fundraising Trail Since then, McCain has praised Romney repeatedly as someone who is certain to continue playing a large role in the GOP. Romney, for his part, has suggested that he’d accept the No. 2 spot on the ticket, though some Republicans privately speculate that he’s looking ahead to 2012 and a possible repeat run. Neither man appeared especially fond of the other during the campaign. Romney cast McCain as outside of the GOP’s conservative mainstream and a Washington insider who contributed to the problems plaguing a broken system. McCain, in turn, argued that Romney’s equivocations and reversals on several issues indicated a willingness to change his positions to fit his political goals.
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POPSHow McCain Can Win the Base Mr. Jindal, who was elected to Rep. David Vitter's seat when Mr. Vitter ran for U.S. Senate in 2004, was re-elected for a second term with 88% of the vote. That's not enough experience? It's as much experience in Congress as Barack Obama has to show for his three years. Oh, and by the way, Mr. Jindal, in his last term, had an American Conservative Union rating of 100, with 96 for both terms. In addition he has consistently taken the No New Taxes pledge proposed by Americans for Tax Reform. In 1991 he was a young Hill staffer working for Rep. Jim McCrery. One day Mr. McCrery asked him to look over some Medicare plans being proposed in committee. A couple of days later, he brought back to the boss a totally revised system that was so impressive that Mr. McCrery remembered him and in 1995 introduced him to Gov.-elect Murphy J. Foster Jr. Mr. Jindal, at the age of 24, was appointed secretary of the Louisiana Department of Health and Hospitals.
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POPSClinton, McCain, Obama's Passport Files Snooped State Department spokesman Sean McCormack said the violations of McCain and Clinton's passport files were not discovered until Friday, after officials were made aware of the unauthorized access of Obama's records and a separate search was conducted.
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POPSBaghdad Rocked As McCain, Cheney Visit McCain met with Deputy Prime Minister Barham Saleh on Sunday and planned to meet with Gen. David Petraeus, the top U.S. commander in Iraq, the U.S. Embassy said. Further details of the visit were not released for security reasons, the embassy said. Before leaving the United States, McCain, who was making his eighth trip to Iraq, said the tour to the Middle East and Europe was for fact-finding purposes, not a campaign photo opportunity. McCain, the senior Republican on the Senate Armed Services Committee, was accompanied by Sens. Joe Lieberman, an independent, and Republican Lindsey Graham, two top supporters of his presidential ambitions. The weeklong trip will take McCain to Israel, Britain and France.
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POPSTo Die For NAFTA Hillary won Ohio denouncing the NAFTA deal Bill Clinton cut. The lady gets it. McCain admits to knowing almost nothing about economics and is now being advised by my old friend Jack Kemp. In a Wall Street Journal essay bemoaning my views, Kemp concedes, "I'm on the advisory board of Toyota North America and now drive a hybrid Lexus." Ex-secretaries of state and Cabinet officers, ex-senators and congressmen, and ex-White House aides are getting rich working for foreigners who are carting off American jobs, American technology, American markets, American factories -- and America's future. Look at the Bush-McCain record: $4 trillion in trade deficits, $2.5 trillion in manufactures alone. One in every six manufacturing jobs, 3 million, gone. With America borrowing $2 billion a day to pay for foreign goods, we have seen a collapse of the dollar, the price of gold quadruple to $1,000 an ounce, oil soar to $107 a barrel and gas heading toward $4 a gallon.
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POPSDances With Mitt>>>How Long Will McCain Play Coy? On the other hand, the Pennsylvania primary in on April 22nd, and it seems likely that Hillary will make up some ground there, keeping the competition alive. Having a Romney underticket, with its implications for party unity would be an excellent contrast with the shambles apparent among the Democrats. Aside from the perceptual issues, fund-raising gets that much easier as well. My guess? Two to three more weeks before McCain announces Mitt as running mate.
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POPSPrying The Nomination Away One Finger At A Time >>>Rich Lowry: Hillary Shameless Will to Power<<<< When Hillary said at the beginning of her campaign that she's in it to win it, she meant it. Hillary Clinton's shameless will to power will keep her in the race for the Democratic presidential nomination to the bitter end, according to National Review Editor Rich Lowry. She's not electrifying on the stump, her campaign is dysfunctional, and truth be told shes not particularly experienced. What Hillary has is a shameless will to power, and a near lock on an old-school Democratic coalition built on working-class whites. Obama has downplayed the possibility of taking the vice presidential slot, but hasn't totally ruled it out, and until he does, doubts will remain about whether he has the stomach for what Hillary will drag him through.
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POPSCarbon Output Must Near Zero To Avert Danger Sen. Barbara Boxer (D-Calif.), who is shepherding climate legislation through the Senate as chairman of the Environment and Public Works Committee, said the new findings "make it clear we must ACT NOW to address global warming." "It won't be easy, given the makeup of the Senate, but the science is compelling," she said. "It is hard for me to see how my colleagues can duck this issue and live with themselves." The Earth has already warmed by 0.76 degrees Celsius (nearly 1.4 degrees Fahrenheit) above pre-industrial levels. Most scientists warn that a temperature rise of 2 degrees Celsius (3.6 degrees Fahrenheit) could have serious consequences.
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POPSCould Earmark Moratorium Really Be On The Way? The GOP may be falling behind the Democrats, with House Speaker Nancy Pelosi moving toward a moratorium. In the Senate, courageous freshman Democrat Claire McCaskill of Missouri supports the DeMint amendment. She could be joined by her choice for president, Barack Obama. These developments encouraged Flake to say: "If Democrats actually move ahead with an earmark moratorium before Republicans, the Democrats will get the credit for eliminating earmarks, and, frankly, they'll deserve it."
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POPSDownside Of Obama Strategy And Hillary's Advantage Even some Obama advisers see a real problem. "Ultimately, all that matters is how the nominee stacks up against John McCain," said one adviser "Right now, Barack is not connecting with the children of the Reagan Democrats. That's a real concern." Obama rejects the charge that he has failed to reach important segments of the party, noting that he has shown he can crack Clinton's coalition of working-class voters, women and Latinos with his wins in the bellwether state of Missouri, the swing state of Virginia and the Rust Belt redoubt of Wisconsin. He also showed that he can expand the battleground into the coveted Mountain West, with his convincing win in Colorado. "I don't buy into this demographic argument," Obama said. "Missouri, Wisconsin, Virginia -- in many of these states we've won the white vote and the blue-collar vote. "A lot of the states he's winning are states that we're not going to win in November. It's not a strategy that bodes well",said a Clinton supporter.
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POPSClinton's One Plausible Path To The Nomination Barack Obama won 11 out of 11 primaries and caucuses from Super Tuesday to Feb. 19. Hillary Clinton won three out of four contests on March 4. Suddenly, the look and feel of the Democratic presidential race were different. Yet the delegate count has changed hardly at all. Three victories in four states with 370 delegates netted Clinton only about a 20-delegate edge, leaving her still about 100 delegates behind. On the night that John McCain officially clinched the Republican nomination, the course of the Democratic race seemed less clear and more fraught with peril than ever. All of this is a windfall, surely, for McCain -- unless he forgets that his party is in trouble and that he needs to make an affirmative case for himself and his policies. And loudly enough to overcome the din as Clinton and Obama pummel each other.
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POPS List Of Plausible Picks For McCain's Vice President Five meet all the important criteria to be John McCain's running mate this fall. They are: Mitt Romney, Tim Pawlenty, John Kasich, Rob Portman, and Chris Cox. They edge out other superb candidates such as Mike Pence, Mark Sanford, and Paul Ryan. (former Oklahoma Gov. Frank Keating.) To review, the best candidate 1) will be obviously ready to become president at a moment's notice; 2) will be a Reaganite conservative; 3) should at least put into play a state, region, or constituency that otherwise would be far less attainable for McCain or for a typical Republican; 4) should be well rounded, preferably with at least interesting non-political item on his resume; 5) should have some executive or serious organizational experience; 6) should be intelligent, widely respected, good on TV, and preferably "cool" in persona to balance McCain's sometimes fearsome intensity; and 7) should clearly be a reformer with a record of occasionally bucking the establishment on behalf of principle.
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POPS Alive! Karl Rove Neither Mr. Obama nor Mrs. Clinton can win with delegates elected in primaries and caucuses. In a real irony, the Democratic Party will settle its nominee battle with the aristocratic device of superdelegates -- party apparatchiks, interest group leaders and elected officials, many of whom gained their post years ago. What happens if a bloc of superdelegates remains uncommitted until the convention? And what will happen to Florida and Michigan, which presently have no delegates? In three recent polls, (Fox, LA Times/Bloomberg and Gallup), almost twice as many Democrats support Mr. McCain as Republicans support Mr. Obama. Three times as many Democrats support Mr. McCain as Republicans back Mrs. Clinton. So what must Mr. McCain and Mrs. Clinton do, especially in the seven weeks before Pennsylvania? Mr. Obama has no real record of voting and working across party lines on high profile issues like judges, immigration, intelligence reform, troop funding and energy.
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POPSWe Are Making Our Selves, OUR NATION, POORER - And Other Nations RICHER. If we drill in these places then we will lower the cost of energy WORLDWIDE and that will help the world's economy. IT'S A WIN-WIN-WIN-WIN-WIN: We make more money; we send less overseas to unsavory nations; we lower our costs and the energy costs of the whole world - and it doesn't harm the environment one iddy-biddy bit. SO WHY DON'T WE DO THIS!? Where's the leadership from Bush!? WHY HASN'T MCCAIN SPOKEN OUT ABOUT THIS!? Where's the freakin' Congressional GOP!? Useless.
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