Now that Hillary Clinton has at last formally withdrawn from the race for the White House, the eyes of America and the world will focus on Barack Obama and his Republican rival Senator John McCain.

While Obama will surely press his credentials as the embodiment of the American dream – a handsome, charismatic young black man who was raised on food stamps by a single mother and who represents his country’s future – McCain will present himself as a selfless, principled war hero whose campaign represents not so much a battle for the presidency of the United States, but a crusade to rescue the nation’s tarnished reputation.
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While both candidates will speak at the AIPAC summit today, and they will both probably say similar things, here’s some highlights from McCain’s speech:

The threats to Israel’s security are large and growing, and America’s commitment must grow as well. I strongly support the increase in military aid to Israel, scheduled to begin in October. I am committed to making certain Israel maintains its qualitative military edge. Israel’s enemies are too numerous, its margin of error too small, and our shared interests and values too great for us to follow any other policy.

Honestly, I doubt Obama will say anything much better, but there you go.

Update:

Here’s Obama’s speech. A bit better (less talk of war with Iran, more talk of working with people, including Palestine, for peace), but there is still this:

At the same time, we must preserve our total commitment to our unique defense relationship with Israel by fully funding military assistance and continuing work on the Arrow and related missile defense programs. This would help Israel maintain its military edge and deter and repel attacks from as far as Tehran and as close as Gaza. And when Israel is attacked, we must stand up for Israel’s legitimate right to defend itself.

Not an increase in aid as McCain proposed, but not a decrease either.

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We’re entering record-breaking territory here. Since The Real McCain 2 launched this past Sunday, over 1 million people have seen it! It’s been the #1 most viewed video on YouTube, #1 on the viral video chart, and the #2 story on the Digg Election 2008 page. We’re reaching an audience that most cable news shows only dream of.

We knew the press’s inexplicably blind love for McCain has led to a dearth of accurate reportage regarding his record on the issues. We knew the corporate media have been going far easier on McCain than on either Obama or Clinton. Now that we have the numbers, we know that the general public hungers for the truth about the so-called “Maverick.”

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The Democratic primary was not the only one going on in Pennsylvania yesterday. The Republican primary was also conducted and the results need to be examined. There is practically no chance for anyone but John McCain to win the nomination, but the voters in Pennsylvania have sent him a message that they are not 100% behind him.

While the talk has been about the Democratic race and the conflict between Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama splitting the party in two while John McCain can devote his time to working on the general election, the vote in the primary sends him a message that he needs to connect with members of his own party first.

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For months now, I have had this recurring nightmare: the Bush/Cheney junta figures out how to stay in power. I used to think they’d come up with some version of an our-national-security-is-at-too-high-a-risk-to-permit-elections scenario and refuse to leave, just hanging on to the reins themselves, hunkering down against all critics. That, however, was apparently too big a leap for even these most calloused of neo-Cons to attempt (though I’m not confident the American people couldn’t have been cowed into doing without elections). Now their strategy is apparently to do what a year ago seemed beyond belief: they’ve actually found a candidate to run under their banner who promises to keep the Ship of State on the precise course they’ve steered for the past eight years.

That was certainly a very tough search. Even more incredibly, they managed to find someone to do so that seems capable of doing it with a straight face! There is in my estimation no more straight-faced person in American politics today than John McCain., and after hearing some of his recent public pronouncements, there may be no more boring politician on the American scene than John McCain. The guy seems capable of making even Fred Thompson at his most somnambulant sound comparatively exciting. However, we’ve had yawn-inducing candidates many times before. That is part of the price we pay for Democracy. What is scary about McCain is not that he is capable of putting us to sleep but that he is hell-bent on replicating every blunder of Dubya’s administration…and tacking on a few doozies of his own for good measure.

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Republican presumptive nominee John McCain has ignored official campaign expenditure limits and has overspent millions in the primary.

According to spending reports filed last week by McCain’s campaign, the Arizona senator has broken the limits set by the presidential public financing system.

Candidates such as McCain, who have committed to public financing, are only allowed to spend up to $54 million on the primary. McCain, however, spent $58.4 million.

This is while lawyers of the 71-year-old senator contend that the spending cap does not apply in the current situation.

They allege since the Republican hopeful announced after February 6’s Super Tuesday victories that he would withdraw from the matching-funds program he had entered last year, the spending cap does not apply to him.

“The FEC regulations specifically state that candidates who do not receive public funding payments from the US Treasury are exempt from the primary spending ceiling,” expounded one of his senior campaign officials.

Chairman of the commission David Mason, however, warned McCain last month that his withdrawal request had not yet been granted.

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McCain Advisers Lobbied for Europeans to Win Air Force Tanker Deal

WASHINGTON — A co-chairman of Senator John McCain’s presidential campaign and other top campaign advisers and supporters were lobbyists for the European Aeronautic Defense and Space Company, part of a group that beat out Boeing for a $35 billion contract to build aerial refueling tankers for the Air Force.

Boeing, which has filed an appeal with the Government Accountability Office, is expected to focus at least in part on Mr. McCain’s role in the deal, including letters that he sent urging the Defense Department, in evaluating the tanker bids, not to consider the potential effects of a separate United States-Airbus trade dispute.

That contract was won by the European Aeronautic Defense and Space Company, known as EADS, the corporate parent of Airbus, and Northrop Grumman, the military contractor based in Los Angeles.

Mr. McCain has long expressed pride at having a central part in scuttling an earlier Air Force plan to lease the tankers from Boeing. That deal collapsed in 2004 in a major corruption scandal that sent two Boeing executives to prison.

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What could go wrong?

[T]here’s increasing speculation in Washington and among McCain’s supporters that the Arizona maverick will instead run to the center and pick a more liberal vice presidential candidate.

The theory goes like this:

Barack Obama has become his party’s front-runner because he has expanded the Democratic Party. His big rallies draw crowds of nearly 20,000, unheard of for a primary campaign…

This is a strategy that simply won’t work for McCain because there is a certain bloc of core, loyal and principled conservatives who will never vote for him no matter what he says now, who he picks to run with, or who the Democratic nominee might be…

So, McCain’s only option is to run hard for the middle and hope that his centrist ticket can beat the soaring rhetoric and high promises of a likeable guy like Obama with little experience and a liberal voting record.

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“Former candidate Mitt Romney has formally endorsed Republican john McCain for president and will encourage his 286 delegates to support McCain. Developing…”

Romney is trying to get into the “circle” of jerks which includes other politicians so he can receive support again when he runs in 2012 or in future. Obviously some politicians thought Romney had done nothing to contribute to them so they ridiculed him. By endorsing McCain, he is setting up his future presidential bid.

Conservatives can now see that the truly wasted vote was for Romney.

Romney Timeline

• Romney tried to out-”liberal” Ted Kennedy for a Senate seat but then argued that was just a phase he was going through and now he is “Mr. Conservative.”
• People believed him and voted for Romney as the “electable” anti-McCain.
• Romney took many Paul votes in NH, NV, etc. and then Romney flipflops by dropping out days after saying he was staying in (making him less electable than still-in Ron Paul after all; you have to be in it to win it).
• Then Romney flipflops by trying to throw all his anti-McCain votes to McCain.

I would be furious if I were a Romney voter or delegate.

What are Romney voters/delegates saying?

Ron Paul’s Top Contributors - Follow the Money

1. U.S. Army
2. U.S. Navy
3. U.S. Air Force
The Department of Defense comes in at #19.

John McCain’s top 3 are:
1. Merrill Lynch
2. Citigroup, Inc
3. Blank Rome , LLP

Neither the U.S. Army, U.S. Navy, or U.S. Air Force show up in John McCain’s top 20 contributors.

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A shining example of how the media engaged in a witch hunt as part a coordinated campaign to sink the presidential campaign of Congressman Ron Paul is when they attacked him for vaguely racist comments made by other people in the 80’s, while completely ignoring the fact that Republican frontrunner John McCain openly said he hated “gooks” more recently.

James Kirchick’s New Republic hit piece, which was echoed by every sector of the establishment media for weeks on end, was a vitriolic, biased, and agenda-driven smear attack that lumped in half-truths, outright lies and guilt by association in an attempt to demonize Ron Paul as a racist.

Bear in mind that the comments Kirchick based his article on were largely drawn from newsletters put out in the 1980’s of which Ron Paul had no editorial control over. Despite the fact that the comments were made by other people, Ron Paul apologized anyway and yet the feeding frenzy that ensued blatantly exposed the fact that the establishment had been chomping at the bit to seize on anything negative to attack the Congressman with.

Meanwhile, John “Keating Five”, ahem I mean John “anti-corruption” McCain, disgracefully said he hated “gooks” in public for assembled reporters to hear during his previous presidential campaign in 2000.

“I hated the gooks. I will hate them as long as I live,” McCain said on his campaign bus.

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“The Constitution has little relevance to the government, but still it’s interesting to note that the crazed John McCain was born, to his state-connected parents, in the Panama Canal Zone. The Zone, the product of US imperialism under the crazed Teddy Roosevelt, was never officially US territory. That is, McCain was born in a foreign country, and therefore not eligible to be president, according to the Constitution.”

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