HOW WORRIED IS McCAIN ABOUT THE HISTORIC LANDSLIDE TAKING SHAPE-- AND HOW DEEP IN THE MUD AND FILTH WILL HE GO TO TRY TO STAVE IT OFF?

McCain's long overdue exposure by the media as a hypocrite sucking up to lobbyists at every opportunity, may have helped him shake loose some money from right-wing loons who hate the NY Times and Washington Post but in terms of voters... didn't quite work out so well, a new Times-CBS poll shows that if the election were held today, Obama would swamp McCain in one of the most historic landslides in the history of American politics. Although, even McCain's dismal 38% looks like an awful big number of people voting for what would be clearly a third term for George Bush's failed presidency.

The McCain campaign is certain they can bring Obama's numbers down with the race card. We're going to have 9 months of vicious Republican attacks on levels we haven't seen in many years. Wonkette found a good one today-- funny if it wasn't so abysmal for a party claiming to be part of the mainstream and not an extremist bunch of crackpots. And McCain and his surrogates won't only be trying to undermine confidence in the next president of the United States by making race and heritage an issue, he plans to spen a great deal of time building on the previously unchallenged lies about his own support for the military. But as my pal Adam proved at Daily Kos today, McCain's record of supporting outr fighting men and women has been exceptionally bad. In fact, if you want more information beyond what Adam has delved into, take a look at the 17 roll calls on the well being of our military personnel since 2003. McCain has voted against our troops, rubber stamping Bush's demands, on every single vote except the one to provide supplemental funds to provide armor for Humvees in Iraq (Senate Roll Call 108, April 21, 2005); he joined with the Democrats to pass that.

But truth and logic-- let alone common decency-- are something Republicans never let come between them and the lust for power. For all the White House's hysterical screaming about the New York Times "dropping a bomb" on McCain's campaign, a Bush press conference in Michigan about McCain's addiction to lobbyist dollars and his blatant hypocrisy about campaign finance reform, sounds like it could be a TV ad for Democrats. George Bush on John McCain and the flow of bribes from the lobbyists propping him up: "He's the person who's been the Washington Insider... What I need to do is make it clear and not let Senator McCain get away with this Washington double talk." Take a look:



[h/t: John Amato]


McCAIN'S ADVERSARIAL RELATIONSHIP WITH TRUTH REARS ITS HEAD AGAIN

McCain must have stopped paying whatever little Dutch boy he had on his payroll plugging the dike because has it ever burst! Today ABC News is reporting that he was lying again when he tried rebutting the NY Times expose about his comfy relationship with lobbyists.

After the story broke, the McCain campaign distributed a lengthy document stating that the senator's commerce committee staff "met with public broadcasting activists from the Pittsburgh area" who opposed a controversial license swap involving Iseman's client, Paxson Communications, before it sent two letters to the Federal Communication Commission urging the commissioners to vote on the issue.

"It never happened," said Jerold Starr, who led the grassroots opposition to the deal as the co-chairman of the Save Pittsburgh Public Television Campaign. "Moreover, we had no idea that McCain had any interest in our local matter."

Starr's co-chair on the campaign, Linda Wambaugh, said that she and Starr handled all the lobbying for campaign.

"We were it. Anything would have come through us," said Wambaugh. "There was absolutely no contact whatsoever-- no meetings, no phone calls, no correspondence."

The McCain response document also claimed that both Paxson's lobbyists and the public broadcasting activists "expressed to staff members their frustration that the proceeding had been before the FCC for over two years. Both parties asked the staff to contact the FCC regarding the proceeding."

"That's a bold-faced lie," said Starr, who wrote about his experience leading the campaign in his 2000 book "Air Wars." "The longer it took, the better our chances were. It meant that the FCC was paying serious attention to our complaint."