[Anyone] mclame and klondYke Barbie:

[totem at laplaza.org]

To clarify some issues which are missing from the Republican speeches, commercials and talking 
points:
Sen. McCain is no friend of the military and veterans:
In mid 2007, Senator Reid noted that McCain missed 10 of the past 14 votes on Iraq. 

September 2007: McCain voted against the Webb amendment calling for adequate troop rest 
between deployments.  

July 2007:  McCain voted against a plan to drawdown troop levels in Iraq.  

March 2007: McCain was too busy to vote on a bill that would require the start of a drawdown in 
troop levels within 120 days with a goal of withdrawing nearly all combat troops within one year. 

June 2006:  McCain voted against a resolution that Bush start withdrawing troops but with no 
timeline to do so.

May 2006:  McCain voted against an amendment that would provide $20 million to the Department 
of Veterans Affairs (VA) for health care facilities.

April 2006:  McCain was one of only 13 Senators to vote against $430,000,000 for the Department of 
Veteran Affairs for Medical Services for outpatient care and treatment for veterans.

March 2006:  McCain voted against increasing Veterans medical services funding by $1.5 billion in FY 
2007 to be paid for by closing corporate tax loopholes.

March 2004:  McCain once again voted for abusive tax loopholes over veterans when he voted 
against creating a reserve fund to allow for an increase in Veterans' medical care by $1.8 billion by 
eliminating abusive tax loopholes. 

October 2003:  McCain voted to table an amendment by Senator Dodd that called for an additional 
$322,000,000 for safety equipment for United States forces in Iraq and to reduce the amount 
provided for reconstruction in Iraq by $322,000,000.

April 2003:  McCain urged other Senate members to table a vote (which never passed) to provide 
more than $1 billion for National Guard and Reserve equipment in Iraq related to a shortage of 
helmets, tents, bullet-proof inserts, and tactical vests.

August 2001:  McCain voted against increasing the amount available for medical care for veterans by 
$650,000,000. 
  If he can’t even see his way to actually doing what the troops want, or what the veterans need, and 
he doesn’t have the support of veterans, then how can he be a credible commander in chief?
(FACTS garnered from http://www.veteransforcommonsense.org/articleid/9559)

Sen. McCain's flying record:
1. As told by McCain biographer Robert Timberg, "McCain was practicing landings; his engine quit 
and he plunged into Corpus Christi Bay. Knocked unconscious by the impact, he came to as the plane 
settled to the bottom." There was, however, no engine failure with the aircraft.
2. "Flying too low over the Iberian Peninsula," reports Timberg, "he took out some power lines which 
led to a spate of newspaper stories in which he was predictably identified as the son of an admiral."
3. Crash three occurred when McCain was returning from flying a trainer solo to Philadelphia for an 
Army-Navy football game. According to Timberg, McCain radioed, "I’ve got a flameout." He went 
through the standard relight procedures three times. At one thousand feet, he ejected, landing on the 
deserted beach moments before the plane slammed into a clump of trees."
4. assigned to the USS Forrestal as an A-4 Skyhawk pilot. While seated in the cockpit of his aircraft 
waiting for takeoff, a freak accident occurred when a rocket slammed into the exterior fuel tank of 
McCain’s plane. Miraculously, McCain escaped from the burning aircraft, but dozens of his shipmates 
were killed and injured in the explosions that followed.
5. McCain’s final downing came just three months later when his A-4 was hit by antiaircraft artillery 
over Truc Bach Lake near Hanoi, North Vietnam.

McCain points to his eighteen years in Congress as the kind of experience needed to run the country 
as President. Yet the bulk of that time he has simply taken up space. He has no noteworthy 
legislative achievements to his name. The closest thing he has attained to a reputation is for being 
remarkably arrogant and ill-tempered with colleagues, to the point of blithering, profanity-laced 
rages against any who don't see things the way he does. Which is part & parcel of why so few GOP 
members in either house have endorsed him.
(FACTS quoted from http://home.comcast.net/~jimsondergeld/McCainiatheMan.html)

Has McCain-Palin formulated a national security policy, a policy to reduce the huge deficit brought 
about by 8 years of Pres. Bush (for whom McCain voted 90% of the time), a policy to end the Iraq war, 
the Afghanistan war and keep us from war with Iran, a national health care program, a policy to 
protect the environment and a policy to solve the energy crisis besides drilling for oil, drilling for oil, 
drilling for oil and more nuclear power?
I use the repetition because that was the one and only substantive policy statement made by Gov. 
Palin in her acceptance speech.  
The rest of her speech was about her family and vitriolic hatred of Obama.  That's the best she could 
do?
And McCain's speech was also void of policy and long on attacking Obama.  In fact, McCain's 
campaign commercials are already blaming Obama for the mess that McCain and Bush created!!

It is time for a change, and that change is with Barack Obama and Joe Biden.