U.S. Sen. John McCain just sent an unmistakable message that he will stand up for Wall Street hedge fund managers and stand against those knocked out of work by the recession Wall Street caused.

McCain voted against H.R. 4213, the unemployment insurance, jobs and tax extenders bill, legislation that would extend unemployment benefits at a time when jobs are scarce. Meanwhile, banks are afraid to lend under threat from hedge fund managers, who are happy with the status quo because they benefit from a 15 percent tax rate on their income. That’s a little more than half what middle class wage earners pay on their taxes.

McCain’s top five 2008 campaign contributors were Wall Street banks and he suspended that campaign to race back to Washington, D.C. to help bail out these banks.

Meanwhile, Arizona voters have overwhelmingly agreed to raise their own taxes to protect schools, public safety and health care services.

“I’ll stand up for Arizona workers and businesses who pull their own weight. I’ll stand up for those who lost their jobs because far-off financiers’ risky schemes collapsed,” said U.S. Senate candidate Rodney Glassman. “John McCain seems happy to stand up for his friends who caused this mess.”

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U.S. Senate candidate Rodney Glassman is calling on John McCain to prove his independence and donate to Gulf Coast communities the $2.4 million he has taken from Big Oil.

McCain has taken $2.4 million in campaign cash from Big Oil companies and $36,000 from British Petroleum since 2006. McCain’s most well-known presidential campaign slogan was “Drill Baby, Drill!”

Friends of the Earth has identified McCain as the top fundraiser from Big Oil, headlining a bi-partisan list of the “BP 10.” The environmental group is calling on each Washington insider to show their own energy independence by giving the money to help the families of shrimpers, restaurant owners and roughnecks who have been financially devastated by the Deepwater Horizon oil spill.

“Arizona’s thoughts and prayers go out to our fellow Americans coping with a disaster created by Big Oil,” said U.S. Senate candidate Rodney Glassman. “John McCain should show he stands with the people on the gulf coast and show Arizona he is not beholden to Big Oil’s special interests by giving his Big Oil contributions to relief efforts.”

McCain once sponsored climate change legislation and supported energy independence. The United States has three percent of the world’s oil reserves and consumes 20 percent of the supply.

“McCain was once a voice for the environment, now he has become an agent of the companies that take hard earned tax dollars, fight against safety regulations and ensure America remains addicted to oil. The people of Arizona need a U.S. Senator who will look to a sustainable future and invest in renewable energy and innovative green technologies. For Arizona this includes solar.” Glassman said. “We can create thousands of Arizona jobs and improve our national security by not borrowing money from China to send to Saudi Arabia.”

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So this is the web video that the McCain campaign put out 15 seconds after the debate ended. It attacks Barack Obama for saying John McCain is right. Here is why I think it is stupid.

First, the video makes it look like that by virtue of agreeing with John McCain on something you aren’t ready to lead. Agreeing with John McCain on a lot of things certainly implies questionable judgment, yet I don’t think that was the message they were going for.

Second, it’s misleading. Every time Obama said he agreed with McCain on something, he followed up with how he disagreed with McCain on the big picture or the way to address the problem. It’s like someone saying “America needs to be energy independent” and another saying “I agree that we need to be energy independent, but your plan isn’t the right way to get there.”

Third, it attacks the concept of bi-partisan cooperation. If anything Obama is showing where there is some common ground, which would be the basis of coming to consensus across party lines to find solutions to America’s challenges. This ad shows that when it comes to working across party lines, McCain is all talk. This is why the members of the two parties rarely work together. As soon as they do it becomes fodder for political attacks.

Here is a video created by the Huffington Post that shows Obama calling McCain out when he was dead wrong, and this poor judgment has cost our country dearly.

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Eartha Meltzer’s stunning piece in the Michigan Messenger just hit my RSS reader, and I have to say I am both astonished and disgusted by what could be the most wicked attempt at disenfranchisement in decades.

The chairman of the Republican Party in Macomb County Michigan, a key swing county in a key swing state, is planning to use a list of foreclosed homes to block people from voting in the upcoming election as part of the state GOP’s effort to challenge some voters on Election Day.

Michigan Republicans are trying to further victimize those Americans that have been hit the worst by the disastrous Bush/McCain economic policies by taking away their right to vote for the change they most desperately need.

The Michigan Republicans are planning on challenging these foreclosed Americans as ineligible voters for not being “true residents.”

What’s worse is that McCain’s campaign is benefiting big-time from these predators.

The Macomb GOP’s plans are another indication of how John McCain’s campaign stands to benefit from the burgeoning number of foreclosures in the state. McCain’s regional headquarters are housed in the office building of foreclosure specialists Trott & Trott. The firm’s founder, David A. Trott, has raised between $100,000 and $250,000 for the Republican nominee.

The Macomb County party’s plans to challenge voters who have defaulted on their house payments is likely to disproportionately affect African-Americans who are overwhelmingly Democratic voters. More than 60 percent of all sub-prime loans — the most likely kind of loan to go into default — were made to African-Americans in Michigan, according to a report issued last year by the state’s Department of Labor and Economic Growth.

And if you want to see a real contrast between the values and priorities of the Democratic and Republican parties, look at this:

Statewide, the Republican Party is gearing up for a comprehensive voter challenge campaign, according to Denise Graves, party chair for Republicans in Genessee County, which encompasses Flint. The party is creating a spreadsheet of election challenger volunteers and expects to coordinate a training with the regional McCain campaign, Graves said in an interview with Michigan Messenger.

Where Democratic organizations recruit election protection volunteers, the Republicans recruit volunteers to challenge the right to vote of American citizens. Instead of comprehensive voter registration and empowerment campaigns, they run a “comprehensive voter challenge campaign.” Just think about that for a moment. The McCain campaign is training people how to keep other Americans from voting, predominantly African-Americans.

J. Gerald Hebert, a former voting rights litigator for the U.S. Justice Department, has this to say about the Republican efforts:

“At a minimum what you are seeing is a fairly comprehensive effort by the Republican Party, a systematic broad-based effort to put up obstacles for people to vote,” he said. “Nobody is contending that these people are not legally registered to vote.

“When you are comprehensively challenging people to vote,” Hebert went on, “your goals are two-fold: One is you are trying to knock people out from casting ballots; the other is to create a slowdown that will discourage others,” who see a long line and realize they can’t afford to stay and wait.”

ACORN’s David Lagstein sums it up best: “The Republican-led state Senate has not moved on the anti-predatory lending bill for over a year and yet [Republicans] have time to prey on those who have fallen victim to foreclosure to suppress the vote.”

We need to be aware of these attempts to disenfranchise American citizens in all of our states and communities and do everything we can to fight against the Republicans in their war against American voters.

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I think that the McCain Campaign’s recent BarackBook stunt was stupid, so I decided to create a mock-up of what McCainBook would look like. Click to enlarge.

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JOHN MCCAIN: “Now we’ve got the cables. We’ve got talk radio. We’ve got the bloggers. I hate the bloggers. We’ve got all kinds of sources of information.”

I wonder if the cables ever hang out with the internets.

Hat tip to Crooks and Liars.

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