As the presidential campaign enters its final days, John McCain is emerging as a case study in what psychologists term "projection." Perhaps still feeling guilty about the mountain of cash from Charles Keating which almost ended his career 20 years ago, McCain is instead attacking Barack Obama's stunning fundraising success. As it turns out, McCain's […]

As his appearance on Fox News Sunday showed once again, "Joe the Plumber" is John McCain's newest human shield. Wurzelbacher is just the latest prop rolled out to either lend McCain attributes he obviously lacks or to offer the supposed maverick a cloak of invulnerability to criticism. As it turns out, he joins a long […]

In much the same way that night follows day, a desperate John McCain predictably played the "socialist" card against Barack Obama. Ratcheting up his recent scurrilous attacks that Obama's tax cuts for working Americans constitute "welfare," McCain in his Saturday radio address followed running mate Sarah Palin and Ohio Senator George Voinovich in branding Obama […]

In his speeches and with his latest ad, John McCain is committing a double-fraud when it comes to tax policy. In a spot featuring ersatz plumber and BFN (best friend for now) Joe Wurzelbacher, McCain called Barack Obama's tax plan for working families "welfare." As his duplicitous spot reveals, John McCain apparently knows very little […]

On Thursday, candidates John McCain and Barack Obama took a break from the down and dirty battles of the election to poke fun at each other during the annual Al Smith dinner in New York. But if McCain and Obama's night of graciousness and good-natured ribbing was a welcome break from the highly-charged campaign, it […]

In the wake of last night's third and final presidential debate, a media frenzy has surrounded John McCain's latest human shield, "Joe the Plumber." But while reporters and bloggers continue to plumb the depths of Republican Joe Wurzelbacher's voter registration, unpaid taxes, distant links to Charles Keating, business license and other miscellany, one useful nugget […]

For the past two weeks, the McCain campaign and its allies have been waging an aggressive smear campaign designed to portray Barack Obama as out of the mainstream on the issue of abortion. But with his dripping condescension about the "health of the mother" in Wednesday's final presidential debate, John McCain turned the tables on […]

On Wednesday, the New York Times performed an election year public service with an analysis that was part history lesson and part thought exercise. Taking the example of the S&P 500 going back to Herbert Hoover, the Times rightly concluded that the Democratic Party "has been better for American pocketbooks and capitalism as a whole." […]

After days of conflicting rumors from his own campaign, John McCain emerged Tuesday to offer his new, new plan for the economy. While parroting Barack Obama's proposals to Monday to end taxes on unemployment benefits and a temporary reduction in the tax rates on IRA withdrawals, the centerpiece of McCain's latest economic policy spasm is […]

After a weekend of rampant speculation that Monday would produce yet another incarnation of John McCain, the only comeback from his campaign appears to be the text of his 2004 speech to the Republican National Convention. McCain's latest transformation - after McCain the Goldwater disciple, the Reagan footsoldier, the Maverick, the neocon, the experienced one, […]