John McCain to Come to Santa Barbara

Watch John McCain on video at http://therealmccain.com/

More on John McCain, from Matt Welch, Editor-in-chief of the libertarian Reason Magazine:

http://www.democracynow.org/2008/2/4/the...

"He finished near the bottom of his class, 894th out of 899 at the Naval Academy in Annapolis. And he was a real sort of maverick in the kind of Top Gun way, always getting into trouble, sneaking off to drink beer and smoke cigarettes and date strippers, and had a pretty colorful kind of straining-at-the-leash type of life, because he knew he didn’t really have a choice but to fulfill his sort of family’s destiny.

And he became a flyboy in the Navy and was involved in one of the worst—and in fact, I think the worst—Navy sort of tragedy after World War II, which was the Forrestal fire in Vietnam, which killed 130-plus men. He tumbled off the nose of his airplane as it was sort of exploding on the deck of this aircraft carrier in Vietnam. And then on his—I believe his fifth mission was flying over Vietnam on a—Hanoi on a bombing run and was shot out of the sky and, of course, became a prisoner of war for five-and-a-half years, where he, you know, withstood torture with great bravery and distinction. He eventually cracked, like most prisoners of war do under the duress, and taped some statements, you know, disparaging his country and apologizing for his crimes, but stuck it out and then came back to the US in ’73 and became the Navy liaison to the Senate and eventually started his political career in 1982. ... He started in Congress. He humorously—he had divorced his first wife, married a young woman named Cindy—Cindy McCain now, Cindy Hensley. Her father was—owned the exclusive beer distributorship for Budweiser in Maricopa County in Arizona, and so was—had a lot of money. And he was shopping around basically for a congressional seat. On the day that Congressman John Rhodes announced that he was resigning—or actually even before he announced, but on the day that he decided that he was resigning from his seat, John told Cindy, you know, buy a house in the district. So he kind of moved to Arizona with the explicit idea that he would immediately run for Congress and then use that as a springboard to run for the Senate seat when Barry Goldwater retired in 1986.

And what’s very little sort of understood—one of many things that’s little understood about John McCain is that from the beginning he was spending crazy amounts of money. You know, he’s this champion of campaign finance, but he wildly outspent his opponents in Arizona time and time again, especially at the beginning of his career, with his father-in-law’s money, with money from Charles Keating and money from other people, and built up this political career and ended up going to the Senate and becoming the maverick we all know and love. "

etc.

After his comments about opening up the coast to oil drilling, I think the people of Santa Barbara would run his rear end out of town.

This visit is a waste of time. The few Santa Barbarans who will vote for McCain, would vote for him regardless of his visit. The rest of us who have the good sense to realize that a McCain presidency would be an extension of the Bush presidency won't be swayed by anything he has to say.

McCain is a war monger, no doubt.

Unfortunately this town is a bit hypocritical in it's choice of candidates for President.

http://www.antiwar.com/pilger/?articleid...

No doubt Obama is a better choice than McCain, but I cannot support Obama as he is a war hawk. Hillary was even worse. We only really had one choice this Presidential election, and due to lack of media coverage and complete laziness by our citizenry, Ron Paul's campaign did not flourish. He was the only candidate who really wanted peace with other nations and to bring our troops home. He was the only one who understood that our military and CIA presence in the Middle East and around the world is the primary reason why we are hated by some, including terrorists.

He is the only candidate outspoken on the benefits of medicinal cannabis and putting an end to the failed war on drugs.

On top of that, he thinks that drilling our coastline should be a decision left up to the local community, not the federal government. He is the ONLY one who spoke out about environmental issues in an intelligent way. For example, during the industrial revolution large corporations colluded with the federal government so that they could be allowed to pollute. Polluting the air and water and land is NOT showing consideration for the property rights of others, which is already in the constitution and has been ignored for over a century. It's time to STOP ignoring this and other parts of the constitution. The federal government therefore has the power to tax and prevent all sorts of pollution. We need to stop subsidizing foreign oil. These are all positions that this great man held, and nobody would listen.

Good job, America, you really screwed this one up. We actually had a chance to put things back into the right place.

Torture is wrong, McSame flip-flops on his stance on torture.
A vote for McCain is voting for more war crimes to be committed with our tax dollars. Mccain = W's third term!
My conservative republican friends can't stand Bush or McSame.

Gas prices are hitting all-time highs. Our country is in the midst of a recession thanks in part to our crippling dependence on oil, so what's John McCain's plan? Will he hold the corporate leaders of the energy industry accountable when he addresses them today in Houston? Probably not, considering they are some of his biggest fund-raisers.

The Center for Responsive Politics finds that McCain has accepted over $1 million from the oil and gas industry. Many of McCain's top advisers have lobbied for big oil, which is why he now acts in their best interests, opposing environmental legislation and alternative energy plans. And that's exactly why we want everyone to know The REAL McCain.