Wednesday, March 28, 2007

McCain Supports Gay Marriage on MySpace

Oh -- this is great.

John McCain's MySpace page uses a well-known template that was developed by Newsvine Founder and CEO Mike Davidson (see his original HERE) -- then McCain's site HERE). Davidson has said that people can re-use the template, if they give him credit for it on their site.

McCain used it, didn't give credit. Also, instead of putting the images it uses on his own site, he linked to the ones at Davidson's MySpace. That means that every time you look at John McCain's MySpace, you're using up bandwidth on Davidson's server. This is considered Not Cool on the Internet, hot-linking to somebody else's images.

But Davidson had the perfect solution. Since he had control, basically, over stuff that appears on McCain's web site ... he changed it.

As TechCrunch explains:
Davidson decided to play a small prank on the campaign this morning as retribution. Since he’s in control of some of the images on the site, he replaced one that shows contact information with a statement:
Today I announce that I have reversed my position and come out in full support of gay marriage ... particularly marriage between two passionate females.

Here are the before and afters:


I think that's fair enough, don't you?

[Thanks to Crooks and Liars for pointing this one out.]

4 Comments:

Anonymous Anonymous said...

This time, McCain's FLIP FLOP on a social issue was a spoof, but he has really FLIP FLOPPED on social issues before. Remember this whopper from the 2000 Presidential campaign?

McCain has been the focus of conservative wrath following comments made to The Chronicle's editorial board last week about overturning Roe vs. Wade, the 1973 Supreme Court decision legalizing abortion.

``I'd love to see a point where it is irrelevant and could be repealed because abortion is no longer necessary,'' McCain told The Chronicle then. ``But certainly in the short term, or even the long term, I would not support repeal of Roe vs. Wade, which would then force X number of women in America to (undergo) illegal and dangerous operations.''

But on Sunday, in an interview with CNN's Wolf Blitzer, McCain said he favors the ultimate repeal of Roe vs. Wade, ``but we all know, and it's obvious, that if we repeal Roe vs. Wade tomorrow, thousands of young American women would be (undergoing) illegal and dangerous operations.''

On Monday, McCain's campaign released a clarification: ``I have always believed in the importance of the repeal of Roe vs. Wade, and as president, I would work toward its repeal. . . . But that . . . must take place in conjunction with a sustained effort to reduce the number of abortions performed in America.

``I will continue to work with both pro-life and pro-choice Americans so that we can eliminate the need for abortions,'' McCain pledged.

But in a letter to National Right to Life Committee president Wanda Franz, McCain wrote, ``I share our common goal of reducing the staggering number of abortions currently performed in this country and overturning the Roe vs. Wade decision. I truly hope this clarifies any ambiguity on my position.''


http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/1999/08/25/MN54171.DTL&hw=mccain+roe+wade&sn=004&sc=70

Republican presidential candidate John McCain, when asked Wednesday what he would do if his 15-year-old daughter Meghan became pregnant and wanted an abortion, said it would be a "family decision."

"The final decision would be made by Meghan with our advice and counsel," McCain said, speaking of himself and his wife Cindy.

"I would discuss this issue with Cindy and Meghan, and this would be a private decision that we would share within our family and not with anyone else," McCain told reporters in New Hampshire on board his campaign bus nicknamed "The Straight Talk Express. "Obviously I would encourage her to bring, to know that baby would be brought up in a warm and loving family, but the final decision would be made by Meghan with our advice and counsel."


http://archives.cnn.com/2000/ALLPOLITICS/stories/01/26/mccain.abortion/index.html

These are not the statements of a straight talking maverick. They are the statements of a FLIP FLOPPER. If McCain was truly interested in reducing the "staggering number of abortions currently performed in this country" he'd support federal funding for abstinence-based comprehensive sex education programs. The vast majority of American parents want our public schools to teach our teens how to protect themselves and each other should they fail at abstinence as most of them do. Does McCain support federal funding of abstinence-based comprehensive sex education programs that teach about life-saving contraception? Apparently not.

Q: “What about grants for sex education in the United States? Should they include instructions about using contraceptives? Or should it be Bush’s policy, which is just abstinence?”

Mr. McCain: (Long pause) “Ahhh. I think I support the president’s policy.”


http://thecaucus.blogs.nytimes.com/2007/03/16/mccain-stumbles-on-hiv-prevention/

If McCain truly wants to reduce the demand for abortion, he will FLIP FLOP away from limiting federal funding to abstinence-only programs and instead support the REAL Act (http://lautenberg.senate.gov/newsroom/record.cfm?id=254458) to fund abstinence-based comprehensive programs.

March 29, 2007 3:16 PM  
Anonymous Anonymous said...

BAGHDAD, April 2 — A day after members of an American Congressional delegation led by Senator John McCain pointed to their brief visit to Baghdad’s central market as evidence that the new security plan for the city was working, the merchants there were incredulous about the Americans’ conclusions.

“What are they talking about?” Ali Jassim Faiyad, the owner of an electrical appliances shop in the market, said Monday. “The security procedures were abnormal!”

The delegation arrived at the market, which is called Shorja, on Sunday with more than 100 soldiers in armored Humvees — the equivalent of an entire company — and attack helicopters circled overhead, a senior American military official in Baghdad said. The soldiers redirected traffic from the area and restricted access to the Americans, witnesses said, and sharpshooters were posted on the roofs. The congressmen wore bulletproof vests throughout their hourlong visit.

“They paralyzed the market when they came,” Mr. Faiyad said during an interview in his shop on Monday. “This was only for the media.”

He added, “This will not change anything.”

At a news conference shortly after their outing, Mr. McCain, an Arizona Republican, and his three Congressional colleagues described Shorja as a safe, bustling place full of hopeful and warmly welcoming Iraqis — “like a normal outdoor market in Indiana in the summertime,” offered Representative Mike Pence, an Indiana Republican who was a member of the delegation.

But the market that the congressmen said they saw is fundamentally different from the market Iraqis know.

Merchants and customers say that a campaign by insurgents to attack Baghdad’s markets has put many shop owners out of business and forced radical changes in the way people shop. Shorja, the city’s oldest and largest market, set in a sprawling labyrinth of narrow streets and alleyways, has been bombed at least a half-dozen times since last summer.

At least 61 people were killed and many more wounded in a three-pronged attack there on Feb. 12 involving two vehicle bombs and a roadside bomb.

American and Iraqi security forces have tried to protect Shorja and other markets against car bombs by restricting vehicular traffic in some shopping areas and erecting blast walls around the markets’ perimeters. But those measures, while making the markets safer, have not made them safe.

In the latest large-scale attack on a Baghdad market, at least 60 people, most of them women and children, were killed last Thursday when a man wrapped in an explosives belt walked around such barriers into a crowded street market in the Shaab neighborhood and blew himself up.

...Mr. McCain was asked about a comment he made on a radio program in which he said that he could walk freely through certain areas of Baghdad.

“I just came from one,” he replied sharply. “Things are better and there are encouraging signs.”

He added, “Never have I been able to go out into the city as I was today.”

Told about Mr. McCain’s assessment of the market, Abu Samer, a kitchenware and clothing wholesaler, scoffed: “He is just using this visit for publicity. He is just using it for himself. They’ll just take a photo of him at our market and they will just show it in the United States. He will win in America and we will have nothing.”

A Senate spokeswoman for Mr. McCain said he left Iraq on Monday and was unavailable for comment because he was traveling.


http://www.nytimes.com/2007/04/03/world/middleeast/03mccain.html?_r=1&hp&oref=slogin

Now McCain's got the Drudge report doing FLIP FLOPS for him.

CNN reporter slams Drudge's charge that he 'heckled' McCain; Exclusive video confirms his claim
04/02/2007 @ 8:28 am
Filed by Michael Roston and David Edwards

CNN reporter Michael Ware this morning hit back at news aggregator Matt Drudge who accused him on Sunday of "heckling" Republican Senators John McCain and Lindsay Graham at a Baghdad press conference. Video acquired by RAW STORY appeared to show a short press conference without any interruptions and with Ware himself asking no questions during the question and answer session.

On CNN this morning, Ware denied the Drudge Report "exclusive" which ran yesterday and questioned Drudge's source.

"This is a report that was leaked by an unnamed official of some kind to a blog, to somewhere on the internet," Ware told Soledad O'Brien this morning on CNN, according to an unofficial transcript posted at the conservative blog Power Line. "No one has gone and put their name forward. We certainly haven't heard Senator McCain say anything about it or any of his staff have come forward to say anything about it."...


See the video of the Baghdad press conference here:
http://rawstory.com/news/2007/CNN_reporter_slams_Drudges_charge_that_0402.html

April 03, 2007 10:24 AM  
Anonymous Anonymous said...

April 5, 2007, 6:08 pm
What Was He Thinking?

Is it just me, or has the time come to get out the fool’s cap, dust it off and place it smartly on the head of John McCain?

What has happened to that man? He makes a nitwit public remark about the newly “safe” Baghdad in which Gen. David H. Petraeus, commander of the American forces in Iraq, saunters about without a helmet.

When it is learned that the general, being of sound mind, goes out with a small army of Humvees and fully armed bodyguards, McCain is embarrassed.

He backtracks and rephrases weakly, insisting that he didn’t mean to say “without protection.”

He should have left it at that and it would now be quite forgotten.

Where were his advisors?

Instead, he hops a plane to Baghdad and proceeds to stage (the operative word) what must be one of the strangest travesties in modern political history.

We at home are treated to the sight of a gregarious McCain, shopping and giggling in the marketplace — and wearing no helmet. He is, however, clad in a flak jacket. What’s wrong with this picture? A man in a flak jacket selling safety?

Unseen, we learn, are a surrounding force of more than 100 soldiers armed for action, a small fleet of Humvees, strategically placed sharpshooters and streets blocked off for the theatrical occasion. Above are a Black Hawk and two combat helicopters. Did he think we would not find out the extent of this stunt, endangering not only the troops requisitioned for the performance but also the shopkeepers seen with him, marking them as America-friendly with the usual attendant results?

I pictured McCain as a furious movie director, chewing out his cameraman: “You goddamn idiot, you weren’t supposed to show the flak jacket, the soldiers, the armed might … Now I look like a consummate ass!”

Right.

What will daredevil McCain’s next stunt be? Driving in a Nascar race without a seatbelt?

I’ve tried to think of the appropriate caption for the shot of the bare head of the smiling McCain, there in blood-soaked Baghdad. How about “What, me worry?”

(We later learn that there just happened to be an attack an uncomfortably short time later on the very spot that Knievel John and his troupe of conscripted extras just vacated.)

May we return for a moment to the absent helmet? Makes our soldiers look a little sissy doesn’t it, feeling the need of this apparently dispensable piece of equipment? (Raises another question: could a helmetless head in a combat zone contain anything worth protecting?)

As background to this mindless event, we learn that before, during and after it, a hefty number of our soldiers have been killed, along with the usual boxcar load of civilians.

You hate to say it, but it’s hard to imagine even the “Bushies” coming up with such a silly and dangerous jape. It makes Rove & Co. look like statesmen. What politically does McCain hope to gain these days? What will the voters think? Mightn’t a presidential candidate so ardently cheerleading for the extension of this war fall equally in love with a future one?


http://cavett.blogs.nytimes.com/2007/04/05/what-was-he-thinking/

***********************************

FLOP said...

(April 06, 2007 -- 03:37 PM EDT)

Here's a press release just out from 60 Minutes on the McCain Baghdad 'stroll' ...


Presidential candidate Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.) says he misspoke in comments he made about security in Baghdad and acknowledged that heavily armed troops and helicopter gunships accompanied him when he visited a market there. McCain tells this to Scott Pelley in his first interview since the visit for a 60 MINUTES report that will include the only video camera footage of McCain’s market visit, to be broadcast Sunday, April 8 (7:00-8:00 PM, ET/PT).

In two interviews before the Army took McCain and 60 MINUTES on the heavily guarded visit to the al-Shorja market last Sunday, the senator said security had improved in Iraq. Upon his return, he also told a news conference he had just come back from a neighborhood one could walk around in freely. The remarks made headlines and he now regrets saying them. “Of course I am going to misspeak and I’ve done it on numerous occasions and I probably will do it in the future,” says McCain. “I regret that when I divert attention to something I said from my message, but you know, that’s just life,” he tells Pelley, adding, “I’m happy, frankly, with the way I operate, otherwise it would be a lot less fun.” ...


http://www.talkingpointsmemo.com/archives/013482.php

April 07, 2007 8:06 AM  
Anonymous Anonymous said...

Blind Bush followers like McCain need to learn there are consequences for certain campaign photo ops. Twenty-one innocent Iraqis lost their lives after his tax-payer funded publicity stunt. This is outrageous.

The latest massacre of Iraqi children came as 21 Shia market workers were ambushed, bound and shot dead north of the capital. The victims came from the Baghdad market visited the previous day by John McCain, the US presidential candidate, who said that an American security plan in the capital was starting to show signs of progress.

http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/world/iraq/article1604931.ece

More than 100 US troops, tank crews, and helicopter pilots created the illusion of a peaceful marketplace. Those troops and equipment were put at risk so McCain could have his delusional Baghdad stroll. Thank goodness none of them were hurt.

Of all the people to risk soldiers' lives for a political stunt, it is unbelievable that McCain would be the one to stoop so low.

April 07, 2007 10:33 AM  

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