THIS is supposed to make me feel better?

Make me feel safer? Are you kidding me?

SACRAMENTO -- Cindy McCain, wife of Sen. John McCain, is headed to the Republic of Georgia, where tensions between the government and Russia have sparked international concern and have become an issue on the presidential campaign trail.

McCain announced to a group of fundraisers in Sacramento that his wife was headed to the country, but the campaign did not provide any details about the trip.

McCain has been very aggressive in his condemnation of Russia's invasion of Georgia, and his campaign has been critical of Obama's more measured response when Russian tanks first pushed into the country.

McCain spokeswoman Jill Hazelbaker confirmed Cindy McCain is enroute to the nation and said she is visiting as part of the World Food Program. She said she will meet with Georgian President Mikheil Saakashvili and visit with wounded Georgian soldiers.

Since the outbreak of violence, several people seen as emissaries from the two campaigns have visited. McCain sent Sens. Joseph I. Lieberman (I-Conn.) and Lindsay Graham (R-S.C.); Sen. Barack Obama signed off on a trip by his new vice presidential running mate, Sen. Joe Biden (D-Del.)

Cindy McCain lied

She didn't forget. She didn't misspeak. She didn't embellish. She didn't stretch the truth.

She lied:

The latest embellishments come from the McCain camp. Cindy McCain has repeatedly referred to herself as an “only child.” This week came news that she actually has two half sisters, although apparently she had very little contact with them.

The McCain campaign had also put out the story that Mother Teresa “convinced” Cindy to bring home two orphans from Bangladesh in 1991.

Mrs. McCain, it turns out, never met Mother Teresa on that trip. (Once contacted by the Monitor, the campaign revised the story on its website.)

Such exaggerations may simply be the product of a faulty memory or a desire to be “better” than one is in a political culture that requires larger-than-life idols. But with the advent of the fact-checking obsessed blogosphere – and a media racing to keep up – such self-aggrandizement doesn’t last as long as it once did.

“It’s all about myth-making,” says Darrell West, the director of governance studies at the Brookings Institution in Washington. “Politicians love to turn their stories into great epics, and sometimes they have to embellish to smooth out the story line.”

“But now there are too many professional and amateur fact-checkers,” he says. “And there are hundreds if not thousands of bloggers who have detailed knowledge on specialized information, so you really can’t get away with stretching the truth anymore.”

Can you imagine what would have happened in the media if Michelle had lied like Cindy lied?

Exactly.

crossposted at American Street

Won't Cindy take offense?

Here...

I thought only John McCain could call her that...

Update: Cindy proves she may deserve the slur.

Now that John McCain has declared he will be a pro-life president...

That means he won't declare war on anyone, right?

And if he's so pro-life, does he accept the newest move to declare birth control an abortifacient?

Then we get to ask if Cindy McCain used birth control, because obviously good GOP wives wouldn't dare.

It must be nice to have so many houses

That it's easy to forget to pay taxes on one of them:

Via Huffpost, Newsweek reports that John and Cindy McCain have failed to pay taxes on their beach-front home in La Jolla, California, for the last four years and are about to enter into default. The article reports that the McCains had been delinquent in paying taxes until Newsweek inquired about the matter. The McCains then paid off $6,744.42 in back taxes, but still owe more.

Always new

The top ten idiots.

They really want to go there?

Right wingers want to go after Michelle Obama? They think she's the weak link and think it's a good idea to go after the candidates' spouses?

Because Cindy McCain is a mother lode of scandal. Having an affair with a married man, bookkeeping for the Keating Five, going through drug addiction and stealing from a charity? Want to compare these problems against a non-existent tape of Michelle saying the word 'whitey'?

Is that the only thing they have?

I thought McCain was going to run a positive campaign....

The president is an employee of the American people

And if an employee refuses to share his or his wife's tax returns when applying for the job, it arouses suspicions.

According to McCain's personal financial disclosure, Cindy McCain's investments include two mutual funds -- American Funds Europacific Growth fund and American Funds Capital World Growth and Income fund -- that are listed by the Sudan Divestment Task Force as targets for divestment.

"Those have been sold as of today," said McCain spokesman Brian Rogers. Both funds have holdings in Oil & Natural Gas Corp., an India-based company that does business in Sudan. The American Funds Capital World Growth & Income Fund also has holdings in Petrochina, a Chinese government-owned oil company with vast investments in Sudan.

Last year, in a speech on energy policy to the Center for Strategic and International Studies in Washington, McCain cited China's investments in Sudan as an example of regimes that survive off free-flowing petro dollars.

"The politics of oil impede the global progress of our values, and restrains governments from acting on the most basic impulses of human decency," he said. "There is only one reason China has opposed sanctions to pressure Sudan to stop the killing in Darfur: China needs Sudan's oil."

[snip]

But Cindy McCain files separate tax returns which she has not made public. Last week, she said she would never make her returns public even if her husband becomes president.

Later Wednesday, the Democratic National Committee reiterated its call for Cindy McCain to release her tax returns. "The fact the McCain family was holding Sudan-related investments even as John McCain was out on the campaign trail calling for sanctions is a reminder of why the American people expect and deserve full disclosure from their elected officials," said DNC spokesman Damien LaVera.

Cindy McCain is an heiress to a $100 million dollar estate, so it probably is a little hard to keep track of all the investments. But her husband is running for president. In fact he's been running for president for YEARS.

So you think the investments would have been rinsed through and cleaned up by now, wouldn't you?

Cindy, what else are you not telling us?

McCain's yesterday's statement can be negated today because tomorrow it will be different again

Arianna Huffington:

Through a spokesperson with the colorful name Tucker Bounds, McCain has denied telling me he didn't vote for Bush in 2000. "It's not true," Bounds told the Washington Post, "and I ask you to consider the source."

My sentiments exactly -- because John McCain has a long history of issuing heartfelt denials of things that were actually true.

He denied ever talking with John Kerry about his leaving the GOP to be Kerry's '04 running mate -- then later admitted he had, insisting: "Everybody knows that I had a conversation."

He denied admitting that he didn't know much about economics, even though he'd said exactly that to the Wall Street Journal. And the Boston Globe. And the Baltimore Sun.

He denied ever having asked for a budget earmark for Arizona, even though he had. On the record.

He denied that he'd ever had a meeting with comely lobbyist Vicki Iseman and her client Lowell Paxon, even though he had. And had admitted it in a legal deposition.

And those are just the outright denials. He's also repeatedly tried to spin away statements he regretted making (see: 100-year war, Iraq was a war for oil, etc.).

So, yes, by all means, "consider the source."

Update 5/9: Gee, was I right or was I right?:

Two Hollywood actors who dined with Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.) in early 2001 at actress Candice Bergen's home confirmed Thursday that he told the assembled group he did not vote for George W. Bush in the 2000 election.

In separate phone interviews, Bradley Whitford and Richard Schiff -- both of whom starred in the television political drama "The West Wing" -- said the senator made the remarks after he spoke at length about his reservations about Bush becoming president.

So pretty soon the media is going to say McCain misspoke. It's called LYING, you guys!

Asking a question of John McCain

Can get you questioned by the Secret Service.

The question:

Q: This question goes to mental health and mental health care. Previously, I've been married to a woman that was verbally abusive to me. Is it true that you called your wife a (expletive)?

The word is cunt, as in:

Three reporters from Arizona, on the condition of anonymity, also let me in on another incident involving McCain's intemperateness. In his 1992 Senate bid, McCain was joined on the campaign trail by his wife, Cindy, as well as campaign aide Doug Cole and consultant Wes Gullett. At one point, Cindy playfully twirled McCain's hair and said, "You're getting a little thin up there." McCain's face reddened, and he responded, "At least I don't plaster on the makeup like a trollop, you cunt."

The answer:

McCain: Now, now. You don't want to... Um, you know that's the great thing about town hall meetings, sir, but we really don't, there's people here who don't respect that kind of language. So I'll move on to the next questioner in the back.

The response:

Clive businessman Marty Parrish was escorted from Sen. John McCain's town hall meeting by Des Moines police and members of the Secret Service after asking McCain if he had called his wife Cindy an expletive in 1992.

Parrish, an ordained Baptist minister who holds a master's degree in political science, was questioned by Secret Service agents before being released. He was not charged in the incident. Parrish asked whether McCain called his wife Cindy an expletive related to the female anatomy, as has been alleged in the book "The Real McCain," written by Dem strategist Cliff Schecter.

I wonder if his name is now on the Terrorist Watch List because he dared ask a question...

And Senator, we really do want to know if you were crass and hot headed enough to curse at your wife undeservedly and in front of reporters. Because it would give us a snapshot of whether you could lose your temper and undeservedly bomb .. say... Iran.

So. Senator. Did you call your wife a cunt?

Where is Cindy?

And just what is she hiding? Besides her 100 million?

Sen. John McCain reported income of $405,409 last year, but the money he spent on charitable contributions, wages to household staff, alimony and taxes ate up most of that -- showing how his wife, Cindy, helped support a wealthy lifestyle.

McCain on Friday released his 2007 and 2006 tax returns, but not those of his wife, whose income from ownership of a beer distributor far exceeds $1 million, according to financial disclosure statements filed previously in the Senate.

McCain, the presumptive Republican presidential nominee, has never before released his tax returns. Outside groups estimate the McCains' combined wealth to be between $28 million and $100 million.

How odd. What has Cindy invested in that McCain doesn't want us to see? War profiteering? Defense contractors? Big oil? Enron? China?

Shouldn't we be able to see where her money is because it clearly affects him? Show us the tax returns like every other candidate has done and let the American people decide whether it is unimportant or not.