SEDONA, Arizona - Taking a few days off from the presidential race, Sen. John McCain nonetheless keeps the media on its toes with a daily, early morning trip for coffee.

The Republican presidential candidate, who is staying at his comfortable home in the hills near Sedona, has been driven with staff, Secret Service, reporters, photographer and a television crew in tow to a Starbucks.

There, he quickly gets a cup to go and returns home.

On Friday, the six-vehicle motorcade — four SUVS and two vans– drove him 19 miles roundtrip to a Starbucks in Sedona.

On Thursday, the entourage of nine vehicles made a similar trip to a Starbucks in Cottonwood and back.

Members of the media are kept well away, confined inside the two vans, where they occupy themselves determining what McCain ordered, whether Cindy McCain’s shorts were white or khaki, how much fuel the trips consumed or why the candidate doesn’t just send an aide out for the coffee instead. 

For the record, on Thursday McCain had a cappuccino. Mrs. McCain’s shorts were khaki on Friday. The questions of fuel consumption and why an aide doesn’t fetch the coffee remained unanswered.

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Photo credit: Reuters/Mark Avery (Make-up artist tends to McCain at forum in California)

CHARLES CITY, Indiana - Democratic presidential candidate Barack Obama tried on Thursday to win over members of one of his most skeptical audiences: senior citizens.

Those voters have tended to be a strong base for Obama’s rival Hillary Clinton, a former first lady and New York senator. At 60, Clinton is older than the 46-year-old Obama and is seen by many older voters as the more experienced candidate.

Visiting an assisted living center in Indiana, the Illinois senator shared stories about his grandfather’s service in World War II, his grandmother’s frugality and his mother’s battle with cancer.

He also expressed empathy for the daily struggles of older people worried about paying for prescription drugs and health care while trying to get by on a fixed income.

In a proposal that was popular with the group, Obama promised to try to eliminate the income tax on their Social Security benefits.

He also underlined his opposition to a temporary suspension of the federal gasoline tax — an idea proposed by presumptive Republican presidential nominee Sen. John McCain  and also supported by Clinton.

Obama said the gas tax suspension “isn’t a real solution” because it would provide, at most, only a short-term fix to the energy problem. He also said it would divert money from the fund used to pay for highway repairs.

One questioner mentioned an idea that Clinton has proposed — suspending the gasoline tax and making up the difference for the highway trust fund with a tax on windfall profits of oil companies.

The questioner, an older woman, asked whether a short-term fix to the energy problem was such a bad thing, remarking jokingly that “a lot of us are nothing but short-timers.”

That drew laughter from the group, prompting Obama to say: “You look like you’re going to be around for a while.”

Obama seemed to impress the crowd after a nearly hour-long visit.

Lavera Schroeder, 82, said she found Obama to be a “normal person” who “talked on our terms” and did not use confusing words or jargon that the group would not understand.

“He said his mother tried to get by,” she said. “That’s how we grew up. We ate molasses and home-made bread.”

But Schroeder said she would not be able to vote for Obama in Tuesday’s primary election in Indiana because she had been in the hospital and not had a chance to register.

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- Photo credit: Reuters/John Gress (Democratic presidential candidate Barack Obama campaigns at the CMW specialty metals factory in Indianapolis, Indiana, on April 30)

GRAHAM, N.C. - Offering Americans a summer tax holiday from soaring gasoline prices as another example of why she is the best candidate for president, Sen. Hillary Clinton took aim on Monday at her Democratic Party rival Sen. Barack Obama.

“This is one of the big differences in this race. My opponent Senator Obama opposes giving consumers a break on the gas tax at the federal level. I support it. I understand the American people need some relief,” she told supporters gathered in a fire station here.

“Meanwhile Sen. (John) McCain says he’s all for a gas tax holiday, but he won’t pay for it. Well, that is a mistake because we can’t give up on building and repairing our roads. My plan is 100 percent paid for with the windfall profits tax on Big Oil,” she said.

U.S. drivers are reeling from soaring costs at the pump that have seen gasoline reach $4 a gallon in some parts of the country, with an average price around the country of $3.60, after oil scaled a record near $120 a barrel.

Clinton’s plan would use the windfall profits on oil to subsidize the federal gas tax holiday over the summer to make sure the country’s Highway Trust Fund — used to build and repair roads and bridges — doesn’t suffer.

Major oil companies report first quarter earnings this week and are expected to chalk up bumper profits thanks to record crude prices, with Exxon Mobil forecast to see net income rise around 22 percent to over $11 billion.

“Last year, Exxon Mobile made $40 billion in profits. So you paid through the roof and they made out like bandits. I don’t think those profits were the result of a free and fair market,” she said, blaming energy market manipulation.

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Photo credit: Reuters/Frank Polich (Clinton campaigns in Indiana).