WASHINGTON - The presidential campaign trail took a side trip down memory lane today when the Swift Boat Veterans for Truth re-surfaced.

The Swift Boat group was responsible for raising doubts about Democrat John Kerry’s war record in Vietnam, where the Massachusetts senator had served on a small combat vessel known as a swift boat.

The group’s charges were so contentious — it said Kerry did not deserve the combat medals that he subsequently tossed on the steps of the U.S. Capitol to protest the war — that the slogan, “the Swift Boating of John Kerry” became a metaphor for the 2004 campaign that George W. Bush won.

Against that backdrop, one of the Swift Boat veterans turned up on a conference call that Republican John McCain’s camp held to defend McCain’s war record after retired Gen. Wesley Clark, a supporter of Democrat Barack Obama, said just because McCain’s plane was shot down over Vietnam does not make him qualified to be president.

The Swift Boater was retired Col. Bud Day. A reporter on the call asked Day how the current flap over Clark’s comments compared to the Swift Boat flap.

Day said that, well, the charges against Kerry were accurate and the ones against McCain were inaccurate.

“The Swift Boat attacks were simply a revelation of the truth,” Day said.

This prompted the expected outrage from Democrats, including Kerry himself.

“John McCain condemned these kinds of attacks in 2004 when he called the Swift Boat Veterans for Truth ‘dishonest and dishonorable.’  Senator McCain should condemn these remarks and cut ties with the colonel and anyone else connected to SBVT (Swift Boat Veterans for Truth),” Kerry said in a statement.

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Photo: Reuters/Joshua Roberts - Sen. John McCain speaks to National Association of Latino Elected and Appointed Officials at a Washington, D.C. conference on June 28, 2008. 

CINCINNATI - The plate was heaped with a pile of spaghetti, covered with spicy chili, and layered over with a thick blanket of grated cheddar cheese, and it sat in front of Republican John McCain.

Refusing a bib to wear around his neck to catch the fallout, the presidential candidate dove into the plate of “three-way” chili, an early lunch at Skyline Chili, a Cincinnati institution.

He only made it about half-way through the ample serving, and then it was on to Xavier University for a town hall meeting.

After taking questions from the audience for an hour there, he retreated to a side room where he was interviewed by a couple of half-pints, a brother-and-sister team, Spencer and Piper Macke.

The favor was granted because Spencer, 6, had raised $4,000 for a military veterans fund. He and Piper, 5, were shy but got through five questions, including:

Have you ever driven a tank? McCain said he has sat in one, but could not be trusted to drive one.

Has he ever fired an M-16 rifle? No, but he carried a pistol as a Navy flyer.

Is the president like a king? “These days king have very little if any power.”

Was he served food as a prisoner of war in Vietnam?  Yes, often a soup with cabbage and “other things in it that I am happy to say I’ve never identified.”  

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- Photo credit: Steve Marcus

 FRESNO, California — Republican presidential candidate John McCain had a bandage on the top of his head on Monday, but McCain said it was not due to a new bout of skin cancer.

“It was a brush with a low-hanging door,” McCain told reporters at a news conference at Fresno State University.

McCain has had four instances of melanoma — a potentially lethal type of skin cancer — and various other skin growths have been taken off his body over the years.

McCain, 71, said he bumped his head getting out of a car during a visit to Canada last weekend. He said his head “hit the roof a teeny bit.”

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Photo credit:Reuters/Chris Wattie. (John McCain smiles while delivering a speech to the Economic Club of Canada in Ottawa on June 20, 2008)

CHICAGO - Barack Obama skipped a trip to Iowa today because he did not want to interfere with flood recovery efforts there. So instead, he surprised a class of eighth graders by showing up at their graduation ceremony.

Obama was at the Illinois Institute of Technology to hold a roundtable discussion on predatory lending practices. Next door to his event was the graduation ceremony for the Young Women’s Leadership Charter School of Chicago, a school for disadvantaged youth.

When Obama made his surprise entrance at the ceremony, the children and their parents leaped to their feet and cheered, “Obama, Obama.”

They even cheered when Obama told them they should spend their summer preparing for ninth grade. He urged them not to settle for mediocrity, saying a changing world requires better educated Americans.

“What books are you going to read instead of watching TV?” he said.

When he ended his brief remarks, the crowd was still ecstatic that he showed up.

“Change, change, change,” they cried.

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Photo credit: Reuters/John Gress (Obama campaigns in Chicago June 6)

We were about to do a blog item on Bill Clinton’s comment Monday basically saying Hillary Clinton’s presidential campaign had run its course, the day before the last Democratic primaries.

(He told a crowd in Grand Rapids, Michigan, that, “This may be the last day I’m ever involved in a campaign of this kind,” according to NBC News.)

But then we spotted Todd Purdum’s long profile of Bill Clinton in this month’s Vanity Fair magazine.

The article talks in detail about some of the business deals that helped the former president amass a $109 million fortune, wonders whether Clinton’s heart bypass surgery changed him to an angrier man, and reports on his friendships with billionaire bachelor buddy Ron Burkle, sometime movie and music producer Steve Bing and other pals.

The article said there is no proof of “post-presidential sexual indiscretions on Clinton’s part, despite a steady stream of tabloid speculation and Internet intimations that the Big Dog might be up to his old tricks.”

Then it proceeds to get into the rumors.

“Over the last few years, aides have winced at repeated tabloid reports about Clinton’s episodic friendship and occasional dinners out with Belinda Stronach, a twice-divorced billionaire auto-parts heiress and member of the Canadian Parliament 20 years his junior, or at more recent high-end Hollywood dinner-party gossip that Clinton has been seen visiting with the actress Gina Gershon in California. There has been talk of a female friend in Chappaqua, a woman in a bar at a meeting of the Aspen Institute, and a public sighting of Clinton, Bing and a ravishing entourage in a New York elevator that, a former Clinton aide told me, led a business leader who saw them to say: I don’t know what the guy was doing, but it was so clear that it was just no good,” the article says.

The response from Bill Clinton’s office sounded apoplectic.

“A tawdry, anonymous quote-filled attack piece, published in this month’s Vanity Fair magazine regarding former President Bill Clinton repeats many past attacks on him, ignores much prior positive coverage, includes numerous errors, and ultimately breaks no new ground. It is, in short, journalism of personal destruction at its worst,” said “The Office of President Clinton.”

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Photo credit: Reuters/Ana Martinez (Bill and Hillary Clinton during recent campaign stop in Puerto Rico)
    

MIAMI - Republican John McCain’s “Straight Talk Express” bus took a little detour today, depositing McCain at a Cuban-American restaurant in Little Havana.

McCain, who likes to keep a cup of coffee at his side most of the time, decided to sample the espresso served up at Cafe Versailles, ordering a cup at a window for ordering items to go.

Taking a sip from the small ceramic cup, he must have found it a pretty strong brew. He pumped his fist as he tasted the coffee.

“Do I have any enamel on my teeth?” he asked. “Delicious!”

This was after McCain stopped at La Casa del Preso, a memorial to deceased and current political prisoners in Cuba. After a tour inside, he spoke to a group of Cuban-Americans gathered outside.

“Buenas tardes,” he told them, then admitted that was pretty much the extent of his knowledge of the Spanish language.

In English, he proceeded to criticize Cuba’s communist government and vowed that sooner or later the Cuban people would be free.

Somebody in the crowd thought McCain should pick a vanquished Republican adversary, former Massachusetts Gov. Mitt Romney, as his vice presidential running mate.

“Romney for vice,” was one sign held up by people in the crowd.

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Photo credit: Reuters/Carlos Barria (McCain speaks at town hall meeting in Miami)

WASHINGTON - President George W. Bush stirred up the U.S. presidential campaign Thursday by suggesting that Democratic front-runner Barack Obama’s pledge to talk to Iran’s leader amounted to “the false comfort of appeasement.”

“Some seem to believe we should negotiate with terrorists and radicals, as if some ingenious argument will persuade them they have been wrong all along,” Bush said in a speech to the Israeli parliament marking Israel’s 60th anniversary.

Without mentioning Obama by name, he compared “this foolish delusion” to the appeasement of the Nazis ahead of World War Two. 

“As Nazi tanks crossed into Poland in 1939, an American senator declared: ‘Lord, if only I could have talked to Hitler, all of this might have been avoided.’ We have an obligation to call this what it is — the false comfort of appeasement,” Bush said.

The remark drew swift response from Obama, who argues the United States blunders by refusing to talk to the leaders of hostile nations like Iran, Syria and Cuba.

“It is sad that President Bush would use a speech to the Knesset on the 60th anniversary of Israel’s independence to launch a false political attack,” Obama said.

“The president’s extraordinary politicization of foreign policy and the politics of fear do nothing to secure the American people or our stalwart ally Israel,” he said.

Republican candidate John McCain criticized Obama’s pledge to speak directly to U.S. foes, saying “it shows naivete and inexperience and lack of judgment” to consider sitting down with a country like Iran that wants to destroy Israel. “My question is, what does he want to talk about?” McCain said.

Not everyone in Bush’s administration is opposed to talking to Iran. Defense Secretary Robert Gates offered his own ideas just a day before the president’s Knesset speech, telling a diplomatic forum: “We need to figure out a way to develop some leverage with respect to the Iranians and then sit down and talk with them.”

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WASHINGTON - Remember John Edwards? 
    He ran a spirited campaign for the Democratic presidential nomination, never caught much fire and dropped out of the race about, oh, it feels like 10 years ago (actually it was January).
    The former North Carolina senator has kept a low profile ever since and has resisted entreaties from the remaining Democrats, Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton, for his endorsement.
    And he is still resisting, as voters cast ballots on Tuesday in his home state’s Democratic primary election, according to People Magazine, which tracked down Edwards and his wife, Elizabeth.
    Edwards, who was John Kerry’s vice presidential running mate in 2004, told People he likes Clinton’s “tenacity” but sees “a lot of the old politics” in her.
    He likes Obama, too, but “sometimes I want to see more substance under the rhetoric.”
    Bottom line, according to People, rather than endorse one or the other, Edwards and his wife will save their political capital for causes such as fighting poverty and improving U.S. health care.

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http://www.reuters.com/news/globalcovera ge/2008candidates

Photo credit:  Reuters/Lee Celano (Edwards, with wife Elizabeth on the right, announces his withdrawal from the Democratic presidential race in January.)

LITTLE ROCK, Ark. - Republican presidential candidate John McCain was not content to just eat the prized barbecue at Little Rock’s Whole Hog Cafe — he wanted to know how it is cooked.

The Arizona senator disappeared into the kitchen of the eatery soon after riding his “Straight Talk Express” bus to the restaurant on Friday with former Arkansas Gov. Mike Huckabee and their wives, Cindy McCain and Janet Huckabee.

In the back of the place, the cooks were smoking half chickens and slabs of pork ribs in large barbecue smokers, as a succulent smoky smell wafted throughout.

“All right, Cindy, we’re going to have to get one,” McCain said of the smokers.

“Load it on the bus,” Cindy replied.

McCain considers himself quite the barbecue artist, grilling ribs at his Sedona, Ariz., ranch, and was interested in the mix of spices used to rub into the meat before it is cooked.

“Is that a trade secret, your dry rub?” McCain asked the owners. One of the owners cautioned him against using too much salt. “I’m going to have to change my ways,” McCain said.

The McCain and Huckabees decided to take away some ribs, and then came the matter of who would pay. Janet Huckabee insisted the food was already paid for and Gov. Huckabee — mentioned as a possible vice presidential running-mate – told McCain his money was no good in Arkansas.

But McCain put down two $20 bills and a staffer said McCain ultimately paid.

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WASHINGTON - Former President Bill Clinton has leaped into the debate over Democratic presidential candidate Hillary Clinton’s exaggerations about her 1996 trip to Bosnia — and got his facts wrong.

Hillary Clinton, the former U.S. first lady, has been accused of playing loose with the facts ever since her dramatic description of arriving in Bosnia under sniper fire was contradicted by the actual videotape of her visit.

The controversy had seemed to run its course — until Thursday, when Bill Clinton got into the act while campaigning for his wife in Indiana.

“There was a lot of fulminating because Hillary, one time late at night when she was exhausted, misstated, and immediately apologized for it, what happened to her in Bosnia in 1995,” Clinton said, according to MSNBC.

The former president accused the news media of hyping the story.

“You would’ve thought, you know, that she’d robbed a bank the way they carried on about this. And some of them when they’re 60 they’ll forget something when they’re tired at 11:00 at night, too,” he said.

In fact the trip was in 1996, not 1995 as Clinton said, and Hillary Clinton did not speak about Bosnia at 11 p.m., but repeated the exaggeration several times during day-time campaign events.

Neither did Clinton immediately apologize for the remark. Instead, she has simply said she misspoke.

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