Katie Couric asked John McCain a great question the other day on CBS: You claim you know how to win wars? Which wars have you won?

Watch it here:




I asked the press to put this very question to John McCain about ten days ago, albeit in a little bit more colorful language. You can watch that here. There is no good answer for this because John McCain is taking credit for many things he had no part in or was only minimally involved with. He is way overplaying his so-called national security credentials.

Some might think I'm going a bit too far in pointing this out, but we should also remember John McCain crashed five different planes in his time in the service. He also finished 894th in his Annapolis class of 899. God bless him for serving anyway, but it's hard to take that record and brag about how you have won all these wars.

John McCain has a service record he can be proud of, that anyone could be proud of. His resistance at the POW camps was down right heroic. But when you put yourself out there as the man who knows military strategy and winning wars, we have to look at your record and see what's really in there.

And when you look, there is not some secret stash of wars that John McCain led troops into and won because of his national security know-how. There just isn't and when he pretends there is, it looks like forced braggadocio. If he sticks with his actual service record, he would have something everyone could agree was a big asset for him. He served with tremendous courage and honor. He doesn't also have to claim to be Dwight D. Eisenhower. Leave well enough alone.

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Does John McCain prepare for any of his interviews? First Joy Behar clowned him and then Ellen DeGeneres took him to school and now Meredith Vieira bats him around. Or as the kids would say, she pwned him (I still don't know why we substitute the "p" for the "o" in that word, but it does sound a little cooler that way).

Someone tell John McCain he needs to wake up before these interviews -- or come up with policies that he can actually defend. Watch him get dismantled by Vieira here:

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Whenever we do a week in review, there's always going to be something that's not safe for work or for kids. This week is no exception. So, watch this with caution:





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George W. Bush is a historic embarrassment that will forever stain the legacy of American democracy. Listen to short clips from his press conference yesterday and see if you can make it through a couple of minutes without averting your eyes:




I always come back to the same point because it is the one that makes the biggest difference. The press failed us. This man was always stupid -- and glaringly so. The press needed to tell the American people that the emperor had no clothes on. Instead they spent so many years covering his ass. That's how this imbecile was elected a second time. It was great failing of the press, while they thought they were being "neutral." Your job isn't to be neutral, it's to be objective.

A neutral sports reporter would be laughed out of the press box. The Cowboys beat the Giants 42-10. The neutral reporter says they both played fine. The objective reporter says the Cowboys kicked ass and the Giants sucked. Report the score!

A neutral reporter says John McCain and Barack Obama are both fine candidates who represent a change from George W. Bush. An objective reporters says that John McCain's policy proposals are nearly identical to George W. Bush's. They agree on at least 95% of the issues.

You don't have to say John McCain sucks, that's an opinion. But you do have to say that he is nearly a carbon copy of Bush. That's a fact. If you don't report that, then you are not doing your job of informing the American people. That's how we get incompetent presidents like George W. Bush -- because the press was too scared to report the obvious truth.

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More accurately, Governor Mark Sanford (R-SC) clowned himself. But he did such a poor job, even Wolf Blitzer had to challenge him and show that his argument made no sense. First, watch how Gov. Sanford mumbles, bumbles and stumbles through this interview:





Now, as to the real point -- there is no difference between John McCain and George Bush on economic issues. John McCain agrees with 98% of the policies that got us into this mess in the first place.

They fundamentally don't believe in government regulation. That is a radical position (a sensible position is that we need some regulation, enough to check the excesses of an unfettered market without over-regulating industry). When it comes to financial institutions taking great risks for short-term pay-offs and then dumping their mess on the American taxpayer if it goes wrong, we need more regulation to make sure they can't do this.

If they want to take all this risk and then when they get burned, we don't bail them out, then fine. But if it's going to be my money that bails them out, I'm not going to sign-off on excessive risk for excessive short-term profits when we have to deal with the long-term pain. This is highway robbery. It's also socialism for the rich.

If you're a middle-class working family, Republicans throw bootstraps at you and say you need to pick yourself up off the ground. They offer no government assistance under the guise of the free market. But if the top banks get in trouble, the free market is out the window and here comes government welfare to save the day for rich folks.

Funny how that works. Unless you're insanely wealthy or directly benefit from these anti-free market practices of the Bush administration (no-bid contracts to favored military suppliers is another example), you'd be crazy to vote for another Republican.

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You don't believe that tough, macho, war-hero John McCain can be scared of a little old librarian? Then watch this:





What I'm most concerned about is that we have started to accept these things as normal. As if we never had any rights in the first place. When we don't stand up for the Carol Krecks of the world, Dick Cheney wins. We have to guard our liberties jealously. Patriots died to get us those rights.

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UPDATE -- In the video above you see the security guard saying it was the Secret Service who asked Kreck to leave. The Secret Service vehemently denied they had anything to do with it today. Using the Secret Service name to do your dirty work -- classy!

Everyone has been lambasting General Wesley Clark today over his comments about John McCain, including Barack Obama who rejected his comments. But has anyone watched the comments? Not only does General Clark not disparage John McCain's war record, he calls him his "hero" for how courageous he was in his service.

The only point General Clark is making is that this does not translate to having experience in executive responsibility. That point is not only uncontroversial, it is indisputable. Is everyone who got shot out of a plane or spent time in a POW camp qualified to be President of the United States? Of course, not.

Does that experience and how he handled it speak to John McCain's courage? Absolutely. His service to the country? No doubt. But does it speak to whether he has the national security or foreign policy experience necessary to be president? Absolutely not.

Watch General Clark's comments here and judge for yourself whether he said something outrageous or perfectly rational:




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One of McCain's campaign managers, Charlie Black, told Fortune magazine that an attack on the United States would be good for John McCain's campaign. As I explain in the video below, I'm not a big advocate of over-emphasizing these campaign gaffes but imagine if Obama's campaign had said this:




You know that if an Obama adviser said an attack on America would help their campaign, there would be a media riot over it. They would cover nothing else until that staffer was fired and Obama and denounced and rejected him and everyone he knows. This would be the largest news story for weeks. Now, let's see what happens to McCain and see how fair and balanced our media really is.

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Gasoline prices continue to rise, pinching American consumers. It's becoming a major political issue, and could soon become an economic crisis. What is the Bush/McCain solution? Offshore oil drilling in the United States. Even if you think this makes sense, it's the latest example of implementing a policy for the wrong reasons.

The title of this post sounds facetious, but in fact, Bobby Jindal, the governor of Louisiana says it is literal. He wrote an essay in 1994 claiming he took part in an exorcism where he battled Lucifer and won! That's bad ass. Now that's the kind of experience we need in the White House. If he can beat the Devil imagine what he can do Al Qaeda.

Just when you thought the Republicans couldn't get any more nuts, Governor Jindal is here to prove you wrong. Listen for the unbelievable details here:





This guys is being considered for the VP slot by McCain. Now, I'm not going to put this on McCain. I doubt he knew about the exorcism, or approves of battling Satan in your down time. And he hasn't even picked Jindal. This is part of the normal vetting process and I hope Jindal has now been effectively vetted out of consideration.

So, putting the McCain connection aside, how did this guy get to be governor? Atheists who believe in a rational world have no chance in politics in this country, but stark raving mad guys like this are considered legitimate and electable? What does that tell you about us? Now, that's the real scary thought.

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When you look at the speeches of John McCain, Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama last night, one things becomes clear. There is one speech which lacked all energy, excitement and interest -- and that clearly was John McCain's.

We did a mashup of their speeches from Tuesday night, we picked some of McCain's best moments to be fair to him and it still looks pretty miserable by comparison:




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The reviews are in for McCain's speech, and they are not good. We admire the man and respect his service, but has he ever looked more wooden and awkward than he did last night? That weird, gawky smile! That stilted, smug grin!

It reminded us of something, but what?

We couldn't put our finger on it for the longest time, but then we realized where we'd seen that look before . . .

Barack Obama won the Democratic nomination tonight, but you couldn't tell that if you were listening to Hillary Clinton's speech. I really thought she would have the good sense to know when the fight is over. But her refusal to concede tonight went from determination to derangement. Everybody likes a good tough fighter, but no one likes someone who keeps hitting after the bell has rung. It's ugly.

Watch her speech here (this is the part where she refuses to acknowledge that Obama has won) and then we explain how crazy this decision is:




Then Obama spoke and he was very gracious to her, even though he had already heard that she wouldn't concede. What more does he have to do? He passed the magic number. He has more pledged delegates, super delegates, overall delegates (and more popular votes too, despite Clinton's maniacal and completely unjustifiable claims to the contrary). The race was to get to a majority of the delegates -- and he got there. What is there not to concede?

There is one possible explanation for Hillary's actions tonight, I explain that in the clip below. First you'll see Obama's historic speech (the part where he claims victory) and then hear the possible reason Hillary is still hanging around in this race:




By the way, did you see McCain's speech tonight? Wow, that was embarrassing. It was anemic, lame and lacked even one percent of the energy of Clinton or Obama's speech. Unless some world changing event happens, McCain doesn't stand a chance. Anyone who saw Obama's speech and McCain's speech tonight can see that plain as day.

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This idea of not talking to your enemies is so silly I can't believe anyone is taking it seriously. Was Reagan appeasing the Soviet Union when he negotiated with them? How about Nixon going to China? Let alone when Reagan sold weapons to Iran (which actually comes pretty damn close to appeasement).

These neocons sound like they're in third grade. Sally won't talk to Suzy because she did something really mean to her. Adults should know better. It's so disappointing that McCain has gone down this neocon road and bought into the Bush idea of not talking to your enemies.

Speaking of responsible adults in the Republican Party, James Baker gives John McCain a lesson on diplomacy (these are the kind of serious professionals that attracted me to the Republican Party in the first place -- our progressive viewers hate it when I compliment James Baker, but whether you agreed or disagreed, you knew the man was smart and capable):




Well, it turns out John McCain agreed with James Baker -- at some point. Because as you can see from this clip, he went much further than Obama and wanted to talk to Hamas:




John McCain used to be a reasonable guy. What he's done to try to get elected is a really sad spectacle to watch. Did you see how uncomfortable he was on Ellen as he tried to maintain his craven position on gay marriage? The man is not comfortable in his own skin anymore. And he might not even be comfortable with his own positions anymore (whatever they happen to be today), because he then commits the mother of all flip-flops:




I'm not sure I've ever seen a politician flip-flop as many times John McCain has. He's breaking all the records. It's really sad and ironic because one of the things that attracted me to him in 2000 was how principled he was. Well, at least I thought he was principled. But that was a different McCain than this guy running for office now. I don't even recognize this guy. And even if I did, it looks like he'd just change tomorrow anyway.

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Today John McCain finally did what he should have done a long time ago -- he rejected Pastor John Hagee. We celebrate in the video below:




Putting the kidding about "strike back" aside, let me tell you why it's important that McCain denounce Hagee. As I explained later in the show, I don't believe that McCain agrees with Hagee's insane beliefs. But if McCain did not denounce him and he won the presidency, he would feel that he was indebted to Hagee for his endorsement. Hence, he would try to appease this nutjob -- as the Bush administration has been doing with all of these lunatic evangelical ministers like Jerry Falwell and Pat Robertson (both of whom said the US had 9/11 coming).

A guy like Jeremiah Wright isn't going to influence a thing in the White House if Barack Obama wins. But the Christian Right is different because they are a well-organized political movement. They have real power. This is why the Bush administration had a weekly call with these prominent Christian Right figures and often tweaked their policies to appease them.

The problem isn't that John McCain agrees with Rev. Hagee or Rev. Parsley, it's that he has to try hold on to their political support by giving them something they want. That's what is dangerous.

That's why it's such good news that they are no longer with the campaign, because even if McCain wins now hopefully he won't feel like he owes them anything.

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