McCain Now Opposes Equal Pay Remedy for Women

Sen. John Sydney McCain, III has announced that he opposes a bill that would allow women to sue to receive pay that is equal to that of their male co-workers. The bill "is named for Lilly Ledbetter, a supervisor at the Goodyear Tire & Rubber Co.'s plant in Gadsden, Ala., who sued for pay discrimination just before retiring after a 19-year career there. By the time she retired, Ledbetter made $6,500 less than the lowest-paid male supervisor and claimed earlier decisions by supervisors kept her from making more." Yahoo News

"The bill sought to counteract a Supreme Court decision limiting how long workers can wait before suing for pay discrimination. The Supreme Court voted 5-4 last year to throw out her complaint, saying she had waited too long to sue." Yahoo News

Last year, the U.S. Supreme Court decided that if a woman must file a discrimination claim within just months of the time when the discrimination began, otherwise she loses all right to file a complaint for her lifetime. So, if a woman began to receive unequal pay in 1980 and has been paid unequally ever since, she cannot file a complaint today because the filing deadline has already run. Her time to file has run out, even if she has only now discovered the discrimination.

There were a number of legal theories the Supreme Court could have adopted to preserve the woman's right to a claim and to give her a chance at equal pay. For example, the Court could have found that Congress intended for the filing period to begin to run when the woman discovered she was being unequally paid, rather than when the unequal pay secretly began. The Court could also have found that, when the discrimination is ongoing, each successive unequal paycheck is part of a continuing act of discrimination, and the clock on the filing deadline only begins to run when on the date of the last act of discrimination, e.g. the last unequal paycheck, not the first one.

Instead, the U.S. Supreme Court decided to exacerbate the problem of unequal pay by determining that if a company can pay a woman unequally until her filing deadline runs, then they can continue to pay her unequally for the rest of her life!

What an embarrassing day in the American injustice system. What an indictment of Sen. John Sydney McCain, III, who supports this absurd decision and opposes a Congressional remedy.

Video of McCain's Biggest Flip Flops, In His Own Words

On Iraq, gay marriage and the Confederate Flag, John McCain is all double-talk.

NYT: McCain Campaign Guilty of Plagiarism

Hat Tip to Field Negro.

The New York Times reports that a prominently placed section of the John McCain website that was devoted to his wife's cooking recipes was actually copied verbatim from the Food Network:

Until early Tuesday morning, visitors to John McCain’s campaign Web site could find seven of “Cindy’s Recipes,” among them three elegant and healthful offerings: passion fruit mousse, ahi tuna with Napa cabbage slaw and farfalle pasta with turkey sausage, peas and mushrooms.

Only problem was, all three, listed as favorite family recipes of Cindy McCain, Mr. McCain’s wife, were taken verbatim from the Food Network. NYTimes

Doesn't this mean that John McCain's campaign has engaged in deliberate "plagiarism"? Cornell University's policy on plagiarism says:

What is plagiarism?

Plagiarism is misrepresenting somebody else's intellectual work - ideas, information, writing, thinking - as your own. In other words, it is a misuse of source material. Whether intentional or unintentional, plagiarism is a serious violation of Cornell's Code of Academic Integrity. Cornell University

For example, in the 1988 Democratic Primary race, "Democratic presidential candidate Joseph R. Biden Jr., a U.S. senator from Delaware, was driven from the nomination battle after delivering, without attribution, passages from a speech by British Labor party leader Neil Kinnock." WaPost.Com

Now we discover that McCain's campaign deliberately took entire recipes from the Food Network and presented them, on McCain's official website, as Cindy McCain's "family recipes," which was a bold-faced lie.

Also on Tuesday, the Wonkette site posted a recipe, “Cindy McCain’s 3-Minute No-Bake Cookies,” which appeared in the December 2007 issue of Yankee Magazine and was identical to a recipe from Quaker Oats. Mr. Bounds said he would look into it. NYTimes

Are John McCain's claims to "straight-talk" really just a lot of flatulence?

Of course, McCain blames the plagiarism on an intern and claims that the intern has been fired. Who is that fired intern? Is he or she available for an interview to confirm or deny the McCain campaign's version of events? Did the same low-level McCain aide plagiarize both the articles published in 2007 and those published a year later, in 2008? That strains credulity.

What's clear now is that the McCain campaign has "plagiarized" and the media, including the New York Times, is loath to use the precise term that most aptly applies.

John McCain is Older than . . . FM Radio!

This video tells all things younger than John McCain.

Could the World Survive John McCain's Temper?

If he swears at his own Republcan Senate colleagues, could he make a cautious and reasoned decision about dropping nuclear bombs on Iran?

Today, the Washington Post explores the question of whether it would be dangerous to elect John McCain president because of his explosive and sometimes uncontrollable temper.

[O]ver the years, no one has written more intimately about McCain's outbursts than McCain himself. "My temper has often been both a matter of public speculation and personal concern," he wrote in a 2002 memoir. "I have a temper, to state the obvious, which I have tried to control with varying degrees of success because it does not always serve my interest or the public's."

That temper has followed him throughout his life, McCain acknowledges. He recalls in his writings how, as a toddler, he sometimes held his breath and fainted during moments of fury. As the son of a naval officer who was on his way to becoming a four-star admiral, McCain found himself frequently uprooted and enrolled in new schools, where, as an underappreciated outsider, he developed "a little bit of a chip on my shoulder," as he recalled this month.

( . . . )

"As a young man, I would respond aggressively and sometimes irresponsibly to anyone who I perceived to have questioned my sense of honor and self-respect. Those responses often got me in a fair amount of trouble earlier in life." McCain: A Question of Temperament

Whoaooooooooo now! Should a nuclear super-power elect a hot head who can't control his temper and who overreacts and personalizes slights?

Former senator Bob Smith, a New Hampshire Republican, expresses worries about McCain: "His temper would place this country at risk in international affairs, and the world perhaps in danger. In my mind, it should disqualify him." McCain: A Question of Temperament

The Washington Post retells one of many documented accounts of John McCain getting into fist fights, or nearly so, with lawmakers of his own party, who mostly vote like he does in the U.S. Congress.

John McCain cupped a fist and began pumping it, up and down, along the side of his body. It was a gesture familiar to a participant in the closed-door meeting of the Senate committee who hoped that it merely signaled, as it sometimes had in the past, McCain's mounting frustration with one of his colleagues.

But when McCain leaned toward Charles E. Grassley and slowly said, "My friend . . ." it seemed clear that ugliness was looming: While the plural "my friends" was usually a warm salutation from McCain, "my friend" was often a prelude to his most caustic attacks. Grassley, an Iowa Republican with a reputation as an unwavering legislator, calmly held his ground. McCain became angrier, his fist pumping even faster.

It was early 1992, and the occasion was an informal gathering of a select committee investigating lingering issues about Vietnam War prisoners and those missing in action, most notably whether any American servicemen were still being held by the Vietnamese. It is unclear precisely what issue set off McCain that day. But at some point, he mocked Grassley to his face and used a profanity to describe him. Grassley stood and, according to two participants at the meeting, told McCain, "I don't have to take this. I think you should apologize."

In the video above, we have reports of John McCain calling a Republican Senate colleague "chickenshit" and saying, "Fuck you! I know more about [immigration reform] than anyone else in this room. This type of speech toward elected officials used to decorum has led to more than one fist-fight or near fist fight in the US Senate. So, what would it lead to between John McCain's country and countries like Venezuela, Cuba, Iran and even France? Can we really afford the civilian death toll of World War III?

"Wow! Read all the dirt about John McCain in one place!"

The Gossiplist.com blog follows the activities of movie stars, but they're not about to let John McCain become president without a fight, and blow us all to the stars. Gossiplist.com says, "Wow! Read all the dirt about John McCain in one place!" And here's there March 25th compilation of all the dirt they've found at "Truth About McCain"!

McCain is on holiday in the Middle East playing 'pretend President'. Meanwhile, someone has written a blog containing a massive amount of dirt on him. Some of the pearls contained:

McCain Financial Scandal Cost US Treasury Two Billion Dollars - A review of New York Times archives from 1990 and 1991 shows that Senator John McCain was a subject of a major financial and bank scandal, known as the "Savings and Loan Scandal", that dominated news coverage of the US Congress during that period.

McCain Retracts "No New Taxes" Pledge After Two Weeks
McCain Received $110,000 from Bank Whose Failure Cost US Treasury 2Billion Dollars - McCain was caught "intervening with regulators on behalf of Mr. Keating at a time when his Lincoln Savings and Loan Association was on the verge of collapse."

McCain Would be the Oldest Man Ever Elected President - Now he is hoping to be the oldest man ever elected to a first term as president. Even if the melanoma returns, he would not be the first sitting president to have had cancer. - Who will be his running mate? This really matters now. The VP spot is usually worthless, but this guy is ancient and living on borrowed time anyway.

Republican Ex-Senator Bob Dole Says McCain is a Hot-Head - With a top campaign adviser and extreme religious zealots advising McCain to go to war with Iran, one wonders what would stop McCain, in a moment of stress, from starting a first strike nuclear or coventional war with Iran. And once he starts it and can't get his "mission accomplished" moment, what will he do when the war insistently refuses to live up to his expectations?

John McCain was not born in the USA, he was born in Panama. According to the Constitution only US born citizens can be elected President. Read more.

Lord knows that the whitosphere and the afrosphere don't agree about everything, but there's one thing about which we are in complete agreement and allied and joined at the hip: John Sydney McCain, III must NEVER, EVER become president of these United States.

US Military Contractors lost 35 Billion Tanker Bill to France After McCain & Co.'s Lobbying for France's Airbus Corp.

Would John McCain help a French corporation get a 35 Billion dollar Defense Contract just because his top campaign aides were working for the French corporation? The Washington Post provides information supporting that conclusion:

McCain finance chairman Thomas G. Loeffler and Susan E. Nelson, who left Loeffler's lobbying firm to be McCain's finance director, both began lobbying for Airbus's parent company in 2007, Senate records show. William L. Ball III, a former secretary of the Navy and frequent McCain surrogate on the trail, also lobbied for Airbus, as did John Green, who recently took a leave from Ogilvy Public Relations to serve as McCain's legislative liaison.

"Airbus, I have to give them credit," said R. Thomas Buffenbarger, the president of the International Association of Machinists, which represents Boeing employees. "They know they need that kind of lobbying help. And they went after people who could deliver."

It is not clear what specifically the McCain campaign advisers did for Airbus. Lobbying registration documents list only "initiatives and interests regarding the KC-30 Aerial Refueling Tanker Program." Loeffler did not respond to e-mail requests for an interview. WaPost

McCain himself got involved before the contract was taken from Boeing and give to a the French:

McCain has confirmed sending two letters to Defense Department officials urging them to level the playing field for a deal that would provide a fleet of in-air refueling planes for military aircraft. In one 2006 letter, McCain urged officials to change their criteria for evaluating bidders for the tanker contract.

( . . . )

Airbus parent EADS North America more than tripled its contributions to U.S. lawmakers after 2004, as it pursued the Air Force contract, according to an analysis done by the Center for Responsive Politics. McCain was the top individual recipient of contributions from company employees and the company's political action committee in the 2008 election cycle. WaPost