Maverick and his wife are doing a press conference in response to the NY Times Story that rehashed old charges of ethical lapses and walked right up to the line of accusing him of having an affair with a lobbyist he may have done some favors for.

Fox News is streaming it live here.

UPDATE:

Well, that was quick. It's all over.

"I'm very disappointed in the article. It's not true," the likely Republican presidential nominee said as his wife, Cindy, stood alongside him during a news conference called to address the matter.

McCain described the woman in question, lobbyist Vicki Iseman, as a friend.

The newspaper quoted anonymous aides as saying they had urged McCain and Iseman to stay away from each other prior to his failed presidential campaign in 2000. In its own follow-up story, The Washington Post quoted longtime aide John Weaver, who split with McCain last year, as saying he met with lobbyist Iseman and urged her to stay away from McCain.

Weaver told the Times he arranged the meeting after "a discussion among the campaign leadership" about Iseman.

McCain said he was unaware of any such conversation.

Posted by: DrewM. at 06:10 AM | Comments (24)
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Well, not exactly footage of the actual shootdown, but footage of the Navy rehearsing the shootdown. It's so hot I can't embed the file, so you'll have to follow the link after the jump to see the footage.

I hope all the lawyers on this site are standing ready to defend my right to post this highly classified information that was leaked to me by an insider on the team that did the job. more...

Posted by: Russ from Winterset at 09:24 PM | Comments (6)
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To our principled folks who refuse to vote for McCain-

Okay, that's cool. I strenuously and passionately disagree with you, but that's cool. But please allow me to underscore the fact that all of the above will actually be attempted under an Obama administration. I don't say that to fear-monger... this is what the new generation of lefty is. The new lefty is a full-blown socialist in the European mold, with eyes on the Latin American mold.

Glenn Reynolds speaks of all the things the libs accuse of happening under Bush actually happening under them (i.e. academia)- such ideas will be given free reign underneath an Obama administration. That would fundamentally transform the face of the country, and with two new Supreme Court justices to reinforce that, the rule of law would likely reflect this New Leftism.

If you can't vote for McCain, I won't try to convince you. But I urge you from the depths of my soul to work your asses off to keep Obama away from the presidency. I am dissatisfied with McCain, and I certainly don't trust that he's going to represent my interests. But I do trust that a vote for McCain will be vital to keeping Obama out of the presidency- and hopefully spare us the nightmare of another Carter-style presidency thirty years hence.

In the next few months, I hope that your minds will change- not because I want you to roll over on your ideals- but because what an Obama presidency would mean to this country. It doesn't just apply to the presidency- it applies as well to Congress.

Thanks for reading.

tmi3rd

Something else to bear in mind. Reagan made conservativism cool. Allow me to suggest that this was not entirely simply due to the power of his ideas -- but in no small part to his remarkable powers of communication and warmth of personality and 18/00 Charisma.

John F. Kennedy created a whole generation of liberals (despite not really being clearly a liberal himself) on the strength of his wit and vitality, and of course his martyrdom.

Liberalism is somewhat unpopular now. Not nearly as unpopular as it was during the 80s and 90s. The public is flirting with giving full-bore liberal statism a try.

Obama is cult of personality figure with a great deal of charisma (or so I'm told; I find him vacuous and droning). There is a real possibility that the nation's basic politics can be changed not by reasoned argument and dispassionate analysis, but simply by the fact that he's "cool" and offers "hope."

Bear that in mind. This election isn't about Obama. It's about liberalism and "progressivism," as it always is. But Obama is an especially dangerous agent of progressivism, expressly now running as essentially a spiritual leader guiding a zealous religious movement. Progressivism has always been largely that, of course -- atheists feel the need for transcendence, same as the religious, they just channel that urge into "secular" pursuits like worshipping Mother Gaia and cleansing their souls of politically impure thoughts -- but now we're faced with the para-religion of progressivism shorn of any pretense of secularity, headed now by the apotheosis of democracy-as-divinity.

McCain's a prick. But he's not the living christ of strange and hostile church.

Posted by: Ace at 09:02 PM | Comments (304)
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Hell yes.

A missile launched from a Navy ship successfully struck a dying U.S. spy satellite passing 130 miles over the Pacific on Wednesday, a defense official said. Full details were not immediately available.

It happened just after 10:30 p.m. EST.

Two officials said the missile was launched successfully. One official, who is close to the process, said it hit the target. He said details on the results were not immediately known.

The goal in this first-of-its-kind mission for the Navy was not just to hit the satellite but to obliterate a tank aboard the spacecraft carrying 1,000 pounds of a toxic fuel called hydrazine.

Danger Room has a look at the narrowness of the shooting window and the process that led to the order to shoot being given.

The U.S. military will only have seconds per day to shoot down an ailing spy satellite. And the decision to fire will be made by the Secretary of Defense himself.

At a Pentagon press conference today, an unnamed "senior military official" briefed reporters on the details on the satellite take out attempt. "Each day there will be one window," he said. "It will only exist for a matter of tens of seconds, and so you have to be at exactly the right place, exactly the right time, and all criteria have to line up exactly right."

And then basically a bullet has to hit a bullet a hundred plus miles in space.

Remember, the Democrats want to kill missile defense because it, like the surge, doesn't work.

Update [Ace]: I was just going to post this.

Fuck it, I think I will anyway.

Nah. Already did that six times this week.

Posted by: DrewM. at 08:17 PM | Comments (68)
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It looks like the Milky Way galaxy is about twice as thick as the 6,000 light years "scientific consensus" had concluded.

It took just a couple of hours using data available on the internet for University of Sydney scientists to discover that the Milky Way is twice as wide as previously thought.

Astrophysicist Professor Bryan Gaensler led a team that has found that our galaxy - a flattened spiral about 100,000 light years across - is 12,000 light years thick, not the 6,000 light years that had been previously thought.

Posted by: Purple Avenger at 07:36 PM | Comments (62)
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It's a long article so consider this a place holder until Ace or someone else gets a chance to comb through it all. Bottom line...the NY Times is shocked! shocked! that Maverick is a Republican and finally gets around to treating him like one.

They recycle every ethical lapse they can think of and with a hey you never know attitude "report" McCain and a female lobbyist deny having had an affair.

As I said, it's going to take awhile to go through this but suffice it to say Maverick is no longer the Times' favorite Republican.

All those years courting the media at the expense of Republicans and conservatives and they abandon him the second he actually has to run against a Democrat. Who's got your back now Maverick?

Link to the NY Times article here.

UPDATE: Meh, a whole lot of old news and a helping of innuendo.

20 year old story on the Keating 5? Check.

Mention of involvement and subsequent separation from a non-profit funded by lobbyists after the passage of McCain-Feingold? Check

Allegations of possible favoritism for a lobbyist they darkly hint he might have had an affair with? Yep.

Anything else? Not really.

It's not so much a damaging article in terms of content, it's just not one a Democrat or Maverick, prior to becoming the presumptive nominee, would have to put up with.

How quickly the fickle affections of the media turn!

UPDATE x2: Team Maverick responds:

"It is a shame that the New York Times has lowered its standards to engage in a hit and run smear campaign. John McCain has a 24-year record of serving our country with honor and integrity. He has never violated the public trust, never done favors for special interests or lobbyists, and he will not allow a smear campaign to distract from the issues at stake in this election.

"Americans are sick and tired of this kind of gutter politics, and there is nothing in this story to suggest that John McCain has ever violated the principles that have guided his career."

Welcome to the life of every prominent Republican.

Posted by: DrewM. at 05:35 PM | Comments (103)
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Is now on full display for the world to see: Obama Campaign Urges Clinton to Concede.

This is striking, really. And it illustrates just the kind of "rookie mistake" that unseasoned pols running high on their own self-importance make. Obama should know better than this. The fact that he apparently doesn't is good news for all those who seem intimidated at the prospect of having to face him when the stakes are much higher.

What makes it even better (for those of us who have maintained that Obama is a deeply flawed candidate waging a deeply flawed general election strategy) is that the essence of Obama's call for Clinton's leaving the race is probably correct: the math doesn't work for her. But by publicly calling her out in this fashion, and by trying to compare her to a fringe candidate like Mike Huckabee, the Obama campaign overplays their hand. This reveals that they aren't satisfied with merely winning, they now have embraced the mentality that they are entitled.

Obama's campaign manager, David Plouffe, dismissed her camp's hopes of making a comeback when the power states of Texas and Ohio hold their primaries on March 4, and said Clinton would be unable to bridge a widening gap in delegates.

"This is a wide, wide lead right now," Plouffe said in a conference call with reporters. "The Clinton campaign keeps saying the race is essentially tied. That's just lunacy."

The argument from the Obama camp appears designed to paint Clinton as a nuisance candidate -- much like Mike Huckabee who has continued to fight for the Republican nomination even though it is mathematically impossible for him to catch up to John McCain's lead in delegates.

More in the extended entry.
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Posted by: Jack M. at 05:05 PM | Comments (39)
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A fully automatic 12 gauge.

With beautiful, little projectiles like the Frag 12.

Ejaculations: 300 rounds a minute.

Way better than Gene Simmons.

Posted by: Dave In Texas at 04:36 PM | Comments (22)
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Posted by: Ace at 02:11 PM | Comments (57)
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Pardon the overstatement, but this is creepy stuff, suggesting, as it does, that your lives are now required to have meaning and purpose -- and that the government will be providing that meaning and purpose to you.

Quoth the new Evita:

Barack Obama will require you to work. He is going to demand that you shed your cynicism. That you put down your divisions. That you come out of your isolation, that you move out of your comfort zones. That you push yourselves to be better. And that you engage. Barack will never allow you to go back to your lives as usual, uninvolved, uninformed.

Hey, Michelle, Barack? I don't mean this offensively, but eat my fucking balls, okay?

You red-diaper unreconstructed communist symps. How. Fucking. Dare You.

Jim Gerghty, meanwhile, offers the typical NR-approved pussytalk to critique this odd conception of the government's centrality in our spiritual lives.

What Are Barack Obama's Legislative Accomlishments? Chris Matthews, who gets a little thrill up his leg over Obama, actually asks an Obama supporter a bruising question.
more...

Posted by: Ace at 01:16 PM | Comments (145)
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