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In this time of change and uncertainty, these questions are expected, but this isn’t the first time we’ve heard them. These are the same kinds of questions I heard over two decades ago after I turned down a job on Wall Street and went to work as a community organizer on the South Side of Chicago. The job was to help lift up neighborhoods that had been devastated by the closing of local steel plants. So I worked with unions and the city government to organize job-training for the jobless and hope for the hopeless, and block by block, we turned those neighborhoods around.

It showed me the fundamental truth that’s been at the heart of America’s success – and at the heart of the labor movement in this country – the idea that we all have mutual obligations to one another, that I am my brother’s keeper; I am my sister’s keeper, and that in this country, we rise and fall together.

But we know that for the past seven and a half years, we’ve had a whole different philosophy in the White House. They call it the ownership society – but what it means is you’re on your own.  You’re a worker who’s been laid off from a job? Tough luck, you’re on your own. You’re a single mom trying to find health care for your kids? Tough luck, you’re on your own.  You’re a senior whose pension got dumped after a lifetime of hard work? Tough luck, you’re on your own.

It’s not just that this administration hasn’t been fighting for you; they’ve actually tried to stop you from fighting for yourselves. This is the most anti-labor administration in our memory. They don’t believe in unions. They don’t believe in organizing. They’ve packed the labor relations board with their corporate buddies. Well, we’ve got news for them – it’s not the Department of Management, it’s the Department of Labor, and we’re here to take it back.  That’s why I’m running for President of the United States of America.

Now, John McCain seems to think the Bush years have been pretty good because he’s offering more of the same. And today’s a good reminder of that because it’s Tax Day. This is supposed to be a day when we pay what we owe to the government. But it’s become a day when George Bush’s Washington rewards its friends on Wall Street.

John McCain used to oppose the Bush tax cuts.  He used to say that he couldn’t support a tax cut where "so many of the benefits go to the most fortunate." He used to say that tax cuts in a time of war were a bad idea, and that they violated his "conscience." But somewhere along the way to the Republican nomination, I guess he figured that he had to stop speaking his mind and start towing the line – because now he wants to make those tax cuts permanent.

So I respect Senator McCain. And I honor his service to this nation. But I don’t think America can afford four more years of the failed Bush policies, and that’s what he’s offering. We need to roll back the Bush-McCain tax cuts and invest in things like health care that are really important. Instead of giving tax breaks to the wealthy who don’t need them and weren’t even asking for them, we should be putting a middle class tax cut into the pockets of working families. That’s why I’m the only candidate in this race who’s proposed a tax cut that would save our families $1,000 a year, and eliminate income taxes entirely for seniors making less than $50,000.

But let me be clear – this isn’t just about ending the failed policies of the Bush years; it’s about ending the failed system in Washington that produces those policies. For far too long, through both Democratic and Republican administrations, Washington has allowed Wall Street to use lobbyists and campaign contributions to rig the system and get its way, no matter what it costs ordinary Americans.

Think about it. The top mortgage lenders spend $185 million lobbying Congress, and we wonder why Washington looked the other way when they were tricking families into buying homes they couldn’t afford. Drug and insurance companies spend $1 billion on lobbying, and we wonder why the cost of health care continues to shoot up.  When George Bush put Dick Cheney in charge of energy policy, Cheney met with the environmentalist groups once, he met with the renewable energy groups once, and he met with the oil and gas companies forty times.  So it’s no wonder Exxon Mobile is making $11 billion a quarter when you’re paying close to $4 a gallon for gas.

We need a President who’s thinking about not just Wall Street, but Main Street; who’s not just looking to bump up a corporate bottom line, but to do what’s right for the American people.  Because that’s the only way we’re going to bring about real change – change that will make a lasting difference in the lives of ordinary Americans.

I believe I can bring about that change – because I’m the only candidate in this race who’s actually worked to rein in the power of lobbyists by passing historic ethics reforms in Illinois and in the U.S. Senate. And I’m the only candidate who isn’t taking a dime from Washington lobbyists and PACs. They have not funded my campaign, they will not run my administration, and they will not drown out the voices of the American people, of working people, of unions when I’m President of the United States.

Your voices will be heard.  If you have any doubts, you can ask the union leaders in Illinois.  When I was home talking to some of the local leaders there a couple of years ago, they told me they were being underbid on projects because unscrupulous builders were gaming the system.  And I listened.  They said that on some construction jobs, those builders were calling their employees "independent contractors" to get out of having to pay employment taxes and workers comp or overtime.

That didn’t sound right to me.  So I set about leading an effort with Senator Durbin, Senator Kennedy and others in the Senate to end this practice. Because if you’re doing the same work as other employees, you should have worker protections, the same ability to organize, and the same wages and benefits. And I’ll fight to make that the law of the land when I’m President of the United States.

We’ll make sure Washington serves nobody’s interests but the people’s. Because I don’t know about you, but I’m tired of playing defense. I’m ready to play some offense. I know the Building and Construction Trades are ready to play offense. We’re ready to play offense for the minimum wage. We’re ready to play offense for retirement security.

We’re ready to play offense for universal health care. It’s time we stood up to the drug and insurance companies who’ve been blocking reform for too long and tell them enough is enough. I refuse to accept that in the richest nation on Earth, we have to stand by while 47 million Americans go without health insurance, and millions more are being driven to financial ruin trying to pay their medical bills. I’m tired of seeing union members having to spend all their time negotiating about the health care they already have when they should be negotiating for better wages that can support their families.

We’re going to change that. We’re going to work with employers who are providing health care for their employees and lower premiums by up to $2,500 per family per year.  And for those who don’t have health care, we’re going to set up a plan that’s as good as the one I have as a Member of Congress. And we’re not going to do it twenty years from now, or ten years from now.  We’re going to do it by the end of my first term as President of the United States of America.

We’re ready to play offense for working Americans. We need to make sure workers building America’s infrastructure are making the prevailing wage and getting the benefits they deserve. After Katrina, George Bush suspended Davis-Bacon. Families had nothing left. Whole communities had been destroyed. But George Bush thought people didn’t deserve to make 9 or 10 bucks an hour to rebuild that city. And John McCain isn’t much different.  He seems to think Davis-Bacon is something that comes from a pig farm. He’s opposed it time and time again. That’s wrong. We need to strengthen Davis-Bacon, and make sure any new infrastructure projects we’re proposing adhere to Davis-Bacon standards. And that’s what I’ll do when I’m President of the United States of America.

But it’s not enough to make sure we’re paying workers fair wages and benefits. We need to make sure the government uses project labor agreements to encourage completion of projects on time and on budget. One of the first things George Bush did when he got into office was to ban PLAs. That’s bad for workers and bad for America, and that’s why one of the first things I’ll do as President will be to repeal that ban and put PLAs back into place.

It’s time we had a President who didn’t choke saying the word "union."  It’s time we had a Democratic nominee who didn’t choke saying the word "union." We need to strengthen our unions by letting them do what they do best – organize our workers. If a majority of workers want a union, they should get a union. And that is why I’ll fight for and why I intend to sign the Employee Free Choice Act when it lands on my desk in the White House.

Here’s what else we’ll do – we’ll put Americans back to work. I applaud your partnership with Helmets-to-Hardhats. I believe we have a responsibility to serve our soldiers as well as they’re serving us, and by helping make sure they have the skills to work in the trades when they come home, you’re living up to that responsibility. As President, I’ll support funding for this critical program.

And we won’t just promote job-training, we’ll promote job-creation. That’s why we’ll pass what I’m calling the Patriot Employer Act that I’ve been working on since I got to the Senate – because in my administration, we’re not going to give tax breaks to companies that ship jobs overseas; we’ll give them to companies that create good jobs with decent wages here in America.

We’re going to invest in this country.  Back in the 1950’s, Americans were put to work building the Interstate Highway system and that helped expand our middle class. We need to show the same kind of leadership today.  That’s why I’ve called for a National Infrastructure Reinvestment Bank that will invest $60 billion over ten years and generate millions of new jobs. We can’t keep standing by while our roads and bridges and airports crumble and decay. For our economy, our safety, and our workers, we have to rebuild America.

Investing in America means investing in the jobs of the future. We shouldn’t be sending billions of dollars to foreign nations because of our addiction to oil. We should be investing in American-made solar panels, windmills, and clean coal technology. That’s why I’ve proposed investing $150 billion over the next ten years in the green energy sector. This will create up to five million new American jobs – and those are jobs that pay well, and can’t be outsourced. That’s why this will be a priority in my administration.

Now, I know some will say we can’t afford all this. But it seems to me – if we can spend $10 billion a month rebuilding Iraq, we can spend $15 billion a year in our own country to create jobs and strengthen the long-term competitiveness of our economy.

But if we’re serious about fighting for our workers here at home, we’ve got to fight for them around the world. Now, the truth is trade is here to stay, and that if we have strong labor and environmental protections in our agreements, and if our trading partners are playing by the rules, trade can be a good thing for our workers and our economy. But what we can’t do is ignore violence against union organizers in Colombia.  What we can’t do is sign trade deals that put the interests of multinational corporations ahead of the interests of our workers or our environment. That’s why I opposed NAFTA, and CAFTA, and that’s why I’ll make sure our trade agreements work for all Americans when I’m President of the United States.

So make no mistake - the American people have a choice in this election. We can talk about our economic problems all we want, but unless we change the broken system in Washington, nothing else is going to change.  We can talk all we want about standing up for our workers, but unless we have a President you can trust to listen and put working Americans first, nothing is really going to change.

And you can trust me. Because politics didn’t lead me to working folks; working folks led me to politics. I was standing with American workers on the streets of Chicago twenty years ago, and the reason I’m here today is because I don’t want to wake up one day many years from now and see that our workers are still being denied the wages and benefits and rights that they deserve, or that we still haven’t made the investments in infrastructure and in training our workers that we desperately need.

The reason I’m here today is because I know what it’s like to go to college on student loans, and see a mother get sick and worry that maybe she can’t pay the bills. I know what it’s like to have to scratch and work and claw to build a better life for your family. And I don’t want to wake up many years from now and find that the American dream is still out of reach for too many Americans.

The reason I’m here today is because I believe that if we can just put an end to the politics of division and distraction, and reclaim that sense that we all have a stake in each other, that we rise and fall as one nation; if we can just unite this country around a common purpose – black, white, Hispanic, Asian, and Native American; labor and management; Democrats, Republicans, and Independents – there’s no obstacle we cannot overcome, no destiny we cannot fulfill.

That’s the fundamental truth I learned on the streets of Chicago. That’s the idea at the heart of the Building and Construction Trades. And that’s the opportunity we have in this election. There is a moment in the life of every generation where that spirit of unity and hopefulness has to come through if we’re going to make our mark on history.  This is our moment.  This is our time. I’m proud and honored that the first union endorsement I received in this campaign was from a Building and Construction Trades union – the Plumbers and Pipefitters. And I’d be proud and honored to have all of your support. And if you will march with me, and organize with me, and if you vote for me, then I promise you this:  We will not just win this Democratic Nomination, we will win the general election and then together – you and I – we’re going to change this country, and we’re going to change this world. Thank you.

Tonight, we are going to swap anti-McCain gear, along with some ammo against The Grinch for November. Feel free to "steal" these pictures and use them as you wish. And whenever there is a troll who looks like he could use a few donuts, use these and say, "I'm John McCain and I approved this comment."

John McCain tries to put lipstick on the pig in Iraq:

In full disclosure and frankness and candor and straight talk, the Maliki movement to Basra had a very big downside to it. As you know, we saw a thousand police and military desert their posts. But the rest of the military did a pretty good job, did a pretty good job. We did secure the port of Basra. Maybe I’m digging for the pony here.

John McCain says one thing and does another on Vet funding:

As President, I will do everything in my power to ensure that those who serve today and those who have served in the past have access to the highest quality health, mental health and rehabilitative care in the world. The disgrace of Walter Reed must not be forgotten. ... Whatever our commitments to veterans cost, we will keep them, as you have kept every commitment to us. The honor of a great nation is at stake.

– Voted AGAINST an amendment providing $20 billion to the VA’s medical facilities. [5/4/06]

– Voted AGAINST providing $430 million to the VA for outpatient care "and treatment for veterans," one of only 13 senators to do so. [4/26/06]

– Voted AGAINST increasing VA funding by $1.5 billion by closing corporate loopholes. [3/14/06]

– Voted AGAINST increasing VA funding by $1.8 billion by ending "abusive tax loopholes." [3/10/04]

– Voted AGAINST a $650 million increase in veterans’ medical care funding. [8/1/01]

Charles Krauthammer candidly states that John McCain would destroy the UN:

KRAUTHAMMER: Well, I like the idea of the league of democracies, and only in part because I and others had proposed it about six years ago. What I like about it, it’s got a hidden agenda. It looks as if it’s all about listening and joining with allies, all the kind of stuff you’d hear a John Kerry say, except that the idea here, which McCain can’t say, but I can, is to essentially kill the U.N.

This is dog whistle politics; McCain is pandering to the Black Helicopter crowd who wants to do away with the UN. And this is just one more reason why he is too radical for this country; if he were to get into power, he would likely do away with any pretense of UN inspections and resolutions and assemble a coalition of the willing to attack Iran. Since Gordon Brown would flat-out reject such an idea, McCain would wait until his pal David Cameron gets elected in the hopes that he would be more compliant in such a venture. Then, he would totally bypass the UN in any invasion or bombing campaign of Iran, claiming that they were about to develop nukes that were a threat to Israel.

A vote for McCain would be a vote for a third term of Bush.

This, despite the fact that 76% of Americans want someone who wants policies that are different than Bush.

Tom Engelhart on how air wars would create even more terrorism against US interests:

First, the farther away you are from the ground, the clearer things are likely to look, the more god-like you are likely to feel, the less human those you attack are likely to be to you. How much more so, of course, if you, the "pilot," are actually sitting at a consol at an air base near Las Vegas, identifying a "suspect" thousands of miles away via video monitor, "following" that suspect into a house, and then letting loose a Hellfire missile from a Predator drone cruising somewhere over Iraq, Afghanistan, Somalia, or the tribal areas of Pakistan.

Second, however "precise" your weaponry, however "surgical" your strike, however impressive the grainy snuff-film images you can put on television, war from the air is, and will remain, a most imprecise and destructive form of battle.

Third, in human terms, distance does not enhance accuracy. The farther away you are from a target, the more likely it is that you will have to guess who or what it is, based on spotty, difficult to interpret, or bad information, or even outright misinformation; whatever the theoretical accuracy of your weaponry, you are far more likely to miscalculate, make mistakes, mistarget, or target the misbegotten from the air.

Fourth, if you are conducting war this way and you are doing so in heavily populated urban neighborhoods, as is now the case almost every day in Iraq, then civilians will predictably die "by mistake" almost every day: the child who happens to be on the street just beyond camera range; the "terrorist suspect" or "insurgent" who looks, at a distance, like he's planting a roadside bomb, but is just scavenging; the neighbors who happen to be sitting down to dinner in the house next to the one you decide to hit.

Therefore, if John McCain were to attack Iran, then it would simply raise the number of people who would be willing to bomb American targets exponentially.

A vote for John McCain would be a vote for a third term for the economic policies of Bush:

Senator McCain’s economic plan offers no change from George Bush’s failed policies by going full speed ahead with fiscally irresponsible tax cuts for the wealthiest Americans that John McCain himself one said ‘offended his conscience.’ He also proposes a gift basket of new tax cuts for corporate America at a time when some CEOs are making more in a day than some workers make in a year.  John McCain’s plan is one that could have been written by the corporate lobbyists who run his campaign, and probably was.

More evidence that the McCain Doctrine has not provided any stability or security in Iraq:

Bombers struck four cities across Iraq on Tuesday, killing at least 54 people and providing a stark reminder that American and Iraqi forces are still fighting a war on two fronts.

While the militaries battle Shiite militias in the south and in Baghdad, the two deadliest attacks on Tuesday occurred in cities to the north and west that American forces say they had largely taken back from Sunni insurgents.

At least 40 people died in the first attack, a suicide car bombing in Baquba, the capital of Diyala Province, according to the chief of security operations for the city, but counts by the police and emergency workers removing the bodies said the number was 53.

In Ramadi, the capital of Anbar Province, west of Baghdad, a suicide bomber struck a restaurant, killing 13 people, security officials said.

The McCain Doctrine is a long-term failure as well as a short-term failure:

Fallujah remains a crippled city more than two years after the November 2004 United States-led assault.

Unemployment, and lack of medical care and safe drinking water in the city 60 kilometers west of Baghdad remain a continuous problem. Freedom of movement is still curtailed.

The city suffered two devastating US military attacks during 2004. Many of the buildings were destroyed, or heavily damaged. Several collapsed under the heavy bombing, and were never rebuilt. The heaps of concrete slabs and piles of rubble remain where they were.

"We wonder why we have been targeted by Americans since the first days of the occupation," Dr Mohammad Abed from al-Anbar University told Inter Press Service "This city sacrificed thousands of its citizens through five years of occupation just because they said 'no' to a project that threatens their country's future."

Now a less visible form of destruction is being spread, he said. "The new wave of destruction is represented by tearing the social tissue apart. The Americans are paying tremendous amounts of money to get people of Fallujah to fight each other."

John McCain's irresponsible tax cuts would add $400 billion to the deficit:

But a major component of his economic plan — like those of Presidents Bush and Reagan — centered on tax cuts. Besides making the Bush income tax cuts permanent and reducing corporate taxes to 25 percent from 35 percent, Mr. McCain called for eliminating the alternative minimum tax and doubling the value of exemptions for dependents to $7,000 from $3,500, among other recommendations. He also proposed giving taxpayers the option of filing a simpler, shorter tax form each year than is available now.

Mr. McCain even called for cutting one tax before the Republican National Convention, let alone the election: he urged Congress to suspend the 18.4-cent-a-gallon federal gas tax from this Memorial Day until Labor Day. He said doing so would provide "an immediate economic stimulus," but such plans have gained little traction recently in Congress, and some environmentalists fear such a cut would encourage more people to use their cars at a time when Mr. McCain has made combating global warming a central theme of his campaign.

The McCain campaign put the cost of his tax cuts at roughly $200 billion a year, but its estimate did not include the cost of making the Bush tax cuts permanent, which would more than double that figure.

John McCain lacks knowledge on Petraeus' role:

Republican presidential candidate Sen. John McCain of Arizona may not have been paying the closest of attention last week during hearings on the Bush administration’s Iraq policy.

Speaking Monday at the annual meeting of the Associated Press, McCain was asked whether he, if elected, would shift combat troops from Iraq to Afghanistan to intensify the search for al-Qaida leader Osama bin Laden.

"I would not do that unless Gen. [David] Petraeus said that he felt that the situation called for that," McCain said, referring to the top U.S. commander in Iraq.

Petraeus, however, made clear last week that he has nothing to do with the decision. Testifying last week before four congressional committees, including the Senate Armed Services Committee on which McCain is the ranking Republican, Petraeus said the decision about whether troops could be shifted from Iraq to Afghanistan was not his responsibility because his portfolio is limited to the multi-national force in Iraq.

Decisions about Afghanistan would be made by others, he said.

"I’ve been sort of focused on another task," Petraeus said when pressed about whether more troops should be diverted to Afghanistan rather than Iraq.

John McCain lifted "family recipes" from popular food site:

In an effort to demonstrate that the McCains are regular folks, "in touch" with ordinary Americans, the McCain website has been featuring a series of "McCain family recipes" for such dishes as Ahi Tuna with Napa Cabbage and Farfalle Pasta with Turkey Sausage. "Cindy's recipes" were part of a special section of the McCain website highlighting the accomplishments of McCain's wife, Cindy, the heiress to a beer distributing empire.

The image of the picture-perfect Cindy McCain whipping up a quick Ahi tuna or passionfruit mousse for her husband in the midst of the rigors of the campaign trail was always a little jarring. It turns out three of the recipes on the McCain site were lifted, practically verbatim, from the Food Network site, while a fourth was a slightly modified version of a Rachel Ray recipe.

John McCain getting into bed with Big Oil:

Specifically, I wanted to believe the guy talking tough about campaign finance reform was committed to getting money out of politics. This was the Arizona senator who in 2002 taped a radio ad praising his state’s "clean elections" system. It provides public money to candidates so they don’t have to finance campaigns with corporate contributions — the kind given in exchange for legislative favors. McCain’s support for clean elections, I thought, proved he wanted to end corruption.

But by the time the senator showed up here in Colorado last week for a fundraiser at Denver’s Petroleum Club, I knew I had been duped.

As The Washington Post reports, McCain is now "assiduously courting both lobbyists and their wealthy clients, offering them private audiences as part of his fundraising." He has more lobbyists as fundraisers than any other White House contender, and he allows lobbyists to simultaneously work in his campaign and represent business clients. In fact, the Post reported that his chief adviser "said he does a lot of his [lobbying] work by telephone from McCain’s Straight Talk Express bus."

Such antics have run that "Straight Talk Express" into the ditch of hypocrisy. Just look at McCain’s actions on two huge issues: energy and campaign finance reform.

While McCain prepared his presidential run in 2005, a bill came up to permit drilling in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge (ANWR). McCain — the "maverick" who voted to prevent ANWR drilling in 2003 — sided with the oil industry and reversed his vote. He has since signed on more than a dozen staffers and fundraisers who have represented energy interests, while his presidential campaign has been rewarded with $393,000 from the oil and gas industry.

Chris Matthews kisses McCain's ass:

Let me ask you about your Republican Party, because you've been a maverick and a lot of people like you because of that. And I want to ask you how much of a maverick you are.

Would you put a person on the ticket with you, like the former governor of this state, who is very popular, Tom Ridge, even though he may disagree -- even though he may disagree with you on the issue of Roe v. Wade and abortion rights? Would you put somebody on the ticket like that? On that one issue, would that stop him?

Even as Petraeus proclaims success of McCain Doctrine, Green Zone personnel told to stay indoors:

As General David Petraeus and U.S. Ambassador Ryan Crocker testify before Congress this week about the security situation in Iraq, telling the Senate Armed Services Committee on Tuesday that the surge is working and progress is under way, U.S. embassy officials in Baghdad have been ordered to take heightened security precautions in light of stepped-up attacks on the Green Zone, including one on Sunday that killed two U.S. soldiers and wounded 17 others.

Under this new security boost, says a U.S. Embassy official who asked not to be identified, embassy personnel have been told to remain under "hardened cover." Instructed to avoid their trailers, some embassy staffers are now sleeping in reinforced buildings within the Green Zone, according to a source who has spoken with embassy officials in Baghdad. Embassy personnel have also been cautioned to limit their trips outdoors and, when they must leave the protection of reinforced structures, to wear flak jackets, protective eyewear, and helmets.

"This is the security posture as of right now," the official says. "Due to the situation they've advised us to stay inside. At this time, the U.S. Embassy is taking precautions and taking hard cover."