Men Free Blog

A few weeks ago, the press made a big deal about the fact that John McCain had more houses than he could recall off the cuff. Newsweek has taken the next logical step towards providing the all-important TMI by finding out how many cars each candidate owns.

Barack Obama and his wife Michelle make do with just one vehicle; a 2008 Ford Escape Hybrid that replaced the senator’s un-PC but much cooler HEMI-powered Chrysler 300. McCain takes a more, ahem, liberal approach to vehicle ownership, with 13 cars and trucks to fill his seven garages. If we were wealthy and influential, we too would own a lot of cars. That would give us a tangible link to the Republican nominee, except for the fact that our collection of cars would be a hell of a lot cooler. McCain owns a 2004 Cadillac CTS as his daily driver, and it gets less interesting from there. Rounding out the Maverick’s sizable stable is a 2005 VW convertible, a 2001 Honda sedan, a 2007 Ford pickup, a 2008 Wrangler, a 2000 Lincoln, a 2001 GMC SUV, three 2000 NEV Gem electric cars, and a vintage 1960 Willys Jeep. McCain’s wife Cindy, who uses drifting as a form of therapy and sits atop a family fortune from her beer distribution company, drives a Lexus with “MS BUD” vanity plates.

Nothing in that crop of rides screams “I’m rich and powerful,” but if you have seven houses, it makes sense to have at least one vehicle at each residence. What doesn’t make sense is that all of those vehicles are about as exciting as sugar free tapioca pudding.

WASHINGTON - Three days after the voting ended, the race for Democratic delegates in Super Tuesday’s contests was still too close to call. With nearly 1,600 delegates from Tuesday contests awarded, Sen. Barack Obama led by two delegates Friday night, with 91 delegates still to be awarded. Obama won 796 delegates in Tuesday’s contests, to 794 for Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton, according to an analysis of voting results by The Associated Press.
 
In the Republican contest, Sen. John McCain had a commanding lead in the race for delegates.

Nearly a third of the outstanding delegates are from Colorado, a state where Obama won the popular vote. California, a state that Clinton carried, had 20 Democratic delegates still to be awarded. Neither state expected to have complete results before next week.

Obama won the popular vote in 13 states Tuesday, while Clinton won in eight states and American Samoa.

In the overall race for the nomination, Clinton has 1,055 delegates, including separately chosen party and elected officials known as superdelegates. Obama has 998.

A total of 2,025 delegates are need to secure the Democratic nomination.

Many delegates were outstanding because some states have been unable to provide all the votes in some congressional districts. The problems arose in states with counties that are split into multiple congressional districts.

The states have provided results in each county. But in some cases, they are still working to assign the votes in the appropriate congressional district.

Those votes are important because both parties award delegates based on statewide votes and on results in individual congressional districts. Democrats award them proportionally, meaning precise counts can be necessary, even when the vote is overwhelmingly in favor of one candidate.

In California, officials were still counting absentee ballots Friday. Officials had estimated that more than 1 million absentee ballots may have been submitted.

In Tuesday’s Republican contests, McCain won 617 delegates to 205 for former Massachusetts Gov. Mitt Romney, who suspended his campaign on Thursday. Former Arkansas Gov. Mike Huckabee won 155 and Rep. Ron Paul won 10. There are still 36 Republican delegates to be awarded from Tuesday’s contests.

In the overall race for the nomination, McCain leads with 719, to 198 for Huckabee and 14 for Paul. Romney’s suspended campaign still has 298 delegates.

A total of 1,191 delegates are needed to secure the Republican nomination.

The AP tracks the delegate races by projecting the number of national convention delegates won by candidates in each presidential primary or caucus, based on state and national party rules, and by interviewing unpledged delegates to obtain their preferences.

In some states, like Iowa and Nevada, local precinct caucuses are the first stage in the allocation process. The AP uses preferences expressed in those caucuses to project the number of national convention delegates each candidate will have when they are chosen at county, congressional district or state conventions.

source:news.yahoo

 WASHINGTON - Sen. John McCain stumbled in the first elections since becoming the apparent Republican nominee for president, losing the Kansas caucuses as another round of states voted Saturday.

Despite losing to former Arkansas Gov. Mike Huckabee in Kansas, McCain is all but assured his party nod. The Arizona senator has rolled up huge numbers of delegates to the national convention: Before Saturday, he had 719 delegates to Huckabee’s 234. Mitt Romney, who suspended his campaign last week, had 298.

Two of the three states voting Saturday, Kansas and Washington, were potentially difficult for McCain because he has warred with a major employer in both, Boeing Co. Kansas and Washington held GOP caucuses, while Louisiana held a primary election.

McCain helped kill a controversial $6 billion deal for Boeing to build refueling tankers for the Air Force. The deal led to corruption-related convictions for company executives and the resignation of its CEO, but nonetheless, jobs in the two states were at stake.

McCain said Boeing “has cleaned up its act” and said he supports the new process in which Boeing is competing to build the planes.

“We’ve now got a very fair competition between Airbus and Boeing for the Air Force tanker,” McCain told reporters aboard his campaign plane between Wichita, Kan., and Seattle. “In fact, that decision will be made in just a few weeks, I understand.”

As the nominee-in-waiting, McCain appeared somewhat more focused in recent days on trying to rally conservative critics behind him and unite his party than on barnstorming across the states voting Saturday and next Tuesday. Maryland, Virginia and the District of Columbia hold primaries Tuesday.

McCain did make a quick trip to Baltimore on Thursday and made stops in Norfolk, Va., Wichita and Seattle on Friday. But his main focus was on his critics; he addressed the annual Conservative Political Action Conference in Washington on Thursday, and planned to spend Saturday on the phone talking with supporters as well as those who have not yet backed him.

McCain said he would be “talking with various people, thanking people who supported us, urging them to continue.”

“It’s a process of trying to unite the party,” he told reporters Friday before landing in Seattle.

McCain’s campaign announced the endorsement of yet another prominent Republican, former United Nations Ambassador John Bolton, who praised McCain’s courage “to fight the liberals in the Senate” in the controversy over Bolton’s nomination to his former post.

While GOP leaders continue to sign on with McCain, he endured a mostly symbolic defeat when former Massachusetts Gov. Mitt Romney beat him in a straw poll at the conservative conference.

McCain cleared his path to the party nomination earlier in the week with a string of Super Tuesday victories that drove Romney from the race. He spent the rest of the week trying to reassure skeptical conservatives, at the same time party leaders quickly closed ranks behind him.
source:news.yahoo