WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Presumptive Republican presidential candidate John McCain secured millions in federal funds for a land acquisition program that provided a windfall for an Arizona developer whose executives were major campaign donors, according to a USA Today report.

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McCain, an Arizona senator, inserted $14.3 million in a 2003 defense bill to buy land around Luke Air Force Base in Glendale, Arizona, in a provision sought by SunCor Development, the largest of 50 landowners near the base, the newspaper reported on its Web site Thursday, citing public records.

Upset with a state law that restricted development around the base, SunCor representatives met with McCain’s staff to lobby for funding, USA Today reported, citing the company’s president at the time, John Ogden.

The Air Force later paid SunCor $3 million for 122 acres near the base — three times its assessed value and twice the military’s estimated value, the newspaper said.

USA Today said its analysis of campaign finance data compiled by the nonpartisan CQ MoneyLine shows that McCain’s campaigns have received $224,000 since 1998 from donors connected to SunCor’s parent company Pinnacle West, including $104,100 for his current presidential run.

Two current and one retired Pinnacle executives are fundraisers for McCain’s presidential campaign.

McCain has made fighting special interest projects on Capitol Hill a centerpiece of his White House bid.

McCain campaign spokesman Brian Rogers told the newspaper the senator’s ties to SunCor had nothing to do with his support for the base project.

Rogers said the Air Force had a legitimate need for the land and asked for money to buy it in a March 2002 budget planning document, USA Today reported.

Asked about the newspaper’s report, Rogers told Reuters: “This is absurd.”

“This project was requested by the Air Force and supported by virtually everyone in AZ (Arizona) politics — Governor Napolitano, the entire congressional delegation, etc. — but that’s not even mentioned in this story. It’s shameful,” Rogers said in an email.

The more dust the better.

The same goes for the Koran and the Torah.

And during the Dark Ages, when they were happily torturing women to death as witches, the Bible was impacting that as well. Or at least someone’s interpretation of the Bible. Meanwhile, science was kept alive in the Middle East - impacted by the Quran.

By Rev. Trent Patterson

Statesville Record and Landmark

Friday, February 8, 2008

I recently read a book about one of the greatest problems facing our country today. You are asking yourself, what could that problem be? Could it be taxes, economics, war, Iran, Iraq, global climate change or high gas prices? If you are a Patriots fan, you may not be focused on any of the problems listed above; you may still be suffering from the loss Sunday night. The current political season has all of us thinking about the problems that we face as individuals.

So what is the greatest problem facing our nation today? I agree with author Woodrow Kroll when he identifies the problem as Bible illiteracy. It is one of the greatest threats to our nation and to the church.

If you look on the Internet at numerous booksellers’ Web sites, or visit a Christian bookstore, you will find thousands of choices of Bibles. There are numerous choices of bindings, study notes, themes, helps, versions, and (as I am finding out at this point in my life) choices in print size. Yet in Bible-rich America, we are experiencing a serious lack of respect, knowledge, and love for God’s Word. Kroll said, “If Christians blew the dust off their Bibles at the same time, we’d all be killed in the dust storm.” I wholeheartedly agree.

Gone are the days when the Bible was a priority in the majority of people’s lives in our land. Every generation is shrinking further and further away from knowing the basic stories and personalities of the Bible. Many of our grandparents were well versed in the simple stories of David, Jesus, Noah, Jonah, Daniel and Abraham. They were taught these stories at church, home and in many instan-ces, school.

Today’s generation is being denied an exposure to the Bible. If you go back even further than our grandparents you can see the great influence that the Bible had on our society. The Liberty Bell is inscribed with a direct quote from Leviticus 25:10 “Proclaim Liberty throughout the land and to all the inhabitants thereof.”

According to David Barton, almost half (24 of 56) of the signers of the Declaration of Independence had what would be considered seminary or Bible school degrees. This nation’s founding was clearly influenced by the Holy Scriptures.

The Bible has also impacted science, literature, politics and all other areas of our culture. The Bible had such an influence on the world, that our calendar system is based on the central figure of Scripture, Jesus Christ. However, it is time for the church to take a stand and put the Bible back in its rightful place in our lives. The Word of God has the answers to all of life’s problems. This is not a time for us to back away and doubt the inspiration, inerrancy, and infallibility of the Word. Let’s read it more. Let’s trust it more. We can all take part in a revival of God’s word by making it “a lamp unto our feet and a light unto our path.”

May 11, 2008, 9:57PM
McCain health care plan is both radical and right
Uncoupling insurance from employment long overdue

By MICHAEL TANNER
Copyright 2008 Houston Chronicle

John McCain is proposing the most radical overhaul of American health-care policy in a decade and a half. Not since Bill and Hillary Clinton’s failed reform attempt has a presidential candidate, or even a president, called for such sweeping changes to the way health care is delivered and health insurance is purchased. more at:

http://www.chron.com/disp/story.mpl/editorial/outlook/5771291.html

WEDNESDAY, APRIL 30, 2008
McCain’s Health Care Plan: Why It’s Another Dumb Idea
John McCain has just issued a new health-care bulletin about his health-care plan. In response to criticisms from the likes of Elizabeth Edwards, who notes his plan wouldn’t cover people with pre-existing conditions like her and, indeed, like McCain himself, McCain has amended his plan: States would create “high-risk” pools for people with risky pre-existing conditions. More at:
//robertreich.blogspot.com/2008/04/mccains-health-care-plan-why-its.html

Why McCain has the best health-care plan
His is the only one of the candidate proposals that has a chance of getting medical costs under control. An argument for some free-market sanity.

By Shawn Tully, editor-at-large

(Fortune Magazine) — Fellow Americans, choose your revolution. One way or another, we’re getting a new health-care system. The old one is obviously broken. The U.S. now has 47 million uninsured, and costs are out of control. The Department of Health and Human Services predicts that if things continue as they are, health spending will almost double by 2017 to $4.3 trillion, or one-fifth of GDP, vs. 16% today.
The crisis has gotten so severe that fixing the system is no longer a partisan issue. Everyone understands that something has to change, and fast. In this presidential race, both sides are proposing radical fixes that would totally transform the way health care is delivered and paid for in America. Both the Democrats and the Republicans embrace the same goals: John McCain, Barack Obama, and Hillary Clinton are all putting forth ways of making health care affordable for every American and stopping a disastrous escalation in costs. Both sides also envision a world where employers play a much smaller role in medical benefits. The differences, of course, are in the way each candidate intends to reach those laudable goals. In essence, McCain wants to create a kind of national insurance market that shoves more decision-making power into the hands of consumers; the Democrats are aiming for a Medicare-like federal superprogram. (We’ll stick with the “Democrat” label in this story. The nominee status was still unclear at presstime, and, intraparty sniping notwithstanding, the Clinton and Obama plans are extremely similar.) more at:

//money.cnn.com/2008/03/10/news/economy/tully_healthcare.fortune/

What about their policies is working? And you isn’t it coincidence that MCSame is spouting the same ideals.

Be afraid Americans…be very afraid.