Santa Ana, CA — Sen. John McCain called for a cautious approach to the current economic situation, criticizing Democratic proposals for increased government intervention as he laid out his economic principles before a group of Golden State business leaders.

“I have always been committed to the principle that it is not the duty of government to bail out and reward those who act irresponsibly, whether they are big banks or small borrowers. Government assistance to the banking system should be based solely on preventing systemic risk that would endanger the entire financial system and the economy,” McCain said in a speech before about 300 small business leaders before taking questions from the group. “Any assistance for borrowers should be focused solely on homeowners…(and) must be temporary and must not reward people who were irresponsible at the expense of those who weren’t.” (Full remarks below)

While noting that he is open to “any and all proposals” and he will not “allow dogma to override common sense,” he dismissed Sen. Hillary Clinton’s proposal for the creation of a $30 billion federal fund to buy out troubled mortgages.

“I am open to ideas. That idea, I believe, is a very expensive one. I don’t believe it works. And I’d like to know how its paid for,” McCain told reporters after the event.

McCain also expressed optimism during the roundtable that he is “hopeful that the worst is over,” noting that yesterday’s housing reports showed a “little glimmer of hope.”

“I believe I can tell you that I think that perhaps we are seeing the worst of…(the) subprime lending crisis which then led to the collapse or dramatic fall..in home values,” he said. “I think we may be seeing the beginning of the end of that.”

Among the immediate policy proposals McCain called for Tuesday:

• the nation’s top mortgage lenders to meet and “do everything possible to keep families in their homes and businesses growing.
• top accounting professionals to assess current systems.

The initial remarks took on a more formal feel than most McCain campaign events–with the AZ Senator delivering prepared remarks using a teleprompter.

At an availability later Tuesday, Clinton responded to McCain’s speech as a plan for “further inaction.”

“It sounds remarkably like Herbert Hoover and I don’t think that’s a good economic policy. We have a framework of regulation, it needs to be updated and modernized. The government has a number of tools at its disposal that are well-suited for just this situation,” she said. “I think that inaction has contributed to the problems we face today and I believe further inaction would exacerbate those problems…I don’t think it’s an adequate response to say the government shouldn’t be helping either banks or people because I think that would be a downward spiral that would cause tremendous economic pain and loss in our country and I don’t see why we should wait by for that to happen.”

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Chula Vista, CA — Just back from his trip to Iraq, Sen. John McCain focused Monday on the progress being made on the ground during a San Diego-area town hall meeting without commenting on the news today that the U.S. has lost 4,000 soldiers in the conflict.

During a subsequent media availability, McCain was asked why he did not mention the latest milestone in the five-year war. The presumptive GOP nominee said he honors the troops every day.

“I have commented on hundreds of occasions of the sacrifice the great and brave, young Americans have made in Iraq and elsewhere in the world in the struggle against radical, Islamic extremism. I wear a bracelet on my hand…not only as a symbol of the sacrifice that a brave young man named Matthew Stanley made, but that…of 4,000 other brave, young Americans who have served and sacrificed as well. My thoughts and my prayers go out to those families every day, not just on the day that 4,000 brave, young Americans have sacrificed. And I have said that repeatedly on hundreds of occasions.”

McCain focused Monday on the importance of winning the current battle with insurgents in Mosul, adding that he doesn’t believe he will change the current strategy from the one President Bush is pursuing in Iraq.

In a last minute schedule change, Hillary Clinton’s campaign announced that the Senator will hold a 9am event in Detroit, MI — where she’ll accuse Senator Obama of obstructing a re-vote in the state.

“She’ll make the case that every vote should count, that the people of Michigan should not be disenfranchised, and that snubbing Michigan is going to hurt Democrats in the general election,” says campaign spokesman Mo Elleithee. “We have an opportunity to prevent that; Senator Obama is standing in the way. So she wants to go to Michigan to press that case herself.”

Democratic governor Jennifer Granholm (a Clinton supporter) has legislation for a new primary ready to go — legislation Clinton herself supports — and campaign aides say Obama’s campaign is raising objection after objection in order to stymie a re-vote in a state she’s likely to win.

Obama campaign spokesman Tommy Vietor fires back that the Clinton campaign is the one playing politics with Michigan. “We understand that when it comes to counting votes, the Clinton campaign favors whatever they think will benefit them,” he said in a statement. “But on a day when Michigan legislators themselves have indicated that there isn’t enough legislative support for a re-vote — and when Senator Clinton’s own Michigan co-chair said that a re-vote ‘wouldn’t make much difference’ — it doesn’t make any sense for them to point fingers at our campaign.”

“As others in Michigan have pointed out,” he says, “there are valid concerns about the proposal currently being discussed.”

Ending the Clinton campaign’s weeks-long drought in superdelegate endorsements, anti-Iraq PA Congressman Jack Murtha has endorsed the Senator from New York.

Murtha called Clinton “the candidate that will forge a consensus on health care, education, the economy, and the war in Iraq,” saying “I’ve known Senator Clinton for fifteen years. I know that she continually reaches out for opinions and ideas not just from our nation’s leaders, but from all Americans.”

Clinton’s superdelegate lead over Barack Obama has slipped from around 100 to just 30 since February 5th, as he’s picked up uncommitted party leaders (as well as some who’d been committed to her) while her campaign has worked merely to keep unannounced superdelegates from making a decision until after all the votes are in.

Read the full Murtha statement after the jump

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Barack Obama today took questions from the media following a town hall meeting in Monaca, Pennsylvania. The purpose was for Obama to talk about the economy and respond to Senator Clinton’s speech today on the Iraq war.

When faced with multiple questions about his relationship with his former pastor, Reverend Jeremiah Wright, Obama assured the assembled press corps that he would address our questions at a speech tomorrow in Philadelphia.

“I am going to be talking about, not just Rev. Wright, but just the larger issue of race in this campaign, which has ramped up over the last couple of weeks. So I don’t want to give a full preview – you might not come to the speech,” he told reporters.

The speech, billed as a “major address on race, politics, and unifying our country,” is still being written by speechwriters and the senator himself, who considers this speech to be very personal, per a senior staffer. While he will discuss Wright, the speech was not scheduled in direct response to the storyline per se, but because the issue of race has come up so prominently in the past few weeks, and during the course of the campaign.

At today’s media avail, the senator deferred several questions on Wright to the speech, at one point noting tomorrow’s event will be “a lot more fulsome than a press conference.” He added, “Does that make sense?”

But Obama did allow a small glimpse into his thoughts, saying, “I think the caricature that’s been painted of [Wright] is not accurate. And so part of what I’ll do tomorrow is just to talk a little bit about how some of these issues are perceived from within the black church community, for example, which I think views this very differently,” he said. Trinity Church issued a statement yesterday saying Wright’s character was being “assassinated” by the media.

The only other question he fielded on the subject was when asked how the story has impacted his campaign. “You guys are in a better position to assess that than I am,” he replied.

Watch the exchange with reporters here:

done

Yesterday Barack Obama published a statement on his former pastor’s incendiary sermons on the Huffington Post blog and conducted interviews on the three cable networks. Today, he brought it up the hot topic on the campaign trail at a high school in Plainfield, Indiana - an effort to take ownership of the problematic issue rather than let it fester on its own. At times like these when our divisions become the focus, it is important to remember that we can come together as a nation in spite of the things that divide us, Obama told the racially diverse crowd.

Senator Obama waited until the end of his Indiana town hall meeting to bring up the sore subject. He began by recalling Bobby Kennedy’s speech in Indianapolis after Martin Luther King, Jr.’s assassination. Read his remarks, in full, below.

“[RFK] said at that moment of anguish, he said we’ve got a choice in taking the rage and bitterness and disappointment and letting it fester and dividing us further, so that we no longer see each other as Americans, but we see each other as separate and apart and at odds with each other. Or we can take a different path that says we have stories, but we have common dreams and common hopes and we can decide to walk down this road together and remake America once again. You know, I think about those words often, especially in the last several weeks because this campaign started on the basis that we are one America. As I said in my speech in the convention in 2004, there’s no black America, white America, or Asian America or Latino America. There’s the United States of America.

“I noticed over the last several weeks, the forces of division have started to raise their ugly heads again. I’m not here to cast blame or point fingers because everybody senses that there’s been this shift. You’ve been seeing it in the reporting. You’ve been seeing it in some of the commentary of supporters on all sides. Most recently, you’ve heard some statements of my former pastor that were incendiary and that I completely reject although I knew him and know him as somebody in my church who talked to me about Jesus and family and friendships, but clearly if all I knew was those statements I saw on television, I’d be shocked. And it reminds me that we’ve got a tragic history when it comes to race in this country. We’ve got a lot of pent up anger and bitterness and misunderstanding. But what I continue to believe in is that this country wants to move beyond these kinds of divisions. This country wants something different,” he said. The crowd of some 3,000 began to cheer and chant, “Yes we can,” a mantra many Obama supporters have repeated since the candidate used it throughout his speech following his New Hampshire primary defeat.

“I just want to say to everybody here that as somebody who was born into a diverse family, as somebody who has little pieces of America all in me, I will not allow us to lose this moment where we can not forget about our past and not ignore the very real forces of racial inequality and gender inequality and the other things that divide us. I don’t want us to forget that we have to acknowledge them and lift them up. When people say things like what my former pastor said, you have to speak our forcefully against them, but what you have to also do is to remember what Bobby Kennedy said that it is within our power to join together to truly make a United States of America.

“And that we have to do not just so our children live in a more peaceful country and a more peaceful world, but that is also the only way that we’re going to deliver on the big issues that we’re facing in this country. We can’t solve health care – divided. We cannot create an economy that works when we’re divided. We can’t fight terrorism divided. We can’t care for our veterans divided. We have to come together. That’s what this campaign is about, that’s why you’re here, that’s why we’re going to win this election,” he concluded.

Washington, D.C. — John McCain’s campaign is pushing back on recent allegations that controversial Ohio pastor, Rev. Rod Parsley, serves as a “spiritual guide” for the GOP presidential nominee.

As Barack Obama continues to take heat for anti-American and racially divisive comments made by his longtime pastor, Rev. Jeremiah Wright, some voices on the left are arguing that McCain should be receiving similar scrutiny for provocative remarks made by Parsley.

The Ohio-based religious leader has made a number controversial statements about Muslims, previously calling Islam an “anti-Christ religion” based on “deception.” In a recent book, he also wrote that the prophet Mohammad “received revelations from demons and not from the true God,” adding that “Allah was a demon spirit.”

According to the campaign, McCain met Parsley for the first time three weeks ago, when the pastor served as an introductory speaker at a February 26 rally in Cincinnati.

McCain praised most of the leaders in attendance, saying of Parsley: “I am very honored today to have one of the truly great leaders in America, a moral compass, a spiritual guide…thank you for your leadership and your guidance. I am very grateful you are here.” (Coincidence note: This was the same event of the infamous Bill Cunningham remarks)

A number of blogs and magazines (inc. here, here, and here) are citing the “spiritual guide” line to make the case that Parsley is an important influence for the Arizona Senator. International publications are also picking up on the endorsement–a headline in the Tehran Times this morning screams, “McCain advisor: Destroy Islam.”

A campaign official disputes that argument, adding that any comparison between the Wright and Parsley situations is “totally absurd.” The official notes that Rev. Wright married Obama, baptized his children and has served as his spiritual adviser for 20 years, whereas McCain received Parsley’s endorsement at one event and has never attended his service.

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Senator Barack Obama often talks about his church, the Trinity Church of Christ in Chicago, on the campaign trail. Normally he refers to the church to assure voters that he is Christian, not Muslim, a notion that has plagued the candidate along the campaign trail. Typically Obama says he has attended the church for 20 years and if one were to go, they’d find a “very conventional African American church” where you would hear gospel music and “people preaching about Jesus.” In Ohio just a few days ago, Obama told voters, “You would feel at home if you were there.”

Reverend Dr. Jeremiah Wright, who until just a couple weeks ago presided over Trinity’s congregation, officiated Senator and Mrs. Obama’s wedding and baptized their two daughters. In his first book, Dreams from My Father, Obama wrote the pastor had great influence over him in the 1990s, and it was Wright who delivered a sermon entitled “The Audacity of Hope,” which had such an impact on Obama, that he chose to use the phrase as the title of his second book. And, of course, hope continues to be a main theme of the Obama campaign.

But Obama’s pastor has also been a lightning rod for controversy. For starters, Wright’s relationship with Louis Farrakhan, one described as “close” by Senator Obama, has been of concern to many in the Jewish community.

On February 24th, Obama spoke to the Cleveland Jewish Community Leaders group, where he was asked about Wright. Obama noted the pastor occasionally was known to “say controversial things,” adding most of those controversial statements were “directed at the African American community.” Barely a week later, he explained why Wright said things that are considered controversial. “Because he’s considered that part of his social gospel. He was one of the leaders in calling for divestment from South Africa and some other issues like that, and he thinks it’s important for us to focus on what’s happening in Africa, and I agree with him on that.”

Obama assured the Ohio Jewish leaders, “I have never heard an anti-Semitic [statement] made inside of our church. I have never heard anything that would suggest anti-Semitism on part of the Pastor. He is like an old uncle who sometimes will say things that I don’t agree with. And I suspect there are some of the people in this room who have heard relatives say some things that they don’t agree with.” He added, “My pastor is going to be retiring over the next month. So my general view, and the reason that I raise this, this is always a sensitive point, what you don’t want to do is distance yourself or kick somebody away, because you are now running for President and you are worried about perceptions, particularly when someone is basically winding down their life and their career.”

But the controversy hasn’t gone away - it’s now bigger and extends beyond the Jewish community. In some of his sermons, Wright has said some pretty shocking things, including inflammatory remarks about both rival Hillary Clinton and the United States, as revealed by FOX News and other networks.

A campaign spokesman issued a statement to reporters, reading, “Senator Obama has said before that he profoundly disagrees with some of the statements and positions of Reverend Wright, who has preached his last sermon as pastor at the church. Senator Obama deplores divisive statements whether they come from his supporters, the supporters of his opponent, talk radio, or anywhere else.”

The story only grew, and so Senator Obama responded with an Op-Ed on the Huffington Post blog site this afternoon, taking a harder stance against his longtime pastor, and clearly hoping this will be the end of the controversy.

Obama said he “vehemently disagreed” with the statements currently in the spotlight. Obama wrote Rev. Wright “has never been my political advisor; he’s been my pastor. And the sermons I heard him preach always related to our obligation to love God and one another, to work on behalf of the poor, and to seek justice at every turn. The statements that Rev. Wright made that are the cause of this controversy were not statements I personally heard him preach while I sat in the pews of Trinity or heard him utter in private conversation.”

The campaign can’t remember when Obama last attended Trinity, but said it had been “months.” Obama wrote that he would continue a relationship with his church under the care of its new pastor, Otis Moss, III, who took over just last weekend. “While Rev. Wright’s statements have pained and angered me, I believe that Americans will judge me not on the basis of what someone else said, but on the basis of who I am and what I believe in; on my values, judgment and experience to be President of the United States,” Obama concluded.

Flanked by ten admirals and generals and a slew of American flags, Obama spoke about his readiness to be Commander-in-Chief — a qualification the Clinton campaign has said on the stump and in television ads that Obama does not possess.

It’s his judgment, Obama says, not necessarily the Washington experience that qualifies him for the role. “Instead of a serious, substantive debate, we’ve heard vague allusions to a ‘Commander-in-Chief threshold’ that seems to be about nothing more than the number of years you’ve spent in Washington.  This is exactly what’s wrong with the national security debate in Washington,” he said in front of reporters in Chicago. “The real Commander-in-Chief threshold doesn’t have to do with years tallied up in Washington, it has to do with the judgment and vision that you will bring to the Oval Office,” he continued.

General Tony McPeak - a retired Air Force commander and Obama supporter - said Obama has both the sound judgment and the temperament to lead the nation. “Good news and bad, Senatorn Obama was up in Iowa, maybe not so up in New Hampshire. But he was the same Barack Obama on the one day as the other. Steady, reliable. You know no shock Barack kind of guy. No drama Obama. So when that phone rings, when that red phone rings at 3am, you want a guy with this kind of temperament to answer that telephone.”

But then Senator Obama said that he thinks both of his adversaries, Republican and Democrat, are also qualified to be Commander-in-Chief. When asked directly if he thought Hillary Clinton was prepared, he responded unequivacably, “Yes. As I do – as I believe Senator McCain is, and as I believe I am.” He then qualified that statement, saying Senator Clinton has played politics with the issue. “Keep in mind though I think it is fair to say that Senator Clinton has deployed this as a political strategy. The disingenuousness of it was revealed when they started saying that well, maybe he can be Vice President. Which by the President Clinton’s own criteria that it means I must be qualified to be commander in chief. Apparently the thinking is that you know I might not be ready on day one but maybe on day 15 I would be prepared,” he said.

He cited numerous officials who served under former President Bill Clinton who now support Candidate Obama as evidence that he is ready. “The Clintons understand this. This was a last minute gambit prior to Texas and Ohio, because in their own terms that had  said that their campaign would end if they didn’t win,” he said, explaining that this strategy fit into the Clinton’s  “kitchen sink” campaign strategy.

But Obama does see a silver lining to this line of attacks. “This issue would have come up in the general election anyway. So we mind as well surface it now. I didn’t except Democrats to be making these arguments against fellow Democrats. They typically come from Republicans against Democrats. Certainly if Senator Clinton were the nominee John McCain will make the exact same argument against her. But if it’s, since I intend to be the nominee and I’m going to be running against John McCain, it’s an argument that we would have to deal with at some point,” he noted.