Obama is not perfect, but McCain has Charlie Black as a top adviser, who had appears to have been tied to Jack Abramoff over the years. Why have we focused so much on Obama's pastor (who has little if any influence on the campaign or how Obama will govern), but not at all on McCain's campaign staff, especially Charlie Black, who are likely to run the McCain White House.

McCain will get more scrutiny after the primary is over.

Who knows? Ron Paul could still win it!

Let's count all the GOP votes, even in Florida and Michigan!

While some of the far left blogs are trying to infer a connection, Black was chair of BKSH & Associates, a lobbying firm. Black served as senior advisor to Presidents Reagan and Bush Sr. He also served as a principal public spokesman for Bush Sr in the 1992 presidential campaign. In 1990, he served as chief spokesman for the RNC.

Ron

Abramoff and Black were associated for many years beginning in the '80's. They were never in business together, but they were part of the same lobbying system that has run Washington since the '80's. Black was also a political consultant for Jesse Helms early in his career. He helped train Lee Atwater in dirty tricks politics. He served as a lobbyist for Jonas Svabimbi of the UNITA front in Angola, Ahmed Chalabi (who helped con the US into getting into Iraq while on the payroll of Iran), and the Blackwater Group. We can pretend that this is a mainstream conservative Republican, but he's one of the sleazy operators that have made politics disgusting for the past 30 years -- fear-mongering, race-baiting (see Helms ads when he ran against Harvey Gantt). Imagine Charlie Black as President McCain's chief adviser; the ties between this man and McCain are real, not a figment like the nonexistent ties between Obama and Billy Ayres.

Associations…like the ones with Rev. Write and William Ayers. How funny, one day everyone is crying foul when these individuals who were associated with Obama are brought up, and then a few days later…this. I guess if I had to choose, I would take the associations of a person who was associated with another guy who knows the candidate over a known terrorist who has had the candidate over to his house and sat on the same committee with him for years. Give me a break!

redwhite&blue, do you even know anything about Ayers, other than what you hear on Fox News? Furthermore, members of 60's underground movements have gone on to lead very productive lives. As a matter of fact, many teach at universities. Better check each school out carefully before you send your kids! (And don't forget to cross off UC Berkeley, Angela Davis is teaching there).

He bombed the Pentagon; I don't need to know anything more about the Terrorist.

UC Berkeley? Why would you assume I would even consider sending a kid to that school? Hell, I wouldn’t even visit the city of Berkeley after the crap they pulled with the Marines!

RCH1 is right. While Black is in the same league as Abramoff and both raised money for Bush in the nineties, there is no real proof that they are connected at the hip.

Plus, like it or not, McCain was one of the driving forces to get Abramoff. Obama would be insane to try and tie McCain to Abramoff, this I am sure would backfire and Obama is smarter than that.

This campaign has had enough of finger pointing as misdirection. McCain is deep in the pockets of enough lobbyists (and it seems one lobbyist is deep into his pocket - not that I'm pointing fingers) that trying to escalate it by mentioning Abramff only hurts the efforts. Stick to the facts. They are more than enough to cause McCain enough problems.

Like the time he met with an alleged Russian mobster in Vienna because he wasn't allowed into the US.