If it looks like a Bush and quacks like a Bush....

It's starting to look like the "Straight-Talk Express" has a couple of flat tires.

We already knew most of McCain's campaign staff were lobbyists, but the Associated Press is reporting that two staff members and a volunteer on his campaign have worked or currently work as lobbyists for European Aeronautic Defense & Space, who's French subsidiary AirBus won a $35 Billion (with a B) contract to build airplanes for the United States Air Force.

Yes, the very same decision that will in all likelihood deal a crippling blow to the local economy in Wichita .

The AP story reports that:

Top current advisers to Senator John McCain's presidential campaign last
year lobbied for European Aeronautic Defense & Space bid that beat Boeing to a $35 billion Air Force tanker contract, taking sides in a bidding fight that McCain has tried to referee for more than five years.

Two of the advisers gave up their lobbying work when they joined McCain's
campaign. A third, the former Texas Representative Tom Loeffler, lobbied for
EADS while serving as McCain's national finance chairman.

This should come as no surprise coming from the guy who was endorsed by George W. Bush, who has proven time and time again that making his friends rich is more important than the welfare of the country.

Now, McCain's team is claiming that the lobby work these individuals did for the company is not related to the tanker deal.

Do they truely want us to believe that it is purely a coincidence that two people in high-ranking positions on his campaign team and one volunteer have significant financial ties to a company that just received a $35 billion deal made possible by an amendment he wrote in 2003?

I mean honestly, you can't swing a dead cat without hitting a former EADS lobbyist. I actually have EADS lobbyists doing yardwork at my house as we speak. Who ISN'T a former EADS lobbyist?

Probably not anyone on Sens. Hillary Clinton or Barack Obama's staff.