Category: Presidential Campaign

How to Fix the Economy

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You know the drill. Credit Crises, housing crash, dollar at all time low.

Then we have Sam Zell, media mogul and drooling moron, saying that the reason that the exonomy is tanking is because Obama and Clinton are talking it down in their campaigns (H/t Will Bunch of Attytood).

Zell has it wrong. The savior of our economy is politics. With Clinton raising $35 million in February, and Obama having raised even more money, campaign spending is the only stimulus package out there.

If we have a contested convention, between the money spent on pundits, feting super-delegates, and advertisements, we should have full employment.

(please note snark tag)

Austan Goolsbee Fingered as NAFTA Contact In Obama Campaign

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So reprots CTV News.

There are three possibilities.

The first is that these discussions never happened, in which case both Obama and Goolsbee deserve an apology.

The second is that Goolsbee did talk to the ambassador with the approval of the campaign, in which case everyone in the campaign deserves a dope slap and a severance notice.

This would be unnecessary and stupid, and I do not think that the members of Obama campaign are that stupid. (If they are, then they deserve to lose)

The third possibility is that Goolsbee decided to do this unofficially on his own.

If that’s the case, he needs to be dropped in an ostentatiously public manner, because you can’t afford to have someone freelancing like this on policy or diplomacy.

I do know that Mr. Goolsbee has occasionally read my blog, so if he wants to make a statement, I will post it unedited.

The Bigots Are Going After Each Other Now

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It appears that Bill Donohue, President of the “Catholic League” and all around bigot is upset because Texas Evangelical leader John Hagee, another bigot, has endorsed John McCain.

It seems that Hagee hates Catholics too, you see.

But Catholic League President Bill Donohue said in a statement today that Hagee has written extensively in negative ways about the Catholic Church, “calling it ‘The Great Whore,’ an ‘apostate church,’ the ‘anti-Christ,’ and a ‘false cult system.'”

“Senator Obama has repudiated the endorsement of Louis Farrakhan, another bigot. McCain should follow suit and retract his embrace of Hagee,” Donohue said.

I appreciate McCain’s conundrum. If he disavowed bigotry, he’d lose at least 3/4 of the Republican party.

Pass the popcorn.

WRAPUP 4-Shame on you, Clinton tells Obama | Markets | Bonds News | Reuters

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Hillary Clinton is finally going after Barack Obama’s dishonest right wing attacks on health care reform.

This is going to make any health care plan nigh-impossible if Obama gets elected. Thanks.

Universal Healthcare is more than a core Democratic Party value. It’s essential to save this nation.

What’s more, it will change the dynamic of governance in the US for decades to come, and will create a Democratic majority nationwide for decades to come.

And Barack Obama is campaigning against it, because he thinks that he’s just so awesome that he will get Republicans to support him in slitting their own throats politically.

McCain Sleaze Update

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So, the FEC has said that McCain has opted in for the primary, and that unless the FEC approves his petion to pull out, which it cannot because it lacks quorum, he cannot opt out. (here and here)

The WaPo story has the money quote’

This is serious,’ agreed Republican election lawyer Jan Baran. Ignoring the matter on the grounds that the FEC lacks a quorum, Baran said, ‘is like saying you’re going to break into houses because the sheriff is out of town.’

As I’ve said before, if Barack Obama wants an out for the general election, all he has to do is explain that McCain is already violating campaign finance law.

In the matter of inappropriate dealings with lobbyists and their clients, we have broadcast station owner Lowell “Bud” Paxson directly contradicting McCains “no meetings’ statement, and we have letters from McCain threatening the FCC regarding a loophole in regulations that benefited Glencairn Ltd. and Sinclair communications. Glencairn’s lobbyist? Vicki Iseman.

I do not believe that John McCain screwed Vicki Iseman, but I do believe that McCain and Iseman did screw the American public.

Finally, we are starting to see coverage regarding how the national media is in the tank for McCain.

It’s only been 9 years for someone to recognize that.

McCains Denials are False, So Says….John McCain

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Michael Isikoff has the goods: McCain’s claims of never talking to anyone from Paxson Communications is false:

A sworn deposition that Sen. John McCain gave in a lawsuit more than five years ago appears to contradict one part of a sweeping denial that his campaign issued this week to rebut a New York Times story about his ties to a Washington lobbyist.

On Wednesday night the Times published a story suggesting that McCain might have done legislative favors for the clients of the lobbyist, Vicki Iseman, who worked for the firm of Alcalde & Fay. One example it cited were two letters McCain wrote in late 1999 demanding that the Federal Communications Commission act on a long-stalled bid by one of Iseman’s clients, Florida-based Paxson Communications, to purchase a Pittsburgh television station.

Just hours after the Times’s story was posted, the McCain campaign issued a point-by-point response……

But that flat claim seems to be contradicted by an impeccable source: McCain himself. “I was contacted by Mr. Paxson on this issue,” McCain said in the Sept. 25, 2002, deposition obtained by NEWSWEEK. “He wanted their approval very bad for purposes of his business. I believe that Mr. Paxson had a legitimate complaint.”

…

McCain’s subsequent letters to the FCC—coming around the same time that Paxson’s firm was flying the senator to campaign events aboard its corporate jet and contributing $20,000 to his campaign—first surfaced as an issue during his unsuccessful 2000 presidential bid. William Kennard, the FCC chair at the time, described the sharply worded letters from McCain, then chairman of the Senate Commerce Committee, as “highly unusual.”

So, what we have here at best is what he did with Charles Keating, and now he is lying about it.

You have more details on his ties to lobbyists and wealthy pay-to-play campaign contributors here and here.

The Washington Post notes that McCain’s paid campaign staff is full of lobbyists, which kind of means that when AP Reporter Glen Johnson heckled Mitt Romney about not having lobbyist on staff, he was being unfair and unprofessional.

FEC Chairman Warns that McCain May Be Breaking Campaign Finance Law

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FEC Chairman David Mason is saying that his February 6 request to withdraw from the public financing system for the primaries had not been granted.

Technically, the FEC cannot rule on his request to exit the system (he has not technically received any payments), because the Republicans are insisting on appointing electoral terrorist Hans von Spakovsky to the FEC.

Additionally, he agreed to go back into the system if he flamed out in the primaries in order to secure a loan, which may qualify as using FEC money as collateral, which means that he would be bound by the limits, and could not pull out.

One wonders if perhaps the Senate can approve the other three FEC nominees now that McCain is caught up in all this.

Heh.

McCain Already in Violation of McCain Feingold Campaign Finance Law

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If not by the letter of the law, then certainly by the spirit.

McCain got a $4 million loan for his campaign, and as part of the deal, he agreed to take public financing if his campaign failed. If he won, or became the front-runner, he would get the necessary donations.

Federal Election Commission Chairman David Mason, in a letter to McCain this week, said the all-but-certain Republican nominee needs to assure the commission that he did not use the promise of public money to help secure a $4 million line of credit he obtained in November.

And interesting aside to this is that it gives Barack Obama an out on his promise on opting in to public financing.

John McCain is already in violation of McCain-Feingold, so there can be no deal.

The Obama-Nixon Connection, and it’s a Good thing

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I got this quote from The Economist:

As Mr Crook observes, Mr Obama is far from a centrist. His voting record suggests that, if elected, Mr Obama would be the most economically left-wing American president since … well, it’s hard to say. Richard Nixon?

He means it as an insult, I’d take it as a compliment, and there is an argument to be made that Nixon in terms of the economy and regulation was more liberal than any of his successors.

I think, however, that the author of the piece overestimates Obama’s liberalism.

The Sick Old Man Sells His Soul to the Devil

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First he promises, “no new taxes”, and then proposes taxing employer supplied health insurance, which amounts to taxes on about a trillion dollars a year, and then he says that Bush should veto the anti-torture bill.

Raising taxes on the middle class, and going pro torture to suck up to his constituency….some “straight talker”.

BTW, is it me, or is he looking increasingly physically feeble on the stump?

In 2000, McCain Aides Felt Compelled to to Build Human Shield Around His Penis

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The New York Times has just broken a story on a possible inappropriate relationship between John McCain and a young attractive lobbyist, Vicki Iseman*.

Early in Senator John McCain’s first run for the White House eight years ago, waves of anxiety swept through his small circle of advisers.

A female lobbyist had been turning up with him at fund-raisers, visiting his offices and accompanying him on a client’s corporate jet. Convinced the relationship had become romantic, some of his top advisers intervened to protect the candidate from himself — instructing staff members to block the woman’s access, privately warning her away and repeatedly confronting him, several people involved in the campaign said on the condition of anonymity.

When news organizations reported that Mr. McCain had written letters to government regulators on behalf of the lobbyist’s client, the former campaign associates said, some aides feared for a time that attention would fall on her involvement.

There is no specific allegation of any sort of physical or romantic relationship, but his aides were concerned enough about this that someone had a serious talk to him, and they prevented further contact between McCain and Iseman, forming a sort of a human shield.

Let’s be clear, it’s entirely possible that they never did anything physical. What’s more it could be possible that they never expressed to each other, or to anyone else any romantic feelings.

To put it in a military perspective, fraternization between an Officer and an Enlisted man does not have to involve romance. A BFF (Best Friends Forever) relationship is inappropriate within a chain of command.

That being said, given his involvement with con artist Charles Keating and his role as one of the Keating 5, where he was “just doing favors for a friend”, it is remarkably intemperate. It was insanely reckless.

John McCain has has a reputation for outbursts and instability, and it calls his judgment into question.

To quote a friend of his:

“He is essentially an honorable person,” said William P. Cheshire, a friend of Mr. McCain who as editorial page editor of The Arizona Republic defended him during the Keating Five scandal. “But he can be imprudent.”

This at best brings his judgment, his common sense, and his commitment to really changing things in Washington into question.

The issue is not whether he had sex with that woman. It is why he forged such a close relationship with a lobbyist, and did favors for her after having experienced what he himself calls his catharsis in the Keating matter.

To put it bluntly at best is he reckless, and is he nuts.

*Well, young to me. She’s 40 and I’m 45.