Shortly after it was announced that former US Sen. Ted Stevens had passed away in a plane crash in Alaska, Sarah Palin took to her Facebook page to offer words of condolence for her political mentor. In fact she used few words of condolence, and instead used Stevens to defend her $500 million theft of taxpayer money a.k.a. the natural gas pipeline.
Palin’s Facebook tribute started off well, “It’s with great sadness that Todd and I hear the reports coming in of Senator Ted Stevens’ passing in the plane crash near Dillingham. In our land of towering mountains and larger than life characters, none were larger than the man who in 2000 was voted “Alaskan of the Century.” This decorated World War II pilot was a warrior and a true champion of Alaska.” Read More....
Now comes the history of Sarah Palin! Will she throw you under the bus as she did her children and employees? Hell yes! Will she use Ted Steven's then scrub his endorsement when it looks like it might hurt her? Hell yes! Here is the proof!
I would also like to add that as an ex-republican there was a time I greatly admired this man. In time I began to realize that I did not agree with any republican politics. With this being said I am saddened for his families loss and that of Alaska. I know that he did fight hard for that state and my thoughts go out to his family as well as other families who lost those they love in this tragic event.~Mem
"It is not accidental that Palin just happened to pay tribute to Stevens in a way that showcased her issues. Palin has now proven that she does not possess even the most basic social grace; she can’t even honor the dead without lapsing into self promotion. I guess she was showing restraint. She managed not to plug her reality show or her new book, but only she could turn a tribute to Ted Stevens into Facebook infomercial for Sarah Palin Inc."
Four employees hired by a temporary staffing agency to encourage absentee voting for Sen. John McCain in Wisconsin say they were instructed to tell people they were Republican volunteers.
The employees told The Associated Press in interviews on Monday they were hired by Allstaff Labor Group to go door-to-door in the Milwaukee suburbs locating McCain supporters and distributing absentee ballot request forms.
Allstaff recruited the workers under a contract with a consulting firm hired by the Republican Party of Wisconsin to run its absentee ballot program.
The workers claim they were told to say they were GOP volunteers even though they were getting paid $10 an hour for the work. They were required to sign agreements stating they would not speak publicly about their work with anyone including reporters, but they decided to speak out because they were angry they had not been paid for their final few days.
"I told the Republican Party and Allstaff, I wanted to know why we were lying to these residents," said Loyalty Dixon, 26, a Milwaukee resident who worked about two weeks in Waukesha. "I said, isn't that fraudulent? They didn't give me a good explanation. They said, you guys know you're getting paid. Don't worry about it."
She recalled getting praised by Waukesha residents at gas stations and at a McDonald's for being a McCain supporter. Some residents at their doors even asked whether they were getting paid, she said.
"We had to lie to these people and say we were volunteers," she said.
Three other employees shared similar stories on Monday.
"They had us say, 'I'm volunteering for the Republican Party of Wisconsin," said Marquis Mayes, 23. "I asked them, why would we say we were volunteers and we're not? They didn't have an answer for that."
The workers claimed they were owed between $200 and $300 for their last few days of work. They said they needed the money to pay upcoming rent and utility bills; they had found out about the job while they were at a Milwaukee YWCA looking for employment.
Two of the workers said they planned to vote for Sen. Barack Obama on Tuesday; two others said they were leaning toward McCain but were unsure now because of the dispute with the Republican Party over their pay.
GOP spokeswoman Kirsten Kukowski confirmed there was a dispute over how many hours they worked, and the party's vendor was working to resolve it.
She said the program's managers were instructed to "accurately represent the program," and if that didn't happen it was a mistake. The paid workers may have picked up a script that said they were volunteers since they were working at GOP offices alongside volunteers, she said.
She insisted that if anyone brought the issue to the party's attention it would have been promptly fixed.
"We did not instruct them to misrepresent themselves," she wrote in an e-mail.
Allstaff representatives did not return phone messages.
Allstaff was only one of many temporary staffing firms hired by GOP consulting firm Lincoln Strategy Group to run the party's absentee ballot request distribution program.
Kukowski released a copy of the confidentiality agreement signed by the temporary workers, in which they agreed not to discuss the project "with anyone outside of Lincoln Strategy Group and the Republican Party apparatus.
"In addition," the agreement says, "I acknowledge that I am not authorized to speak to any member of the media (i.e. reporter, journalist, camera crew, etc.) should they inquire about the details of this project."
Kukowski said the agreement was required because workers were handling sensitive personal information about voters.
She said the workers spent three weeks distributing the forms to McCain supporters around the state.
The state's top election official, Kevin Kennedy, said the effort ran into problems in the Green Bay area, with at least one employee turning in numerous absentee ballot distribution forms that were falsified. He said the worker was promptly fired and the local clerk tossed out the forms.
He said he also received complaints that the workers were told to mislead voters into believing they were volunteers. Those complaints have been forwarded to local district attorneys, he said, but it's unclear whether it would be a crime.
"I've heard the argument made that somehow this was falsely facilitating absentee voting but I think that's a stretch," Kennedy said. "I think the issue more is, what does that say about the tactics of a political party? ... I don't think it's illegal to do but it creates all sorts of problems."
Kennedy compared the problems to those seen during voter registration drives by the liberal-leaning group ACORN, which Republicans have accused of voter fraud. Anytime workers are paid for campaign work they have an incentive to cut corners, he said.
Brave New Films talks to the actual original Mavericks, who aren't too fond of John McCain using their name:
Fontaine Maverick, great-great-granddaughter of Samuel Augustus Maverick (1803-1870) explains the origin of the expression -- and why it shouldn't apply to the Republican candidate:
Samuel Maverick was a Texas cattleman, land baron and politician, so influential that he was one of the signers of the Texas Declaration of Independence. Fiercely independent and equally liberal. Sam became well known for what he didn't do, however. It seems, according to Fontaine, that he had taken some cattle in lieu of a debt he was owed. He let them roam on an island off of Texas, and for whatever reason, didn't brand them. So, any unbranded cattle became known as Maverick's. Now, this more than likely wasn't an act of revolt. No one knows for sure, but Maverick really wasn't much of a cattleman. He was also shrewd, later on in life if cattle weren't branded, he would often claim them.
Sam was also very spirited and free minded. It was because of this that in 1867 the term Maverick was first cited as being used to describe someone with an independent streak, someone not branded.
"Mavericks believe everybody has a right to be in America so long as they obey the law," Fontaine told me. "Grandfather Maury was no coward. He chased the Klan right out of San Antonio once, stood up to the mob... Maury was burned in effigy in San Antonio, for his defense of members of the Communist Party's right to assemble, for his defense of the Hispanic community, support for those who didn't have a voice. "
"My brother called me from California last week during the VP debate and told me if they said the world Maverick one more time, he was going to shoot the TV. Of course, he doesn't have a gun, but, you get the point. My mother was just quoted in the New York Times about how we feel McCain is branded, Palin is branded, they are Republicans, and true Mavericks carry no brand. It's driving our family crazy, upsetting us and the legacy of my family, and we really with the campaign would stop misusing the word and the phrase.
"John McCain on a few occasions has shown that he can go against his party, but how hard is that when his party has been wrong on so many things as we now see," she continued. "But he has a brand. And Palin, I'm not sure she even knows the history of the word of or my family, but one thing is clear to all of my family, she truly is not a Maverick."
The New Republic published an explosive story Saturday evening detailing how John McCain, in all likelihood, leaked information to investigators of the Keating Five scandal that was designed to help his image at the expense of the other four Senators involved.
If the allegation is true -- and TNR makes a healthy case as to its veracity -- it would mean that McCain violated Senate rules and could have been expelled from that body.
"All five senators -- including McCain -- had testified under oath and under the U.S. penal code that the leaks did not come from their camps," Sahil Mahtani reports. "The leaks were also prohibited by rules of the Senate Ethics Committee; according to the rules of the Senate, anyone caught leaking such information could face expulsion from the body."
But this is not be the only instance in which McCain defied the rules of the Senate when seeking to absolve himself of any wronging in the Keating affair. Public records in Arizona reveal that the Senator was also dishonest in discussing the extent of financial transactions he and his family had with the disgraced Savings and Loans chief.
In a three-and-a-half hour interview with investigators on February 13, 1990, McCain told the Ethics Committee that "other than the Fountain Square project [a property deal in which Keating and McCain's family were jointly invested] there were no other financial dealings between him or his family and ACC [American Continental Corporation]."
This, it seems, was not true.
In 1983, the company owned by the McCain family -- specifically his wife Cindy and father-in-law Jim Hensley -- bought a property in Mesa, Arizona, owned by ACC, only to sell it back two months later.
According to property records (pdf), on May 26 of that year, Keating's ACC "conveyed" Lot 188 of Laguna Shores Unit 8 to the Hensley/McCain's Western Leasing Company for the price of $75,000. On July 21, 1983, Western Leasing Company sold the lot right back to ACC for the same exact price.
In Obama's prepared remarks for Pueblo, CO, he congratulated McCain on getting on Dick the VP's endorsement:
President Bush is sitting out the last few days before the election. But earlier today, Dick Cheney came out of his undisclosed location and hit the campaign trail. He said that he is, and I quote, "delighted to support John McCain."
I’d like to congratulate Senator McCain on this endorsement because he really earned it. That endorsement didn’t come easy. Senator McCain had to vote 90 percent of the time with George Bush and Dick Cheney to get it. He served as Washington’s biggest cheerleader for going to war in Iraq, and supports economic policies that are no different from the last eight years. So Senator McCain worked hard to get Dick Cheney’s support.
But here’s my question for you, Colorado: do you think Dick Cheney is delighted to support John McCain because he thinks John McCain’s going to bring change? Do you think John McCain and Dick Cheney have been talking about how to shake things up, and get rid of the lobbyists and the old boys club in Washington?
Chuck Hagel's Republican Exile
by Connie Bruck
11-1-08
Could Hagel have a role in an Obama Administration?
In early June, Senators Chuck Hagel and John McCain met in Hagel’s office on Capitol Hill. McCain, the presumptive Republican Presidential nominee, considered Hagel—a fellow-Republican and the senior senator from Nebraska—among his closest friends in Congress. Six months earlier, in December, 2007, McCain’s campaign manager, Rick Davis, had asked Hagel to endorse McCain and campaign with him in the upcoming primaries. Hagel had demurred. Even after McCain became the presumptive nominee, in March, Hagel, asked repeatedly on the Sunday-morning talk shows whether he was going to endorse him, remained noncommittal.
John Venners, a Washington D.C. based public relations man who aided an influence effort to ease international economic sanctions against the Iraqi regime of Saddam Hussein, made $40,000 in campaign contributions since 2004 to the Republican House and Senate Campaign Committees, according to public records.
Venners was a partner in the influence venture on behalf of Saddam Hussein's regime with William Timmons, a Washington lobbyist who was tapped by John McCain to play a leading role in his presidential transition team, according to federal court records and pubic investigative reports by the United Nations.
As first disclosed by Huffington Post, Timmons played a central role over a five year period in the lobbying campaign on behalf of Saddam's regime to ease sanctions against Iraq shortly after the end of the first Gulf War.
Timmons declined to comment for that article as well as for this one. Venners did not respond to messages seeking comment at his office, or that of his wife, a Washington political consultant.
Samir Vincent, an Iraqi born American citizen who Timmons and Venners worked closely with on the influence campaign, pleaded guilty to criminal charges in January 2005 that he acted as an unregistered agent of Saddam Hussein's regime. Tongsun Park, a second lobbyist who Timmons and Venners also worked closely with, was convicted by a federal jury in July 2006 on charges that he too violated the Foreign Agent Registration
During the same period beginning in 1992, when Timmons and Venners worked closely with Vincent and Park on the lobbying campaign, they were also attempting to negotiate a contract with the Iraqi government to purchase and resell Iraqi oil. The four men stood to share at least $45 million if the business deal went through. In the end, the arrangement failed because the sanctions were not lifted.
Federal campaign finance records, some of which are available online, show that between 2004 and 2008, Venners made some $40,000 in campaign contributions to the National Republican Senatorial Committee and the National Republican Congressional Committee, which raise money to finance, respectively, Republican Senate and House candidates. Between 2006 and 2008, Venners made more than $16,000 in additional campaign contributions to individual campaigns of House and Senate Republicans, according to public records. He contributed during the same period to a single Democrat during that period, Sen. Max Baucus, of Montana, whom he gave $1,000.
On its website, the NRSC says of itself: "The National Republican Senatorial Committee is the only political committee solely dedicated to electing Republicans to the U.S. Senate, and re-taking the majority in 2008.
"The NRSC provides invaluable support and assistance to current and prospective Republican U.S. Senate candidates in the areas of budget planning, election law compliance, fundraising, communications tools and messaging, research and strategy."
The National Republican Congressional Committee does much the same thing for Republican House candidates.
Timmons and Venners were cooperating witnesses in the federal investigations of Vincent and Park and were never charged by prosecutors with wrongdoing. And information made public during the case indicated that Vincent and Park often engaged in illegal activity--such as acting as middlemen on behalf of the Iraqi regime to pay millions of dollars in bribes to U.N. officials to ease economic sanctions against Iraq-- without Timmons and Venners knowing what Vincent and Park were up to.
But other evidence made public during the trial demonstrated that Timmons knew that he and Vincent were working closely with top aides to Saddam Hussein in the lobbying campaign to ease or lift economic sanctions against the Iraqi regime.
Testimony and records made public during Park's criminal trial detail that virtually everything Timmons did while working on the lobbying campaign was within days conveyed by Vincent to either one or both of Saddam Hussein's top aides, Tariq Aziz and Nizar Hamdoon. Vincent also testified that he almost always relayed input from the Iraqi aides back to Timmons.
Talking points that Timmons produced for the lobbyists to help ease the sanctions, for example, were reviewed ahead of time by Aziz, Vincent testified in court. Proposals that Timmons himself circulated to U.S. officials as part of the effort were written with the assistance of the Iraqi officials, and were also sent ahead of time with Timmons' approval to Aziz, other records show.
Timmons' activities occurred in the years following the first Gulf War, when Washington considered Iraq to be a rogue enemy state and a sponsor of terrorism. His dealings on behalf of the deceased Iraqi leader stand in stark contrast to the views his current employer held at the time.
During the closing weeks of the election, Sen. John McCain has gone to great lengths to present his opponent, Barack Obama, as someone too willing to coddle to groups that have ties to terrorists or terrorist activity.
It is important to understand which individuals and organizations Obama has been associated with, the refrain usually goes, as it is reflective of his foreign policy as a whole.
But if that is indeed the standard by which voters are to judge the candidates, than McCain has some questions of his own.
During the late 1990s, the Senator supported and reportedly helped arm an organization that, while eventually tolerated by the U.S. foreign policy establishment, was accused of terrorist activities and allegedly had ties to al Qaeda.
During the late stages of the Balkan War, the Kosovo Liberation Army was known for committing incredible atrocities in its efforts to facilitate Kosovo's independence from Yugoslavia. The guerrilla group often was responding to acts of violence committed against its own people. But its tactics were, nevertheless, viewed as condemnable: abductions and murders, systematic burning and looting of homes, and harassment and intimidation of Yugoslav officials.
Eventually, the KLA went from being criticized for threatening a fragile peace process to, gradually, being recognized as a military force that had popular roots within the Albanian community and a shared mission with America. But within the United States, the group was never publicly praised and often considered dangerous.
"As far as I know, no one ever turned around and said, 'these were freedom fighters and I support them,'" said Fred Abrahams, who documented the Balkans War for Human Rights Watch.
Indeed, when the Clinton administration considered forging a stronger relationship with the KLA as a means of bringing all parties to the bargaining table, GOP officials questioned whether such a policy would be a tacit support for a "group with terror, drug ties."
"Such an effusive embrace by top Clinton Administration officials of an organization that only a year ago one of its own top officials labeled as 'terrorist' is, to say the least, a startling development," read a paper put together by the Senate Republican Policy Committee.
And yet, John McCain, the current Republican standard-bearer, was one of the KLA's most outspoken supporters. Back in May 1999, when it seemed as if NATO air raids would prove ineffective in stopping the violence, and calls were being made to send in ground troops, McCain suggested that the U.S. simply fund the KLA instead.
"It wouldn't bother me if you arm the KLA [Kosovo Liberation Army] forces," he said.
Moreover, this past February, former Rep. Joe DioGuardi, a prominent Albanian lobbyist, was quoted as saying that McCain even help get arms for KLA forces.
"Even in 1998 when we had problems with Milosevic, McCain did everything that we asked of him to the benefit of the Albanian people, including arming the KLA," he said. "We are American Albanians and we need a leader who will strengthen this country... We must support John McCain because he did everything we asked of him for Kosovo, from supporting the Kosovo Liberation Army to supporting the independence of Kosovo."
DioGuardi, a bundler for McCain, did not immediately return requests for comment. Brian Rogers, a spokesman for the McCain campaign replied: "You've cracked the code, Sam!"
The Senator's support for the KLA, however, puts him near one of the far ends of his party's mainstream during that conflict. It also represents another potential blemish on a foreign policy record that McCain has held up as virtuous compared to Barack Obama's problematic associations. Earlier it was reported that the Arizona Republican had a served on the board of a far-right conservative organization that had supplied arms to paramilitary organizations in Latin America.
McCain's involvement in the U.S. Council for World Freedom became problematic for his candidacy because of that group's past ties to anti-Semitic figures and its efforts to circumvent U.S. law and fund militant anti-communists.
McCain's support for the KLA was far less clandestine than his service on the U.S. Council for World Freedom board. But it is similarly telling of his world policy views.
While the U.S., as Abrahams noted, generally turned a blind eye on the KLA because the two "shared a common enemy," there is scant evidence of public officials cheer-leading the guerrilla group at the time. Indeed, conservative officials hung the issue over Clinton's head during the late 1990s as of a lack of foreign policy morals.
Part of it had to do with alleged ties to al Qaeda -- the Washington Times reported in May 1999 that several members of the KLA were trained in terrorist camps run by Osama bin Laden himself, charges that Abrahams says have never been proven. But much of the criticism had to do with the KLA's brutal tactics. According to a 2001 report by Human Rights Watch:
The KLA was responsible for serious abuses... including abductions and murders of Serbs and ethnic Albanians considered collaborators with the state. Elements of the KLA are also responsible for post-conflict attacks on Serbs, Roma, and other non-Albanians, as well as ethnic Albanian political rivals... widespread and systematic burning and looting of homes belonging to Serbs, Roma, and other minorities and the destruction of Orthodox churches and monasteries.
Now I'm not one to kick a man when he's down, nor even to hit him when he's wobbly. But watching John McCain's poll numbers stay strangely resilient despite the virtual disintegration of his campaign, I feel compelled to share a cautionary tale of my own firsthand experience with the Straight-Talk Express. That hell-bent freight train rolled over me a couple years ago and I haven't felt the same since. Back then, I was something of a McCain admirer. Today, I have a different story to tell - one that helps explain the tortuous path the McCain camp has taken in recent weeks through the scorched earth of a deteriorating candidacy. This path, one could say, is prelude; what I've learned watching McCain seek the White House should give anyone pause about the prospect of him occupying it.
So here's what happened. John McCain was featured prominently in my documentary film Why We Fight, which premiered at Sundance in 2005. In pre-screenings of the film across the country before its theatrical release, John McCain wowed audiences with his outspoken words onscreen. On the subject of misguided U.S. foreign policy, he said "Where the debate and controversy begins is how far does the United States go and when does it go from a force for good to a force of imperialism?" About defense industry corruption, he declared, "President Eisenhower's concern about the military-industrial complex -- his words have unfortunately come true." In specific, McCain criticized not only the Bush Doctrine of preemptive war but even the contracting and billing practices of Halliburton.
In November '05, as the theatrical release of Why We Fight approached, I visited Washington for a follow-up with the Senator, both as a courtesy and hoping he might appear at the film's premiere. I arrived early for my appointment, and his receptionist pointed me to a seat on the couch. She was busy fielding a torrent of calls. "Senator McCain's office, please hold," she said repeatedly. "The office of Senator McCain, please hold...."
On a TV flickering silently, the Senate was in a frenzied session on the administration's handling of pre-war intel on Iraq. Watching the charade of partisan posturing onscreen, I wondered if Americans outside the Beltway even cared at all. The calls coming in to the receptionist suggested they did. From her responses, the callers seemed concerned with a wide array of subjects facing the Senator. "The Senator is unavailable at the moment," she would say. "May I pass on a message? Yes he is familiar with that issue. You say you support it? Yes? I will pass that on to the Senator. Thank you for calling." Some version of this conversation recurred ten times in the first 15 minutes I was there.
During a lull, I approached the receptionist and asked her how many such calls she fields each day. "Oh hundreds," she smiled. "Is there a system for passing all this on to the Senator?" I asked. "Oh yes," she replied, brandishing a steno pad with an immaculate handwritten tally of the views expressed. "I share this with him at the end of the day." Impressed and inspired, I returned to the visitor's couch. For a moment, Washington seemed to be working for America. As I waited, though, I noted a conversation taking place on the opposite side of the waiting room. There at a conference table was a group of businessmen meeting with two of the Senator's staffers. I hid myself in a magazine and pretended not to listen. From what I could gather, the businessmen represented a defense interest seeking the Senator's support for some system produced by their firm. It was pretty ironic. There I was, having made a film that investigates military-industrial-congressional corruption, and after less than an hour in Washington I was already witnessing in microcosm the tension of forces acting on public policy. On my right, the voices of Eisenhower's "alert and knowledgeable citizenry" seeking their Senator's ear through his receptionist's headset. On my left, representatives of the military-industrial sector, seeking with quiet confidence to influence the Senator on a matter of mutual interest.
A balanced picture? How could it be, really? Given the grotesque costs of elections and the need for members of Congress to bring home jobs, the most important people for any politician, Republican or Democrat, are those whose companies create jobs and generate contributions. And for the most part, that's not you and me. Most Americans don't meet their politicians. Half the country doesn't vote. Ninety-six percent don't write campaign checks.
I didn't see the Senator that day but met instead with his Chief of Staff Mark Salter. I explained to Mr. Salter that Senator McCain's outspoken onscreen remarks were proving popular with audiences weary of the status quo. I told him I wanted to arrange events to inspire public discourse and hoped the Senator might appear. Salter had bigger fish to fry, thanked me perfunctorily for my visit, and that was that.
But I could never have anticipated what happened next. The film was released nationally in January 2006. A few days later, I got a call from an agitated Mark Salter. He didn't recall my visit, hadn't seen the film, and after a panicked battery of questions, demanded I send him a copy. As promised during our November meeting, I had already sent him an advance copy, which I pointed out was already in his office. He asked me to hold, presumably confirmed this, then came back on the line to say he'd get back to me.
When next I heard from Salter, panic had grown to fury. He said the Senator's critical comments about the dangers of preemption and of American imperialism could give the mistaken impression McCain was opposed to the Iraq war and the Bush Administration broadly. But the moment in the film that was his greatest concern was when, responding to a question about the controversial awarding of no-bid contracts to Halliburton, McCain concedes, "It looks bad. It looks bad. And apparently, Halliburton more than once has overcharged the federal government. That's wrong." When pressed on how he would tackle this problem, McCain boldly declares, "I would have a public investigation of what they've done."
At that moment in the film, a phone rings off-screen and Senator McCain is advised by a staffer that Vice-President Cheney is calling. With a nervous laugh, the Senator excuses himself. "The vice-president's on the phone," he stammers, rising and scrambling off-screen, leaving the camera rolling on his empty chair. Different people see this scene differently. Some see McCain's sudden departure as perfectly normal. He's a high-ranking Senator, and the Vice-President is calling. Others see McCain's departure as evidence of a too-close relationship with Cheney. They note a certain embarrassment in McCain's body language. To yet a smaller, third group, McCain's reaction underscores Dick Cheney's omnipotence in Washington. Given the Administration's penchant for wiretapping, one viewer laughingly told me he thought perhaps "Cheney had decided the interview had gone on long enough."
Jokes aside, when McCain's office voiced their concern about this moment, I expected, if anything, they might fear the suggestion of uncomfortably close ties between McCain and Cheney. When Salter instead declared to me that I was "making it look like John McCain was critical of the Vice-President," and that "Vice-President Cheney has nothing to do with Halliburton," I realized that what he was objecting to was not that McCain might appeared too close to Cheney but rather not close enough. Mr. Salter demanded that I send him a transcript of the Senator's interview, not just the parts that appear in the film. Since none of the film's more than twenty other interviewees had been provided such a thing, and since I valued the film's independence from political pressure, I told Mr. Salter I would seek advice from other journalists and get back to him.
Salter next resorted to threats, saying that, unless I complied, he would smear my name in the media and exert pressure on the film's principal funder never to work with me again. I said I thought the BBC would be unlikely to welcome such pressure from an irate chief of staff to a senator. Salter then changed gears, appealing to my sense of fairness. "When Senator McCain sat down to talk to you," he explained, "he thought he was talking to a television crew from the BBC." I said that that was true, but that the film had then gone on to win Sundance and secure a theatrical release. But then something troubling about his remark dawned on me. "If you don't mind my asking," I said, "are you suggesting there are things Senator McCain will say to a British audience that he isn't comfortable saying to the American people?"Needless to say, this didn't help matters. But I wasn't trying to be snide. My question was just the logical extension of what Salter had intimated. But it clearly touched a nerve. He became enraged and, after hanging up, sought to make good on his threat to tarnish my name and career.
On February 8, 2006, in an article in Roll Call entitled "An Angry Star is Born," Mary Ann Akers wrote, "Attention, Sen. Barack Obama (D-Ill.): You're not the only punching bag for Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.). The 2008 presidential hopeful is also really mad at the producer of the Sundance Film Festival award-winning film 'Why We Fight''...McCain -- and especially his chief of staff -- think the movie producer intentionally twisted McCain's few lines in the film so that he comes off as critical of Vice-President Cheney."
The article goes on to quote Mr. Salter as calling me a "slippery son of a gun" and accusing me of "'doing manipulative editing' to make it look like McCain is questioning Cheney's involvement in the awarding of contracts to Halliburton..." Salter then offered Roll Call the same peculiar argument he gave me about British television. "McCain thought he was doing an interview on Iraq with the BBC," Salter told Roll Call, "'turns out to be a theatrically released film in the United States.'" Salter then underscored McCain's fondness for Cheney, lest the film leave anyone with the impression that he was in any way critical of the Vice-President. The Senator, the article quoted Salter to say, has "complete respect for Mr. Cheney's integrity."
Salter also kept his promise to inform the BBC about my alleged misconduct. He contacted them, after which they called me, nonplussed and a bit bemused at the strange culture of Washington. Ultimately, the episode came and went, and the McCain camp's efforts against me subsided. Looking back, of course, it was all about damage control to ensure that the Senator's presidential ambitions not be imperiled by a film in which he could be seen as critical of the Bush Administration. They hoped to distance McCain from his own words, which was pointedly disheartening for me, as I had seen so many audiences be so moved by them.
But the larger moral of my story became clear in recent weeks as the McCain camp entered a pattern of spiraling electoral thuggery that bears all the markings of the behavior I experienced. First came McCain's petulant withdrawal from Larry King, compounded by the vitriol Sarah Palin directed at the mainstream press at the Convention. But as the McCain candidacy unraveled over the weeks that followed, with his own staffers coming to call Palin a "Diva" and a "whack job"and both sides sowing the seeds for a post-election blame game, the strategy of shooting the messenger has proven to be just another bizarre flare-up in the fog of a turbulent campaign. Arguably, when your opponent can outspend you 4 to 1 on advertising, offending the free-of-charge mainstream press, which John McCain once called "my base," might not be the best idea. So why did they do it? Why all the fuss and desperation? Where does the palpable insecurity within the McCain camp come from? And what does it tell us? The superficial answer to these questions lies in my own experience as a precursor to what I have seen play out in the campaign. In her strident debut, Palin played the straight-talk card in describing McCain. "Wherever he goes and whoever is listening, John McCain is the same man!" she declared. Like so many of the talking points she was given, one can assume these words were carefully crafted to unmake a prevailing impression the McCain team perceives as a liability. This time, it was the fact that McCain is widely perceived as politically slippery - a politician who says different things to different people. For me, witnessing the John McCain who courageously appeared in my film and the later McCain whose staff went after me for sharing his thoughts with the American public, I've seen firsthand how the Straight-Talk Express really works. Basically, the train tends to veer off its rails whenever its "maverick" conductor goes off-script, pandering to one desired constituency in a way that alienates another. His handlers in the caboose are then left scrambling to undo impressions they fear will come back to haunt them. When the train gets out of control, taking their campaign someplace they didn't mean to go, they try to backtrack at all cost. So whether this means dissing David Letterman or bullying a lowly filmmaker like me, no contortion is so great that they won't indulge it if it helps the train reach Pennsylvania Avenue. Now, I don't really expect straight talk from politicians, but when a politician makes "straight talk" his claim to fame, he actually gets my hopes up. In McCain's case, I learned the hard way that the Straight Talk Express is actually just political stagecraft of the most cynical and cutthroat kind.
But on a deeper level, I sense that all the problems of managing McCain's public image are ultimately a reflection of a profound division in McCain's own soul as he runs for the presidency. His awkward manner, his sidekick's rogue behavior, his campaign's erratic relations with the press and public - all this radio static speaks volumes about the deeper insecurity and unresolved persona of the man himself - qualities so glaring no amount of lipstick or campaign theatrics can hide them.
The problem for McCain is that his career - and in particular his strained relations with the Bush camp -- does not offer a coherent, consistent message for a candidacy. Here is a man whose prevailing legacy is that he was a tortured American POW. And yet, in fear of losing the party base, he was forced to engage from day one in a slippery political dance on the most sensitive issue of his life, going some distance to apply the principles of his experience, yet not so far that he might be perceived as critical of the President. Thus, instead of becoming a vital reminder of how America can cannibalize her young people in a misbegotten war, McCain let his ambition for the White house ally him with an Administration on the wrong side of history, condoning the morally shameful enterprise they engineered in Iraq. By doing this, instead of helping America avoid repeating history, he became one willing to block out even his own memories and pretend, as he did in his speech about 2013, that there can ever be "victory with honor" in a war like that in Iraq. Deep down, McCain must know that after giving themselves to a war of lies, cynicism, and corruption, young people return home with less than they started out with. But instead of representing this wisdom and sparing another generation of young Americans the anguish he experienced, McCain sold them out in order that he might win the chance to occupy that same office from which he was once misguidedly commanded into harm's way.
With all due respect to the inner challenges McCain faces as he tries to reconcile the politician with the human being, what America most needs today -- alongside an unrelentingly engaged public - is deep, inspired, and coherent leadership, not a continuation of the personal insecurity, confused morality, and political opportunism that got us where we are.
Eugene Jarecki's 2006 film "Why We Fight" won the Grand Jury Prize at the Sundance Film Festival as well as a Peabody Award. This posting is an excerpt from his new book, The American Way of War: Guided Missiles, Misguided Men, and a Republic in Peril. It has just been released by Simon & Schuster/Free Press.
Michael Goldfarb Says It All For The McCain Campaign. This really does say more about who McCain and his Cronies are then it says about who Obama is!-Mem
This is so funny and shows how out of touch McCain is with himself! McCain campaign officials later said that Joe was slated to appear with McCain at a different campaign event.-Mem
REMEMBER THIS WOMAN WAS A PAID EMPLOYEE!-MEM McCain worker reaches deal in hoax assault Police say 20-year-old can't explain why she made up the story
AP-10-30-08
PITTSBURGH - A McCain campaign volunteer accused of making up a story about being robbed and assaulted in Pittsburgh by a man who disliked her McCain bumper sticker will enter a program for first-time offenders.
Under the deal announced in court Thursday, 20-year-old Ashley Todd will be released from jail and required to undergo mental health treatment. Her record eventually will be expunged as long as she goes to treatment, stays out of trouble and keeps authorities apprised of her whereabouts.
Todd, of College Station, Texas, has been jailed since Oct. 24, when police say she admitted making up a story about being robbed near a Pittsburgh bank and then assaulted by a man who scraped a backward letter "B" into her cheek.
Todd, who was charged with making a false police report, did not have to enter a plea.
It's clear that some Americans are beyond persuasion. Thankfully, it seems that most of us are willing to recognize BS when we see it.
We are a stalwart and stouthearted people, and never more so than in hard times. People weep in the dark and arise in the morning and go to work. The waves crash on your nest egg and a chunk is swept away and you put your salami sandwich in the brown bag and get on the bus.
In Philly, a woman earns $10.30/hour to care for a man brought down by cystic fibrosis. She bathes and dresses him in the morning, brings him meals, puts him to bed at night. It's hard work lifting him and she has suffered a painful hernia that, because she can't afford health insurance, she can't get fixed, but she still goes to work because he'd be helpless without her. There are a lot of people like her. I know because I'm related to some of them.
Low dishonesty and craven cynicism sometimes win the day but not inevitably. The attempt to link Barack Obama to an old radical in his neighborhood has desperation and deceit written all over it.
Meanwhile, stunning acts of heroism stand out, such as the fidelity of military lawyers assigned to defend detainees at Guantanamo Bay -- uniformed officers faithful to their lawyerly duty to offer a vigorous defense even though it means exposing the injustice of military justice that is rigged for conviction and the mendacity of a commander in chief who commits war crimes. If your law school is looking for a name for its new library, instead of selling the honor to a fat cat alumnus, you should consider the names of Lt. Cmdr. Charles Swift, Lt. Col. Mark Bridges, Col. Steven David, Lt. Col. Sharon Shaffer, Lt. Cmdr. Philip Sundel and Maj. Michael Mori.
It was dishonest, cynical men who put forward a clueless young woman for national office, hoping to juice up the ticket, hoping she could skate through two months of chaperoned campaigning, but the truth emerges: The lady is talking freely about matters she has never thought about. The American people have an ear for B.S. They can tell when someone's mouth is moving and the clutch is not engaged. When she said, "One thing that Americans do at this time, also, though, is let's commit ourselves just every day, American people, Joe Six-Pack, hockey moms across the nation, I think we need to band together and say never again. Never will we be exploited and taken advantage of again by those who are managing our money and loaning us these dollars," people smelled gas.
Some Republicans adore her because they are pranksters at heart and love the consternation of grown-ups. The ne'er-do-well son of the old Republican family as president, the idea that you increase government revenue by cutting taxes, the idea that you cut social services and thereby drive the needy into the middle class, the idea that you overthrow a dictator with a show of force and achieve democracy at no cost to yourself -- one stink bomb after another, and now Governor Palin.
She is a chatty sportscaster who lacks the guile to conceal her vacuity, and she was Mr. McCain's first major decision as nominee. This troubles independent voters, and now she is a major drag on his candidacy. She will get a nice book deal from Regnery and a new career making personal appearances for forty grand a pop, and she'll become a trivia question, "What politician claimed foreign-policy expertise based on being able to see Russia from her house?"
And the rest of us will have to pull ourselves out of the swamp of Republican economics. Your broker kept saying, "Stay with the portfolio, don't jump ship," and you felt a strong urge to dump the stocks and get into the money market where at least you're not going to lose your shirt, but you didn't do it and didn't do it, and now you're holding a big bag of brown bananas. Me, too. But at least I know enough not to believe desperate people who are talking trash.
Anybody who got whacked last week and still thinks McCain-Palin is going to lead us out of the swamp and not into a war with Iran is beyond persuasion in the English language. They'll need to lose their homes and be out on the street in a cold hard rain before they connect the dots.
he McCain campaign continues to snipe at each other over the handling, and subsequent effect, of Sarah Palin on the campaign trail. According Nicole Wallace, a senior McCain aide who is one of Palin's handlers and helped to orchestrate her initial rollout, there is an 'organized campaign to lay blame' for things at her feet. Robert Draper, however, offers a defense of Wallace, saying she's kept quiet about things that a couple of McCain higher-ups have leaked to him, and that Wallace was in a very unenviable position:
I'm sympathetic to Eskew and Wallace, and not just because they're decent people. They've held their tongue from leaking what a couple of McCain higher-ups have told me--namely, that Palin simply knew nothing about national and international issues. Which meant, as one such adviser said to me: "Letting Sarah be Sarah may not be such a good thing." It's a grim binary choice, but apparently it came down to whether to make Palin look like a scripted robot or an unscripted ignoramus. I was told that Palin chafed at being defined by her discomfiting performances in the Couric, Charlie Gibson, and Sean Hannity interviews. She wanted to get back out there and do more. Well, if you're Eskew and Wallace, what do you say to that? Your responsibility isn't the care and feeding of Sarah Palin's ego; it's the furtherance of John McCain's quest for the presidency.
Draper also reports that McCain snubbed Palin during a long ride on the Straight Talk Express.
Little known about man who has sent thousands to GOP
By Andrew Zajac, Ray Gibson and Bob Secter Tribune reporters
October 29, 2008-Chicago Tribune
Big campaign donors typically come with deep pockets and influence. But in Illinois this election cycle, no one not running for office himself has given more to the nation's federal campaigns than Shi Sheng Hao of Roselle, a virtual unknown in business and political circles.
Before September 2007, Hao's name had never appeared in the 15-year-old federal database of campaign contributors. Since then, however, his donations have topped $120,000 — including $70,100 on a single June day to Republican presidential candidate John McCain.
Over the same time frame, a network of Hao relatives has kicked in more. The take from this group over the last 13 months exceeds $269,000, a small amount to Democrats but most of it to McCain and the Republican National Committee, records show.
Hao didn't register to vote at the northwest suburban address attached to his donations until October 2007, a month after he wrote his first political check, $25,000 to the RNC.
The circumstances surrounding Hao's sudden and prolific political activism are curious and his whereabouts unclear. His name isn't listed on property records or the mailbox at the unassuming tract home listed on his donations. Hao lives "overseas," insisted a man who answered the door at the Roselle home recently. The man declined to identify himself.
The story of Hao—whose varied roster of business associates appears to include a Taiwanese government investment arm as well as the mastermind of a decade-old Democratic fundraising scandal — is an eyebrow-raiser in the current election climate.
Ethnic Chinese donors became an issue in the battle for the Democratic nomination last year because some didn't seem to live where they claimed on contribution records. Now, Republicans are raising questions about the authenticity of many small donations Democrat Barack Obama has received from abroad.
Sheila Krumholz, executive director of the Washington-based Center for Responsive Politics, said the timing of the Hao-related contributions appeared troubling, though there could be a plausible explanation. "Large contributions from people who have never given previously do generally provoke questions about who they are and what they're up to, and most importantly, what they're looking for," said Krumholz, whose non-partisan group closely tracks political donations. "The public needs to be concerned because there are fraudulent donations, and persons use them to gain influence and access in Washington."
McCain spokesman Brian Rogers said Hao was not a "major donor" and "not a part of this campaign in terms of fundraising," but declined to discuss him further or address the campaign's procedures for vetting donors. RNC spokesman Danny Diaz said he would not respond to questions from the Tribune, contending that the newspaper was biased against McCain.
So who is Shi Sheng Hao, and what are his means and motives for becoming a mega-donor? No one answers a telephone listed in his name in the 630 area code, and there's no answering machine. Messages left for him by phone and e-mail with several relatives went unanswered.
But this much can be gleaned from public records:
Donation disclosures list his occupation as a businessman with entities identified only by slightly different acronyms: ADECC, AAEC, A.A.E.C.C. On some he is also listed as president of American Chinese Entertainment Ltd.
Hao and his wife, Hsin-Ning, declared bankruptcy in 1995, at the time using the Roselle home as an address and listing as a business a firm called Asian American Environmental Control.
Hao holds an Illinois driver's license that lists his address as the Roselle home, but property records show the four-bedroom house has been owned since 1992 by Robert and Jen Chi, and their last name is on the mailbox. Contacted at the Des Plaines marketing firm where she works, Jen Chi said she didn't want to discuss Hao, though she said she knew how to get in touch with him and would have him call the Tribune. He never did.
"I don't know anything about his business," said Chi, who herself gave $15,000 to the RNC the week after Hao's first donation. "I don't want to be stuck in the middle." Hao's wife, Hsin-Ning, also used the Roselle address when she made a $25,000 contribution to the RNC last year. In September, however, she listed a Taipei address on a $2,300 contribution to the campaign fund of former Democratic presidential candidate Hillary Clinton.
There is no record in business databases of American Chinese Entertainment Ltd., the firm listed in some Hao donation records. However, an Asian American Entertainment Corp. was incorporated early this year in California with a Shi Sheng Hao as president. Government records show that firm and at least two other Hao companies have connections to the family of Gene and Nora Lum, onetime prominent Democratic fundraisers in the Asian-American community who were convicted in 1997 of making political donations through illegal straw donors.
A Taiwanese firm with a nearly identical name as Hao's new California company, Asian American Entertainment Ltd., is also headed by a Shi Sheng Hao. That firm has been embroiled in a lengthy legal battle in Las Vegas over a soured partnership in an application for a casino license in Macau, the former Portuguese colony now part of China.
A court filing in that case described Hao's firm as a business affiliate of the China Industrial Development Bank, a finance arm of the Taiwanese government. Hao is listed as a resident of Taiwan in corporate papers filed in the case.
It is not clear whether the Shi Sheng Hao in the lawsuit and the California ventures is the same Shi Sheng Hao using the Roselle address. But public records point to numerous coincidences, including corporations with similar names and an overlap of investors. Some political donations from the Roselle address also refer to Hao by a nickname, Marshall, the same nickname given for Hao in the Las Vegas court action.
Federal records indicate a pattern of large and coordinated donations from Hao, relatives and associates. Collectively, eight of them gave a total of $130,000 to the RNC in late September to early October of last year.
As the threat of Democrats controlling both houses of Congress and the White House creeps its way into nearly every GOP attack, some leaders on the Hill are hitting back. On Tuesday, Speaker Nancy Pelosi pointedly reminded John McCain that, at one point in time, when he was establishing his bipartisan bona fides and exhibiting a form of political chivalry, the Republican nominee actually heaped praise on her.
"Senator McCain has also changed his tune on my Speakership. In July, Senator McCain said that I am an 'inspiration to millions...I respect Speaker Pelosi' in a role that is 'in many ways...more powerful than the president' and that I am 'one of the great American success stories,'" said the Speaker in a statement from her office. "The American people are looking for solutions to serious challenges our nation faces. Democrats will work in a bipartisan way to restore the American Dream by growing our economy, establishing our energy independence, increasing access to health care and higher education, and work toward responsibly ending the war in Iraq, all while restoring fiscally responsible pay-as-you-go budget discipline."
The move on the Speaker's behalf was reminiscent of the McCain campaign using flattering quotes from Sen. Joe Biden against the Obama campaign. As Jonathan Martin over at Politico described it: "Pelosi delves into oppo file."
But it is a reminder that, for an election that began with promises of being civil and bipartisan, this campaign has delved into the traditional demagoguery and demonizing. The RNC responded in due course shortly thereafter, striking a distinction between praising Pelosi the glass ceiling breaker and Pelosi the leader of the "most unpopular Congress in American history."
"Just like Obama, Pelosi offered high-flying rhetoric about 'change' when Democrats took control of the House in 2006, but her record has demonstrated nothing but partisan wrangling and divisive maneuvering during the past two years," wrote Amber Wilkerson, an RNC spokeswoman. "This November, Americans who are looking to shake up the status quo in Washington will reject Barack Obama and Nancy Pelosi's liberal agenda."
Another admission from the McCain campaign that their health care plan is nothing more than a bunch of right-wing platitudes thrown together without any real serious thought as to how to solve the health care crisis. From CNN:
Changing the tax treatment wouldn't hurt the employer-sponsored system and would allow more of the uninsured to buy their own coverage, [the McCain campaign says]. Also, his advisers say a McCain administration would keep an eye on the credit to make sure it didn't lag behind the cost of coverage, while also working to lower the rate of medical inflation.
Younger, healthier workers likely wouldn't abandon their company-sponsored plans, said Douglas Holtz-Eakin, McCain's senior economic policy adviser.
"Why would they leave?" said Holtz-Eakin. "What they are getting from their employer is way better than what they could get with the credit."
Got that?
The entire premise of McCain's health care plan is that people can do better on the free market. That's why you get a tax credit. That's why you would be able to buy insurance across state lines. The market supposedly makes health insurance cheaper, makes your health insurance company offer better coverage, and makes buying the insurance you need easier. And things like tying health insurance to employment are anti-free market, which is why the McCain plan taxes employer health benefits to encourage people to get insurance on the individual, free-er market.
Of course, tying health care to employment is the way we've done things in America for generations, and it turns out it's also pretty popular. (Not to mention that insurance companies have to cover you through an employer health care plan, while they can deny you for pre-existing conditions on the individual market.) And so, in the face of political pressure, you have Douglas Holtz-Eakin admitting the truth.
Faced with the fact that destroying our employer-based health care system isn't exactly a priority for most Americans, he argues that the McCain plan wouldn't actually destroy the employer-based system. Why? Because the tax credit McCain is offering wouldn't buy a decent health care plan, even for the young and healthy!
Let's unpack this a little bit more. According to Holtz-Eakin, John McCain doesn't actually want to dismantle the employer-based health care system. But, McCain's plan would tax any health benefits you'd get through work. So, if Holtz-Eakin is right in saying you'd get better coverage through work than you'd get with the tax credit on the individual market (and he probably is), and if he's right in saying most workers won't drop their employer-based insurance for the individual market because they're getting a better deal at work, then John McCain is simply proposing a tax on your current health care benefits without giving you anything in return. That's the worst kind of tax increase.
Shorter Douglas Holtz-Eakin: John McCain's health care plan won't destroy the employer-based insurance system because McCain's plan doesn't work.
Remember John McCain: Less jobs, more war? Well now it's John McCain: More tax, less benefits.
Shameless Sarah Palin Exploits the Death of Ted Stevens for Self Promotion
