Friday, October 31, 2008
Saturday, October 25, 2008
Palin's 'going rogue,' McCain aide says
From Dana Bash, Peter Hamby and John King CNN
ALBUQUERQUE, New Mexico (CNN) -- With 10 days until Election Day, long-brewing tensions between GOP vice presidential candidate Gov. Sarah Palin and key aides to Sen. John McCain have become so intense, they are spilling out in public, sources say.
Several McCain advisers have suggested to CNN that they have become increasingly frustrated with what one aide described as Palin "going rogue."
A Palin associate, however, said the candidate is simply trying to "bust free" of what she believes was a damaging and mismanaged roll-out.
McCain sources say Palin has gone off-message several times, and they privately wonder whether the incidents were deliberate. They cited an instance in which she labeled robocalls -- recorded messages often used to attack a candidate's opponent -- "irritating" even as the campaign defended their use. Also, they pointed to her telling reporters she disagreed with the campaign's decision to pull out of Michigan.
A second McCain source says she appears to be looking out for herself more than the McCain campaign.
"She is a diva. She takes no advice from anyone," said this McCain adviser. "She does not have any relationships of trust with any of us, her family or anyone else.
"Also, she is playing for her own future and sees herself as the next leader of the party. Remember: Divas trust only unto themselves, as they see themselves as the beginning and end of all wisdom."
A Palin associate defended her, saying that she is "not good at process questions" and that her comments on Michigan and the robocalls were answers to process questions.
But this Palin source acknowledged that Palin is trying to take more control of her message, pointing to last week's impromptu news conference on a Colorado tarmac.
Tracey Schmitt, Palin's press secretary, was urgently called over after Palin wandered over to the press and started talking. Schmitt tried several times to end the unscheduled session.
"We acknowledge that perhaps she should have been out there doing more," a different Palin adviser recently said, arguing that "it's not fair to judge her off one or two sound bites" from the network interviews.
The Politico reported Saturday on Palin's frustration, specifically with McCain advisers Nicolle Wallace and Steve Schmidt. They helped decide to limit Palin's initial press contact to high-profile interviews with Charlie Gibson of ABC and Katie Couric of CBS, which all McCain sources admit were highly damaging.
In response, Wallace e-mailed CNN the same quote she gave the Politico: "If people want to throw me under the bus, my personal belief is that the most honorable thing to do is to lie there."
But two sources, one Palin associate and one McCain adviser, defended the decision to keep her press interaction limited after she was picked, both saying flatly that she was not ready and that the missteps could have been a lot worse.
They insisted that she needed time to be briefed on national and international issues and on McCain's record.
"Her lack of fundamental understanding of some key issues was dramatic," said another McCain source with direct knowledge of the process to prepare Palin after she was picked. The source said it was probably the "hardest" to get her "up to speed than any candidate in history."
Schmitt came to the back of the plane Saturday to deliver a statement to traveling reporters: "Unnamed sources with their own agenda will say what they want, but from Gov. Palin down, we have one agenda, and that's to win on Election Day."
Yet another senior McCain adviser lamented the public recriminations.
"This is what happens with a campaign that's behind; it brings out the worst in people, finger-pointing and scapegoating," this senior adviser said.
This adviser also decried the double standard, noting that Democratic nominee Sen. Barack Obama's running mate, Sen. Joe Biden, has gone off the reservation as well, most recently by telling donors at a fundraiser that America's enemies will try to "test" Obama.
Tensions like those within the McCain-Palin campaign are not unusual; vice presidential candidates also have a history of butting heads with the top of the ticket.
John Edwards and his inner circle repeatedly questioned Sen. John Kerry's strategy in 2004, and Kerry loyalists repeatedly aired in public their view that Edwards would not play the traditional attack dog role with relish because he wanted to protect his future political interests.
Even in a winning campaign like Bill Clinton's, some of Al Gore's aides in 1992 and again in 1996 questioned how Gore was being scheduled for campaign events.
Jack Kemp's aides distrusted the Bob Dole camp and vice versa, and Dan Quayle loyalists had a list of gripes remarkably similar to those now being aired by Gov. Palin's aides.
With the presidential race in its final days and polls suggesting that McCain's chances of pulling out a win are growing slim, Palin may be looking after her own future.
"She's no longer playing for 2008; she's playing 2012," Democratic pollster Peter Hart said. "And the difficulty is, when she went on 'Saturday Night Live,' she became a reinforcement of her caricature. She never allowed herself to be vetted, and at the end of the day, voters turned against her both in terms of qualifications and personally."
ALBUQUERQUE, New Mexico (CNN) -- With 10 days until Election Day, long-brewing tensions between GOP vice presidential candidate Gov. Sarah Palin and key aides to Sen. John McCain have become so intense, they are spilling out in public, sources say.
Several McCain advisers have suggested to CNN that they have become increasingly frustrated with what one aide described as Palin "going rogue."
A Palin associate, however, said the candidate is simply trying to "bust free" of what she believes was a damaging and mismanaged roll-out.
McCain sources say Palin has gone off-message several times, and they privately wonder whether the incidents were deliberate. They cited an instance in which she labeled robocalls -- recorded messages often used to attack a candidate's opponent -- "irritating" even as the campaign defended their use. Also, they pointed to her telling reporters she disagreed with the campaign's decision to pull out of Michigan.
A second McCain source says she appears to be looking out for herself more than the McCain campaign.
"She is a diva. She takes no advice from anyone," said this McCain adviser. "She does not have any relationships of trust with any of us, her family or anyone else.
"Also, she is playing for her own future and sees herself as the next leader of the party. Remember: Divas trust only unto themselves, as they see themselves as the beginning and end of all wisdom."
A Palin associate defended her, saying that she is "not good at process questions" and that her comments on Michigan and the robocalls were answers to process questions.
But this Palin source acknowledged that Palin is trying to take more control of her message, pointing to last week's impromptu news conference on a Colorado tarmac.
Tracey Schmitt, Palin's press secretary, was urgently called over after Palin wandered over to the press and started talking. Schmitt tried several times to end the unscheduled session.
"We acknowledge that perhaps she should have been out there doing more," a different Palin adviser recently said, arguing that "it's not fair to judge her off one or two sound bites" from the network interviews.
The Politico reported Saturday on Palin's frustration, specifically with McCain advisers Nicolle Wallace and Steve Schmidt. They helped decide to limit Palin's initial press contact to high-profile interviews with Charlie Gibson of ABC and Katie Couric of CBS, which all McCain sources admit were highly damaging.
In response, Wallace e-mailed CNN the same quote she gave the Politico: "If people want to throw me under the bus, my personal belief is that the most honorable thing to do is to lie there."
But two sources, one Palin associate and one McCain adviser, defended the decision to keep her press interaction limited after she was picked, both saying flatly that she was not ready and that the missteps could have been a lot worse.
They insisted that she needed time to be briefed on national and international issues and on McCain's record.
"Her lack of fundamental understanding of some key issues was dramatic," said another McCain source with direct knowledge of the process to prepare Palin after she was picked. The source said it was probably the "hardest" to get her "up to speed than any candidate in history."
Schmitt came to the back of the plane Saturday to deliver a statement to traveling reporters: "Unnamed sources with their own agenda will say what they want, but from Gov. Palin down, we have one agenda, and that's to win on Election Day."
Yet another senior McCain adviser lamented the public recriminations.
"This is what happens with a campaign that's behind; it brings out the worst in people, finger-pointing and scapegoating," this senior adviser said.
This adviser also decried the double standard, noting that Democratic nominee Sen. Barack Obama's running mate, Sen. Joe Biden, has gone off the reservation as well, most recently by telling donors at a fundraiser that America's enemies will try to "test" Obama.
Tensions like those within the McCain-Palin campaign are not unusual; vice presidential candidates also have a history of butting heads with the top of the ticket.
John Edwards and his inner circle repeatedly questioned Sen. John Kerry's strategy in 2004, and Kerry loyalists repeatedly aired in public their view that Edwards would not play the traditional attack dog role with relish because he wanted to protect his future political interests.
Even in a winning campaign like Bill Clinton's, some of Al Gore's aides in 1992 and again in 1996 questioned how Gore was being scheduled for campaign events.
Jack Kemp's aides distrusted the Bob Dole camp and vice versa, and Dan Quayle loyalists had a list of gripes remarkably similar to those now being aired by Gov. Palin's aides.
With the presidential race in its final days and polls suggesting that McCain's chances of pulling out a win are growing slim, Palin may be looking after her own future.
"She's no longer playing for 2008; she's playing 2012," Democratic pollster Peter Hart said. "And the difficulty is, when she went on 'Saturday Night Live,' she became a reinforcement of her caricature. She never allowed herself to be vetted, and at the end of the day, voters turned against her both in terms of qualifications and personally."
Friday, October 24, 2008
McCain Advisor votes for Obama asked to be removed from McCain's List
McCain Adviser Endorses Obama
The Huffington Post | Rachel Weiner | October 24, 2008 01:59 PM
The Wall Street Journal today rounds up the horde of prominent Republicans jumping ship to Barack Obama. Now one of John McCain's actual advisers has switched sides:
Charles Fried, a professor at Harvard Law School, has long been one of the most important conservative thinkers in the United States. Under President Reagan, he served, with great distinction, as Solicitor General of the United States. Since then, he has been prominently associated with several Republican leaders and candidates, most recently John McCain, for whom he expressed his enthusiastic support in January.
This week, Fried announced that he has voted for Obama-Biden by absentee ballot. In his letter to Trevor Potter, the General Counsel to the McCain-Palin campaign, he asked that his name be removed from the several campaign-related committees on which he serves. In that letter, he said that chief among the reasons for his decision "is the choice of Sarah Palin at a time of deep national crisis."
The Huffington Post | Rachel Weiner | October 24, 2008 01:59 PM
The Wall Street Journal today rounds up the horde of prominent Republicans jumping ship to Barack Obama. Now one of John McCain's actual advisers has switched sides:
Charles Fried, a professor at Harvard Law School, has long been one of the most important conservative thinkers in the United States. Under President Reagan, he served, with great distinction, as Solicitor General of the United States. Since then, he has been prominently associated with several Republican leaders and candidates, most recently John McCain, for whom he expressed his enthusiastic support in January.
This week, Fried announced that he has voted for Obama-Biden by absentee ballot. In his letter to Trevor Potter, the General Counsel to the McCain-Palin campaign, he asked that his name be removed from the several campaign-related committees on which he serves. In that letter, he said that chief among the reasons for his decision "is the choice of Sarah Palin at a time of deep national crisis."
Wednesday, October 22, 2008
McCain Lobbyist ties to SADDAM HUSSEIN!!! Yes it's true!
Murray Waas murraywaas@gmail.com | HuffPost Reporting From DC
McCain Transition Chief Aided Saddam In Lobbying Effort
October 14, 2008 02:49 PM
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
William Timmons, the Washington lobbyist who John McCain has named to head his presidential transition team, aided an influence effort on behalf of Iraqi dictator Saddam Hussein to ease international sanctions against his regime.
The two lobbyists who Timmons worked closely with over a five year period on the lobbying campaign later either pleaded guilty to or were convicted of federal criminal charges that they had acted as unregistered agents of Saddam Hussein's government.
During the same period beginning in 1992, Timmons worked closely with the two lobbyists, Samir Vincent and Tongsun Park, on a previously unreported prospective deal with the Iraqis in which they hoped to be awarded a contract to purchase and resell Iraqi oil. Timmons, Vincent, and Park stood to share at least $45 million if the business deal went through.
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.
John McCain strongly supported the 1991 military action against Iraq, and as recently as Sunday described Saddam Hussein as a one-time menace to the region who had "stated categorically that he would acquire weapons of mass destruction, and he would use them wherever he could."
Timmons declined to comment for this story. An office manager who works for him said that he has made it his practice during his public career to never speak to the press. Timmons previously told investigators that he did not know that either Vincent or Park were acting as unregistered agents of Iraq. He also insisted that he did not fully understand just how closely the two men were tied to Saddam's regime while they collaborated.
But testimony and records made public during Park's criminal trial, as well as other information uncovered during a United Nations investigation, suggest just the opposite. 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.
Moreover, there was a major financial incentive at play for Timmons. The multi-million dollar oil deal that he was pursuing with the two other lobbyists would only be possible if their efforts to ease sanctions against Iraq were successful.
Story continues below
Vincent, an Iraqi-born American citizen with whom Timmons worked most closely, pleaded guilty to federal criminal charges in January 2005 that he had acted as an unregistered agent of Saddam Hussein's regime. Tongsun Park, the second lobbyist who Timmons worked closely with, was convicted by a federal jury in July 2006 on charges that he too violated the Foreign Agent Registration Act.
As part of a plea bargain agreement with the Justice Department, Vincent agreed to testify against Park and others in exchange for a reduced prison sentence. He was the government's chief witness against Park during Park's trial. Park was sentenced to five years in prison after his conviction.
A U.N commission headed by former Federal Reserve Chairman Paul Volcker conducted an exhaustive investigation of the oil-for-food program, in which various individuals were found to have paid illegal kickbacks to Saddam Hussein. The findings of the Volcker Commission detail the roles of Vincent, Park and Timmons in trying to ease the sanctions.
* * * * *
Timmons testified that he first introduced Vincent to Tongsun Park and encouraged him to hire Park to work on the deal.
At the time Timmons introduced the two men, Park's notorious background was well known:
In the 1970s, Park had admitted to making hundreds of thousands in payments and illegal campaign contributions to U.S. congressmen on behalf of the South Korean government. Park was indicted on 36 counts by a federal grand jury, but fled to South Korea before he could face trial. All of the charges were later dismissed in exchange for Park providing information about which public officials received funds from the South Korean government.
Perhaps unsurprisingly, not long after Timmons suggested that Vincent hire Park to assist their influence, lobbying, and back-channel diplomatic efforts on behalf of Saddam Hussein's government, much of that effort became increasingly bizarre, corrupt, and - on occasion - illegal.
Vincent testified that Park covertly received millions of dollars from Saddam's government that was supposed to be used to bribe then-U.N. Secretary General Boutros Boutros Ghali to ease international sanctions against Iraq. But both men simply pocketed the money, according to Vincent. (There is no evidence that Boutros Ghali even knew of Iraq's intention to bribe him.)
Investigations by the Justice Department and the Volcker commission disclosed that Park also served as the middleman for a million dollar payment that investigators believed was a bribe for another senior United Nations official. That official in fact admitted receiving the money from Park, but said he did not know that the funds originated with Saddam's regime.
Timmons told federal investigators that he was unaware of these particular activities, and investigators were unable to uncover any evidence to contradict that claim.
Timmons also claimed that he was motivated to push forward with the lobbying campaign with Vincent and Park not only to assist Saddam's regime but also because he believed that his actions would serve U.S. interests, that they would help the people of Iraq obtain needed medicine and food being denied them by sanctions, and would serve to facilitate a rapprochement of relations between Hussein and the U.S. that would be beneficial to both countries.
But there was a financial incentive in play as well. During the same period, Vincent was hard at work obtaining contracts with Iraq to purchase and resell Iraqi oil allowed under international sanctions; Timmons would have stood to benefit financially from those contracts.
Timmons claimed to investigators that any contracts offered to him, Vincent, and Park would be awarded solely on merit, and had nothing to do with their lobbying efforts.
But Vincent told investigators that their work clearly gave them an inside track. And in other instances, in which Timmons was not involved, Vincent profited from lucrative oil-for-food contracts awarded by Iraq as compensation for his effort to buy influence in the U.S. and at the U.N. for Saddam's regime.
At Park's trial, Vincent testified that he, Park, and Timmons stood to make as much as $45 million in profits from one particular oil venture with Saddam's regime had it gone forward. Park testified that he was unsure exactly what percentage of the proceeds each of the three men would have personally received. The deal ultimately fell through.
An investigator who worked on the U.N. investigation of the oil-for-food program told me that Timmons clearly should have or did understand that he was the possible recipient of oil contracts from the Iraqi government because of his lobbying and back channel diplomatic efforts on behalf of Saddam: "He would have to be the most naive person in the world to believe that was not the case," the official told me. "I guess William Timmons is just a natural born oilman. He is either deceiving himself to rationalize what he has done or taking the rest of us for fools."
Between 1997 and 2001, according to the Volcker report, Vincent received five such contracts from Saddam's regime.
In his guilty plea agreement with the Justice Department, Vincent admitted: "I received those allocations because of the work I had done on behalf of the Government of Iraq in helping set up the oil-for-food program."
* * * * *
Samir Vincent was well positioned for the task at hand when he began his influence and back channel diplomacy campaign with the Iraqis; he had been boyhood friends of two of Saddam Hussein's closest advisers, Nizaar Hamdoon and Tariq Aziz.
Hamdoon, who died in 2003, was Saddam's foreign minister, and Tariq Aziz had variously served as Baghdad's ambassador to the United States, ambassador to the United States, and Iraq's deputy prime minister.
But Vincent also sought to enlist the help of a Washington insider or lobbyist if his efforts were to have any chance of success.
His initial plan to purchase Iraqi oil through the American Red Cross faced opposition from the U.S. government. Vincent's partner at the time, an American businessman named John Venners, suggested that they needed "help from some people that he knew very well" who "used to be high up in the government." Venners recommended William Timmons.
As Time magazine's Michael Scherer recently reported, Timmons is "a Washington institution," having worked as a senior aide to every Republican president since Richard Nixon. He also serves as chairman emeritus of Timmons and Company, "a small but influential lobbying firm he founded in 1975 shortly after leaving the White House."
According to Vincent's testimony, Timmons immediately opened doors for the Iraqi-American lobbyist. He talked to then-Deputy Secretary of State Lawrence Eagleburger on Vincent's behalf. He also contacted then-Sen. Bob Dole and John Bolton, then-undersecretary of state for international affairs, to discuss Vincent's plan.
In a meeting with U.N. officials, Vincent pressed his case armed with "talking points" that Timmons had written for him. Before using them, Vincent said that he first sent the talking points to Nizaar Hamdoon and Tariq Aziz, with Timmons' approval.
After the meeting, Vincent traveled all the way to Baghdad to report back to Tariq Aziz what had occurred. Later, he had another meeting with Hamdoon and Aziz at the United Nations mission in New York to plan on next steps. Vincent testified he made formal minutes of that meeting, typed them up, and then traveled to Washington to personally give them to Timmons. This was routine practice as Vincent, Timmons, and the Iraqis worked together.
Timmons himself was apparently loathe to meet with Hamdoon or Aziz personally. But virtually the entire time they worked together, Vincent would relay to Timmons what the Iraqis had to say and vice versa.
After Vincent's first meeting with U.N. officials, Aziz and Hamdoon suggested that something called a "non-paper" be presented the next time Vincent met with the same officials. Non-papers are diplomatic communications in which parties can propose positions in writing, but do not have to fear if they leak to the public or press, because they do not officially represent positions of the government.
At the request of Aziz and Hamdoon, Timmons authored the non-paper which Vincent could rely on for that second meeting. Both Aziz and Hamdoon also reviewed the paper before Vincent used it.
On March 15, 1995, Timmons wrote a memo (which is a matter of public record as an exhibit in the case) advocating that they and the Iraqis should enlist the assistance of U.S. oil companies to make their case.
Timmons once again apparently understood that his audience was the Iraqi government. Vincent testified that Timmons gave him the memo knowing that the document was "supposed to solicit the thoughts of the Iraqi government, if this is something they would seriously consider." Vincent dutifully passed Timmons' memo on to Nizaar Hamdoon, he testified.
Weeks later, in April 1995, Vincent was summoned to Iraq to meet with Saddam Hussein in Baghdad.
As to Timmons' claims that he kept his distance from Vincent and Park and did not know much about what they and the Iraqis were up to, this exchange between a federal prosecutor and Vincent once again suggests otherwise:
Q: And when you returned to the United States, did you tell anyone about your visit with Saddam Hussein?
A: I told Bill Timmons and Tongsun Park.
Q: Why did you tell Bill Timmons about your visit with Saddam?
A: To let him know that we were talking to the leader of Iraq, and in essence we have access and assure him that any messages we were relaying between Iraqi and Tariq Aziz and anyone else, it was being transmitted to the president, Saddam Hussein, in Iraq.
* * * * *
Presciently, Time's Scherer noted that McCain's own staffers had early concerns that appointing Timmons could prove detrimental to the Arizona Senator's presidential ambitions:
His [lobbying] registrations include work on a number of issues that have become flashpoints in the presidential campaign. He has registered to work on bills that deal with the regulations of troubled mortgage lenders Freddie Mac and Fannie Mae, a bill to provide farm subsidies and bills that regulate domestic oil-drilling.
By tapping Timmons, McCain has turned to one of Washington's steadiest and most senior inside players to guide him in the event of a victory -- but also to someone who represents the antithesis of the kind of outside-of-Washington change he has recently been promising. One Republican familiar with the process said the decision to involve Timmons could become a political liability for the campaign's reformist image, especially in the wake of the controversies over the lobbying backgrounds of other McCain staffers, including campaign manager Rick Davis. "It's one more blind spot for Rick Davis and John McCain," the person said.
Timmons' work to relax international sanctions against Iraq, as well as to benefit financially from Saddam Hussein's regime, may be another such flashpoint.
The Volcker report makes clear that when Timmons first got involved with Vincent and the Iraqis, the lure of millions of dollars was at least one incentive. By early 1992, Timmons and his associates were already "pursu[ing] the purchase of sale of Iraqi oil and the exploration by a consortium of companies of the Manjoon field in Iraq," the report said.
According to the report, the venture was dependent on Vincent's belief "that sanctions against Iraq would be lifted immediately and that the Iraqi government might grant a long-term concession to an American oil company."
Later, when Timmons pressed the case even more aggressively that sanctions against Saddam's regime be eased, he, Vincent and Park hoped to profit as well, according to the Volcker report. "Continuing through 1994 and 1995, Mr. Vincent and Mr. Park, along with Mr. Timmons and others, persisted in their efforts to establish a foothold in the Iraqi oil business," the report stated.
At one point, Timmons even boasted to investigators that it was his ideas that later became the basis for the United Nations' oil-for-food program.
Under that program, the United Nations allowed Iraq to sell its oil under U.N. supervision, with the proceeds placed in U.N. escrow accounts to buy food, medicine, and other humanitarian goods for the Iraqi people.
However, a major flaw in the program was that Saddam Hussein's regime was allowed to play a role in the selection of oil companies awarded contracts. Because of lax oversight of the program, Saddam's government was able to demand that foreign oil companies -- including American ones -- provide more than $1.7 billion in kickbacks to his regime.
One of the most outspoken critics in the U.S. Senate of the oil-for-food program was John McCain:
"We need to have a full and complete cooperation on the part of the U.N. about this whole oil-for-food program, which stinks to high heaven," McCain told Fox News in Dec. 2004. "We're talking about billions and billions of dollars here that were diverted for many wrong purposes. And this is an example of corruption.
"And by the way, it's an argument, maybe a small one, but maybe an argument that justifies our action in Iraq. Because clearly the sanctions and the framework of those sanctions was completely eroded."
Additional reporting by Patrick B. Anderson.
McCain Transition Chief Aided Saddam In Lobbying Effort
October 14, 2008 02:49 PM
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
William Timmons, the Washington lobbyist who John McCain has named to head his presidential transition team, aided an influence effort on behalf of Iraqi dictator Saddam Hussein to ease international sanctions against his regime.
The two lobbyists who Timmons worked closely with over a five year period on the lobbying campaign later either pleaded guilty to or were convicted of federal criminal charges that they had acted as unregistered agents of Saddam Hussein's government.
During the same period beginning in 1992, Timmons worked closely with the two lobbyists, Samir Vincent and Tongsun Park, on a previously unreported prospective deal with the Iraqis in which they hoped to be awarded a contract to purchase and resell Iraqi oil. Timmons, Vincent, and Park stood to share at least $45 million if the business deal went through.
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.
John McCain strongly supported the 1991 military action against Iraq, and as recently as Sunday described Saddam Hussein as a one-time menace to the region who had "stated categorically that he would acquire weapons of mass destruction, and he would use them wherever he could."
Timmons declined to comment for this story. An office manager who works for him said that he has made it his practice during his public career to never speak to the press. Timmons previously told investigators that he did not know that either Vincent or Park were acting as unregistered agents of Iraq. He also insisted that he did not fully understand just how closely the two men were tied to Saddam's regime while they collaborated.
But testimony and records made public during Park's criminal trial, as well as other information uncovered during a United Nations investigation, suggest just the opposite. 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.
Moreover, there was a major financial incentive at play for Timmons. The multi-million dollar oil deal that he was pursuing with the two other lobbyists would only be possible if their efforts to ease sanctions against Iraq were successful.
Story continues below
Vincent, an Iraqi-born American citizen with whom Timmons worked most closely, pleaded guilty to federal criminal charges in January 2005 that he had acted as an unregistered agent of Saddam Hussein's regime. Tongsun Park, the second lobbyist who Timmons worked closely with, was convicted by a federal jury in July 2006 on charges that he too violated the Foreign Agent Registration Act.
As part of a plea bargain agreement with the Justice Department, Vincent agreed to testify against Park and others in exchange for a reduced prison sentence. He was the government's chief witness against Park during Park's trial. Park was sentenced to five years in prison after his conviction.
A U.N commission headed by former Federal Reserve Chairman Paul Volcker conducted an exhaustive investigation of the oil-for-food program, in which various individuals were found to have paid illegal kickbacks to Saddam Hussein. The findings of the Volcker Commission detail the roles of Vincent, Park and Timmons in trying to ease the sanctions.
* * * * *
Timmons testified that he first introduced Vincent to Tongsun Park and encouraged him to hire Park to work on the deal.
At the time Timmons introduced the two men, Park's notorious background was well known:
In the 1970s, Park had admitted to making hundreds of thousands in payments and illegal campaign contributions to U.S. congressmen on behalf of the South Korean government. Park was indicted on 36 counts by a federal grand jury, but fled to South Korea before he could face trial. All of the charges were later dismissed in exchange for Park providing information about which public officials received funds from the South Korean government.
Perhaps unsurprisingly, not long after Timmons suggested that Vincent hire Park to assist their influence, lobbying, and back-channel diplomatic efforts on behalf of Saddam Hussein's government, much of that effort became increasingly bizarre, corrupt, and - on occasion - illegal.
Vincent testified that Park covertly received millions of dollars from Saddam's government that was supposed to be used to bribe then-U.N. Secretary General Boutros Boutros Ghali to ease international sanctions against Iraq. But both men simply pocketed the money, according to Vincent. (There is no evidence that Boutros Ghali even knew of Iraq's intention to bribe him.)
Investigations by the Justice Department and the Volcker commission disclosed that Park also served as the middleman for a million dollar payment that investigators believed was a bribe for another senior United Nations official. That official in fact admitted receiving the money from Park, but said he did not know that the funds originated with Saddam's regime.
Timmons told federal investigators that he was unaware of these particular activities, and investigators were unable to uncover any evidence to contradict that claim.
Timmons also claimed that he was motivated to push forward with the lobbying campaign with Vincent and Park not only to assist Saddam's regime but also because he believed that his actions would serve U.S. interests, that they would help the people of Iraq obtain needed medicine and food being denied them by sanctions, and would serve to facilitate a rapprochement of relations between Hussein and the U.S. that would be beneficial to both countries.
But there was a financial incentive in play as well. During the same period, Vincent was hard at work obtaining contracts with Iraq to purchase and resell Iraqi oil allowed under international sanctions; Timmons would have stood to benefit financially from those contracts.
Timmons claimed to investigators that any contracts offered to him, Vincent, and Park would be awarded solely on merit, and had nothing to do with their lobbying efforts.
But Vincent told investigators that their work clearly gave them an inside track. And in other instances, in which Timmons was not involved, Vincent profited from lucrative oil-for-food contracts awarded by Iraq as compensation for his effort to buy influence in the U.S. and at the U.N. for Saddam's regime.
At Park's trial, Vincent testified that he, Park, and Timmons stood to make as much as $45 million in profits from one particular oil venture with Saddam's regime had it gone forward. Park testified that he was unsure exactly what percentage of the proceeds each of the three men would have personally received. The deal ultimately fell through.
An investigator who worked on the U.N. investigation of the oil-for-food program told me that Timmons clearly should have or did understand that he was the possible recipient of oil contracts from the Iraqi government because of his lobbying and back channel diplomatic efforts on behalf of Saddam: "He would have to be the most naive person in the world to believe that was not the case," the official told me. "I guess William Timmons is just a natural born oilman. He is either deceiving himself to rationalize what he has done or taking the rest of us for fools."
Between 1997 and 2001, according to the Volcker report, Vincent received five such contracts from Saddam's regime.
In his guilty plea agreement with the Justice Department, Vincent admitted: "I received those allocations because of the work I had done on behalf of the Government of Iraq in helping set up the oil-for-food program."
* * * * *
Samir Vincent was well positioned for the task at hand when he began his influence and back channel diplomacy campaign with the Iraqis; he had been boyhood friends of two of Saddam Hussein's closest advisers, Nizaar Hamdoon and Tariq Aziz.
Hamdoon, who died in 2003, was Saddam's foreign minister, and Tariq Aziz had variously served as Baghdad's ambassador to the United States, ambassador to the United States, and Iraq's deputy prime minister.
But Vincent also sought to enlist the help of a Washington insider or lobbyist if his efforts were to have any chance of success.
His initial plan to purchase Iraqi oil through the American Red Cross faced opposition from the U.S. government. Vincent's partner at the time, an American businessman named John Venners, suggested that they needed "help from some people that he knew very well" who "used to be high up in the government." Venners recommended William Timmons.
As Time magazine's Michael Scherer recently reported, Timmons is "a Washington institution," having worked as a senior aide to every Republican president since Richard Nixon. He also serves as chairman emeritus of Timmons and Company, "a small but influential lobbying firm he founded in 1975 shortly after leaving the White House."
According to Vincent's testimony, Timmons immediately opened doors for the Iraqi-American lobbyist. He talked to then-Deputy Secretary of State Lawrence Eagleburger on Vincent's behalf. He also contacted then-Sen. Bob Dole and John Bolton, then-undersecretary of state for international affairs, to discuss Vincent's plan.
In a meeting with U.N. officials, Vincent pressed his case armed with "talking points" that Timmons had written for him. Before using them, Vincent said that he first sent the talking points to Nizaar Hamdoon and Tariq Aziz, with Timmons' approval.
After the meeting, Vincent traveled all the way to Baghdad to report back to Tariq Aziz what had occurred. Later, he had another meeting with Hamdoon and Aziz at the United Nations mission in New York to plan on next steps. Vincent testified he made formal minutes of that meeting, typed them up, and then traveled to Washington to personally give them to Timmons. This was routine practice as Vincent, Timmons, and the Iraqis worked together.
Timmons himself was apparently loathe to meet with Hamdoon or Aziz personally. But virtually the entire time they worked together, Vincent would relay to Timmons what the Iraqis had to say and vice versa.
After Vincent's first meeting with U.N. officials, Aziz and Hamdoon suggested that something called a "non-paper" be presented the next time Vincent met with the same officials. Non-papers are diplomatic communications in which parties can propose positions in writing, but do not have to fear if they leak to the public or press, because they do not officially represent positions of the government.
At the request of Aziz and Hamdoon, Timmons authored the non-paper which Vincent could rely on for that second meeting. Both Aziz and Hamdoon also reviewed the paper before Vincent used it.
On March 15, 1995, Timmons wrote a memo (which is a matter of public record as an exhibit in the case) advocating that they and the Iraqis should enlist the assistance of U.S. oil companies to make their case.
Timmons once again apparently understood that his audience was the Iraqi government. Vincent testified that Timmons gave him the memo knowing that the document was "supposed to solicit the thoughts of the Iraqi government, if this is something they would seriously consider." Vincent dutifully passed Timmons' memo on to Nizaar Hamdoon, he testified.
Weeks later, in April 1995, Vincent was summoned to Iraq to meet with Saddam Hussein in Baghdad.
As to Timmons' claims that he kept his distance from Vincent and Park and did not know much about what they and the Iraqis were up to, this exchange between a federal prosecutor and Vincent once again suggests otherwise:
Q: And when you returned to the United States, did you tell anyone about your visit with Saddam Hussein?
A: I told Bill Timmons and Tongsun Park.
Q: Why did you tell Bill Timmons about your visit with Saddam?
A: To let him know that we were talking to the leader of Iraq, and in essence we have access and assure him that any messages we were relaying between Iraqi and Tariq Aziz and anyone else, it was being transmitted to the president, Saddam Hussein, in Iraq.
* * * * *
Presciently, Time's Scherer noted that McCain's own staffers had early concerns that appointing Timmons could prove detrimental to the Arizona Senator's presidential ambitions:
His [lobbying] registrations include work on a number of issues that have become flashpoints in the presidential campaign. He has registered to work on bills that deal with the regulations of troubled mortgage lenders Freddie Mac and Fannie Mae, a bill to provide farm subsidies and bills that regulate domestic oil-drilling.
By tapping Timmons, McCain has turned to one of Washington's steadiest and most senior inside players to guide him in the event of a victory -- but also to someone who represents the antithesis of the kind of outside-of-Washington change he has recently been promising. One Republican familiar with the process said the decision to involve Timmons could become a political liability for the campaign's reformist image, especially in the wake of the controversies over the lobbying backgrounds of other McCain staffers, including campaign manager Rick Davis. "It's one more blind spot for Rick Davis and John McCain," the person said.
Timmons' work to relax international sanctions against Iraq, as well as to benefit financially from Saddam Hussein's regime, may be another such flashpoint.
The Volcker report makes clear that when Timmons first got involved with Vincent and the Iraqis, the lure of millions of dollars was at least one incentive. By early 1992, Timmons and his associates were already "pursu[ing] the purchase of sale of Iraqi oil and the exploration by a consortium of companies of the Manjoon field in Iraq," the report said.
According to the report, the venture was dependent on Vincent's belief "that sanctions against Iraq would be lifted immediately and that the Iraqi government might grant a long-term concession to an American oil company."
Later, when Timmons pressed the case even more aggressively that sanctions against Saddam's regime be eased, he, Vincent and Park hoped to profit as well, according to the Volcker report. "Continuing through 1994 and 1995, Mr. Vincent and Mr. Park, along with Mr. Timmons and others, persisted in their efforts to establish a foothold in the Iraqi oil business," the report stated.
At one point, Timmons even boasted to investigators that it was his ideas that later became the basis for the United Nations' oil-for-food program.
Under that program, the United Nations allowed Iraq to sell its oil under U.N. supervision, with the proceeds placed in U.N. escrow accounts to buy food, medicine, and other humanitarian goods for the Iraqi people.
However, a major flaw in the program was that Saddam Hussein's regime was allowed to play a role in the selection of oil companies awarded contracts. Because of lax oversight of the program, Saddam's government was able to demand that foreign oil companies -- including American ones -- provide more than $1.7 billion in kickbacks to his regime.
One of the most outspoken critics in the U.S. Senate of the oil-for-food program was John McCain:
"We need to have a full and complete cooperation on the part of the U.N. about this whole oil-for-food program, which stinks to high heaven," McCain told Fox News in Dec. 2004. "We're talking about billions and billions of dollars here that were diverted for many wrong purposes. And this is an example of corruption.
"And by the way, it's an argument, maybe a small one, but maybe an argument that justifies our action in Iraq. Because clearly the sanctions and the framework of those sanctions was completely eroded."
Additional reporting by Patrick B. Anderson.
Palin Spends $150,000 on clothing and makeup, real conservative!
Palin Clothes Spending Has Dems Salivating, Republicans Disgusted
October 22, 2008 01:30 AM
Sam Stein stein@huffingtonpost.com | HuffPost Reporting From DC
Since her selection as John McCain's running mate, the Republican National Committee spent more than $150,000 on clothing and make-up for Gov. Sarah Palin, her husband, and even her infant son, it was reported on Tuesday evening.
That entertaining scoop -- which came by way of Politico -- sent almost immediate reverberations through the presidential race. A statement from McCain headquarters released hours after the article bemoaned the triviality of the whole affair.
"With all of the important issues facing the country right now, it's remarkable that we're spending time talking about pantsuits and blouses," said spokesperson Tracey Schmitt. "It was always the intent that the clothing go to a charitable purpose after the campaign."
But even the most timid of Democrats are unlikely to heed this call for civility. For starters, the story has the potential to dampen enthusiasm among GOP activists and donors at a critical point in the presidential race. It also creates a huge PR headache for the McCain ticket as it seeks to make inroads among voters worried about the current economic crisis.
Mainly, however, Democrats (in this scenario) are not prone to forgiveness. After all, it was during this same campaign cycle that Republicans belittled the $400 haircut that former Sen. John Edwards had paid for with his own campaign money (the funds were later reimbursed). And yet, the comparison to that once-dominant news story is hardly close: if Edwards had gotten one of his legendary haircuts every singe week, it would still take him 7.2 years to spend what Palin has spent. Palin has received the equivalent of $2,500 in clothes per day from places such as Saks Fifth Avenue (where RNC expenditures totaled nearly $50,000) and Neiman Marcus (where the governor had a $75,000 spree).
Beyond the political tit-for-tat, however, the revelation of the clothing expenditures offers what some Democrats see as a chance not just to win several news cycles during the campaign's waning days but to severely damage Palin's image as a small-town, 'Joe Six-Pack' American.
"It shows that Palin ain't like the rest of us," Tom Matzzie, a Democratic strategist told the Huffington Post, when asked how the party would or could use the issue. "It can help deflate her cultural populism with the Republican base. The plumber's wife doesn't go to Nieman's or Saks."
Indeed, the story could not come at a more inopportune time for the McCain campaign. During a week in which the Republican ticket is trying to highlight its connection to the working class -- and, by extension, promoting its newest campaign tool, Joe the Plumber -- it was revealed that Palin's fashion budget for several weeks was more than four times the median salary of an American plumber ($37,514). To put it another way: Palin received more valuable clothes in one month than the average American household spends on clothes in 80 years. A Democrat put it in even blunter terms: her clothes were the cost of health care for 15 or so people.
There are, in these cases, legal questions surrounding campaign expenditures. Though, on this front, Palin and the RNC seem to be in the clear.
"I don't think it's taxed," said David Donnelly of Campaign Money Watch. "I don't think she can keep it. It's owned by the RNC. They had to use coordinated funds to pay for the clothes."
And certainly the possibility exists that this issue can be effectively swept under the rug. Palin is not known for taking impromptu questions from the press. Moreover, the media, at this juncture, has other major story lines (see: upcoming election) to grapple with, thus denying the piece the relative vacuum that accompanied the Edwards story. Finally, there is little desire among conservative writers or pundits to litigate the matter, even if they were more than happy to jump on board when a Democrat was in the spotlight.
Several hours after Politico posted its findings, the topic remained nearly untouched by the major right-wing outlets. Though as Marc Ambinder at the Atlantic opined:
"Republicans, RNC donors and at least one RNC staff member have e-mailed me tonight to share their utter (and not-for-attribution) disgust at the expenditures. ... The heat for this story will come from Republicans who cannot understand how their party would do something this stupid ... particularly (and, it must be said, viewed retroactively) during the collapse of the financial system and the probable beginning of a recession."
October 22, 2008 01:30 AM
Sam Stein stein@huffingtonpost.com | HuffPost Reporting From DC
Since her selection as John McCain's running mate, the Republican National Committee spent more than $150,000 on clothing and make-up for Gov. Sarah Palin, her husband, and even her infant son, it was reported on Tuesday evening.
That entertaining scoop -- which came by way of Politico -- sent almost immediate reverberations through the presidential race. A statement from McCain headquarters released hours after the article bemoaned the triviality of the whole affair.
"With all of the important issues facing the country right now, it's remarkable that we're spending time talking about pantsuits and blouses," said spokesperson Tracey Schmitt. "It was always the intent that the clothing go to a charitable purpose after the campaign."
But even the most timid of Democrats are unlikely to heed this call for civility. For starters, the story has the potential to dampen enthusiasm among GOP activists and donors at a critical point in the presidential race. It also creates a huge PR headache for the McCain ticket as it seeks to make inroads among voters worried about the current economic crisis.
Mainly, however, Democrats (in this scenario) are not prone to forgiveness. After all, it was during this same campaign cycle that Republicans belittled the $400 haircut that former Sen. John Edwards had paid for with his own campaign money (the funds were later reimbursed). And yet, the comparison to that once-dominant news story is hardly close: if Edwards had gotten one of his legendary haircuts every singe week, it would still take him 7.2 years to spend what Palin has spent. Palin has received the equivalent of $2,500 in clothes per day from places such as Saks Fifth Avenue (where RNC expenditures totaled nearly $50,000) and Neiman Marcus (where the governor had a $75,000 spree).
Beyond the political tit-for-tat, however, the revelation of the clothing expenditures offers what some Democrats see as a chance not just to win several news cycles during the campaign's waning days but to severely damage Palin's image as a small-town, 'Joe Six-Pack' American.
"It shows that Palin ain't like the rest of us," Tom Matzzie, a Democratic strategist told the Huffington Post, when asked how the party would or could use the issue. "It can help deflate her cultural populism with the Republican base. The plumber's wife doesn't go to Nieman's or Saks."
Indeed, the story could not come at a more inopportune time for the McCain campaign. During a week in which the Republican ticket is trying to highlight its connection to the working class -- and, by extension, promoting its newest campaign tool, Joe the Plumber -- it was revealed that Palin's fashion budget for several weeks was more than four times the median salary of an American plumber ($37,514). To put it another way: Palin received more valuable clothes in one month than the average American household spends on clothes in 80 years. A Democrat put it in even blunter terms: her clothes were the cost of health care for 15 or so people.
There are, in these cases, legal questions surrounding campaign expenditures. Though, on this front, Palin and the RNC seem to be in the clear.
"I don't think it's taxed," said David Donnelly of Campaign Money Watch. "I don't think she can keep it. It's owned by the RNC. They had to use coordinated funds to pay for the clothes."
And certainly the possibility exists that this issue can be effectively swept under the rug. Palin is not known for taking impromptu questions from the press. Moreover, the media, at this juncture, has other major story lines (see: upcoming election) to grapple with, thus denying the piece the relative vacuum that accompanied the Edwards story. Finally, there is little desire among conservative writers or pundits to litigate the matter, even if they were more than happy to jump on board when a Democrat was in the spotlight.
Several hours after Politico posted its findings, the topic remained nearly untouched by the major right-wing outlets. Though as Marc Ambinder at the Atlantic opined:
"Republicans, RNC donors and at least one RNC staff member have e-mailed me tonight to share their utter (and not-for-attribution) disgust at the expenditures. ... The heat for this story will come from Republicans who cannot understand how their party would do something this stupid ... particularly (and, it must be said, viewed retroactively) during the collapse of the financial system and the probable beginning of a recession."
Sunday, October 19, 2008
Saturday, October 11, 2008
McCain, Media & Meltdown: A Witches' Brew for Election Violence
Paul AbramsPosted October 10, 2008 | 07:58 PM (EST)
As previously described, John McCain's body language shows he is a hater ("McCain's Body Language: He is a Hater", October 8, 2008). Now, his rhetoric has caught up to his body language. He has been baiting his audiences to view Barack Obama as dangerous, and representative of a "foreign" (read: sinister) element.
The spontaneous reactions of his audience -- from "kill him", "off with his head", to "he's a terrorist" -- show that the effect of such language is to remove the veneer of civility that keeps our country together and enables us to settle our differences through the rule of law and electoral processes. When people leave a McCain rally telling reporters that Obama is a terrorist because "it's in his blood", the potential for violence is real.
Sure, McCain has every right to question Obama's policies, his past statements and past votes, and even his past associations to the extent they are truly relevant and not a manufactroversy (i.e., a manufactured controversy).
How those questions are put determines whether they are inflammatory, whether they are the equivalent of "yelling fire in a crowded theatre." When McCain says, "Who is Barack Obama?" it is clear that he is not just questioning his policies, he is not too subtly suggesting that Obama is "not one of us."
Evolution has hardwired our brains to make instant judgments about whether a situation is safe or dangerous, part of me or "other." With the exceptions of food and sex, the default mode is defensive, and then the brain rationalizes that emotional choice. The more the McCain campaign feeds the emotional triggers, the more people will default to the defensive perspective that Obama is "other."
We are also primarily a visual species (more than auditory, touch or smell) Hence, to convey that John Kerry was really "French" (which he is not), they focused on his hair, and windsurfing (French is elite, just think of wines). For Barack, his race and his origin, as reflected in his middle name, is even more effective. For Obama to be perceived as "one of us," he had first to overcome the initial "us"/"other" response based upon his skin color.
As indicated in "Obama's Millennials -- 83 Million Strong," (June 30,2008), for voters born after 1980, who grew up in an integrated society, differences in skin color do not register as "other." By contrast, even the most progressive boomers, who may have grown up in integrated schools, but who were in the frying pan of the controversy, do not have the same easy "us" response to differences in race. Thus, McCain's attempts to trigger emotional responses to the default position of defense against Obama as other, will only work with people born prior to 1980, i.e., the boomers and the elderly.
The McCain campaign's strategy is deliberate, scientific, vicious, disgraceful and, most worryingly, dangerous.
This would be bad, and inflammatory enough on it own, but when engrafted upon a very angry electorate, people whose good works have been lost in a flash of greed and mismanagement, and who feel powerless, it is like shouting fire in a crowded theatre. A person who truly "puts country first," as McCain claims to be, would err on the side of caution. Indeed, he ought affirmatively to condemn any implication that Barack Obama is strange or has any hidden agenda. That does not stop McCain from strongly disagreeing with Obama.
In neurological terms, an honorable McCain, who puts country first, would specifically seek to "avoid the amygdala," dampening down the reptilian responses, and appeal to peoples' logic. He would do so even if there were not this underlying fuse just awaiting a signal to be lit, but especially since there clearly is a growing incendiary feeling among the electorate.
Here is what McCain said about Obama just 10 weeks ago:
"Let me begin with a few words about my opponent. Don't tell him I said this, but he is an impressive fellow in many ways. He has inspired a great many Americans, some of whom had wrongly believed that a political campaign could hold no purpose or meaning for them. His success should make Americans, all Americans, proud. Of course, I would prefer his success not continue quite as long as he hopes. But it makes me proud to know the country I've loved and served all my life is still a work in progress, and always improving. Senator Obama talks about making history, and he's made quite a bit of it already. And the way was prepared by this venerable organization and others like it. A few years before the NAACP was founded, President Theodore Roosevelt's invitation of Booker T. Washington to dine at the White House was taken as an outrage and an insult in many quarters. America today is a world away from the cruel and prideful bigotry of that time. There is no better evidence of this than the nomination of an African-American to be the presidential nominee of his party. Whatever the outcome in November, Senator Obama has achieved a great thing -- for himself and for his country -- and I thank him for it." (McCain speech to NAACP, July 10, 2008).
As if McCain's campaign itself were not bad enough, the mainstream media is egging him on. I have yet to hear anyone say, "whoa!", "yes, McCain may be behind, but his only chance is to convince people of some major policy superiority, or even that he himself (McCain) is more trustworthy than Obama on matters that count for the electorate." Nor have any of the networks just refused to cover allegations no matter how bogus, and no matter how bogus they know them to be.
It seems to go without question to them that, if McCain is behind, then of course he should be manufacturing controversies, and doing everything he can to make people fear Obama at a gut level, i.e., that it is perfectly acceptable for him to engage in all-out, untruthful, character assassination, sowing fear and doubt.
There is one bright light -- Campbell Brown. She has realized that parity does not mean equal time when one side is speaking the truth and the other is lying, or when one side is appealing to their views of the issues and the other is engaging in false character assassination. Chris Matthews notes the problem, but gives "equal time" to people like Pat Buchanan, who claim it is "payback time" for the Goldwater campaign (!) -- were people suggesting Goldwater's Jewish background made him weird or unreliable, or just that he himself promoted dangerous views? -- and then laughs, as if incitement to violence is a big joke. I do not think John Kennedy, Robert Kennedy and Martin Luthur King, Jr., would get Pat's punchline.
If Obama is going to raise taxes on the top bracket, and McCain says that will reduce jobs, that's a great discussion to have on the basis of "equal time". [Obama can ask McCain to explain the 23M jobs created after raising taxes on the top bracket during the recession in 1993]. But, if Obama says he is going to raise taxes on the top bracket, and McCain says that Obama had a coffee at the home of a college professor who 40 years ago was a radical, then that's not a discussion that deserves any time just because that is what the McCain campaign has decided to make its message of the day.
During the Watergate hearings, the not-yet jailed Nixon Attorney General John Mitchell excused the crimes he and others committed against the political process and against the Constitution in the 1972 election with these words: "All we were trying to do is re-elect the President." Earlier he had explained: "In my mind, the reelection of Richard Nixon, compared to what was on the other side, was so important that I put it in exactly that context."
Although Mitchell became the nation's first Attorney General to go to jail, it appears as if the anything-goes to win psychology that has permeated Wall Street has also captured the media. There are no more standards, except the Wall Street standards of what will attract the most viewers, and thus the greatest profits. Whatever the campaigns, or the Drudge Report, serves up, they buy. It is "news" just because a campaign said it. One party can arrogate to itself the judgment that the other side is so unacceptable that law-breaking, or inciting-to-violence is justified to defeat them.
As this is being written, I am told that McCain has dialed it back, stating that Obama is not someone to be afraid of if he is elected President. Whether that is a poll-driven message or a pang of conscience, it may help... a bit. Let us now see if he takes down his inflammatory ads, publicly talks down those at his rallies who incite to violence, says "no" when he is being egged on by an enthusiastic supporter, and begins, finally, to run the respectful campaign he claimed he wanted.
John McCain had to choose between losing this election or dishonor.
He chose dishonor.
He shall lose.
As previously described, John McCain's body language shows he is a hater ("McCain's Body Language: He is a Hater", October 8, 2008). Now, his rhetoric has caught up to his body language. He has been baiting his audiences to view Barack Obama as dangerous, and representative of a "foreign" (read: sinister) element.
The spontaneous reactions of his audience -- from "kill him", "off with his head", to "he's a terrorist" -- show that the effect of such language is to remove the veneer of civility that keeps our country together and enables us to settle our differences through the rule of law and electoral processes. When people leave a McCain rally telling reporters that Obama is a terrorist because "it's in his blood", the potential for violence is real.
Sure, McCain has every right to question Obama's policies, his past statements and past votes, and even his past associations to the extent they are truly relevant and not a manufactroversy (i.e., a manufactured controversy).
How those questions are put determines whether they are inflammatory, whether they are the equivalent of "yelling fire in a crowded theatre." When McCain says, "Who is Barack Obama?" it is clear that he is not just questioning his policies, he is not too subtly suggesting that Obama is "not one of us."
Evolution has hardwired our brains to make instant judgments about whether a situation is safe or dangerous, part of me or "other." With the exceptions of food and sex, the default mode is defensive, and then the brain rationalizes that emotional choice. The more the McCain campaign feeds the emotional triggers, the more people will default to the defensive perspective that Obama is "other."
We are also primarily a visual species (more than auditory, touch or smell) Hence, to convey that John Kerry was really "French" (which he is not), they focused on his hair, and windsurfing (French is elite, just think of wines). For Barack, his race and his origin, as reflected in his middle name, is even more effective. For Obama to be perceived as "one of us," he had first to overcome the initial "us"/"other" response based upon his skin color.
As indicated in "Obama's Millennials -- 83 Million Strong," (June 30,2008), for voters born after 1980, who grew up in an integrated society, differences in skin color do not register as "other." By contrast, even the most progressive boomers, who may have grown up in integrated schools, but who were in the frying pan of the controversy, do not have the same easy "us" response to differences in race. Thus, McCain's attempts to trigger emotional responses to the default position of defense against Obama as other, will only work with people born prior to 1980, i.e., the boomers and the elderly.
The McCain campaign's strategy is deliberate, scientific, vicious, disgraceful and, most worryingly, dangerous.
This would be bad, and inflammatory enough on it own, but when engrafted upon a very angry electorate, people whose good works have been lost in a flash of greed and mismanagement, and who feel powerless, it is like shouting fire in a crowded theatre. A person who truly "puts country first," as McCain claims to be, would err on the side of caution. Indeed, he ought affirmatively to condemn any implication that Barack Obama is strange or has any hidden agenda. That does not stop McCain from strongly disagreeing with Obama.
In neurological terms, an honorable McCain, who puts country first, would specifically seek to "avoid the amygdala," dampening down the reptilian responses, and appeal to peoples' logic. He would do so even if there were not this underlying fuse just awaiting a signal to be lit, but especially since there clearly is a growing incendiary feeling among the electorate.
Here is what McCain said about Obama just 10 weeks ago:
"Let me begin with a few words about my opponent. Don't tell him I said this, but he is an impressive fellow in many ways. He has inspired a great many Americans, some of whom had wrongly believed that a political campaign could hold no purpose or meaning for them. His success should make Americans, all Americans, proud. Of course, I would prefer his success not continue quite as long as he hopes. But it makes me proud to know the country I've loved and served all my life is still a work in progress, and always improving. Senator Obama talks about making history, and he's made quite a bit of it already. And the way was prepared by this venerable organization and others like it. A few years before the NAACP was founded, President Theodore Roosevelt's invitation of Booker T. Washington to dine at the White House was taken as an outrage and an insult in many quarters. America today is a world away from the cruel and prideful bigotry of that time. There is no better evidence of this than the nomination of an African-American to be the presidential nominee of his party. Whatever the outcome in November, Senator Obama has achieved a great thing -- for himself and for his country -- and I thank him for it." (McCain speech to NAACP, July 10, 2008).
As if McCain's campaign itself were not bad enough, the mainstream media is egging him on. I have yet to hear anyone say, "whoa!", "yes, McCain may be behind, but his only chance is to convince people of some major policy superiority, or even that he himself (McCain) is more trustworthy than Obama on matters that count for the electorate." Nor have any of the networks just refused to cover allegations no matter how bogus, and no matter how bogus they know them to be.
It seems to go without question to them that, if McCain is behind, then of course he should be manufacturing controversies, and doing everything he can to make people fear Obama at a gut level, i.e., that it is perfectly acceptable for him to engage in all-out, untruthful, character assassination, sowing fear and doubt.
There is one bright light -- Campbell Brown. She has realized that parity does not mean equal time when one side is speaking the truth and the other is lying, or when one side is appealing to their views of the issues and the other is engaging in false character assassination. Chris Matthews notes the problem, but gives "equal time" to people like Pat Buchanan, who claim it is "payback time" for the Goldwater campaign (!) -- were people suggesting Goldwater's Jewish background made him weird or unreliable, or just that he himself promoted dangerous views? -- and then laughs, as if incitement to violence is a big joke. I do not think John Kennedy, Robert Kennedy and Martin Luthur King, Jr., would get Pat's punchline.
If Obama is going to raise taxes on the top bracket, and McCain says that will reduce jobs, that's a great discussion to have on the basis of "equal time". [Obama can ask McCain to explain the 23M jobs created after raising taxes on the top bracket during the recession in 1993]. But, if Obama says he is going to raise taxes on the top bracket, and McCain says that Obama had a coffee at the home of a college professor who 40 years ago was a radical, then that's not a discussion that deserves any time just because that is what the McCain campaign has decided to make its message of the day.
During the Watergate hearings, the not-yet jailed Nixon Attorney General John Mitchell excused the crimes he and others committed against the political process and against the Constitution in the 1972 election with these words: "All we were trying to do is re-elect the President." Earlier he had explained: "In my mind, the reelection of Richard Nixon, compared to what was on the other side, was so important that I put it in exactly that context."
Although Mitchell became the nation's first Attorney General to go to jail, it appears as if the anything-goes to win psychology that has permeated Wall Street has also captured the media. There are no more standards, except the Wall Street standards of what will attract the most viewers, and thus the greatest profits. Whatever the campaigns, or the Drudge Report, serves up, they buy. It is "news" just because a campaign said it. One party can arrogate to itself the judgment that the other side is so unacceptable that law-breaking, or inciting-to-violence is justified to defeat them.
As this is being written, I am told that McCain has dialed it back, stating that Obama is not someone to be afraid of if he is elected President. Whether that is a poll-driven message or a pang of conscience, it may help... a bit. Let us now see if he takes down his inflammatory ads, publicly talks down those at his rallies who incite to violence, says "no" when he is being egged on by an enthusiastic supporter, and begins, finally, to run the respectful campaign he claimed he wanted.
John McCain had to choose between losing this election or dishonor.
He chose dishonor.
He shall lose.
Kerry: McCain-Palin's "Hate Filled" Crowds Should Disqualify Them
Sam Stein stein@huffingtonpost.com | HuffPost Reporting From DC Become a Fan Get October 10, 2008 11:12 AM
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Four years ago, John Kerry flirted with the idea of making John McCain his running mate. Today, he is denouncing the Arizona Senator for "a stunning failure of leadership," and running a nasty, hate-filled campaign.
In a letter to supporters, the Massachusetts Democrat -- no stranger to smears himself -- ramps up his criticisms of McCain to new heights. In addition to airing disgust with the tone of the McCain crowds, he rips Gov. Sarah Palin for making "outrageous charges that only a few years ago would have disqualified someone from serious consideration for national office."
The letter reads:
John McCain has shown a stunning failure of leadership. His campaign, in a time of economic crisis and foreign policy drift, has degenerated into a negative and nasty campaign of smears.
The reports are piling up of ugliness at the campaign rallies of John McCain and Sarah Palin. Audience members hurl insults and racial epithets, call out "Kill Him!" and "Off With His Head," and yell "treason" when Senator Obama's name is mentioned. I strongly condemn language like this which can only be described as hate-filled.
According to reports, every ad paid for by the John McCain campaign is now a negative ad -- every single one! McCain allows his running mate to make outrageous charges that only a few years ago would have disqualified someone from serious consideration for national office.
We cannot stand by and allow this to happen. We need to fight back, spread the word about what kind of low campaign he's running, and make sure people know the truth.
Kerry, like Obama, has set up a website to debunk smears in real time. And he directs supporters to the link: http://www.truthfightsback.com/page/content/smearpolitics
His strained relationship with McCain serves as a reminder of how much the political dynamics have changed in the past four years. It also begins to raise the question: what kind of reception will McCain receive either if he goes back to the Senate as a campaign loser or has to work with Congress as the next president?
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Four years ago, John Kerry flirted with the idea of making John McCain his running mate. Today, he is denouncing the Arizona Senator for "a stunning failure of leadership," and running a nasty, hate-filled campaign.
In a letter to supporters, the Massachusetts Democrat -- no stranger to smears himself -- ramps up his criticisms of McCain to new heights. In addition to airing disgust with the tone of the McCain crowds, he rips Gov. Sarah Palin for making "outrageous charges that only a few years ago would have disqualified someone from serious consideration for national office."
The letter reads:
John McCain has shown a stunning failure of leadership. His campaign, in a time of economic crisis and foreign policy drift, has degenerated into a negative and nasty campaign of smears.
The reports are piling up of ugliness at the campaign rallies of John McCain and Sarah Palin. Audience members hurl insults and racial epithets, call out "Kill Him!" and "Off With His Head," and yell "treason" when Senator Obama's name is mentioned. I strongly condemn language like this which can only be described as hate-filled.
According to reports, every ad paid for by the John McCain campaign is now a negative ad -- every single one! McCain allows his running mate to make outrageous charges that only a few years ago would have disqualified someone from serious consideration for national office.
We cannot stand by and allow this to happen. We need to fight back, spread the word about what kind of low campaign he's running, and make sure people know the truth.
Kerry, like Obama, has set up a website to debunk smears in real time. And he directs supporters to the link: http://www.truthfightsback.com/page/content/smearpolitics
His strained relationship with McCain serves as a reminder of how much the political dynamics have changed in the past four years. It also begins to raise the question: what kind of reception will McCain receive either if he goes back to the Senate as a campaign loser or has to work with Congress as the next president?
Is this what we want
Larisa AlexandrovnaPosted October 10, 2008 | 09:39 PM (EST) BIO Become a Fan Get Email Alerts Bloggers' Index
Hate as a political strategy...
McCain-Palin have been rather busy this week endorsing the view of some of their psychotic supporters who chanted "Obama is a traitor," among the other hate-filled rants. Well, DU blogger Heather located this document - a political ad that ran in Dallas the day before John F. Kennedy was assassinated - from the national archives:
How far will McCain and Palin go to get what they want? Are they willing to incite violent behavior? The fringe of the right-wing does not need to be encouraged or supported. They simply need to be pushed to the outskirts of civilized society. Sure they can vote, but KKK members can vote too. Best not to pander to hate in a country where hate has already caused so much horror.
Hate as a political strategy...
McCain-Palin have been rather busy this week endorsing the view of some of their psychotic supporters who chanted "Obama is a traitor," among the other hate-filled rants. Well, DU blogger Heather located this document - a political ad that ran in Dallas the day before John F. Kennedy was assassinated - from the national archives:
How far will McCain and Palin go to get what they want? Are they willing to incite violent behavior? The fringe of the right-wing does not need to be encouraged or supported. They simply need to be pushed to the outskirts of civilized society. Sure they can vote, but KKK members can vote too. Best not to pander to hate in a country where hate has already caused so much horror.
Friday, October 10, 2008
McCains illegal ties continued!
Keating Connection: The Sequel
Cindy McCain Makes a Deal
By John Dougherty 10/10/08 12:39 PM
Cindy McCain addresses the Republican National Convention. (Wikimedia)
PHOENIX—Sen. John McCain’s wife and father-in-law continued a lucrative business partnership with disgraced financier Charles H. Keating Jr. for 11 years after the GOP presidential nominee said he ended his close friendship with Keating in March 1987.
Cindy McCain’s business partnership with Keating in a real-estate development between 1986 and 1998 netted her a tidy profit, in addition to years of significant tax benefits. Her father, who died in 2000, earned similar returns.
Illustration by: Matt Mahurin
McCain’s campaign and his Senate office did not respond to repeated phone calls and emails concerning Cindy McCain’s investment with Keating. McCain and his wife file separate tax returns and signed a pre-nuptial agreement before their marriage in May 1980. Cindy McCain owns one of the nation’s largest beer distributorships, Hensley & Company.
On Monday, McCain’s attorney, John Dowd, said in a conference call with reporters that McCain was not aware of his wife’s and father-in-law’s investment with Keating at the time it was made. “John was unconnected to that and unaware of it at the time and did not participate in it,” Dowd said.
However, during the Keating Five Senate Ethics Committee hearings in 1990-91, McCain testified that he was aware of the family investment with Keating in early 1986.
Under questioning from Dowd, McCain said he learned of the investment from a Hensley & Co. executive.
“I was told …they were going to invest in a shopping center and that the investment –- the project — was being put together by a subsidiary of American Continental,” McCain told the ethics committee. “He [the executive] later told me that had happened. And I had no interest in it and just noted in passing that this investment took place.”
The GOP presidential candidate writes in one memoir that a turbulent 30-minute verbal altercation in his Senate office on March 24, 1987, ended his six-year friendship with Keating. The argument began after McCain heard from another senator that Keating had called him “a wimp.”
“We never met again,” McCain wrote in his 2002 memoir, “Worth the Fighting For.” “I never had another conversation with him.”
The rupture in their personal relationship, however, didn’t stop McCain from attending two meetings the next month with federal banking regulators at Keating’s insistence. McCain’s attendance at the April meetings nearly halted his political career. The Senate Ethics Committee, which investigated McCain’s actions on behalf of Keating, who was seeking regulatory relief for his savings and loan business, found that McCain used “poor judgment” in his dealings with Keating.
Nor did the end of McCain’s relationship with Keating affect his immediate family’s business relationship with the financier. Cindy McCain and her father, James Hensley, remained investors in the Keating real-estate partnership that included a north Phoenix shopping center. The center sold in July 1998 for $15.4 million.
Their business relationship with Keating began April 15, 1986, when the two bought an 8 percent stake in Fountain Square Associates Ltd. Partnership. Cindy McCain and her father made the $359,100 investment through Western Leasing Co., a partnership they jointly owned.
Fountain Square Associates was structured as a tax shelter for wealthy investors. Its only asset was the Phoenix shopping center, which was built by another Keating-controlled company. The shelter allowed investors to use real-estate depreciation as a tax deduction, a provision later banned by Congress.
The Fountain Square Associates’ prospectus promised investors a 37 percent annual return on their investment. Cindy McCain and Hensley were among 54 investors in the partnership, most of whom were Keating employees and associates. Western Leasing purchased six shares in the partnership, Keating bought two and most of the remaining investors one share or less. Each share sold for $59,850.
Fountain Square Associates’ general partner, which oversaw daily operations, was American Continental Resources Corp., a subsidiary of Keating’s Phoenix-based American Continental Corp. American Continental also owned Lincoln Savings & Loan, the thrift that Keating asked McCain and the four other senators to protect from regulators.
In 1989, American Continental filed for bankruptcy, leaving more than 23,000 investors holding worthless bonds. Many bondholders were elderly and thought thought their investments were insured because Keating had sold them at federally insured Lincoln Savings branches.
Keating was convicted on 73 counts of bankruptcy and wire fraud in 1993, and sentenced to 12 years in federal prison. Four years later, his conviction was overturned on a technicality. In 1999, Keating pleaded guilty to four counts of fraud and was sentenced to time served.
Despite the bankruptcy, American Continental Resources managed to keep control of the shopping center owned by Fountain Square Associates, which allowed Cindy McCain and Hensley to take advantage of its tax breaks. After the shopping center sold, McCain’s 1998 Senate financial disclosure statement reported under “unearned income” that his wife made between $100,001 and $1 million on the sale of the property. In previous years, McCain’s financial statements had valued the Fountain Square partnership at less than $1,000, generating income of less than $200.
In 1998, Cindy McCain held millions of dollars worth of assets in stocks, municipal bonds and other securities, including a partnership share worth at least $1 million in the Arizona Diamondbacks. She also had investments in two other real estate projects, each worth at least $1 million, including a master planned community in Yuma, Ariz., and 160 acres of undeveloped property in Mesa, Ariz.
The same year, Cindy McCain also owed more than $1 million to a Phoenix bank, and had more than $200,000 in loans from the family’s beer distributorship.
Sen. McCain’s only income in 1998, besides his Senate salary, was his $49,688 Navy pension. He also listed three bank accounts totaling less than $31,000. He reported no liabilities.
The Fountain Square sale generated the second largest amount of income from Cindy McCain’s array of investments in 1998, according to Sen. McCain’s financial disclosure statement. Only dividends from Cindy McCain’s investment in Hensley & Company stock, which exceeded $1 million, generated more income.
Cindy McCain’s and Hensley’s 1986 investment in Fountain Square earned the father and daughter team a nice return. Its greater value to the family, however, may have had more to do with politics than money. Their investment was made the same year that McCain was running for the Senate seat held by the retiring Barry M. Goldwater. Keating and his employees contributed more than $50,000 to McCain’s campaign, bringing their total contributions to McCain since 1982 to at least $112,000.
Cindy McCain Makes a Deal
By John Dougherty 10/10/08 12:39 PM
Cindy McCain addresses the Republican National Convention. (Wikimedia)
PHOENIX—Sen. John McCain’s wife and father-in-law continued a lucrative business partnership with disgraced financier Charles H. Keating Jr. for 11 years after the GOP presidential nominee said he ended his close friendship with Keating in March 1987.
Cindy McCain’s business partnership with Keating in a real-estate development between 1986 and 1998 netted her a tidy profit, in addition to years of significant tax benefits. Her father, who died in 2000, earned similar returns.
Illustration by: Matt Mahurin
McCain’s campaign and his Senate office did not respond to repeated phone calls and emails concerning Cindy McCain’s investment with Keating. McCain and his wife file separate tax returns and signed a pre-nuptial agreement before their marriage in May 1980. Cindy McCain owns one of the nation’s largest beer distributorships, Hensley & Company.
On Monday, McCain’s attorney, John Dowd, said in a conference call with reporters that McCain was not aware of his wife’s and father-in-law’s investment with Keating at the time it was made. “John was unconnected to that and unaware of it at the time and did not participate in it,” Dowd said.
However, during the Keating Five Senate Ethics Committee hearings in 1990-91, McCain testified that he was aware of the family investment with Keating in early 1986.
Under questioning from Dowd, McCain said he learned of the investment from a Hensley & Co. executive.
“I was told …they were going to invest in a shopping center and that the investment –- the project — was being put together by a subsidiary of American Continental,” McCain told the ethics committee. “He [the executive] later told me that had happened. And I had no interest in it and just noted in passing that this investment took place.”
The GOP presidential candidate writes in one memoir that a turbulent 30-minute verbal altercation in his Senate office on March 24, 1987, ended his six-year friendship with Keating. The argument began after McCain heard from another senator that Keating had called him “a wimp.”
“We never met again,” McCain wrote in his 2002 memoir, “Worth the Fighting For.” “I never had another conversation with him.”
The rupture in their personal relationship, however, didn’t stop McCain from attending two meetings the next month with federal banking regulators at Keating’s insistence. McCain’s attendance at the April meetings nearly halted his political career. The Senate Ethics Committee, which investigated McCain’s actions on behalf of Keating, who was seeking regulatory relief for his savings and loan business, found that McCain used “poor judgment” in his dealings with Keating.
Nor did the end of McCain’s relationship with Keating affect his immediate family’s business relationship with the financier. Cindy McCain and her father, James Hensley, remained investors in the Keating real-estate partnership that included a north Phoenix shopping center. The center sold in July 1998 for $15.4 million.
Their business relationship with Keating began April 15, 1986, when the two bought an 8 percent stake in Fountain Square Associates Ltd. Partnership. Cindy McCain and her father made the $359,100 investment through Western Leasing Co., a partnership they jointly owned.
Fountain Square Associates was structured as a tax shelter for wealthy investors. Its only asset was the Phoenix shopping center, which was built by another Keating-controlled company. The shelter allowed investors to use real-estate depreciation as a tax deduction, a provision later banned by Congress.
The Fountain Square Associates’ prospectus promised investors a 37 percent annual return on their investment. Cindy McCain and Hensley were among 54 investors in the partnership, most of whom were Keating employees and associates. Western Leasing purchased six shares in the partnership, Keating bought two and most of the remaining investors one share or less. Each share sold for $59,850.
Fountain Square Associates’ general partner, which oversaw daily operations, was American Continental Resources Corp., a subsidiary of Keating’s Phoenix-based American Continental Corp. American Continental also owned Lincoln Savings & Loan, the thrift that Keating asked McCain and the four other senators to protect from regulators.
In 1989, American Continental filed for bankruptcy, leaving more than 23,000 investors holding worthless bonds. Many bondholders were elderly and thought thought their investments were insured because Keating had sold them at federally insured Lincoln Savings branches.
Keating was convicted on 73 counts of bankruptcy and wire fraud in 1993, and sentenced to 12 years in federal prison. Four years later, his conviction was overturned on a technicality. In 1999, Keating pleaded guilty to four counts of fraud and was sentenced to time served.
Despite the bankruptcy, American Continental Resources managed to keep control of the shopping center owned by Fountain Square Associates, which allowed Cindy McCain and Hensley to take advantage of its tax breaks. After the shopping center sold, McCain’s 1998 Senate financial disclosure statement reported under “unearned income” that his wife made between $100,001 and $1 million on the sale of the property. In previous years, McCain’s financial statements had valued the Fountain Square partnership at less than $1,000, generating income of less than $200.
In 1998, Cindy McCain held millions of dollars worth of assets in stocks, municipal bonds and other securities, including a partnership share worth at least $1 million in the Arizona Diamondbacks. She also had investments in two other real estate projects, each worth at least $1 million, including a master planned community in Yuma, Ariz., and 160 acres of undeveloped property in Mesa, Ariz.
The same year, Cindy McCain also owed more than $1 million to a Phoenix bank, and had more than $200,000 in loans from the family’s beer distributorship.
Sen. McCain’s only income in 1998, besides his Senate salary, was his $49,688 Navy pension. He also listed three bank accounts totaling less than $31,000. He reported no liabilities.
The Fountain Square sale generated the second largest amount of income from Cindy McCain’s array of investments in 1998, according to Sen. McCain’s financial disclosure statement. Only dividends from Cindy McCain’s investment in Hensley & Company stock, which exceeded $1 million, generated more income.
Cindy McCain’s and Hensley’s 1986 investment in Fountain Square earned the father and daughter team a nice return. Its greater value to the family, however, may have had more to do with politics than money. Their investment was made the same year that McCain was running for the Senate seat held by the retiring Barry M. Goldwater. Keating and his employees contributed more than $50,000 to McCain’s campaign, bringing their total contributions to McCain since 1982 to at least $112,000.
Even Republicans critisize Palin rallies
Republican Congressman Criticizes Palin Rallies
The Huffington Post | October 10, 2008 11:57 AM
Veteran Republican Congressman Ray LaHood criticized his party's vice presidential nominee Friday, saying that Sarah Palin's vitriolic campaign rallies ""don't befit the office she's running for."
Rep. LaHood, who has represented Illinois' 18th district for seven terms and is retiring in January, told WBBM Radio that Palin should control the racially-charged heckling at her rallies:
"Look it. This doesn't befit the office that she's running for. And frankly, people don't like it."
Some of the names Obama is being called, which include "terrorist" and "traitor," "certainly don't reflect the nature of the man," LaHood said to WBBM.
LaHood supports John McCain's candidacy, but warned that the heckling could backfire on the Republican ticket.
The Huffington Post | October 10, 2008 11:57 AM
Veteran Republican Congressman Ray LaHood criticized his party's vice presidential nominee Friday, saying that Sarah Palin's vitriolic campaign rallies ""don't befit the office she's running for."
Rep. LaHood, who has represented Illinois' 18th district for seven terms and is retiring in January, told WBBM Radio that Palin should control the racially-charged heckling at her rallies:
"Look it. This doesn't befit the office that she's running for. And frankly, people don't like it."
Some of the names Obama is being called, which include "terrorist" and "traitor," "certainly don't reflect the nature of the man," LaHood said to WBBM.
LaHood supports John McCain's candidacy, but warned that the heckling could backfire on the Republican ticket.
Even McCain's Economists turn against him
'Economists For McCain' Trash McCain's New Mortgage Plan
The Huffington Post | Sam Stein & Seth Colter Walls | October 10, 2008 04:18 PM
Many of the professional economists who formally endorsed John McCain's economic plan are expressing bewilderment with his most recent proposal to rectify the home mortgage crisis.
In interviews with the Huffington Post, roughly a dozen of McCain's economist supporters said they disagreed with the Senator's recent proposal -- for the government to buy distressed mortgages at face value from banks and renegotiate them with homeowners. Several viewed it as a gimmick, driven mostly by political circumstance. Only one pro-McCain economist spoke up in favor of the plan.
"This is just political gamesmanship," said Robert H. Heidt, a professor at the Indiana University School of Law. "The bill is wildly over-ambitious in trying to rescue home buyers from the downturn in real estate appreciation. It's costs would never end. I will end up voting for McCain but this is ridiculous."
Added George Viksnins, a retired professor of economics at Georgetown University: "Even though I support McCain I think this is an ill-considered program. This was something to get press time and face time, and that is the problem with our political system. This was done as a sound bite and without analysis."
"This is part of the larger plan to reward people who made mistakes. There is nothing in the plan to prevent people from continuing to do dumb things," remarked Don Booth, a professor of economics at Chapman University, who previously signed onto McCain's economic plan. "If we reward bad behavior, we will get more bad behavior."
One economist who backed McCain was more sympathetic to what the Arizona Republican was trying to do -- the argument being that the government, which contributed to the crisis by encouraging home loans to those in no position to afford them, now held responsibility in helping the nation out of the mess.
"I think his idea is a good one to the extent that you have to stabilize the housing market.
I think the intention is the right intention. I think the direction is the right direction," said
Professor C. Thomas Howard of the Reiman School of Finance at the University of Denver. But even Howard was left concerned with the lack of details or underlying principle in McCain's approach. "Are they going too far in trying to save everything?"
Others were simply confused and critical with McCain's proposal to pay full price on these mortgages, arguing it amounted to a taxpayer bailout for those home owners who went beyond their financial means and financial institutions that jumped in on the business of shaky loans.
Story continues below
Michael Connolly, an economics professor at the University of Miami, called the idea "Robin Hood economics."
"It will provide an incentive for people to default [on their loans]," he warned. "And they might get rid of their negative equity and take the subsidy and default on their next loan too."
Houston Stokes, a professor at the University of Illinois at Chicago, said he didn't agree that the government should "pay a face value" due to the moral hazard it created.
"These guys got themselves into a jam and it is now their problem," he said. "We should not overpay. We should buy these mortgages at the lowest price... I don't want to be accused of helping out the Wall Street types."
Stokes was echoed by Delaware University economics professor Burton Abrams, who said that McCain was encouraging "future bad decisions," before noting that "there are no easy solutions here and all have their costs."
The American Enterprise Institute's Glenn Biggs (another McCain economics backer) may have summarized it best: "The issue could be not just moral hazard and unfairness, in the sense that [people think]: how do I get my share of this? And maybe they stop paying on their mortgage. I don't know the plan well enough to know what design features it has. But generally, people want to qualify for a benefit when it exists."
McCain's plan, which has quietly undergone revision in recent days, was first announced during Tuesday night's presidential debate with Barack Obama.
"I would order the secretary of the Treasury to immediately buy up the bad home-loan mortgages in America and renegotiate at the new value of those homes, at the diminished value of those homes, and let people make those -- be able to make those payments and stay in their homes," McCain said, adding: "Is it expensive? Yes."
In the immediate aftermath, as pundits scratched their heads, it was unclear how much the plan would cost, whether the government would pay face value for the devalued mortgages, or even if it was legal. Eventually, the Senator ceded that it would require "new money" beyond the funds included in the recent $700 billion economic rescue package.
In the meantime, the McCain campaign has tried to present the idea as a prudent and fair measure of stabilizing the housing market and ensuring that average Americans don't lose their homes. But even for some of McCain's own endorsers, the political implications behind his most recent proposal seemed all too regrettable and clear.
"I have favored McCain's approach to the economy, since Obama's plans will, of necessity, lead to tax increases and huge spending increases," said Phil Bryson, a professor of economics at Brigham Young University. "I would have expected this kind of mortgage plan to have been proposed by Obama, since it fits well with his general approach to government action. It comes from McCain only because the declining economy has given Obama a surge in the polls and people are willing to accept anything Obama says without question."
The Huffington Post | Sam Stein & Seth Colter Walls | October 10, 2008 04:18 PM
Many of the professional economists who formally endorsed John McCain's economic plan are expressing bewilderment with his most recent proposal to rectify the home mortgage crisis.
In interviews with the Huffington Post, roughly a dozen of McCain's economist supporters said they disagreed with the Senator's recent proposal -- for the government to buy distressed mortgages at face value from banks and renegotiate them with homeowners. Several viewed it as a gimmick, driven mostly by political circumstance. Only one pro-McCain economist spoke up in favor of the plan.
"This is just political gamesmanship," said Robert H. Heidt, a professor at the Indiana University School of Law. "The bill is wildly over-ambitious in trying to rescue home buyers from the downturn in real estate appreciation. It's costs would never end. I will end up voting for McCain but this is ridiculous."
Added George Viksnins, a retired professor of economics at Georgetown University: "Even though I support McCain I think this is an ill-considered program. This was something to get press time and face time, and that is the problem with our political system. This was done as a sound bite and without analysis."
"This is part of the larger plan to reward people who made mistakes. There is nothing in the plan to prevent people from continuing to do dumb things," remarked Don Booth, a professor of economics at Chapman University, who previously signed onto McCain's economic plan. "If we reward bad behavior, we will get more bad behavior."
One economist who backed McCain was more sympathetic to what the Arizona Republican was trying to do -- the argument being that the government, which contributed to the crisis by encouraging home loans to those in no position to afford them, now held responsibility in helping the nation out of the mess.
"I think his idea is a good one to the extent that you have to stabilize the housing market.
I think the intention is the right intention. I think the direction is the right direction," said
Professor C. Thomas Howard of the Reiman School of Finance at the University of Denver. But even Howard was left concerned with the lack of details or underlying principle in McCain's approach. "Are they going too far in trying to save everything?"
Others were simply confused and critical with McCain's proposal to pay full price on these mortgages, arguing it amounted to a taxpayer bailout for those home owners who went beyond their financial means and financial institutions that jumped in on the business of shaky loans.
Story continues below
Michael Connolly, an economics professor at the University of Miami, called the idea "Robin Hood economics."
"It will provide an incentive for people to default [on their loans]," he warned. "And they might get rid of their negative equity and take the subsidy and default on their next loan too."
Houston Stokes, a professor at the University of Illinois at Chicago, said he didn't agree that the government should "pay a face value" due to the moral hazard it created.
"These guys got themselves into a jam and it is now their problem," he said. "We should not overpay. We should buy these mortgages at the lowest price... I don't want to be accused of helping out the Wall Street types."
Stokes was echoed by Delaware University economics professor Burton Abrams, who said that McCain was encouraging "future bad decisions," before noting that "there are no easy solutions here and all have their costs."
The American Enterprise Institute's Glenn Biggs (another McCain economics backer) may have summarized it best: "The issue could be not just moral hazard and unfairness, in the sense that [people think]: how do I get my share of this? And maybe they stop paying on their mortgage. I don't know the plan well enough to know what design features it has. But generally, people want to qualify for a benefit when it exists."
McCain's plan, which has quietly undergone revision in recent days, was first announced during Tuesday night's presidential debate with Barack Obama.
"I would order the secretary of the Treasury to immediately buy up the bad home-loan mortgages in America and renegotiate at the new value of those homes, at the diminished value of those homes, and let people make those -- be able to make those payments and stay in their homes," McCain said, adding: "Is it expensive? Yes."
In the immediate aftermath, as pundits scratched their heads, it was unclear how much the plan would cost, whether the government would pay face value for the devalued mortgages, or even if it was legal. Eventually, the Senator ceded that it would require "new money" beyond the funds included in the recent $700 billion economic rescue package.
In the meantime, the McCain campaign has tried to present the idea as a prudent and fair measure of stabilizing the housing market and ensuring that average Americans don't lose their homes. But even for some of McCain's own endorsers, the political implications behind his most recent proposal seemed all too regrettable and clear.
"I have favored McCain's approach to the economy, since Obama's plans will, of necessity, lead to tax increases and huge spending increases," said Phil Bryson, a professor of economics at Brigham Young University. "I would have expected this kind of mortgage plan to have been proposed by Obama, since it fits well with his general approach to government action. It comes from McCain only because the declining economy has given Obama a surge in the polls and people are willing to accept anything Obama says without question."
Conservatives Turning on McCain
GOP Former Gov: "He Is Not The McCain I Endorsed"
The Huffington Post | Rachel Weiner | October 10, 2008 11:14 AM
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Comments Former Republican Governor of Michigan William Milliken tells the Grand Rapids Press that he's "disappointed" in John McCain and the campaign he is running:
He endorsed John McCain in the presidential primary, but now former Republican Gov. William Milliken is expressing doubts about his party's nominee.
"He is not the McCain I endorsed," said Milliken, reached at his Traverse City home Thursday. "He keeps saying, 'Who is Barack Obama?' I would ask the question, 'Who is John McCain?' because his campaign has become rather disappointing to me.
"I'm disappointed in the tenor and the personal attacks on the part of the McCain campaign, when he ought to be talking about the issues."
The Huffington Post | Rachel Weiner | October 10, 2008 11:14 AM
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Comments Former Republican Governor of Michigan William Milliken tells the Grand Rapids Press that he's "disappointed" in John McCain and the campaign he is running:
He endorsed John McCain in the presidential primary, but now former Republican Gov. William Milliken is expressing doubts about his party's nominee.
"He is not the McCain I endorsed," said Milliken, reached at his Traverse City home Thursday. "He keeps saying, 'Who is Barack Obama?' I would ask the question, 'Who is John McCain?' because his campaign has become rather disappointing to me.
"I'm disappointed in the tenor and the personal attacks on the part of the McCain campaign, when he ought to be talking about the issues."
McCain is a sick man and worst than Bush!
Sam Stein stein@huffingtonpost.com | HuffPost Reporting From DC
McCain Defends His Rabid Crowds
The McCain campaign is defending crowd members at its recent rallies who have called Obama a terrorist, accused him of treason and even screamed "kill him" when his association with former Weather Underground member Bill Ayers has been broached.
"Barack Obama's attacks on Americans who support John McCain reveal far more about him than they do about John McCain. It is clear that Barack Obama just doesn't understand regular people and the issues they care about. He dismisses hardworking middle class Americans as clinging to guns and religion, while at the same time attacking average Americans at McCain rallies who are angry at Washington, Wall Street and the status quo," reads a statement from spokesman Brian Rogers. "Even worse, he attacks anyone who dares to question his readiness to serve as their commander in chief in chief. Raising legitimate questions about record, character and judgment are a vital part of the Democratic process, and Barack Obama's effort to silence and shame those who seek answers should make everyone wonder exactly what he is hiding."
Rogers' remarks are a deliberate attempt to simplify and obscure some of the rhetoric that has recently come from McCain supporters. Videos taken of people heading into McCain-Palin rallies have shown individuals who label Barack Obama as a terrorist, a communist and a threat to the well-being of the country. At a town hall meeting in Wisconsin on Thursday, several attendees urged the Republican nominee to attack his opponent on the Ayers issue and Reverend Jeremiah Wright, who McCain himself has said should be off limits.
The rabid nature of the scene has startled longtime political observers and even former associates of McCain himself.
John Weaver, the Senator's former top strategist, has said McCain is making a tactical mistake by letting abusive hecklers have their voices heard during his forums. David Gergen, a longtime Washington strategist, has warned that the rhetoric from these attendees could "lead to some violence."
Veteran Republican Congressman Ray LaHood criticized Sarah Palin in particular, saying her rhetoric did not "befit the office she's running for."
AFL-CIO President John Sweeney denounced the recent campaign stops as dangerous and expressed alarm that the top of the Republican ticket would not protest the crowd's language.
"Sen. John McCain, Gov. Sarah Palin and the leadership of the Republican party have a fundamental moral responsibility to denounce the violent rhetoric that has pervaded recent McCain and Palin political rallies. When rally attendees shout out such attacks as "terrorist" or "kill him" about Sen. Barack Obama, when they are cheered on by crowds incited by McCain-Palin rhetoric -- it is chilling that McCain and Palin do nothing to object."
Veteran reporter Dan Balz has opined that "McCain's tactics are over the line, with no restraint in sight, and threaten to provoke reactions among partisans on both sides that will continue to escalate."
And Frank Schaeffer penned a solemn and critical column (first published in the Baltimore Sun) personally addressed to McCain himself: "If your campaign does not stop equating Sen. Barack Obama with terrorism, questioning his patriotism and portraying Mr. Obama as "not one of us," I accuse you of deliberately feeding the most unhinged elements of our society the red meat of hate, and therefore of potentially instigating violence."
McCain, through Rogers' statement, is gambling that the voices of caution don't matter as much as the sentiments of the people. But he is also implicitly arguing that even the vilest rhetoric sent Obama's way is fair game when chalked up to concerns about the Illinois Democrat's past associations and judgments. And he's acknowledging that he won't lift a finger to dissuade the raging tempers.
McCain Defends His Rabid Crowds
The McCain campaign is defending crowd members at its recent rallies who have called Obama a terrorist, accused him of treason and even screamed "kill him" when his association with former Weather Underground member Bill Ayers has been broached.
"Barack Obama's attacks on Americans who support John McCain reveal far more about him than they do about John McCain. It is clear that Barack Obama just doesn't understand regular people and the issues they care about. He dismisses hardworking middle class Americans as clinging to guns and religion, while at the same time attacking average Americans at McCain rallies who are angry at Washington, Wall Street and the status quo," reads a statement from spokesman Brian Rogers. "Even worse, he attacks anyone who dares to question his readiness to serve as their commander in chief in chief. Raising legitimate questions about record, character and judgment are a vital part of the Democratic process, and Barack Obama's effort to silence and shame those who seek answers should make everyone wonder exactly what he is hiding."
Rogers' remarks are a deliberate attempt to simplify and obscure some of the rhetoric that has recently come from McCain supporters. Videos taken of people heading into McCain-Palin rallies have shown individuals who label Barack Obama as a terrorist, a communist and a threat to the well-being of the country. At a town hall meeting in Wisconsin on Thursday, several attendees urged the Republican nominee to attack his opponent on the Ayers issue and Reverend Jeremiah Wright, who McCain himself has said should be off limits.
The rabid nature of the scene has startled longtime political observers and even former associates of McCain himself.
John Weaver, the Senator's former top strategist, has said McCain is making a tactical mistake by letting abusive hecklers have their voices heard during his forums. David Gergen, a longtime Washington strategist, has warned that the rhetoric from these attendees could "lead to some violence."
Veteran Republican Congressman Ray LaHood criticized Sarah Palin in particular, saying her rhetoric did not "befit the office she's running for."
AFL-CIO President John Sweeney denounced the recent campaign stops as dangerous and expressed alarm that the top of the Republican ticket would not protest the crowd's language.
"Sen. John McCain, Gov. Sarah Palin and the leadership of the Republican party have a fundamental moral responsibility to denounce the violent rhetoric that has pervaded recent McCain and Palin political rallies. When rally attendees shout out such attacks as "terrorist" or "kill him" about Sen. Barack Obama, when they are cheered on by crowds incited by McCain-Palin rhetoric -- it is chilling that McCain and Palin do nothing to object."
Veteran reporter Dan Balz has opined that "McCain's tactics are over the line, with no restraint in sight, and threaten to provoke reactions among partisans on both sides that will continue to escalate."
And Frank Schaeffer penned a solemn and critical column (first published in the Baltimore Sun) personally addressed to McCain himself: "If your campaign does not stop equating Sen. Barack Obama with terrorism, questioning his patriotism and portraying Mr. Obama as "not one of us," I accuse you of deliberately feeding the most unhinged elements of our society the red meat of hate, and therefore of potentially instigating violence."
McCain, through Rogers' statement, is gambling that the voices of caution don't matter as much as the sentiments of the people. But he is also implicitly arguing that even the vilest rhetoric sent Obama's way is fair game when chalked up to concerns about the Illinois Democrat's past associations and judgments. And he's acknowledging that he won't lift a finger to dissuade the raging tempers.
Palin scary body language
Kathlyn and Gay Hendricks
Posted October 10, 2008 | 09:25 AM (EST)
Body Politics: Sarah Palin's Body Language And Why It Should Worry You
Since our last post, we've been asked many times to comment on Sarah Palin's mannerisms. Her Body-Talk is not as blatant as her running mate, probably because she has a background as a performer in beauty pageants and television. She has learned to conceal the smirks and clenches that play so openly across the countenance of John McCain.
In our work we call body language the Five Flags, because there are five major ways human beings react when they're not speaking the authentic truth. Twitches and jaw-clenches are examples of Flag #1, Body-Flags. To understand Sarah Palin, though, you need to understand Flags #2 and #3, Voice-Flags and Attitude-Flags. The English word 'personality' comes from two Latin words, per and sona, "through sound." The Romans knew that the personality comes through in the tone of voice and other vocal aspects.
From thirty-five years of clinical experience, we can tell you a lot about Sarah Palin's real personality and why it makes many people even more nervous that John McCain's.
Attitude-Flag #1: The Aggressive Confidence Of The Con-Person
Sarah Palin has mastered one fundamental requirement of a Republican president: she can smile and look you directly in the eye while telling an outrageous lie. At least when John McCain lies, his body screams his discomfort by putting on an eye-catching display of twitches, phony smiles and robot moves. McCain's body language is so strange that it's easily observable; he appears to be operated by a puppeteer who is a couple of triple-espressos over the line. That's a good thing, though. We'd much rather have a presidential candidate who reads like a comic book when he's lying than one who conceals those whoppers under a grin and a wink. Sarah Palin belts out her deceptions and distractions with a radiant confidence we usually only see in sociopaths and infomercial pitch-persons. The last public figure we saw who could grin and lie with that kind of sunny confidence was O. J. Simpson.
Voice-Flag #1: The Exaggerated Folksiness Of The Huckster
Our partisan colors may peek through subtly from time to time, but we do our best to be non-partisan lie-catchers. We cringed when Bill Clinton did his famous "I did not have sex..." line. We immediately looked at each other and said "uh-oh," because his body language let us know loud and clear that he did indeed have sex with "that woman." About ten minutes after Clinton's declaration, our phone started ringing from producers of talk shows wanting us to comment on Clinton's body language. They knew they'd seen something, but they couldn't figure out exactly what.
More recently, we cringed when we heard Sarah Palin start using more of those pseudo-folksy expressions such as "You betcha" and "doggone-it." She was droppin' so many g's on-stage at last week's debate that the janitorial staff may have had to work over-time pickin' 'em up, by gum. The last eight years have taught us all a sobering lesson: you don't have to be smart to be the President of the United States. However, we hope that America is smart enough to see Palin's exaggerated folksiness for what it is, a cheap trick to cozy up to us so they can sell us four more years of Bush Lite. We hope America will hear those "You betchas" and send Mc Cain/Palin a message right back: Just because you pretend to be dumb and folksy, you don't automatically get to live in the White House.
Voice-Flag #2: The Metallic Shriek Of The Fear-Monger
To emphasize certain points, Sarah Palin takes her voice up the tone scale to a metallic shriek. This tone will be familiar to many of us: it's the voice your mother employed as a last resort to get you out of bed when you were a teenager. It's designed to scare you, to rake fingernails across your inner chalkboard. She often uses this voice when she first takes the stage at a rally. It works quite well there, because it cuts like a knife and jolts any of the faithful who might be dozing to sit up in their seats. We hope Americans are not so sleepy as to vote in favor of hearing this tone of voice for four years.
Here's the bottom line: The McCain/Palin campaign strategy is based entirely on stirring up fear. It's a classic way to distract people from thinking about real issues and to cover up the lack of any real solutions. Their thinking goes like this:
•If we can get people scared that Obama might secretly be a Muslim or a terrorist, maybe we can get them not to think about the real issues.
•If we can get people scared that Rev. Wright might turn the inaugural benediction into an anti-American rant, maybe we can get them to believe America's economic problems are just something cooked up by the elite media as a way to play "Gotcha" on poor Sarah and John.
•If we can scare people into thinking Barack HUSSEIN Obama is going to put Louis Farrakhan in charge of the annual White House Easter egg hunt, maybe people won't notice that we have absolutely no solutions to the real problems they face.
Barack Obama has so far opted to run a positive campaign based on hope and thoughtful solutions. It's our fervent desire that he continue to do so, because it's about time we turned our national attention to positive possibilities. Over the past eight years we've had enough fear-mongering to last a lifetime.
(Stay tuned! In our next post we'll look at two more important bits of body language that we all need to be paying attention to during the campaign. We've noticed these flags at play in both Joe Biden and John McCain, and they spell trouble for all of us.)
Posted October 10, 2008 | 09:25 AM (EST)
Body Politics: Sarah Palin's Body Language And Why It Should Worry You
Since our last post, we've been asked many times to comment on Sarah Palin's mannerisms. Her Body-Talk is not as blatant as her running mate, probably because she has a background as a performer in beauty pageants and television. She has learned to conceal the smirks and clenches that play so openly across the countenance of John McCain.
In our work we call body language the Five Flags, because there are five major ways human beings react when they're not speaking the authentic truth. Twitches and jaw-clenches are examples of Flag #1, Body-Flags. To understand Sarah Palin, though, you need to understand Flags #2 and #3, Voice-Flags and Attitude-Flags. The English word 'personality' comes from two Latin words, per and sona, "through sound." The Romans knew that the personality comes through in the tone of voice and other vocal aspects.
From thirty-five years of clinical experience, we can tell you a lot about Sarah Palin's real personality and why it makes many people even more nervous that John McCain's.
Attitude-Flag #1: The Aggressive Confidence Of The Con-Person
Sarah Palin has mastered one fundamental requirement of a Republican president: she can smile and look you directly in the eye while telling an outrageous lie. At least when John McCain lies, his body screams his discomfort by putting on an eye-catching display of twitches, phony smiles and robot moves. McCain's body language is so strange that it's easily observable; he appears to be operated by a puppeteer who is a couple of triple-espressos over the line. That's a good thing, though. We'd much rather have a presidential candidate who reads like a comic book when he's lying than one who conceals those whoppers under a grin and a wink. Sarah Palin belts out her deceptions and distractions with a radiant confidence we usually only see in sociopaths and infomercial pitch-persons. The last public figure we saw who could grin and lie with that kind of sunny confidence was O. J. Simpson.
Voice-Flag #1: The Exaggerated Folksiness Of The Huckster
Our partisan colors may peek through subtly from time to time, but we do our best to be non-partisan lie-catchers. We cringed when Bill Clinton did his famous "I did not have sex..." line. We immediately looked at each other and said "uh-oh," because his body language let us know loud and clear that he did indeed have sex with "that woman." About ten minutes after Clinton's declaration, our phone started ringing from producers of talk shows wanting us to comment on Clinton's body language. They knew they'd seen something, but they couldn't figure out exactly what.
More recently, we cringed when we heard Sarah Palin start using more of those pseudo-folksy expressions such as "You betcha" and "doggone-it." She was droppin' so many g's on-stage at last week's debate that the janitorial staff may have had to work over-time pickin' 'em up, by gum. The last eight years have taught us all a sobering lesson: you don't have to be smart to be the President of the United States. However, we hope that America is smart enough to see Palin's exaggerated folksiness for what it is, a cheap trick to cozy up to us so they can sell us four more years of Bush Lite. We hope America will hear those "You betchas" and send Mc Cain/Palin a message right back: Just because you pretend to be dumb and folksy, you don't automatically get to live in the White House.
Voice-Flag #2: The Metallic Shriek Of The Fear-Monger
To emphasize certain points, Sarah Palin takes her voice up the tone scale to a metallic shriek. This tone will be familiar to many of us: it's the voice your mother employed as a last resort to get you out of bed when you were a teenager. It's designed to scare you, to rake fingernails across your inner chalkboard. She often uses this voice when she first takes the stage at a rally. It works quite well there, because it cuts like a knife and jolts any of the faithful who might be dozing to sit up in their seats. We hope Americans are not so sleepy as to vote in favor of hearing this tone of voice for four years.
Here's the bottom line: The McCain/Palin campaign strategy is based entirely on stirring up fear. It's a classic way to distract people from thinking about real issues and to cover up the lack of any real solutions. Their thinking goes like this:
•If we can get people scared that Obama might secretly be a Muslim or a terrorist, maybe we can get them not to think about the real issues.
•If we can get people scared that Rev. Wright might turn the inaugural benediction into an anti-American rant, maybe we can get them to believe America's economic problems are just something cooked up by the elite media as a way to play "Gotcha" on poor Sarah and John.
•If we can scare people into thinking Barack HUSSEIN Obama is going to put Louis Farrakhan in charge of the annual White House Easter egg hunt, maybe people won't notice that we have absolutely no solutions to the real problems they face.
Barack Obama has so far opted to run a positive campaign based on hope and thoughtful solutions. It's our fervent desire that he continue to do so, because it's about time we turned our national attention to positive possibilities. Over the past eight years we've had enough fear-mongering to last a lifetime.
(Stay tuned! In our next post we'll look at two more important bits of body language that we all need to be paying attention to during the campaign. We've noticed these flags at play in both Joe Biden and John McCain, and they spell trouble for all of us.)
Tuesday, October 7, 2008
Cindy McCain, investigated by Drug Enforcement Agency for ILLEGAL DRUGS!!!!!
A Tangled Story of Addiction
Consequences of Cindy McCain's Drug Abuse Were More Complex Than She Has Portrayed
In 1991, with wife Cindy at his side, Sen. John McCain talked to reporters about the Charles Keating scandal. Cindy McCain has said that the stress of the scandal, along with back pain, was a factor in her addiction to painkillers. (By John Duricka -- Associated Press)
Tom Gosinski, who worked for Cindy McCain, says her efforts to cover up her addiction "ruined" lives. (By Dominic Bracco Ii -- The Washington Post)
By Kimberly Kindy
Washington Post Staff Writer
Friday, September 12, 2008; Page A01
When Cindy McCain is asked what issues she would champion as first lady, she often cites one of the most difficult periods of her life: her battle with -- and ultimate victory over -- prescription painkillers. Her struggle, she has said repeatedly, taught her valuable lessons about drug abuse that she would pass on to the nation.
"I think it made me a better person as well as a better parent, so I think it would be very important to talk about it and be very upfront about it," McCain said in an interview with "Access Hollywood." In an appearance on the "Tonight Show With Jay Leno," she said she tries "to talk about it as much as possible because I don't want anyone to wind up in the shoes that I did at the time."
In describing her struggle with drugs, McCain has said that she became addicted to Vicodin and Percocet in early 1989 after rupturing two disks and having back surgery. She has said she hid her addiction from her husband, Sen. John McCain, and stopped taking the painkillers in 1992 after her parents confronted her. She has not discussed what kind of treatment she received for her addiction, but she has made clear that she believes she has put her problems behind her.
While McCain's accounts have captured the pain of her addiction, her journey through this personal crisis is a more complicated story than she has described, and it had more consequences for her and those around her than she has acknowledged.
Her misuse of painkillers prompted an investigation by the Drug Enforcement Administration and local prosecutors that put her in legal jeopardy. A doctor with McCain's medical charity who supplied her with prescriptions for the drugs lost his license and never practiced again. The charity, the American Voluntary Medical Team, eventually had to be closed in the wake of the controversy. Her husband was forced to admit publicly that he was absent much of the time she was having problems and was not aware of them.
"So many lives were damaged by this," said Jeanette Johnson, whose husband, John Max Johnson, surrendered his medical license. "A lot of good people. Doctors who volunteered their time. My husband. I cannot begin to tell you how painful it was. We moved far away to start over."
McCain's addiction also embroiled her with one of her charity's former employees, Tom Gosinski, who reported her drug use to the DEA and provided prosecutors with a contemporaneous journal that detailed the effects of her drug problems. He was later accused by a lawyer for McCain of trying to extort money from the McCain family.
"It's not just about her addiction, it's what she did to cover up her addiction and the lives of other people that she ruined, or put at jeopardy at least," Gosinski said in an interview this week.
Cindy and John McCain declined repeated requests to be interviewed for this article. The McCain campaign also declined to comment.
Based on the limited details they have provided in earlier interviews, it is impossible to tell the full story of a difficult period in their lives. The following account of Cindy McCain's prescription drug abuse and her and her husband's efforts to deal with it is based on official records, including a report by the county attorney's office in Phoenix, and on interviews with local and federal officials involved in the probe.
Politics and Philanthropy
In 1988, during her husband's first Senate term, Cindy McCain founded the American Voluntary Medical Team, a nonprofit that sent volunteer doctors and nurses to provide free medical care in Third World countries and U.S. disaster zones. Cindy McCain served as president, operating out of her family's business, a giant Anheuser-Busch beer distributorship in Phoenix owned by her father.
The McCains had married in 1980. They moved to Washington after he was first elected to the House of Representatives in 1982. But she later returned to Phoenix, her home town, believing it was a better place to raise a family. Sen. McCain commuted home on weekends.
Even far from Washington, politics took a toll on Cindy McCain. In 1989, she was pulled into a Senate investigation that focused on her husband and four other senators who had intervened with regulators on behalf of savings-and-loan owner Charles Keating.
When questions arose about a vacation the McCains took to Keating's home in the Bahamas, Cindy McCain, as family bookkeeper, was asked to document that they had reimbursed the Keatings, but she could not. She has repeatedly cited the stress of the Keating Five scandal and pain from two back surgeries that same year as reasons for her dependence on painkillers.
Her charity, AVMT, kept a ready supply of antibiotics and over-the-counter pain medications needed to fulfill its medical mission. It also secured prescriptions for the narcotic painkillers Vicodin, Percocet and Tylenol 3 in quantities of 100 to 400 pills, the county report shows.
McCain started taking narcotics for herself, the report shows. To get them, she asked the charity's medical director, John Max Johnson, to make out prescriptions for the charity in the names of three AVMT employees.
The employees did not know their names were being used. And under DEA regulations, Johnson was supposed to use a form to notify federal officials that he was ordering the narcotics for the charity. It is illegal for an organization to use personal prescriptions to fill its drug needs.
"The DEA told me it was okay to do it that way," Johnson told The Washington Post recently, in his first media interview about the case. "Otherwise, I never would have done it."
The county report showed that Johnson told officials he knew it was wrong, but he wrote prescriptions at McCain's request at least twice.
After Johnson wrote the prescriptions, McCain, and sometimes her secretary, picked them up from his home. Once they were filled, Johnson was supposed to maintain custody of the narcotics, but he said he let McCain control them and carry the medications in her luggage on charity trips.
No one tracked the narcotics in between the charity's missions, the county report shows.
When the county investigator asked Johnson where the charity stored its narcotics, he said they were in a safe. When asked where the safe was located, Johnson said he had never seen it.
Officials with other medical charities contacted by The Post said it is unusual to distribute narcotics overseas, particularly in Third World countries where medical teams treat disease and infection rather than performing painful surgeries.
Some of the doctors and nurses who went on McCain's missions said they never saw narcotics on AVMT trips and would have discouraged carrying such medications. "You don't bring narcotics into a foreign country, especially with people who have machine guns around," said Michele Stillinger, a nurse during a 1991 AVMT mission to Bangladesh.
'I Noticed the Mood Swings'
In 1991, with wife Cindy at his side, Sen. John McCain talked to reporters about the Charles Keating scandal. Cindy McCain has said that the stress of the scandal, along with back pain, was a factor in her addiction to painkillers. (By John Duricka -- Associated Press)
Cindy McCain has been open about her addiction in the early 1990s. (Bonnie Jo Mount - The Washington Post)
Tom Gosinski, who worked for Cindy McCain, says her efforts to cover up her addiction "ruined" lives. (By Dominic Bracco Ii -- The Washington Post)
Tom Gosinski, then 32, met Cindy McCain while working for America West Airlines and coordinating an AVMT flight to Kuwait. She hired him in 1991.
He grew close to the McCain family. He knew the domestic staff, as well as Cindy's father, James, and mother, Marguerite.
Thinking he might one day write a book, Gosinski kept a journal that he later turned over to investigators. His entries about AVMT suggest that McCain's behavior led employees to believe she was using drugs.
"Right away, I noticed the mood swings," Gosinski told The Post in June. "She wouldn't show up at the office, and we'd call her home. Her house staff would say she hadn't come out of her room yet. It would be 11 a.m. or noon."
As time wore on, his diary chronicled office concerns that McCain was taking pills from the charity's inventory. Gosinski developed a code for her behavior, the county report shows. On days when his boss appeared to be in a good mood, he wrote "OP," for "on Percocet." Bad days were called "NOP," for "not on Percocet."
On July 20, 1992, he wrote, "I really don't know what is going on but I certainly hope that Cindy does not get herself of [sic] AVMT in trouble."
A relative of McCain's told charity staff members that McCain's parents planned to confront her about her behavior, according to the journal. McCain has said they did so in late 1992, asking whether painkillers were causing her "erratic" conduct. Gosinski's journal indicates he heard about the confrontation the next day, Oct. 2, 1992.
McCain's relationship with Gosinski soon deteriorated. In January 1993, she ordered him to stop gossiping about her, Gosinski said. Soon after, she fired him but wrote him a glowing termination letter.
Gosinski eventually returned to America West as a travel consultant and worked part time in a bookstore.
The Investigation Begins
Three weeks after his firing, Gosinski contacted Phoenix DEA agents and gave them a copy of his journal.
The DEA questioned the charity's doctors, and McCain hired John Dowd, a powerhouse Washington lawyer, to represent AVMT. Dowd had defended John McCain in the Keating Five scandal, helping the senator win the mildest sanction of the five senators involved. Dowd declined to comment for this article.
Soon, the DEA began looking at Cindy McCain. Dowd informed Johnson, the physician, that "there's been further investigation and Cindy's got a drug problem," Johnson told county investigators.
The DEA pursued the matter for 11 months. Dowd kept tabs on the investigation from Washington, writing letters and making frequent phone calls to the agency, according to sources close to the investigation.
McCain's conduct left her facing federal charges of obtaining "a controlled substance by misrepresenting, fraud, forgery, deception or subterfuge." Experts say she could have faced a 20-year prison sentence.
Dowd negotiated a deal with the U.S. attorney's office allowing McCain, as a first-time offender, to avoid charges and enter a diversion program that required community service, drug treatment and reimbursement to the DEA for investigative costs. Johnson agreed to surrender his medical license and retire.
With final negotiations between federal prosecutors and Dowd still underway, Gosinski sued McCain for wrongful termination.
On Feb. 4, 1994, Gosinski's attorney, Stanley Lubin, wrote to McCain, saying his client had omitted certain details in his lawsuit "due to their sensitive nature." He said that for $250,000, Gosinski would drop the action. Lubin said in an interview that he met with Dowd, who said the lawsuit was without merit. "He told me if I thought the senator was going to cave into this extortion, I was going to learn a very serious lesson," Lubin recalled.
On April 28, 1994, Dowd wrote to Maricopa County Attorney Richard Romley, a Republican, asking that Gosinski be investigated for attempted extortion.
Romley agreed. Dowd and Cindy McCain lined up witnesses and prepared a brief to support the contention that Gosinski's job performance was unacceptable and that he was of questionable character, assertions he denied.
In May of that year, county investigator Terry Blake interviewed McCain at her Phoenix home. He asked questions about Gosinski and then grilled McCain about prescription painkillers. He later wrote:
"Mrs. McCain was asked if AMVT procured narcotic drugs as a part of their normal operation. She said they did.
"I asked if she ever obtained narcotic drugs by using her employee's names. She said she did.
"Mrs. McCain was asked if prescriptions were written in Mr. Gosinski's name without his knowledge. She said yes."
McCain told Blake she once had a dependence on painkillers, according to the report, which included the interview summary and copies of her illegal prescriptions. The probe of possible extortion by Gosinski was closed without charges.
After the case was closed, prosecutors told McCain's lawyer that they would make the report public. Before it was released, Sen. McCain dispatched Jay Smith, then his top strategist, to Phoenix to line up interviews between Cindy McCain and journalists from four selected media outlets who were unaware of the report. Smith did not include two news organizations that had learned about the report, the Arizona Republic and New Times, an alternative weekly in Phoenix.
McCain told the reporters that she was stepping forward willingly. "If what I say can help just one person to face the problem, it's worthwhile," she said.
Two reporters wrote that McCain said she had completed a drug treatment program at the Meadows, a facility in Wickenberg, Ariz., as part of the agreement with federal prosecutors. But days later, federal officials said that no agreement had been reached and that she had not yet been accepted into a diversion program, which would include approved treatment. McCain issued a statement saying the reporters erred, but she did not disclose details of her treatment.
The only public reference to treatment is her mention in the county investigator's report of a one-week stay at the Meadows.
Once the county report was released, along with Gosinski's journal, a few reporters challenged McCain's account. Only New Times published excerpts from Gosinski's diary. Within a few weeks, the story died in Arizona, without receiving national exposure. Gosinski ultimately ran out of money and let his lawsuit against McCain die.
Gosinski, who has moved to Nebraska, was initially reluctant to tell his story when contacted by The Post in May. He is still viewed with enmity by some in the drug investigation, including the Johnsons, who hold him responsible for the doctor's troubles.
He eventually gave several lengthy interviews and provided The Post with a copy of his journal. He subsequently cut off contact and asked that his name not be printed, saying he became frightened by the prospect of facing the McCain campaign on his own.
On Wednesday, he said he had changed his mind. He appeared at a news briefing in Arlington set up by a Democratic Party consultant. Gosinski, a registered Republican, said that he sought help orchestrating a single media event because so many reporters wanted his story, but that he has had no contact with the Obama campaign or the Democratic National Committee.
He also signed an agreement with the Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington, a D.C.-based watchdog group, which will provide legal representation for him in the event of a lawsuit.
Controversy Fades
McCain's drug use became national news during her husband's first presidential campaign in 2000. Newsweek published a first-person account of her struggle, but it included some errors.
"It began with Vicodan [sic]. In 1989, I had ruptured a couple of disks carrying my 1-year-old, Bridget, in a pack on my back," she wrote.
But Bridget was not born until 1991. In other accounts, McCain said she hurt her back while picking up her son Jimmy, who was a toddler at the time of her injuries.
As the McCains traveled in the Straight Talk Express bus in 2000, interest in Cindy McCain's story faded when it became clear that she and her husband weren't headed for the White House.
This year, as the McCains campaigned again, Cindy McCain granted interviews about her past problems to "Access Hollywood" and Jay Leno. She called her addiction a life-changing crisis.
"Your life experiences make you," she told "Access Hollywood," "and hopefully you learn from them."
Research editor Alice Crites and staff researcher Madonna Lebling contributed to this report.
Consequences of Cindy McCain's Drug Abuse Were More Complex Than She Has Portrayed
In 1991, with wife Cindy at his side, Sen. John McCain talked to reporters about the Charles Keating scandal. Cindy McCain has said that the stress of the scandal, along with back pain, was a factor in her addiction to painkillers. (By John Duricka -- Associated Press)
Tom Gosinski, who worked for Cindy McCain, says her efforts to cover up her addiction "ruined" lives. (By Dominic Bracco Ii -- The Washington Post)
By Kimberly Kindy
Washington Post Staff Writer
Friday, September 12, 2008; Page A01
When Cindy McCain is asked what issues she would champion as first lady, she often cites one of the most difficult periods of her life: her battle with -- and ultimate victory over -- prescription painkillers. Her struggle, she has said repeatedly, taught her valuable lessons about drug abuse that she would pass on to the nation.
"I think it made me a better person as well as a better parent, so I think it would be very important to talk about it and be very upfront about it," McCain said in an interview with "Access Hollywood." In an appearance on the "Tonight Show With Jay Leno," she said she tries "to talk about it as much as possible because I don't want anyone to wind up in the shoes that I did at the time."
In describing her struggle with drugs, McCain has said that she became addicted to Vicodin and Percocet in early 1989 after rupturing two disks and having back surgery. She has said she hid her addiction from her husband, Sen. John McCain, and stopped taking the painkillers in 1992 after her parents confronted her. She has not discussed what kind of treatment she received for her addiction, but she has made clear that she believes she has put her problems behind her.
While McCain's accounts have captured the pain of her addiction, her journey through this personal crisis is a more complicated story than she has described, and it had more consequences for her and those around her than she has acknowledged.
Her misuse of painkillers prompted an investigation by the Drug Enforcement Administration and local prosecutors that put her in legal jeopardy. A doctor with McCain's medical charity who supplied her with prescriptions for the drugs lost his license and never practiced again. The charity, the American Voluntary Medical Team, eventually had to be closed in the wake of the controversy. Her husband was forced to admit publicly that he was absent much of the time she was having problems and was not aware of them.
"So many lives were damaged by this," said Jeanette Johnson, whose husband, John Max Johnson, surrendered his medical license. "A lot of good people. Doctors who volunteered their time. My husband. I cannot begin to tell you how painful it was. We moved far away to start over."
McCain's addiction also embroiled her with one of her charity's former employees, Tom Gosinski, who reported her drug use to the DEA and provided prosecutors with a contemporaneous journal that detailed the effects of her drug problems. He was later accused by a lawyer for McCain of trying to extort money from the McCain family.
"It's not just about her addiction, it's what she did to cover up her addiction and the lives of other people that she ruined, or put at jeopardy at least," Gosinski said in an interview this week.
Cindy and John McCain declined repeated requests to be interviewed for this article. The McCain campaign also declined to comment.
Based on the limited details they have provided in earlier interviews, it is impossible to tell the full story of a difficult period in their lives. The following account of Cindy McCain's prescription drug abuse and her and her husband's efforts to deal with it is based on official records, including a report by the county attorney's office in Phoenix, and on interviews with local and federal officials involved in the probe.
Politics and Philanthropy
In 1988, during her husband's first Senate term, Cindy McCain founded the American Voluntary Medical Team, a nonprofit that sent volunteer doctors and nurses to provide free medical care in Third World countries and U.S. disaster zones. Cindy McCain served as president, operating out of her family's business, a giant Anheuser-Busch beer distributorship in Phoenix owned by her father.
The McCains had married in 1980. They moved to Washington after he was first elected to the House of Representatives in 1982. But she later returned to Phoenix, her home town, believing it was a better place to raise a family. Sen. McCain commuted home on weekends.
Even far from Washington, politics took a toll on Cindy McCain. In 1989, she was pulled into a Senate investigation that focused on her husband and four other senators who had intervened with regulators on behalf of savings-and-loan owner Charles Keating.
When questions arose about a vacation the McCains took to Keating's home in the Bahamas, Cindy McCain, as family bookkeeper, was asked to document that they had reimbursed the Keatings, but she could not. She has repeatedly cited the stress of the Keating Five scandal and pain from two back surgeries that same year as reasons for her dependence on painkillers.
Her charity, AVMT, kept a ready supply of antibiotics and over-the-counter pain medications needed to fulfill its medical mission. It also secured prescriptions for the narcotic painkillers Vicodin, Percocet and Tylenol 3 in quantities of 100 to 400 pills, the county report shows.
McCain started taking narcotics for herself, the report shows. To get them, she asked the charity's medical director, John Max Johnson, to make out prescriptions for the charity in the names of three AVMT employees.
The employees did not know their names were being used. And under DEA regulations, Johnson was supposed to use a form to notify federal officials that he was ordering the narcotics for the charity. It is illegal for an organization to use personal prescriptions to fill its drug needs.
"The DEA told me it was okay to do it that way," Johnson told The Washington Post recently, in his first media interview about the case. "Otherwise, I never would have done it."
The county report showed that Johnson told officials he knew it was wrong, but he wrote prescriptions at McCain's request at least twice.
After Johnson wrote the prescriptions, McCain, and sometimes her secretary, picked them up from his home. Once they were filled, Johnson was supposed to maintain custody of the narcotics, but he said he let McCain control them and carry the medications in her luggage on charity trips.
No one tracked the narcotics in between the charity's missions, the county report shows.
When the county investigator asked Johnson where the charity stored its narcotics, he said they were in a safe. When asked where the safe was located, Johnson said he had never seen it.
Officials with other medical charities contacted by The Post said it is unusual to distribute narcotics overseas, particularly in Third World countries where medical teams treat disease and infection rather than performing painful surgeries.
Some of the doctors and nurses who went on McCain's missions said they never saw narcotics on AVMT trips and would have discouraged carrying such medications. "You don't bring narcotics into a foreign country, especially with people who have machine guns around," said Michele Stillinger, a nurse during a 1991 AVMT mission to Bangladesh.
'I Noticed the Mood Swings'
In 1991, with wife Cindy at his side, Sen. John McCain talked to reporters about the Charles Keating scandal. Cindy McCain has said that the stress of the scandal, along with back pain, was a factor in her addiction to painkillers. (By John Duricka -- Associated Press)
Cindy McCain has been open about her addiction in the early 1990s. (Bonnie Jo Mount - The Washington Post)
Tom Gosinski, who worked for Cindy McCain, says her efforts to cover up her addiction "ruined" lives. (By Dominic Bracco Ii -- The Washington Post)
Tom Gosinski, then 32, met Cindy McCain while working for America West Airlines and coordinating an AVMT flight to Kuwait. She hired him in 1991.
He grew close to the McCain family. He knew the domestic staff, as well as Cindy's father, James, and mother, Marguerite.
Thinking he might one day write a book, Gosinski kept a journal that he later turned over to investigators. His entries about AVMT suggest that McCain's behavior led employees to believe she was using drugs.
"Right away, I noticed the mood swings," Gosinski told The Post in June. "She wouldn't show up at the office, and we'd call her home. Her house staff would say she hadn't come out of her room yet. It would be 11 a.m. or noon."
As time wore on, his diary chronicled office concerns that McCain was taking pills from the charity's inventory. Gosinski developed a code for her behavior, the county report shows. On days when his boss appeared to be in a good mood, he wrote "OP," for "on Percocet." Bad days were called "NOP," for "not on Percocet."
On July 20, 1992, he wrote, "I really don't know what is going on but I certainly hope that Cindy does not get herself of [sic] AVMT in trouble."
A relative of McCain's told charity staff members that McCain's parents planned to confront her about her behavior, according to the journal. McCain has said they did so in late 1992, asking whether painkillers were causing her "erratic" conduct. Gosinski's journal indicates he heard about the confrontation the next day, Oct. 2, 1992.
McCain's relationship with Gosinski soon deteriorated. In January 1993, she ordered him to stop gossiping about her, Gosinski said. Soon after, she fired him but wrote him a glowing termination letter.
Gosinski eventually returned to America West as a travel consultant and worked part time in a bookstore.
The Investigation Begins
Three weeks after his firing, Gosinski contacted Phoenix DEA agents and gave them a copy of his journal.
The DEA questioned the charity's doctors, and McCain hired John Dowd, a powerhouse Washington lawyer, to represent AVMT. Dowd had defended John McCain in the Keating Five scandal, helping the senator win the mildest sanction of the five senators involved. Dowd declined to comment for this article.
Soon, the DEA began looking at Cindy McCain. Dowd informed Johnson, the physician, that "there's been further investigation and Cindy's got a drug problem," Johnson told county investigators.
The DEA pursued the matter for 11 months. Dowd kept tabs on the investigation from Washington, writing letters and making frequent phone calls to the agency, according to sources close to the investigation.
McCain's conduct left her facing federal charges of obtaining "a controlled substance by misrepresenting, fraud, forgery, deception or subterfuge." Experts say she could have faced a 20-year prison sentence.
Dowd negotiated a deal with the U.S. attorney's office allowing McCain, as a first-time offender, to avoid charges and enter a diversion program that required community service, drug treatment and reimbursement to the DEA for investigative costs. Johnson agreed to surrender his medical license and retire.
With final negotiations between federal prosecutors and Dowd still underway, Gosinski sued McCain for wrongful termination.
On Feb. 4, 1994, Gosinski's attorney, Stanley Lubin, wrote to McCain, saying his client had omitted certain details in his lawsuit "due to their sensitive nature." He said that for $250,000, Gosinski would drop the action. Lubin said in an interview that he met with Dowd, who said the lawsuit was without merit. "He told me if I thought the senator was going to cave into this extortion, I was going to learn a very serious lesson," Lubin recalled.
On April 28, 1994, Dowd wrote to Maricopa County Attorney Richard Romley, a Republican, asking that Gosinski be investigated for attempted extortion.
Romley agreed. Dowd and Cindy McCain lined up witnesses and prepared a brief to support the contention that Gosinski's job performance was unacceptable and that he was of questionable character, assertions he denied.
In May of that year, county investigator Terry Blake interviewed McCain at her Phoenix home. He asked questions about Gosinski and then grilled McCain about prescription painkillers. He later wrote:
"Mrs. McCain was asked if AMVT procured narcotic drugs as a part of their normal operation. She said they did.
"I asked if she ever obtained narcotic drugs by using her employee's names. She said she did.
"Mrs. McCain was asked if prescriptions were written in Mr. Gosinski's name without his knowledge. She said yes."
McCain told Blake she once had a dependence on painkillers, according to the report, which included the interview summary and copies of her illegal prescriptions. The probe of possible extortion by Gosinski was closed without charges.
After the case was closed, prosecutors told McCain's lawyer that they would make the report public. Before it was released, Sen. McCain dispatched Jay Smith, then his top strategist, to Phoenix to line up interviews between Cindy McCain and journalists from four selected media outlets who were unaware of the report. Smith did not include two news organizations that had learned about the report, the Arizona Republic and New Times, an alternative weekly in Phoenix.
McCain told the reporters that she was stepping forward willingly. "If what I say can help just one person to face the problem, it's worthwhile," she said.
Two reporters wrote that McCain said she had completed a drug treatment program at the Meadows, a facility in Wickenberg, Ariz., as part of the agreement with federal prosecutors. But days later, federal officials said that no agreement had been reached and that she had not yet been accepted into a diversion program, which would include approved treatment. McCain issued a statement saying the reporters erred, but she did not disclose details of her treatment.
The only public reference to treatment is her mention in the county investigator's report of a one-week stay at the Meadows.
Once the county report was released, along with Gosinski's journal, a few reporters challenged McCain's account. Only New Times published excerpts from Gosinski's diary. Within a few weeks, the story died in Arizona, without receiving national exposure. Gosinski ultimately ran out of money and let his lawsuit against McCain die.
Gosinski, who has moved to Nebraska, was initially reluctant to tell his story when contacted by The Post in May. He is still viewed with enmity by some in the drug investigation, including the Johnsons, who hold him responsible for the doctor's troubles.
He eventually gave several lengthy interviews and provided The Post with a copy of his journal. He subsequently cut off contact and asked that his name not be printed, saying he became frightened by the prospect of facing the McCain campaign on his own.
On Wednesday, he said he had changed his mind. He appeared at a news briefing in Arlington set up by a Democratic Party consultant. Gosinski, a registered Republican, said that he sought help orchestrating a single media event because so many reporters wanted his story, but that he has had no contact with the Obama campaign or the Democratic National Committee.
He also signed an agreement with the Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington, a D.C.-based watchdog group, which will provide legal representation for him in the event of a lawsuit.
Controversy Fades
McCain's drug use became national news during her husband's first presidential campaign in 2000. Newsweek published a first-person account of her struggle, but it included some errors.
"It began with Vicodan [sic]. In 1989, I had ruptured a couple of disks carrying my 1-year-old, Bridget, in a pack on my back," she wrote.
But Bridget was not born until 1991. In other accounts, McCain said she hurt her back while picking up her son Jimmy, who was a toddler at the time of her injuries.
As the McCains traveled in the Straight Talk Express bus in 2000, interest in Cindy McCain's story faded when it became clear that she and her husband weren't headed for the White House.
This year, as the McCains campaigned again, Cindy McCain granted interviews about her past problems to "Access Hollywood" and Jay Leno. She called her addiction a life-changing crisis.
"Your life experiences make you," she told "Access Hollywood," "and hopefully you learn from them."
Research editor Alice Crites and staff researcher Madonna Lebling contributed to this report.
Monday, October 6, 2008
Sarah Palin blessed by witch doctor, seriously, just watch!
Max Blumenthal
Posted September 24, 2008 | 05:06 AM (EST)
The Witch Hunter Anoints Sarah Palin
On September 20 and 21, I attended services at the church Sarah Palin belonged to since she was an adolescent, the Wasilla Assembly of God. Though Palin officially left the church in 2002, she is listed on its website as "a friend," and spoke there as recently as June 8 of this year.
I went specifically to see a pastor visiting from Kiambu, Kenya named Thomas Muthee. Muthee gained fame within Pentecostal circles by claiming that he defeated a local witch, Mama Jane, in a great spiritual battle, thus liberating his town from sin and opening its people to the spirit of Jesus.
Muthee's mounting stardom took him to Wasilla Assembly of God in May, 2005, where he prayed over Palin and called upon Jesus to propel her into the governor's mansion -- and beyond. Muthee also implored Jesus to protect Palin from "the spirit of witchcraft." The video archive of that startling sermon was scrubbed from Wasilla Assembly of God's website, but now it has reappeared.
The Youtube version is below (Palin appears after about 7:30):
Since Palin was nominated as vice president, Wasilla Assembly of God has taken a draconian line with reporters. The church now forbids members of the media from filming, taking notes, or bringing voice recorders to its services. I was able to record Muthee's recent sermons only by deploying an array of tiny cameras and hidden microphones. Though the quality and comprehensiveness of my footage was severely compromised by the church's closed door policy to the press, I was not going to be deterred.
By the end of the second day of Muthee's sermons, the church had been tipped off about me, the liberal media member in its midst. An associate pastor told me he had received an email from an anonymous source warning him about me. When I tried to interview members of the congregation in the church parking lot, my questions were either met with silence or open hostility. I strongly suspect the McCain campaign has mobilized the Wasilla Assembly of God against perceived threats from the media.
But they hardly needed encouragement. On the first night of services, Muthee implored his audience to wage "spiritual warfare" against "the enemy." As I filmed, a nervous church staffer approached from behind and told me to put my camera away. I acceded to his demand, but as Muthee urged the church to crush "the python spirit" of the unbeliever enemies by stomping on their necks, I pulled out a smaller camera and filmed from a more discreet position. Now, church members were in deep prayer, speaking in tongues and raising their hands. Muthee exclaimed, "We come against the spirit of witchcraft! We come against the python spirits!" Then, a local pastor took the mic from Muthee and added, "We stomp on the heads of the enemy!"
Behind the Christian right's enthusiasm for Palin's conservative credentials is a visceral sense that that she has come from them, not to them. Some right-wing evangelicals even believe she has messianic potential. As former Christian Broadcasting Network vice president Jim Bramlett wrote, "Sarah is that standard God has raised up to stop the flood. She has the anointing."
The Christian right's analysis is accurate to a certain degree. While Palin may not be The One, she is certainly one of them. Her social policy views, from her rejection of scientific evidence on global warming to her opposition to publicly funding emergency contraception for rape victims, are explicitly influenced by the sectarian theology she has subscribed to since she was a teenager. There is no better evidence of the depth of Palin's radical convictions than her startling encounter with the witch-hunter, Bishop Muthee.
Next week, I will post an exclusive video documentary here that will shed further light on Palin's relationship with Muthee and the religious right in Alaska. Stay tuned.
Posted September 24, 2008 | 05:06 AM (EST)
The Witch Hunter Anoints Sarah Palin
On September 20 and 21, I attended services at the church Sarah Palin belonged to since she was an adolescent, the Wasilla Assembly of God. Though Palin officially left the church in 2002, she is listed on its website as "a friend," and spoke there as recently as June 8 of this year.
I went specifically to see a pastor visiting from Kiambu, Kenya named Thomas Muthee. Muthee gained fame within Pentecostal circles by claiming that he defeated a local witch, Mama Jane, in a great spiritual battle, thus liberating his town from sin and opening its people to the spirit of Jesus.
Muthee's mounting stardom took him to Wasilla Assembly of God in May, 2005, where he prayed over Palin and called upon Jesus to propel her into the governor's mansion -- and beyond. Muthee also implored Jesus to protect Palin from "the spirit of witchcraft." The video archive of that startling sermon was scrubbed from Wasilla Assembly of God's website, but now it has reappeared.
The Youtube version is below (Palin appears after about 7:30):
Since Palin was nominated as vice president, Wasilla Assembly of God has taken a draconian line with reporters. The church now forbids members of the media from filming, taking notes, or bringing voice recorders to its services. I was able to record Muthee's recent sermons only by deploying an array of tiny cameras and hidden microphones. Though the quality and comprehensiveness of my footage was severely compromised by the church's closed door policy to the press, I was not going to be deterred.
By the end of the second day of Muthee's sermons, the church had been tipped off about me, the liberal media member in its midst. An associate pastor told me he had received an email from an anonymous source warning him about me. When I tried to interview members of the congregation in the church parking lot, my questions were either met with silence or open hostility. I strongly suspect the McCain campaign has mobilized the Wasilla Assembly of God against perceived threats from the media.
But they hardly needed encouragement. On the first night of services, Muthee implored his audience to wage "spiritual warfare" against "the enemy." As I filmed, a nervous church staffer approached from behind and told me to put my camera away. I acceded to his demand, but as Muthee urged the church to crush "the python spirit" of the unbeliever enemies by stomping on their necks, I pulled out a smaller camera and filmed from a more discreet position. Now, church members were in deep prayer, speaking in tongues and raising their hands. Muthee exclaimed, "We come against the spirit of witchcraft! We come against the python spirits!" Then, a local pastor took the mic from Muthee and added, "We stomp on the heads of the enemy!"
Behind the Christian right's enthusiasm for Palin's conservative credentials is a visceral sense that that she has come from them, not to them. Some right-wing evangelicals even believe she has messianic potential. As former Christian Broadcasting Network vice president Jim Bramlett wrote, "Sarah is that standard God has raised up to stop the flood. She has the anointing."
The Christian right's analysis is accurate to a certain degree. While Palin may not be The One, she is certainly one of them. Her social policy views, from her rejection of scientific evidence on global warming to her opposition to publicly funding emergency contraception for rape victims, are explicitly influenced by the sectarian theology she has subscribed to since she was a teenager. There is no better evidence of the depth of Palin's radical convictions than her startling encounter with the witch-hunter, Bishop Muthee.
Next week, I will post an exclusive video documentary here that will shed further light on Palin's relationship with Muthee and the religious right in Alaska. Stay tuned.
Palin religous affiliation
Palin Plays The Wright Card
Sam Stein stein@huffingtonpost.com | HuffPost Reporting From DC
Speaking to Bill Kristol, the conservative New York Times columnist, Sarah Palin continued her assault on Barack Obama's character. This time she aired criticisms of the Senator's former Reverend, Jeremiah Wright.
"To tell you the truth, Bill, I don't know why that association isn't discussed more," Palin said, "because those were appalling things that that pastor had said about our great country, and to have sat in the pews for 20 years and listened to that -- with, I don't know, a sense of condoning it, I guess, because he didn't get up and leave -- to me, that does say something about character. But, you know, I guess that would be a John McCain call on whether he wants to bring that up."
The remarks provide yet another sign of how invested the McCain camp is in turning the narrative of this campaign away from economic and towards personality issues.
And yet, taken on its own, the line is jarring in its chutzpah. Palin, for starters, recently bemoaned the media "elite's" obsession with trivial gotcha games that distract from discussions of substance. Now, she is doing it herself.
More jarring, however, is that Palin and the McCain campaign have, up to this point, gone to some efforts to avoid the subject of religious affiliations. That's because Palin's spiritual past contains, like Obama's, stark political liabilities. At her old church, the Wasilla Assembly of God, Palin discussed both the Iraq War and the construction of the $40 billion Alaska national gas pipeline as projects touched by God. Her old pastor Ed Kalnins suggested that people who voted for Sen. John Kerry in 2004 would not be accepted in heaven and argued that terrorists and Iraq were part of a war "contending for your faith." A guest pastor at that church personally blessed Palin by asking Jesus to protect her from the perils of witchcraft.
More recently, Palin's attended a Wasilla Bible Church sermon conducted by the founder of Jews for Jesus, David Brickner, who made several remarkable claims about terrorism in Israel.
"Judgment is very real and we see it played out on the pages of the newspapers and on the television. It's very real," he said. "When Isaac was in Jerusalem he was there to witness some of that judgment, some of that conflict, when a Palestinian from East Jerusalem took a bulldozer and went plowing through a score of cars, killing numbers of people. Judgment -- you can't miss it."
Palin, by all accounts, didn't "get up and leave" the pew.
Sam Stein stein@huffingtonpost.com | HuffPost Reporting From DC
Speaking to Bill Kristol, the conservative New York Times columnist, Sarah Palin continued her assault on Barack Obama's character. This time she aired criticisms of the Senator's former Reverend, Jeremiah Wright.
"To tell you the truth, Bill, I don't know why that association isn't discussed more," Palin said, "because those were appalling things that that pastor had said about our great country, and to have sat in the pews for 20 years and listened to that -- with, I don't know, a sense of condoning it, I guess, because he didn't get up and leave -- to me, that does say something about character. But, you know, I guess that would be a John McCain call on whether he wants to bring that up."
The remarks provide yet another sign of how invested the McCain camp is in turning the narrative of this campaign away from economic and towards personality issues.
And yet, taken on its own, the line is jarring in its chutzpah. Palin, for starters, recently bemoaned the media "elite's" obsession with trivial gotcha games that distract from discussions of substance. Now, she is doing it herself.
More jarring, however, is that Palin and the McCain campaign have, up to this point, gone to some efforts to avoid the subject of religious affiliations. That's because Palin's spiritual past contains, like Obama's, stark political liabilities. At her old church, the Wasilla Assembly of God, Palin discussed both the Iraq War and the construction of the $40 billion Alaska national gas pipeline as projects touched by God. Her old pastor Ed Kalnins suggested that people who voted for Sen. John Kerry in 2004 would not be accepted in heaven and argued that terrorists and Iraq were part of a war "contending for your faith." A guest pastor at that church personally blessed Palin by asking Jesus to protect her from the perils of witchcraft.
More recently, Palin's attended a Wasilla Bible Church sermon conducted by the founder of Jews for Jesus, David Brickner, who made several remarkable claims about terrorism in Israel.
"Judgment is very real and we see it played out on the pages of the newspapers and on the television. It's very real," he said. "When Isaac was in Jerusalem he was there to witness some of that judgment, some of that conflict, when a Palestinian from East Jerusalem took a bulldozer and went plowing through a score of cars, killing numbers of people. Judgment -- you can't miss it."
Palin, by all accounts, didn't "get up and leave" the pew.
Thursday, October 2, 2008
Palin is "Joe Six Pack"...This is scary!
Sam Stein stein@huffingtonpost.com
HuffPost Reporting From DC
McCain Camp's Pre-Debate Spin: Palin Doesn't Need To Pass IQ Test
Listening to surrogates and aides to John McCain on Thursday, one is left with the impression that there is no great need for Gov. Sarah Palin to actually answer questions during tonight's vice presidential debate.
Indeed, the spin coming from McCain surrogates and strategists is that all Palin has to do is pass a sort of artificial personality test, in which she strikes an emotional thread with the average voter -- question, answers, or intellectual capacity be damned.
Such were the talking points mere hours before the debate in St. Louis, which peaked with Sen. Joe Lieberman - a man not unaccustomed to the pressures of such a forum - actually proclaiming that Palin's relative ignorance helped her relate to "regular people."
"She's not lived in the world of Washington, so she doesn't know every detail of all the questions senators deal with," Lieberman told NBC's Andrea Mitchell. "But, frankly, that's her strength. I think that's why a lot of regular people out across America think she's going to be their voice."
Mitchell interjected, "Senator, she wants to be a heartbeat away from the presidency. You know, that doesn't mean just being an average mom, it means bringing other skills."
But Lieberman stayed on the point, stating later, "I think tonight is not a kind of final college exam. I think the point is who is she as a person... Whether she can answer every detailed question, I don't think that ultimately matters to the American people so long as they think she passes those other personal thresholds."
It was the ultimate setting of expectations -- a political get-out-of-jail-free card should Palin stumble this evening. And it wasn't an isolated incident. Over on Fox News, Chris Wallace was relaying a conversation with a McCain "strategist" in which the metrics for debate success were once again defined in strictly personal terms.
"They say they want to show that she is plain spoken, that she relates to Joe Six-Pack and embrace the contrast her to a smooth-talking Washington insider like Joe Biden," Wallace reported. "I said: 'But what if she does not know some of the answer to something?' They said, 'Look, she should not be embarrassed by that. She should say 'I'm not a Washington insider. I'm going to learn about that but I was a reformer in Alaska and I shook things up.'"
Earlier in the day on Fox News, McCain aide Meg Stapleton was also playing up Palin's "Joe Six-Pack" attributes, even arguing that Palin's "experience as an ordinary American" qualified her to be "one heartbeat away" from the Oval Office... "god forbid."
"So if it's the economic crisis, she can certainly speak to the fact that she carries a mortgage. She's got kids ready to go to college, she has a son who is also heading off to the military. So from a military perspective, she is engaged just like any ordinary American. So if she is one heartbeat away, as she is one heartbeat away as a vice presidential candidate, and she assumes the presidency, god forbid -- in terms of John McCain, I don't wish ill, but as your question points -- if she becomes president of the United States, she is ready, and that is because she has the experience of an ordinary American who can get in there and knows what is on people's minds and what people need."
HuffPost Reporting From DC
McCain Camp's Pre-Debate Spin: Palin Doesn't Need To Pass IQ Test
Listening to surrogates and aides to John McCain on Thursday, one is left with the impression that there is no great need for Gov. Sarah Palin to actually answer questions during tonight's vice presidential debate.
Indeed, the spin coming from McCain surrogates and strategists is that all Palin has to do is pass a sort of artificial personality test, in which she strikes an emotional thread with the average voter -- question, answers, or intellectual capacity be damned.
Such were the talking points mere hours before the debate in St. Louis, which peaked with Sen. Joe Lieberman - a man not unaccustomed to the pressures of such a forum - actually proclaiming that Palin's relative ignorance helped her relate to "regular people."
"She's not lived in the world of Washington, so she doesn't know every detail of all the questions senators deal with," Lieberman told NBC's Andrea Mitchell. "But, frankly, that's her strength. I think that's why a lot of regular people out across America think she's going to be their voice."
Mitchell interjected, "Senator, she wants to be a heartbeat away from the presidency. You know, that doesn't mean just being an average mom, it means bringing other skills."
But Lieberman stayed on the point, stating later, "I think tonight is not a kind of final college exam. I think the point is who is she as a person... Whether she can answer every detailed question, I don't think that ultimately matters to the American people so long as they think she passes those other personal thresholds."
It was the ultimate setting of expectations -- a political get-out-of-jail-free card should Palin stumble this evening. And it wasn't an isolated incident. Over on Fox News, Chris Wallace was relaying a conversation with a McCain "strategist" in which the metrics for debate success were once again defined in strictly personal terms.
"They say they want to show that she is plain spoken, that she relates to Joe Six-Pack and embrace the contrast her to a smooth-talking Washington insider like Joe Biden," Wallace reported. "I said: 'But what if she does not know some of the answer to something?' They said, 'Look, she should not be embarrassed by that. She should say 'I'm not a Washington insider. I'm going to learn about that but I was a reformer in Alaska and I shook things up.'"
Earlier in the day on Fox News, McCain aide Meg Stapleton was also playing up Palin's "Joe Six-Pack" attributes, even arguing that Palin's "experience as an ordinary American" qualified her to be "one heartbeat away" from the Oval Office... "god forbid."
"So if it's the economic crisis, she can certainly speak to the fact that she carries a mortgage. She's got kids ready to go to college, she has a son who is also heading off to the military. So from a military perspective, she is engaged just like any ordinary American. So if she is one heartbeat away, as she is one heartbeat away as a vice presidential candidate, and she assumes the presidency, god forbid -- in terms of John McCain, I don't wish ill, but as your question points -- if she becomes president of the United States, she is ready, and that is because she has the experience of an ordinary American who can get in there and knows what is on people's minds and what people need."
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