A Spork in the Drawer

More McSame

Gosh, it's a good thing that St. John hates lobbyists:

Sen. John McCain championed legislation that will let an Arizona rancher trade remote grassland and ponderosa pine forest here for acres of valuable federally owned property that is ready for development, a land swap that now stands to directly benefit one of his top presidential campaign fundraisers.

Initially reluctant to support the swap, the Arizona Republican became a key figure in pushing the deal through Congress after the rancher and his partners hired lobbyists that included McCain's 1992 Senate campaign manager, two of his former Senate staff members (one of whom has returned as his chief of staff), and an Arizona insider who was a major McCain donor and is now bundling campaign checks.

[...]

Betts is among a string of donors who have benefited from McCain-engineered land swaps. In 1994, the senator helped a lobbyist for land developer Del Webb Corp. pursue an exchange in the Las Vegas area, according to the Center for Public Integrity. McCain sponsored two bills, in 1991 and 1994, sought by donor Donald R. Diamond that yielded the developer thousands of acres in trade for national parkland.

[...]

As McCain positions himself as a champion of environmental causes, observers of the Yavapai Ranch swap say it shows a paradox in the senator's positions.

"Paradox"? Wouldn't it bee more accurate to just call McCain a fraud?

McCain also has been critical of government's "revolving door," which allows former government officials to position themselves as influential lobbyists. Rogers said that McCain does not recall being lobbied by his former staff members on the land swap and that "no lobbyist influenced Senator McCain on this issue."

Somebody should tell St. John about his top advisor Charlie Black.

Is the Senator involved in fleecing the American taxpayer?

A town official opposed to the swap said other Yavapai Ranch land sold nine years ago for about $2,000 per acre, while some of the prime commercial land near a parcel that the developers will get has brought as much as $120,000 per acre.

Heavens! That's an awful lot of Straight Talk!

Perhaps the corporate media will take notice of this hypocrisy.

When pigs fly.

As a side note, one of the people involved in this ripoff is Carl H. Lindner Jr of Chiquita Banana infamy.

St. John has some nice friends, no?

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Republican Family Values

Rep. Vito Fossella

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And Speaking Mavericky McMaverick...

Kevin Drum makes the point:

Can we stop pretending to be children about this? There's only one reason for a politician to make sure that all his assets are in his wife's name: it's to make sure that no one knows anything about his assets. It's not as if McCain is the first pol to try this, after all.

(Kevin then goes on to ask the stunningly dense rhetorical question, "Is the press really going to let him get away with this?" Duh.)

Anyway, perhaps St. John can come up with an explanation for this whilst flying in luxury on his wife's jet. Perhaps the answer lies in the Beer Baroness' tax returns.

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Well Then

Sen. Larry Craig (R-Wide Stance) lends his support to Sen. David Vitter (R-Pampers).

The sheer number of possible quips has shut down my brain.

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Boo Hoo

EJ Dionne:

Never do I want to hear again from my conservative friends about how brilliant capitalists are, how much they deserve their seven-figure salaries and how government should keep its hands off the private economy.

The Wall Street titans have turned into a bunch of welfare clients. They are desperate to be bailed out by government from their own incompetence, and from the deregulatory regime for which they lobbied so hard. They have lost "confidence" in each other, you see, because none of these oh-so-wise captains of the universe have any idea what kinds of devalued securities sit in one another's portfolios.

[...]

Enter the federal government, the institution to which the wealthy are not supposed to pay capital gains or inheritance taxes. Good God, you don't expect these people to trade in their BMWs for Saturns, do you?

Truly.

I don't necessarily object to government bailouts of large financial institutions. What I DO object to is that these bailouts come with no strings attached. No regulations, no commitments to good corporate governance, nothing.

And yet giving money to the "undeserving" poor is a handout that only encourages bad behavior.

Privatizing the profits and socializing the losses, indeed.

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Random Thought

Toe Tappin' Larry Craig and Diaper Dave Vitter are still respected members of the Senate.

Why is that?

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It's Not The Sex...

...it's the ethics. Or lack thereof. First the NYT then the WaPo (apparently more to follow) report on St. John's "inappropriate" "relationship" with a telco lobbyist named Vicki Iseman.

There's even a Pittsburgh angle. Via smintheus at dkos we find that:

On November 17, 1999 the Senator and Presidential candidate instructed the FCC commissioners to take action on the deal no later than December 15, 1999. "If in your judgment the Commission cannot meet this request, please advise me of this fact in writing, with a specific and complete explanation, no later than November 18, 1999," wrote McCain.

In a second letter, dated December 10, 1999, written to FCC Chair William Kennard, McCain was even more forceful in his resolution. He demanded, "if the license applications were not acted upon" that Chairman Kennard "...explain why." Obviously feeling the pressure, the commissioners voted to approve the application. However, the FCC press release indicated that the 30-page opinion included four separate dissenting opinions.

Kennard responded to McCain's letter by saying, "It is highly unusual for the commissioners to be asked to publicly announce their voting status on a matter that is still pending." He said such inquiries "could have procedural and substantive impacts on the Commission's deliberations and, thus, on the due process rights of the parties."

Save Pittsburgh Public Television campaign's director Jerry Starr, said, "This is the latest and most flagrant example of Washington insiders riding rough-shod over community sentiment. The pressure to resolve this by December 15th comes from the applicants, Paxson Communications, WQED, and Cornerstone TeleVision, whose contract expires at the end of the year." Starr added, "McCain is making big statements about taking the money out of politics, but we have discovered that Paxson, his people and his attorneys have contributed at least $15,000 to McCain's campaign in the past few months."

(Paxson and Cornerstone are fundie outfits; WQED is the local PBS station.)

I don't really care if McCain was having it off the Ms. Iseman (it wouldn't be the first time he's done such a thing) but I'd hope, tough wouldn't bet, that this puts to rest his image of Mr. Ethical Maverick Straight Talk Express. That's almost entirely a creation of the "liberal" media. However, they have there narrrative and they'll likely stick to it.

Jane: "No jokes about "lobbyists" and "pork.""

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ADDED: JMM:

Reading all of this stuff I have the distinct feeling that only a few pieces of the puzzle are now on the table. Given unspoken understandings of many years' duration, a lot of reporters and DC types can probably imagine what the full picture looks like. But we're going to need a few more pieces before the rest of us can get a sense of what this is all about.

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Dicky!

I finally got around to reading Vanity Fair's piece on our favorite batshit crazy billionaire Richard Mellon Scaife. The bits I like most:

THE HOOKER

In December of 2005, the private detective proved Ritchie’s (the soon to be ex-Mrs. Scaife - ed.) fears to have been well founded: he took pictures showing the reclusive 75-year-old billionaire with a woman named Tammy Vasco, a tall, blonde 43-year-old whose criminal history includes two arrests for prostitution. The pair was photographed at Doug’s Motel, a roadside establishment near Pittsburgh, where rooms rent for $49 a night, or $31 for three hours.

He spends all of that money in an attempt to destroy a president yet meets an (ex?) hooker in a motel that charges by the hour. Gotta keep those priorities straight, I guess.

THE ANGORA SWEATER

Ritchie says Dick started pursuing her immediately. Dick himself says that he didn’t see Ritchie again for another six months. Then one day she came to his office, soliciting for a charity; he couldn’t take his eyes off her white angora sweater. That afternoon, he adds with a wink, “we did what comes naturally.”

“Never owned an angora sweater,” Ritchie protests, aghast and lilting. “I’m allergic to things like that!”

Was it Ritchie or Ed Wood?

CORRUPTION OF A MINOR

David (Dicky's son from his first marriage - ed.) says that Ritchie soon won him over: “My grades were so bad at school at that point, I just thought, Well, instead of getting yelled at,” siding with Dick against Franny could be “a new chapter to our friendship. All of a sudden, he and I were drinking buddies.” When Dick and Ritchie visited him at Deerfield Academy, David claims, Ritchie brought pot for them to smoke together, and his father bought him alcohol.

“To take marijuana to a child? To a prep school?,” Ritchie marvels, when asked about the story. “Never,” she declares, her petite hands holding one another in her lap. “And how dare anyone even make a comment like that?”

Dick, who regretfully confirms the details of his son’s story, says that he did not inhale.

"I didn't inhale."

HIS NAME IS "DICK"

For the exchange of vows, on the old Penguin Court property (Dick had had the gloomy mansion torn down after his mother died, in 1965), Ritchie wore a short white dress. For the reception, at Ligonier’s Rolling Rock Club, the new wife surprised her husband, a fireworks aficionado, by hiring Zambelli, which is responsible for the July Fourth shows on the Mall in Washington, to create a blazing sign on the lawn that proclaimed, in sparkling letters, ritchie loves dick. Even today, a certain set of Pittsburgh women, including wives of some of the country’s most brass-knuckled industrialists, speak of Ritchie’s flaming double entendre as among the most shocking moments of their lives.

It was not a double entendre, Ritchie says, with tears in her eyes: “My mind doesn’t work that way. Please. His name is Dick. His name is Dick, and I thought of the human being. And how evil of them, because I was saying I loved my husband.”

Sometimes you just gotta have Dick.

BEAUREGARD

After Dick had Ritchie arrested and thrown in jail (and stories about it appeared in his newspaper), Ritchie and the Scaife’s three dogs—including Dick’s favorite, a yellow Lab named Beauregard (Dick says Beauregard was a gift from Ritchie; Ritchie says the couple owned the dog together)—moved in with Pietragallo and his wife, Helena, who is one of her oldest friends. Then, in March 2006, Dick arranged for a sign to be made and placed on his front lawn: wife and dog missing—reward for dog.

Woof.

DICKY = BILL CLINTON

For his part, Dick does not believe that any of his efforts to humiliate Ritchie were excessive. Erecting those signs in his front yard, he says, was just plain “fun.” Do the end of the marriage, its escalating vindictiveness, and the ongoing consequences of such anger make him in any way sad? His eyes go blank, and he says, “No, I don’t think about that. I just don’t want her near me. That’s all I think about.”

Asked whether his infidelity is hypocritical, in light of his political commitments, he refers not to a moral principle but to his own personal history. “My first marriage ended with an affair,” he says, amused. And monogamy is not, he continues, an essential part of a good marriage. “I don’t want people throwing rocks at me in the street. But I believe in open marriage.” Philandering, Scaife says with a laugh, “is something that Bill Clinton and I have in common.”

That's our Dicky!

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Power Over Principle

So Grand Ayatollah Pat Robertson has gone and endorsed Benito Giuliani despite Rudy's long history of social liberalism. (I don't think for a minute that a president Giuliani would govern as a social liberal, but that's his record.)

This just adds to the pile of evidence that the likes of Robertson care about power first and foremost. They know that whatever else, Rudy will bomb and kill and run his administration in a way that will make us nostalgic for the sanity and moderation of BushCheney. To Hell with strongly held Biblical principles so long as they think they'll be able to put a boot on people's throats.

And as Greg Sargent reminds us, somebody ought to ask Rudy if he agrees with Robertson's contention that the United States deserved the 11 September attacks.

I would enjoy hearing Rudy's answer.

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Question

Is there a Republican who isn't a closeted gay?

State Representative Richard Curtis says he's not gay, but police reports and court records indicate the Republican lawmaker from southwestern Washington dressed up in women's lingerie and met a Medical Lake man in a local erotic video store which led to consensual sex at a downtown hotel and a threat to expose Curtis' activities publicly.

[...]

Curtis, according to a search warrant unsealed Tuesday, went to the Hollywood Erotic Boutique on East Sprague on October 26th at approximately 12:45 a.m. The store clerk, who had talked with Curtis, referred to him as "The Cross-Dresser" and said that during their conversations he confirmed he was gay and was married with children at home.

During his visit to the video store Curtis was observed wearing women's lingerie while receiving oral sex from an unidentified man in one of the movie viewing booths inside the store.

And we still don't know why JimmyJeff GannonGuckert was spending so much time at the White House.

An odd bunch, those Republicans.

[Via Attaturk.]

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Fiscal Conservative? Not So Much

George W. Bush, despite all his recent bravado about being an apostle of small government and budget-slashing, is the biggest spending president since Lyndon B. Johnson. In fact, he's arguably an even bigger spender than LBJ.

“He’s a big government guy,” said Stephen Slivinski, the director of budget studies at Cato Institute, a libertarian research group.

[...]

Diana Furchtgott-Roth, a senior fellow at the Hudson Institute, a conservative research group, blamed a ravenous Congress that was eager to show constituents how generous it could be. (Republicans ran that Congress until January. Bush never vetoed a single GOP spending bill.)

Good on McClatchy for pointing out the lack of vetoes.

LBJ = Tax and Spend

GWB = Spend and Spend.

You tell me which is worse.






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Republican Filibusters? Who Knew?

From McClatchy:

This year Senate Republicans are threatening filibusters to block more legislation than ever before, a pattern that's rooted in — and could increase — the pettiness and dysfunction in Congress.

[…]

Seven months into the current two-year term, the Senate has held 42 "cloture" votes aimed at shutting off extended debate — filibusters, or sometimes only the threat of one — and moving to up-or-down votes on contested legislation. Under Senate rules that protect a minority's right to debate, these votes require a 60-vote supermajority in the 100-member Senate.

[…]

Nearly 1 in 6 roll-call votes in the Senate this year have been cloture votes. If this pace of blocking legislation continues, this 110th Congress will be on track to roughly triple the previous record number of cloture votes — 58 each in the two Congresses from 1999-2002, according to the Senate Historical Office.

McClatchy even provides an easy to understand chart:

Good on McClatchy. The same “news” media that screamed “FILIBUSTER!” every time the Dems did it have been rather reticent to do the same when the Repubs use it.

Go figure.

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And The Award For Best Wide-Stance Goes To...

...Lavatory Larry Craig!

Sen. Larry Craig has been chosen for induction into the Idaho Hall of Fame, despite his well-publicized arrest and guilty plea in an airport sex sting, officials said.

The nonprofit Idaho Hall of Fame Association picked Craig in March, months before he pleaded guilty to disorderly conduct after a Minneapolis airport police officer accused him of soliciting sex in the men's restroom, the organization's board chairman said.

"Larry Craig has made a great contribution to Idaho over the period of 20-some years. At the time it was considered, this other matter had not come up," Harry Magnuson told The Spokesman-Review newspaper Saturday.

You might have noticed that the Notorious Toe Tapper remains in the Senate much to the consternation of his fellow Repubs.

Meanwhile, it's been revealed that Larry's favorite recipe involves putting a hot dog through a hole. This is not a joke. It's for real.

Paging Dr. Freud, Dr. Sigmund Freud to the white courtesy telephone please.

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On Double Standards

Pierce:

One of the most charmingly naive arguments mustered by conservative critics of the Avignon Presidency's laughably bloated sense of its own constitutional prerogatives is to ask other conservatives how they will feel if these expanded powers fall into the hands of, say, President Hillary Clinton. The answer to this is very simple -- no Democratic president ever will be allowed to use them. Almost immediately, a Democratic president who tries even the most tepid exercise of these alleged powers will be pilloried on the Right as the lineal descendant of Heinrich Himmler. Recent criticisms -- almost entirely ignored by the mainstream press in real time, while the Bushies actually were feeding the Constitution into the woodchipper -- will suddenly be given new life as examples of liberal -- or, to use C-Plus Augustus's favorite term of art, "Democrat" -- hypocrisy, a master narrative beloved by the cocktails-on-Nantucket crowd. I do not doubt the good faith of conservative scholars like Bruce Fein on these issues. They have been brave and true. But they either misunderstand, or don't care to engage, the profound bad faith in which movement conservatism engages all questions of public policy. Those people have no compunction about acting upon principles wholly at odds with the principles they earlier have espoused most vigorously. Indeed, that is the most essential tactic they have. Consider the case of uber-charlatan John Yoo, who is what Alexander Hamilton would be if Hamilton had the constitutional knowledge of a ferret. Here's an interesting example. I assure you that this dynamic will be at play for the entire eight years of a Democratic administration. It will be obvious and shameless and an awful lot of people in my business will pretend not to see what is plainly in front of them.

As always, read the rest over at Dr. Alterman's place.

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Lavatory Larry Update

Good luck, Senator Widestance!

Sen. Larry Craig's attorneys will try to convince Judge Charles Porter at a hearing today that the Idaho senator's guilty plea was a mistake.

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Lavatory Larry Post Of The Day

Republican Sen. WideStance is maybe...back in?

Stay tuned!

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Lavatory Larry Post Of The Day

Sen. Craig (R-Tap Three Times) is out...is in...is apparently out.

What tomorrow brings no man can say.

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Fun!

Former (Current?) Sen. Larry Craig (R-Wide Stance) can't decide if he's in or out. It appears that none other than Snarlin' Arlen has talked him in to reconsidering.

Meanwhile, via David Kurtz, in the case of Diaper Dave Vitter (R-Huggies), "DC Madam" Deborah Jeane Palfrey might be claiming that she'll have to divulge national security secrets to defend herself.

Say what you will but sometimes the Republicans provide terrific entertainment.

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Craig Resigns

Senator Wide Stance is outta the building.

Idaho Republican governor Butch Otter will appoint his successor.

Which otter is the governor?

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***IMPORTANT ANNOUNCEMENT***

Sen. Larry Craig (R-Wide Stance) wants you to know:

"Let me be clear: I am not gay. I never have been gay[.]"

Craig, second from left, is "not gay."

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Republican Morality

Larry Craig (Republican - ID).

That is all.

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It's About Hypocrisy

I like EJ Dionne. He usually has a pretty solid take on things and he seems to be a decent liberal. And he seems to be a genuinely nice chap. Sometimes, though, he's too nice:

But a big part of me is rooting for Vitter to survive because I so want to return to a time when we -- that "we" includes the media -- chose to pay little attention to the extracurricular sexual activities of our politicians. The magnitude of our public problems does not afford us the luxury of indulging in crusades about politicians' private lives, even those involving a high degree of hypocrisy.

[...]

But if we are to get out of this habit of destroying the distinctions between public and private lives, liberals need to give the conservative hypocrites a break.

This is where I get off of the bus. Dionne has it exactly backwards. Here's how that last sentence should read: "But if we are to get out of this habit of destroying the distinctions between public and private lives, rightwingers need to stop trying to legislate our private lives."

Now, I don't give a damn what consenting adults to with (or more to the point, to) each other in the bedroom or the kitchen or a secluded spot in the woods...well, you get my point. Hell, they can even wear diapers for all I care. But as long as the "moralists" insist on telling us how to live our private lives their private lives are fair game.

The onus is on the David Vitters of the country, not the liberals who expose their hypocrisy.

Finally, via dangerblond, check out this hilarious video by Clay.

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