I think today is one of the most exciting and interesting days of politics I can remember in my whole life because it’s so raw and naked and out there.
On the Republican side, Sen. McCain got hit today hard and right where he lives. The New York Times reveals a questionable relationship between the 72 year old Arizonan and a 40 something lobbyist for the telecoms along with a review of McCain’s tour with the Keating 5, a popular smash and grab punk group of days of yore who were often called upon to entertain at the Savings and Loan trough and a few newer questions or issues about some work McCain did for the said blonde’s clients. Ouch. That’s gotta hurt, coming out just right at this one particular moment, it being a presidential campaign where your integrity’s on the line, right, John?
On the Democratic side, supporters of Sen. Clinton are forming a 527 group (this is a strange form of poker in which a buy-in is $100K with a $10M total pot.) Sen. Clinton is all in. They are going to run, we are led to believe, “contrast” ads. You know, the ads that say “my opponent favors this and I’m shocked, shocked to learn there is gambling at this establishment.”. A bunch of unemployed party hacks and ad men are going to lead this sorry parade.
Power plays.
Obama has gone anti-Nafta and pulled in the union endorsements, AFL and Teamsters, et al., trying to lure in Ohio voters and make it a knockout.
The 527 is a game the Clinton’s have played before when they passed NAFTA back in the 90s. They called in all those chits all at once. And, you know what? $100,000 is cheap for a presidential chip. If Bill came to me, I’d write the check as long as I was one of those Silicon Valley and outsourcing global market guys. The win is worth billions and the loss would be a big swing. Cheap.
I actually admire Hillary for this. It’s cold and ruthless and brazen use of political power. She may lose, but she actually is going to go down fighting. She’s told herself and everyone else that she can win and it’s show time. She’s pushing all in. If she doesn’t win, she loses the presidential race AND all those favors. The centrists of the Democratic Party are the establishment that the Clinton’s created and they will either win or walk away from a lot of power and money. They are pushing back. You can call it cold and calculating, but it’s also tough and bold. If she really is good enough and smart enough and tough enough to be president, there’s no stopping now. Good luck to her. I’ll actually be happier to vote for her in November now than I would have been a week ago. Like Yoda says, there is no “try”, there’s only “do” or … go back to New York. I think Barack has your number, Hillary, but you go, grrl. Make it interesting. Show us how it’s done.
It’s the same on the Republican side. The New York Times didn’t pull this out of their ass. Hillary knows who is behind this. The “Vast Right Wing Conspiracy.” Yeah. I’m not kidding. The money behind the Limbaugh/Coulter wingnuts who brought us the “Arkansas Project” in the first place. The ones that won’t let McCain go until the evangelicals and Yahoos are satisfied. The guys with “fuck you” money who want the naval aviator to remember that Wall Street rules the GOP. Pretty naked shot across the bow. It’s also a good bet it’s some of those lobbyists and their clients who got the pushback when he was doing McCain-Feingold. This story was the product of a hurt sense of entitlement and perhaps disillusionment that fell into foul hands and it was groomed and fed to the New York Times as sure as can be.
With Bush in the tank and without an obvious “heir” to the throne, there’s a good bit at stake in this White House election. Think about the billions going to defense and all those contracts that got unbribeable after Abramhoff. There’s some serious shit on the line.
Man, it’s just raw, naked power right out there in public for all of us to see. Did we really think we’d get a “maverick” and an “insurgent” without the good old boys and their networks having their say? Money and naked corporate power are unmasked and the dogs of war let slip. Time to cry havoc, I suppose, and gird our loins.
Tally HO! The game’s afoot, Watson!
blogblah!!!
I haven’t seen it mentioned anywhwre, but one of Vicki Iseman’s clients was/is Bearing Point, the company that ‘consulted’ on how to carpetbag post-Saddam Iraq.
Holy Shit! I am disappointed re the NYT. They to a degree represent sort of an approximation to European thinking across the Atlantic to me and many others. What utter bullshit! As you know, this piece of news is as interesting as “a bicycle crashed in China” to us over here. So who cares?? What has that got to do with his ability to lead the country? I would have thought that the NYT of all people know that. I still remember a memorable meeting of EU- and Lithuanian parliamentarians in Vilnius, Lithuania (I had to look the place up on a map before I went there myself, rest assured, this was before Lithuania joined the EU) the very day Bill Clinton had to testify to the Grand Jury re Lewinsky. That took place and was broadcasted by CNN during our lunch break. Before the said break, EU parliamentarians and the Lithuanians weren’t exactly chummy. There were many conflicts and the atmosphere was fairly tense. During the lunch break, many of us, including yours truly, sneaked up to our hotel rooms to watch this medieval-style trial on CNN. When people returned to the meeting in the afternoon, the atmosphere had changed – we Europeans felt like one happy family of sane people, by comparison. Everybody was in shock, Western Europeans and Lithuanians alike. Having seen this primitive exhibition of a hypocritical puritan spirit, they all of a sudden felt that whatever differences they had, they were minor compared to the huge differnece every one of us felt compared to the US watching CNN’s airing of Bill Clinton’s interrogation by the Grand Jury. We all felt a lot saner than we had.in a long time. This is what this NYT “revelation” reminds me of. Who the fuck cares who he eyed or slept with???? I’d have lots of questions to address to McCain, but his fucking credentials are irrelevant to me. And I am a lifelong dyed-in-the-wool feminist. So whatever this is about, real (!) feminism has got nothing to do with it. Brigitte
B
Here’s a link:
http://slate.com/blogs/blogs/xxfactor/
to a blog by several women of various political stripe who carry on an online discussion about campaign matters. One entry that interested me a good bit was about the unfavorable stereotypes in literature of strong women going back to Chaucer. Think Hillary as Lady Macbeth.
For another blog with a decidedly feminist view that is a good bit more meaty, IMHO, try Firedoglake at:
http://firedoglake.com/
My take on the NYT piece was far different than yours. First, it doesn’t matter to me one way or another whether the connection between McCain and Ms. Iseman was romantic/sexual. The point was that he is a man who has staked his career (since the Keating 5 savings and loan scandal) on being impervious to the lobbyist money and influence pervasive in Washington, but that seems to be a mere facade. He’s got lobbyist crawling all over his campaign, including his campaign manager. He’s got lobbyists peddling their influence by cellphone only a few feet away from him on the so-called “Straight Talk Express”. He was so close to one (yes, female) lobbyist that he sent letters to the FCC that elicited the response that the efforts of the “sqeaky clean” McCain were inappropriate.
In his attempt to make the story be about how liberal and unfair the story and the NYT is, he did something he rather famously does: make blanket and indignant denials that seem on closer inspection to be not so “truthy”. About the inappropriate letter, he claims he spoke to no one, but his own depositions under oath dispute the denial, as does the industrialist for whom he was carrying water.
Next, why was it OK to sexualize the Clinton administration and not a Republican candidate? Payback’s a bitch.
Finally, as I tried to explain in my post, the NYT story isn’t about sex or lobbyists or anything else on the surface. It was a warning. A fish wrapped in newspaper, using the Godfather movie metaphor. The warning was clear to me: toady up to your Wall Street masters or your campaign sleeps with the fishes (it’s dead).