I Guess Keeping Haley Barbour Happy…

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Is more important than staving off total economic collapse.

Oh, sure, McCain might just have flip-flopped and decided to debate tonight when he realized his gambit had failed.

But I think something else happened. I think Mississippi governor and big-time GOP lobbyist Haley Barbour made it clear to McCain that he would be rather unhappy if the debate–in which Mississippi has already invested millions–didn’t go off as planned.

After all, McCain’s is the campaign run by and for big-time lobbyists. McCain would rather lose a debate and crash the economy than lose the goodwill of a lobbyist like Haley Barbour.

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McCain Out-Hoovers Hoover

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Sure, the comparisons between Herbert Hoover and McCain were inevitable ever since McCain asserted "the fundamentals of the economy are strong."

But if you think about it, McCain’s about to do Hoover one better. After all, Hoover didn’t fuck up the response to a financial crisis until after he was President. McCain’s little photo op seems to have scuttled the Paulson deal, just as it was almost finalized.

Democrats complained of being “blindsided” by a new conservative
alternative to the plan first put forward by Treasury Secretary Henry
Paulson. And the outcome casts doubt on the ability of Congress to move
quickly on the matter, even after leaders of House and Senate banking
committees reached a bipartisan agreement Thursday on the framework for
legislation authorizing the massive government intervention.

It was McCain who urged President Bush to call the White House
meeting attended by House and Senate leaders as well as Obama, his
Democratic rival. But the candidates left without commenting to
reporters outside, and the whole sequence of events confirmed
Treasury’s fears about inserting presidential politics into what were
already difficult negotiations.

[snip]

At the same time House Financial Services Committee Chairman Barney
Frank (D-Mass.) said he feared McCain was undercutting Paulson by
appealing to conservatives in the House.

“McCain and the House Republicans are undercutting the Paulson plan,
talking about a wholly different approach,” Frank said prior to the
meeting. “This is the presidential campaign of John McCain undermining
what Hank Paulson tells us is essential for the country.”

What is it that I saw on those signs, again? "Photo Op First"?

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Charlie Keating Helps Sarah Palin With Couric’s Tough Questions

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(Original Photo; color by twolf)

Charlie Keating keeps crashing his old best friend John McCain’s election party. People are starting to get the picture. Today, Keating arrives to help Sarah Palin get the answers she promised to Katie Couric.

When Katie Couric’s questions turn you into quivering Jello, you have a problem. Houston, Sarah Palin has a problem. In Wednesday night’s CBS interview of Palin, Ms. Couric asked Ms. Palin to explain her claim that McCain was a reformer that championed oversight. After Palin rumblin, bumbin and stumblin through a bunch of gibberish, Couric finally demanded a real answer:
.

Couric: But can you give me any other concrete examples? Because I know you’ve said Barack Obama is a lot of talk and no action. Can you give me any other examples in his 26 years of John McCain truly taking a stand on this?

Palin: I can give you examples of things that John McCain has done, that has shown his foresight, his pragmatism, and his leadership abilities. And that is what America needs today.

Couric: I’m just going to ask you one more time – not to belabor the point. Specific examples in his 26 years of pushing for more regulation.

Palin: I’ll try to find you some and I’ll bring them to you.

Katie Couric was a reporter last night; that is all you can ask for. Fair questions with a persistence for a legitimate answer. As you can see above, Sarah Palin had a startling lack of rational or cogent answers.

Since Sarah Palin is going to try to hunt down a polar bear examples of McCain "pushing for more regulation" so she can "bring them to" Ms. Couric, let’s help her out. Here is a prime example of John Sidney McCain III working hard on strict regulation; from the November 15, 1989 Arizona Republic :

Sen. John McCain, while a member of the House, twice supported scrapping a rule that limited risky investments by savings and loans, records show.
…
McCain’s efforts came after he accepted at least $21,000 in campaign contributions [and] … McCain and his wife, Cindy, vacationed at Keating’s private resort on Cat Cay in the Bahamas. That was the first of several such trips for which McCain did not reimburse Keating, as required by Senate rules…

McCain, as is so often the case, finally partially reimbursed Keating after getting caught with his hand in the cookie jar by the Senate ethics investigation. Read more →

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Did McCain Blow Off Letterman to Pre-Empt Sarah and Katie?

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Help me with the timing on this.

Sometime–either earlier today or earlier this week–Sarah Palin sat down and taped an interview with Katie Couric. The first part of that interview airs this evening.

Then instead of showing up for a scheduled interview with David Letterman, and at a time when he said he had to run back to DC for emergency work to save the American economy, McCain did an interview with Katie Couric. In other words, after the McPalin campaign assessed how the Palin-Couric interview went, they put together a last minute interview between McCain and Couric.

As of this moment, CBS News has, as its lead story, McCain’s debate cancellation stunt. Not Sarah Palin’s second interview with a straight reporter. McCain has effectively pre-empted the interview with his running-mate. 

I get the feeling that Palin-Couric interview went even worse than the Charlie Gibson one.

And perhaps not coincidentally, McCain is now trying to postpone the VP debate.

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Bush Failure > Obama Leadership > McCain Stunt

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Let me just clarify what seem to be the underlying issues behind McCain’s latest gimmick.

First, the bailout is in deep trouble. There are several reasons why the bailout is in trouble. It’s a crappy plan that, experts believe, does not really fix the crisis. So for those assessing the plan rationally, there is great skepticism about it.

In addition, Democrats are rightly suspecting this is another case of the boy-Bush who cried wolf. At the very least, the Bush Administration is springing this bailout in a irresponsibly political manner.  Add in Paulson’s dishonesty about the bailout, and the Administration simply can’t be trusted as honest partners in trying to solve this problem.

Meanwhile, Republicans are unwilling to accept what this crisis clearly proves: their ideology is dead. Rather than deal with the crisis the country is in, they are instead trying to turn the crisis into a campaign gimmick–an opportunity to distance themselves from Bush.

All of these things: the problems with the plan, Bush’s lack of credibility with Democrats, and Bush’s inability to get his own party to put country over campaign gimmicks, demonstrate the depth of Bush’s leadership failure.

At the same time, Republican promises to politicize this issue–along with Paulson’s promises–made McCain the key political stumbling block to crafting a deal.

So Obama did the right thing–showed leadership. At 8:30 AM, Obama reached out to his rival to propose they come up with a bipartisan statement. By making this effort, Obama gave up the opportunity to show just how much better he and his team are responding to this issue and instead prioritized finding a solution that would work.

McCain received that offer.

And he sat on it.

For six hours.

Finally, at 2:30 PM, McCain accepted the offer to put country ahead of politicking.

Only McCain couldn’t afford to do that. It seems that, during those six long hours when McCain was mulling Obama’s proposal, McCain was inventing a way to turn this into yet another political gimmick. Twenty minutes after accepting Obama’s proposal, McCain pulled this stunt of calling for a suspension of the campaign and postponement of the debate.

Bush’s failure of leadership, Obama’s assumption of that leadership, followed by McCain’s empty stunt. That’s the state of our country right now.

And as for the guy whose failures got us into this mess? Read more →

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Breaking!

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Obama takes 9 point lead in national poll and Palin gimmick has worn off entirely.

… Read more →

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Operation “The Surge Is a Success–Bury the Afghanistan NIE”

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John McCain has a narrow road to the Presidency. He has to bank on his claimed greater qualifications to be Commander-in-Chief to attract the votes of those who still believe the Global War on Terrorists and the Nations We Occupy (GWOTANWO) is our biggest concern. To win his Commander-in-Chief argument, McCain has to downplay the fact that Obama’s gradual withdrawal from Iraq is in fact the plan Maliki supports (and McCain has to hope Bush remains successful in shutting Maliki up about it), emphasize the spin that Obama has said the surge was a success, and hope no one remembers that McCain was a big hawk on the Iraq war back when we could have avoided it.

Oh, and he has to hope no one talks about how the McCain-Bush Iraq myopia led to the utter neglect of Afghanistan, thereby letting the terrorists regain a foothold in Pakistan’s tribal areas.

And to that end, the Bush Administration will not tell us what its NIE on Afghanistan says.

Officials say a draft of the classified NIE, representing the key judgments of the US intelligence community’s 17 agencies and departments, is being circulated in Washington and a final "coordination meeting" of the agencies involved, under the direction of the Office of the Director of National Intelligence, is scheduled in the next few weeks.

According to people who have been briefed, the NIE will paint a "grim" picture of the situation in Afghanistan, seven years after the US invaded in an effort to dismantle the al Qaeda network and its Taliban protectors.

After all, the only way the Iraq surge can look even remotely successful is if we remain ignorant of the opportunity costs we paid to execute it.

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Who Told the TrooperGate Witnesses to Ignore the Subpoenas?

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Here’s an interesting question. Who told the Palin-friendly TrooperGate witnesses not to show up? It’s relevant, you see, because two Democrats are thinking of asking the police to investigate whether there was any witness tampering in the case. It seems they’re not focusing on the more incendiary possibility that Murlene Wilkes’ financial incentive persuaded her to lie to Stephen Branchflower about being pressured to deny a Wooten workers comp claim. Rather, these lawmakers are considering whether the mere act of instructing witnesses to ignore a subpoena constitutes witness tampering.

Separately, two Alaska Democrats said they are considering asking state police to investigate why subpoenaed witnesses, including Palin’s husband, did not testify before the legislative committee last week. The lawmakers, Rep. Les Gara and Sen. Bill Wielechowski, said state law bars witness tampering, but that they did not have enough information to file a formal complaint in the case.

In other words, the people who told Todd Palin and about seven state employees to blow off a valid subpoena may be on the dock for witness tampering.

I don’t know whether that argument withstands legal scrutiny (bmaz?). But the McCain team is taking no chances. They say they didn’t tell witnesses not to show.

Griffin said the campaign has not advised any witnesses on how to respond to subpoenas.

Which makes me wonder whether this is one of the reasons why Palin’s lawyer, Tom Van Flein, is lying about having terminated his contract with the state.

Last week, Governor Palin’s lawyer Tom Van Flein was quoted in the Anchorage Daily News as saying that his "firm last Friday terminated its state contract, worth up to $95,000, to represent the governor’s office."

Not true. The contract wasn’t canceled.

Van Flein has a written contract with the State of Alaska. Like all such contracts with the State, it has provisions governing termination. Termination requires notice to the State, typically in writing.

According to my sources, Van Flein did not provide notice of termination to the state, either in writing or orally.

See, back when I was trying to count all the conflicts of interest among Palin’s legal teams in Alaska, I speculated that maybe Van Flein had terminated his contract because it made it possible for him to represent both Sarah and Todd Palin, getting around the fact that 1) the state shouldn’t pay legal fees for a non-state employee, and Read more →

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Sarah Palin: Gibberish We Can Believe In?

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Energy is supposed to be Sarah Palin’s strong point, right? After all, she is the Governor of Alaska, and more to the point, was the chair of the Alaska Oil and Gas Conservation Commission, the agency that is supposed to "protect the public interest in exploration and development of oil and gas resources, while ensuring conservation practices, enhancing resource recovery, and protecting the health, safety, environment, and property rights of Alaskans." But when she was asked about ensuring that the fruits of domestic oil drilling would go to the domestic market, her answer was complete gibberish. By now, most of you have seen the video or read the transcript of her answer:

Read more →

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Oh, THAT Kind of Financial Incentive

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I asked a while back what the TrooperGate investigator, Stephen Branchflower, might have meant when he said a key witness–whom he believes lied to him in an interview–had a "financial incentive" to do so.

It appears that Murlene Wilkes, who handles the state’s workers comp claims, was pressured by the governor’s office to deny a claim from Trooper Wooten. Yet, when Branchflower asked whether she had been pressured, she said "no." So Branchflower subpoenaed her (and she gave a deposition, on Friday), to find out whether she continued to say "no" under oath. 

But it wasn’t clear why Branchflower believed that Wilkes had had a financial incentive to lie to him.

Andrew Halcro clears that up for us. Apparently, the state is fighting to keep the workers comp contract in Wilkes’ hands–and they’re willing to pay her $300,000 more than they otherwise would have to do so.

Regarding the Harbor Adjustment issue and "open govt" policy.  The adjusting contract for the State is currently under dispute- the State is trying to renew Harbor Adjustment’s contract for over $300,000 per year (1.5 million dollars) over the life of the contract, more than the next highest bidder.  Harbor bid approx $1.5 million per year for the contract.  the next highest was $1.2 million per year.  Harbor won the bid; why?

Harbor Adjustments is the company at the center of the controversy surrounding former State Trooper Mike Wooten’s injury claim. The company has a contract with the state to process workers compensation claims and has been reported to have been pressured by the governor’s office to deny the claim back in the spring of 2007.

At first, company owner Murlene Wilkes told special investigator Steve Branchflower that no such pressure occured. Shortly thereafter, an employee of Harbor Adjustments called Branchflower and ended up giving a sworn deposition that the governor’s office did pressure the firm to deny the claim.

It appears that the state is trying to stick with Murlene Wilkes’ company–the witness in question–in spite of the fact her bid for that contract came in $300,000 higher than the next highest bidder. 

$300,000. I’d say that’s a financial incentive alright.

photo by crazyneighborlady 

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