Oh, That’s Why McCain Can’t Keep Shiite and Sunni Straight

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Because he’s "dizzy."

Also revealed: He has occasional momentary episodes of dizziness, when he gets up suddenly. McCain first told a doctor about them in 2000 — a visit that also uncovered the melanoma — and intense testing concluded they were harmless vertigo. He didn’t report any episodes at his most recent exam.

So I guess in the McCain family, not only is John not the breadwinner of the family, but in spite of the fact that he has a beautiful blonde wife, he’s the dizzy one. 

GOP: If You Can’t Disenfranchise Brown People at the FEC, Disenfranchise Them by Vote-Caging

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I’m not surprised that the RNC is hiring former insta-US Attorney and expert vote cager Tim Griffin.

Indicating what lies ahead is the McCain campaign’s plan to bring in Tim Griffin, a protege of Karl Rove, who is a leading practitioner of opposition research — digging up derogatory information about opponents. Although final arrangements have not been pinned down, Griffin would work at the Republican National Committee, as he did in Bush’s 2004 re-election campaign.

I’m rather more struck by the timing.

Griffin’s return comes just days after Mark McKinnon, who refused to use smear tactics to campaign against Obama, stepped down.

More alarming still, it comes just days after Hans von Spakovsky, whom Bush had selected to be the FEC’s expert in disenfranchising brown people, gave up his bid for that position.

I guess the Republicans felt they couldn’t run this year without having somebody in charge of disenfranchising brown people.

All of which leaves me wondering. If Tim Griffin helps McCain win the Presidency using the same methods he did in 2000 and 2004, how will President McCain reward him? Will he try to illegally fire Justice Souter and replace him with Tim Griffin?

Why Is the DNC Ignoring MI’s Citizens’ Legal Complaints about the Cluster$%@#?

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The Democratic Party’s charter requires that the Party:

Establish standards and rules of procedure to afford all members of the Democratic Party full, timely and equal opportunities to participate in decisions concerning the selection of candidates, … and further, to promote fair campaign practices and the fair adjudication of disputes. (Charter, Article I, Section 4)

Yet both the Democratic National Committee and the Michigan Democratic Party appear to be violating that requirement in their selection of which challenges to the MI Clusterfuck to hear at the May 31 Rules and Bylaws Committee meeting.

At least one group of ordinary Michigan citizens submitted a complaint that appears to fulfill all legal requirements. Yet the MDP has failed to follow its own rules on how to assist with and respond to that complaint–and it also did not comply with the requirement that it publish the names of those selected in the April 19 district conventions (which triggers a deadline for the submission of complaints). And the DNC will only hear the two state party-led complaints at the May 31 Rules and Bylaw Committee, thereby violating the requirement that "all members" of the party be able "to participate in decisions concerning the selection of candidates."

This complaint is similar to the petition I launched in April, in that its solution would reflect a compromise number between the results of the January 15 Clusterfuck and a 50-50 split: it works out to be the same 69-59 that the "Blue Ribbon Commission" has proposed. Also, like my petition, this complaint calls for the super-delegates to receive no vote.

But it’s different in two ways. First, it advocates giving MI’s elected delegates just half a vote each, not the full vote I suggested (in that respect, I like mine better, but then I didn’t get off my ass and file an official complaint; though this complaint has the advantage that it matches what the rules call for). More importantly, the complaint justifies its solution based on the MDP’s and the DNC’s own rules.

My favorite part of the petition is that it notes that, on March 26, a Court ruled the January 15 primary unconstitutional. That meant, the petition asserts, that the,

Michigan Presidential Primary of January 15, 2008, was "invalid, inoperable, and without effect." The result was non-binding.

Read more →

In Minneapolis, Vegan = Terrorist

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How does one equate vegan potlucks with this restriction on permissible terrorist investigations?

Mere speculation that force or violence might occur during the course of an otherwise peaceable demonstration is not sufficient grounds for initiation of an investigation under this Subpart, but where facts or circumstances reasonably indicate that a group or enterprise has engaged or aims to engage in activities involving force or violence or other criminal conduct described in paragraph (1)(a) in a demonstration, an investigation may be initiated in conformity with the standards of that paragraph. [my emphasis]

I ask because apparently, Minneapolis’ Joint Terrorist Task Force is recruiting people to infiltrate vegan potlucks to look for potential–what?–tahini enthusiasts?–in advance of the RNC convention this fall.

Paul Carroll was riding his bike when his cell phone vibrated.

[snip]

When Carroll called back, Swanson asked him to meet at a coffee shop later that day, going on to assure a wary Carroll that he wasn’t in trouble.

Carroll, who requested that his real name not be used, showed up early and waited anxiously for Swanson’s arrival. Ten minutes later, he says, a casually dressed Swanson showed up, flanked by a woman whom he introduced as FBI Special Agent Maureen E. Mazzola. For the next 20 minutes, Mazzola would do most of the talking.

“She told me that I had the perfect ‘look,’” recalls Carroll. “And that I had the perfect personality—they kept saying I was friendly and personable—for what they were looking for.”

What they were looking for, Carroll says, was an informant—someone to show up at “vegan potlucks” throughout the Twin Cities and rub shoulders with RNC protestors, schmoozing his way into their inner circles, then reporting back to the FBI’s Joint Terrorism Task Force, a partnership between multiple federal agencies and state and local law enforcement. The effort’s primary mission, according to the Minneapolis division’s website, is to “investigate terrorist acts carried out by groups or organizations which fall within the definition of terrorist groups as set forth in the current United States Attorney General Guidelines.”

Carroll would be compensated for his efforts, but only if his involvement yielded an arrest. No exact dollar figure was offered. [my emphasis]

Now, maybe the vegans we’ve got here in Michigan are dramatically different from those infesting Minnesota. But where I’m from, vegans tend to be fairly peaceful people. Read more →

Energy Policy? Check. Foreign Policy? Check.

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The USA Today has the news that, like McCain’s energy policy, McCain’s foreign policy was crafted by a lobbyist actively lobbying on those same issues (h/t freepatriot).

John McCain’s top foreign policy adviser lobbied the Arizona senator’s staff on behalf of the republic of Georgia while he was working for the campaign, public records show.

Randy Scheunemann, founder of Orion Strategies, represented the governments of Macedonia, Georgia and Taiwan between 2003 and March 1, according to the firm’s filings with the Justice Department. In its latest semiannual report, the firm disclosed that Scheunemann had a phone conversation in November about Georgia with Richard Fontaine, an aide in McCain’s Senate office.

Orion Strategies earned $540,000 from its foreign clients over the year ending on Dec. 1, reports show. Scheunemann also received $56,250 last year from March to July from McCain, according to campaign finance records.

But wait, it gets better. That lobbying call Scheunemann had about Georgia with McCain’s aide? He had it at a time when Scheunemann was working for free for McCain. Apparently, when he was broke last year (and, appropriately, flying around on the Sugar Momma Express), McCain was compensating his campaign staffers in access.

Given all the discussion of retroactive immunity for FISA, you guys are especially going to love this bit:

Campaign spokesman Jill Hazelbaker said the ethics policy is not retroactive.

That’s what you’d expect out of a campaign managed by a lobbyist who, until March, was lobbying Senators (including McCain?) to pressure them to give telecoms retroactive immunity. But Hazelbaker’s insistence that there is no retroactive ethical fix reinforces my point from yesterday: once your campaign policies have been developed by a bus full of lobbyists, there’s no way to cleanse those policies of ethical taint.

Really, McCain ought to give up this lobbyist disclosure whitewash. We’d all get through detailed discovery of the degree to which lobbyists own McCain’s campaign faster if he would just tell us which of his policies weren’t developed by active lobbyists.

Problem is, I can’t think of a likely policy area where McCain’s campaign isn’t dripping with lobbyists. You think maybe his blog outreach program is free of lobbyist taint?

Why Is McCain’s Former Campaign Chair Stumping for Obama?

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Yesterday brought the news that Mark McKinnon–one of McCain’s key campaign advisors–fulfilled his promise to step down rather than work against Barack Obama.

Mark McKinnon said last year that he would leave McCain’s campaign after the primary season if the Arizona senator were to run against Obama.

[snip]

In a 2007 interview with Cox News, McKinnon said he would vote for McCain, but "I just don’t want to work against an Obama candidacy." He added that if Obama were to reach the White House, it "would send a great message to the country and the world."

Part of McKinnon’s unease with running against Obama, incidentally, is that he didn’t want to run negative against Obama. So I guess we can look forward to lots more smear campaigning from the Republican side, now that McKinnon has stepped down.

More interesting than McKinnon, though, is reality-based Republican Chuck Hagel’s apparent support for Obama.

The Republican Senator from Nebraska was a political thorn in McCain’s side on Tuesday night, repeatedly lavishing praise on the presumptive Democratic candidate and levying major foreign policy criticisms at the GOP nominee and the Republican Party as a whole. At one point, Hagel even urged the Arizona Republican to elevate his campaign discourse to a higher, more honest level.

[snip] 

Much of Hagel’s address, hosted by the Ploughshares Fund, was spent weaving between Obama praise and McCain quips. He urged the media, for example, to focus on important policy issues an "not just why Barack [doesn’t] wear flag pins on his lapel."

Asked whether he would be open to serving as Secretary of Defense in a hypothetical Obama administration, Hagel demurred. But in the process, he praised the Illinois Democrat for being open to a bipartisan cabinet.

You see, Chuck Hagel is not just any reality-based Republican. Chuck Hagel was the Co-Chair of McCain’s 2000 Presidential campaign.

Now, there are several conclusions one might draw from Hagel’s apparent endorsement of Obama over his former candidate. Perhaps Hagel is fickle or a flip-flopper. Perhaps Barack Obama is so charismatic, he has been able to woo Hagel over just a few years in the Senate, in spite of Hagel and McCain’s lifelong friendship and shared background as Vietnam Vets. 

Or perhaps McCain is not the man he was in 2000. 

Virginia and Tom Davis’ Plan to Save the GOP Brand

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DHinMI is right. Tom Davis’ memo about how to save the Republican brand is worthy reading–if only because one of the few Republicans who believes in gravity penned it.

To me, the most interesting passage is where Davis reviews the reasons why Republican fundraising sucks.

(1) Abandonment of many traditional GOP interest groups or a hedge strategy to “buy in” on a perceived longer term Democratic majority. For example, Pharma, UPS, government contractors and FED Ex are now giving strategically to Democrats for “protection money”.

(2) GOP leaders turned lobbyists, from Bob Livingston to JC Watts, are giving Blue. Are there any Democratic lobbyists returning the favor?

(Is anyone weeping "K Street Project" tears right now? I guess it’s not enough to ensure all the lobbyists are Republicans, now, is it?)

(3) Net roots and money from the internet have swelled Democratic coffers, from the Obama campaign, to their Red to Blue programs, giving Democrats huge
fundraising advantages across the board. Much of this is fueled by a strong Democratic desire to seize power after eight years of Bush and Cheney, coupled with a strong disappointment among grass roots Republicans at the party’s performance in office. Governance is a tough business requiring tough choices and holding together coalitions of economic and social conservatives is difficult to sustain.

Thank you Tom. Though there are bigger reasons why you Republicans suck at the netroots. First, transparency kills Republicans in the same way sunlight kills vampires. That, and dirty fucking hippies scare you Republicans–in fact, anything that operates on any but a top-down hierarchy. So the Republican Party is just constitutionally inappropriate for the netroots. But thanks for the nod of recognition.

Immigration pits our business wing against our grass roots wing. The War has turned many educated, affluent Republicans away. Spending priorities, scandals, gas prices and home value declines leave little for Republicans to be enthused over, particularly when our ability to draw issue lines and force choices by Democrats is frustrated by House Rules, inarticulate and unfocused national leadership and finger pointing.

Davis could have written a whole memo about these few subjects, starting with the recognition that you can oppose undocumented workers being hired to bring down wages, but focus on prosecuting employers, not brown people. Given that it’s not even in the realm of imagination for Davis, I guess he’s just got a paradigmatic inability to understand the issues that–even he says–could flip this election. Read more →

John McCain’s “Green” Credentials Were Developed by an ACTIVE Energy Lobbyist

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Of the dozens of lobbyists that work on John McCain’s campaign, one already got nabbed in McCain’s recent "conflict of interest vetting for everyone but my wife" initiative: Eric Burgeson (though the NYT also reports that Tom Loeffler, Fundraising Chair, "was expected to give up his position to comply with the new rules "–presumably that’ll happen once Loeffler has finalized the next round of $30,000 a person fundraising dinners).

One lobbyist out of dozens. Why was Eric Burgeson, an advisor on energy and environmental issues, so much more of a problem for McCain than all the other lobbyists working on his campaign?

Burgeson’s recent job history looks like a wildly revolving door taking him from the White House, to the Department of Energy, and then into lobbying (I’m still trying to figure out whether Burgeson played a part in Dick’s Energy Task Force):

October 2006 to present: Barbour Griffith & Rogers, Vice President, Energy and Environment

April 2005 to October 2006: Chief of Staff, Department of Energy

November 2004 to April 2005: Special Assistant to the President and Associate Director of the Office or Presidential Personnel, White House

May 2004 to November 2004: Deputy Chief of Staff and White House Liaison, DOE

January 2001 to May 2004: Associate Director in the Office of Cabinet Affairs in the White House, Senior Policy Advisor to the Secretary of Energy and Senior Legislative Advisor in the Office of Energy Efficiency and Renewable Energy

1999 to 2001: Lobbyist for Mercury group, representing (among others) BP Amoco, Lockheed Martin, and the NRA

His 2008 first quarter lobbying for BGR offers more insight into the conflicts Burgeson represented for McCain:

Breakthough Fuel, energy and environment, new client (no quarterly reports)

Coal 2 Liquid, liquid coal, includes Senate lobbying

Contractors International Group on Nuclear Liability, IAEA Convention on Supplementary Compensation for Nuclear Damage, includes Senate lobbying

Deloitte Consulting, procurement of technology and systems management, includes Senate lobbying

Energy Enterprise Solutions, IT Management, includes Senate lobbying (more background)

Flambeau River Biorefinery, energy and budget, includes Senate lobbying (more background)

Forest County Potawatami Community, tribal affairs, includes Senate lobbying (more background)

Kurdistan Regional Government, foreign relations, includes Senate lobbying (and Presidential and NSC lobbying)

MLBA Services, insurance reform, includes Senate lobbying

MPI Corporate Holdings, business development, US Mint

Materials Processing Corporation, electronics recycling, includes Senate lobbying (more background)

O2 Diesel Company, renewable energy, includes Senate lobbying (more background)

Qioptiq, defense issues, includes Senate lobbying (more background)

Read more →

One Very Special Disclosure Survey

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After losing a slew of dictator-connected advisors in the last week, the McCain campaign has finally decided it might be a good idea to vet the people hanging out with John McCain.

McCain campaign manager Rick Davis moved to avoid a recurrence of the situation with his conflict-of-interest policy, released late yesterday. It also sought to stem the impression that McCain’s campaign is run by lobbyists — a characterization Democrats have tried to make since it was reported that a senior adviser, Charlie Black, made lobbying calls from McCain’s signature bus, the Straight Talk Express. Davis himself is currently on leave from his lobbying and consulting firm, and the campaign removed two other officials this week for work they’d done on behalf of Burmese junta.

[snip]

The memo establishes a new vetting process, requiring campaign aides to fill out a questionnaire on their status and to provide proof to the campaign legal department that they’ve terminated outside contracts.

In an show of civic responsibility, Progressive Media USA has filled out the forms for five of McCain’s top advisors. Here, for example, is part of Charlie Black’s now-completed survey:

McCain Staff Lobbyist Survey

NAME: Charlie Black

CAMPAIGN ROLE: Senior Political Adviser

Have you ever registered as a federal lobbyist?
Yes

Have you ever been a registered foreign agent?
Yes

Please list all of the foreign governments, political and other interests you lobbied for:
Read more →

The Brilliance of the Edwards Endorsement

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I joked to some folks yesterday that Will Rogers is probably rolling over in his grave about now. Between Obama’s insistence on running one, unified message and party and Obama’s masterful implementation of the Edwards endorsement yesterday, we Democrats may no longer be able to quip–at least for the next several months–that we "belong to no organized party."

That sentiment was widely shared among a bunch of local political types in MI with whom I just had beers. It wasn’t just that Obama (and David Bonior, surely) had managed to headline Obama’s first MI event with the guy in the race who spoke most about the crappy economy. It wasn’t just that it was MI where he chose to get the endorsement–making up for a lot of the bad things some Michiganders have been told about Obama. It wasn’t even just the nice touch of keeping the Edwards endorsement a secret from the thousands who showed up in Van Andel arena to see Obama until Obama got to announce it himself on stage–magnifiying the specialness of the Edwards endorsement. It was, obviously, also the way Obama managed to pre-empt Hillary’s biggest win since Arkansas with the news that both of them have been chasing since February.

But the more I think about it, Obama’s management of the Edwards endorsement was even more brilliant than that.

Consider, for a moment, Robert Reich’s explanation of why Hillary remains in the race (h/t Jane).

She wants the best possible deal she can strike with Obama. She wants Obama to agree to pay her campaign debts, to seat the Michigan and Florida delegations (so she can claim a moral victory), and – the quietest deal of all – a personal commitment from him to appoint her to the Supreme Court when the next vacancy occurs.

Just as a picky point, the Edwards endorsement simplifies any resolution of MI. If the MI compromise proposal goes forward, it’ll make it a lot easier to award Obama 59 delegates now that the other major candidate who took uncommitted votes has endorsed Obama–Edwards isn’t going to complain that "his" votes from uncommitted are awarded to Obama. Read more →