[[[[[ shudder ]]]]] ~~~ Updated shudder 20 February 2008
Posted by marisacat in 2008 Election, DC Politics, U.S. Senate, WAR!.trackback
Well yes that is Bush… but just imagine Ms Iseman in his place.
Thanks to HCFM and catnip who posted it within a couple minutes of each other…
Brrreaking: For McCain, Self-Confidence on Ethics Poses Its Own Risk
WASHINGTON — Early in Senator John McCain’s first run for the White House eight years ago, waves of anxiety swept through his small circle of advisers.
A female lobbyist had been turning up with him at fund-raisers, in his offices and aboard a client’s corporate jet. Convinced the relationship had become romantic, some of his top advisers intervened to protect the candidate from himself — instructing staff members to block the woman’s access, privately warning her away and repeatedly confronting him, several people involved in the campaign said on the condition of anonymity.
When news organizations reported that Mr. McCain had written letters to government regulators on behalf of the lobbyist’s clients, the former campaign associates said, some aides feared for a time that attention would fall on her involvement.
Mr. McCain, 71, and the lobbyist, Vicki Iseman, 40, both say they never had a romantic relationship. But to his advisers, even the appearance of a close bond with a lobbyist whose clients often had business before the Senate committee Mr. McCain led threatened the story of redemption and rectitude that defined his political identity…
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NBC News just on out here… The Obamas lead… he as front runner – she splainin’. Timing a bit off… but perhaps McCain captures, with Ms Iseman, tomorrow’s cycle…
Not sure how it shakes out… I am tempted to give credit (ew, have a lemon scented towel) to Axelrod… he is often credited with clearing the way for Obama in his senate run, first of a Dem primary challenger then the Republican opposite. Both thru leaked divorce details… Blair Hull was the Dem and Ryan was the R…
But, who knows. Operative land is quivering… Film at 11 ??
Ooopps, NBC news getting the Iseman story in now…
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UPDATE, 6:23 am
Thanks to JJB from Attytood…. Ms Iseman flies high. Or is a fly buzzing around…
From the Attytood page, loved these lines from her alumnus update:
In addition, she has met Melanie Griffith, Britney Spears, Bo Derek, and former New York Mayor Rudolph Giuliani.
And, of course, George Bush and John McCain.
Will wonders never cease?
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isn’t this all happening a little early?
Seems to me someone is just trying to air McCain out in preparation for the general.
My favorite photo of this decade! I call it “Bush and his stateside poodle”. It completely encapsulates the relationship between the worst president ever and that of his congress.
please promise you’ll run this one regularly.
well it was esp fun tonight… bush in hand… and all that.
I will see too if I can locate a great link I found on McCain a couple of years ago. All the dirt lined up (and on his wife’s family as well)… and from a Mid West conservative pro mil pro gun group that just hates him.
Buried in that NY Times piece is that McCain never declared the trip on the Paxson corporate jet he took with Iseman although he fessed up to others.
I’ve been thinking about what Bush and McCain are talking about in that photo and I remembered how close it was to the destruction of Falujah.
McCain: Bomb
Bush: Yes. We’re going to bomb.
McCain: Bomb
Bush: Yes. Bomb
McCain: Bomb
Bush: Yes. We’re going to flatten Fallujah, level it, wipe it off the face of the earth.
McCain: Bomb?
Bush: Yes. To the stone age.
McCain: Oh thank you. Thank you.
2. the bush/mccain birthday cake moment while Katrina was raging is lodged in my mind.
Vicki: Come here Big John and show us you’ve got a little Woodstock in you. Yeah. I wasn’t born yet but I heard the sex was wild.
McCain: Don’t talk about Woodstock. I was in Vietnam at the time.
Vicki: Yes you were. Come to Vicki my big war hero.
McCain: I was locked up for 5 years.
Vicki: Yes.
McCain: 5 years and I couldn’t…
Vicki: Yes. I know it got lonely.
McCain: In a hole for 5 years.
Vicki: Yes poor dear and with no female company.
McCain (Sobbing): I couldn’t bomb anybody. I couldn’t. Nixon was going to use nukes and I heard about it and I thought (sobbing some more) I thought I wouldn’t even be in on it. I didn’t get to bomb Cambodia. I missed the whole escalation.
Vicki: Poor dear. Escalation.
McCain: The surge of my generation and I missed it.
if he putzes around and blows the election he can always get a job hawking viagra on teevee.
Cuba Libre
Honestly it was probably the McCain camp to make him appear virile and rock starish…
yeah, they’ll prolly start handing out free condoms at every campaign stop.
trojan mavericks
An Animated History of Evil
LOL.. I was asleep but feel pretty sure the earth did not move:
McCain Lobby Gal Reps for Hillary / DNC Bundler Haim Saban, Israel Firster who bought Univision, Largest Spanish Language Network in 2006. Great Timing no??
Univision, is owned by
.
His maxed out prez money is behind Hillary.
see kids, it works! lets spend more money on our destabilizing, bullshit missile shield!
Saban has given to Bush Rahm and Durbin, 5 grand to Hill PAC in 05,
lotta other toadies ,
No Dough for BO Tho…LOL
LOL…thick as Thieves
WaPo
… and the Saban Chair at the Brookings. Which Ken Pollock sat in for some years.
we are so fucked. Over and over.
All these media dealings tie into the aggregation of Comcast. And where there is Comcast (hope they don’t smote me down), there is Eddie Eddie Eddie Rendell…
big deal for their HQ in Philly…All kinds of FCC reg evasion… stock swaps, spin offs, less than arms length operating agreements…bonanza for the dual-op law firms too, clearly…
…. and where there is Media, Content and Distribution agreements, there is Hillary Rosen and Rahm…I don’t know any more delicate way to put it…Has Secular Judaism in this country all but gone out the window like the Catholics and Christian Fundies???
Jesus, (irony noted) if it wasn’t for the contributions of Progressive Jews in this country where would the Labor movement have been?
I really do paint religious affiliation of any kind with a broad brush now. Hardly able to distinguish culture and heritage from poison all around…
This is from her bio at Alcalde, they flattered her taking the evening gown division pic.
I just got through the FEC on Saban…He has Given 1.3 Million to the Dems since 2000… Huge money to Rahm at DCCC 5000 grand to Rahms PAC “Our Common Values” ….of all the dough that’s been controlled by Rahm over the years, OBAM got 2 grand for Sen in 2004..
True, The General for Ill Sen in 2004 was a walk,
so the pittance from Rahms PAC to BO Illinois Sen not a surprise by itself, but clearly , – he wasn’t leaving any organization building money laying around for BO..
McCain must have some kind of “Remind Me of Momma” thing…
I cannot believe that Rahm was in any way opposed to the rise of Obama. I have no idea how that crowd ran things but so many ways to direct money/influence/leverage around.
Again, he has never had a hard campaign in his life. The Senate run is constantly glossed over in recap pieces, the impression is left that he survived some great effort…, very similar to her Daley office connection.
BTW, Axelrod started as a Chic Trib reporter, before taking on clients.
then again, Rahm and Bill worked hand in hand in some of the House runs in 06…
who knows. IF ONLY they would consume, subsume, kill each other, that whole crowd.
Torture, Same As It Ever Was
with that nightmare, I’m off to bed.
So, Saban gave massive amounts of money to the Repubs and the Dems. But, never fear! The two parties are as different as nite and day!
Carry on.
Bush’s approval number: 19%.
That’s nearing Cheney territory and it would be huge news if all of this election sideshow crap wasn’t going on.
Don’t sack Musharraf, US and UK warn election victors
Once again, democracy sucks when you don’t get your way.
Halperin’s The Page, a round up links, McCain responses and a link back to the Wapo article, from Dec.
When there was little hope of real traction. Still a couple weeks til Iowa.
It’s the classic…
oh I don’t know. I enjoy watching rot gut pols squirm. Even ones who say they are pure and invoke prayers for themselves, of course..
This is sad. lol Candidate Guilty of Faking Disappearance (He was running as a Dem.)
Americans are sick and tired of this kind of gutter politics
Right. That’s why FAUX has so many viewers.
I cannot believe that Rahm was in any way opposed to the rise of Obama.-mcat I agree I was speaking to the short leash..He’s sittin pretty either way..
In the same review of Rahms dough, He gave Reid 2 grand.LOL. .Not that Reid would have needed it but it’s picnic money..But In a Mafia Family, Rahm would have been whacked for the insult, the lack of “tribute” to a Boss …It really is laughable as it just turns the CW of who’s runnin who on its head, shows we’re well beyond the quaint idea of special interests or influence peddlers,….We live under a corporate gangster state. With plenty of Lawyers, Judges and Politicians on the Payroll… Cops and The Army a phone call away. Rahm gave 5 grand to Wes Clark this time around. You like to Party Wes? How ’bout a blogger convention?
Candidate Guilty of Faking Disappearance-Catnip
that Guy’s all fucked up…He was supposed to fake *Appearance when running, then disappear *after getting elected….
I’m out .
No I’m not.
I was just fakin… LOL. Now I’m out..G’night…
We live under a corporate gangster state. With plenty of Lawyers, Judges and Politicians on the Payroll… Cops and The Army a phone call away.
agree,,, and once the scrim drops, it is very much on view.
Towering Mac… LOL
“Americans are sick and tired of this kind of gutter politics, and there is nothing in this story to suggest that John McCain has ever violated the principles that have guided his career.”
Oh, yes … he was just an innocent member of the Keating Five. Fucker manages to turn getting caught up in corrupt dealings into a public relations makeover, and the media helped, for years.
As a sidenote to this McCain/lobbyist story, Duncan Black notes that (like lobbyist Vicki Iseman) he too attended Indiana University of Pennsylvania, an institution of alleged higher learning that may actually be a few cuts below Northern Illinois University, Kosolini’s alma mater. I realize that only so many people can go to Penn State, and the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania’s other public colleges are pretty lousy, but still . . .
Forgot to post this, which DB links to, a photo of the very gregarious Ms. Iseman and another prominent GOP politico. Make a lovely couple, don’t they?
BTW, I wonder if Ms. Iseman gets to deduct her plastic surgeon’s bills as a business expense? I, for one, would be willing to argue in favor of it’s legitimacy as a dedction. (Retracts claws, goes to start long hard work of sleeping in sun all day.)
UK apology over rendition flights
Diego Garcia – that secret place where the natives were turfed to make way for the military. Has anybody ever apologized for that?
Denials made in “good faith”? GMAFB.
I should check to see if this victory by the island’s previous inhabitants was ever appealed by the British government.
It looks like it’s still up for appeal at the end of this year. Maybe the British gov’t will be embarrassed enough by these admissions of rendition flights that it’ll drop the appeal. That would be one way to begin to make restitutions for the wrong it’s done to the Chagossians and those who were on those torture flights.
We live under a corporate gangster state.
And you need a program to keep up with all of the players. I remember reading Friends in High Places many years ago, one of many books that would have clued people into the fact that the Iraq invasion was all about oil, global domination and capitalism if more people had actually read it (and the topic/scope of which senators like Clinton obviously would have known about before she voted for the AUMF).
The connections of those “Friends in High Places” that go back for decades at least gave me a huge hint at the time that the entire US gov’t system was more corrupt than I had ever realized – even after living through Vietnam, Watergate and Iran/Contra.
And its backroom realities like that that stop me from buying all of this “hope” and “change” talk from any of the two big party candidates. Just how do they think they can infiltrate and change a system that is so beholden to the almighty dollar and corporate greed? And why haven’t Clinton and Obama (to my knowledge) said anything about the fate of the contractors in Iraq? Bringing the “troops” home is not enough. And what about the secretive SPP meetings that are only perpetuating the power of companies like Bechtel etc? Has anybody renounced those? Of course not.
So, while the little people are being swept away by all of this “change” euphoria, it just feels so much like observing a snake oil salesman pitching his cure in an old time revival tent. What’s really going to change?
Even blowing his nose, Obama gets applause
pa dum pum…lol
well in the vein of endless diversion… which imo “change” and “hope”, as currently served up, are… there is this comment at Attytood:
48
the Holy Snizzle.
8)
The thread under the snot applause story is quite hilarious as well… That Obama lawsuit thing comes up & from what I can tell, several regulars begin a flame war. Good times.
Speaking of which, maybe I should try the hanky approach to becoming a rock star, hell I’ve been sick for 3 weeks, might as well give it a try.
has it occurred to anyone that right now is the perfect time for this McCain story to come out?
A month ago, it could have cost him the nomination. Just before the election, it might do some real damage. But right now, and only right now, there is plenty of time to massage it away (ew, sorry).
It even serves the purpose of getting him in all the headlines at a time when there is no other reason for anyone to be interested in his campaign.
So, while the little people are being swept away by all of this “change” euphoria, it just feels so much like observing a snake oil salesman pitching his cure in an old time revival tent.
I’ve tried to search (what remains of) my soul for why this election just isn’t getting me excited. Worse, it’s somehow making me feel like a lid is being put on meaningful change. For the last 6-7 years everyone has been under Bush’s thumb and I think that made people bolder in considering alternative possibilities to the whole tired arrangement… but now, well, it’s going to be “Hail to the Chief” again though maybe with a little more forced Sixties parroting. Clinton II without the Clintons? Or do I just not want to go back to business as usual?
I feel kinda gypped, actually. Like the next four years are gonna be really, really boring and boldness is going to be forgotten. Someone tell me how we can elect a new president that is still essentially for the same program (“American Dream 1.0″) in hard economic times, without having him (1) taking us off to a Great Good War or (2) donning sweaters and preaching to us about our national malaise…?
All things being equal, I think I would have felt less gypped with a genuine Clinton II… at least the left would have felt really galvanized around concrete issues, not just singing campfire songs together.
okay, that’s my current state of thinking. Shoot away!
NYCO
and
melvin
out of Moderation.. Sorry for the delay…
8)
Big trouble in Belgrade today:
A little voice in the back of my head keeps repeating “some damned fool thing in the Balkans.” Smart man, that Otto von Bismark, though while he saw what would happen clearly, he was no more able to prevent it eventually happening than any number of other people.
McCain upstaged by real news: Belgrade protesters break into U.S. embassy
Holbrooke’s on the teevee blaming it on the Russians.
Holbrooke said there’s no security in the embassy but a CNN reporter said there were marines there. And good luck getting NATO troops to go there.
melvin, no. 53,
According to Josh Marshall, the Times might have rushed to get this story out because a number of other MSM outlets were preparing their own stories on the subject. He thinks the Times story reads like a hodge-podge partly because it was rushed, and partly because in-house lawyers demanded certain things be excised.
liberalcatnip, no. 57,
Please forgive Holbrooke, he’s unintentionally channeling the thoughts of some Hapsburg functionary, circa July 1914.
Wesley Clark on CNN. It’s like deja vu all over again.
This Times of London article of several days ago is looking mighty prescient right now.
Please forgive Holbrooke, he’s unintentionally channeling the thoughts of some Hapsburg functionary, circa July 1914.
lol…round and round it goes…where it stops, nobody knows.
The Socialist Worker was on it too earlier this week. This really is sounding like another “no one could have predicted the breach of the levees” situation. If this was predicted, why wasn’t the US embassy better protected? Wes Clark is now blaming the Serbian gov’t for the lax security. It looks like Bush will be off the hook for this one too.
54
we are all to be changelings!
at least the left would have felt really galvanized around concrete issues, not just singing campfire songs together.
Well, as I’ve written, I think it’s a matter of realistically looking at what can happen if a Dem wins the WH. They’ll still have congress to deal with and if the configuration stays basically the same as it is now, there’s not much movement on big issues (a la Dem promises) to be had unless Dem supporters are into continuing the executive power reaches that Bush now has. All of this talk about reaching across the aisle looks pretty unrealistic to me. Add the fact that government moves very slowly along with the Dems refusing to hold Bushco accountable and it doesn’t make for a very encouraging picture.
liberalcatnip, no. 64,
Apparently, the embassy was “closed,” so at least some precautions were taken. Apparently, there was no one in the embassy building itself, and the Marine guards had been moved to another part of the compound.
This passage was interesting:
Oh, the evils of the demon slivovitz!
Forgot the link in my previous comment.
A helicopter carrying U.S. Sens. John Kerry, Joe Biden and Chuck Hagel makes an emergency landing in Afghanistan. (CNN breaking)
….due to weather.
well along with all the sturm and drang, I saw a [as it was reported] peaceful demonstration of what was called “150K” in the streets of … I think Belgrade, againsst the breakaway.
Along wtih, of course what ever else…. done by whomever.
I heard a report that the Embassy was closed for the week and the ambassador “at home”…
I was just listening to CBC news where they were interviewing a documentary filmmaker in Serbia. He said that he didn’t think the police there, who were more than likely sympathetic to the protesters on the issue of anger about Kosovo’s independence, would resort to any kind of firepower against the protesters. He also said that the protest began peacefully enough and that the violence seemed to just gain momentum on the ground as things unfolded (add alcohol here). One of the CBC’s reporters said that the US embassy building they’re showing is just part of the compound, as you noted, and that the rest of it seemed to be okay. As for the days and months to come, the filmmaker said he thought this was just the beginning.
I was just listening to Eagleburger on CNN saying NATO had better step up (or else, damnit – parapharsed). Why does the US seem to forget that it’s a part of NATO so frequently? Whenever US politicians talk about NATO (as with the UN), they treat it as if it’s ust a European entity.
liberalcatnip, no. 72,
Well, what Eagleburger is really saying is that the vassal states should remember who their lord and master is, and they’d better do our bidding without question, or else. This is generally the attitude most US politicians take w/r/t NATO, although the GOPeratives are usually less subtle about it.
Report: U.K. gov’t hid reference to Israel on Iraq weapons dossier
Here’s the Guardian article.
FFS, why is it so difficult to admit the truth? It’s not like the Brits were going to abandon Israel any time soon.
new thread…
LINK