John McCain's 'Lil Gambling Problem

The NY Times has everything you ever wanted to know about John McCain, his lobbyists/advisers and the gaming industry.

-AF

Fun Facts To Know And Tell

The Sunlight Foundation sheds light on how Wall Street has been spending what is now essentially our money to buy their best possible bail out deal:

If you haven’t been under a rock lately, you know that the Bush Administration is proposing a $700 billion bailout for Wall Street. What you might not know is that there have been 258 parties this year alone for members of the House Financial Services Committee-the very folks who are making crucial decisions about this legislation-a number of them hosted by lobbyists for the finance, insurance, and real estate industries.

For example, last week, on September 16, lobbyists were invited to a “financial services” luncheon for Rep. Dean Heller at the Capitol Hill Club. The cost for entry was $500 for individuals, $1,000 for PACs. Heller has collected $190,252 from the financial sector for his congressional elections out of a total of $1,242,583, or 15.3 percent.

Then there was the invitation from the Real Estate Roundtable PAC on September 14 for folks to join Rep. Gregory Meeks to watch the New Orleans Saints play the Washington Redskins play at FedEx Field. The cost: $1,000. Meeks has taken $1,015,432 from the financial sector over his congressional career, 27.8 percent of his fundraising total-$3,657,984.
(All emphasis mine).

Heller is a Republican and Meeks is a Dem.

This is craziness.

-AF
(HT: Harper's Ken Silverstein)

Because we already had McLies.com...

All you really need to know about "mavericks" John McCain & Sarah Palin: mclobbist.com.

-AF

Bi-Partisan House Oversight Committee: "Abramoff & Associates Influenced Administration Decisions"

No shit. Download the 8-page summary here or check Raw Story.

Top Ten John McCain Myths

MediaMatters has just three more left and they are biggies... At #8. John McCain is the lobbyist's biggest enemy. If by enemy, you mean employer...

Free Ride: John McCain and the Media available now.

-AF

McCain's Lobbyist Connections

Media Matters Action has a handy-dandy chart showing John McCain and the lobbyists he's surrounded himself with. Click on the individual lobbyist to find what he or she has lobbied for.

-AF

+Update: Thinkprogress gets specific.

Spitzer Narc Was Hard Core GOP Operative

Harper's Scott Horton...










finds More Political Taint in the Spitzer Case:

According to accounts that prosecutors and investigators have leaked to the New York Times and other publications, the Spitzer case was launched by a Suspicious Activity Report submitted by the North Fork Bank. Today, however, the Miami Herald ties the investigation to a tip furnished by the notorious G.O.P. dirty trickster Roger Stone.

Among other partisan feats Roger Stone organized the 2000 Florida demonstrations protesting the recounts. He has a history of bad blood with Spitzer. Last year Stone was fired as consultant to NY Senate Republican majority leader Joseph Bruno for threatening Spitzer's father.

-AF

+Update: McClathy has latched onto the story too:

Almost four months before Gov. Eliot Spitzer resigned in a sex scandal, a lawyer for Republican political operative Roger Stone sent a letter to the FBI alleging that Spitzer ''used the services of high-priced call girls'' while in Florida.

The letter, dated Nov. 19, said Miami Beach resident Stone learned the information from ''a social contact in an adult-themed club.'' It offered one potentially identifying detail: The man in question hadn't taken off his calf-length black socks "during the sex act.''

Stone, known for shutting down the 2000 presidential election recount effort in Miami-Dade County, is a longtime Spitzer nemesis whose political experience ranges from the Nixon White House to Al Sharpton's presidential campaign. His lawyer wrote the letter containing the call-girl allegations after FBI agents had asked to speak to Stone, though he says the FBI did not specify why he was contacted.

''Mr. Stone respectfully declines to meet with you at this time,'' the letter states, before going on to offer ''certain information'' about Spitzer.

''The governor has paid literally tens of thousands of dollars for these services. It is Mr. Stone's understanding that the governor paid not with credit cards or cash but through some pre-arranged transfer,'' the letter said.

''It is also my client's understanding from the same source that Gov. Spitzer did not remove his mid-calf length black socks during the sex act. Perhaps you can use this detail to corroborate Mr. Stone's information,'' the letter said. It was signed by attorney Paul Rolf Jensen of Costa Mesa, Calif.

The letter also notes that while Stone believes the information is true, he ''cannot swear to its accuracy'' because it is second-hand.

James Margolin, a spokesman for the FBI's New York office, would not say whether the bureau had received the letter. A spokeswoman for Spitzer also had no comment.

The letter was written several months after allegations were leveled at Stone that he had left a threatening phone message at the office of Bernard Spitzer, the ex-governor's father, regarding ''phony'' campaign loans involving his son's unsuccessful 1994 bid for attorney general. Stone denied making the call but resigned as a consultant for state Senate Republicans in Albany.
(emphasis added)

(HT: TPM).

-AF

+In my haste to post this, I neglected to call attention to Roger Stone's learning the information from ''a social contact in an adult-themed club. WTF does that mean?

++Update #1 (3/24@4:26PM): The eminently readable Majikthise has more dirt on Stone's history and the lowdown on the Miami adult-themed club he referenced.

++Update #2 (3/24@4:46PM): In light of Roger Stone's "revelation," Marcy Wheeler has questions about the Feds' account of the Spitzer investigation time line and a reminder that Roger Stone is a notorious wife swapper.

Mr. McCain Not So McSqueaky Clean: Close Links to 3 Telecom Lobbyists

Everyone's all a titter about this NY Times story alleging that Sen. John McCain has had an "inappropriate relationship" with lobbyist Vicki Iseman. Her un-scrubbed lobby firm bio is here. Per Raw Story, the Times had held this story for months publishing it only after The New Republic (sub. required) starting nosing around 229 W. 43rd St. for their own story. WaPo was treading water on this one too.

I personally could care less whether or not the self-confessed Senior Adulterer from Arizona and Iseman are romantically entangled (other than the mere thought of McCain entangling anything with anyone completely creeps me out). It will be enough to give some so-called "values voters" pause.

But as the Amazing Digby points out It's Not About The Sex...it's about the favors. McCain's unswerving support of Iseman's telecom clients included championing bills to end big time evangelical Bud Paxson's (Ion Television formerly Paxson Communications) and others' fight to force cable to run his broadcast stations or to provide minority ownership tax breaks for Cunningham Broadcasting (née Glencairn, LTD -- the shell corp. owned and operated by the evil John Kerry-swiftboating Sinclair empire to avoid FCC ownership regs). McCain not so coincidentally spearheaded a ton of broadcast industry deregulation that contributed to the MSM mess we now endure.

However, this goes deeper than McCain's favoritism and reciprocal of use of their corporate jets and other stuff. The aforementioned NY Times piece points out just how far Johnny Boy's super-cozyness with lobbyists goes:

Like other presidential candidates, he has relied on lobbyists to run his campaigns. Since a cash crunch last summer, several of them — including his campaign manager, Rick Davis, who represented companies before Mr. McCain’s Senate panel — have been working without pay, a gift that could be worth tens of thousands of dollars.

In recent weeks, Mr. McCain has hired another lobbyist, Mark Buse, to run his Senate office. In his case, it was a round trip through the revolving door: Mr. Buse had directed Mr. McCain’s committee staff for seven years before leaving in 2001 to lobby for telecommunications companies.
(my emphasis)

Shee-it! As HuffPo noted last year John McCain's 2008 team is fucking riddled with lobbyists! Forget about a rumored romance with Iseman, even at work Johnny's in bed with lobbyists! Mark Buse is notorious as one of the two lobbyists secretly hired by former CPB Chair/Karl Rove amigo/Republican tool Ken Tomlinson to quash attempts to seat more actual broadcasters on the PBS board.

It turns out McCain's campaign manager Rick Davis is even more controversial. The WaPo hits Rick Davis for setting up a McCain meet with gangster-linked Putin-pal billionaire Russian tycoon Oleg Deripaska. At the time Davis was still at his own lobby firm Davis Manafort where his biggest clients were telecom giants SBC Global AT&T and Verizon. According to Open Secrets between 1998-99 & 2003-05 Davis Manafort raked in at total of $670,000 SBC Global AT&T bucks. From 2003-2005 Verizon tossed him a cool $540,000.

While Iseman and Buse do not seem to have any vested interest in telecom immunity, his Campaign Manager Rick Davis sure does. "Straight Talk" McCain's recent vote to keep telecom immunity in Bush's wiretapping bill appears not like a vote to keep us safer but a vote for Davis' once and future clients. McCain's continued support of telecom immunity is a fait accompli or Davis wouldn't be working for him for free.

This raises the question: In what other ways would "Honest Johnny" McCain favor the special interests he used to rail against once he's President and at what cost to the average citizen?

Let's all agree right now to not find out. Please.

-AF

**Update: Firedoglake has more dirt on Davis.

**Update #2: TPM's Josh Marshall harks back to his days at TAP for a Paxson-led mega billion dollar tax payer boondoggle.

**Update #3: Stroke Girl waxes philosophic on the rise & fall of the heroic John McCain.

Immunity...Schmunity

While Bush & company try to scare us into supporting an immunity that benefits no one else but themselves, the telecoms flex their considerable monetary muscles by twisting Congressional arms. According to Opensecrets.org, the telecom/electronics lobby ranks #4 w/$2 billion+ spent since 1998. That’s a heckuva lotta of campaign contributions, free dinners and scotches. My guess it that that a majority of this went to Bush, Boehner, DeLay, “Duke”, Blunt, Stevens, Doolittle, Lewis et al.

No small wonder the Republican Representatives walked en masse yesterday. They had been already paid by the telecoms for their day's work to ignore their sworn duty to serve the American people. Inquiring minds want to know how many Dems voting for this bill also received some sort of past or renewed "support" from the telecom lobby.

Glenn Greenwald examines this fandango's latest developments here. In it he snags the following killer Mike McConnell quote from NPR this morning:

"We can't do this mission without their help," he said."Currently there is no retroactive liability protection for them. They're being sued for billions of dollars."

Yes, McConnell cannot "do this mission without their help." But the telecoms also cannot fail to cooperate in any lawful information gathering activity. Glenn fells this strawiest of the eavesdropping straw man arguments:

The claim that telecoms will cease to cooperate without retroactive immunity is deeply dishonest on multiple levels, but the dishonesty is most easily understood when one realizes that, under the law, telecoms are required to cooperate with legal requests from the government. They don't have the option to "refuse." Without amnesty, telecoms will be reluctant in the future to break the law again, which we should want. But there is no risk that they will refuse requests to cooperate with legal surveillance, particularly since they are legally obligated to cooperate in those circumstances. The claim the telecoms will cease to cooperate with surveillance requests is pure fear-mongering, and is purely dishonest.

If the telecoms committed no wrongdoing, what are they so worried about? After all, the telecoms can afford the very best lawyers. And once one suit is dismissed, the rest will soon follow. Its the complete lack of debate over whether any law has been broken that is conspicuous by its absence. (This from an administration still arguing that water boarding is not torture!)

This urgent need for retroactive immunity stems from the fact that all involved in warrantless wiretapping know that their crimes are completely indefensible. If they succeed in giving the telecoms retroactive immunity, the Bush Administration also immunizes themselves from any related prosecution. That is more important to Bush & Co. than protecting the asses of their generous telecommunications industry campaign contributors or, for that matter, the American people.

That is a talking point worthy of wider dissemination.

Meanwhile the clock keeps a tickin' on Bush's shot at scoring hisself sum immunities.

-AF