McCain's Lobbyists Come Out of the Closet

A recent letter from Howard Dean notes:

I've got a joke for you.

Last week, John McCain's campaign manager, Rick Davis, sent a memo to the McCain campaign staff about a brand new "conflicts policy."

This policy was designed to identify staffers with "conflicts" working within McCain's organization after three advisers resigned from the campaign. One was found to be working for an anti-Democrat "527" organization, and the other two -- a regional campaign manager and the convention CEO -- were found to have lobbied for the Myanmar junta in 2003.

Here's the punch line: Rick Davis, author of the memo and the person in charge of finding these "conflicts" within the campaign, founded his own lobbying firm, and, according to the Politico, "has made at least $2.8 million lobbying Congress since 1998."

But it gets worse. Charlie Black is McCain's chief political adviser. Over the past seven years, lobbying filings show he's used his connections with George Bush and Dick Cheney to lobby administration officials for dozens of wealthy clients. The Washington Post reported that "Black said he does a lot of his work by telephone from McCain's Straight Talk Express bus."

John McCain's commitment to keeping Washington lobbyists out of his campaign is a joke -- but it's not funny. It's shocking. Since Davis sent around his "conflicts" memo, two more people have been shamed out of the McCain campaign. But why not Davis and Black? Of all the possible conflicts revealed, isn't lobbying from the campaign bus the worst? And does McCain care that his campaign manager made millions after starting his own lobbying shop? If those are acceptable, what exactly did McCain find about the people they let go?

Tell John McCain to fire Rick Davis and Charlie Black today. If he's really committed to keeping "conflicts" out of his campaign, he should have no trouble cleaning house the way he needs to.

http://www.democrats.org/FireTheLobbyists

This past Sunday, John McCain defended the situation by telling reporters that his lobbyist advisers are "not in the lobbying business; they've been out of that business." And just yesterday, John McCain said he wants to have "the most comprehensive and transparent of any presidential campaign in history" when it comes to lobbyists. How can that be true when people like Charlie Black admit he's conducting his lobbying business on the back of the bus?

John McCain and his campaign can't have it both ways. On the one hand, he says "ethics and transparency are not election year buzz words." But, on the other hand, he and his top campaign advisors have no problem fudging about their lobbying records. When pressed on the discrepancy, they give a flip excuse: Americans don't care.

Demand honesty and openness in politics. Tell John McCain to fire Charlie Black and Rick Davis today:
http://www.democrats.org/FireTheLobbyists
Let's keep McCain accountable,

Howard Dean

McCain needs to do his homework

John McCain is perpetuating a myth that has been debunked many times.

The shrub carried out a thinly veiled attack on Barack Obama as an "appeaser" for suggesting that it might be a good idea to talk to some of the Middle-East leaders. When McCain was asked about the shrub's statements, a part of his response was,

"I believe that it's not an accident that our hostages came home from Iran when President Reagan was president of the United States. He didn't sit down in a negotiation with the religious extremists in Iran, he made it very clear that those hostages were coming home.''

The reaganites are very fond of claiming that it was the fear of the supposed actor's toughness that caused the Iranians to release the prisoners a few minutes after his inauguration on January 20, 1981. All of the news channels gave that as a possible or probable reason for the timing of the release. But the rest of the story came out later when it was revealed that President Carter's Secretary of State, Warren Christopher had concluded negotiations for their release the day before with the signing of the Algiers Accords. Sources inside Iran later revealed that the timing of the release was done deliberately to detract from reagan's inauguration not because they were afraid of his pseudo-macho, Hollywood cowboy toughness.

Please, John. There are enough reagan myths clogging up the minds of the American people without you perpetuating this one.

So Much for Compassionate Convervativism

ThePatriotPost, subtitled "The Conservative Journal of Record," revealed what most of us already knew, that there really is nothing compassionate about conservativism with this comment,

If Obama’s past Senate voting record wasn’t incriminating enough, he recently gave some revealing, and disturbing, insight into how his nominees would be chosen: “We need somebody who’s got the heart, the empathy, to recognize what it’s like to be a young teenage mom, the empathy to understand what it’s like to be poor or African-American or gay or disabled or old—and that’s the criteria by which I’ll be selecting judges.” An Obama presidency led by empathy rather than by constitutional dictates would certainly be in keeping with his pledge to bring “real”change to Washington. Uh, you can keep the change, Barack. (PatriotPost)

I just wish conservatives would be honest about their motives. At best they are motivated by enlightened self-interest and at worst by pure selfishness and greed. I'll take heart and empathy anyday

Worst President of Two Centuries

Only two other presidents have served in two centuries, John Adams and William McKinley. Why oh why did we end up with George Bush?

Five years ago today, George W. Bush got up on that aircraft carrier and fed us the biggest load of bullshit of his entire presidency. Not counting of course, the lies about the imminent threat from Iraq which was the whole pretext or pretense for going to war in the first place.

He told us it was "Mission Accomplished" in Iraq. Of course later he denied that he ever meant the war was over. And just today another lame comment came out of the Whitehouse.

"President Bush is well aware that the banner should have been much more specific and said `mission accomplished' for these sailors who are on this ship on their mission."

Somehow in the previous discussions of this bit of stupidity, I missed the fact that the Whitehouse had acknowledged that they paid for the banner, but only because the crew of the ship had requested it.

President Bush's flight suit posturing was a grotesque gumbo made up of equal parts arrogance, dishonesty and downright ignorance. But it was par for the course.

This whole presidency has been one "Mission Accomplished" moment after another, where our confabulator-in-chief told us how dandy things were in Iraq, how strong our economy was, how well the recovery was going in New Orleans, only for us to quickly find out how wrong he was.

Let's talk about what George Bush has really accomplished since he took office:

-The price of oil has quadrupled;
-We've seen the biggest drop in housing prices in 20 years;
-We experienced the first-ever economic expansion without a rise in median income; and
-Osama bin Laden - the guy who actually attacked us on September 11th -- is still on the loose.

It's a sad record and clear proof that Bush hasn't accomplished much of anything - and it's enough to drive you crazy to think he still has almost nine months left in the White House. Who knows what kind of damage he can do to the country on his way out.

Disclaimer: Contents freely adapted from a fund raising message from James Carville.