Tea for Who?

So the GOP has been turned over to the extremists of the Tea Party tonight in Delaware, New York and possible New Hampshire. Even Karl Rove is upset.

Meanwhile the astroturf organization behind the Tea Party, Dick Armey's Freedomworks lobby, wants to bring African-Americans, Hispanics and Jews into the fold. Good luck with fellow teabaggers like this:



Ah, blackface is so 19th Century.

McIncoming

Is John McCain's campaign going to be buried in enough bad news to sink it?

After trying to smear Obama on the Freddie Mac/Fanny Mae mortgage crisis, it turns out that it is actually his Campaign Manager, Rick Davis, who's on their lobbying payroll:

One of the giant mortgage companies at the heart of the credit crisis paid $15,000 a month from the end of 2005 through last month to a firm owned by Senator John McCain’s campaign manager, according to two people with direct knowledge of the arrangement.

The disclosure undercuts a remark by Mr. McCain on Sunday night that the campaign manager, Rick Davis, had had no involvement with the company for the last several years.

As my son likes to say, that's gotta hurt!

Kinda negates the McCain campaign's lambasting of The New York Times just a day ago. Seems they can't stand being called liars. After all, this is politics, right? Maybe they were brought up to believe it was okay to lie, even better to win the lie count contest.

But the incoming fire from the Obama campaign might be enough to keep McCain knocked back on his heels. There's not only Obama taking it to him on the economy, but also faster out of the gate on Iran's Ahmadinejad's latest anti-Semitic remarks while also urging McCain to join him in supporting a bipartisan bill, as well as (being a little to demogogic for my tastes) slamming McCain for his fleet of cars:

In response to all this (and more on Palin below) McCain seems to be dummying up all around, earning the new sobriquet, "No-Talk Express":

He's doing the same thing his campaign has mandated for running mate Sarah Palin. She's being shielded from the press in every way possible, even while arranging bullshit photo ops with world leaders (aw, her very first!), earning more ire from journalists:

The McCain-Palin campaign tried to prevent reporters and television producers from viewing the vice presidential nominee's meetings with world leaders during the United Nations General Assembly Tuesday.

The campaign had planned to allow a “pool” camera and producer -- serving as representatives for all five television networks -- as well as wire and newspaper reporters into of most of Palin's meetings. But, at the last minute, the campaign informed the press corps that only cameras – without reporters or producers accompanying them – would be permitted.

The five television networks protested, threatening not to shoot video of the meeting at all unless an editorial presence was allowed into the meeting...

..One aide (possibly from Karzai’s entourage) repeatedly said “No writers” and tried to block the CNN producer from entering the room during the Karzai meeting, according to a pool report, but a senior Palin aide allowed the producer to enter...

...Members of the press were in the room for a total of 29 seconds during the Karzai meeting, according to the pool report....

...She has not held a press conference since being chosen by McCain four weeks ago, and has not done the traditional local interviews when traveling into media markets.

On Sunday, Palin stopped at an Orlando ice cream shop but reporters were not told of the event so an editorial representative was not sent. Several days earlier, press aides were surprised that a pool reporter asked questions about the economic situation during a stop at a deli in Cleveland.

She can't handle the truth. And there's ample reason why -- it's prosecutable:

The reason Gov. Palin has abandoned her truth and transparent, open and honest aura with her foolish and obvious coverup and trail of lies is simple. Troopergate is not about trying to get her ex-brother-in-law, trooper Mike Wooten, fired. It's not even about the firing of her Public Safety Commissioner Walt Monegan. Troopergate is about something the public has not yet picked up on...

...The real damage to Palin from Troopergate comes with an injury claim involving trooper Wooten when he hurt his back while in the line of duty.

Independent investigator Steve Branchflower testified recently he believes someone in the governor's office tried to block Wooten's workers' compensation injury benefits.

Harbor Adjustment Services, the company hired by the state to process, evaluate and decide on workers' benefit claims, had great financial incentive in bowing to pressure from the governor to deny Wooten's injury claim...

...But Branchflower says an employee with Harbor Adjustment Services contradicts the owner and has testified the governor's office did apply pressure to deny Wooten his benefits...

...Dianne Kiesel, a state employee with the Department of Administration, tells me former Palin chief of staff Mike Tibbles instructed her to walk Wooten's personnel file over to the governor's office.

And there is the governor's aide, Frank Bailey, caught on tape admitting he has information that came from Wooten's workers' comp file.

The very file that includes pictures, taken by none other than Todd Palin, of Wooten riding a snowmachine trying to prove the trooper was not injured.

Here's why this is all so damaging to the governor. It's one thing to try to get a trooper fired because you believe he is a danger to the public. But using your considerable power as governor to block the benefits of a former family member you have a long-running dispute with moves this scandal into a new realm.

Vindictive Sarah even had her husband go shoot some "evidence." How Mayberry is that?

She's still stacking the deck, pretending now that she'll cooperate in the probe. But the reality is:

Less than a week after balking at the Alaska Legislature's investigation into her alleged abuse of power, Gov. Sarah Palin on Monday indicated she will cooperate with a separate probe run by people she can fire.

The fix is is in, baby! But hasn't the GOP learned anything yet about getting nailed worse later for the cover-up?

Andrew Sullivan's been doing the yeoman's job of cataloguing Palin's lies and is up to a solid, fact-checked twelve. And there's still 41 more days until the election for her to run up the count.

Nice executive decision, Johnny.

I hope it keeps you busy.

Dangerous Candidate

It looks like the U.S. posturing in the Georgia debacle may ultimately be about -- surprise, surprise -- oil:

American policy makers hoped that diverting oil around Russia would keep the country from reasserting control over Central Asia and its enormous oil and gas wealth and would provide a safer alternative to Moscow’s control over export routes that it had inherited from Soviet days. The tug-of-war with Moscow was the latest version of the Great Game, the 19th-century contest for dominance in the region...

...Now energy experts say that the hostilities between Russia and Georgia could threaten American plans to gain access to more of Central Asia’s energy resources at a time when booming demand in Asia and tight supplies helped push the price of oil to record highs.

So is it any surprise that presumptive Republican Presidential nominee Senator John McCain is in bed with Georgia, who's President Mikheil Saakashvili started the fighting in the first place with at least a silent nod from the U.S. -- if not more -- and is somehow yet to pay the price in the U.S. media? The name is Randy Schuenemann:

Randy Scheunemann earned about $70,000 serving as Sen. John McCain's top foreign policy adviser between the January 2007 and May 15, 2008.

During the same period, the government of Georgia paid his firm $290,000 in lobbying fees...

...On April 17, McCain got on the phone with Georgia President Mikheil Saakashvili about Russian efforts to gain leverage over two of Georgia's troubled provinces. That same day, McCain issued a public statement condemning Russia and expressing strong support for the Georgian position.

And also on that same day, Georgia signed a new, $200,000 lobbying contract with Scheunemann's firm, Orion Strategies, according to the Post.

Think there might be a conflict of interests? And with McCain always itching to start another Cold War with Russia (nostalgic for his youth?), he's escalating by sending campaign surrogates -- John thinks he can win the election on the basis of a new neocon revival against Russia.

But of all the quotes today about the conflict, this one takes the cake:



Make an embroidered pillow out of it: "In the 21st century, nations don’t invade other nations." Like the last five years in Iraq never happened.

Willful omission or yet another "senior moment?"

Both answers bode ill.

75,000

That's the number of people who showed up to see Senator Barack Obama speak at the Portland waterfront. Seventy-five thousand people, like more than show up to football games, Rolling Stones concerts, I'd expect more than any Presidential nomination campaign event prior to Convention in history. Even the candidate himself was impressed:

“Wow! Wow! Wow!” were his first words as he surveyed the multitude, which included people in kayaks and small pleasure craft on the river on an unseasonably hot day in Oregon.

More pix here. Local news report here:



And he's doing "small" as well, talking ice cream with a kid, uh, too young to vote:



Yum yum.

And is life matching up for Senator John McCain? Not so much.

War on Moore

If the health insurance companies are this scared, eliminating them and finally creating a single-payer national health service must be the right thing to do.

If Fox News is spreading the lie that Universal Health Care leads to terrorism, it must be the right thing to do.

If Fred Thompson worked to help the National Family Planning and Reproductive Health Association with abortion rights lobbying in 1991, he will almost certainly not be the Republican Presidential nominee in 2008.