Tricky Dick

Richard Nixon & Bebe Rebozo?

A new biography by Don Fulsom, a veteran Washington reporter who covered the Nixon years, suggests the 37th U.S. President had a serious drink problem, beat his wife and — by the time he was inaugurated in 1969 — had links going back two decades to the Mafia, including with New Orleans godfather Carlos Marcello, then America's most powerful mobster.

Yet the most extraordinary claim is that the homophobic Nixon may have been gay himself. If true, it would provide a fascinating insight into the motivation and behaviour of a notoriously secretive politician.

Fulsom argues that Nixon may have had an affair with his best friend and confidant, a Mafia‑connected Florida wheeler-dealer named Charles 'Bebe' Rebozo who was even more crooked than Nixon.

I remember my parents and their friends joking about how much Nixon hung with this mediocre ex-baseball player all the time, but they'd never really imagine this at the time. Was foul-mouthed, bigoted Dick Nixon the ultimate homosexual masochist in the age of fascistic repression of gay rights? It would explain so much. As President, Nixon was of course part of that repression.

The only and ultimate escape for RMN: resignation.

Anthony's Weiner

It looks like the bus is coming for Rep. Anthony Weiner (D-NY), as more and more Dem leaders bail on him in light of increased penile exposure.

All I can think of is Borat:



So my country can be free.

Distraction

At some level, who really cares? So Rep. Anthony Weiner (D-NY), one of the brightest, funniest, most committed progressive members of Congress did some sexting over Twitter. In his come-clean statement today, teary and regretful, he made it clear that there was never any physical contact. Even though he was fairly recently married to an attractive woman, he went outside the marriage for some fantasy interactions with your women, he says all on his own electronic equipment, on his own time, the shame being mainly for stupidity and embarrassing his wife. And trying to lie about it in the lamest media strategy ever.

I'm guessing the big shame is that his masturbatory practices have been exposed. Morally, this can't be nearly as big a sin as Sen. John Ensign (R-NV) having sex with his close colleague's wife and trying to pay them off, or Sen. David Vitter (R-LA) and former Governor Eliot Spitzer (D-NY) paying for prostitutes in direct violation of the law, or former Sen. John Edwards (D-NC) knocking up a Los Angeles climber while his wife was sick with cancer. Or even former House Speaker Newt Gingrich cheating on his wife and dumping her while she was sick with cancer. Or the closet homosexual liaisons of several Republicans in Federal government.

Whacking off to someone 3,000 miles away just does not rise to the same level of offense. Embarrassment, sure. Criminality, doubt it. And extra points to Rep. Weiner for not insisting that his wife stand next to him in shame and smouldering anger while he told the world of his humiliatingly flawed behavior.

And never, to my knowledge, has Rep. Weiner ever run on marital or sexual morality. Not abstinence, not homophobia, nothing like when GOoPers who have voted against gay marriage etc. have been caught in the act.

I'd like to see him bounce back, win re-election next year and eventually become Mayor of NYC. Maybe a little humility will be good for the Weiner. I hope he and his wife work it out, and if they don't I hope he finds someone who alleviates his need for Internet liaisons.

Most of all, and here's where I think he may have been particularly targeted by the rightwing Internet trollers who outed him, I hope he can continue to work on the potentially monstrous conflict of interest that Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas has with his wife accepting money from anti-healthcare reform organizations, if and when the Affordable Care Act comes up for judicial review.

That, or may someone of equal or greater effectiveness pick up the cause, ideally of disbarment.

Nutjob

You can keep your Christine O'Donnell, your Sharon Angle. The biggest nutjob rigthwing woman is Victoria Thomas, wife of Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas:

In a voice mail message left at 7:31 a.m. on Oct. 9, a Saturday, Virginia Thomas asked her husband’s former aide-turned-adversary to make amends. Ms. Hill played the recording, from her voice mail at Brandeis University, for The New York Times.

“Good morning Anita Hill, it’s Ginni Thomas,” it said. “I just wanted to reach across the airwaves and the years and ask you to consider something. I would love you to consider an apology sometime and some full explanation of why you did what you did with my husband.”

Ms. Thomas went on: “So give it some thought. And certainly pray about this and hope that one day you will help us understand why you did what you did. O.K., have a good day.”

In Jewish parlance, we call this chutzpah. If not meshugenah. Where does Virginia Thomas get the gall to dig up Professor Hill's office number and leave her such a disrespectful message at 7:30am?

For the record, Ms. Hill said she's stands by her Senate hearing testimony regarding Thomas' inappropriate sexual remarks and pornographic movie references when she worked for him.

Virginia Thomas is a classic contemporary wingnut looking for her share of publicity:

Mrs. Thomas is a founder of a new nonprofit group, Liberty Central, which opposes what she has characterized as the leftist "tyranny" of the Obama administration and congressional Democrats.

She was a keynote speaker earlier this month in Richmond, Va., at a state convention billed as the largest tea party event ever.

God help us. But if her intention was to get in the cable news discussion, it seems to have backfired:

Ginni Thomas canceled her appearance on NPR’s and WBUR’s On Point — scheduled a week in advance — at the last minute. The interview would have lasted 20 minutes and aired nationally. Thomas’ publicist said she had a “scheduling conflict.”

“I’m horribly, horribly sorry,” the publicist said in an e-mail.

The producers “worked tirelessly” to book Thomas for a conversation about her very public involvement in the Tea Party, said John Wihbey, a producer.

Leave it to Andy Borowitz to offer on The New Yorker site, "Three Things to Do When Clarence Thomas' Wife Calls You":

1. Start apologizing the moment you hear her voice. Remember, like a bear at a campsite, Virginia Thomas does not want to eat you, she’s only after your food, and in this case, your apology is the only thing protecting you from Mrs. Thomas mauling you to death. If apologizing does not work, clap your hands loudly into the receiver in the hopes of scaring her away.
   
   
2. When she says, “This is Virginia Thomas,” reply, “No, this is Virginia Thomas. Who’s calling? Wait a minute—is that you, Anita Hill?” When she denies being Anita Hill (and she will), say, “There you go again, with your infernal lies. This is like Clarence’s confirmation hearings all over again. You disgust me, Anita Hill.” With any luck, accusing her of being Anita Hill will disorient her long enough for you to summon help.
   
   
3. Get in the habit of answering your phone, “Long Dong Silver residence."

And if you feel like I do, sign here for Clarence to apologize to Anita.

Daddy's Home

There are entertainment careers and then there's the career of Dennis Hopper, just passed at 74, who was an actor, director, photographer and headcase with the biggest ups and downs imaginable. Having hit Hollywood in the late 1950's he acted beside his idol, James Dean, in both the landmark Rebel Without a Cause and the blockbuster, Giant, then got himself banished due to Method acting on the set of a Henry Hathaway movie. Later reinstated by Hathaway himself, Hopper went on to ignite the Hollywood youth movement with his independent release, Easy Rider, which was not only Hopper's directorial debut but also made the long-struggling Jack Nicholson a star. No doubt directors like Scorsese and Spielberg have Hopper to thank for getting their breaks, but with his second film, the ill-fated The Last Movie, Hopper trashed it all in a drug-fueled orgy of endless principle photography and long-gestating over-editing that again made him a pariah.

After getting kicked out of the town of Taos for his psychotic behavior and pulling a gig on Apocalpyse Now -- like Giant, the over-budget scandal of its time, he went on to accidentally direct the low-budget Out of the Blue when the original director crapped out, doing a terrific job also acting as a ne'er-do-well dad just out of jail, mirroring his own struggles. He lobbied hard for and secured the indelible role of Frank Booth in David Lynch's 80's milestone, Blue Velvet, breaking some unknown gas and murmuring, "Daddy's home..." as he molested Isabella Rossellini. Colors was probably his biggest-budgeted directing effort, also in the 1980's, and he had the lead villain role in -- again the most expensive Hollywood picture to date -- Waterworld.

Along the way his accomplished photography and art world cred included a long friendship with Bruce Connor, in the very top tier of mid-20th century underground filmmaking pioneers.

A few months ago, Matt Zoller Seitz put together this terrific docu-video on Hopper. Enjoy:



I'd say, "Dennis, we hardly knew ye." But I think we did.

Kabukarama

I actually don't think the Republicans are wrong to be suspicious of President Obama's health care summit. But they called him into the brier patch -- nice job. Lately President Obama has shown a refreshing ability to call them on their bullshit, and I'm betting that most -- if not all -- of what they have prepared for the summit is politics rather than serious policy, and by serious I mean more than a notion or ideology. I mean something that might demonstrably lower health care costs and cover almost everybody.



If El Presidente Bush were to run one of these -- and he never did in his eight years, not bipartisan, not on C-Span, not once -- he might not even be chairing it. Whereas what I expect will keep this from being kabuki is that President Obama has already shown himself to be a fair meeting leader. And he actually studies and considers conservative ideas. Not Movement ideas so much as small "c" old school, un-hysterical style.

The bigger kabuki play is in my home state of New York, where a possible influence scandal is breaking with Gov. David Paterson in the wrong. Not sure how this will turn out because my guess from the vantage point of the opposite coast is that Paterson is considered a very weak Governor in the state with terrible poll numbers to match, the Democratic Party is all but coalesced around current NYS Attorney General Andrew Cuomo, Paterson is digging in his heels and somebody had to hit him with a smear or a real impropriety in order to try and loosen him up.

The question then becomes whether Paterson -- who's father was a politician, who made it in the Harlem political world, who made it to Lieutenant Governor and by resignation then the Governorship -- can handle a political attack like this in his sleep. He's calling for an investigation, whatever that means, but it's a smart start.

May the best kabukatron win.

Just for One Day

The saddest story in sports, Mark MacGwire comes clean in order to take a pitching coach job in peace. Is it just more evidence of our mass misplaced hero worship?

A real hero, Miep Gies, who protected Anne Frank and saved her diary.

A hero of the cinema, Eric Rohmer.

Her Satanic Majesty's Request.

Tiger's Wood

Nettertainment tries not to spend too much time covering scandal and for the early part of this latest one, I thought it was his own family business, who cares. But now the Tiger Woods story is exploding in so many ways, one must stand back in awe.

First there was the this-doesn't-add-up car accident two doors down from his house with his wife ventilating car windows with a golf club. Now I hear he hasn't shown himself in public since then because his tooth is chipped, maybe from a 5-iron assault that started in the house and sent him running and driving, barefoot.

We've also learned that his wife spoke with one of his girlfriends the day of the "accident" and heard the voice message of him asking the same girlfriend (or a different one?) to remove her i.d. from her phone. That woman had scheduled a press conference, but for a rumored $1,000,000 called it off. Meanwhile his wife was renegotiating their prenuptial agreement to the tune of $80,000,000 if she sticks with him for another eight years; not sure if she's still interested, having reportedly moved out of their home today. Not sure who's got the kids.

This was the climax of a day when a mistress or fling or whatever you want to call these ladies seemed to come out of the woodwork one an hour. The last number I heard was twelve. There's a waitress, a pornographic actress, lots of augmentation, bleached blondes, hair-pulled brunettes (Tiger reportedly likes it "rough," is well-endowed but doesn't bother with condoms), you name it. His wife looks augmented to me as well, and clearly has a strong swing.

Best of all, one of these high-moral women is in negotiations with Playgirl to publish nude photos of the golf champion. Assuming each of these ladies is raising their hand while the million dollar bills are being handed out, what would such photos be worth? Five million dollars? Wouldn't that be worth not having them plastered across the Internet, forever imprinting the image of nude Tiger in our collective consciousness so that every time we saw him teeing off, we'd be thinking him naked with a different club?

I don't expect every brilliant performer in the world to be a saint, nor is it much of a surprise that someone with such a squeaky clean reputation turns out to be a serial adulterer. It is, however, a real bummer for anyone with kids who looked up to Tiger and, here's the rub, a real bummer for his brand.

Clearly the payoffs to wife and mistress were Tiger Woods, Inc. springing into action. I find a fascination in imagining his agent(s) and lawyer(s) burning up the phone lines to corporate sponsors, desperate to reassure one and all that this was under control and would blow over. Heck, if it's worth $10MM/year to his wife to keep her aboard, then he must be raking in ten times that annually.

Maybe she's upset the apple cart for good, and maybe it will end up hurting her financially as much as it must be starting to hurt him. Maybe he's over-leveraged like all the all rich folks and this will send him tumbling. The first sponsor pull-outs (faster than Tiger ever did) have yet to be made public, but today was not a good day for that -- one assumes a morals clause in most of these contracts.

Even the EA Sports Tiger Woods Golf videogame franchise would not be immune. Won't there be jokes about the secret level where Tiger shags the comely caddy right there on the 18th hole green? Or maybe the cheat code Easter Egg where you get to play as his wife...only you tee off on his head!

The little car crash that started this all has turned into a much bigger can't-turn-away car crash, sometimes in slow motion, sometimes in a tumble like today. It's a perverse fascination to be sure, and at this stage in our culture where the line between public and private is so dissolved, our illusions about our heroes so shredded, it seems that moral judgment is almost beside the point. Make it if you like, but we're all sinners in our own way, so be it.

It hurts a little to see yet another good icon revealed as just another dumb dude, the man who had too much but was supposed to stand for something.What's more fascinating is watching the process, same as it ever was but maybe a bit more horrifying, humiliating and hilarious that usual, inadvertent bread and circuses for our entertainment.

The best move now is to take Oprah up on her reported offer of advice and an appearance. Confess to being a sex addict on her show and having entered a rehab program, take the public lashing and the eventual forgiveness, ideally within the same hour. Beg for your wife's forgiveness maybe there in public, maybe Oprah will even have her waiting in the wings and stage your reunion.

Either that or sign that reality show deal. Right now.

While you're hot.

Another Day...

...another hypocritical "family values" Republican elected official in a tawdry sex scandal:

Meet Tennessee state senator Paul Stanley. He's a solid conservative Republican and married father of two, who according to his website is "a member of Christ United Methodist Church, where he serves as a Sunday school teacher and board member of their day school." (Check out the religious imagery on the site -- the sun poking through clouds, as if manifesting God's presence -- which of course shows Stanley's deeply pious nature.)

Stanley recently sponsored a bill designed to prevent gay couples from adopting children. And when a Planned Parenthood official recently sought his support for family planning services for Memphis teens, Stanley told her, according to the official, that he "didn't believe young people should have sex before marriage anyway, that his faith and church are important to him, and he wants to promote abstinence."

...

In a sworn affidavit, a Tennessee state investigator has said that Stanley admitted to having a "sexual relationship" with a 22-year-old female intern working in his office, and to taking nude pictures of her in "provocative poses" in his apartment.

...

Late Update: It gets worse. In 1994, Stanley's first wife, Judy Martin, filed for a restraining order against him, charging that he had physically assaulted her three times. She wrote: "He was going out the door to leave our house and he hit me with a tremendous blow and then he proceeded to turn and run away from me outside the garage to the street." Stanley and Martin divorced the following year.

According to the Nashville Post, Stanley met his current wife, Kristi Stanley, soon afterwards, while both were working for Bill Frist's U.S. Senate office in Memphis. She was working as -- an intern.

Yep, The Party of No can say no to healthcare reform for struggling Americans...but they sure say yes between the sheets!

Greedy Greedy Greedy

So AIG wants to reward themselves for deep-sixing the economy:

American International Group is preparing to pay millions of dollars more in bonuses to several dozen top corporate executives after an earlier round of payments four months ago set off a national furor.

The troubled insurance giant has been pressing the federal government to bless the payments in hopes of shielding itself from renewed public outrage.

I'd say, I've got your blessing right here.

The greed of Wall Street predates Gordon Gekko, as Matt Taibbi hilariously and pointedly nails Goldman Sachs in Rolling Stone, who claims that it "has engineered every major market manipulation since the Great Depression," and lays out:

The history of the recent financial crisis, which doubles as a history of the rapid decline and fall of the suddenly swindled-dry American empire, reads like a Who's Who of Goldman Sachs graduates. By now, most of us know the major players. As George Bush's last Treasury secretary, former Goldman CEO Henry Paulson was the architect of the bailout, a suspiciously self-serving plan to funnel trillions of Your Dollars to a handful of his old friends on Wall Street. Robert Rubin, Bill Clinton's former Treasury secretary, spent 26 years at Goldman before becoming chairman of Citigroup — which in turn got a $300 billion taxpayer bailout from Paulson. There's John Thain, the asshole chief of Merrill Lynch who bought an $87,000 area rug for his office as his company was imploding; a former Goldman banker, Thain enjoyed a multibillion-dollar handout from Paulson, who used billions in taxpayer funds to help Bank of America rescue Thain's sorry company. And Robert Steel, the former Goldmanite head of Wachovia, scored himself and his fellow executives $225 million in golden-parachute payments as his bank was self-destructing. There's Joshua Bolten, Bush's chief of staff during the bailout, and Mark Patterson, the current Treasury chief of staff, who was a Goldman lobbyist just a year ago, and Ed Liddy, the former Goldman director whom Paulson put in charge of bailed-out insurance giant AIG, which forked over $13 billion to Goldman after Liddy came on board. The heads of the Canadian and Italian national banks are Goldman alums, as is the head of the World Bank, the head of the New York Stock Exchange, the last two heads of the Federal Reserve Bank of New York — which, incidentally, is now in charge of overseeing Goldman.

But there's three greedies in the title of the post, and the last one for tonight is a couple, Doug and Cindy Hampton, which is increasingly looking like an Indecent Proposal variation where the reveal is looking like Doug pimping out his wife to Sen. John Ensign (R-NV) for a long period of time in hopes of the big score:

Senator John Ensign’s wealthy parents gave almost $100,000 to his former lover and her family, ostensibly out of concern for their welfare and as part of a “pattern of generosity,” his lawyer disclosed Thursday...

...“After the senator told his parents about the affair,” the statement issued by Mr. Coggins said, “his parents decided to make the gifts out of concern for the well-being of longtime family friends during a difficult time. The gifts are consistent with a pattern of generosity by the Ensign family to the Hamptons and others...

...The disclosure of the $96,000 gift came a day after Doug Hampton said on a Las Vegas television program that Mr. Ensign had paid Mrs. Hampton more than $25,000 in severance pay.

Y'know, a good couple is a good team. Working together towards common goals. And not too possessive -- his wife was bending the marital contract for nine months (December 2007 - August 2008).

On the Ensign side, isn't he getting a little old for his folks to be bailing out his adultery?

Grifters, grifters everywhere. Wall Street and Washington.

Who could have predicted that?

Compart Mental

My brother-in-law has a theory that men don't think they're being watched, i.e. when they're doing things they don't want people to know about. Checking the fly, picking the booger, cheating on the wife with Maria in Argentina. They think they're getting away with it.

Mark Sanford may preserve his political career, but I think there are already too many state officials of his own party in South Carolina who think that his disappearing without any contact for five days is dereliction of duty. If not batshit crazy. Which his press conference most definitely was -- like what's the craziness at the beginning about his love of the Appalachian Trail...and adventure trips:



Did accepting the federal stimulus money drive him to Argentina? He apologizes long before revealing what everyone is expecting with sickening banality, like a well-known segueway between songs on an overplayed CD. He even brings up the Appalachian Trail canard like he planted it with his staff as a red herring, Sherlock still holding out on the final reveal. He goes off on "God's Laws" whatever that is as to protect us from ourselves, "The biggest self of self is indeed self."

At 7:42 he admits his infidelity with "a dear, dear friend in Argentina." At 14:12 he goes into how this friendship developed not in spite of but because of what Obama calls the bubble of big-office political life. Mind-melding over their separate problems, counsel for each other. Then a year ago there began three trysts. Just three. And now he's been crying in Argentina breaking it off, and as on the next stage of his journey "to get his heart right."

Heart/head: this is a man who got himself way too compartmentalized and is finding the walls dissolved. If he isn't lying about this Argentinean woman, then he's brought this all on himself in a way he never had to, unless she was a threat of blackmail. He's doing his public philosophizing about his own shortcomings, and the shortcircuits are showing.

Look, it's an easy mark (which is not to say cheap) that those most sanctimonious about such matters, those who derive a significant percentage of their voter support from such sanctimony as opposition to marriage equality, should prove themselves more worthy of being whacked with the first stone rather than casting it.

But I also think all guys live a double life at some level, or have at some point in their lives, the life they don't think others see. Sanford's press conference is like watching a newbie relate his own jejune personal experience, his own wonder, even, at the world he has both created and found himself in.

He should have learned from the best.

WTF Sanford

One wonders what shoe is going to drop -- if Gov. Mark Sanford's wife had no idea where he was on Father's Day and his staff is claiming he was hiking the Appalachian Trail, was he hiking...in the raw?:

We’re not suggesting that the formerly missing Governor of South Carolina specifically ditched his family and security detail to go hiking on Naked Hiking Day. It’s just that one of the days he hit the trail also happened to be the aforementioned holiday...

...Then it took a Farrelly brothers screenplay type of twist. Sanford had not disappeared. According to his spokesman, he was hiking on the Appalachian Trail. Coincidentally, on Naked Hiking Day.

It’s a big tradition. Many hikers celebrate the summer solstice by hiking au naturel. It just so happened the solstice occurred on Fathers Day — one of the days Sanford was hiking.

If he was hiking. Or is there something else at play? A reported sighting gives the lie to the "official" story:

Local news channel WYFF4 reports:

On Tuesday, sources told News 4's Nigel Robertson that a state vehicle is missing and was tracked down, not to the Appalachian Trail, but to the Hartsfield-Jackson Airport in Atlanta.

Sources told Robertson that a federal agent spotted Sanford in the airport boarding a plane. Robertson was told that the governor was not accompanied by security detail.

...

News 4 called the governor's office, and was told again by staffers that they stand by their original statement that the governor is hiking the Appalachian Trail. They did not want to comment on this story.

It had previously been reported that the governor's cell phone had been tracked to the Atlanta area.

Sanford's staff put out the word late last night that he's hiking the Appalachian. Of course, it would be possible for Sanford to have driven from Columbia to Atlanta, boarded a flight to somewhere else on the trail, got off the plane, and embarked on his hike. But it doesn't seem like the most logical way to do it.

So is/was Sanford hiking? Writing? Exorcising? Tripping 'shrooms? Freaking out?

Or is it possible that there's some tie, even by inspiration, with the recently revealed Sen. John Ensign (R-NV) scandal?:

It's almost a given that a guy who wastes time on the Senate floor blustering about the sanctity of marriage would have an affair with a married woman. So when news broke earlier this week that Sen. John Ensign would be coming clean about his infidelity, we weren't all that surprised.

We did figure he'd step down though, if only because he loves the word "resign." He called on Sen. Larry Craig to resign after his wide-stance problem was revealed. He also called on Bill Clinton to resign when the president's cigar issue became known. Ensign even said that if he was in the same -- ahem -- "position" as Craig, that he would resign. Ensign has also said that he thinks that "we need people who are in office who will hold themselves to a little higher standard."

Well, apparently he wasn't talking about his own higher standards. Ensign merely gave up his leadership position in the Senate, which makes some sense. After all, how can you have seniority when you're such a big baby? Anyway, it would be kind of bizarre if Ensign got all upset and called on himself to resign.

Ensign is also a member of the Christian group the Promise Keepers, begging the question of what promises he's kept.

Another Republican so-called Presidential contender down the tubes. So who knows what's up with Sanford -- and if his wife is out of the loop, what reasons spring to mind?

Maybe John Ensign can join Mark Stanford on that Appalachian Trail.

Outfitted the way God created them.

Cheney Family Values

Obama and his Administration now has its hammer.

With Ex-President Cheney unwilling to step out of the limelight for ideological or ass-saving purposes, he is now the highest ranking Republican going up against Barack Obama...but his party can't exactly follow him. We're well past kabuki now, or the emperor revealed without clothes. Every politician in D.C. knows that he was the architect of our nation's notorious torture policy and it's application as physical program, the Grand Vizier, the Grand Inquisitor, the Emperor. The most wrong man in politics.

Why on earth would any of the other scurrying elected Republican officials get too close to Cheney? For so many years now he's had the lowest approval rating of any of them by a longshot, and they were finally rid of him! And if he gets indicted, or simply goes down in history as the politician who brought the most shame to our nation since slavery, then do you really want to be the last guy people remember standing next to him?

If they line up right behind Cheney this time around, they're even more scared, because it would mean that amongst all the Republican "talent" in this country, he's still the strongest man around, the one they believe to be the most feared by his enemies -- and his elective career is finished. Kaput. So...better to swarm to the other Party Leader, Mr. Limbaugh, a non-elected radio pundit. After all, he's just an entertainer. Or whatever the apology is this week.

Here's what I think happened over this past week. Cheney still has moles embedded throughout the "permanent" government -- the Pentagon, possibly the State Department, other administrative areas where they have been watching Obama and delivering early warning to their master. Cheney must have gotten word that the memos would be released, directly implicating, indicting him as being the boss of the torture syndicate. Proving it, now by a timeline. So, like Rove (whom he must have tipped off as well), he immediately moved to "get out in front of it" by going on the Sean Hannity show.

In doing so, he's triggered this massive cognitive dissonance, as GOP figures attempt to thread some non-existent needle where we didn't torture, but it works -- because of some story the Dick Cheney apparatus told me (i.e. from the torturers themselves!) -- just accept it does, and it wasn't that bad what we did anyway (assorted nonsensical justifications), so maybe it is torture so if it is so what? Which leads to, so what are you going to do about it?:



That's right, that's former President Cheney's daughter out there fabricating right from the starting gun, attacking, playing the family arguments, claiming it's not torture, it's Navy Seal training tactics, lies about the information we "gained" from waterboarding, all passive tenses for Dick Cheney's involvement like he was just offering an opinion...you know, spinning like a dervish to try and keep her father off the stand and out of jail.

Since these revelations, on the very face of them, call for investigation and possibly indictments, it's clearly in Obama's interest to be the guy standing between the pitchforks and prosecuting the remnants of the GOP. This is the time for him to be soliciting bent-kneed favors godfather-style, especially on his potentially transformational national healthcare plan. The kind that really changes the trajectory of this nation.

Instead of prosecuting them, ostracize them with more transparency, more U.S. Iraq and Afghanistan prison photos on the way, force the decision to be made by society rather than government. Let some investigations go through, "against your wishes," and extract more legislative favors along the way. That's a longer game, and so far Obama's the master of that.

I mean, he's written two really good bestsellers, won a Senate seat, and won a Presidential primary and campaign.

Obobble

I pretty much feel about Tom Daschle exactly as DeRosaWorld put it here. So another distraction gone. On the Republican side, it's distraction grande: meet Joe the Not-Really-Plumber, paid political strategist.

Obama does something extraordinary: he admits a mistake. He hires a Republican as Commerce Secretary. His bill gets another two hundred billion in the Senate.

Obama's built a long reputation as a great finisher. Does he have his endgame in place for the first major legislative initiative of his Presidency?

Solid Gold

Here's the video with Josh Marshall announcing winners of Talking Points Memo's annual Golden Duke Awards for sleazy, scandalous behavior by politicians in 2008:



Text version here, with detailed breakdown of individual judges votes.

Here's to hoping the next President never even gets nominated.

"Accident"

Mysterious or maybe not so much:

At 3:31 PM Friday, December 19, Michael L. Connell, a top Internet consultant for the Republican National Committee and for the Bush and McCain presidential campaigns, left Washington from the small airport in College Park, Md. Alone at the helm of a single engine Piper Saratoga, Connell's flight plan anticipated arrival at his hometown Akron-Canton Airport in a little over two hours, at 5:43 PM.

Instead, about three miles short of the Akron-Canton Airport, Connell's plane crashed to the ground in an upscale section of Lake Township, killing Connell instantly. "I was standing in the kitchen and I looked out the window and all I saw was fire," Taylor Fano told The Akron Beacon Journal. "It took out the flagpole and the cement blocks surrounding the flagpole . . . . It skidded across the driveway and right in-between a line of pine trees and a small fence around an in-ground pool."

The Federal Aviation Administration is investigating the accident and has not yet filed a report, but there was no immediate evidence of wrong-doing or sabotage.

Many in the blogosphere have called for further investigation of the crash, suggesting that Connell was about to provide crucial information in the case of alleged vote fraud in the 2004 Ohio presidential contest, and that that information would implicate Karl Rove and others in the Bush administration.

Reminds me of all the "accidental" deaths surrounding the key witnesses in the GOP's last major scandal, Iran-Contra.

Frosted Dick

I heartily enjoyed Frost/Nixon on a number of levels. For one, it's set up and played like a boxing match, which plays into the second level of enjoyment, that Ron Howard has made a piece of not-very-visually-spectacular history into something that might actually reach people by making it clear and understandable, not unlike my personal favorite of his movies, Apollo 13 (ripped off for Oscars by Mel Gibson/Braveheart?). The third level is performance -- not only is Frank Langella terrific as Nixon, but Michael Sheen does a great David Frost, both reprising their performances from the play by Peter Morgan, who also did the screenplay.

But what I liked best about the movie, and something I felt slightly lacking in Oliver Stone's admirably ambitious W., is the success in capturing Richard Nixon's character. While the Stone movie missed a key element of El Presidente Bush, namely his cruel cunning (he knew how to win elections by undercutting like a preppy frat president might win over a room), Morgan, Howard and Langella caught that particularly needy ambition of Nixon's, where the very thing that made him admirable -- his intelligence pulling him up out of low circumstances of birth -- was his undoing in a way emblematic of the times in which he rose.

Let me explain.

As TV's Mad Men and James Ellroy's American Tabloid so accurately depict, there's a period in 20th Century American history where the difference between what was seen and what was hidden in society was rolling downhill to a tipping point. Even now there are differences between the public perception of how business is done -- and government and sex/romance -- and what really happens behind the scenes. I believe it was a hell of a lot worse back then, as the older, more brutal ways of society bumped up against the powerful image of The American Dream, reaching a tipping point with the lies of the Vietnam War that sent American youth into the streets and led to the first big call for transparency, climaxing with Nixon's Watergate scandal.

In the movie, Nixon asks about the price of things -- just between friends -- and looks for the hidden motives behind everyone's actions, with a predilection to ascribe actions of others to their ethnicity or religion. This fascination with how things really work, clear-eyed to him but cynical to others, was part-and-parcel of his ambition. As a bright young man who got into Harvard and Yale but couldn't attend because he lacked the financial means, Nixon always felt looked down upon by the swells, an inferiority complex that drove him to doing anything to win, hence the dirty tricks dating back to his college election days. He wouldn't really ever apologize for them because that was how the world worked -- to him President Lyndon Johnson installed the tape recorder, President John F. Kennedy got us into Vietnam, he took no real personal responsibility for his own actions extending both of those practices.

It is interesting how the revival of interest in the original interviews with the release of the feature has coincided with El President Bush's interview with Charlie Gibson, a similar attempt to rescue his legacy. While the lack of personal responsibility is similar, the intellectual curiosity level is monumental:





But the failing in Nixon's own intellectual curiosity, as so well depicted in Frost/Nixon, is that he always ended up drawing the same shrunken conclusions. That's how things really work. And I'm the smartest man in the room, so I know I'm right.

What a waste.

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.

Unsalvageable?

The title of this post might refer to the Republican National Convention, coming on the heels of the gladiatorial challenge that was the Democratic National Convention (with Obama coming out not into the Parthenon as the GOP spinmeisters mistakenly called it, but rather the Coloseum as if in his hard-hitting speech he was calling to McCain, "Come out, come out, wherever you are..."), or it might refer the Sarah Palin GOP VP nomination, or it might refer to John McCain candidacy itself.

At this point the RNC is a shambles, with Monday a, um, wash as Hurricane Gustav managed to force massive program cancellation but then made land more safely than expected, thank God, saving lives but denying any dramatic visit by McCain or McCain/Palin to the distressed area.



It doesn't help that tanks are roving the streets of St. Paul to quell protests and even Democracy Now's Amy Goodman has been arrested for expressing her Constitutional right to free speech:



Meanwhile, why haven't I seen any new photos or live video of Palin this past 24 hours? Am I missing something, or is she under wraps as she lawyers up on her Troopergate (and gets a deposition date), reveals a teen pregnancy in her family in order to end rumors of another teen pregnancy that might seem even stranger, turns out to have been Wasilla's "Mayberry Machiavelli" ordering loyalty tests as Mayor, appears to have lied in her Wikipedia entry about winning Miss Congeniality in a beauty contest, and been a member of a fringe Alaskan secessionist party:



You know, putting country first.

Worst political day ever? How about when right-leaning cable heads like Campbell Brown start to wail on your experience claims:



What all this does is the very thing it was meant to avoid: split the Republican Party. You've got serious government and security Republicans faced with a Presidential nominee who doesn't do sufficient vetting on the first major decision of his office, thrown into post-vetting instead and only beginning that process on the first day of their national convention. You've got what appears more and more to be a cynical violation of "country first" principle calling into question the candidate's judgment and playing right into the Obama's argument against McCain, along with the "four more years of the same" meme. You've got the first Administration Republican in history lawyering up before even being nominated. You've got a campaign that tried to throw the long-ball diversion (as Obama calls non-issue, non-policy politics) of all time boomeranging back to create the hugest possible diversion for the GOP itself at the very week where it needs to bind together in full.

You've got a Party out of any possible control by the candidate and ostensible Party Leader:



Big question: if Palin is forced by the party elders and hands to Eagleton out, who will run with the damaged McCain? McGovern couldn't do better than Sargent Shriver, who had started The Peace Corps but never held national elective office. In situations like these, the stink of the loser is too great, the label of second choice too humiliating.

My guess is McCain will/would wind up with his original choice, Joe Lieberman, mainly because that's another guy with nothing left to lose.

As for Governor Palin, I just think all of this backwoods Alaskan smalltown stuff makes her look more and more disconcerting to the average American voter, and will remain so even after she's left the scene.

Very disconcerting.

Years

Another blazing success of the Bush/Cheney/Rumsfeld/Rove Administration's War on Terra:

GUANTÁNAMO BAY, Cuba — Rejecting a prosecution request for a severe sentence, a panel of military officers sentenced the convicted former driver for Osama bin Laden to five and a half years in prison on Thursday. The sentence means that the first detainee convicted after a war crimes trial here could complete his punishment by the end of this year.

The military judge, Capt. Keith J. Allred of the Navy, had already said that he planned to give the driver, Salim Ahmed Hamdan, credit for at least the 61 months he has been held since being charged, out of more than six years in all. That would bring Mr. Hamdan to the end of his criminal sentence in five months. After that his fate is unclear, because the Bush administration says that it can hold detainees here until the end of the war on terror.

Nice job, Republicans, of nailing Osama bin Laden's ex-chauffeur. I'm sure those five months will be worth all the money and brainpower spent on the conviction, although as long as Republican is President and can, like a king, keep him imprisoned indefinitely, at least more of the interrogation story won't come out.

Hey, it's not even Friday yet and there's another GOP politician in a disgraceful sexual scandal:

JEFFERSON CITY -- Missouri state Rep. Scott Muschany, R-Frontenac, was indicted today in connection with a reported sexual assault of a 14-year-old girl on May 17, the day after this year’s Legislative session ended.

The alleged victim is the daughter of a state employee. The girl’s mother and Muschany -– who is married and has two children -- were romantically involved, the woman said.

A Cole County grand jury returned an indictment today charging Muschany with the Class C felony of "deviate sexual assault." The indictment identifies the victim only by initials. It says that on May 17, Muschany "had deviate sexual intercourse" with the girl, "knowing that he did so without" her consent.

Muschany, 42, was booked into the Cole County Jail today at 2:50 and he was released after posting a $5,000 bond. If convicted, Muschany faces a fine of up to $5,000 and a prison term of up to 7 years.

Only seven? Maybe he can take some of Hamdan's six.

What are the Republicans doing right, besides giving Paris Hilton some awesome new material?

They're doing what Obama said:

BAGHDAD (AP) - Iraq and the U.S. are near an agreement on all American combat troops leaving Iraq by October 2010, with the last soldiers out three years after that, two Iraqi officials told The Associated Press on Thursday. U.S. officials, however, insisted no dates had been agreed.

Hey, it's fun to mock, but there's a point to it. While grandpa McCain is putting a softer face on the deadly GOP brand, let's not forget that the same Karl Rove driving his vile and lying character smears of Obama has been driving U.S. policy for almost a decade. Let's not forget that the GOP financial and ideological party apparatus, taken over by Tom Delay, Jack Abramoff, Grover Norquist, Dick Cheney et al is essentially corrupt, a criminal enterprise that will take more than this election to wash through the system, if ever. It's the party of blatant hypocrisy, dividing voters with anti-gay rights laws while assaulting young boys or seeking illicit sex in airport bathrooms.

This election is about much, much more than Barack Obama. He's a vessel, sure, he brings youth and intelligence, strategy and tenacity to the Party and hopefully the Republic, and he's the right man at the right time. But this is just as much about clearing the palate, flushing the toilet, lighting sage and Native chants.

They'll try to smear Obama, to bring them down to their level. But that's just not the guy he is.

Just remember who these smearmongers are, Rove to McCain, and how much they've just gone and ruined these last eight years.