Kids, try to live your life so that you never have to ... breathe a sigh of relief? ... when seeing your name in the paper, in a sentence like this.
Mr. Abramoff, who was convicted of defrauding lenders in the deal but was not thought by prosecutors to have had a hand in the Boulis murder, ...
Yeah, that Jack.
Meanwhile, the Times is apparently amazed that New York-based mobsters have interests in Florida.
All together now! No one could have predicted ...
From today's liberally-biased newspaper:
David H. Safavian, the top federal procurement official under President George W. Bush, was sentenced to a year in prison for lying about his ties to the lobbyist Jack Abramoff. Mr. Safavian, ex-chief of staff at the General Services Administration, was accused of hiding his efforts to help Mr. Abramoff win federal business. He was convicted in December of obstruction of justice and making false statements.
Here is a picture from the liberally-biased Wikipedia of Safavian (second from right), along with "Jack Abramoff, golf organizer Jason Murdoch, former Christian Coalition leader Ralph Reed [mysteriously not yet convicted] … and convicted former Congressman Bob Ney:"
As the man said, reality has a well-known liberal bias.
Your paper has repeatedly attempted to insinuate impropriety on the part of Senator McCain where none exists — and it reveals that your publication is desperately willing to gamble away what little credibility it still has.
That was campaign spokesman Tucker "Out of" Bounds, asked to comment on a story that the New York Times was assembling. You'll love the irony (projection?) in that last sentence -- the story is now available, and will appear on page 1 of the print edition of the Sunday Times. It's a long investigative piece headlined, "McCain and Team Have Many Ties to Gambling Industry."
Man, you want to talk delicious? This story has it all. It's got McCain going after Jack Abramoff as a convenient target to burnish his MaverickTM image, while:
... interviews and records show that lobbyists and political operatives in Mr. McCain’s inner circle played a behind-the-scenes role in bringing Mr. Abramoff’s misdeeds to Mr. McCain’s attention — and then cashed in on the resulting investigation.
It's got McCain flip-flopping, again for image-burnishing purposes, changing in 2005 from a politician who had taken bundles of cash from the Indians for years, and then suddenly declaring Indian casinos "as one of three national issues that were 'out of control.'" (Sound familiar?)
It's got suggestions about why McCain and Joe Lieberman are such great pals -- Connecticut casinos. It's got stories about McCain's own gambling habits, how he was treated by casino owners in Vegas, his numerous connections to lobbyists in the gaming industry, and the favors he did for them. It's even got copies of emails and letters between some of the players.
Enough out of me. Go read and enjoy.
(h/t: graz)
From vacation, that is. Check out "The Candidate We Still Don’t Know." Awesome.
Somehow, one line from Rich's piece seems the best caption for the accompanying picture:
Although maybe one more snippet couldn't hurt:
The most revealing poll this month by far is the Pew Research Center survey finding that 48 percent of Americans feel they’re “hearing too much” about Obama. Pew found that only 26 percent feel that way about McCain, and that nearly 4 in 10 Americans feel they hear too little about him. It’s past time for that pressing educational need to be met.
What is widely known is the skin-deep, out-of-date McCain image. As this fairy tale has it, the hero who survived the Hanoi Hilton has stood up as rebelliously in Washington as he did to his Vietnamese captors. He strenuously opposed the execution of the Iraq war; he slammed the president’s response to Katrina; he fought the “agents of intolerance” of the religious right; he crusaded against the G.O.P. House leader Tom DeLay, the criminal lobbyist Jack Abramoff and their coterie of influence-peddlers.
With the exception of McCain’s imprisonment in Vietnam, every aspect of this profile in courage is inaccurate or defunct.
Will the MSM ever get off its collective can and do its job? Or will it let McCain skate right through November, just like it did the Current Occupant?
Okay, maybe just one more:
Some of those who know McCain best — Republicans — are tougher on him than the press is. Rita Hauser, who was a Bush financial chairwoman in New York in 2000 and served on the Foreign Intelligence Advisory Board in the administration’s first term, joined other players in the G.O.P. establishment in forming Republicans for Obama last week. Why? The leadership qualities she admires in Obama — temperament, sustained judgment, the ability to play well with others — are missing in McCain. “He doesn’t listen carefully to people and make reasoned judgments,” Hauser told me. “If John says ‘I’m going with so and so,’ you can’t count on that the next morning,” she complained, adding, “That’s not the man we want for president.”
Did you know that the Washington Post got hold of a list of the attendees of those "energy task force" meetings held in early 2001? You remember. This was probably the first hint of Dick Cheney's fetish for secrecy, even before 9/11. A NY Times editorial mentioned it, so I looked at the WaPo's site.
Here's the article I found. You might also read the transcript of an interview with one of the reporters who wrote the article.
No huge surprises; i.e., probably whomever you suspected was there, was there. Still, it's good to get these things on the record.
Here's a nice example of the Orwellian naming and incestuousness that characterizes the Bush & Cronies' way of doing business:
One advocacy group that visited was the Council of Republicans for Environmental Advocacy, founded in 1998 by Grover Norquist and Gale A. Norton, who became Bush's first interior secretary. Later, the group was run by Italia Federici, who was involved socially with Steven Griles. Griles, then Norton's deputy at Interior, was recently sentenced to prison for obstructing a Senate investigation of disgraced lobbyist Jack Abramoff.
The first three links on this list point to Salon. You know the drill. The last is on the NY Times's site, and free.
Probably no one else in the blogosphere will bother to note this bit of happiness, so I figured I should at least mention it.
According to today's NY Times (Lead story! Damned liberal media!), the erstwhile bug hunter has himself been squashed.
I haven't been following the saga closely, assuming hoping it was just a matter of time before Delay got brought to justice, but it seems that a second aide to the former House majority leader has recently pleaded guilty to corruption charges, in connection with the Jack Abramoff scandal. Both aides are said to be cooperating with the Justice Department, as is Abramoff himself.
From the Times's story (emph. added):
Bill Miller, a leading Austin lobbyist close to the Republican leadership, said Mr. DeLay called Gov. Rick Perry Monday night. Mr. Miller quoted Mr. DeLay as saying "I don't want to be a distraction" and said he had maintained that his decision to drop out of the race had nothing to do with any pending criminal action.
In an interview Monday night, Richard Cullen, Mr. DeLay's principal criminal defense lawyer, said that his client had been pondering a withdrawal from the race for some time and that "it had nothing to do with any criminal investigation."
Uh huh.
The formal announcement about wanting to spend more time with his family is expected soon.
(Thanks to dubyasworld.com for the image.)
According to Paul D. Thacker's piece, posted today on The New Republic's web site, Fox science columnist Steven Milloy has been outed as a shill for big business. Specifically:
As revealed in Mother Jones last spring, between 2000 and 2003, ExxonMobil donated $90,000 to two nonprofits Milloy operates out of his house in Potomac, Maryland. [emph. added]This might explain why he listed a global warming study on his list "the top 10 junk science claims of 2005."
Thacker goes on to list another write-for-pay arrangement that Milloy has made (note that "Milloy has been affiliated with FoxNews.com since July 2000"):
According to Lisa Gonzalez, manager of external communications for Altria, the parent company of Philip Morris, Milloy was under contract there through the end of last year. . . . Although she couldn't comment on fees paid to Milloy, a January 2001 Philip Morris budget report lists Milloy as a consultant and shows that he was budgeted for $92,500 in fees and expenses in both 2000 and 2001.During this time, Milloy did a couple of pieces, for Fox News, debunking research on the dangers of secondhand smoke.
Here's the kicker: Thacker mentions several other shills who have recently been outed, and the resulting relationship with said shills' employers. In summary:
The Shill: Armstrong Williams
The Shill: Doug Bandow
The Shill: Michael Fumento
The Shill: Steven Milloy
The whole story is posted on TNR's site, but you may have to jump through some hoops to read it. Let me know if you want me to email you the text, instead.
