JUST POLITICS

THE SORT OF APPOINTEES YOU CAN EXPECT IF MCCAIN WINS

2008-05-11T12:20:00.002-04:00

POLITICO The PR executive John McCain just tapped to help run the GOP convention quit today after a report that his firm once represented the Burmese junta that is now doing little to relieve its people from the devastation incurred by this week’s cyclone. Doug Goodyear, CEO of the DCI Group, said in a statement issued by the convention committee that he was resigning "so as not to become a distraction in this campaign.”

EARLIER NEWSWEEK STORY Some allies worry that Goodyear's selection could fuel perceptions that McCain-who has portrayed himself as a crusader against special interests-is surrounded by lobbyists. Goodyear is CEO of DCI Group, a consulting firm that earned $3 million last year lobbying for ExxonMobil, General Motors and other clients.

Potentially more problematic: the firm was paid $348,000 in 2002 to represent Burma's military junta, which had been strongly condemned by the State Department for its human-rights record and remains in power today. Justice Department lobbying records show DCI pushed to "begin a dialogue of political reconciliation" with the regime. It also led a PR campaign to burnish the junta's image, drafting releases praising Burma's efforts to curb the drug trade and denouncing "falsehoods" by the Bush administration that the regime engaged in rape and other abuses. . .

Another issue: DCI has been a pioneer in running "independent" expenditure campaigns by so–called 527 groups, precisely the kind of operations that McCain, in his battle for campaign-finance reform, has denounced. . .

Ironically, Goodyear was chosen for the post after the McCain campaign nixed another candidate, Paul Manafort, who runs a lobbying firm with McCain's campaign manager, Rick Davis. The prospect of choosing Manafort created anxiety in the campaign because of his long history of representing controversial foreign clients, including Philippine dictator Ferdinand Marcos. More recently, he served as chief political consultant to Viktor Yanukovich, the former Ukrainian prime minister who has been widely criticized for alleged corruption and for his close ties to

Russia

's Vladimir Putin-a potential embarrassment for McCain, who in 2007 called Putin a "totalitarian dictator."

ANTI-BLACK SECRET SERVICE E-MAILS DISCOVERED IN COURT CASE

2008-05-11T12:08:00.001-04:00

DAVID JOHNSTON, NY TIMES Secret Service supervisors shared crude sexual jokes and engaged in racially derogatory banter about blacks, and passed around an anecdote about a possible assassination of the Rev. Jesse Jackson, according to internal e-mail disclosed in a federal court filing by lawyers for black Secret Service agents.

The filing includes 10 e-mail messages that were among documents the agency recently turned over to lawyers for the black agents as part of an increasingly bitter discrimination lawsuit. The messages were written mainly from 2003 through 2005, and were sent to and from e-mail accounts of at least 20 Secret Service supervisors. . .

In some of the court documents, the senders of the e-mail messages are identified only by the jobs they currently occupy and the rank they held when the messages were sent. For example, an Oct. 9, 2003, message referring to a "Harlem Spelling Bee,” ridiculing black slang, was sent by Thomas Grupski, then assistant director for protective operations, who, according to the filing, now heads the Office of Government Liaison and Public Affairs.

A March 3, 2003, message describing Mr. Jackson as the "Righteous Reverend” was passed among several Secret Service supervisors. The message, about a missile striking an airplane in which Mr. Jackson and his wife were traveling, concludes, it "certainly wouldn’t be a great loss and it probably wouldn’t be an accident either." . . .

The lawsuit, which has dragged on through years of litigation, was filed in 2000 by 10 black agents who charged that they were unfairly denied promotions. The agency employs about 3,200 agents, about 10 percent of whom are black.

WHEN CAMPAIGN REPORTERS STILL TOLD IT LIKE IT WAS

2008-05-10T14:08:00.000-04:00

I rise to pay my small tribute to Dr. [Warren] Harding. Setting aside a college professor or two and a half dozen dipsomaniacal newspaper reporters, he takes the first place in my Valhalla of literati. That is to say, he writes the worst English that I have ever encountered. It reminds me of a string of wet sponges; it reminds me of tattered washing on the line; it reminds me of stale bean soup, of college yells, of dogs barking idiotically through endless nights. It is so bad that a sort of grandeur creeps into it. It drags itself out of the dark abysm of pish, and crawls insanely up to the topmost pinnacle of posh. It is rumble and bumble. It is flap and doodle. It is balder and dash. - HL Mencken

THE DIFFERENCE BETWEEN LIBERAL AND CONSERVATIVE POPULISM

2008-05-10T13:45:00.001-04:00

JONATHAN CHAIT THE NEW REPUBLIC Conservative populism and liberal populism are entirely different things. Liberal populism posits that the rich wield disproportionate influence over the government and push for policies often at odds with most people's interest. Conservative populism, by contrast, dismisses any inference that the rich and the non-rich might have opposing interests as "class warfare." Conservative populism prefers to divide society along social lines, with the elites being intellectuals and other snobs who fancy themselves better than average Americans.

Consider this analysis recently offered by Bill Clinton in Clarksburg, West Virginia: "The great divide in this country is not by race or even income, it's by those who think they are better than everyone else and think they should play by a different set of rules." This is precisely the dynamic that allows multimillionaires like George W. Bush and Bill O'Reilly to present themselves as being on the side of the little guy. A more classic expression of conservative populism cannot be found. . .

Likewise, Bill Clinton recently declared, "The people in small towns in rural America, who do the work for America, and represent the backbone and the values of this country, they are the people that are carrying her through in this nomination." The corollary--that strong values and hard work is in shorter supply among ethnically heterogeneous urban residents--is left unstated. Hillary Clinton's statement about "hard- working Americans, white Americans" simply made explicit a theme that conservative populists usually keep implicit.

Liberal populism is mostly harnessed to a concrete legislative program aimed at broadening prosperity. Al Gore's "people versus the powerful" campaign focused on his differences with Bush over issues like regulation of HMOs and progressive taxation. Conservative populism, by contrast, is a way of exploiting the grievances it identifies without redressing them. It has an ever- shifting array of targets--Michael Dukakis's veto of a law requiring students to recite the Pledge of Allegiance, or the rantings of Jeremiah Wright--but no way to knock them down.

Conservative populists sometimes ape liberal populism by promising material benefits to average people. But the promise is structured so as to pose no threat to any wealthy economic interest. George W. Bush offered tax cuts to the middle class, but paired them with far larger tax cuts for the rich, so that, ultimately, the middle class bore a larger proportion of the tax burden.

Hillary Clinton's embrace of the gas tax holiday is a miniature example of the same pattern. Her plan, which rests upon the political principle that high gasoline prices are unacceptable and that the federal gas tax is a burden on hard-pressed Americans, is highly congenial to the interests of oil companies. Yet she presents it as an assault on Big Oil, much as Bush presented his tax cuts as a way to force the rich to pay a higher share of the burden of government. . .

The liberal populist sees politics as a series of quantifiable trade-offs between competing interests. The conservative populist offers an appeal that can't be quantified: Who shares your values? Who is more manly? (James Carville: "If she gave him one of her cojones, they'd both have two.")

MAJOR MEDIA STILL HIDING DIRT ON HILLARY CLINTON

2008-05-09T16:53:00.000-04:00

RICHARD PRINCE, JOURNAL-ISMS Clinton told USA Today, "I have a much broader base to build a winning coalition on." As evidence, the story said, Clinton cited an Associated Press article "that found how Sen. Obama's support among working, hard-working Americans, white Americans, is weakening again, and how whites in both states who had not completed college were supporting me."

While bloggers, some columnists and editorial writers and some readers jumped on the comments, stories in the mainstream media downplayed them. . .

Even USA Today, to whom Clinton uttered the comment as a response to a general question about her campaign, broke the story under a bland Web site headline, "Clinton makes case for wide appeal."

An Associated Press story by Beth Fouhy seemingly attempted to validate Clinton's comments and to marginalize those who found them offensive. . .

CNN's "Situation Room" and the "NBC Nightly News with Brian Williams" both interviewed Obama but did not ask him about Clinton's "white Americans' comment. If it made the network evening news shows, it was reported routinely.

THAT'S NOT THE ONLY STORY about Clinton the major media has concealed of late. A full day after Jerry Seper's major scoop about documents from former Whitewater prosecution aide Samuel Dash's estate providing more evidence of Hillary Clinton's dishonesty, a Google search failed to come up with a single major media story on the topic. There were 62,839 stories in that period that mentioned Clinton but not one about the revelations concerning Whitewater and Webster Hubbell

THE CLINTON DIVORCE

2008-05-09T16:47:00.000-04:00

WALL STREET JOURNAL No, we don't mean Bill and Hillary. We mean the separation now under way between the Clintons and the Democratic Party. Like all divorces after lengthy unions, this one is painful and has had its moments of reconciliation, but after Tuesday a split looks inevitable. The long co-dependency is over.

Truth be told, this was always a marriage more of convenience than love. The party's progressives never did like Bill Clinton's New Democrat ways, but after Walter Mondale and Michael Dukakis they needed his epic political gifts to win back the White House. They hated him for their loss of Congress in 1994, but they tolerated Dick Morris and welfare reform to keep the presidency in 1996.

The price was that they had to put their ethics in a blind Clinton trust. Whitewater and the missing billing records, Webb Hubbell, cattle futures and "Red" Bone, the Lincoln Bedroom, Johnny Chung and the overseas fund-raising scandals, Paula Jones and lying under oath, Monica and the meaning of "is." Democrats, or all of them this side of Joe Lieberman and Pat Moynihan, defended the Clintons through it all. Everything was dismissed as a product of the "Republican attack machine," an invention of the "Clinton haters," or "just about sex.". . .

Then something astonishing happened. A new star emerged in Barack Obama. . . Democrats supporting Mr. Obama had a revelation about Clintonian mores. David Geffen, channeling William Safire, declared that "everybody in politics lies," but the Clintons "do it with such ease, it's troubling." Ted Kennedy was shocked to see the Clintons play the race card in South Carolina. The media discovered their secrecy over tax records and Clinton Foundation donors. . .

By the time Mrs. Clinton made her famous claim about dodging Bosnian sniper fire, Democrats and their media friends no longer called it a mere gaffe, as they once might have. This time the remark was said to be emblematic of her entire political career. The same folks who had believed her about Whitewater and the rest now claimed she never tells the truth about anything.

As the scales suddenly fell from liberal eyes, the most striking statistic was the one in this week's North Carolina exit poll. Asked if they considered Mrs. Clinton "honest and trustworthy," no fewer than 50% of Democratic primary voters said she was not. In Indiana, the figure was merely 45%.

Slowly but surely, these Prisoners of Bill and Hill are now walking away, urging Mrs. Clinton to leave the race. Chuck Schumer damns her with faint support by saying any decision is up to her. Columnists from the New York Times, which endorsed her when she looked inevitable, now demand that she exit so as not to help John McCain. With Mr. Obama to ride, they no longer need the Arkansas interlopers.

If the Clintons play to their historic form, they will ignore all this for as long as they can. . . The difference between now and the 1990s, however, is that this time the Clinton foes aren't the "vast right-wing conspiracy." This time the conspirators are fellow Democrats. It took 10 years, but you might say Democrats have finally voted to impeach. \

PAPERS OF TOP WHITEWATER INVESTIGATION AIDE SUGGEST MAJOR HILLARY CLINTON LYING, POSSIBLE HUSH MONEY FOR WEBSTER HUBBELL

2008-05-08T16:58:00.001-04:00

Another scoop from Jerry Seper of the Washington Times, one of the best reporters on the Clinton scandal stories. The papers confirm a number of items reported by the Progressive Review including the apparent hush money for Webster Hubbell

JERRY SEPER, WASHINGTON TIMES A decade before Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton admitted fudging the truth during the presidential campaign, federal prosecutors quietly assembled hundreds of pages of evidence suggesting she concealed information and misled a federal grand jury about her work for a failing Arkansas savings and loan at the heart of the Whitewater probe, according to once-secret documents that detail the internal debates over whether she should have faced criminal charges.

Ordinarily, such files containing grand jury evidence and prosecutors' deliberations are never made public. But the estate of Sam Dash, a lifelong Democrat who served as the ethics adviser to Whitewater Independent Counsel Kenneth W. Starr, donated his documents from the infamous 1990s investigation to the Library of Congress after his 2004 death, unwittingly injecting into the public domain much of the testimony and evidence gathered against Mrs. Clinton from former law partners, White House aides and other witnesses.

The documents, reviewed by The Washington Times, identify numerous instances in which prosecutors questioned Mrs. Clinton's honesty. . .

For instance, the papers say prosecutors thought Mrs. Clinton first concealed her legal representation of Madison Guaranty Savings and Loan Association - and the money she made doing it - during the 1992 presidential campaign when she and her husband, then-Arkansas Gov. Bill Clinton, came under fire in a questionable Arkansas real estate project known as Whitewater.

Beginning in March 1992 and continuing over the next several years, Mrs. Clinton steadfastly denied that she ever "earned a penny" in representing her Rose Law Firm clients, including the failing thrift's owners, James and Susan McDougal - the Clintons' partners in the Whitewater Development Corp. project.

But the newly discovered records, more than 1,100 pages in 30 separate documents, tell a different story.

A June 1998 draft indictment of Mrs. Clinton's Rose firm partner Webster L. Hubbell, who followed the Clintons to Washington in 1993 as associate attorney general, said Mrs. Clinton did legal work for Madison "continuously" from April 1985 to July 1986. It also said she represented the thrift before the Arkansas Securities Department for approval to issue preferred stock, helped Madison obtain a questionable broker-dealer license to sell the stock and was actively involved in a failed Madison project known as Castle Grande.

The draft indictment clearly asserts that Mrs. Clinton, despite her denials, represented Madison and its projects "in a series of real estate and financial transactions." A separate 183-page report included in the Dash documents said Mr. Hubbell and Mrs. Clinton "concealed from federal investigators the true nature of their work" with Madison and its various entities.

Clinton campaign spokesman Jay Carson disputed the allegations. "This is a baseless accusation which was looked into over a decade ago in an investigation that took $71.5 million and eight years to determine there was no case," he said. . .

In April 1998, Whitewater prosecutors, divided over Mrs. Clinton's truthfulness, argued over whether to indict her on charges of lying under oath about her legal work for Madison. Lawyers and others close to the probe said a draft indictment of the first lady became "a work in progress" after Mrs. Clinton's January 1996 grand jury appearance in U.S. District Court in Washington.

Prosecutors concluded at the time, the sources said, that she had testified falsely in denying doing legal work in the Castle Grande venture.

"There is concern among some about how successful they might be in bringing a criminal indictment against Mrs. Clinton for obvious reasons, but there is no lack of desire to do so," one lawyer familiar with the probe said at the time. The lawyer said the decision rested on two major points: whether there was sufficient evidence to contradict her sworn testimony and, more importantly, whether prosecutors could win the case in court.

No indictment was sought, but Whitewater prosecutors noted at the time, according to the Dash documents, that sworn statements by Mrs. Clinton were contradictory and misleading and that her involvement with Madison"s failed real estate project known as Castle Grande project was only fully detailed with the discovery of her Rose firm billing record summaries in the White House living quarters in January 1996 - two years after they had been subpoenaed.

A week before the summaries were found, the Resolution Trust Corp. said in a Dec. 28, 1995, report it had little information on Mrs. Clinton's ties to Madison or Castle Grande. After their discovery, the agency concluded Mrs. Clinton was more involved with the two entities than was previously known.

The summaries said Mrs. Clinton billed Madison for 60 hours of legal work, spoke with Madison officials about the Castle Grande project on 14 occasions, discussed legal matters with Madison's owners - the McDougals - 16 times, had 28 meetings with Rose firm lawyers on Madison, and met with state regulators about Madison at least twice.

At the time, Madison was seeking help from Mrs. Clinton's Rose Law Firm in Little Rock to fend off state and federal regulators concerned that the thrift was insolvent. Madison also wanted to jump-start a questionable preferred stock deal to pump much-needed cash into the operation and was desperate to keep the government from shutting it down. . .

In a report titled "Hubbell Hush Money Summary," Whitewater investigators said that a day before Mr. Hubbell quit, Mrs. Clinton and other top administration officials met privately at the White House to arrange for him to receive hundreds of thousands of dollars in consulting fees at a time his cooperation in the Whitewater probe could have resulted in charges against the then-first lady.

The records said Mrs. Clinton took an active role in White House efforts to "take care of" Mr. Hubbell financially, helping to locate campaign supporters who divvied up more than $450,000 over the next nine months mostly for consulting work he never did. . .

Mr. Hubbell pleaded guilty in December 1994 to mail fraud and income-tax evasion in the theft of $482,410 from his Rose firm clients and partners and failing to pay $143,747 in taxes. He was sentenced to 21 months in prison, serving 16 before being released.

The Whitewater probe ended on March 21, 2002, when Independent Counsel Robert W. Ray, who succeeded Mr. Starr, concluded in a final report there was "insufficient evidence" to bring charges against the Clintons. But the report also said statements by the Clintons to investigators were "factually inaccurate" and that White House delays in the production of evidence and the "unmeritorious litigation" by its lawyers "severely impeded the investigation's progress."

MAKING IT EASIER TO FIND RON PAUL SUPPORTERS

2008-05-08T16:40:00.000-04:00

PAULVILLE The goal of Paulville is to establish gated communities containing 100% Ron Paul supporters and or people that live by the ideals of freedom and liberty. The process is forming a co-op of people buying shares in the community and these people would be granted land use at a minimum of 1 acre per share, for as long as they homesteaded the land. The community would be privately held by the co-op to establish private property for the general community thus preserving the community is 100% freedom and liberty lovers. The community votes on all community efforts, such as utilities etc. However no one is forced to consume these utilities and or pay for them, AKA people can be off grid on their share of land. This is in line with the ideals that you're free to live your life the way you want and not be forced to do or pay for other people's life styles you may not agree with. These communities are not for the faint at heard they will start as undeveloped land in non city locals, as this is the way to secure large tracts of land needed for these efforts.

However the goal is a minimal financial outlay of around $500 per share to establish this community.

DON'T CRY FOR ME, ARKANSAS

2008-05-07T16:37:00.001-04:00

Nostalgic moments from the Clinton years

NY POST, 2001 Ties between the pardoned and the pardoner:

Linda Medlar Jones: fraud and obstruction of justice in Cisneros case. Was Cisneros' lover

Roger Clinton: conspiracy to distribute cocaine. Bill's half–brother

Tom Bhakta: tax evasion. His family gave $5,000 to Hillary's campaign Outcome: Pardoned

Almon Glenn Braswell: Vitamin peddler convicted of mail fraud and perjury. Hillary's brother Hugh Rodham lobbied for pardon.

Carlos Vignali Offense: cocaine trafficking. Hugh Rodham lobbied for him

John Bustamante: fraudulently obtaining a loan and stealing from a woman's estate. Former adviser to Clinton friend Jesse Jackson

Melvin Reynolds: bank fraud and having sex with underage staffer. Jesse Jackson asked Clinton for commutation.

Henry Cisneros: lying in independent counsel probe. Served in Bill Clinton's Cabinet

Dorothy Rivers Offense: Embezzled federal aid for homeless children. Jesse Jackson associate.

John Deutch: security violations. Served Bill Clinton at CIA

Robert Clinton Fain and James Lowell Manning: tax charges. William Cunningham, Hillary's Senate campaign treasurer, acted as their lawyer.

Susan McDougal: fraud in Whitewater scandal; refusal to testify against Bill Clinton. Longtime friend and Whitewater partner of the Clintons.

Edward R. Downe Jr.: securities fraud. Hillary donor.

Alvarez Ferrouillet laundering money to cover loan for congressional campaign of Mike Espy's brother. Espy was Clinton's agriculture secretary; petition was pushed by Clinton pal Terry McAuliffe

Ronald H. Blackley: Former Espy chief–of–staff convicted of making false statements related to Espy probe. Espy asked for clemency 27–month sentence commuted along with those of four others convicted of lesser charges in Espy probe

Arnold Paul Prosperi: Convicted in 1997 of filing false tax returns and using fake bank records to hide embezzlement. College buddy of Clinton.

Peg Bargon: Possessing eagle feather that her son found in a zoo. She gave feather to Hillary Clinton.

Charles D. Ravenel: bank–fraud conspiracy. Clinton friend since 1980.

Richard Riley Jr.: federal drug charges. Son of Clinton's education secretary.

Stephen A. Smith and Robert Palmer: charges related to Whitewater. Smith was former Clinton aide; Palmer worked as appraiser on Whitewater.

Christopher V. Wade: Whitewater bankruptcy fraud. One of the original developers of Clintons' Whitewater.

Marc Rich: 50 felony counts, including tax evasion of $48 million. Former Clinton counsel Jack Quinn urged Bill Clinton to grant pardon; ex–wife, Denise, a major Clinton donor

John Fife Symington III: false statements to obtain loans. Longtime Clinton friend; once saved Bill's life in boating mishap.

Harvey Weinig: Helped launder at least $19 million for drug cartel. A relative, former White House aide David Dreyer, asked Clinton confidants for clemency.

DON'T CRY FOR ME, ARKANSAS

2008-05-06T13:31:00.001-04:00

Nostalgic moments from the Clinton years

JACQUELINE TRESCOTT, WASHINGTON POST: In an unheard–of last–minute gambit, Ronald I. Dozoretz resigned from the Kennedy Center board and then was reappointed to it last month by President Clinton. The maneuver by the outgoing president gives Dozoretz an additional four years in a post considered one of the choicest plums of Washington art and social circles. Dozoretz is a friend of the Clintons and has given thousands of dollars to Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton's Senate campaign and other Democratic Party organizations.

OUTLYING PRECINCTS

2008-05-05T15:28:00.001-04:00

OUTLYING PRECINCTS

Julia Silverman, AP, Portland Or - Tony Marino, a Republican newcomer who is trying to capture a legislative seat in Tigard. . . introduced himself to voters via a letter to constituents that outlines the mea culpas of his life, including bankruptcy and a run-in with the IRS, five divorces and a PhD from an online university that's not accredited in Oregon. Oh yeah, and his first mailer features Marino and his young daughter on a Harley, neither of them wearing a helmet. (Though a notation underneath notes that the photo was taken in a studio, and that "all smart motorcyclists wear helmets." Oregon law requires motorcycle riders to wear helmets.) Marino's campaign slogan is "Politics Unusual."

But how could not vote for the guy after you've seen his video?

Conservative columnist Mark Steyn gets uncomfortably close to the problem with Obama: "The notion that the Amazing Obama might be just another politician doing what politicians do seems to have affronted the senator more than any of the stuff about

America

being no different from al-Qaida and the government inventing AIDS to kill black people. In his belated 'disowning' of Wright, Obama said, 'What I think particularly angered me was his suggestion somehow that my previous denunciation of his remarks were somehow political posturing. Anybody who knows me and anybody who knows what I'm about knows that that I am about trying to bridge gaps and that I see the the commonality in all people.'. . . As he chugged on, the senator couldn't find his groove and couldn't prevent himself from returning to pick at the same old bone: 'If what somebody says contradicts what you believe so fundamentally, and then he questions whether or not you believe it in front of the National Press Club, then that's enough. That's that's a show of disrespect to me.' And we can't have that, can we? In a shrewd analysis of Obama's peculiarly petty objections to the Rev. Wright, Scott Johnson of the Powerline Web site remarked on the senator's 'adolescent grandiosity.' There's always been a whiff of that. When he tells his doting fans, 'We are the change we've been waiting for,' he means, of course, he is the change we've been waiting for."

DON'T CRY FOR ME, ARKANSAS

2008-05-05T14:41:00.001-04:00

Nostalgic moments from the Clinton years

PROGRESSIVE REVIEW 1999 - As a White House appointee, AIDS czar Sandy Thurman has reconciled the president's sex scandal with her job to preach safe sex. She insists lives are being saved as a result of Clinton's behavior. "It has forced us to open the door to conversations with our children about sexuality and responsible behavior. Children are driving the dialogue. They're asking questions we have to answer."

MCCAIN'S OWN BILL AYERS

2008-05-05T14:26:00.001-04:00

STEVE CHAPMAN, CHICAGO TRIBUNE Obama has been justly criticized for his ties to former Weather Underground member Bill Ayers, who in 1995 hosted a campaign event for Obama and in 2001 gave him a $200 contribution. The two have also served together on the board of a foundation. When their connection became known, McCain minced no words: "I think not only a repudiation but an apology for ever having anything to do with an unrepentant terrorist is due the American people."

What McCain didn't mention is that he has his own Bill Ayers-in the form of G. Gordon Liddy. Now a conservative radio talk-show host, Liddy spent more than 4 years in prison for his role in the 1972 Watergate burglary. That was just one element of what Liddy did, and proposed to do, in a secret White House effort to subvert the Constitution. Far from repudiating him, McCain has embraced him.

How close are McCain and Liddy? At least as close as Obama and Ayers appear to be. In 1998, Liddy's home was the site of a McCain fundraiser. Over the years, he has made at least four contributions totaling $5,000 to the senator's campaigns-including $1,000 this year.

Last November, McCain went on his radio show. Liddy greeted him as "an old friend," and McCain sounded like one. "I'm proud of you, I'm proud of your family," he gushed. "It's always a pleasure for me to come on your program, Gordon, and congratulations on your continued success and adherence to the principles and philosophies that keep our nation great."

Which principles would those be? The ones that told Liddy it was fine to break into the office of the Democratic National Committee to plant bugs and photograph documents? The ones that made him propose to kidnap anti-war activists so they couldn't disrupt the 1972 Republican National Convention? The ones that inspired him to plan the murder (never carried out) of an unfriendly newspaper columnist?

Liddy was in the thick of the biggest political scandal in American history-and one of the greatest threats to the rule of law. He has said he has no regrets about what he did, insisting that he went to jail as "a prisoner of war."

All this may sound like ancient history. But it's from the same era as the bombings Ayers helped carry out as a member of the Weather Underground. And Liddy's penchant for extreme solutions has not abated. . .

Given Liddy's record, it's hard to see why McCain would touch him with a 10-foot pole. On the contrary, he should be returning his donations and shunning his show. Yet the senator shows no qualms about associating with Liddy-or celebrating his service to their common cause.

How does McCain explain his howling hypocrisy on the subject? He doesn't. I made repeated inquiries to his campaign aides, which they refused to acknowledge, much less answer. On this topic, the pilot of the Straight Talk Express would rather stay parked in the garage.

HONORED VET ONE OF FIRST VICTIMS OF VOTER ID

2008-05-05T13:02:00.001-04:00

NUVO - Russell Baughman, 61, has fought in three conflicts as a part of the United States Army. He was on the front lines in Vietnam in March of 1967 during a battle that has since become known as "the bloodiest week." He was sent to Panama shortly after the 1989 U.S. invasion as part of a security maintenance force. And he spent six months in the deserts of Saudi Arabia and Kuwait during the Gulf War in the early '90s.

His military discharge papers feature a paragraph's worth of honors and awards, like the national defense service medal, the Vietnam service medal with two bronze service stars, the combat/infantry badge and a purple heart for being wounded during combat.

So when Baughman arrived at his polling place at precinct 52 in Lawrence [IN] March 11 for the special election, he wasn't expecting to have a problem voting in the country he had defended.

But since Indiana passed its new Voter ID law, which requires every voter to have a valid, government-issued photo ID, Baughman's identification was no longer good enough.

He had with him his expired driver's license (he rides a bicycle), his Department of Veterans Affairs card (featuring his purple heart endorsement) and, of all things, his voter's registration card.

But Baughman was told that neither of his photo IDs were valid. His driver's license didn't count because it was expired and his Veterans Affairs card didn't count because it didn't feature any expiration date at all.

"I've been on the voting rolls since 1968," Baughman said, "and all of a sudden they expect my identity to change. There was no change."

WHY IS THE MEDIA CONCEALING HILLARY CLINTON'S RIGHT WING RELIGIOUS TIES?

2008-05-05T12:25:00.000-04:00

Thanks to alternative media coverage - including that of the Progressive Review - there has been a slight increase in corporate press coverage of John McCain's ties to extremist Christian evangelist John Hagee. But even conventional liberals like Bill Moyers and EJ Dionne, while finally citing the McCain-Hagee connection, still refuse to delve into Hillary Clinton's ties to The Fellowship, a secret rightwing religious group involving a number of Washington big names like herself.

The story has been well documented by such publications as Harper's, the Los Angeles Times and Mother Jones. And it's not a new tale, but it's one the Washington media runs away from, in part because it might wreck the journalists' comfortably servile relationship with some of their sources - with the Clintons near the top of the list.

It's Washington journalism at its worst, the sort of politician-pet relationship that led the media to so badly mislead the public about the Iraq war and, for that matter, many other crucial facts about the Clintons. To this day, for example, the media is tough on Barack Obama's Tony Resko relationship but doesn't mention Hillary Clinton's much deeper relationship with Webster Hubbell.

As we noted about a week ago, the two big exceptions to the media cover up of The Fellowship are

Andrea Mitchell and Jim Popkin of NBC, who reported:

"In his preaching, [Fellowship leader Douglas] Coe repeatedly urges a personal commitment to Jesus Christ. It's a commitment Coe compares to the blind devotion that Adolph Hitler demanded from his followers -- a rhetorical technique that now is drawing sharp criticism.

"'Hitler, Goebbels and Himmler were three men. Think of the immense power these three men had, these nobodies from nowhere," Coe said.

"Later in the sermon, Coe said: "Jesus said, You have to put me before other people. And you have to put me before yourself.' Hitler, that was the demand to be in the Nazi party. You have to put the Nazi party and its objectives ahead of your own life and ahead of other people."

Coe also quoted Jesus and said: "One of the things [Jesus] said is 'If any man comes to me and does not hate his father, mother, brother, sister, his own life, he can't be a disciple.' So I don't care what other qualifications you have, if you don't do that you can't be a disciple of Christ."

The sermons are little surprise to writer Jeff Sharlet. He lived among Coe's followers six years ago, and came out troubled by their secrecy and rhetoric.

"'We were being taught the leadership lessons of Hitler, Lenin and Mao. And I would say, 'Isn't there a problem with that?' And they seemed perplexed by the question. Hitler's genocide wasn't really an issue for them. It was the strength that he emulated," said Sharlet. . . 'They're notoriously secretive,' Sharlet said. 'In fact, they jokingly call themselves the Christian Mafia. Which becomes less of a joke when you realize that they really are dedicated to being what they call an invisible organization.'"

SOURCE WATCH The Fellowship, headquartered in Washington D.C., is a humanitarian religious-right Christian organization about which very little is known. Their signature event is the annual National Prayer Breakfast but that is only a small part of their activities. They are heavily involved in the political culture of Washington, counting at least a dozen Senators and Congressman as known members. The group has also gone by the names Family, Foundation, C Street Center, and International Christian Leadership. An article published in the March 2003 issue of Harper's entitled "Jesus Plus Nothing" by Jeffrey Sharlet provides an excellent exposition; however, Sharlet infiltrated only at the lowest level and so his article is woefully short of details concerning the organization, its mission, or who runs it.

In a June 12, 2003, followup interview by Anthony Lappé for Guerrilla News Network, Jeffrey Sharlet declares that the group's goal and aspiration are "an 'invisible' world organization led by Christ"; and that in his view, their "core issue is capitalism and power."

In 1972, The Fellowship was reorganized to be even more clandestine, shedding the overhead of a typical high-profile nonprofit so that it was essentially little more than a holding company disbursing cash to dozens of ministries beneath it. By 1985, The Fellowship had 150 individual ministries beneath it. This model continues to this day with countless ministries coming into and going out of existence depending upon the current needs of the organization and the initiatives it wishes to fund. As Sharlet writes in his Harper's piece, The Foundation believes that its mobile "cell" structure, which it likens to those organized by Lenin, Bin Laden, and Hitler, makes it far more efficient than a hierarchical organization. And just like Enron's many shell corporations, their cell structure has the additional advantage of being able to move money around very quickly and in a way that makes it difficult to track or audit. . .

Those in the Fellowship who are asked about their role either deny its existence or politely refuse to answer questions about it. All have taken a vow of silence not to speak about The Fellowship.

GREAT MOMENTS IN CLINTON CAMPAIGNING

2008-05-04T11:56:00.001-04:00

Bill Clinton in New Hampshire: "Folks, it's always a mistake to bet against America. It was tough in 1968, and we came back. It was tough in 1992 and we wound up with the eight best years we've had in modern history."

That is if you don't count the following, all of which got worse

1920s like decline in the over the counter stock market

Minimum wage as % of average wage

Real income

Real manufacturing wages

Income gap between rich and poor

Bottom 40% decline in wealth

Foreign debt as a percent of GDP

Workers covered by defined benefit pensions

Personal bankruptcies

Housing foreclosures

Poverty rate

U.S. auto industry relative to foreign car makers

Number of persons in prisons

Drug induced deaths despite drug war

Civil liberties lost as result of drug war

Increase in black work hours for same pay

Black families net worth

Health care benefit with pension

Number of families without health insurance

% of corporations with employee health benefits

Premature & low birthrate babies

Childhood obesity

Depression

Health expenditures as percent of GDP

Decline in public hospitals

Number of corporations controlling most media

Births to unwed mothers

Student loan debt

Per capita new spending on prisons vs. schools

High school completion rate

College completion rate

Democratic margins in House

Voters who describe themselves as Democrats

Decline in voting participation

Decline in 18-24 voting participation

What farmers got for their products

Wages of recent male high school grad

Wages of bottom ten percent of workers

Total hours worked per family

% of workers with defined benefits pension plan

Solid waste per American per day

DETAILS

RECESSION PUNCHES HOLES IN DEMOCRATIC CANDIDATES' HEALTH PLANS

2008-05-04T11:08:00.000-04:00

NY TIMES - The economic slowdown has swelled the ranks of people without health insurance. But now it is also threatening millions of people who have insurance but find that the coverage is too limited or that they cannot afford their own share of medical costs. . .

Many of the 158 million people covered by employer health insurance are struggling to meet medical expenses that are much higher than they used to be - often because of some combination of higher premiums, less extensive coverage, and bigger out-of-pocket deductibles and co-payments.

With medical costs soaring, the coverage many people have may not adequately protect them from the financial shock of an emergency room visit or a major surgery. For some, even routine doctor visits might now take a back seat to basic expenses like food and gasoline. . .

Already, many doctors say, the soft economy is making some insured people hesitant to get care they need, reluctant to spend a $50 co-payment for an office visit. Parents "are waiting longer to bring in their children,” said Dr. Richard Lander, a pediatrician in Livingston, N.J. "They say, ‘The kid isn't that sick; her temperature is only 102.'”. . .

Since the recession of 2001, the employee's average cost of an annual health care premium for family coverage has nearly doubled - to $3,300, up from $1,800 - while incomes have come nowhere close to keeping up. Factor in other out-of-pocket medical costs, and the portion of the average American household's income that goes toward health care has risen about 12 percent, according to the consulting and accounting firm Deloitte, and is now approaching one-fifth of the average household's spending.

In a recent survey by Deloitte's health research center, only 7 percent of people said they felt financially prepared for their future health care needs. . .

More companies may see themselves as having little choice but to require employees to pay even more of their health expenses, said Ted Nussbaum, a benefits consultant at the firm Watson Wyatt Worldwide. And when a weak economy undermines job security, he said, workers may simply have to accept reduced benefits. . .

CLINTONISTAS TRY TO PAINT OBAMA AS ANTI-JEWISH

2008-05-02T15:51:00.001-04:00

RICHARD SILVERSTEIN, TIKUN OLAM In the Jewish community, the mud [against Obama] has been slung fast and furiously for months now. The latest comes from a major leader in the Los Angeles Jewish community who is a Clinton "bundler" (in the words of Variety's political blog), Daphna Ziman. She attended a fundraising event addressed by the local director of the Southern Christian Leadership Conference (and also a black minister). Ziman accused the minister of blaming Jews for the negative portrayal of blacks in Hollywood films. In a subsequent e-mail sent to 50,000 of her "closest" Jewish confidants by way of the mailing list of the pro-Israel group, Stand With Us, Ziman called him an anti-Semite and linked him to Rev. Wright. In a separate e-mail, she claimed that Obama's "movement is out to destroy us [Jews]." This incident was further amplified by the right-wing online news outlet, Pajamas Media and the Republican Jewish Coalition. Clinton's campaign hasn't said a word about Ziman's outburst (which wasn't the first time she expressed what I call Jewish Obamaphobia). When the Clinton campaign winks at such hysteria, aided and abetted by Republican groups and conservative media outlets, it makes you wonder just whose side is she on (and just who is on her side)?

WHY LIBERALS DON'T WIN ELECTIONS

2008-05-02T15:29:00.002-04:00

POLITICO The nation's top Democrats are suddenly rushing to appear on the Fox News Channel, which they once had shunned as enemy territory as the nemesis of liberal bloggers. The detente with Fox has provoked a backlash from progressive bloggers, who contend the party's leaders are turning their backs on the base - and lending credibility and legitimacy to the network liberals love to hate - in a quest for a few swing votes. In a span of eight days, Sen. Barack Obama (D-Ill.), Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton (D-NY.) and Democratic National Committee Chairman Howard Dean are all taking their seats with the network that calls itself "fair and balanced" but is widely viewed as skewing conservative. Markos Moulitsas, founder of the leading liberal site Daily Kos, told Politico's Michael Calderone: "Democrats are being idiotic by going on that network." Ari Melber, the Net movement correspondent for The Nation, told Politico by phone that progressive activists and the Netroots are "not happy about it."

SAM SMITH: A more useful approach, albeit alien to the contemporary liberal mind, is that politics is about convincing other people and not merely associating with those with whom you agree. As Brazilian Archbishop Helder Pessoa Camara once put it:

"Let no one be scandalized if I frequent those who are considered unworthy or sinful. Who is not a sinner? Let no one be alarmed if I am seen with compromised and dangerous people, on the left or the right. Let no one bind me to a group. My door, my heart, must open to everyone, absolutely everyone."

I have made it practice, and encourage others, to engage cordially with the other side. It's how you actually win votes. Far from everyone who watches Fox has the same perspective as Bill O'Reilly, In fact, in my one appearance on the O'Reilly show I didn't do all that badly. According to my post-show analysis, I managed 104 more words than O'Reilly and was actually allowed two answers of 78 and 84 words. I was restricted to five or less words in only 31.11% of my replies.

GREAT MOMENTS IN LAW ENFORCEMENT

2008-05-02T14:50:00.001-04:00

THE COLUMBUS DISPATCH Timothy E. Caudill, 21, could lose his probation over the infraction at a community corrections program. He slept through a fire drill, had loose tobacco in his possession and didn't show up for kitchen duty.Then Timothy E. Caudill shared a Little Debbie snack cake with another inmate at a correctional facility in southeastern Ohio. That was the last straw.

The 21-year-old was kicked out of the residential community corrections program that was a requirement of his probation. And he could go to prison. That is absurd, said Caudill's attorney, Claire "Buzz" Ball. "Everybody talks about prison overcrowding. My God, you have to send some guy to prison for sharing a snack?" Ball said.

Vinton County Prosecutor Timothy P. Gleeson has asked Common Pleas Judge Jeffrey Simmons to revoke Caudill's probation and put him in prison. . . The prosecutor wants Caudill put in prison for nine months. With credit for 105 days served at the SEPTA Correctional Facility, he would serve nearly six more months. . .

"My God, over a 50-cent cake, the state would spend $12,600 for six months," Ball said.

Caudill bought the Little Debbie from the vending machine and then knowingly shared it with a fellow inmate who was on restriction and wasn't allowed access to the vending-machine snacks, said Bob Eaton, operations manager at SEPTA. Caudill was kicked out the next day.

"Admittedly, some of the rules seem a little strange, but the guys come to us because they made bad choices," he said.

Caudill racked up a string of about eight misdemeanor offenses before breaking into Krazy Katie's and getting his first felony conviction, Gleeson said, and his behavior at SEPTA shows that he still fails to follow the rules.

"It's more complicated than a Little Debbie snack cake," he said.

Caudill said he bought a Little Debbie Oatmeal Creme Pie to share with someone who was allowed snack privileges, but a "boy who was always messing with" Caudill and was restricted from snacks swiped part of it.

"I don't think I deserve prison time," Caudill said. "Maybe 30 days (in jail) and extended probation."

MCCAIN'S HEALTH PLAN: FOLLOW THE BOUNCING SEMANTICS

2008-05-02T14:22:00.001-04:00

TRUDY LIEBERMAN, COLUMBIA JOURNALISM REVIEW John McCain finally came forth this week with what his campaign dubbed a major policy speech, laying out his to do list for health care reform. . . Let's start with McCain's overarching reform-altering the tax code to begin weaning the public off of employer-provided health coverage, currently the bedrock of the U.S. health insurance system. His plan would give workers the option of leaving their employers' plans and getting a federal tax credit-$2500 for individuals and $5000 for families-to buy their own insurance in the commercial market. Leaving aside the merits of a plan that could eventually lead to the demise of our employer-based system, a question: How would McCain pay for that tax credit? Now here comes the confusion. The AP ran a somewhat muddled story Tuesday that said:

"To pay for the tax credit, McCain would eliminate the tax exemption for people whose employers pay a portion of their coverage, raising an estimated $3.6 trillion in revenues, [McCain adviser] Holtz-Eakin said. Companies that provide coverage to workers still would get tax breaks. McCain would also cut costs by limiting health care lawsuits."

By that account. . . McCain means that if your boss pays for part of your health insurance, you will begin to pay taxes on some part of it, the way people pay taxes on employer-provided life insurance already. Apparently, the insurance would be counted as income subject to income taxes.

Meanwhile, would employers-who now can deduct health- insurance costs as a business expense-still get to do that, as the AP reported? Or not, as The New York Times suggested yesterday. The Times reported that Holtz-Eakin said the government would save that $3.6 trillion over the next decade by eliminating the tax break that currently goes to encourage employer-based health coverage. That sounds like eliminating the tax break that employers currently get.

But did Holtz-Eakin mean the break to employers, employees, or both? It wasn't really clear to the casual reader. Thursday's Times reported that McCain proposed eliminating the exclusion of health benefits from taxable income for workers. So maybe that's it. But to get further clarity, we called the McCain campaign press office (three times). No one called us back. We looked at McCain's speech, posted on his Web site. No help there-gobbledygook to most people. Here's what it said about the tax breaks:

Under current law, the federal government gives a tax benefit when employers provide health-insurance coverage to American workers and their families. This benefit doesn't cover the total cost of the health plan, and in reality each worker and family absorbs the rest of the cost in lower wages and diminished benefits. But it provides essential support for insurance coverage. . .

The important thing to know about McCain's plan at the moment is that either way-by making employees pay taxes on employer- provided coverage or by no longer allowing employers to deduct health insurance as a business expense, or by doing both-it's the proverbial nose under the camel's tent. It's the beginning of the end of health insurance as we know it, so what he proposes as a replacement should be very carefully reported and considered. In McCain's plan, under the banner of consumer choice, everyone will eventually need to find insurance on their own in the private market. In his speech, McCain himself said: 'Millions of Americans would be making their own health-care choices again.'

This reminds me a lot of what's happening to Medicare. The push to entice beneficiaries to buy certain kinds of private-market policies and opt out of traditional Medicare is a wedge that begins to privatize the program. Encouraging people to opt out of their employer health coverage does the same thing-it makes people fly solo when it comes to their health insurance. Is that what American workers want?

THE LIMITS OF ELOQUENCE

2008-05-02T14:16:00.001-04:00

We have heard much about Barack Obama's eloquence this campaign season. Here is some more eloquence - sent our way by Jim McCusker - that illustrates that eloquence only takes you so far. . .

The simple things are the ones most needed today if we are to surmount what divides us, and cement what unites us.

In these difficult years, America has suffered from a fever of words; from inflated rhetoric that promises more than it can deliver; from angry rhetoric that fans discontents into hatreds; from bombastic rhetoric that postures instead of persuading.

We cannot learn from one another until we stop shouting at one another until we speak quietly enough so that our words can be heard as well as our voices

Click here for the source of these fine words

DON'T CRY FOR ME, ARKANSAS

2008-05-02T14:00:00.001-04:00

Nostalgic moments from the Clinton years

PROGRESSIVE REVIEW, 1999 - Retired police chief SA Rhoads has been teaching a cop course on "subconscious communications" since 1978 to hundreds of police officers, most recently including some 500 from DC. Among the model liars he uses to illustrate his course: Timothy McVeigh, OJ Simpson, and W.J. Clinton, the last having made than 120 gestures of "textbook deception" during his deposition.

OUTLYING PRECINCTS

2008-05-01T23:29:00.001-04:00

The possibility of the host of MSNBC's "Hardball" Christopher Matthews, running against Senator Specter of Pennsylvania, a Republican, for Mr. Specter's senate seat in Pennsylvania is intensifying. Although Mr. Matthews said to Bill Maher of HBO that he's "not getting involved in it" when asked about whether he would seek the position in 2010, it is odd to employ his television program in a way that would make him a favorable candidate to run for senator of Pennsylvania as a Democrat. Mr. Matthews, who is from the Philadelphia area, broadcasted his show from Philadelphia during the week of the Pennsylvania primary. Political figures that appeared on his national show were the mayor of Philadelphia, Michael Nutter, and an African-American congressman of Philadelphia, Chaka Fattah. In addition, Mr. Matthews interviewed on "Hardball" the chairmen of the Democratic committees of Allegheny, Montgomery, and Lackawanna counties, James Burn Jr., Marcel Groen, and Harry McGrath, local figures vital to any statewide candidacy. . . Unlike those of the entertainment world, Mr. Matthews would be the rare person attempting to move from the press. He would be a test case for the notion that interrogating, blustering, and posturing on cable television can prepare one for a life of questioning and public speaking on the floor of the Senate. - NY Sun

Presidential candidate Ralph Nader told an audience in Connecticut the U.S. government has been taken over by big business. In a fundraiser at a former bank building in Waterbury, the long-shot independent said "global corporations" were exercising unchecked power and basically running every government department and agency. "Think of that," Nader said. "We've lost our government." He went on to say he could never return to his roots as a consumer advocate since there were no agencies in Washington that would do anything other than what corporate leaders wanted.

Peter Dreier, Huffington Post A few months ago, Sid Blumenthal, a former Clinton White House aide who is now a top advisor to Hillary Clinton's campaign, circulated a scurulous article, "Obama's Communist Mentor," taken from an extreme right-wing group. It turns out that this was hardly an exception. Blumenthal, who has been widely credited with coining the term "vast right-wing conspiracy" used by Hillary Clinton in 1998 to describe the alliance of conservative media, think tanks, and political operatives that sought to destroy the Clinton White House, is now exploiting that same right-wing network to attack and discredit Barack Obama. And he's not hesitating to use the same sort of guilt-by-association tactics that have been the hallmark of the political right dating back to the McCarthy era. Blumenthal regularly dispatches emails to a list of opinion shapers, including journalists, former Clinton administration officials, academics, policy entrepreneurs, and think tankers -- an obvious effort to create an echo chamber that will reverberate among talk shows, columnists, and Democratic Party funders and activists.

Just hours before the Indiana and North Carolina presidential primaries, ABC News has offered to air a 'town hall' meeting with Hillary Clinton -- to be hosted by former Clinton staffer George Stephanopoulos.. . . It is not clear if ABCNEWS will inform viewers of Stephanopoulos's past employment. Stephanopoulos helped run Mr. Clinton's first presidential election campaign and acted as his press secretary and advisor on policy and strategy before joining ABC News. . . The network hit controversy last month over the decision to allow Bill Clinton's former press secretary to moderate a debate between Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama -- without any disclaimer. - Drudge Report

Al Franken's admission Tuesday night that his corporation had owed $70,000 in back taxes and penalties in 17 states threatens to upend what has been until now a disciplined, on-message campaign against one of the GOP's most vulnerable incumbents. The story of Franken's failure to pay the taxes - on income earned from celebrity appearances and speeches - was front-page news Wednesday in the state's two biggest newspapers, the Minneapolis Star Tribune and the St. Paul Pioneer Press. Franken told The Associated Press on Tuesday that the unpaid taxes were a result of his accountant's error, and all of the back taxes "are a repercussion of the same mistake." Franken's corporation also failed to pay $25,000 in worker's compensation insurance to his employees in New York - a potentially glaring vulnerability, given that he's been running as an advocate of middle-class voters.

London will be electing a new mayor using a modified form of instant run off voting. As Rob Richie of Fair Vote explains: London has "limited IRV" -- only two rankings, and the race immediately goes to the top two choices. This year there are 11 candidates, but two clear frontrunners -- so the great majority of voters likely will rank one of them as their first or second choice. Click for an animated explanation