The "R" Word

Let's talk about the "R" word for a moment, shall we?

The consonant "R" could be used to start any of tens of thousands of words. There's "revenge", for instance, or the synonym "reprisal." But the "R" word mostly in the news lately has been given attention due to Sarah Palin's Facebook fatwa. That would be the word "retarded", a word that does not accurately describe those with Down Syndrome, of which former Governor Palin's son Trig suffers.

Indeed, those with Down's Syndrome can have average to above-average intelligence and those who are developmentally-disabled due to having a superfluous 47th chromosome suffer moderate mental handicaps. Down syndrome should never in any way be all-inclusively folded into mental retardation.

Yet Palin's attack on Rahm Emanuel and calling for his termination only displays her ongoing ignorance of any subject under the sun that doesn't include clothes shopping and color-coordinating her lipstick and shoes.

However, I'm here to address yet another "R" word and that word is "Republican." You see, the rules are different for even moderate Democrats such as Rahm Emanuel and Republican elephant dorks such as Rush Limbaugh. Because, to cite yet another "R" word, Sarah Palin's unwillingness to engage el Rushbo for not only using the word but for calling out the Palin camp for calling out Emanuel can best be described as "Recreant", or, according to Dictionary.com, "unfaithful, disloyal, or traitorous."

Not only does it reveal Palin to be a moral coward in being unwilling to defend her son as she sought to defend him and others with Down's syndrome, it also betrays her as a hypocrite. It also shows that the GOP establishment of which Palin pretends to not be a part both officially and unofficially genuflects at the altar of a child-molesting, racist drug addict who does a radio show from his home.

Limbaugh is himself, to continue our alliteration, a supreme recreant, a reprobate and a raging racist against any who aren't also bloated, wealthy, white WASP Republicans such as he. Yet Republican congressmen, party chairmen and other conservative media pundits continually prostrate themselves at the cloven hooves of this cock goblin and assclown extraordinaire.

Sarah Palin is no different. Whether or not one is wrong in their assumptions or beliefs, one ought to stick to them until having a logical and more correct reason for changing said assumptions or beliefs. If Palin thought it was OK to publicly attack Rahm Emanuel for using the word "retarded" when describing a liberal plan of action, then she would have been even more justified in attacking this jiggling mountain of lying cellulite for attacking her for being politically correct.

But Palin is a quitter and a coward. She has no beliefs other than that which conforms to the conservative zeitgeist, no allegiance other than to the letter "R" and her own transparent presidential ambitions in two years. Sarah Palin still holds out hope that Limbaugh will someday give his millions of airheaded listeners his endorsement of her candidacy except Palin doesn't realize that Limbaugh, a product of a dying, male-dominated America, will never endorse a woman for President no matter how qualified she may be. She has no loyalty, even her own misguided one that she's recently pretended to hold for those with Down syndrome.

Her inability or unwillingness to publicly call out Limbaugh and engage him for slapping her across the snout with the rolled-up newspaper of his radio show and bully pulpit will cost her independent votes later on. Her refusal to apply the same rules to a fellow conservative is Republican partisanship at its most craven.

Is this why Eric Holder is reluctant to prosecute Bush Administration officials?

It seems that Attorney General Eric Holder may be yet another manifestation of Obama-style "bipartisanship" that favors Republicans above all others.

From Legal Schnauzer:

So far, Holder has intervened in federal prosecutions involving Republicans, most notably the case of former U.S. Senator Ted Stevens (R-AK).

Why does Holder seem content to let the Siegelman and Minor cases languish? Alabama attorney and Siegelman-case whistleblower Jill Simpson says she might have the answer.

Simpson, a former opposition researcher for the Republican Party in Alabama, is skilled at tracking down information. She learned that Holder, before being named Barack Obama's attorney general, worked for a Washington, D.C., law firm called Covington & Burling. And what did Simpson discover about that august firm?

The tip I got was that the firm had a very important client. His name was George W Bush. And they represented a very important organization . . . called the Republican National Committee. I was in shock when I checked it--and it was true.

My favorite research item I ran across is when they were protecting the RNC from having to turn over Karl Rove's e-mails that were run on the RNC servers. It shocked me. Plus I found it mighty interesting that AG Eric Holder never enlightened anyone about his conflicts of coming from a big Washington, D.C., law firm that represented the National Republic Committee and George W. Bush in the 2000 election contest.

Simpson notes that Holder's favorable treatment of Republicans hardly stops with the Stevens case. She lists the Tobin phone-jamming case in New Hampshire, the Kott case in Alaska, and the Abramoff/Feeney case in Florida as examples of the Holder DOJ killing GOPers with kindness. What does Simpson make of it?

It has long been reported that the expenses in those cases were picked up by the RNC. That same RNC paid AG Holder's law firm, and that law firm paid AG Holder more than $2 million last year.

Remember when Republicans were the "Law and Order" party?

Now I guess "Law and Order" only refers to a TV show starring Fred Thompson. Now they practically want to codify the IOKIYAR Rule into law:

Washington, D.C. - U.S. Senator Sheldon Whitehouse (D-RI), a member of the Senate Judiciary Committee and a former U.S. Attorney and Attorney General for Rhode Island, today sharply criticized the argument some Republican members of the Committee are making for delaying a vote on the nomination of Attorney General-Designate Eric Holder:

"Republicans on the Judiciary Committee have asked Eric Holder to make a commitment, before he is even confirmed, that he will not prosecute any Bush Administration officials for their involvement in acts of torture during the last administration.

"Anyone familiar with the criminal justice system - especially those with experience as prosecutors or judges - should know that a prosecutor should make no determination about who to prosecute before he or she has all the facts, and particularly not in response to legislative pressure.

"After all we have recently been through at the Department of Justice, I would hope and expect that upon calm reflection, no one on our Committee would expect the Attorney General of the United States to make prosecutive decisions based on legislative pressure."

There go what few specks of moral authority the Bigoted Old Southern White Hypocritical Man Party had left.

Why is Sarah Palin the only candidate who doesn't have to release her tax returns?

Barack and Michelle Obama did. John McCain did (though Cindy McCain gets to censor her own and only release what she wants to, since they file separately and the IOKIYAR rule applies). But Sarah Palin, who thinks she's running for President, has not released hers:

As election day comes ever nearer, Democrats and open-government advocates are pressing for the GOP vice presidential candidate to release her tax filings, a campaign tradition that extends at least to the post-Watergate era.

Instead, Palin has to date declined to share the documents, becoming part of an ever-more-select historical group of candidates who waited until this late in a campaign year to release their tax filings.

[snip]

A spokesman for Palin Thursday reiterated the campaign's stance on the matter. "We plan to release Governor Palin's tax returns well before the election," said Taylor Griffin.

There's just over a month until the election. Does it depend on what the meaning of "well" is?

Do you like an arrogant, unaccountable Executive branch? You'll LOVE the administration of McCain/Cheney-in-lipstick

Meet the new boss, same as the old boss:

The Alaska legislators said Friday that they had no plans to subpoena Palin to force testimony from the governor because she had promised to cooperate. But Democratic state Sen. Hollis French, one of the legislators involved in the inquiry, said seven of Palin's aides had recently declined to be deposed. Palin's lawyer also has pressed to have the matter handled by the Alaska Personnel Board, an agency whose three members are Republican appointees.

Palin's attorney, Thomas V. Van Flein, warned that the Legislature has only "limited investigatory power" -- a caution that some Democratic legislators worry is a prelude to a court battle that would tie the case in knots until after the November election.

"It would be very easy for them to run out the clock," said state Rep. Les Gara, a Democrat pressing for subpoenas. Gara said that if attorneys for Palin and her aides took the case to court, it would wind its way to the Alaska Supreme Court.

Republican lawmakers minimized that threat. "I think a report will be forthcoming in a timely fashion," said state Rep. Jay Ramras, who has been involved with French in a bipartisan effort to look into Monegan's firing.

Both French and Ramras said in a joint statement that they expected a report delivered by Oct. 10 -- well before the election.

Hmmm....abuse of the power of the office, stonewalling an investigation -- yup, the pieces are all there. No wonder the Republicans love Sarah Palin so much. But stonewalling is clearly the theme of the McCain campaign, which in true Cheney fashion, is keeping her hidden in Cheney's underground bunker for two weeks, because only with Palin it's because she's not ready for prime-time and they're afraid she'll say something to get Saint John in trouble:

And the McCain campaign is actively involved in making sure that its #2, in true Republican fashion, never, ever has to account for her actions:

Key Alaska allies of John McCain are trying to derail a politically charged investigation into Gov. Sarah Palin's firing of her public safety commissioner in order to prevent a so-called "October surprise" that would produce embarrassing information about the vice presidential candidate on the eve of the election.

In a move endorsed by the McCain campaign Friday, John Coghill, the GOP chairman of the state House Rules Committee, wrote a letter seeking a meeting of Alaska's bipartisan Legislative Council in order to remove the Democratic state senator in charge of the so-called "troopergate" investigation.

Remember when Republicans used to talk about "law and order", back in the 1970's when they painted Democrats as "soft on crime"? Remember when Republicans used to shout "Rule of law!" at the Clintons? Funny how when Republicans violate the law, it's "Nothing to see here...move along."

The IOKIYAR Rule Strikes Again

If it hadn't been for John McCain's remark yesterday that it just wasn't important how many troops we keep in Iraq for how long, the media would have been out there beating the drum all day about how Obama's bad judgment made him unfit to be president because Jim Johnson got a below-market-rate loan from Countrywide Mortgage.

The McCain camp wasted no time before the loans were discovered in extrapolating an overall lack of judgment as a disqualifier -- if the candidate is a Democrat: "Jim Johnson's resignation raises serious questions about Barack Obama's judgment," said McCain spokesman Tucker Bounds. (Tucker Bounds? TUCKER FUCKING BOUNDS??? Where do Republicans FIND guys with names like this?)

But since Barack Obama is no John Kerry, his camp fired right back: Obama campaign spokesman Bill Burton fired back, saying:

"We don't need any lectures from a campaign that waited fifteen months to purge the lobbyists from their staff, and only did so because they said it was a 'perception problem. It's too bad their campaign is still rife with lobbyist influence and doesn't see a similar 'perception problem' with the man currently running their own vice presidential selection process, a prominent DC lobbyist whose firm has represented Exxon and a top Enron executive, or their campaign chair and John McCain's top economic adviser Carly Fiorina, who presided over thousands of layoffs at Hewlett Packard while receiving a $21 million severance package and $650,000 in mortgage assistance," said Obama campaign spokesman Bill Burton.

Does McCain really want to have a campaign based on judgment about associates?

Where IS Vicki Iseman, anyway?

McCain's VP Search head is Arthur Culvahouse -- yup, you guessed it: a lobbyist.

Do you REALLY want to go there, Senator McCain? All right, then, let's go there:

How about the 134 lobbyists currently active in or raising money for you?

Want to talk about Charles Black, Senator? You know, the guy paid by Angolan dictator Jonas Savimbi?

Should I go on? Or shall we just distill your own bag man connections nicely into an easy-to-understand video?

Before Johnson resigned from the search time, Barack Obama said that he doesn't vet his people's mortgages. But it's clear he has to, because the media rule of "It's OK If You're A Republican" still holds. We know this because nothing about McCain's many, many sweetheart relationships with lobbyists (where IS Vicki Iseman, anyway?) was even mentioned yesterday. Perhaps the media can't hold two ideas about a candidate at once, let alone draw a possible conclusion that it's in the interests of his lobbyist friends and contributors to keep over a hundred thousand troops in Iraq indefinitely.

Buh...buh...but doesn't the IOKIYAR rule apply?

Today's New York Times has an article that pauses, at least for one day, the embargo on negative information about John McCain on the part of the press.

Apparently Sen. Clean is not above using his influences to do favors for well-connected "friends":

Donald R. Diamond, a wealthy Arizona real estate developer, was racing to snap up a stretch of virgin California coast freed by the closing of an Army base a decade ago when he turned to an old friend, Senator John McCain.

When Mr. Diamond wanted to buy land at the base, Fort Ord, Mr. McCain assigned an aide who set up a meeting at the Pentagon and later stepped in again to help speed up the sale, according to people involved and a deposition Mr. Diamond gave for a related lawsuit. When he appealed to a nearby city for the right to develop other property at the former base, Mr. Diamond submitted Mr. McCain’s endorsement as “a close personal friend.”

Writing to officials in the city, Seaside, Calif., the senator said, “You will find him as honorable and committed as I have.”

Courting local officials and potential partners, Mr. Diamond’s team promised that he could “help get through some of the red tape in dealing with the Department of the Army” because Mr. Diamond “has been very active with Senator McCain,” a partner said in a deposition.

For Mr. McCain, the Arizona Republican who has staked two presidential campaigns on pledges to avoid even the appearance of dispensing an official favor for a donor, Mr. Diamond is the kind of friend who can pose a test.

A longtime political patron, Mr. Diamond is one of the elite fund-raisers Mr. McCain’s current presidential campaign calls Innovators, having raised more than $250,000 so far. At home, Mr. Diamond is sometimes referred to as “The Donald,” Arizona’s answer to Donald Trump — an outsized personality who invites public officials aboard his flotilla of yachts (the Ace, King, Jack and Queen of Diamonds), specializes in deals with the government, and unabashedly solicits support for his business interests from the recipients of his campaign contributions.

Mr. McCain has occasionally rebuffed Mr. Diamond’s entreaties as inappropriate, but he has also taken steps that benefited his friend’s real estate empire. Their 26-year relationship illuminates how Mr. McCain weighs requests from a benefactor against his vows, adopted after a brush with scandal two decades ago, not to intercede with government authorities on behalf of a donor or take other official action that serves no clear public interest.

In California, the McCain aide’s assistance with the Army helped Mr. Diamond complete a purchase in 1999 that he soon turned over for a $20 million profit. And Mr. McCain’s letter of recommendation reinforced Mr. Diamond’s selling point about his McCain connections as he pursued — and won in 2005 — a potentially much more lucrative deal to develop a resort hotel and luxury housing.

And apparently there's a nice long history of McCain doing favors for this guy. Of course he says that he'd do the same for any other citizen, but I can't imagine that the ability to raise six-figure sums of campaign money hurts any.

In the larger picture, none of this matters, other than being yet another example of the hypocrisy of Senator Straight Talk. I'm far more concerned about his anger management problem, his preposterous economic "plan" that shovels even MORE cash into the pockets of the wealthy, his following Bush's path of resolving issues from his youth via perpetual war in the Middle East. Add to that questions about his health and his reluctance to release his health records, his "If you can't afford insurance, then go off and die" health care "plan", his contention that our economic problems are all in our heads, his sucking up to the Christofascist Zombie Brigade (which interestingly, allows him to distance himself from Hagee's more inflammatory remarks while still accepting his endorsement, while he decries another candidate for doing the same), and the general sense I get that his faculties are no longer all there.

His attempt on Suckupagus on Sunday to wipe this particular slate clean are especially hilarious: "I condemn remarks that are, in any way, viewed as anti-anything."

Which means he's really Professor Quincy Adams Wagstaff:

How is Don Siegelman different from John McCain?

I haven't written about the Don Siegelman case largely because I am one blogger and I usually have only two hours in a day to write, and the parade of horrors committed by the Bush Administration is so huge that there's only so much one person can cover.

The Siegelman case is important because it is yet another example of the Atwater/Rovian tactic of stealing elections your candidate didn't win (George W. Bush, 2000), overturning elections you didn't win (Bill Clinton) or preventing candidates you can't beat from running (Don Siegelman).

The 60 Minutes segment on the case just ran, and it occurs to me that Don Siegelman is in jail for essentially what John McCain did for Paxon Communications and other clients of Vicki Iseman.

Siegelman was convicted of trading campaign donatinos for political favors, specifically a seat for Richard Scrushy, CEO of HealthSouth on the hospital regulatory board in Alabama in return for a half-million dollars in campaign contributions.

The 60 Minutes piece shows a Republican state attorney general from Arizona stating unequivocally that there's no there there. But Siegelman is doing seven years in Louisiana, and John McCain, having already been one of the Keating Five, is apparently doing similar favors for the well-connected:

Broadcaster Lowell "Bud" Paxson yesterday contradicted statements from Sen. John McCain's presidential campaign that the senator did not meet with Paxson or his lobbyist before sending two controversial letters to the Federal Communications Commission on Paxson's behalf.

Paxson said he talked with McCain in his Washington office several weeks before the Arizona Republican wrote the letters in 1999 to the FCC urging a rapid decision on Paxson's quest to acquire a Pittsburgh television station.

Paxson also recalled that his lobbyist, Vicki Iseman, likely attended the meeting in McCain's office and that Iseman helped arrange the meeting. "Was Vicki there? Probably," Paxson said in an interview with The Washington Post yesterday. "The woman was a professional. She was good. She could get us meetings."

The recollection of the now-retired Paxson conflicted with the account provided by the McCain campaign about the two letters at the center of a controversy about the senator's ties to Iseman, a partner at the lobbying firm of Alcalde & Fay.

The McCain campaign said Thursday that the senator had not met with Paxson or Iseman on the matter. "No representative of Paxson or Alcalde and Fay personally asked Senator McCain to send a letter to the FCC regarding this proceeding," the campaign said in a statement.

But Paxson said yesterday, "I remember going there to meet with him." He recalled that he told McCain: "You're head of the Commerce Committee. The FCC is not doing its job. I would love for you to write a letter."

The Paxson situation may not involve a quid pro quo of money for legislation, but it's impossible to believe that John McCain is doing favors for corporations solely out of the goodness of his heart, particularly when there's at least one lobbyist involved.

It's clear that Don Siegelman was railroaded, and there's no more hard evidence against McCain of specific instances of bribery than there was against Siegelman. But Siegelman is in jail because Republican operatives targeted him, while John McCain is going to be the Republican nominee for president, in one of the most flagrant examples of the IOKYAR Rule that we've seen in a long time.

Just wonderin', is all

I just turned on the TV to Morning Joe, and the Terrible Trio of Joe Scarborough, Mika Brzezinski, and Willie Geist, are shocked....shocked....SHOCKED, I tell you...that the New York Times would print such scurrilous accusations against John McCain.

I suppose it's understandable that Scarborough would be particularly sensitive about stories with allegations that may or may not be substantiated, given the fact that a young woman died under mysterious circumstances in his Florida Congressional office in July 2001. On the other hand, it isn't as if a spotlight was ever shone on Scarborough, perhaps because he was fortunate enough to have this little incident take place around the same time that the media was in a feeding frenzy about a young woman who disappeared and who was associated with DEMOCRATIC Congressman Gary Condit.

But do you think that if the Senator named in the New York Times article had been named "Barack Obama", the Morning Joe crew would be similarly shocked....shoched......SHOCKED AND APPALLED, that this kind of scurrilous story would appear in the pages of the Newspaper of Record?

Imagine how the Giulianis will blow through federal money

Imagine Judith "Evita" Nathan Giuliani as First Lady of the entire country, with a whole White House staff and Secret Service at her beck and call, if this is what she got as the New York city mayor's goumah:

The revelations continue in the case of former Mayor Rudy Giuliani and the security detail for Judith Nathan, his one-time mistress who is now his wife.

Did Nathan misuse the city police detail that Giuliani assigned to protect her?

At the dawn of 2001, Nathan was Giuliani's good friend and was receiving a blanket of police protection.

It was an unusual circumstance. His wife, first lady Donna Hanover, was still living at Gracie Mansion with their children.

But the mayor was unapologetic, citing security concerns.

"If you had any concern for people's safety, you'd have the decency to leave it alone. You should be ashamed of yourselves," the former mayor said back in 2001.

Six years later, presidential candidate Giuliani is facing questions about that security. A source involved with the mayor's operations at the time tells CBS 2 HD that Nathan took flagrant advantage of that police car and driver.

The source says Nathan forced police to chauffeur her friends and family around the city -- even when she wasn't in the car.

That set off alarms with ethics watchdogs.

"The rules are clear, you can't use city resources for private reasons," said Gene Russianoff of the New York Public Interest Research Group. "And if you're using a city car, a police driven car to chauffeur around relatives, unless they're explicitly protected and their deemed to be the subject of potential security threats, it's just wrong."

Nathan's detail was approved by the NYPD after a stranger made an unspecified threat to her. The commissioner at the time was Bernard Kerik, who was recently indicted on tax fraud charges in an unrelated matter.

"It wasn't about her being the mayor's girlfriend," Kerik said. "The person spoke to her by name and made comments to her."

On Friday, Giuliani avoided reporters' questions about the security for Nathan back then. He told reporters off camera "we've explained it."

Giuliani's press secretary, Maria Comella, angrily denounced the use of an unnamed source in this story.

But she did not deny the assertion that Nathan used her police detail to ferry around friends and family.

Meanwhile, outside of the Land of IOKIYAR, former New York State Comptroller Alan Hevesi was forced to resign last year after it came out that he was using a state employee to provide security detail for his mentally ill wife and drive her to doctors' appointments -- without reimbursing the state. But that was different. He was a Democrat. And after all, getting a sick woman to doctors isn't anywhere near as important as getting the would-be Queen Judith I of America to her shopping and lunch dates with her friends.

So is Katie Couric going to tell Fred Thompson to just go home and die quietly?

Of course not. Because while it's unseemly for a Democrat to continue on the campaign trail when his wife, who supports continuing the campaign, is battling cancer, it's perfectly OK for a Republican to embark on a campaign after acknowledging that HE HIMSELF has cancer:

Potential presidential candidate Fred Thompson, known to millions of "Law & Order" viewers as a gruff district attorney, revealed on Wednesday that he was diagnosed with non-Hodgkin's lymphoma, a form of cancer, nearly three years ago.

Thompson, 64, said he is in remission, and never even felt ill, from a type of lymphoma that is very slow-growing and probably not life-threatening. The Tennessee Republican was prompted to make the disclosure on the Fox News Channel and ABC Radio because he is thinking about running for president.

"I know it's not a big deal, as far as my health is concerned, as much as a person can know about things like that," Thompson said.

"But other people have the right to look at it and weigh in, and I have a need to factor that into my decision in terms of the reaction that I get about it," he said.

Thompson's physician said he encourages such patients not to limit their activities, even if that includes a bid for the White House.

"They can lead a normal life. They can travel. They can work. They can possibly be president of the United States," Dr. Bruce Cheson, hematology chief at Georgetown University Hospital, told reporters at an afternoon news conference.

Former Senate Majority Leader Bill Frist, a heart surgeon who abandoned his own plans to seek the presidency, said Thompson's disclosure "indicates his seriousness as a potential candidate."

On his Web site, Frist, also a former Tennessee senator, urged supporters to post statements encouraging Thompson to run.

Paul Tsongas, a candidate I supported in 1992, similarly said that he was in remission and that there was no reason he could not handle the presidency if elected. Tsongas died on January 18, 1997. His death sparked a debate, one seemingly now forgotten, about whether one can be a serious presidential contenter -- not a candidate's wife, but a candidate -- with a history of serious illness can be viable and can be expected to fulfill the demands of the job if elected.