Johnson, a former CEO of Fannie Mae who is currently vice chairman of Perseus LLC, a merchant bank, also vetted vice presidential candidates for Walter Mondale, whose campaign he chaired. On the eve of the convention in 1984, Mr. Mondale was set to choose Sen. Dianne Feinstein of California, only to find irreconcilable political problems with the business dealings of Ms. Feinstein's husband, Richard Blum. Mondale chose Geraldine Ferraro instead. Ironically, questions about Ferraro's husband, a real estate developer, would dog her throughout the general election campaign. Mr. Johnson said later that the experience if 1984 had taught him to start much earlier and vet much more thoroughly.This sounds pretty rigorous -- and the potential V.P. nominees have to comply.
The vetting process entails a rigorous schedule of interviews focusing on everything from politics to potential embarrassments -- Did they ever employ a nanny on whose behalf they did not pay Social Security taxes, for example; did they experiment with drugs or people in college? -- and potential candidates are required to give the search team access to their tax returns and other financial records.
The group, founded by the Rev. Rod Parsley, a television evangelist and pastor of the World Harvest Church in suburban Columbus, vehemently opposes gay rights, and Parsley has written that the teachings of Islam were inspired by demons.Read More......
John Hagee, the controversial evangelical leader and endorser of Sen. John McCain, argued in a late 1990s sermon that the Nazis had operated on God's behalf to chase the Jews from Europe and shepherd them to Palestine. According to the Reverend, Adolph Hitler was a "hunter," sent by God, who was tasked with expediting God's will of having the Jews re-establish a state of Israel.So, apparently, that was finally enough for McCain to "officially" break up with Hagee. The Catholic bashing wasn't enough. The gay bashing wasn't enough. All the other hate speech wasn't enough. It took something this outrageous to create distance between Hagee and McCain.
Americans are fooling themselves if they think U.S. inflation is under control, the manager of the world's largest bond fund said.Read More......
Bill Gross, chief investment officer of Pacific Investment Management Co (PIMCO) said in his June investment outlook that he has been arguing for some time that inflation statistics "were not reflecting reality at the checkout counter."
My lady parts do not ache for Hillary Clinton.(H/t Markos) Read More......
As The First Viable Female Contender’s bid for the Democratic nomination sputters to its inevitable end, everyone and their mother/sister/daughter has something to say about the poisonous misogyny that’s apparently to blame.
Sunday and Monday brought three such post-mortems in The New York Times, one on the front page that ended by quoting a resident of Bizarro World, who laments, “[Obama] still looks more like every other president we’ve ever had than she does.”
Next comes Arianna “No Fear” Huffington, suffering from a strain of short-term memory loss that seems to be going around, to declare: “The greatest triumph of Clinton’s campaign—a complete triumph—is the example she has set for the next generation.”
Currently pregnant with the next generation, let me just say this: There is no greater wish that a mother can have for her daughter than that she will exploit poor people, obliterate Iran, and win rigged class president elections, Putin-style. (Mom, I won 100 percent of the vote!)...
This War on Women is just like the War on Christmas: imaginary....
Now we learn of a new, primarily female group, Clinton Supporters Count Too, which promises to actively campaign against Obama in the general because, as their leader told the Times, “We, the most loyal constituency, are being told to sit down, shut up and get to the back of the bus.” Also: Black people? Suck it.
And Hillary’s lapping it up. Confirming in today’s Washington Post that the primary campaign has been sexist (but not racist), Clinton complains—states/notes/ declares—that there’s been a “disservice because we have broad coalitions of voters who have voted for me who make up the base of a winning campaign in November that I think want to see this end up with my being nominated." Translation: "This is unfair and sexist, because my voters clearly want to see me nominated. And if I'm not nominated, a disservice has been done to my voters." What makes it really unfair is that she’s losing by every measure and we still won’t let her win. Classic misogyny.
Here’s the thing: There is plenty of sexism—more than enough, thank you very much—in this country. Which is why it’s so sad to see Hillary’s supporters (and lately even her female detractors, and way too many column inches) elevate her to some kind of goddess warrior, symbolizing the decades-long fight for gender equality, absorbing the entirety of history’s catcall in one massive blow, and then standing tall again because that’s what women do. Powerful stuff, except that she’s a lying, race-baiting insult to our collective intelligence.
Powerful, if she and her husband hadn’t sold out poor people in the ’90s or if she had stood tall like a woman against the war in Iraq or if she wasn’t right now trying to change the rules of the game and stir up the worst kind of identity politics. Powerful, if her most fervent supporters weren’t threatening to vote for John McCain out of spite, Supreme Court justices be damned.
I respect senator John Mccain's service to our country. He is one of those heroes of which I speak. But I can't understand why he would line up behind the president in opposition to this G.I. bill. I can't believe why he believes it is too generous to our veterans. I could not disagree with him and the president more on this issue. There are many issues that lend themselves to partisan posturing, but giving our veterans the chance to go to college should not be one of them. I'm proud that so many Democrats and Republicans have come together to support this.Now, remember, McCain wasn't there. But, in a move that is the height of sheer gall, McCain attacked Obama's floor speech from California. Marc Ambinder called the response "acidic."
A home-price index considered to be the most comprehensive reading of the U.S. market posted the sharpest quarterly decline in its 17-year history, and analysts say housing has yet to bottom out.Read More......
Senate Republicans have broken with President Bush to help Democrats add help for veterans and the unemployed to a bill paying for another year of the Iraq and Afghanistan wars.So, Bush has threatened to veto this bill. We'll see if all those Republicans who voted the right way today will flip flop to support Bush and McCain on the veto override. And, you know McConnell, McCain and the rest of the hard core Bush lackeys will try every procedural move possible to kill this legislation, which actually does support the troops.
The 75-22 vote also adds billions of dollars in other domestic funds such as heating subsidies for the poor and money for fighting wildfires to the $165 billion for the military operations overseas.
The vote is a rebuke to Bush, who has promised to veto the measure if it contains the domestic measures. However, the president still has enough GOP support to sustain a veto.
Sen. Edward Kennedy (D-MA) "has made clear to confidants that when his time is up, he wants his Senate seat to stay in the family -- with his wife, Vicki," according to the New York Daily News.Reuters explained the law governing a vacant Senate seat in Massachusetts:
Under Massachusetts state law, a vacancy in the U.S. Senate would force the Massachusetts governor to call a special election between 145 and 160 days after it becomes official.Read More......
Despite his call for the U.S. to win the "hearts and minds of the Islamic world," Sen. John McCain recruited the support of an evangelical minister who describes Islam as "anti-Christ" and Mohammed as "the mouthpiece of a conspiracy of spiritual evil."An even bigger problem for John McCain? He went after Obama over Rev. Wright. That makes McCain's pastor - his second pastor bimbo eruption, mind you - more than fair game. ABC's Jake Tapper quotes McCain saying the following about Wright just last month:
McCain sought the support of Pastor Rod Parsley of the World Harvest Church of Columbus, Ohio at a critical time in his campaign in February, when former Arkansas Gov. Mike Huckabee was continuing to draw substantial support from the Christian right.
At a campaign appearance in Cincinnati, McCain introduced Parsley as "one of the truly great leaders in America, a moral compass, a spiritual guide."...
"America was founded with the intention of seeing this false religion destroyed," Parsley says...
The campaign did not answer the question of whether it was aware of Parsley's widely publicized statements prior to seeking his endorsement in February.
McCain has not disassociated himself from the pastor, but the campaign statement said, "Just because someone endorses John McCain doesn't mean he endorses all of their views."
"I saw yesterday some additional comments that have been revealed by Pastor Wright," McCain said. "One of them, comparing the United States Marine Corps with Roman legionnaires who were responsible for the death of our savior. I mean, being involved in that. It’s beyond belief. And then of course, saying that al Qaeda and the American flag were the same flags. So, I can understand. I can understand why people are upset about this. I can understand why, that Americans when viewing these kinds of comments are angry and upset."Read More......
[This is Tapper writing here] Wright never said "al Qaeda and the American flag were the same flags."... You may well find that offensive in itself, but McCain misrepresented what Wright said, in his April 2003 sermon.... After making a political issue out of an issue he said he wouldn't make a political issue, McCain then pivoted to attach Obama to Wright in making comments McCain considers to be out-of-touch, saying Americans would be offended by what Wright said
Conservative Republicans railed against Virginia Sen. Jim Webb's GI bill on Wednesday as the Senate prepared for a showdown vote today on whether to give troops returning from Iraq and Afghanistan a free college education.Lindsey Graham is such a tool. He and his crew think nothing of spending trillions on the Iraq war, but want to shortchange the troops. It would only take 3 1/2 months of Iraq war funding to pay for the GI bill.
Two senators sponsoring a less-generous alternate bill backed by the Bush administration said Webb's measure would entice too many troops to leave the military earlier than planned in a time of war.
"It spends $52 billion to persuade people to leave the military," said Sen. Lindsey Graham, R-S.C.
He's pushing alternate legislation backed by Sen. John McCain of Arizona, the presumptive Republican presidential nominee.
Democrat Webb has refuted the argument, saying there's no evidence that his measure will hurt military retention.
But tempers flared Wednesday, after a veterans group started a television ad campaign attacking McCain for failing to support Webb's bill.
"McCain thinks covering a fraction of our education is enough," a veteran says in the ad, sponsored by VoteVets.org.
"We didn't give a fraction in Iraq. We gave 100 percent."
Senator John McCain is set to release 400 pages of medical records, including documents related to his melanoma surgery in August 2000, to a tightly controlled group of reporters on the Friday before Memorial Day weekend.Like Bush, McCain thinks the traditional media types won't report on anything that interferes with their long weekends. It worked for Bush time and time again. This time, the press has been given a heads up, and it'll probably still work. Read More......
Mr. McCain said late last week that he had nothing to hide. Campaign officials have nonetheless said that even if nothing in the records suggests a problem with his health, a rush of news media reports focusing on the cancer surgery was not politically helpful and that they wanted to play down the information as much as possible — something that the timing of the release would seem to accomplish.
Longtime uber-lobbyist Charles R. Black Jr. is John McCain's man in Washington, a political maestro who is hoping to guide his friend, the senator from Arizona, to the presidency this November.Apparently, there was very good money in representing brutal dictators, if you didn't mind the blood all over it.
But for half a decade in the 1980s, Black was also Jonas Savimbi's man in the capital city. His lobbying firm received millions from the brutal Angolan guerrilla leader and took advantage of Black's contacts in Congress and the White House.
Justice Department records that Black's firm submitted under the Foreign Agents Registration Act detail frequent meetings with lawmakers and their staffs and lavish spending by Black and his partners as they attempted to ensure support for Savimbi, whose UNITA movement was fighting the Marxist Angolan government.
Then in his 30s, Black already had established himself as a pioneer of the revolving door between campaign consulting and lobbying, having been a senior adviser on President Ronald Reagan's reelection campaign before returning to K Street. And his clients, as often as not, were foreign leaders eager to burnish their reputations.
In addition to Savimbi, Black and his partners were at times registered foreign agents for a remarkable collection of U.S.-backed foreign leaders whose human rights records were sometimes harshly criticized, even as their opposition to communism was embraced by American conservatives. They included Philippine President Ferdinand Marcos, Mobutu Sese Seko of Zaire, Nigerian Gen. Ibrahim Babangida, Somali President Mohamed Siad Barre, and the countries of Kenya and Equatorial Guinea, among others.
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