It is a complete waste of the money John McCain’s contributors have donated to his campaign. It is a complete waste of the country’s time and attention at the very moment when millions of people are losing their homes and their jobs. And it is a completely frivolous way to choose the next President of the United States
Kathy Hilton, Paris’s mother and prominent McCain contributor, on McCain’s new ad using her daughter as an example of negative celebrity.
So, John McCain was almost a polygamist:
Although McCain suggested in his autobiography that months passed between his divorce and remarriage, the divorce was granted April 2, 1980, and he wed Hensley in a private ceremony five weeks later. McCain obtained an Arizona marriage license on March 6, 1980, while still legally married to his first wife.
There’s no larger point I’m trying to make about this. You can be a scumbag and still be a good president. (See Clinton, Bill). But as John McCain wants to make this election about character instead of issues (probably because most of his stands on issues are unpopular – and on virtually no issues can he appease both the Republican base and the general electorate) tawdry details like this becomes more relevant.
[digg-reddit-me]The “DC Madam”, Deborah Jeane Palfrey, was found dead this morning by Florida police near her mother’s home. According to the police, she committed suicide. She was found guilty of money laundering and racketeering just over two weeks ago.
Just a tad bit suspicious.
The Dallas Morning News asks:
As surely as this is a tragic outcome, there are some sighs of relief inside the Beltway this afternoon. Can the conspiracy theories be far behind?
The Associated Press has expended it’s initial bulletin to include these relevant details:
[Her] trial concluded without revealing many new details about the service or its clients…
Palfrey faced a maximum of 55 years in prison and was free pending her sentencing July 24.
I give reddit about 30 minutes – at most – until “Dick Cheney killed the DC Madam” headlines appear…
Update: Almost there…
And the awe-inspiring follow-up:
very powerful people… signing in relief
Funnily enough – exactly how she used to make her money
Update II: Really close:
Cheney was CEO of Halliburton during the time of his liaisons with the DC Madam escort firm.
Update III: So freaking close:
Gee, couldn’t see that one coming a mile away… Mess with neocons, commit “suicide”, surprise, surprise.
And Florida’s likely the best place for such a “suicide”, what with the stellar reputation of its police apparatus.
Hopefully she’s got it set up so someone will publish the list to the web upon event of her death.
Update IV: And there it is:
Snaxion is the winner of the “Dick Cheney killed the DC Madam” contest.
Congratulations snaxion!
You win…nothing. Sorry.
Update V: Drudge is now linking to the AP’s new snippet of information:
One of the escort service employees was former University of Maryland, Baltimore County, professor Brandy Britton, who was arrested on prostitution charges in 2006. She committed suicide in January before she was scheduled to go to trial.
Last year, Palfrey said she, too, was humiliated by her prostitution charges, but said: “I guess I’m made of something that Brandy Britton wasn’t made of.”
[digg-reddit-me]A few months ago, I wrote a post called “Before we came here, we thought of ourselves as good people” using the words of Vince Foster to encapsulate the uncommon corruptions of the Clinton years. I was thinking of and looking for the video below when writing, from the conclusion of the film Primary Colors. Both the film and the book were intended to portray barely fictional representations of the Clintons. I believe that movie (slightly more so than the book) captured in a profound way both the appeal and the darker side of the Clintons. (See the trailer here).
The conclusion to the movie is pregnant with meaning given today’s current stand-off between a Clinton and a black man, especially given the arguments made at that time.
There are many issues to tease out of this clip.
Governor Jack Stanton, the clear stand-in for Bill Clinton, is trying to convince an idealistic young black man (of about the same age was Barack Obama in 1992 when the events of the novel happen) to support him as he justifies his use of scandals, smears, dirty politics to win a brutal primary against a candidate who is riding a public groundswell of support from people fed up with politics-as-usual. The governor explains why he needed to use every item in his disposal to take down the opposing candidate, despite their shared values – because the other candidate wouldn’t be able to win in November. The logic used then by candidate Clinton and his stand-in here, Jack Stanton, is the same as the logic used by Ms. Clinton to justify her tactics and continued presence in the race today.
It goes something like this:
1. The only way to win is to win dirty. (“Lincoln had to be a whore in order to call on the ‘better angels of our nature!’ “)
2. The Democrat opposing me won’t be able to win in November. (Because he isn’t willing to play dirty enough and/or because he has some other issues or scandals in his past.)
3. No one else with a chance to win would push the issues and care about the people the Clinton/Stanton candidate would.
4. Therefore, the Clinton/Stanton has a responsibility to save the Democratic party by taking down the candidate(s) opposing them by whatever means they can – because only they can win and push forward the liberal agenda.
Various news agencies have reported that this is exactly the argument that Ms. Clinton and her surrogates have been pushing in private calls to the superdelegates. It’s worth remembering that this is not the first time they have pushed this idea and used it to justify doing whatever they needed to win.
The Clintons seem to truly believe that they alone can win and save America – and that they are justified in doing whatever needs to be done to get them power. This has been their justification to the party for every betrayal, every time they have sold out their values, for every time they have taken out an intra-party opponent.
And if they can continue to make this argument to themselves, it is going to be a long summer.
For those of you who might have missed this Star Ledger exclusive, a former aide to New Jersey Governor Jim McGreevey is claiming he engaged in threesomes with the Mr. Greevey and Mrs. McGreevey over the course of several years. The couple called the regular encounters “Friday Night Specials.”
Mr. McGreevey of course is famous for having to resign as governor after being outed and having employed his lover – not the aide in question, but another – in national security jobs for the state. This latest revelation is newsworthy because Mrs. McGreevey has filed a divorce action against her husband alleging that he deceived her into marriage and that she did not find out about his proclivities until it was made public in 2004. She is using this alleged deception as her grounds to demand sole custody of the couple’s daughter and $600,000.
Really though, this is only news because it means statements like this make it into print:
Pedersen did not say if he was gay or bisexual and only described having contact with Matos McGreevey during the trysts…
And:
…the weekly romps, from 1999 to 2001, …typically began with dinner at T.G.I. Friday’s and ended with a threesome at McGreevey’s condo in Woodbridge.
This 60 Minutes piece from a few weeks ago was astounding. I had heard about it because of the temporary station outage at CBS’s Alabama affiliate conveniently lasting the length of the piece. Of course, in its defense, the Alabama affiliate did re-broadcast the piece a week later. Timing it for maximum attention, they broadcast it during prime time on a Sunday.
In an odd turn of events, the re-broadcast of the short segment – as well as the rest of CBS’s lineup had extremely low ratings that night because of the brand-new phenom of February TV, the Superbowl.
Last November, Geraldine Ferraro made some headlines by trying to defend Senator Hillary Clinton against accusations that she was playing the gender card by…playing the gender card. I wrote about this back then. In a post dated November 5, 2007, I wrote:
Geraldine Ferraro, former vice presidential candidate in 1984, spoke to the New York Times attempting to defend Hillary against accusations that Hillary’s campaign was “playing the gender card” in responding to the quote politics of pile-on unquote. Judge for yourself how well she did:
“We can’t let them do this in a presidential race,” [Ferraro] said. “They say we’re playing the gender card. We are not. We are not. We have got to stand up. It’s discrimination against her as a candidate because she is a woman.”
Is it just me, or does Ferraro play the woman’s card as she says she’s not? It seems that Hillary isn’t the only member of her campaign who can contradict herself within a two minute time limit. I think this type of verbal feat – taking two opposing positions within two minutes – should be called a “pulling a Hillary”.
Now that Ms. Ferraro is in the news again, this post has started getting some search engine traffic. What I find odd is that since March 11, the post has gotten about 100 hits from Google and other search engines – and of those hundred hits, 8 people have left comments – an unusually high percentage for this blog. Additionally, most of the comments are pro-Hillary – also unusual. None of this would be exceptional if:
a. the blog post were new;
b. the blog post were about Ms. Ferraro’s most recent comments, or comments significantly similar;
c. the blog post discussed race in any way;
d. the comments were not so similar-sounding, and all by women (except one);
e. any of the comments had responded to the post in any manner.
Clearly – none of the commentors read the post they were commenting on. The comments they are referring to were about race. Not a single comment mentions anything about the post – or in fact mentions that the post is over four months old. ((I should also mention that two of the comments were defending Mr. Obama.)) Recently, two sites linked to this post: a commenter on BarackObama.com and MyNewswire.
I don’t know quite what to make of this. Has anyone else noticed anything similar? Does anyone have a plausible explanation for this?
Update: Ten more people “viewed” the post, and I received one more comment. I’m also noticing that two of the commentors – Catherine Fadden and Eileen Lewis – have:
That means that my email box is getting errors for every comment posted.
Suicide…. Riiiiiiight.
I’m sure there are no very powerful people who are signing in relief right now.