McCain's Lobbyists -- And His Judgment
By Cernig Saturday Oct 11, 2008 10:30am
There's an interesting and little talked about article this weekend from the National Journal which sets out the lucrative relationships some of John McCain's campaign advisers, in their alter-egos as super-lobbyists, have with some very questionable oligarchs in Russia and elsewhere - leading to some serious questions about McCain's judgement and the company he keeps.
There's Christian Ferry, McCain's deputy campaign manager, who also works for the lobbying firm of McCain's campaign manager and longtime GOP apparatchik Rick Davis.
In Montenegro, Davis Manafort helped push a referendum on independence from Serbia that narrowly passed by popular vote in May 2006. In Ukraine, Ferry was part of a Davis Manafort team that advised Victor Yanukovich, the country's then-prime minister, whose pro-Russian party made gains in the 2006 parliamentary elections. (In 2004, Yanukovich lost to the U.S.-backed candidate, Victor Yushchenko, in a hotly contested presidential race.)
Sources say that Davis Manafort received multimillion-dollar fees from each country. "Ferry was on the ground in both countries and talked about it a great deal," said one source with knowledge of the McCain campaign and of the firm's electoral work in Ukraine. The source added that Ferry acted as "Rick's implementer."
These overseas efforts underscore not only how closely Ferry's career has been linked to Davis but also the extent to which the upper ranks of the McCain campaign include lobbyists and consultants who worked for foreign clients.
And then there's Randy Scheunemann, who has lobbied for Georgia (as we know), Latvia, Macedonia and Taiwan.
And Charles Black, who has worked for the "corruption-plagued nation of Equatorial Guinea and a Moscow think tank run by Leonid Reiman". The latter used to be Vladimir "K.G.B. Eyes" Putin's telecoms minister and has been linked to allegations of money laundering by German authorities. Black, of course, was also one of the folks who arranged Rev. Sun Myung Moon's coronation as "King of America".
And Davis himself, who involved McCain with Raffaello Follieri, "who in September pleaded guilty in federal court in Manhattan to money laundering and defrauding investors of more than $2 million" in what was a part of what has become known as the Vati-Con Scandal. Davis also got McCain sit-down meetings with Oleg Deripaska, whose fortune has been pegged at $28 billion and who was a close ally of that same Vladimir Putin's.
For someone who claims to be a maverick, McCain has an awful lot of people around him who have done the bidding of foreign governments or other foreign interests," says Bill Buzenberg, executive director of the nonpartisan Center for Public Integrity.
But that doesn't really get to the heart of the problem.
Earlier in the week, McCain's association with the US Council for World Freedom , home to Iran-Contra conspirators, anti-semites and organisers of Latin American death squads, and it's parent body - the World Anti-Communist League. The parent group began as the Asian People's AntiCommunist League formed by followers of the Reverend Sun Myung Moon, head of the Unification Church. One was a war criminal, another a plain criminal. Moon still he boasts about it on his own website - along with how he uses the Washinton Times and UPI Wire Service to push those group's agendas. (And hey, we're back to Moon again. Small world.)
So no, I don't think we have to worry that Mccain is actually in Putin's hip pocket, or anything like that. The USCWF are as wild-eyed a bunch of "bodily fluid" purists as ever hated a commie and McCain's entirely in the tank for them (which explains his hatred of Putin and all things Russian). But it does suggest that he's been played for a patsy by lobbyists using his name and status to make a buck for themselves, by trotting him out like a tame poodle for luncheons and meetings. And not only has he been too naive to notice, he's given those lobbyists key positions in his campaign.
Now, is that the kind of judgment you can trust?
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as I've detailed HERE.
Fox news morons are already planning riots and revolution if Obama wins. Check out the comments. The article itself says, "What will you do if the election is stolen" which pretty much means, "What will you do if Obama wins" Pretty scary!!
http://foxforum.blogs.foxnews.com/2008/10/11/...
"In Montenegro, Davis Manafort helped push a referendum on independence from Serbia that *narrowly passed by popular vote* in May 2006."
Actually, that's not true. The referendum terms themselves were unprecedented and absurd. It required 55% of the total vote in order for Montenegro to achieve independence. It was an absurd requirement in itself.
The referendum passed, therefore it was far from narrow, in any democratic/popular vote sense, something like 56-44%.
Well, if it needed 55% and got 56%, that's a narrow victory, isn't it?
The "victory" may have been narrow, the popular vote wasn't by far.
The terms for the "victory" were unprecedented and the implications are disturbing.
Here is an excerpt from the Main German Newspaper Der Speigel
"I mean, come on: John McCain -- the self-proclaimed maverick and believer in All Truth, All The Time -- has become a win-at-any-cost sleaze-monger. First, he insults the intelligence of the American people by choosing a rank amateur as his vice-presidential running mate. Then, he starts spreading -- with a straight face -- all kinds of untruths about Barack Obama, such as his record on taxes and his "plan" to raise taxes on most voters. And now, we're told that he has unleashed Steve Schmidt and his Rovian political destroyers to bring down Obama no matter what, instead of building up McCain."
And his lucrative relationship with these guys . . .
http://www.asecondlookatthesaudis.com
I've explored a similar topic, White 'entitlement' to racism, on my blog today, with a kewl illustration I wish somebody would photoshop for me...My premise is that conscientiously "White" people see Mc/Palin as their revenge for having had to submit to the regimins of "political correctness" all these years...Obama's their excuse for letting it all out...
Talibunny, Talibunny, Siss! Boom! Bah!
Talibunny, Talibunny, Rah! Rah! Rah!
http://www.stinque.com/2008/10/10/talibunny-i...
The repulican goal is to put the most ignorant that can be manipulated in office.
A 425 in verbal and a 416 in math. Don't they give you 400 in each just for paying the fee and putting your name on the form?
McCain's Balkan connections are well-known. UNODC (United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime)released an interesting report this year. Unfortunately for Dems, Obama's advisors also seem blind to the threat posed by the Albanian-Kosovo mafia. http://www.b92.net/eng/news/crimes-article.ph... It's going to be an intersesting next four years.
The darling of the conservative christian right, Lying Palin, has been given new marching orders to tackle the age old staples of abortion, gay marriage, and immigration. The tactics aren’t changing, it is still muster up hate within the troops, just the topic is modified.
Lack of ethics and racism and breaking the commandment of bearing false witness, run hand in hand all in the name of the god of this female false prophet.
McCain will bandy about this next week with the other falsehoods about ACORN, and tout his economic bribe policies at the wall street, banking and corporation entities; all along proclaiming it’s for the average American ( and not a mention of the illegal vote purging that the GOP has already accomplished). All the while, Fox propaganda machine spewing their affirming lies 24 hours a day.The addition of ministers, evoking their two cents (and retaining their tax exempt status) goes unanswered as well, instilling their false prophet threats of their god that apparently condones lies and fear.
Meanwhile the Democratic party says and does nothing about the hundreds of thousands of voters that have been purged. Meanwhile the justice department does nothing about the hundreds of illegally disenfranchised voters (after Obama wins, there will be plenty to prosecute this current AG).
It is up to the bloggers to incite the network news to address the vote purging truth and not these false distractions that the GOP and McCain campaign is spoon feeding the networks. Where are all the true journalist. Why isn’t Brad Friedman on a network news show.
McCain only refrained from this last weeks continuation of hate speeches so that he could appear like the maverick he so maliciously tries to say he is; the harm has been done. The real ugliness of the GOP was becoming too evident and it was hurting him, he did not do this for the sake of the nation; once again America did not come first with this man and his demon like not repented unethical and lying side kick. The lying will continue this week, just new victims, the same hate format continues.
Good point, and one that should be important to the Christian faithful, one would think.
I don't know enough about it... but maybe Palin's Catholic turned Pentacostal turned non-denominational beliefs, or whatever church she is in this week, don't consider lying an unchristian thing? Maybe McCain's Episcopalian cum Baptist-mega-church beliefs don't include Greed among its sins?
Today McCain is pissed off about being compared to racist governor George Wallace, and demands that Obama condemn the person who said it.
Is "I'm an irritable little fucker" the big message the McCain campaign is trying to convey? Because that's all that's coming through.
Not only that, his campaign asked that Obama "personally repudiate these outrageous and divisive comments."
So now it's Obama's responsibility when any Democratic Congressman expresses his own opinion?
Not to mention, only a few weeks ago, McCain himself was asked to name the three wisest people he would rely heavily on if elected. The three he named were General Petraeus, Meg Whitman, and... Congressman John Lewis.
This was news to Lewis, with whom McCain has never established a relationship in 22 years of serving Congress together. I'm sure it wasn't just a cynical attempt to invoke a known civil rights leader as his buddy to gain some "reach across the aisle" points and street cred with the moderates and independents. Was it?
Either way, apparently Mr. Lewis lost all that cherished wisdom in the span of six weeks. I don't think he will be getting any phone calls from John looking for advice. Incidentally, Lewis did not actually equate McCain's campaign rabble-rousing with Wallace's... he just said it reminded him of it. Why wouldn't it?
I thought lobbyists who work for other countries had to register as foriegn agents. Do the rank and file republicans know that their party has been taken over by Russian agents?
McCain is following a tried and true Republican tradition...pursuing money ahead of all other considerations, moral or patriotic. Whether it was the Bush Crime Family financing the Nazis while we were at war with them, neocons fomenting wars so could derive profit from boths sides in ensuing conflicts, starting wars and squandering American lives and treasure and turning innumerable innocents into victims - all for the love of money and power, ripping off the Nation and the People in savings and loan scandals or a long series banking scams perpetrated over a period of time that spanned generations, betraying and corrupting their offices for the dust of the earth, or so many other betrayals and heinous crimes that are far too numerous to count...that's the Repulican way (sad to say, it's also becoming a way of too many Democrats, too). In his bid for power, McCain has exclusively and deliberately surrounded himself with some of the slimiest people on the planet. He knows he has done this. But he is so deluded and cynical, that he contemptfully attempts to pawn himself off to the American People as being a man of principle and integrity. Look how many people have bought what he is selling.
When I look at these guys and see what they have done with their lives, it gives me pause. There is this fuzzy line, the other side of which crimes are no longer merely crimes and betrayals are no longer merely betrayals. They are worse. They are evil, and not only evil, but profoundly so. You know, when it looks like a duck, swims like a duck, quacks like a duck......
McCain and the people with whom he has surrounded himself, whom he holds in highest regard are, pretty much to a person, amoral sociopaths and psychopaths. By the consistent example of their deeds, they can be seen to possess no trace of conscience. As regards their pursuit of power for its own sake and their pursuit of wealth for the sake of acquiring yet more power and for the sake of exercising exclusive but empty privileges, the limits upon what they would do in pursuit of those two objectives is defined soley by the opportunities that they are presented and by the degree to which external restraints are imposed upon them without their consent. They are irredeemable, self-made lifers in a prison of such supreme and absolute selfishness, that there is no realistic hope that they would ever - of their own free will - impose restraints upon their own choices or acts, regardless who those choices and acts harm. It's always the same old story and pattern of behavior. A tiresome pattern of banality that is entirely, and always, predictable. And because of that predictability, it is always disappointing when I look about and see how great is the number of people who would bestow upon them the power and wealth they desire, who fail to perceive these characters as they really are, who fail to pierce the artificial constructs that serve as their public personas: McCain as the heroic, maverick servant, Palin as the folksey, beauty-queen soccer mom, Bush as the guy you'd want to have a beer with...when they are all, to a person, twisted and malignant personalities. Viscious, mean-spirited and vindictive predators. In a healthy and well-informed society, these guys wouldn't be political or business leaders...they would never be able to assemble a following of the trusting in numbers sufficient to enable the doors of opportunity to open. They would, instead, remain at the fringes of society, put there by their own self-defeating choices and behaviors. That they have attained to such positions of power, wealth, influence and freedom to act doesn't say a whole lot of good things about us as a people.
We've got a really deep hole that we need to climb out of.
Great site
http://lobbyistsformccain.com/
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