Sen. John McCain says he’s “going to go to war” with the New York Times, because frankly, that’s all McCain knows how to do. War, metaphorical or otherwise, is his response to everything. I swear, the guy is suffering from Post Traumatic Stress Disorder… his “fight or flight” response is stuck permanently on the former.
And there are folks who want this guy to be the one with his finger on the button?
In related news, The New Republic brings us the story behind the story of the McCain/Iseman affair, while Josh suddenly claims to have standards.
Josh’s column begggars belief.
Chris Kelly in Huffopo has some great lines.
“Most Americans can appreciate a really vigorous act of (admittedly-autumnal) warrior-culture adultery, but no one wants to vote for a crippled old love-struck fool.”
“And afterwards she has to dress him, because he can’t move his arms.”
“But did she have to be a lobbyist? I guess you meet who you meet, but it’s like Britney doing it with the paparazzi.”
“No, an ordinary citizen would not be treated as the President has been treated. But ordinary citizens don’t enforce the laws for the rest of us. Ordinary citizens don’t have the world’s mightiest armed forces at their command. Ordinary citizens do not usually have the opportunity to be figures of historical importance.
Presidents are not ordinary citizens. They are extraordinary, in that they are vested with so much more authority and power than the rest of us. We have a right; indeed, we have an obligation, to hold them strictly accountable……”
Strictly accountable! Because presidents have extraordinary powers.
I feel the American people need to know, using sworn depositions, if there was an affair between a lobbyist and the ranking member of the committee she was lobbying.
If the lobbyist feels she has been unduly soiled(fun fun fun), she should sue the NYT. If she doesn’t, then I guess we are free to believe there were shenanigans.
Seriously, Josh can be such an asshat.
I don’t believe Clark Humphrey will mind quoting his observation about who the “lady in question” was lobbying for:
“Pax, you may recall, in 2004 was the chief TV conduit for the ‘Swift Boat Veterans for Truth'”
Not to be disrespectful to Sen. McCain for his military service which included a long stint as a prisoner of war. It’s useful to remember that he finished at the bottom of his class at the Naval Academy, and subsequently only flew 4 combat missions in Vietnam, being shot down on the fourth. Sen. McCain’s military expertise is less than it may appear from his resume.
His current position on Iraq is that Bush’s flaw has been that he hasn’t pursued the war vigorously enough. That combined with his other statements regarding Iraq should give one pause as to his fitness to lead our country and by extension its military forces.
@3 Saying someone had an affair isn’t libel, it’s a compliment.
Remember in Feb. 2004 when Drudge “broke” the story about Kerry’s “affair” with an intern? Several bastions of the media launched investigations into that unfounded lie.
I’ll tell you what libel is. Libel is accusing someone of not getting any.
I don’t think the button is the main problem with Hundred Years War McCain. I’m more concerned with what he’d do with the tactical forces.
@6 Well, he was good at cracking up aircraft, which is why they pulled him from flight duty and made him an instructor, and he had to beg and plead to get a combat assignment, and then was the only pilot in a flight of 20 to get shot down, and after he was repatriated the only job they could find for him was lobbying, and he resigned from the Navy because he wasn’t promotable as he didn’t have the skills or experience to give him command of anything except a desk and a pile of paperwork.
How long before this Kosovo-Serbia thing turns into another one of those foreign messes that we can’t keep out noses out of?
Jeesh! I’ve had enough of getting involved in the affaris of foreigners!
Makes you wonder if Senators and Congresscritters are able to meet ANYONE other than lobbyists. The hoi poloi have to settle for a fleeting handshake on the rope line.
Maybe this is just a shot from the left, over the bow of the Swift Boat which is now loading provisions for a lengthy and protracted tactical event. If the left only had those kinda balls.
Look, when reading The Stranger or the remarks of Feit or Savage or Barnett or any of the rest of them one must rember that snark and stirring shit up is paramount. It is their first priority. It trumps journalism and morality and ethics and responsible journalism. These guys are assholes. Goldy soils his reputation by associating with them. Dan Savage supported the Iraq War just to act contrary to what people would expect him to do. You want to read something obscene? Read his war mongering piece here.
http://www.thestranger.com/sea.....?oid=12237
The Stranger endorsement committee: Savage, Barnett and Feit endorsed Joe Szwaja against Godden in the last city council election primary and then switched the endorsement to Godden for the election. How can anyone take these assholes seriously.
Having read the NYT article, a couple of things jump out.
First, the article never says that there was an affair, or even that there was any actual impropriety. It says that some campaign aides believed that there was something going on. Big difference.
Assuming that Senator McCain was not in any sort of affair with the young (OK, not so young, but compared to him…) lady, this could be a very good thing for him.
Remember, he’s trying to cozy up to the Republican “base”. Those folks may dislike him, but they consider the New York Times to be the mouthpiece of the devil himself. Getting their endorsement was not a big plus for Senator McCain. Having Air America endorse him might have been a bit worse, but not much.
Having the Times do a hit piece on him will help his standing with the base, and if he never had an affair (even if the article is completely factual) then he wins.
Reasonable folks will look for possible corruption, but I’m willing to bet they won’t find anything that would raise eyebrows anywhere but around here, and we aren’t likely to vote for McCain anyway.
The Republican base sees the Senator under attack from their hated enemy, the New York Times. Time to forget old grudges and rally round the flag.
And Senator McCain doesn’t have to lie, or do anything even slightly shady. He originally gives a weak, but truthful denial, then refuses further interviews on the matter, letting others jump to conclusions.
(It’s quite possible that the reporters have gotten so used to having a weak denial from a Republican mean that there really is a story, that they came to that conclusion here.)
Once the story comes out, the Senator then gives a more vigorous denial, complete with details. This leaves the Times with the appearance that they deliberately lied about a sex scandal in order to make Senator McCain look bad, even though they never made any claim about the Senator being involved in an affair.
Remember, the secondary stories, blogs, etc… are all pushing the story as “The Times says Senator McCain cheated on his wife!” Most people will never read the actual story. Months from now, any time anyone around here quotes the NYT for anything, MTR and Puddy will start spouting about how the Times “lied about McCain having an affair”.
Senator McCain mirrors President Bush in many of his policies and positions, but in one area they are nothing alike, and we had better be very careful because of that difference.
Senator McCain is reasonably intelligent.
Here’s a Kwik Kwiz, kids:
Who was the godfather of Robert F. Kennedy’s daughter Kathleen (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ Kathleen_Kennedy_Townsend), born on the 4th of July in 1951?
[] A. Marlon Brando
[] B. Progressive politician Henry Wallace
[] C. Progressive politician Adlai Stevenson
[] D. Paleo-progressive politician Henry “Scoop” Jackson
[] E. Newsman Edward R. Murrow (Good night!)
[] F. Eleanor Roosevelt
Still waiting for a lucky winner, who will get an extra heaping helping of Slacker Rabbit stew. Slacker Goldstein, who now has lot’s of extra time, is encouraged to go for the gold(stein) by guessing early and often.
So mark the rageneck @ 17-
Who gives a flying fuck?
Savage stranger Josh finally got one right. There’s no story there. Even the shadow shell of a story that Feitkopf thinks they had (unnamed ‘aides’ trying to put some daylight between the regulator and the regulated lobbyist, is not a story because the sources are … nameless.)
The Jayson Blair Times has been down this dirt road at least one time too often: stories spun from nebulae of anonymity. That’s why it’s the Jayson Blair Times, dammit, and it’s damned time that the Times gets birdshot blasted by a warmonger.
Same playbook as pee-dookie…
You can’t blind-em with brilliance so baffle ’em with bullshit.
17: lot’s = lots. Typos! Isht!
16: Passable summary of what Medved said 1.5 hours ago. Perhaps you owe him attribution.
15: Supported the Iraq war, hell! He invented it! Do you really think moron Bush — even if half his Rove wasn’t tied behind his back — would have had the brains for war if Savage hadn’t thought of it first?
On Independence Day 2002 Dan the Man made the cogent and coherent case for war that Bush was unable to make and unwilling to attempt.
So give my man Doorknob Dan the credit he deserves. All by himself he took down a mighty fine senator from Pennsylvania. All by himself he set freedom on the march in Iraq. All by himself he licked Gary Bauer’s knobs.
ewp at 6
I totally agree – he doesn’t appear to actually be that good at war, but according to vietnamveteransagainstmccain he got shot down after his 23rd combat mission (thus losing his fifth and final taxpayer supplied aircraft)(including the one that was accidentally shot out from underneath him while he was still on the deck of the Forrestal)
But let’s be sure the mud we sling is correct.
11’s penis envy is showing. Rabbit came out of his war as a chimpfaced rabbit. McCain came out of his as the hero he willed himself to be.
Nevermind the butt bunny bromide or insinuation that McCain — 1 in 20! — was brought down by incompetence. It’s the kind of small-minded poufter pout uttered by small-brained rodents who think that Camelot Kennedy was a hero for getting his boat sliced in half. If JFK was heroic, it was after the fact, subsequent to the mess he made. McCain was heroic, and his heroism was after the fact that his plane fell from the sky, for whatever reason.
Hate to say it, because I’d love this story to be true, but I think Josh (for once) is dead on. There’s no there there. And I’ve talked to some other journalists today that feel the same way.
TNR’s piece (which Goldy linked to) has a good summary of the internal NYT conflicts over this story. In the end, they sat on it til after McCain’s nomination was assured, then did their best to bury it. But they still ran it, when they had to know that the public’s main takeaway from the story was based on nothing more than anonymous innuendo.
If we’re going to complain when people like Kerry (and, soon enough, Obama) get slimed, then it’s no better when it happens to the opposition.
Perspective, via Thers at Whiskey Fire:
I think it’s great that John McCain might get taken down over some sex thing and not over his idea to kill everyone in a preposterous thousand year war.
http://whiskeyfire.typepad.com.....thout.html
Hate to say it, because I’d like always to be on every opposite side to Geov on every issue, but he and the Feitkopf nail it. The Jayson Blair Times fooled itself again.
I thought the story was relatively balanced. I’m not sure the story was newsworthy. I did hear an anecdote today that puts McCain in a rather nasty light: Sometime during the Clinton years he asked a roomful of GOP faithful why Chelsea Clinton was so ugly. He said it was because Janet Reno was her father. Making “jokes” about a child’s appearance suggests some inherent meanness to the man.
True if your rumour is true, 29, although the Butcher of Waco is always fair game for unfair jest.
Chelsea was not fair game then, but she is now. Having pimped herself out to seduce ‘super’delegates, she’s painted a target on her ugly or “ugly” forhead.
forehead. pretty forehead.
@17 (G.) Joe McCarthy
On topic: I read the article and have a different view of it than lots of other people do.
It’s a fluff piece designed to let lots of comments about McCain’s integrity get published, as well as excerpts from his memoirs about how he’s made mistakes because he’s got so much integrity that he never realizes how bad something looks because he’s so honest his thought processes don’t go down the seamy side.
Even the title: “For McCain, Self-Confidence on Ethics Poses Its Own Risk” is just a big fluff.
This is all designed to make McCain look honest, forthright, not a political insider and a plain dealer. Even the comments about lobbyists donating to and running his campaign are accompanied by “He would never do anything that didn’t jibe with his personal beliefs” kinds of statements.
The there, there is that McCain didn’t learn shit from his near miss with the S & L/Keating crisis. He’s still dancing like a poodle when someone with money who needs a favor comes calling. That’s fine, and yeah, yeah, I know-that’s how it works in Washington. But then don’t run on the white night, moralist bullshit.
30
Here’s a link: http://www.salon.com/news/1998/06/25newsb.html
We have a winner: David @ 32. And we have a perceptive analyst.
We also have right here in our hands the swiftboating of John McCain. Even if David is right about the NYT catalyst for HA’s low-tech lynching of JM, the swiftboat lynching continues, right here.
Rabbit is impelled by penis envy to assert or imply that JM used family prestige to acquire his coveted billet as a guest of Hanoi’s agrarian reformers. In fact, as Rabbit surely knows, McCain refused to use family pull when offered an early out from the Hilton.
We’re not talking about a 90-day wonder, an elitist frat boy (John Kerry) who transfigured into Purple Hearts the kinds of wounds that normal people take to the school nurse for a cartoon-character Band-Aid.
We’re not talking about a reckless rich kid who was asleep at the wheel when a destroyer ran over his boat, and whose rich daddy bought a journalist who turned the fuck up into heroic legend.
35
Ah, yes, and your current president was never an elitist frat boy, nor did he ever trade on family wealth and connections. No, he was one of those admirable–even heroic–young fellers who brought himself up by the bootstraps, despite daunting obstacles, and earned the position and prestige he holds today. Yup, GWB–a timeless model for American youth.
George Bush is also a hero. He defended Texas airspace from incursions by the evil empire of Oklahoma.
How dare you, sir, swiftboat a great American who wasn’t in a boat.
And up a creek.
And without a paddle.
37
Please accept my heartfelt and profound apology. I don’t know what got into me to slander such a fine and wise leader. Sometimes my liberal brain just gets all out of focus and makes me say things that just aren’t true. I’ll go turn on Fox News and watch for the rest of the night to try to get my head straight.
Just remember, without the Oklahoma Cowboys gettin’ together with those Mexican Whores, there’d be no Texans.
TFF
Please don’t blame Texans on Mexican whores. Mexican whores actually perform a service.
As Mike Malloy says,”No disrespect to sex workers.”
@7…RR…
Word on the street is that you had an affair…with the palm of your hand.
The Piper
PooperSquats is the only man known to get a woody in anticipation of a colonoscopy. . .
ROGER YOUR A FUCKIN IDIOT NO WONDER PEOPLE DONT PAY ATTENTION TO YOU.YOUR A FUCKIN LIAR.McCAIN WAS A POW AND A LCDR WHEN HE WAS RELEASED.HE RETIRED AS A CAPTAIN 06.AND WAS THE COMMANDING OFFICER OF THE BIGGEST SQUADRON
IN THE NAVY.SO BEFORE YOU SPOUT PURE BULL SHIT GET YOUR FACTS STRAIGHT.OH AND BY THE WAY OBAMAS BRANCH OF SERVICE AGAIN.TAKE YOUR MEDS
People pay a shitload more attention to Roger than they ever will to you, fuckhead.
Headless@47: That’s not our fault. He throws his “pellets” all over and you and other 16%ers eat them up.
His “critique” was as wrong as one could be.
His “critique” of Ohio was destroyed by CalTech and MIT.
Shall I continue?
Headless@47:
His “critique” of Haiti was as wrong as one could be.
The NYT was right. McCain’s staff was so worried about McCain’s contacts with this young female lobbyist that they conred her and told her to stay away and tried to get McCain to end his contact with her. McCain did accept contributions and corporate jet travel from a company with business before his comittee and afterward intervened on their behalf with the federal agency his committee oversees. Quid pro fucking quo.
But you should read the WaPo and AP stories about this to get a better idea what’s really going on. He may or may not have fucked the woman. No proof has been offered, and no one has claimed that it is true. What is true is that the whore in this story is McCain.
@454…TFF…
Yeah, and you consume gallons of Fleet Phospho Soda for the sheer enjoyment of the resulting movement. Whatever you do, don’t run out!
The Piper
52
You, however, need no laxative to produce prodigious quantities of egotistical shit that you seem to think other people care about.