Feministe has managed to change servers with nary a bump, so yea! for them. And they put this clip of of Rachel Maddow handing David Frum his ass after he plays the “yes, the pseudo-fascism of the Republicans is bad, but now they let snarky lesbians on the air, and that’s just as bad” card on her show.
What a wanker. His entire stance of criticizing the McCain campaign is a pose to get people to listen to him…..excuse the McCain campaign for their behavior and imply that liberals are just as bad, letting McCain off the hook twice over. The funniest part about his whine is that Maddow is the soul of sweetness, and he comes off as the negative, pissy one, while she’s very polite in her disagreement, however strong. Granted, it’s come from a lady, so there’s going to be some people out there grabbing their asses and freaking out, but reasonably speaking, the distance between them only highlights how wrong he is.
John McCain Orders Up an Acme Self-Hoisting Petard
With all the shakeups since he entered the presidential race, it’s been hard to know who’s running John McCain’s campaign… but I’m gradually becoming convinced that it’s Wile E. Coyote.
The whole thing is good, and calls attention to a new Obama campaign-related web site: Low Road Express. The conventional wisdom used to be that the fact-checking approach to fighting smears was useless because it lends credence to them, but the internet’s the perfect medium to reverse that concept; if any campaign can do it, it looks like being Obama’s.
Picture: Washington Post
Randy Scheunemann, McCain’s senior foreign policy adviser, has close business ties to crooked lobbyist Stephen Payne, despite the McCain campaign’s statements (and omissions) to the contrary, as reported by Lindsay Beyerstein.
McCain’s senior foreign policy and national security adviser, Randy Scheunemann, is listed as a member of Worldwide Strategic Energy’s executive team in a pre-prospectus obtained by Majikthise.
This document was circulated to prospective investors in 2007, according to the source who provided the document.
McCain’s campaign had this to say on Monday (the above article was published Sunday):
On Monday, the McCain campaign said that from 2002 to 2006, Scheunemann periodically engaged in consulting relationships with the two companies [Worldwide Strategic Partners and Caspian Alliance] and that Scheunemann was never on the payroll of either firm, but that he was an occasional outside expert consultant.
Scheunemann did not lobby on any specific legislation on behalf of Worldwide Strategic Partners, said McCain campaign spokesman Brian Rogers.
Read all three [1, 2, 3] of Lindsay’s posts on the subject for the full story.
[Update: Added emphasis to point out the campaign’s wafer-thin claim to plausible deniability.]
Haven’t I been telling you all primary season long about the Beltway consultant class, always more concerned about self-preservation and their next meal ticket, poisoning politics and democracy? Here’s bold additional confirmation of it.
The $3 million-dollar/month former Clinton “chief strategist” Mark Penn, whose arrogance and incompetence destroyed Hillary Clinton’s campaign, has gotten in bed with Bush’s babysitter, Karen Hughes, to form a PR/communications firm. This is so DC. (WSJ):
Former Clinton strategist Mark Penn, chairman and CEO of public-relations firm Burson-Marsteller, is hiring former Bush adviser Karen Hughes as a vice chairman, the principals say. The political combatants, known for their partisan efforts, decided to combine forces to offer a one-stop crisis-communication and public-affairs shop to corporations caught in front-page headlines or faced with a changing Washington.
It’s a comeback effort of sorts for both players. Mr. Penn, 54, who served as chief strategist and pollster for Sen. Hillary Clinton’s presidential bid, has been blamed in recent months for her failed candidacy. Ms. Hughes, 51, who came to Washington with President George W. Bush as his communications director, left her State Department position several months ago after making little progress on her mission to improve the U.S. image around the world.
“Mark and I share a vision that communications people should be strategic advisers ... and an understanding of the realities of the political process,” Ms. Hughes said. “And we also share the same lawyer.”
Boy, what boob would hire these two? This level of incompetence cannot and should not continue to be tolerated and enabled. The common sense question is why are people like Hughes and Penn rewarded a dime for continuing to screw up? Is the motto in DC really “F*ck up, move up?
Help me out here, people—Hughes and Penn are the kinds of folks who need to be swept the hell out of Washington until they develop some actual skilz worth paying for.
