Monday With McCain

Thanks for the question, you little jerk. -(John McCain, after being asked by a high school student if he was too old to be president. For good measure, McCain then threatened to draft him.)

This Modern World

I Did NOT Have Sexual Relations With That Woman...

You know how teens have oral (or, wow, anal) sex instead of SEX sex in order to maintain that they are "technical" virgins? (As in, "I did not have sex with that hockey player"?)

Well, turns out the grown-ups had it wrong. Again.

According to the latest data (PDF) from the Guttmacher Institute, teens don't have "nonvaginal" sex in order to preserve their virginity. They have it along with losing their virginity. (And a bunch more after that, apparently. By six months after their first vaginal sex, 81 percent of adolescents have also had oral sex. By three years after, 92 percent.)

The main finding is this: "Both oral and anal sex are much more common among teens who have already had vaginal intercourse than among those who have not, suggesting that teens initiate a range of sexual activities around the same time, rather than substitute one for another.

"'There is a widespread belief that teens engage in nonvaginal forms of sex, especially oral sex, as a way to be sexually active while still claiming that technically, they are virgins,' says study author Laura Lindberg. 'However, our research shows that this supposed substitution of oral sex for vaginal sex is largely a myth. There is no good evidence that teens who have not had intercourse engage in oral sex with a series of partners.'"

Or, as another researcher put it to the Washington Post, "Most teens don't have oral sex until they have had vaginal sex."

This data contains more than just the basis for "A Very Special Hannah Montana," experts say. Rather, it has "clear policy implications," says Lindberg, noting that sex education and counseling need to take into account the even-fuller-than-we-thought spectrum of teen sexual behavior, especially when it comes to preventing sexually transmitted infection (STI). "The federal government's exclusive emphasis on abstinence-only-until-marriage programs does not give teens the skills and information they need to be safe." (Point taken, but if it's STI risk we're worried about, we always knew they had oral/anal sex, regardless of the timing. Not sure how this data should make the safer-sex message that much different.)

What it does suggest, the Post notes, is that we may also have had it wrong when we blasted the abstinence-only folks for "driving" teens to oral sex as, you know, something to do before marriage.

Still, bottom line: When it comes, at very least, to STI prevention -- pretty crucial these days among teens -- oral sex and anal sex are no mere technicality.

Two-Face McCain

Senator John McCain has a lobbyist problem. This past week, as several aides resigned because of their work representing unsavory governments, his campaign implemented a new policy governing these potential conflicts of interest. That led to the departure of additional staffers, including former Rep. Thomas Loeffler, a key adviser and fundraiser.

The McCain camp has insisted that the resignations are nothing more than evidence of the Senator's sincerity in combating outside influences. But the truth, reform groups say, is far from adulatory: McCain's current policy simply doesn't compare to the ethical commitments he championed earlier in his career.

Just twelve years ago, when McCain was politically recuperating from his involvement in the Keating Five scandal, he introduced legislation that would, if implemented today, cripple his presidential campaign.

In March 1996 and again the following year, McCain offered a bill that, in his own words, "would ban a candidate or a candidate's authorized committee from paying registered lobbyists."

In order to root out the moneyed influences, McCain continued, Congress had to unequivocally cut off the flow of campaign cash.

"Registered lobbyists who work for campaigns as fundraisers clearly represent a conflict of interest," he added. "When a campaign employs an individual who also lobbies that Member, the perception of undue and unfair influence is raised."

The legislation never passed.

Fast-forward a dozen years and the political dynamics have clearly changed. Now the GOP standard bearer, McCain has 115 lobbyists either working or raising money on his behalf. Many of these individuals have taken a leave of absence from these positions in order to help with the campaign. But others have held, simultaneously, fundraising and lobbyists positions.

In addition, the Senator has 70 registered lobbyists who have bundled money on his behalf - raising at least $100,000. On top of this, the Center for Responsive Politics reports that the Arizona Republican has received more than $610,000 in direct donations - not bundled cash - from lobbyists.

His recent, self-implemented, campaign policy is designed to counteract the image that such a fundraising apparatus suggests. "No person with a McCain Campaign title or position," the document reads, "may participate in a 527 or other independent entity that makes public communications that support or oppose any presidential candidate."

But critics and reform groups not only argue that the policy is too little too late, but that McCain can no longer claim the ethical high ground on which he has built much of his political career.

"I think because Mr. McCain believes himself to be an ethical man he believes you can't question his ethics. But the fact of the matter is, he has talked a good game but he isn't walking it. And you can't be the guy who positions himself as a reformer and then plays fast and loose with the rules," said Melanie Sloan, executive director of Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington. "I think he was sincere after Keating Five, and he obviously really believed in campaign finance reform, because he pushed it when it really didn't helped him. But I think over time that's changed. At the time he [made this speech] he wasn't thinking how it would affect his presidential run."

Moreover, they add, it is not just the quantity of lobbyists who have surrounded McCain. It is the quality. Indeed, some of the very people funding the Arizona Republicans run for the White House are those who would be interested in favors should he get there. As the New York Times reported in April 2008, several of McCain's bundlers have business interests before the Senator's own Commerce Committee:

Kirk Blalock, of the lobbying firm Fierce, Isakowitz & Blalock, leads Mr. McCain's young professional group and has raised over $250,000 for him; his clients include Sprint Nextel and Viacom.

Kyle McSlarrow, chief of the National Cable and Telecommunications Association, the lobbying arm for the cable industry, has raised over $100,000 for Mr. McCain. He and others in the cable industry recently butted heads with Mr. McCain over a proposal that would allow customers to pick and choose which channels they received.

McCain's supporters insist that his ethical compass is sound enough to ignore these potential conflicts of interest. And indeed, as McSlarrow can testify, raising money for McCain's campaign doesn't always bring with it a return of legislative favors.

"When it comes to McCain," Wayne Berman, another McCain bundler whose clients are affected by McCain's chairmanship at Commerce, told the New York Times, "there's just absolutely no concern whatsoever that he is going to be influenced by lobbyists. He takes on issues as he sees them. It doesn't matter whether his best friends are on the other side or not."

But as it stands now, critics believe that McCain's bevy of lobbyists represents a political liability. On Tuesday, Moveon.org put out one in what will likely be a series of campaign commercials, cataloging the "worlds worst tyrants" for whom Charlie Black, one of McCain's top aides, had previously worked. The list includes Ferdinand Marcos, Mobuto Sese Seko, Angolan rebel Jonas Savimbi and Ahmad Chalabi.

"Charlie Black said he didn't do anything wrong," the spot says. "John McCain should tell Black he did."

I Always Have To Laugh...

...when I see the Republican stalwarts talking about their "conservative revolution." Take the following from Cal Thomas, who certainly provides a laugh-a-minute:

"Which of the principles articulated by Ronald Reagan, and the conservative revolution he led, does the GOP believe has failed? Lower taxes? Reduced spending and smaller government? Self-reliance? Strong defense? Defeating our enemies so they will fear and respect us, instead of appeasing them in hopes that they might like us? If such principles remain valid, why don't more Republicans articulate them?"


Uh, when did the Republicans give us "smaller" government? During the Republican "revolution," government authorities were given much more power than before. Our prison population in the past two decades has grown from about 300,000 to more than two million, mostly because of the failed Republican Drug War that Ronald Reagan initiated.

Thomas has supported the war in Iraq, which is responsible for much of the growth in spending. Is Thomas against torture, the decimation of habeas corpus, or the way that Americans have been creating havoc abroad?

No, in the end, being a Republican is about the power of the American state and nothing else. Thomas has been the cheerleader for the Leviathan State for many years, and he is not about to change now.

Cal Thomas is such a dickhead.

Read Cal's column here.

Titties, Toes And Tater Tot Tuesday

Cops Say: Don't Work. Make More Money By Becoming a Totalitarian Snitch

Next time you invite your neighbor over to share a beer or your girlfriends over for dinner club ask yourself, "are they in need of a few extra bucks?"

“Two or three arrests per week, you could make $700, $750 per week,” Sergeant Self said. “You could make better than a minimum-wage job.”

The police state loves recessions. People hard up for money are turning in their family, neighbors, and anybody else for some quick cash payments from the snitch state.

Some Crime Stoppers coordinators say their program appeals to community spirit and emphasize that not everyone who calls is after money. But their advertising makes no bones about the benefits of a good tip.

“Crime doesn’t pay but we do,” say the mobile billboards cruising Jacksonville, Fla. A poster in Jackson, Tenn., draws a neat equation: “Ring Ring + Bling Bling = Cha-Ching.” The bling, in this case, is a pair of handcuffs.

The New York Times celebrates the mindless, little totalitarians who become informants to help pay the bills. As the writers of the article note, the snitches are "creative." Karen DeCoster argued a long time ago that there's always been a totalitarian force amongst the masses, and what better way to fan the flames of fear and grow state dependency than to offer up depreciating dollars to a bunch of financially needy and mindless losers.

Monday With McCain

I don’t think Americans are concerned if we’re there for one hundred years or a thousand years or ten thousand years. McCain commenting on how Americans view the U.S. occupation of Iraq

The REAL McCain...2

The Straight Talk Express is derailing...

Voters #1 Concern Is Economy

The No. 1 issue today is the economy. Sen. McCain straightforwardly said he is not up on economics. When Congress wanted to give the economy a boost by giving $300 to $1,200 back to taxpayers, Sen. McCain said maybe it would be better to instead give a corporate tax cut to stimulate the economy.

Then, when he gave his future economic goals speech last month, he said that he would grow the economy to increase revenue. Details? Not at this time.

Maybe McCain doesn't know it, but the next president, upon taking office, will face an interest payment on the national debt of $1 billion a day. This is interest only, and does not include principal.

Thanks to President Bush, the national debt has increased during his 7 1/2 years in office from $4.98 trillion to $9.86 trillion. If the Afghanistan and Iraqi wars continue after Jan. 20, 2009, that interest payment will increase daily. Remember this is the first war we have financed by borrowing money.

Do you think McCain can handle our economic problems?

This Modern World

Titties, Toes And Tater Tot Tuesday

Monday With McCain

There are neighborhoods in Baghdad where you and I could walk through those neighborhoods today. --prior to visiting a Baghdad market while being flanked by 22 soldiers, 10 armored Humvees, and two Apache attack helicopters

The Bush Administration's Secret Laws

Reports the LA Times: "The Bush administration recently announced it will allow select members of Congress to read Justice Department legal opinions about the CIA's controversial detainee interrogation program that have been hidden from Congress until now. But as the administration allows a glimpse of this secret law -- and it is law -- we are left wondering what other laws it is still keeping under lock and key." Read the rest.

Of course, in a moral sense, these are not laws at all. Neither are the arrogant orders that pour out of legislatures and agencies. Genuine law, natural law, is unchanging, and we do not have to be told what it is by some politician: you shall not kill, steal, bear false witness, etc. What the state emits is anti-law.

OxyContin Endorsement

Burma, McCain, And The GOP Convention

Does anyone else find it a little odd that on the day we find out Time prints a story titled "Is is time to invade Burma," we also find out from Newsweek that the man John McCain has chosen to manage the GOP convention this summer is lobbyist Doug Goodyear, whose firm once represented Burma's repressive regime?

UPDATE: Just hours after this posting, Doug Goodyear resigned! John McCain being in bed with lobbyists is not really news, even when he’s actually, you know, “in bed” with them. His notorious escapades as the “most culpable” of the Keating Five would certainly have left a less well connected politician spending more time with his family.

But this one goes way beyond schmoozing and playing the system. Johnathan Singer informs us that McCain tapped one of his lobbyist pals to run the GOP Convention this August, but let him go hours after Michael Isikoff’s Newsweek story disclosed that the guy was the CEO of a firm representing the Burma Military Junta — hired to whitewash their image with Washington insiders.

Singer then connects the dots with a Marc Ambinder note that a McCain Campaign regional manager was the stooge directly in charge of that Burmese (Myanmar) Junta account for the very same influence pedaling firm — and he’s still on the job.

Just calling John McCain a continuation of the Bush nightmare is giving him too much credit. This guy is a wholly owned subsidiary of the corporate kleptocracy. It doesn’t matter if McCain fires this lobbyist or distances himself from that one. He’s so swamped with them another would take take the place of an inconveniently notorious one in a heartbeat.

George Bush sold the American government to the highest (no)-bidder. A McCain administration would represent the new owners taking up residence.

Cookie Bought A New Sofa

John McCain's Pastor Problem

John McCain has campaigned with a Reverend Rod Parsley, who has some interesting words on Islam:

America was founded in part with the intention of seeing this false religion destroyed. And I believe September 11, 2001, was a generational call to arms that we can no longer afford to ignore.

David Corn asks:

Imagine if Barack Obama had campaigned with an Imam who had called for destroying Christianity. A media and political uproar would ensue--with wide-ranging calls for Obama to comdemn the Imam.

Yes, and imagine if someone spoke about Judaism that way. Ahmadinejad hasn't even done that. He has called for the end of the nation of Israel (in something of the way that George Bush called for the end of the secular Arab dictatorship in Iraq).

John McCain Embraces Bush's Radical Views Of Executive Power

John McCain yesterday delivered a speech in which he hailed the inspiring constitutional principles of Government on which our country was founded, including the central goal of avoiding excessive, unlimited power in any one branch, secured by checks and balances from the other two branches:

In America, the constitutional restraint on power is as fundamental as the exercise of power, and often more so. Yet the framers knew that these restraints would not always be observed. They were idealists, but they were worldly men as well, and they knew that abuses of power would arise and need to be firmly checked. Their design for democracy was drawn from their experience with tyranny. A suspicion of power is ingrained in both the letter and spirit of the American Constitution. . . .
The executive, legislative, and judicial branches are often wary of one another's excesses, and they should be. They seek to keep each other within bounds, and they are supposed to. And though you wouldn't always know it from watching the day-to-day affairs of modern Washington, the framers knew exactly what they were doing, and the system of checks and balances rarely disappoints.

Sadly, though, McCain lamented that "there is one great exception in our day" to these principles. Surely "the exception" to which McCain refers must be the fact that we've lived for the last eight years under a President who literally has claimed powers greater than those possessed by the British King; whose underlings have promulgated radical and un-American theories literally vesting him with the power to rule outside of the law, who has exploited a political and media culture devoid of "suspicion of power" when exercised by the White House, and who has acted with no meaningful constraints or checks from Congress and virtually none from the judiciary? No, actually, that isn't the "exception" to which McCain was referring at all. Instead:
[It] is the common and systematic abuse of our federal courts by the people we entrust with judicial power. For decades now, some federal judges have taken it upon themselves to pronounce and rule on matters that were never intended to be heard in courts or decided by judges. With a presumption that would have amazed the framers of our Constitution, and legal reasoning that would have mystified them, federal judges today issue rulings and opinions on policy questions that should be decided democratically. Assured of lifetime tenures, these judges show little regard for the authority of the president, the Congress, and the states. They display even less interest in the will of the people.
According to John McCain, then, executive power in the U.S. now is exactly what it should be, perfectly in line with what the Founders envisioned -- except that it is too constrained by a judiciary which "show[s] little regard for the authority of the president." To McCain, the only real problem with our system of checks and balances is that the judiciary has too much power, and the President not enough.

This was exactly the view of the world articulated by George Bush last November when he spoke to the Federalist Society. In that speech, Bush had the audacity to tout the central importance of "separation of powers" and warned that "tyranny" can be avoided only if all three branches "resist the temptation to encroach on the powers the Constitution accords to others." Bush then went on -- just like McCain yesterday -- to lament that our Constitutional framework was endangered not by a President who has seized the defining powers of an autocrat, but rather, by "activist" judges. Not only is McCain's view of presidential powers identical to Bush's, his speech yesterday -- in terms of structure, arguments and even some wording -- was almost an exact replica of the one Bush delivered to the Federalist Society.

Virtually every abuse of the last eight years has its roots in the Bush/Cheney view of the President as Monarch, and John McCain clearly endorses its fundamentals. Indeed, when responding to a questionnaire on executive power circulated to all the candidates by The Boston Globe's Charlie Savage earlier this year, McCain (while paying lip service to nice principles and even taking the extreme position that he would never issue a signing statement) refused to say that there was even a single aspect of Bush's use of executive power that he found unconstitutional or otherwise objectionable:

10. Is there any executive power the Bush administration has claimed or exercised that you think is unconstitutional? Anything you think is simply a bad idea?
McCain declined to answer this question.

By contrast, Obama answered the same question at length, and said:
I also reject the view, suggested in memoranda by the Department of Justice, that the President may do whatever he deems necessary to protect national security, and that he may torture people in defiance of congressional enactments . . .

I believe the Administration's use of executive authority to over-classify information is a bad idea. We need to restore the balance between the necessarily secret and the necessity of openness in our democracy – which is why I have called for a National Declassification Center.
Obama then went on specifically to identify numerous issues -- torture, detention of Americans as "enemy combatants" without due process, warrantless surveillance, violations of international treaties, the lawless creation of military commissions -- which he said were unconstitutional or otherwise objectionable expressions of excessive Presidential power. By contrast, McCain refused to identify even a single Bush assertion of power he rejects.

Ultimately, these are the issues which are the most consequential in determining what type of country we will be, and what type of government we will have (and these issues, therefore, receive the least attention from most of our establishment journalists, for whom there is a perfectly inverse relationship between the significance of an issue and the interest they have in it). All of the other issues of significance flow from these differences.

In a superb new book, entitled The Cult of the Presidency: America's Dangerous Devotion to Executive Power, Gene Healy documents the multiple ways our political system has been corrupted by an out-of-control, unchecked Executive that could not be any more antithetical to the "presidency of limited powers and modest goals the Framers gave us in 1787." As Healy demonstrates, allowing the President to transmute into some central, omnipotent figure of authority -- as Bush/Cheney have done and as McCain seems to embrace -- "is the source of much of our political woe and some of the gravest threats to our liberties," and -- more significantly still -- this model (as the Founders recognized) virtually guarantees a state of ever-expanding militarism and endless war:

Throughout American history, virtually every major advance in executive power has come during a war or a warlike crisis. Convince the public that we are at war, and constitutional barriers to action fall, as power flows to the commander in chief.

Little wonder, then, that confronted with impossible expectations, the modern president tends to recast social and economic problems in military terms . . . . Martial rhetoric often ushers in domestic militarism, as presidents push to employ standing armies at home, to fight drug trafficking, terrorism or natural disasters. And when the president raises the battle cry, he can usually count on substantial numbers of American opinion leaders to cheer him on.
As the amazing commenter Pow Wow repeatedly documents here (see here for one typically excellent example), Congress has "increasingly deferred, dangerously and slavishly, to the presidency, which today very much resembles a monarchy," a state of affairs which -- for the reasons Healy describes -- makes endless war and imperial behavior almost inevitable. As Pow Wow puts it: "The choice for Americans today . . . is between Empire and Republic. We cannot have both."

The central truth of the 2008 election is that, with the exception of a few relatively inconsequential and symbolic matters, John McCain enthusiastically embraces the Bush/Cheney worldview in every way that matters. His ludicrous speech yesterday -- actually complaining that it is the judiciary that wields too much power and is excessively limiting presidential powers -- simply leaves no doubt about that.

-- Glenn Greenwald

This Modern World

Toes, Titties and Tater Tot Tuesday

Monday With McCain

Fuck you! I know more about this than anyone else in the room.
–to Sen. John Cornyn (R-TX), during a testy exchange about immigration legislation

An Army Of One. Really.

Bush administration policy never ceases to amaze me. If you disagree with the invasion of Iraq, you are labeled as "unpatriotic." But if you wear an American flag lapel-pin, affix an "I Support The Troops" magnet to the back of your vehicle, or vote Republican, you are decidedly a "patriot." How sad it is that there are people in the United States that actually fall for this new form of fascism.

The September 12, 1938 edition of The New York Times carried an often, misquoted statement by Professor Halford E. Luccock of Yale Divinity School:

When and if fascism comes to America it will not be labeled "Made in Germany"; it will not be marked with a swastika; it will not even be called fascism; it will be called, of course, "Americanism."

So it was of no huge surprise to The Minutiae King when reading how desperate the Army is to find new recruits. Department of Defense records indicate that the number of new recruits with criminal records has increased by 65% in the last three years. Showing no regard for the mental, physical, or familial situations of those serving in Iraq and Afghanistan, the Bush administration has increased the length of a tour of duty from 12 to 15 months. So it was with much sadness to read where one brave soldier, Sgt. 1st Class David L. McDowell was killed in Afghanistan on April 29, 2008 while on his seventh deployment--yes, his seventh--since 2003. Yes, an Army of one, being stop-lossed over and over and over and over and over...

Recruiting felons. Keeping military families seperated for years at a time.

So much for George Bush, the head of the Republican party, espousing himself as being supportive of military families. And Republicans as being the party of "family values."

This Modern World

EEEEWWWWW!!!

Amy Winehouse is trying to get us to believe that another human would willingly suck on her neck. More likely her Dyson DC21 Motorhead went out of control and attached itself to her neck. Yuk!!!

Hey Ladies! Thinking About Voting For McCain?

After the Senate recently failed to get the 60 votes necessary to force an up-or-down vote on the Lilly Ledbetter Fair Pay Act, Senator John McCain said that widespread gender-based pay inequity isn't due to discrimination. In his view, women just need more "education and training" to close the wage gap.

I think women need equal rights under the law.

Lilly Ledbetter worked 19 years at Goodyear before she learned the men at her level were earning far more. Eventually she sued, and the case went all the way to the Supreme Court where five male justices ruled her claim invalid because she filed it more than 180 days after the date when the discrimination first started. Now, Senator McCain wants to stop legislation to correct this injustice -- and in the process, roll back 50 years of women's rights.

Lilly Ledbetter and women across the country are not only paid less when they have the same education and same training, but also for doing the exact same job as men. The only difference between men and women in the workplace is women bring home less money to take care of their families.

Senator McCain should know better. Tell him to take back his sexist statement and stop blocking an up or down vote on the Lilly Ledbetter Fair Pay Act.