Pretty simple, really.

Thomas Sowell joins those intemperate, unhinged, wanna-lose-the-war traitors who have a slight problem with Maverick McAmnesty.

Thanks to Larwyn.

Posted by: Ace at 10:13 PM | Comments (201)
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Democrats say McCain nearly abandoned GOP

By Bob Cusack

Posted: 03/28/07 07:39 PM [ET]

Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.) was close to leaving the Republican Party in 2001, weeks before then-Sen. Jim Jeffords (Vt.) famously announced his decision to become an Independent, according to former Democratic lawmakers who say they were involved in the discussions.

In interviews with The Hill this month, former Sen. Tom Daschle (D-S.D.) and ex-Rep. Tom Downey (D-N.Y.) said there were nearly two months of talks with the maverick lawmaker following an approach by John Weaver, McCainÂ’s chief political strategist.

Democrats had contacted Jeffords and then-Sen. Lincoln Chafee (R-R.I.) in the early months of 2001 about switching parties, but in McCainÂ’s case, they said, it was McCainÂ’s top strategist who came to them.

At the end of their March 31, 2001 lunch at a Chinese restaurant in Bethesda, Md., Downey said Weaver asked why Democrats hadnÂ’t asked McCain to switch parties.

Downey, a well-connected lobbyist, said he was stunned.

“You’re really wondering?” Downey said he told Weaver. “What do you mean you’re wondering?”

“Well, if the right people asked him,” Weaver said, according to Downey, adding that he responded, “The calls will be made. Who do you want?” Weaver this week said he did have lunch with Downey that spring, pointing out that he and Downey “are very good friends.”

He claims, however, that Downey is grossly mischaracterizing their exchange: “We certainly didn’t discuss in any detail about the senator’s political plans and any discussion about party-switchers, generically, would have been limited to the idle gossip which was all around the city about the [Democrats’] aggressive approach about getting any GOP senator to switch in order to gain the majority. Nothing more or less than that.”

Downey said Weaver is well aware that their discussion was much more than typical Washington chit-chat.

“Within seconds” of arriving home from his lunch with Weaver, Downey said he was on the phone to the most powerful Democrats in town. One of the first calls he made was to then-Senate Minority Leader Daschle.

“I did take the call from Tom [Downey],” Daschle said in an interview. “It was Weaver’s comment” to Downey that started the McCain talks, he added.

Daschle noted that McCain at that time was frustrated with the Bush administration as a result of his loss to George W. Bush in the 2000 Republican primary.

Daschle said that throughout April and May of 2001, he and McCain “had meetings and conversations on the floor and in his office, I think in mine as well, about how we would do it, what the conditions would be. We talked about committees and his seniority … [A lot of issues] were on the table.”

Absolutely not so, according to McCain. In a statement released by his campaign, McCain said, “As I said in 2001, I never considered leaving the Republican Party, period.”

Maverick.

I don't think these guys are lying. And I imagine they have diaries and scheduling books and the like which, while not quite proving they're telling the truth (they could be forgeries, etc.), will pretty much prove that McCain is lying.

Guess when that documentary evidence will make it to the press?

Pretty cool h/t on this: Mark "The Great One" Levin.

Apparently this is flying around all over the place because a lefty guy I know just got it, too.

UPDATE: Jack M. This is one of those occasions where I can offer first hand confirmation as to the essential truth of this story. I can't offer it from the Democratic side, as I have no idea what the nature of McCain's discussions were with Daschle, et. al. I was privy, however, to discussions with John Weaver during the time-frame in question.

Weaver has a public quote that gained some prominence. I'll look for it later, and link it if I can find it. Some reporter asked him (I think it was in 2002) about the candidates who he was now representing since he switched from a registered Republican to Democrat. Weaver's response was essentially "all of my clients are Democrats". The reporter, surprised, prompted Weaver with the reminder "and John McCain" to which Weaver responded "oh yeah...right."

Why is this important? Well for one it illustrates the mind-set of those closest to McCain at a time contemporaneous to the period all these discussions were taking place. Clearly, in the minds of many in McCain's inner circle, he was a Democrat regardless of what letter followed his name on the C-Span graphic.

But many of you will say "Jack, you are gonna take the word of Daschle, Edwards, blah, blah, blah?."

No. I'm going to tell you why I believe these allegations. Because John Weaver told me this personally.

One of my former bosses in the Senate served on a Committee with McCain at the time. He also had a friendship with Weaver that preceded his election to the Senate. For that matter, so did I.

And while McCain's threat was making the rounds, we had discussions in my bosses office about how to capitalize on it if McCain made the jump. We saw opportunities to move up on certain committees that we might not otherwise have had the seniority to attain. Why did we take this so seriously? Because Weaver, when asked, did nothing to disabuse any of us of this "rumor."

Jeffords' jump really caught most people in both parties off guard. As I remember it, he jumped because he was upset that the Bush administration wouldn't fund some education program at the level Jumpin' Jim wanted. At the time, nobody spent much time worrying about anything Jim Jeffords was up to. But Jeffords was hearing the same rumors too. In talking to some of his staffers in the wake of the jump, one of the things I was told was that Jeffords was motivated to do it at the time he chose, because he was convinced that if McCain jumped first, nobody would care about the reasons Jeffords was offering for switching.

Which makes this story sadly ironic in a way. I remain convinced that had Mr. Irrelevant, Jim Jeffords, not jumped, and had his moment of glory for staging the one-man Senate coup, John McCain would have done so. And the GOP would not now be considering nominating him as the standard bearer.

So, if McCain can convince the country to elect him President, he'll have Jim Jeffords, and his desire to beat McCain to the punch, to thank.

Which doesn't make me feel any better about the prospect of a McCain nomination.

Posted by: Ace at 08:02 PM | Comments (158)
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... and imagine the most wonderful things in the world, things that make you happy and warm inside.

Concentrate.... I'm going to try to peer inside your minds. more...

Posted by: Ace at 07:38 PM | Comments (39)
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We thought he flip-flopped. He sure seemed to flip-flop from his Meet the Press "Straight Talk" that he would sign an amnesty were it presented to him.

But it's worse than that -- he evaded while sticking to his guns.

Now, when I heard this, I too thought he said he wouldn't vote in favor of his own comprehensive shit were he president.

But listen to what he actually says: He only says he would not vote for it because it wouldn't come to a vote in the first place. He repeatedly refuses to answer the question, even put to him three times by two different questioners, simply asserting that it won't come to a vote.

Via Kausfiles, with a transcript, except that transcript is wrong.

Kausfiles reports McCain as saying "No, it would not" (meaning the bill wouldn't come to his desk) when in fact McCain says "No, I would not" sign it.

But he's right on the actual point, because McCain's "No, I would not" is immediately followed by the claim that he woudn't ever be in that position because it woudn't pass:

No, I would not, because we know what the situation is today. The people want the border secured first. And so to say that that would come to the floor of the Senate -- it won't. We went through various amendments which prevented that ever -- that proposal.

He's still saying he'd sign the fucking thing if it comes to his desk! Fucking still!

So the little bastard is telling us he "gets it" that we want border security first, and he promises to give that to us -- unless 60 Senators pass a version of McCain-Kennedy without border security first, in which case, fuck border security, he's signing it into law.

So his "promise" on "securing the borders" first isn't a promise at all -- it's a prediction only, a prediction that the American people and the Senate will force him to "build the goddamn fence" before he can sign an amnesty bill.

But if that changes -- if we lose more Republican votes in the Senate, which is likely -- and if they present him his bill without that border-security-first, he is telling us: I will sign it, as I have made no promises about my own actions, only predictions about the likely actions of others.

The Lie: McCain's claim that Kennedy-McCain couldn't come to his desk as president is itself a lie.

Some of you may take comfort in the fact that the votes to sustain the filibuster were won somewhat easily. That's deceptive -- before the actual votes, both sides said the votes were too close to call, counting somewhere between 57-62 votes to end the filibuster and vote amnesty into law.

They weren't lying. They weren't saying that for dramatic purposes. There really were that many votes for amnesty.

So how did the amnesty side wind up with merely 43 or 45 votes?

If you don't know this, when the party, or the leadership of the party at least, really, really wants something, and your vote is needed to put it through, you are expected to vote the way the leadership demands. The purpose of "whips" is to whip votes the way the leadership wants them to come down.

They promise you extra campaign money from the party senatorial/congressional campaign funds to overcome voters lost due to your voting against your constituency's wishes. They'll promise money from big donors directed to your campaign to help you, and nice appearances by party bigs to help get out the vote. And they promise future committee assignments and leadership assignments, too -- if you play ball.

And maybe you'll get some tasty earmarks for your district, too.

And if you don't, you're threatened: You won't get any party help. You won't get prize assignments to committees. Your earmarks may be overlooked or simply refused. You'll be on your own.

That's the pressure that's brought to bear on Senators and Congressmen in a big important vote the leadership wants. And on amnesty, the leadership of both parties wanted it.

But if a vote looks like it's going down in flames, all votes are "released." You no longer have to jeopardize your electoral future by voting against your constituency's desires. You are "released" to vote either according to your own beliefs or your best electoral positioning. The latter, of course, is more important.

So there were in fact 57 to 63 or so votes to defeat the filibuster and pass amnesty into law at various times. Only a few key votes actually changed. Only three or four or maybe five Senators actually committed themselves to changing their vote to sustain the filibuster and reject the amnesty bill.

But these three to five senators were critical, as they dropped the votes in favor of amnesty below the crucial 60 vote threshold -- and at that point, and only at that point, were all the other pro-amnesty commitments released to vote according to how their outraged voters were demanding.

And that was when the lopsided vote against amnesty occurred, giving the illusory impression that amnesty was easily defeated.

It wasn't. But for the votes of three or four or five senators, those votes promised to the leadership would not have been released and would have stayed with the amnesty side, and amnesty would have passed by, say, 62-36 or whatever. (Some Senators, like Tim Johnson, were absent; others might have simply not voted.)

Remember how so many senators wouldn't give you an answer on how they were voting when you called their offices? They were not still deciding. They were in fact committed to vote for amnesty if it was close to passing but were reserving the right to vote against it if it wasn't going to pass anyway.

They were lying to you. They knew how they would vote -- they would vote with the winning side, whichever way it went. They just didn't want to tell you that.

So when Maverick McAmnesty tells you there's no way the Comprehensive Piece of Shit could possibly reach his desk again as president, he's flat-out lying to you and he knows it. Merely losing one or two or three anti-amnesty votes in the Senate will give it more than enough votes to pass this time 'round.

And don't forget that a McCain presidency would represent, as many are saying now, the death-knell of the supposed power of talk radio to influence politics. Many of those who voted against amnesty at the last moment did so because they feared what Laura Ingraham and El Rushbo might do to them.

McCain's presidency would be taken as proof that grassroots outrage like that is a spent force, and the voters can be spurned with impunity.

Amnesty was, is, and remains just a few crucial votes away from passage.

Those guys who wouldn't give you a straight answer last time -- like Burr, for example, or Stevens, or Brownback, the guy who thinks voting on amnesty is so nice he had to do it twice, once yes when it might pass, and then no when it had already failed -- didn't suddenly see the light and vote according to constituent wishes.

They were simply released from their commitment to vote for this very unpopular bill when the count showed it was just a few votes shy of passage.

And McCain is telling you the bill couldn't be brought up again.

Right.

Straight Talk, ya'll. Comin' right at ya, but a little sideways and crab-wise sometimes.

Brownback Changing His Vote From Yes To No: Video here at page bottom, in case you'd forgotten.

Yes when it might win, No when it had failed.

And the Senate is filled with bravehearts just like him.

Posted by: Ace at 05:46 PM | Comments (73)
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It's already a half hour in the can on CNN.

Hot Air has some background for ya. The big question is how hard Hillary will play the "girl card" again, this time whining and acting like Tina Turner to Obama's Ike over his snub of her at SOTU.

Meanwhile... Hot Lesbian Gangbang Action.

Metaphoric, of course.

Posted by: Ace at 05:31 PM | Comments (37)
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Caution: May not be quite as good as American war porn.

You can safely skip to near the end. The build up is a bit long.

Thanks to Cuffy Meigs, who's also blogging about the 50th anniversary of the Explorer 1 and the early American space program.

Posted by: Ace at 05:23 PM | Comments (22)
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Let's get some disclaimers out of the way: a charge is not proof.

A defector's word is not necessarily the gold standard.

Someone who prefers capitalism to communism might just want to make a lot of money after a lifetime of want.

Further, the book's charge is not that he was a bought-and-paid for spy by conscious decision, but rather an unwitting, gullible dupe. A media lefty whose ego could easily be stroked, and who thought he was "among friends" when chatting amiably about American foreign policy decisions and intentions with KGB agents.

Friends who, of course, just thought he was such a super, super smart guy that they would never betray his trust by reporting his words to their Soviet spymaster superiors.

Still.

The Media Blog has the link and the teaser:

How should the media handle sensational allegations that one of the most esteemed members of their profession, former Time magazine journalist and top Clinton State Department official Strobe Talbott, was a dupe of the Russian intelligence service? How should they deal with hard evidence that one of their sacred cows, the United Nations, is penetrated by Russian spies?

The answer is that most of them will ignore it.

This is the fate they're giving to Comrade J, a blockbuster book about Russian espionage written by former Washington Post reporter and author Pete Earley.

Comrade J is about a Russian master spy, Sergei Tretyakov, who defected to the United States because he was disgusted with the Russian/Soviet system and wanted to start a new and better life with his family in America. He identifies former Clinton State Department official Strobe Talbott, a current adviser to Hillary Clinton's presidential campaign, as having been a trusted contact of the Russian intelligence service.

Back in 2000, when Talbott was named head of the Yale Center for the Study of Globalization, he was described as "a key architect of U.S. foreign policy" during the Clinton years. He now heads the Brookings Institution, a liberal Washington, D.C. think tank.

But Tretyakov has some impressive credentials of his own. He wasn't just a low-level official. He is described as the highest ranking Russian intelligence official ever to defect while stationed in the U.S. and handled all Russian intelligence operations against the U.S. He served under cover from 1995-2000 at Russia's Permanent Mission to the United Nations but was secretly working for the FBI for at least three years.

Talbott denies the charges, calling them "erroneous and/or misleading," and his denials are featured on page 184 of the book. He says that he always promoted U.S. foreign policy goals and that the close relationship that he had with a top Russian official by the name of Georgi Mamedov did not involve any manipulation or deception.

This is not the first time that Talbott has come under scrutiny for his alleged contacts with agents of a foreign intelligence service. In 1994, when he was being considered for his State Department post in the Clinton Administration, he was grilled by Senator Jesse Helms, a member of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, about his relationship with Victor Louis, a Soviet "journalist" who was actually a Soviet KGB intelligence agent. Talbott had been a young correspondent for Time magazine in Moscow.

...

Romerstein, a retired government expert on anti-American and communist propaganda activities, said the Earley book is valuable because it documents that the Russian intelligence service picked up where the KGB left off, and that operations against the U.S. continued after the end of the Cold War.

But he said the information about Talbott needs further explanation from Talbott himself. "Talbott really has to explain more than he did to Pete Earley what his relationship was to Mamedov, and he should tell us about his relationship with Victor Louis," Romerstein told AIM.

An intelligence source, it is claimed, but not a conscious one:

...

The book cites Talbott as an "example of how a skilled intelligence agency could manipulate a situation and a diplomatic source to its advantage without the target realizing he was being used for intelligence-gathering purposes." It says Mamedov was "instructed" by the SVR to ask specific questions to get information about certain matters.

"The point is that there are many ways to get intelligence," Earley explained. "And one of the best ways is not by stealing secrets but by becoming friends, getting people to let their guard down, massaging egos, and getting them to tell you helpful information."

However, the book says that Talbott was so compromised by his relationship with Mamedov that the FBI asked Secretary of State Madeleine Albright not to share information with Talbott about an espionage investigation at the State Department because Mamedov might learn about it and tip off Russian intelligence. Earley says he confirmed this account but that Albright has refused to discuss the incident.

Click on the Media Blog link to go to Accuracy in Media and read the whole thing.

Eh, it's not a big story. Not sexy or important or scandalous or anything else that would justify coverage.

I can of course see why our courageously curious media simply can't be bothered to dig into it.

It's either true or it's not true, of course. The media could probably help figure out which, but really, isn't it really better to not know? I mean, digging into it could lead to bad facts, and no one likes bad facts.

Our wise gatekeepers, The Deciders, are right to just hide this from us.

Thanks to CJ.

NPR Interview With Tretyakov: See-Dub of Junkard Blog says this NPR interview with the defector is very interesting.

And interesting for this reason, too: Not a single question about the explosive charges against Strobe Talbott. Fancy that!

I suppose I'll just throw out the possibility that it's possible that this lefty was a CIA asset for a long time, deliberately feeding the KGB what American intelligence wanted them to hear. A double agent.

And of course that would make Talbott a hell of a guy. Such a hell of a guy that he maintains his cover when repeatedly questioned about his suspect KGB pals.

I'm guessing that's not the case, though. The FBI advisory on him either means they were out of the loop (possible) or staged that incident to convince the Soviets Talbott was legit (also possible).

It's also quite possible this is precisely as high-ranking spymaster Tretyakov thinks it is: an arrogant fool who may have thought he could "reach out" to Soviets spies (probably posing as moderates looking to change the system from within) and concoct between them their own private path to detente.

Posted by: Ace at 03:53 PM | Comments (51)
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Michelle Malkin wonders if this is really a point in his favor -- on many issues, conservatives would prefer to not reach across the aisle and not get "things" done if the other option is to stick to conservative principles and at least observe the first rule of medicine, "Do no harm."

Stasis and inaction is preferable to bad change and ill-considered new legislation and benefits, after all.

This dovetails with a point made by a Corner reader:

There's one question that no one seems to have asked McCain about judges: will he apply his "reach across the aisle" attittude to SCOTUS nominations? Or put another way, is McCain going to be the Senate's man in the White House, or is he going to stand his ground on nominations?

It's frustrating to me that no reporters (or anyone else) have asked these kinds of questions of McCain. Here's the long version of the question:



If you are president when the next Supreme Court vacancy occurs, and you seek advice and input about who would be a good nominee, will you ultimately nominate the person who you believe would do the best job on the Court, or would you instead seek a consensus nominee who you think will best satisfy yourself and fifty or sixty United States senators?



I have absolutely no clue how McCain would answer this.

Ramesh Ponuru answers:

Me neither. His remark that consulting with senators is required by the Constitution was not a hopeful portent, but perhaps that remark does not reflect his considered judgment.

I do have a clue. McCain has for years told us with his every action that, when presented with a conflict between conservative principles and cordial bipartisanship deal-making with Democrats, he far prefers the latter.

I don't know how anyone could imagine that McCain, proud of his ability to see past the petty conservative dogma so many of the rest of us are preoccupied by in order to meet the opposition halfway (and then some!), will suddenly become some sort of Federalist Society Stalwart on judges once he's president.

Wouldn't that be playing to partisan animus and ideological litmus tests and special interest agents-of-intolerance, in other words, everything that Maverick McCain heroically stands against?

There's some back-and-forth on this at the Corner; scan down to see the argument.

McCain is telling two audiences two different things. To moderates and Democrats, he says he'll work for compromise in the spirit of friendship and amity. To conservatives, he vows he'll stick to his "Reagan convictions."

This is Straight Talk? It's similar to how he talked up global warming and cap-and-trade legislation in liberalish New Hampshire but then said not a word about this in South Carolina.

Senator, it can't be both. It really, honestly can't.

Posted by: Ace at 03:02 PM | Comments (29)
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Stewie Griffin, outed by his leftist creator as having a "conflicted sexuality" in which his shame of homosexuality drives him towards rage. And world domination.

Via The Malcontent, which is psyched to count Stewie as a fellow gay right-winger.

Oh well. We still have Lois.

What is it about the Family Guy? I have a love-hate relationship with it. Well, a love-indifference relationship. I don't watch it much. On one hand, the gag-type jokes -- mainly in those excrescent flashbacks -- are forced, lazy, dumb, derivative, and not funny.

On the other hand, the character-driven parts of it can be very funny. I've heard Stewie spit out a musty Victorian insults a hundred times, but I still giggle when he calls someone an "Applejohn," whatever the hell that is.

And on one hand, Seth MacFarlane too self-consciously "pushes the envelope," often resulting in "outrageous" moments that don't shock so much as they annoy. When someone's obviously, studiously attempting to shock you -- like Madonna -- it feels far less like an entertainer trying to please you and more like an entertainer trying to please himself over how "wicked" and outre he is.

And on the other hand, sometimes he really does push the envelope so far you enjoy the giddy thrill of disbelief that yeah, he went there, or that he managed to get that past Standards & Practices.

How sick is this?

Oh, I guess it has to be said that The Simpsons has been implying that Bart's gay for years. Homer too, I guess, though his gay moments really don't seem to imply he's gay so much as he's stupid and capricious. I think he just forgets he's heterosexual from time to time.

Posted by: Ace at 02:34 PM | Comments (33)
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Um, okay.

I just did my own study. It turns out the correct figure is forty-three thousand million bazillion kajillion. Grant me, baby. I've got spreadsheets and pie graphs and everything.

I'm sure you'll be very, very surprised to find out this new study was done by many of the same people responsible for the former thoroughly debunked Lancet study.

Posted by: Ace at 01:52 PM | Comments (32)
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