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[Dooly]

Old joke: Write-in Batman.

Newer joke: Write-in Michael Wilson

[Arc]

I'm now holding a mailed flyer that reads:

Please Support the Mental Retardation Levy! Vote "FOR" on Issue 29!

And here I was, not selling my vote, like a sucker.

[SCD]

Despite convention and the last eight years, I bet a 24 of the local stuff for McCain in last November when he wasn't so hot for this year's election. 

I was kind of worried up until the new year.  Not so much. 

Thanks, GOP   

[Arc]

That was a bit... Dranken.

Zombie Reagan & Ted Kennedy ensure Texas delegate upset. I could say that I'm displeased that the popular vote won't matter, yet her campaigns total surprise as to these rules has clouded my displeasure. They were truly blindsided by this 'revelation'.

[Arc]

McCain in bed with lobbyist.

Literally.

A New York Times report says McCain's top advisers became convinced he was having a romantic affair with 40-year-old Vicki Iseman eight years ago, during his first White House campaign.

Lemme get this straight. A politician known as Maverick potentially had an affair with a lobbyist by the name of Iseman.

!!!

Many are questioning why the New York Times is breaking the story only now (Olbermann interrupted Hardball to announce the article), as it appears many sources knew of these allegations back in December. The NYT was simply the one to lawyer up, and may be holding back on more developments. Case in point, Huckabee released a statement less than ninety minutes after the article appeared online.

Screwing an intern or some random escort? Here come the tabloids.

Horizontally bopping a lobbyist, a lobbyist who's business goes before the Senate committee that you chair? That's -gate worthy, although I prefer 'The Straight Cock Express'.

 

[Thad]

Many are questioning why the New York Times is breaking the story only now (Olbermann interrupted Hardball to announce the article), as it appears many sources knew of these allegations back in December. The NYT was simply the one to lawyer up, and may be holding back on more developments.

More to the point, people are wondering why the NYT ENDORSED McCain WHILE sitting on this story.  Seems a little ironic considering the article they finally DID publish was titled "For McCain, Self-Confidence on Ethics Poses Its Own Risk".

[Thad]

A recent New York Times article examined a number of decisions by Senator John McCain that raised questions about his judgment over potential conflicts of interest. The article included reporting on Mr. McCain’s relationship with a female lobbyist whose clients often had business before the Senate committee led by Mr. McCain. Since publication of the article, The Times has received over 2,000 comments, many of them criticizing the handling of the article. Editors and reporters who worked on the article will be answering questions on Friday. Please send yours to askthetimes@nytimes.com.

The most disturbing thing about the article is that, while the Times newsroom sat on it for two months, the Times editorial section endorsed John McCain.  I am aware that news and editorial are independent, but the publisher HAD to know about this conflict of interest.

The next most disturbing thing is the tabloid nature of the story.  That McCain was close to a lobbyist while advocating lobbying reform is fact; that he was literally in bed with that lobbyist is innuendo.  The only evidence you seem to have to support that accusation is hearsay from anonymous sources.  I can't help but notice that The Washington Post covered McCain's spotty record on ethics reform without making any allegations it couldn't prove.  I grant that ethics scandals are not as exciting as sex scandals, but you have to play the hand you're dealt.

I would say that such salacious rumormongering is better suited to The Drudge Report than The New York Times, but I must admit that in recent years I have trouble telling the difference between the two.

I suppose those aren't actually questions, so let me rephrase:

Do you believe it was appropriate for the New York Times to publish an endorsement of a candidate while sitting on a story that could have had a drastic impact on his campaign, and if so, why?  (I remind you that I do not believe "editorial and news are different departments" is an adequate answer; there are people at the paper who knew the story was coming and allowed the endorsement to be printed anyway.)

Do you believe it was reasonable to report on allegations of an affair despite the slim amount of evidence you presented in the article?  Is there additional evidence you chose not to print, and if so, why didn't you print it?  If there is indeed no further evidence beyond what appeared in the article, can you explain why you felt that evidence was sufficient to publish in an article which you surely knew would come as a bombshell?

And finally, given these questions about the journalistic choices you made in printing this article, can you please tell us that the irony of its headline, "For McCain, Self-Confidence on Ethics Poses Its Own Risk", is not lost on you?

Thank you.

[Arc]

TRRB?

The tabloid nature of the story is simply the actual nature of the story. The article itself goes into detail of McCain's multiple past issues with lobbyists, providing the background that his campaign advisers were troubled by this particular relationship above all. They began asking why she was always around. They withheld reporting on her plane trips to the FCC. Once they contemplated that the relationship became romantic, they scrambled to unplug the connection. The nature of the relationship was the catalyst, as his associates independently confirmed.

McCain is not to be trusted on this. He acknowledged to his associates as 'behaving inappropriately and pledged to keep his distance from Ms. Iseman', and yet today he claims there was no favoritism to speak of. Horseshit.

This isn't the first time the NYT has withheld a story due to their fear of the right-wing. Remember, they withheld both the FISA mess and the revelation that Osama bin Laden was hiding in Pakistan. The latter they did not report due to not wanting to "get caught up in the politics of it." Which all comes back to the question of whether the paper understands the concept of irony to any degree.

[Arc]

Clinton: "... If you look... If you look... If you look at the YouTube of these videos..."

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fuEDkqVvpkk

Like a frat party inside a glass house.

[Norondor]

TRRB?

Thaddeus "Rocket Ranger" Boyd

[Thad]

TRRB?

<---

The tabloid nature of the story is simply the actual nature of the story. The article itself goes into detail of McCain's multiple past issues with lobbyists, providing the background that his campaign advisers were troubled by this particular relationship above all. They began asking why she was always around. They withheld reporting on her plane trips to the FCC. Once they contemplated that the relationship became romantic, they scrambled to unplug the connection. The nature of the relationship was the catalyst, as his associates independently confirmed.

That would be the "hearsay from anonymous sources" I was referring to.

McCain is not to be trusted on this. He acknowledged to his associates as 'behaving inappropriately and pledged to keep his distance from Ms. Iseman', and yet today he claims there was no favoritism to speak of. Horseshit.

Don't misunderstand me here -- I think it's probably true.  But I hardly think the Times made an ironclad case for it.

This isn't the first time the NYT has withheld a story due to their fear of the right-wing. Remember, they withheld both the FISA mess and the revelation that Osama bin Laden was hiding in Pakistan. The latter they did not report due to not wanting to "get caught up in the politics of it." Which all comes back to the question of whether the paper understands the concept of irony to any degree.

Hence the dig about having trouble telling the difference between them and Drudge these past few years.

[Zaratustra]

But the concerns about Mr. McCain’s relationship with Ms. Iseman underscored an enduring paradox of his post-Keating career. Even as he has vowed to hold himself to the highest ethical standards, his confidence in his own integrity has sometimes seemed to blind him to potentially embarrassing conflicts of interest.

Well DUH he is a REPUBLICAN.

[Arc]

Yo yo yo yo yo! What it is motherfuckers?
Aw shit, here comes Pac-Man.
Hey Pac-Man, what's up?
Me you bitches! I'm high on crack! Wanna freebase?
No Pac-Man, drugs are bad!
Nope, can't help you man.
Puss~~~ies. WhoooOOOooa! Holy shit!

http://youtube.com/watch?v=JIFEceopAUI

[Norondor]

 

[Burrito Al Pastor]

If Hillary Clinton manages to nab the Democratic nomination, Ralph Nader will suddenly look really good to a lot of people.

[Brentai]

The same people who can expect to be tortured by McCain next year.

[S D S]

Ralph Nader is just shining a spotlight on his greasy slide further down the Hill of Irrelevancy.

If I recall correctly, he received less than a half-million votes out of over a hundred million in 2004, and that was a mere fifth of what he received in 2000.

Nader is a self-aggrandizing, bitter, irrelevant shell of a formerly credible progressive activist that is lucky enough to actually have a camera turned on him while he talks. 

[Arc]

The man, in regards to campaigning for the Presidency, is fruit loops. This is his fifth run for the office. At this point, he could have been comfortably elected to any number of House seats, or a well-targeted Senate seat. The Democrats & Republicans would've been eating out of his hands every other week.

This is made all the more frustrating by the fact that his policies are perfectly sane (if not directly practical), and his explanations of them to the media are knowledgeably thought out.

Instead of aiming for a top-down approach into breaking the two-party system, the Bloombergs of this nation should look into a multi-state strategy for creating a new national party from the ground up. Find voices that appeal to you, give them the funding and spotlight they need, and then after building for a decade of electoral cycles, aim for the grand prize.

[Thad]

I backed Nader in '00, but not '04.  Tom Tomorrow pretty much sums it up:

Nader’s critique of corporate power and its corrosive effect on American democracy is spot-on. But if the point of these third-party runs is to inject that critique into mainstream discourse — well, we’re way past the point of diminishing returns, and actually deep into some sort of anti-matter universe, in which information is literally sucked out of people’s brains at the first mention of his name. In the way that Dan Rather’s report on George Bush going AWOL turned into a discussion about Dan Rather, the only debate another Nader candidacy is going to inspire is a debate about Nader himself, and I just don’t see the point.

I stand by my 2000 vote.  The two-party zero-sum game reeks to high heaven.  Gore did NOT make his case; he spent his campaign acting like Bush Lite, rarely mentioning the environment and, for Christ's sake, picking Lieberman as his running-mate.

I think the only way to get out of the goddamn lesser-evil hole is a viable third-party candidate.  I was hoping to see the Green Party build some momentum from Nader's candidacy, but of course the spoiler label (which I feel is undeserved, for reasons which I've already explained) scuttled any possibility of that happening and has set back the cause by...well, assuming we get a two-term Democrat in November, I'd say sixteen years.  (If we get Clinton, that may knock it down to twelve; I see a lot of dissatisfied Democrats four years from now if she's President.)

Anyway.  The problem for me is, it just seems like there's better use for his time.  Nader could do a lot as a lawyer, as a Congressman, as the general public advocate his always been.  His grassroots activism has power, and has a purpose -- for God's sake, we've got poisonous toys coming in from China; he should be all over TV talking about that.  Public safety is HIS ISSUE.

Yeah, corporate power IS an issue that is BADLY overlooked, by BOTH parties.  But another Presidential campaign isn't going to get people to listen to him.  Lord knows I wish people WOULD listen to him, but it's not going to happen like this.

[S D S]

Exactly. He's not doing anything effective with this. He's not much of an atlernative choice, and he's also not much of a liberal anymore, least of all because actual liberals seem interested in getting things done or effecting real change.

Nader was a liberal.

He was a liberal when he spoke out against the auto industry, and led a campaign to increase awareness and government safety regulations.

That was decades ago.

There is no constructive reason for him to run for president, he will not be included in any of the debates, he will not make it only the majority of the ballots, I would be shocked if the Greens would have him, I doubt very much he will influence any of the discussions held during the campaign. He's shown zero reflection or contrition for anything he did post-2000, like screwing over the Green Party in 2004, and whenever he "speaks out" it's either to announce that he's thinking about running for President, he's running for President, or demagoguing Terri Schiavo or talking with Pat Buchanan in The American Conservative talking about how he's opposed to "feticide."

Nader's had ample time to show that he can be a) relevant or b) not a duchebag.

He's done neither.