Month: February 2008

Saturday Night At The Movies

If it’s Tuesday, this must be a Boschian nightmare

By Dennis Hartley

It’s hard to believe, but it’s been 14 years since Pulp Fiction was unleashed on an unsuspecting public. So what can we glean from this little factoid? What hath Tarantino wrought? Well, for one thing, the genre tag “hit man comedy” has now officially entered the cinematic lexicon. And, by the looks of things, (love it or loathe it) it is here to stay.

The latest example is a film that reportedly, er, knocked ‘em dead at the 2008 Sundance festival and is currently playing in theaters-Martin McDonagh’s In Bruges. A pair of Irish hit men, Ken (Brendan Gleeson) and Ray (Colin Farrell) have botched a job in London and are exiled to the Belgian city of Bruges, where they are ordered to lay low and await judgment on their cock-up from their piqued Dublin employer (Ray Fiennes).

Ken is enamored by the “fairy tale” ambience of Bruges, with its intricate canals and well-preserved medieval architecture, and decides to go the tourist route. The ADD-afflicted Ray, on the other hand, fails to see the appeal of “old buildings” and would just as soon plant himself in front of a pint for the duration of his purgatory. Initially, Ken lures the reluctant Ray into joining him for sightseeing with the promise of some pub time afterwards. However, it quickly becomes evident that Ray lacks any kind of discernible social filter, displaying a general disregard for local mores and folkways. Ken decides that the best way to stay low profile would be to let Ray pass time as he wishes.

In order to avoid spoilers, I won’t elaborate much more on what ensues, other than to say that Ray wanders off and finds himself a love interest and enjoys escapades like a coke binge with a “racist dwarf” while Ken finds himself thrust into a moral and ethical dilemma that fuels the dramatic turn of the film’s final third. Toss some heaping tablespoons of raging Catholic guilt, existentialism 101 and winking Hieronymus Bosch references into the mix, and voila! (The Sundance crowd swoons…)

So what exactly has McDonagh cooked up here? Well, as much as I’d like to be able to tell you that it’s “an original dish”, I’d have to call it more of a “sampler plate” featuring a generous wedge of Quentin Tarantino and a few tidbits of Guy Ritchie, sprinkled with a taste of Brendan Behan. If you’re a fan of dark (very dark) Irish humor, you’ll likely get a few decent chuckles out of playwright McDonagh’s brash and brassy dialog (and marvel at his creative use of “fook” as a noun, adverb, super verb and adjective). Unfortunately, the humor doesn’t fold so well into the mix with the generous dollops of dramatic bathos and queasy violence. Also, some of the more decidedly un-PC jokes fall terribly flat (I realize that nothing is sacred in comedy, but referring to obese people as “elephants” and a dwarf as a “short-arse” is not what I consider groundbreaking, cutting-edge humor).

That being said, there are some strong performances here, almost in spite of the film’s uneven tone. Gleeson and Farrell vibe a Laurel and Hardy dynamic together that works very well; you almost expect the doughy, exasperated Gleeson to exclaim “Well, it’s a fine mess you’ve gotten us into!” every time Farrell throws more gas on the fire with another one of his Tourette’s-like outbursts. Farrell has not previously impressed me as a nuanced performer, but in this film he proves to be quite deft at navigating the tricky waters of black comedy (that unibrow sure comes in handy). Gleeson (a world-class actor) is superb as always. Fiennes, who seems to be channeling Ben Kingsley in Sexy Beast (by way of Michael Caine) goes way over the top with his archetypical caricature of a “hard” Cockney gangster, but he appears to be having a grand old time just the same.

I had an “OK” time on my little Belgian excursion with Ray and Ken; and the location filming does make for a great travelogue, as Bruges truly is a beautiful city-but In Bruges may not be the ideal cinematic getaway for all tastes. A guarded recommendation.

Hit-man “buddy movies”: Pulp Fiction , I Went Down, The Boondock Saints, The Krays , Things Change, I Love You to Death, Buddy, Buddy, Lucky Number Slevin , Panic (2000), The Hit (1984),You Kill Me, The Matador , Leon – The Professional, La Femme Nikita (Special Edition), Diva, Confessions of a Dangerous Mind, The Replacement Killers, Ghost Dog – The Way of the Samurai, Smokin’ Aces, Diamonds are Forever, The Osterman Weekend, Mikey & Nicky, Things to Do in Denver When You’re Dead, The Mechanic, Fulltime Killer, Prizzi’s Honor.

…And a programming note for those of you who have the Sundance Channel:

Since events in Cuba have been grabbing headlines recently, I wanted to mention that there will be a rare TV screening of a fascinating documentary that I reviewed here last year, 638 Ways to Kill Castro (March 3; check local listings for air time). If you don’t have cable, it is available on DVD (although not easy to find). Enjoy! –D.H.

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The Old Dog

by digby

Lerxst places a bet on Modo’s column tomorrow:

Now let’s see, what oh what will Maureen Dowd find to write about this Sunday? I’d think its a sure bet that the name “Iseman” will feature in there. Maybe some reference to the golden dress she’s wearing in the photo that’s all over the news. Some references to Cindy’s hair?

I’d say that’s an excellent prognostication. But I would also assume that she will use it to imply the old boy’s still got it, if you know what I mean. I haven’t heard anyone else set forth that obvious “interpretation’ of recent stories, but Modo might just be the one to finally do it.

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Looking For A Reason

by digby

I know the MSM isn’t particularly quick on the uptake, but this one is so obvious even they should be able to get it. I have been hearing for the past 24 hours how this NYT story has really been good for McCain because it finally brought the base back over to his side.

Can we get real here? The “base” meaning Rush, Fox and the lesser wingnut blowhards, were desperate for an excuse to get on board the Straight Talk Express. The man is the presidential nominee of the Republican Party, the electoral arm of the conservative movement. Did anyone really think their animosity for McCain was going to last through November? Please. They are all on wingnut welfare to one degree or another and there’s no way in hell that they could continue to do their jobs in opposition to the Republican presidential nominee. It’s ridiculous. I’m sure they all felt a huge sense of relief that they had finally found a hook to get back down to business, which is demeaning and destroying liberals on behalf of Republicans.

This is not to say that they won’t blame McCain for being a heretic and turncoat to conservatism when he loses in November. Their lizard brain logic will be “The liberal Democrat won because McCain wasn’t conservative enough.” But in the meantime, they had to find a way to earn their paycheck, and now they have their hook.

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Legs

by dday

Bud Paxson has now officially contradicted St. Maverick on his blanket statement that he never met with the broadcasting mogul, which of course was already contradicted by John McCain himself in a sworn deposition.

Broadcaster Lowell “Bud” Paxson today contradicted statements from Sen. John McCain’s presidential campaign that the senator did not meet with Paxson or his lobbyist before sending two controversial letters to the Federal Communications Commission on Paxson’s behalf.

Paxson said he talked with McCain in his Washington office several weeks before the Arizona Republican wrote the letters to the FCC urging a rapid decision on Paxson’s quest to acquire a Pittsburgh television station.

Paxson also recalled that his lobbyist, Vicki Iseman, attended the meeting in McCain’s office and that Iseman helped arrange the meeting. “Was Vicki there? Probably,” Paxson said in an interview with The Washington Post today. “The woman was a professional. She was good. She could get us meetings.”

Of course she could get meetings with John McCain. The man has a soft spot for lobbyists. And it’s something when your alibi is “But I never show up for work!”

“Senator McCain was actively engaged in a presidential campaign in 1999-2000, and according to his calendar, the last day he conducted business in the Senate was November 8, 1999, and was frequently absent from the Senate prior to that date,” the statement said.

“He returned to the Senate the night of November 19, 1999, for one hour to participate in a budget vote, and the Senate adjourned shortly thereafter on November 22, 1999. Between November 22, 1999 and Christmas, the Senator did not return to the Senate for any substantive meetings as he was involved in a national book tour and a presidential campaign.”

Why should I be impressed that you were on a book tour instead of doing your job?

So now here’s yet another drip of the faucet, with McCain absolutely caught in a lie, contradicted by everybody involved. And of course, the scenario of McCain doing favors for corporate interests who contributed to his campaigns and let him use the corporate jet is a wormhole into his long history of close involvement with lobbyists. Whatever he did with Iseman, she was certainly around the 2000 campaign, bragging about her access, and told to put and end to it (by named source John Weaver). McCain was holding fundraisers arranged by the lobbying firm aboard the yacht from a cruise line they represented (and he sponsored bills to deregulate the cruise line industry around that same time). And this isn’t just a side issue from 2000, it’s basically the same setup right now. He has more lobbyists raising money for him than any Presidential candidate. He has more lobbyists on staff than any Presidential candidate. And while he defended them in comments today, these aren’t people who represent the poor or the environment or Constitutional rights. They’re folks like Charlie Black, the guy who runs his lobbying shop out of the back of the Straight Talk Express bus (no lie).

Among the loudest McCain mouthpieces is Charlie Black, a seasoned Republican operative whose client roster dates back to such paragons as the late Filipino President Ferdinand Marcos and several African dictators, and more recently has featured Erik Prince, the mercenary entrepreneur who founded Blackwater. (Black’s wife is a lobbyist too, and his firm, known as BKSH, is owned by Burson-Marsteller, the enormous P.R. conglomerate chaired by Hillary Clinton’s top campaign advisor, Mark Penn.) McCain’s campaign manager, Rick Davis, is also a lobbyist, whose client interests in the broadcasting and cable industry overlapped with those represented by Iseman and her firm, Alcalde & Fay. During the off years between presidential elections, Davis collected donations from companies regulated by the Senate Commerce Committee, chaired by his boss McCain, for the amusingly named “Reform Institute,” which also paid handsome sinecures to Davis and various other McCain campaign consultants. McCain’s chief fundraiser is Tom Loeffler, a prominent lobbyist and former Texas congressman whose clients range from PhRMA to the kingdom of Saudi Arabia.

The print media is aggressively reporting this story, as the broadcast media tries to hold back the floodgates. The New York Times deserves some criticism for leading with the sex angle and going with sourcing that was a little thin. But all of these allegations about McCain’s lobbyist ties have been out there for some time. They even got printed every so often, but always on the back pages of the paper. It took a bombshell to get the media to take notice. Now that they have, we can all see that the sex angle really doesn’t have much to do with the fact that Mr. Reform, Mr. Straight Talk, Mr. Maverick, is actually just Mr. John McSame, another Republican crook who rewards those who reward him. And wait until they get to the defense contracts he’s shoveled to constituents in Arizona.

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TV Alert

by dday

They buried it on the same night as the Oscars, but 60 Minutes will be airing the Don Siegelman story on Sunday. Siegelman, the Democratic former governor of Alabama, is sitting in a jail cell right now for trumped-up reasons, almost certainly orchestrated by Karl Rove and his charges. Jill Simpson, a former Republican campaign worker, has powerful evidence of this travesty of justice, and she’ll go on the record in the story:

A former Republican campaign worker claims that President Bush’s top political adviser, Karl Rove, asked her to find evidence that the Democratic governor of Alabama at the time was cheating on his wife, according to an upcoming broadcast of “60 Minutes.”

Jill Simpson, who has long alleged that Rove may have influenced the corruption prosecution of former Gov. Don Siegelman, makes the claim against Rove in a broadcast scheduled to be aired Sunday, according to a statement from CBS.

Simpson testified to congressional investigators last year that she overheard conversations among Republicans in 2002 indicating that Rove was involved in the Justice Department’s prosecution of Siegelman. She has never before said that Rove pressed her for evidence of marital infidelity in spite of testifying to congressional lawyers last year, submitting a sworn affidavit and speaking extensively with reporters […]

According to the CBS statement, Simpson says Rove approached her at a 2001 meeting, when Siegelman was still governor.

“Karl Rove asked you to take pictures of Siegelman?” reporter Scott Pelley asks.

“Yes,” Simpson replies.

“In a compromising sexual position with one of his aides,” Pelley says.

“Yes, if I could,” she responds.

Simpson said she is speaking out because Siegelman’s seven-year sentence on corruption charges bothers her, the release said. She said she found no evidence of an affair.

Karl Rove has dodged a lot of bullets in his day, but his entire operation is on the line with this Siegelman story. This involves the US Attorneys scandal, as the real meaning of that purge was about directing federal prosecutors to bring charges against Democrats and to use the Justice Department as an arm of the RNC. It involves Rove’s project to build a permanent Republican majority through implementing all of the federal agencies at his disposal. It involves the entire modus operandi of the Bush White House. This is an extension of what Rove and his merry band of ratfuckers have been doing their entire careers. He just had a bunch of new tools to play with.

Kagro X has a fantastic post detailing the implications here.

This really demonstrates the lengths to which Bush-Cheney’s hyper-politicized Department of Justice can go. If they can railroad the actual governor of a state into prison and have pretty much nobody really sit up and take notice, what does that say about the extent of the damage to the country? Not just the DOJ (which is a goner), but about the supposed watchdogs of the media, who’ve been in large part either cowed into silence, or distracted by an endless stream of shiny objects?

Seriously, this means they can do this to anybody.

But worse than that, it means that anybody who finds themselves under scrutiny by the federal government now has license to charge that they’re being politically targeted. Because if this can happen as Horton describes it happening, all bets are off. It has all the ingredients of the complete and total undoing of all federal law enforcement capability for the foreseeable future […]

That’s the true measure of the damage the Bush-Cheney “administration” has caused. It’s no longer just your basic looting of the Treasury. Dollar-based corruption we at least understand. But corruption of the actual mechanisms of the government itself? Corruption not meant to enrich, but to corrode public trust in the only system we have for actually holding corrupt officials to account?

We’re now looking at federal law enforcement so grossly politicized that even a landslide victory for the opposition party might not be able to root the corruption out.

I’ll be TiVoing on Sunday night. You should too. 52 former state Attorneys General have signed letters in support of re-opening the Siegelman case and investigating the politicization. You should do what you can to help them.

… I should add that this is something that Digby talks about a lot: the right appropriating the critiques of the left. You can bet that if a President Obama or President Clinton tries to get rid of some corrupt Republicans buried deep inside the federal agencies, the bloody shirt of “politicization” will be waved. They poisoned the well of impeachment to innoculate themselves of that potential action, they’re sure to use “voter fraud” claims to try and illegitimize elections, and then this. It’s something I hope we’re thinking about.

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Maverick At War With Himself

by digby

David Brooks finally writes about something on which he actually is an authority (unlike, say, the buying habits of red state America) namely, John McCain. Brooks, you may recall, (along with William Kristol, who ironically now joins him as an op-ed columnist for the NY Times.) was one of the earliest McCainiacs, a believe as was St John, in the notion of GOP Fascism Lite, which they called National Greatness conservatism. (They are pretty much imperialist neocons, but they also want to go around building temples and monuments all over the country to America’s great martial history.)

Anyway, Brooks loves McCain, especially his bloodthirsty nature. I believe his contacts in that campaign are probably impeccable. The picture he draws today is of a man with no center who has two separate groups of worshippers around him with different goals and separate ways of approaching politics. McCain the maverick and McCain the standard hypocritical GOP suck-up are at war with each other and the campaign has manifested that with two separate camps:

Davis is a creature of the political mainstream. He is even-tempered and charming. He is a lobbyist and a friend of lobbyists. He is a good manager. In policy terms, his tastes tend toward the Republican center.

Weaver is a renegade. He has a darker personality. He’s not a member of elite Washington circles and resented the way McCain would occasionally get pulled into them. Weaver is a less effective bureaucrat, but his policy instincts are more daring and independent.

The Davis-Weaver rivalry has lasted for so long because John McCain has a foot in each camp. McCain is, on one level, a figure of the Washington mainstream. He admires Alan Greenspan and Henry Kissinger. He appreciates a steady manager like Davis.

But McCain is also a renegade and a romantic. He loves tilting at the establishment and shaking things up. He loves books and movies in which the hero dies at the end while serving a noble, if lost, cause. He loves the insurgent/band-of-brothers ethos that Weaver exudes.

McCain was loyal to each camp in a house divided. But the poisons emanating from the rift have spread outward. They are the background for the article my colleagues at The New York Times published Thursday.

It’s hard to see how two such different camps could exist in one campaign since they are diametrically opposed to one another. More importantly it seems dicey to have a president who has two such warring parts of his own personality.

McCain’s strength is the fact that he seems to be someone very secure in his own skin, someone who’s biography shows that he has been to hell and back and can’t be frightened or shaken by anything. This kind of thing speaks to something far more complex and potentially dangerous. This is a man who is either a complete phony or has never fully come to understand himself or the profession he chose.

I vote for phony. I think the maverick label is a typical dashing, macho flyboy image that he’s always enjoyed, but has nothing to do with who he actually is, which is a … politician, in the most pejorative sense. The fools are the John Weavers’ and the David Brooks’ who see in him something glorious and heroic, which he may have been at one time, but long since left behind when he decided to systematically create the conditions for him to enter politics — conditions which included leaving his first wife for a beautiful heiress (whom he very may well have been lucky enough to conveniently fall in love with as well)and buying himself a seat in congress. The rest is history.

And they call Hillary calculating…

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It Gets Worse For McCain

by dday

It’s not the sex, it’s the lying.

A sworn deposition that Sen. John McCain gave in a lawsuit more than five years ago appears to contradict one part of a sweeping denial that his campaign issued this week to rebut a New York Times story about his ties to a Washington lobbyist.

On Wednesday night the Times published a story suggesting that McCain might have done legislative favors for the clients of the lobbyist, Vicki Iseman, who worked for the firm of Alcalde & Fay. One example it cited were two letters McCain wrote in late 1999 demanding that the Federal Communications Commission act on a long-stalled bid by one of Iseman’s clients, Florida-based Paxson Communications, to purchase a Pittsburgh television station.

Just hours after the Times’s story was posted, the McCain campaign issued a point-by-point response that depicted the letters as routine correspondence handled by his staff–and insisted that McCain had never even spoken with anybody from Paxson or Alcalde & Fay about the matter. “No representative of Paxson or Alcalde & Fay personally asked Senator McCain to send a letter to the FCC,” the campaign said in a statement e-mailed to reporters.

But that flat claim seems to be contradicted by an impeccable source: McCain himself. “I was contacted by Mr. Paxson on this issue,” McCain said in the Sept. 25, 2002, deposition obtained by NEWSWEEK. “He wanted their approval very bad for purposes of his business. I believe that Mr. Paxson had a legitimate complaint.”

While McCain said “I don’t recall” if he ever directly spoke to the firm’s lobbyist about the issue–an apparent reference to Iseman, though she is not named–“I’m sure I spoke to [Paxson].” McCain agreed that his letters on behalf of Paxson, a campaign contributor, could “possibly be an appearance of corruption”–even though McCain denied
doing anything improper.

Is PAX-TV even around anymore? Never mind, that’s besides the point.

This is really, really bad for McCain. He’s now contradicted himself in public. This is the kind of thing the media loves to hammer, and today’s stories prove that this won’t go away. What’s more, the FEC is basically telling McCain that he cannot walk away from the public financing system.

The nation’s top federal election official told Sen. John McCain yesterday that he cannot immediately withdraw from the presidential public financing system as he had requested, a decision that threatens to dramatically restrict his spending until the general election campaign begins in the fall.

The prospect of being financially hamstrung by the very fundraising system he helped create is the latest in a series of bitter challenges for the presumed GOP nominee, who still faces a fractured conservative coalition as he assumes the mantle of party leadership […]

The implications of that could be dramatic. Last year, when McCain’s campaign was starved for cash, he applied to join the financing system to gain access to millions of dollars in federal matching money. He was also permitted to use his FEC certification to bypass the time-consuming process of gathering signatures to get his name on the ballot in several states, including Ohio.

By signing up for matching money, McCain agreed to adhere to strict state-by-state spending limits and an overall limit on spending of $54 million for the primary season, which lasts until the party’s nominating convention in September. The general election has a separate public financing arrangement.

But after McCain won a series of early contests and the campaign found its financial footing, his lawyer wrote to the FEC requesting to back out of the program — which is permitted for candidates who have not yet received any federal money and who have not used the promise of federal funding as collateral for borrowing money.

The main reason McCain can’t back out is that he received a loan using the public financing as collateral. But the most interesting part of this is that the FEC would have to vote to let McCain out of the public system. But they don’t have a quorum right now, with the nomination of four members held up in the Senate because Bush won’t withdraw the odious Hans von Spakovsky from the position. The other three would easily pass the Senate, but the Republicans have made it an all-or-nothing deal. Who led the fight on the Democratic side to keep von Spakovsky off the FEC? Barack Obama.

What would be hilarious would be McCain going to the White House, hat in hand, pleading with Bush to drop his demands and ditch von Spakovsky so that he can get off the public system that he built.

McCain can deny the sex part of this, and wage war with the New York Times, and get all the wingnuts behind him. But he’s been caught in a web of lies, he has lobbyists populating his entire staff, a member of his leadership team just got indicted, his image as a reformer is being buried, and he might not have a dime to spend for the next SEVEN MONTHS.

Oof.

UPDATE: The signature quote in the Newsweek story, from McCain himself:

“As I said before, I believe that there could possibly be an appearance of corruption because this system has tainted all of us.”

UPDATE II: Any Democrat going on media to talk about this story needs to follow the template of Howard Dean’s comments to the National Journal. They’re brilliant. A taste:

Dean: I have no idea whether the affair story is true or not, and I don’t care. What I do care about is John McCain — and this has been well-documented — is talking all the time about being a reformer and a maverick, and in fact, he has taken thousands of dollars from corporations, ridden on their corporate jets, and then turned around and tried to do favors for them and get projects approved. He has tons of lobbyists on his staff. This is a guy who is very close to the lobbyist community, a guy who has been documented again and again by taking contributions and then doing favors for it. This is not a guy who is a reformer. This is a guy who has been in Washington for 25 years and wants to give us four more years of the same, and I don’t think we need that.

I broke down the interview here.

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Debate Points

by digby

I thought the debate was quite good last night. Senator Obama has become an excellent debater over the course of this primary, which shows that doing a bunch of them is a good thing for the people and for the candidates. He really shines in the one-on-one, appearing confident and knowledgeable, calm and collected. McCain isn’t very good at debating and he isn’t going to get any better at this point. He tends to blurt out canned lines and then flash that weird grimace he calls a smile at inappropriate times. Not his strong suit. The debates next fall are going to be really entertaining.

Steve Benen wonders why Clinton wanted to add debates to the schedule when it was assumed she wanted them in order to go for the jugular:

Indeed, she probably wouldn’t have a choice — it’s been a rough few weeks, her quiver is running noticeably low on arrows, and time for game-changing events is running out.

So, what happened last night in Austin? Well, I should note that I slept through the whole thing, but have read much of the transcript and lots of reports on what transpired. And if there’s a consensus, it seemed to be that nothing happened last night that changed the dynamics of the race in any significant way. Josh Marshall’s response seemed typical of most:

The level of specificity and detail in discussions of policy questions spoke well of both of them. Hillary had a strong closing. Obama has clearly improved as a debater and seemed to embody the frontrunner mantle. All of this points basically to a tie. And in the context of where this campaign is, a tie is a win for Obama because he’s winning. And Clinton needs to change the dynamic of the campaign.

Notwithstanding the inflamed partisans on both sides, I think the great majority of Democrats like both these candidates, genuinely like and admire both of them. You could feel that in the responses from the audience tonight. But that pleasant equilibrium is losing the race for her right now.

I have to admit, I find this rather surprising. By any reasonable measure, Clinton is losing. If she wasn’t going to use this debate to shake up the status quo, then what was the point of pushing the importance of debates so aggressively the past couple of weeks

The point was that she tends to do well in debates and you never know what might happen. Debates themselves can be game changers if someone makes a mistake. The reasons she didn’t go for the jugular is that she knows it doesn’t work for her and, contrary to popular myth, she won’t do or say anything to win. I know that’s shocking to those of you who are convinced that Clinton is a monster, but it’s true. Her campaign has not been, by any historical standards, a negative or nasty one. She has stated repeatedly, and again last night, that the party would be unified and in light of the fact that she is losing, that remark takes on a different character — she will not turn the Democratic party inside out just for the fun of it or greatly damage the front runner in some quixotic quest for power. (It’s hard to believe that anyone but Ann Coulter would ever believe she would do such a thing, but there you have it.)

Her final comment was gracious and heartfelt; one senses the beginning of the end being accepted and absorbed.(And, of course, a Democrat is never more well-loved than when he or she is delivering a concession speech…) This is a person of maturity and depth and one of whom most Democrats in this country are actually quite proud.

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It’s His Judgment, Stupid

by tristero

Even if you take him at his word and give him every benefit of a doubt, even if you cut him some slack for being more willing than most politicians to admit mistakes, even if you dismiss as tawdry the insinuation of an affair that the Times couldn’t prove, the article makes it quite clear there’s something seriously wrong with McCain’s judgment. The deal breaker – what makes him utterly unqualified to be president, especially now – is that he seems incapable of improving it. He makes the same mistake over and over again. Here’s an overlooked nuance from the second paragraph:

A female lobbyist had been turning up with him at fund-raisers, visiting his offices and accompanying him on a client’s corporate jet. Convinced the relationship had become romantic, some of his top advisers intervened to protect the candidate from himself — instructing staff members to block the woman’s access, privately warning her away and repeatedly confronting him, several people involved in the campaign said on the condition of anonymity.

Aides – plural – repeatedly had to confront McCain about his inappropriate relationship with a lobbyist. Once or twice wasn’t enough for him to get the message. This is a persistent theme in McCain’s behavior.

In fact, the Iseman incident itself was a reprise of similar behavior. Ten years earlier, to use the Times’ word, McCain had done an “official favor for a friend with regulatory problems” and found himself knee deep in the Keating savings and loan scandal, barely escaping with his career. And then, with Iseman, “Mr. McCain had written letters to government regulators on behalf of” his new friend’s client.

But there’s more. Not only had McCain gotten in trouble for the earlier favor-mongering, he even realized, albeit belatedly, what his mistakes were – being too trustful of daring, confident, people; getting too close to people with business before the government, and so on. Even understanding this, he acted the same way with Iseman (regardless of whether you believe his denials of an affair).

In other words, McCain admits his judgment is frequently awful. Even when he knows better, he can’t help himself sometimes- he’s easily, and dangerously, swayed by strong personalities and by his need for friendships with such people. But think about what that means. Even if you cut him slack on a personal level – something along the level of, “well, at least he has the courage to admit he’s wrong and the insight to know why” – this is not the kind of personality you want negotiating with Vladimir Putin, to pick just one example.

Sure. Everyone makes mistakes. And even though McCain makes spectacular mistakes, that in and of itself isn’t the real crux of the problem. Rather it’s this: By his own admission, McCain can’t learn from his mistakes. He knows himself that his personality is too rigid. That is the critical difference between John McCain and a truly qualified candidate for President of the United States. And no amount of straight-shooting hype will change that.

The (Republican) Lost Weekend

by dday

So the latest on the FISA bill is this: the House and Senate were supposed to meet today to begin the compromise of the RESTORE Act, which has no telecom amnesty, and the Senate Intelligence Committee version of the bill, which does. But the Republicans took a walk and refused to negotiate.

“In what should have been a bipartisan, bicameral meeting, staff members of the House and Senate Judiciary and Intelligence Committees met today to work in good faith to reach a compromise on FISA reform. As we have said, we are using this week to work on a compromise that strengthens our national security and protects Americans’ privacy. Unfortunately, we understand our Republican counterparts instructed their staffs not to attend this working meeting, therefore not allowing progress to be made in a bipartisan, bicameral way. While we are disappointed that today’s meeting could not reflect a bipartisan effort, we will continue to work and hope Republicans will join us to put our nation’s security first.”

So that extension of the Protect America Act which expired last week, which was such an outrage that all of us were going to wind up dead, in our beds, today, in fact I’m surprised there’s anyone alive out there still reading, was apparently not important enough to forsake some political grandstanding.

Apparently President Me First and the Gimme Gimmes isn’t allowing a compromise because he doesn’t want a compromise. He wants the phone companies to get away with lawbreaking and that’s the end of it.

Asked about a potential deal with Democrats, Bush said, “I would just tell you there’s no compromise on whether these phone companies get liability protection.” The administration says it needs the help of the phone companies for its post Sept. 11, 2001, surveillance.

Bush said his strategy for breaking the deadlock on the surveillance bill will be to keep talking about why it should be passed on his terms. “The American people understand we need to be listening to the enemy,” he said.

Considering that nobody is paying attention to this irrelevant President or his little fearmongering games, this seems like a weird tactic. That doesn’t mean it won’t work – there are still enough Democrats, like North Carolina Senate candidate Kay Hagan, who can be frightened out of their wits into giving up crucial liberties (the preferred candidate to take on Liddy Dole, Jim Neal, gets my support for his stance on this alone) – but the President is operating under a different standard. He still thinks that he’s the center of attention and he can whip out press releases filled with falsehoods and that’ll be enough to send the Democrats into a tailspin. It still might be, but I’m with publius on this one:

In short, the GOP learned too much from its 2002 victory. Rather than seeing 2002 as a one-time victory based on unique historical circumstances, they’ve come to see it as a universal recipe for electoral success. In their minds, they can win by taking any national security issue on which the Dems are divided and embrace the policy that maximizes executive authority (or more precisely, Bush’s authority – I’m sure they’ll all transform into squawking Hayeks if Obama or Clinton win).

The reason the GOP embraces 2002 so completely is essentially the flipside of why the Dems avoid it – they were, shall we say, deeply satisfied by the results. Winning elections is nice and all. But what made 2002 so orgasmically stimulating was the utter decimation of their opponents’ spirit. It’s fun, I hear, to see groups of people you despise so utterly demoralized and shamed. (I feel that way when the Duke basketball team loses). For them, 2002 was like a first-time heroin rush – and now they keep trying to recapture that lovin’ feeling. (ed. They should watch more than the first 5 minutes of Trainspotting. Agreed.) […]

These historical subtleties were lost on the GOP though. The lessons they took from the 2002 and 2004 elections were to double down on terrorist demagoguery. My ideological comradskies tend to view this GOP strategy through moral lenses – but the party was simply acting rationally. GOP officials thought fear and demagoguery won them elections, so it’s a strategy they returned to […]

Today, the long-term costs of that short-sightedness are becoming clear. The 2006 election was the first clue, but it won’t be the last. Remember that, in the run-up to 2006, the congressional GOP had fallen in line behind a “stay the course” strategy. They didn’t care that Iraq wasn’t working. What mattered is that it kept their handy “you hate the troops/love the terrorists” strategy intact. But then, miracle of miracles, the Dems turned the tables and used “stay the course” as an offensive attack [cue 2001 Space Odyssey drums]. Because so many GOP candidates (e.g., the odious George Allen) had advocated that very policy from the get-go, the Dem strategy tied the entire party to the war, which made the candidates politically vulnerable.

The 2008 election is shaping up to be an extension of the 2006 wave – and for similar reasons. It’s no accident that the parties’ enthusiasm is so asymmetrical right now. For one, contrary to what its elected leaders think, the Republican rank-and-file aren’t idiots. They are profoundly demoralized by recent failures – and, frankly, by the second-grade level emotional appeals.

The Dems, on the other side, are simply reconfirming Newton’s Third — for every action, there is an equal and opposite reaction. When your electoral strategy is based on demonizing 45% of the country, that 45% is going to get pissed off and become more politically active. In this respect, the Dean campaign was essentially the first tremor of what could become an Obama earthquake.

If the Democrats have any self-respect, they’d let the FISA bill just die in conference. The Republicans aren’t interested in a good-faith effort, obviously; they want either massive executive power or a political issue. The former is unconscionable; the latter DOESN’T APPEAR TO BE WORKING ANYMORE. This isn’t leading news programs. There isn’t a grassroots community dying for the telecoms to get off the hook. Republicans reached for the needle to get their sweet heroin rush and found it to be empty.

I don’t want to get overconfident but if Democrats can resist the sweet dulcet tones of Jello Jay Rockefeller begging them to save his telecom buddies, they should easily be able to just drop this. And it’ll blow away. And the lawsuits will go forward, and maybe someday we’ll actually get to the bottom of one aspect of what the Bush Administration has been doing for the last 7-plus years. Thin gruel, I know. But also essential.

UPDATE: Is this really all they’ve got??

First of all, words don’t make futuristic noises when revealed on a computer screen. This really has to be stopped. Second, nice job, Jello Jay, you made it into their movie! Do you get residuals for that? Third, I can’t do third because I really just pissed myself when I saw those scary black-and-white ski mask-wearing terrorists totally making phone calls to each other and IMing and using Twitter – with impunity!

This is really laughable. They’ve completely misunderstood the political moment. For some facts instead of fear on FISA, go here (warning: no words printing out on screen with beeps and boops).

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