I remember when I first came to the wilds of eastern Nebraska 20 years ago . . . the wife an' me polin' our flatboat up the Missouri River to a spot where we could unload our gear just upstream of the rough settlement of Omaha.
FROM THERE, we would stake out our little homestead a few miles to the west. Yeah, we did have a little skirmish with some hostile savages, but their bows and arrows were no match for the missus' and my bolt-action 30.06 deer rifles.
We built a nice sod house out here on the prairie . . . only had to live in our buffalo-skin teepee for three or four months that winter. It's amazin' how warm a wigwam can be when you have 30-foot snowdrifts for windbreak and icy insulation.
Ah, I miss the homesteadin' days of '88. It hasn't been the same since we got runnin' water, e-lectric lights and a flush toilet.
Who knows? Maybe with my resume of sod-bustin', Injun fightin' and conquerin' the wild frontier, I could get myself e-lected president.
But Mr. Richardson stopped returning Mr. Clinton’s calls days ago, Mr. Clinton’s aides said. And as of Friday, Mr. Richardson said, he had yet to pick up the phone to tell Mr. Clinton of his decision.
The reaction of some of Mr. Clinton’s allies suggests that might have been a wise decision. “An act of betrayal,” said James Carville, an adviser to Mrs. Clinton and a friend of Mr. Clinton.
“Mr. Richardson’s endorsement came right around the anniversary of the day when Judas sold out for 30 pieces of silver, so I think the timing is appropriate, if ironic,” Mr. Carville said, referring to Holy Week.
Mr. Richardson said he called Mrs. Clinton late on Thursday to inform her that he would be appearing with Mr. Obama on Friday to lend his support.
“It was cordial, but a little heated,” Mr. Richardson said in an interview.
BETRAYAL? JUDAS ISCARIOT?That kind of nuclear language over a freakin' political endorsement?
James Carville -- and, frankly, the rest of Washington, D.C., too -- needs to get a damn life. What we have here is a failure of perspective.
It's not like Richardson betrayed his lord and savior. One, Hillary Clinton -- it is obvious -- cannot even save herself, and her ex-prez hubby ain't gonna raise her campaign from the dead.
Two, Barack Obama ain't the savior, either. Saviors have no need of Bill Richardson's endorsement.
Three, Carville needs to go home, pour himself a double of something mighty fine, pat his child on the head, put on some sweet music, make out with his wife and thank God for his blessings. In that is found the meaning of life.
In the Washington fever swamps is found a bad case of nothing good.
Would this be an example of Sen. John McCain being "imprudent," like what one of his friends mentioned to The New York Timesin that story the GOP presidential candidate so hotly denies? Newsweek reports:
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.
McCain's subsequent letters to the FCC—coming around the same time that Paxson's firm was flying the senator to campaign events aboard its corporate jet and contributing $20,000 to his campaign—first surfaced as an issue during his unsuccessful 2000 presidential bid. William Kennard, the FCC chair at the time, described the sharply worded letters from McCain, then chairman of the Senate Commerce Committee, as "highly unusual."
The issue erupted again this week when the New York Times reported that McCain's top campaign strategist at the time, John Weaver, was so concerned about what Iseman (who was representing Paxson) was saying about her access to McCain that he personally confronted her at a Washington restaurant and told her to stay away from the senator.
GIVING THE strong impression that you're on the take is imprudent. Galavanting around the country with a hot lobbyist not your wife is imprudent.
Vowing to keep our overstretched armed forces in a Middle Eastern cesspool for 50, 100 or 10,000 years "if need be" is imprudent. Flat-out asserting "there will be other wars" is imprudent, if for no other reason than tipping your hand in a high-stakes international poker game.
Unless you're bluffing. Which -- given the stakes and your opponents' willingness to call your bluff in the name of Allah -- is damned imprudent right there.
What's really imprudent, though, is telling bald-face lies to a press corps that more than has the means, the skill and the motivation to conclusively prove you're a damned liar tout de suite. If McCain, on the verge of securing the Republican nomination, is that contemptuous of the truth then follows up by completely underestimating the press corps, he is a man who has no business in the Oval Office.
We've had a gullet full of just the same -- with catastrophic results -- from its present occupant.
Presumptive GOP presidential nominee John McCain seems to be picking an interesting way to spark some Bill Clinton-style crossover appeal in the general election.
According to The New York Times, the old goat has been acting more than a little like Bubba Himself the past decade or so. Special-interest soft money to keep the "Straight Talk Express" rolling along, zipping from sea to shining sea on other people's dime, lobbyists . . . a hot chick on his arm who wasn't Mrs. McCain.
But who was a lobbyist. A special lobbyist.
Well, you do have to admire the senator's taste in lobbyists. He'll be ready to something on Day One:
Early in Senator John McCain’s first run for the White House eight years ago, waves of anxiety swept through his small circle of advisers.
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.
When news organizations reported that Mr. McCain had written letters to government regulators on behalf of the lobbyist’s client, the former campaign associates said, some aides feared for a time that attention would fall on her involvement.
Mr. McCain, 71, and the lobbyist, Vicki Iseman, 40, both say they never had a romantic relationship. But to his advisers, even the appearance of a close bond with a lobbyist whose clients often had business before the Senate committee Mr. McCain led threatened the story of redemption and rectitude that defined his political identity.
It had been just a decade since an official favor for a friend with regulatory problems had nearly ended Mr. McCain’s political career by ensnaring him in the Keating Five scandal. In the years that followed, he reinvented himself as the scourge of special interests, a crusader for stricter ethics and campaign finance rules, a man of honor chastened by a brush with shame.
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.
Mr. McCain promised, for example, never to fly directly from Washington to Phoenix, his hometown, to avoid the impression of self-interest because he sponsored a law that opened the route nearly a decade ago. But like other lawmakers, he often flew on the corporate jets of business executives seeking his support, including the media moguls Rupert Murdoch, Michael R. Bloomberg and Lowell W. Paxson, Ms. Iseman’s client. (Last year he voted to end the practice.)
Mr. McCain helped found a nonprofit group to promote his personal battle for tighter campaign finance rules. But he later resigned as its chairman after news reports disclosed that the group was tapping the same kinds of unlimited corporate contributions he opposed, including those from companies seeking his favor. He has criticized the cozy ties between lawmakers and lobbyists, but is relying on corporate lobbyists to donate their time running his presidential race and recently hired a lobbyist to run his Senate office.
“He is essentially an honorable person,” said William P. Cheshire, a friend of Mr. McCain who as editorial page editor of The Arizona Republic defended him during the Keating Five scandal. “But he can be imprudent.”
IMPRUDENT. Just the quality I'm looking for in a president.
"I'm deeply disappointed the Republican Party seems poised to select a nominee who did not support a Constitutional amendment to protect the institution of marriage, who voted for embryonic stem cell research to kill nascent human beings, who opposed tax cuts that ended the marriage penalty, and who has little regard for freedom of speech, who organized the Gang of 14 to preserve filibusters, and has a legendary temper and often uses foul and obscene language.
"I am convinced Sen. McCain is not a conservative, and in fact, has gone out of his way to stick his thumb in the eyes of those who are. He has at times sounded more like a member of the other party. McCain actually considered leaving the GOP in 2001, and approached John Kerry about being Kerry's running mate in 2004. McCain also said publicly that Hillary Clinton would make a good president. Given these and many other concerns, a spoonful of sugar does not make the medicine go down. I cannot, and I will not vote for Sen. John McCain, as a matter of conscience."
NOBODY deserves to have that done to them -- a Dobson endorsement, that is. You could be looked upon as a power-hungry, misguided prig purely by involuntary association.