IF YOU SUSPECTED McCAIN HAS BEEN SELLING HIS ASS TO THE HIGHEST BIDDERS... WELL NOW WE KNOW SOME OF THE BIDDERS

Bush with McCain's lobbyist, Ms. Iseman

I don't really care if McCain was getting a little side-action on Cindy. After all, at one point it was Cindy who was the side action. It's the kind of thing Huckabee voters worry themselves about. The popular media will probably treat McCain's little bump in the road to political oblivion as a tawdry and titillating sex scandal, a sex scandal that ultimately no one can ever prove-- and no one would want to except the kind of people who going sniffing around in other people's underwear and blue dresses. But they're all Republican thugs and not likely to bother poor old McCain anyway. But the adulterous relationship long-time former McCain aides claim he was engaged in-- for as many as 15 years-- is a story for rubes and teenagers. The real story is about McCain's carefully crafted-- but obviously false, obvious, at least, to anyone paying attention-- image as a straight-shooting man of probity and ethics.

McCain's PR firm campaign has already released an official statement trying to discredit the story he has worked hard to try to keep out of the press. A vicious old gut fighter, McCain's first instinct, of course, is to smear the NY Times:

"It is a shame that the New York Times has lowered its standards to engage in a hit and run smear campaign. John McCain has a 24-year record of serving our country with honor and integrity. He has never violated the public trust, never done favors for special interests or lobbyists, and he will not allow a smear campaign to distract from the issues at stake in this election.

"Americans are sick and tired of this kind of gutter politics, and there is nothing in this story to suggest that John McCain has ever violated the principles that have guided his career."

The record shows clearly that although McCain has successfully pivoted away from scandal after scandal-- people think he uncovered the Keating Five Scandal, instead of being one of the more scandalous of the Five-- he is a man of the lowest ethics and the most deceitful instincts.

Early in 2000 the Boston Globe reported on a multitude of instances where McCain used his influence and power to get results from the FCC, which his Committee was charged with overseeing.

Days before Senator John McCain joined hands with Senator Bill Bradley last month to decry the noxious influence of special interest campaign donors, McCain pressured the Federal Communications Commission to vote on an issue that cleared the way for a major contributor to his
presidential campaign to buy a Pittsburgh television station.

McCain, in his bluntly worded Dec. 10 letter to the FCC, did not urge a vote favoring the contributor, Paxson Communications. But he acted at the request of the company's lobbyist, during a period when he used Paxson's corporate jet four times to travel to campaign events-- where he almost always attacks [with the most cold-blooded hypocrisy] monied special interests.

McCain's intervention in the case drew a speedy, scolding response from William E. Kennard, the FCC chairman, who deemed the Senator's letter "highly unusual'' and suggested it was inappropriate. The
Senate Commerce Committee, which McCain heads, oversees the FCC.

Angela J. Campbell, the attorney who represents opponents of the sale to Paxson, went much further, asserting in an interview yesterday that McCain's action was improper, unethical, violated FCC rules barring such contacts on pending FCC matters, and appeared designed to assist a major contributor.

"Senator McCain said, 'Do it by December 15 or explain why,' and the commission jumped to it and did it that very day. The senator's intent was for the FCC to grant the transfer of the TV license, said
Campbell, a Georgetown University law professor. McCain's intercession, she added, ''may well have tipped the decision.''

A spokesman for the senator, noting that McCain often sees the FCC deliberative process as molasses-like, said there was no connection between Paxson's political support for McCain-- $20,000 in two concentrated doses from Paxson and its law firm-- and his intercession with the FCC.

But McCain's close ties to Paxson were abundantly clear on the key dates surrounding the FCC decision. The day before he sent the Dec. 10 letter, McCain used Paxson's jet for a trip from New York to Florida. The day after the letter, he took the company jet from Florida to Washington. The campaign reimbursed the company at first-class airfare rates-- well below the actual cost of the charters.

The scandal breaking about McCain being in bed with a lobbyist should not degenerate into a sex scandal. It's a scandal about McCain's long and disgraceful career as a well-paid shill for the corporate interests he claims to be free of. The whore in tonight's long-overdue scandal is not the female lobbyist Vicki Iseman. The whore is the corrupt senator from Arizona, John McCain.

Keep in mind that Iseman is far from the only lobbyist in McCain's wretched life. In fact, one of the filthiest and most unethical lobbyists in Washington, Rick Davis (who even the far right finds too unethical to bear), is McCain's current campaign manager! McCain has long been a tool of special interests, lobbyists and their well-heeled clients. The combination of fear and cowed admiration the mass media has had for McCain has kept them from even the most rudimentary and obvious reporting on his jarring shortcomings as a leader and political figure. A couple weeks ago Joe Conason wrote an essay at Salon, Will The Press Get Over Its Love For McCain?, which highlighted his utter lack of ethics, particularly in regard to the ironic base of his corruption, the McCain "Reform Institute."

Speaking of reform, just how much of a reformer is McCain? The myth as recounted by the maverick himself and his admiring scribes is that the searing experience of the Keating Five scandal purified his character. Never again would he allow himself to be turned away from the path of righteousness by lobbyists and donors, never again would he sell out the public interest to the high rollers, never again would he besmirch the honor of his office ... and so on.

This is inspiring stuff, and he may well believe it all, but there is a growing backlog of evidence that he has not always lived up to such exacting standards-- particularly during his tenure as chairman of the Senate Commerce Committee.

Consider just one McCain story that never drew the roaring gang of cable and print hacks who would surely show up if someone named Clinton (or Edwards or even perhaps Obama) had done the same thing. It is the story of an entity that the Arizona senator founded, known as the Reform Institute.

Created after his failed presidential run in 2000, the Reform Institute is a hybrid between a domestic issues think tank and a tasty sugar teat for campaign staffers. Among its senior fellows is former Mexican Cabinet member Juan Hernandez, who also heads the McCain campaign's outreach to Hispanic voters. Other Reform Institute employees have included lobbyist and political consultant Rick Davis, long a member of the McCain inner circle and now his campaign manager.

The sweetest aspect of the Reform Institute-- aside from its commitment to research on immigration reform, campaign finance and other liberal concerns that the senator no longer finds so relevant-- is that its own financing is not subject to the regulations and disclosures of federal election law. In practice, that has meant not only that the McCain crowd could sop up subsidies from foundations run by liberal Democrats but that corporate donors with issues before the Commerce Committee could chip in a few bucks, too. Or a few thousand bucks, or even 50,000 bucks or more, like the executives of Cablevision (under the name CSC Holdings) and Echostar, communications firms with substantial issues at stake before McCain's committee.

Then there was that contribution from American International Group, whose executives had been quite concerned in 2000 about McCain's vow to stop AIG from profiting illicitly on insurance overcharges ripped off from the Boston "Big Dig" project. Sen. John Kerry got most of the blame for the demise of McCain's reform bill, which would have banned insurance giants like AIG from overcharging federal projects and reaping windfalls from investing that money. But it was actually McCain who killed his own bill -- and nobody seems to have checked back to discover that AIG later donated more than $50,000 to the Reform Institute. How much more? That might be a relevant question now, notably because Maurice "Hank" Greenberg, the McCain backer who ran AIG in those days, has since been forced to relinquish the company under threat of criminal prosecution.

If the very thought of McCain having sex with some young woman creeps you out, good; that isn't the story. The story is what he delivered to her clients and to other lobbyists' clients. Let the sanctimonious Huckabee supports worry about adultery and fornication; let's keep focused on good governance.

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.

...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.

Anyone hear from Holy Joe Lieberman on this? We know how he hates this kind of behavior.