MORE CROOKED LOBBYISTS EXITING THE DOUBLE TALK EXPRESS

Gettin' lonely on the bus

I just went upstairs to put on some shoes and socks and the TV was on and this guy was talking about how McCain had been forced to fire yet another corrupt lobbyist, Thomas Loeffler, a McCain national finance co-chairman! It was like 8 in 6 days or something. Granted his campaign has dozens and dozens of them but at the rate they're being found conspiring with dictators or oil companies or corporations that outsource American jobs... well, pretty soon McCain may wind up driving the Double Talk Express himself!

Funny how McCain always seems to do the bidding of the lowlife lobbyists around him-- and then get millions of dollars in campaign "contributions" from the corporations that employ the lobbyists. Everyone knows how fanatic McCain has been in going along with Bush's outrageous demands that the criminal executives at the telecom companies be granted retroactive immunity so that they can never be prosecuted for any crimes they may have committed when spying on American citizens without warrants. But how many people understood that McCain, who has been bribed-- in the form of "donations"-- by the telecoms to the tune of nearly $4,000,000, was surrounded by campaign staffers who work for them? AT&T alone has shoved $189,700 up McCain's ass. And their lobbyist? Thomas Loeffler, of course.

The media doesn't talk much about how McCain made sure one of his lobbyist's clients got a $35 billion airforce tanker contract, even though they were a foreign firm bidding against Boeing. As a result thousands of jobs will be created in Europe instead of Washington, Illinois and other states.

Shipping American jobs overseas may be someone's idea of "Free Trade," but it doesn't go over outside of the Board rooms. When McCain bragged about having been instrumental in denying an immense new contract to Boeing for refueling planes and helping the European Aeronautics Defense and Space Co. get it instead, there was "outrage from union halls to the halls of Congress over the impact on U.S. jobs, prestige and national security."

Boeing supporters in Congress are directing their wrath at McCain, the Arizona senator and nominee in waiting, for scuttling an earlier deal that would have let Boeing build the next generation of Air Force refueling tankers. Boeing now will miss out on a deal that it says would have supported 44,000 new and existing jobs at the company and suppliers in 40 states.

"I hope the voters of this state remember what John McCain has done to them and their jobs," said Rep. Norm Dicks, D-Wash., whose state would have been home to the tanker program and gained about 9,000 jobs.

Several of McCain's in-house lobbyists were behind that deal-- and got very well-compensated when McCain was able to steer the contract to Airbus instead of Boeing: Susan Nelson (McCain's finance director, who was also getting big bucks from Loeffler supposedly without McCain knowing), William Ball III, John Green and, of course, Loeffler himself.

Tomorrow's Wall Street Journal has some whitewashed details of sleazy lobbyist Thomas Loeffler's relationship with McCain and why he was finally kicked off the bus.

Thomas Loeffler, a former U.S. representative from Texas, resigned from his post as a national finance committee and campaign co-chairman, a campaign spokesman confirmed Sunday.

Mr. Loeffler is the founder of The Loeffler Group, a San Antonio lobbying shop that has worked on behalf of AT&T Inc. and Southwest Airlines Co. as well as foreign interests, including Saudi Arabia.

Mr. Loeffler's resignation continues the fallout from a new policy that John McCain, the likely Republican nominee, instituted last week requiring full disclosure of involvement with lobbying firms and other independent political groups.

This is so totally shady. McCain wasn't aware that Loeffler was a lobbyist? The firm he works for is called The Loeffler Group. There are almost no McCain campaign staff who aren't lobbyists or "former" lobbyists, although several of the "former" lobbyists have been caught doing their lobbying on the Double Talk Express itself! In one of the most classic cases of bolting the barn door after the cows have escaped (and been butchered, packaged, made into BigMacs, and pooped out), McCain has unctuously announced a new policy that "bans staffers and aides from being registered lobbyists or working on behalf of foreign interests. It allows unpaid volunteers to continue as registered lobbyists as long as they disclose those interests and don't lobby or advise Sen. McCain on behalf of those interests." Meanwhile, just so you can comprehend the level of McCain's chicanery and gross hypocrisy, his actual campaign manager, Rick Davis, one of the most loathed and sleazy of the Beltway lobbyists "still owns a stake in his lobbying organization, Davis Manafort Inc., but is no longer paid by the firm." It was that kind of logic about Cheney and Halliburton that cost the American taxpayers hundreds of billions of dollars. These people have absolutely no shame. I guess it looked a little funny that the Saudis have given Loeffler over $15 million and Loeffler has admitted lobbying McCain on their behalf. Kind of makes people think that they were buying themselves another president to replace the worn out disgrace they bought in 2000.

A few days ago two more of the filthiest of the filthy, a couple of high priced whores for the brutal and fascist Myanmar dictatorship, Doug Goodyear and Doug Davenport were fired when their connections to the dictatorship-- which McCain has been well aware of for years-- wound up in the newspapers. Then Eric Burgeson was unceremoniously fired as a McCain energy advisor when it was discovered he was tailoring the advising to the needs of his lobbying clients. And the day before yesterday GOP consultant Craig Shirley was hustled off the bus because of his slimy ties to stophernow.com, an attack site created to target Hillary Clinton that is now aimed at-- you guessed it-- Barack Obama.


UPDATE: TOO BAD WE CAN'T ALL AFFORD LOBBYISTS

I mean too bad we can't afford the really expensive, sleazy kind who infest the McCain campaign. If we could maybe McCain would do us favors too. And if American military vets could afford a high-priced sleazy lobbyist, maybe McCain wouldn't be on an anti-vet jihad.