Hey Schieffer, Incorporate Some Breaking News

Waiting on the debate, which I think has about a 50/50 chance of turning into a smear factory. But if it does, it would be nice if Bob Schieffer could work it around to one of today's top stories and see what the Maverick would have to say in his defense:

Early in 2007, just as her husband launched his presidential bid, Cindy McCain decided to resolve an old problem -- the lack of cellular telephone coverage on her remote 15-acre ranch near Sedona, nestled deep in a tree-lined canyon called Hidden Valley.

By the time Sen. John McCain's presidential bid was in full swing this summer, the ranch had wireless coverage from the two cellular companies most often used by campaign staff -- Verizon Wireless and AT&T.

Verizon delivered a portable tower know as a "cell site on wheels" -- free of charge -- to Cindy McCain's property in June in response to an online request from Cindy McCain's staff early last year. Such devices are usually reserved for restoring service when cell coverage is knocked out during emergencies, such as hurricanes.

In July, AT&T followed suit, wheeling in a portable tower for free to match Verizon's offer. "This is an unusual situation," said AT&T spokeswoman Claudia B. Jones. "You can't have a presidential nominee in an area where there is not cell coverage."

If you think this sounds perfectly reasonable, consider that Ted Stevens is facing jail time for pretty much exactly the same thing. Oh, and the McCain campaign's spin is that the Secret Service made him do it - which the Secret Service denies.

"The Washington Post story regarding Verizon providing a cell tower to the McCain Ranch is wrong," (Verizon PR guy) Thonis said. "Verizon received a request from Mrs. McCain, but declined.

"Subsequent to that, the Secret Service made a legitimate request for a temporary tower for its work and Verizon complied as is required by our contract with the agency. The Secret Service request, made on May 28, specifically said it needed the service urgently and requested that Verizon 'explore every possible means of providing an alternative cellular or data communications source in the referenced area and provide any short term implementation of any type as a solution in the interim."

But James Grimaldi, the Post reporter who broke the story, has the Secret Service saying they did not formally request the tower.

Secret Service spokesman Eric Zahren told the paper: "This was something that was being addressed before we were out there."

Just the Verizon flack's protestations are revealing. They confirm that Cindy McCain asked for a cell phone tower for her personal use - and pretty much only the McCain family's use, as there are few other homes in the area. They confirm that the request was in well before McCain took the nomination.

McCain, of course, regulates these phone companies as part of his day job, and mixes with their lobbyists on his campaign staff.

Ethics lawyers said Cindy McCain's dealings with the wireless companies stand out because Sen. John McCain is a senior member of the Senate Commerce Committee, which oversees the Federal Communications Commission and the telecommunications industry. He has been a leading advocate for industry-backed legislation, fighting regulations and taxes on telecommunications services. (he was a past chair of the Commerce Committee, too -ed.)

McCain and his campaign have close ties to Verizon and AT&T. Five campaign officials, including campaign manager Rick Davis, have worked as lobbyists for Verizon. Former McCain staffer Robert Fisher is an in-house lobbyist for Verizon and is volunteering for the campaign. Fisher, Verizon chief executive Ivan Seidenberg and company lobbyists have raised more than $1.3 million for McCain's presidential campaign and Verizon employees are among the top 20 corporate donors over McCain's political career, giving more than $155,000 to his campaigns.

McCain's Senate chief of staff Mark Buse, senior strategist Charles R. Black Jr., and several other campaign staffers have registered as AT&T lobbyists in the past. AT&T Executive Vice President Timothy McKone and AT&T lobbyists have raised more than $2.3 million for McCain. AT&T employees have donated more than $325,000 to McCain campaigns, putting the company in the No. 3 spot for career donations to McCain, according to the nonpartisan Center for Responsive Politics.

I don't know, rather than Bill Ayers, that might be something the public would like to know, Mr. Schieffer.

Or, you could mention the international terrorists tied to John McCain, otherwise known as "anti-Castro Cubans".

Cindy Story Fizzles

The mystery of the missing Washington Post article has been solved, as they published a very long front-page story today about Cindy McCain's drug addiction. I have to say that I think they puled their punches, however. Mainly it removes John McCain's involvement from the story, and the DEA investigation just sort of ends, according to their account. A lot of the burden is placed on heavyweight lawyer John Dowd instead of McCain himself. There's no mention of her securing a passport to hide her drugs on travel, there's no mention of McCain's office strong-arming the DEA to drop the charges. These are elements that Tom Gosinski was willing to put on the record to other journalists. WaPo didn't think they were worthy.

It reads more like a puff piece with a slight edge to it. You certainly learn about Cindy's criminal activities, but not about the abuse of power.

Very depressing.

Spike

Digby already mentioned the breaking story about John McCain's strong-arming of the DEA to stop them from investigating his wife's prescription drug theft. Raw Story adds more to the case.

Tom Gosinski, a former employee of the medical-aid charity Cindy McCain used as personal supplier of Percocet and Vicodin, is speaking out publicly for the first time.

On Wednesday, Gosinski sat down with RAW STORY and other outlets to tell his story and distribute copies of his personal journal from his time with the American Voluntary Medical Team in the last half of 1992, where he voiced ever more acute concerns and frustrations over McCain's drug use and its impact on her mood and job performance.

"My journal wasn't to trash Cindy or anything," he says. "My journal was kept because I came in contact with so many people. It was a way of keeping an ongoing biography of all the people I met, so I could refer back to it."

He says he can't buy the official McCain camp line that Cindy's drug abuse was kept from her husband, he saw and heard too much for any of their stories to make sense -- like the time Cindy was allegedly taken to the hospital after an overdose and John rushed in to berate the doctors and nurses there before moving Cindy to their secluded Sedona ranch. Then there were the Hensley family interventions and the fact that Cindy's drug abuse came to be something of an open secret among employees of the charity.

There's a lot here, from Gosinski being fired and blackballed for knowing too much about Cindy's drug abuse, to Cindy getting a diplomatic passport from her husband's Senate office so she wouldn't be searched in airports with all of these drugs, and on and on.

It's a dense story. But there's another aspect to it revealed today by John Aravosis. Apparently, the Washington Post recorded an interview with Gosinski that they are hiding from the public.

Go to Google. Type in the name "gosinski." Look at the sixth result.



John Mccain abused his power to keep it a.... secret, perhaps? This isn't a story about the wife, it's a story about the Senator possibly using his office to obstruct justice for personal gain. Sounds a lot like Troopergate in fact. Definitely a story.

But when you click the link and go to the Washington Post's Web site, there's nothing there, just a blank template with no content.

I just checked this a second ago. It's still on Google, and there's still a blank template at WaPo when you click on the link.

This is a spiked story. There's plenty of precedent for this in 2004, when 60 Minutes delayed broadcast of a story about Iraq, Niger and yellowcake that would have been very damaging to President Bush until after the election. There are other examples as well.

This now becomes the scandal. It is completely inappropriate for the Washington Post to spike a legitimate news story about the corruption of a Presidential candidate, especially considering that candidate is running on this platform of reform. And all the other news outlets need to be informed of this as well. If there's enough pressure, one of them may see the tactical value in going forward with interviewing a willing witness before their competitors. If that's how the news business still works, anyway.

Some phone calls need to be made.

Bling We Can Believe In

Cindy McCain had the price of an average house on her body Tuesday night.

So Exotic

It never got mentioned on Barack Obama's trip to strange and wondrous Hawaii that John McCain met his second wife there.

How Many Half-Sisters Are Going To Come Out Of The Woodwork?

This is like an episode of Dallas.

When Cindy McCain talks about growing up, she usually refers to herself as an "only child" -- a phrase that ignores the existence of her half sisters.

"It's terribly painful," Kathleen Hensley Portalski said yesterday. "It is as if she is the 'real' daughter. I am also a real daughter."

Portalski and McCain are both children of the late Jim Hensley, the Arizona businessman who founded one of the largest beer distributorships in the nation. Kathleen, 65, is the product of Hensley's first marriage in the 1930s to Mary Jeanne Parks. Hensley divorced Parks for Marguerite "Smitty" Johnson, whom he met at a West Virginia hospital in World War II and married in 1945. Cindy was born nine years later [...]

But there's more: Cindy McCain has another half sister. Before her marriage to Hensley, Johnson had a daughter, Dixie Burd, by a previous relationship. Burd, who is much older than Cindy, could not be reached for comment.

The McCain campaign has been tight-lipped about the expanded family tree: "Mrs. McCain was raised as the only child of Jim and Marguerite Hensley, and there was no familiar relationship with any other sibling," it said in a statement.

The question is whether the public thinks this messiness makes the McCains more "authentic."

Riddle Me This

If you did a blind test of two families, and one just got their student loans paid off, and both parents were the products of middle-class homes, with one raised by a single mother and occasionally on food stamps...

And the other family is fabulously wealthy, the wife just made a ton of dough from a major multinational merger involving American and Belgian beer companies, and has been recently quoted as saying "In Arizona, the only way to get around the state is by small private plane"....

Which family would you consider to be the "elitists"?

(The McCain quote, by the way, specifically refers to how to traverse a large state while campaigning, so that's not necessarily the source of the elitism there, it's the fact that Cindy decided to learn how to fly in response to a mild fear of small planes, and then bought her own plane, which is a response that's kind of out of reach to the average American. Also, will the Anheuser-Busch/InBev merger mean that the Belgians can made Budweiser taste a little less like the worst thing I've ever put in my mouth?)

McCain And Women

John W. McCain is holding a women's-only town hall event today in Wisconsin. He talked about how he's committed to "equal pay for equal work" but he sung a different tune just a few months ago.

In fact, McCain seems committed to just the opposite. In April, he skipped the vote on the Ledbetter Fair Pay Act, which would have rectified the Supreme Court decision in Ledbetter v. Goodyear “that made it much harder for women and other workers to pursue pay discrimination claims.”

In fact, on that very same day, McCain said that if he had been in the Senate, he would have voted against it because the bill “opens us up to lawsuits for all kinds of problems.” He also dismissed the importance of equal pay, saying that women simply need “education and training“:

“They need the education and training, particularly since more and more women are heads of their households, as much or more than anybody else,” McCain said. “And it’s hard for them to leave their families when they don’t have somebody to take care of them.

The issue is not “education and training.” When denied equal pay by her supervisor, Lilly Ledbetter was doing the exact same job as her male counterparts and received numerous performance-based awards.

McCain is confused about his position on women's issues because it seems he doesn't pay that much attention to them. Earlier this week Carly Fiorina, one of his most accomplished surrogate liars, brought up how many insurance plans cover Viagra but not birth control. McCain, of course, voted against legislation that would have mandated birth control to be part of insurance coverage. When he was asked for comment, deer in headlights felt sorry for him.

Q: Earlier this week Carly Fiorina was meeting with a bunch of reporters and talked about it being unfair that insurance companies cover Viagra but not birth control. And -

McCain: I certainly do not want to discuss that issue. (uneasy laughter)

Q: But apparently you’ve voted against (McCain laughter continues)

McCain: I don’t know what I voted -

Q: Voted against coverage of birth control, forcing health insurance companies to cover birth control in the past. Is that still your position?

McCain: I’ll look at my voting record on it, but I have, uh, (5 second pause) , I don’t recall the vote right now. But I’ll be glad to look at it and get back to you as to why, I don’t -

Q: I guess her statement was that it was unfair that health insurance companies cover Viagra but not birth control. Do you have an opinion on that?

McCain: (after 8 second pause) I don’t know enough about it to give you an informed answer because I don’t recall the vote, I’ve cast thousands of votes in the Senate. I will respond to - it’s a, it’s a (nervous)

Here's video, if you can see it:



McCain has no interest in these issues whatsoever. His personal treatment of women mirrors his policy treatment of them. This was on Page 1 of the LA Times today, above the fold, and it just shows what a retrograde, selfish human being McCain has been for the bulk of his life:

In his 2002 memoir, "Worth the Fighting For," McCain wrote that he had separated from Carol before he began dating Hensley.

"I spent as much time with Cindy in Washington and Arizona as our jobs would allow," McCain wrote. "I was separated from Carol, but our divorce would not become final until February of 1980."

An examination of court documents tells a different story. McCain did not sue his wife for divorce until Feb. 19, 1980, and he wrote in his court petition that he and his wife had "cohabited" until Jan. 7 of that year -- or for the first nine months of his relationship with Hensley.

Although McCain suggested in his autobiography that months passed between his divorce and remarriage, the divorce was granted April 2, 1980, and he wed Hensley in a private ceremony five weeks later. McCain obtained an Arizona marriage license on March 6, 1980, while still legally married to his first wife.

His wife was disfigured in a car accident while McCain was a POW and when he returned, he traded her in for a newer, younger, prettier model. Bottom line. There's divorce based on irreconcilable differences and there's this completely different circumstance.

If you want another cynical creep in the White House who will do nothing for women's issues, McCain is definitely your man.

UPDATE: For contrast, you can find the Obama campaign's report about the impact of his economic plan on working women here. It's a PDF.

Tax Cheats

Turns out that John and Cindy McCain are the same kind of irresponsible conservatives who are so unpatriotic they don't believe the country (and in this case, this state) is worth paying for.

When you're poor, it can be hard to pay the bills. When you're rich, it's hard to keep track of all the bills that need paying. It's a lesson Cindy McCain learned the hard way when NEWSWEEK raised questions about an overdue property-tax bill on a La Jolla, Calif., property owned by a trust that she oversees. Mrs. McCain is a beer heiress with an estimated $100 million fortune and, along with her husband, she owns at least seven properties, including condos in California and Arizona.

San Diego County officials, it turns out, have been sending out tax notices on the La Jolla property, an oceanfront condo, for four years without receiving a response. County records show the bills, which were mailed to a Phoenix address associated with Mrs. McCain's trust, were returned by the post office. According to a McCain campaign aide, who requested anonymity when discussing a private matter, an elderly aunt of Mrs. McCain's lives in the condo, and the bank that manages the trust has not been receiving tax bills on the property. Shortly after NEWSWEEK inquired about the matter, the McCain aide e-mailed a receipt dated Friday, June 27, confirming payment by the trust to San Diego County in the amount of $6,744.42. County officials say the trust still owes an additional $1,742 for this year, an amount that is overdue and will go into default July 1. Told of the outstanding $1,742, the aide said: "The trust has paid all bills shown owing as of today and will pay all other bills due."

Keep in mind, California Republicans want this type of tax-dodging for those who can most easily afford it to be the LAW. They think it's perfectly fine for wealthy yacht and private plane owners to avoid their taxes.

There's also the question of whether people, who are so ridiculously wealthy that they forget about properties where their relatives are living for four years, can be credibly seen to be at all in touch with the concerns of the average American.

Sense Of Entitlement

Cindy McCain is not going to tell you about her money.

One issue she is hearing about already is her refusal to release her tax returns. When she and McCain married in 1980, they signed a prenuptial agreement in which they agreed to keep their finances separate. The candidate has released his tax returns, but Mrs. McCain told Curry that even if she becomes first lady, her finances will remain private.

“My husband and I have been married 28 years,” Mrs. McCain said. “And we have filed separate tax returns for 28 years. This is a privacy issue. My husband is the candidate. I am not the candidate."

This didn't work for Teresa Heinz Kerry and it won't work for Cindy McCain. I respect some degree of privacy, but it's over the top to suggest that the personal fortune of the potential next President of the United States is somehow off-limits. There could be any number of conflicts of interest in those records. And the public kind of deserves to know about that.

Interestingly enough, conservative magazines are going after McCain on this issue.

The National Review's Andrew Stuttaford writes:

Trusts and income this large, even if only partly controlled by a potential future First Lady, matter. We've already seen how (she) effectively helped finance her husband's campaign, at least in its bleaker moments.

Matthew Continetti writes for The Weekly Standard that she should give up the returns, even though it would be difficult:

Making (her) tax returns public would confirm that she's (Senator McCain's) sugar daddy (sugar mommy?). It would also strike a blow against (her husband's) populist rhetoric by detailing the lavish lifestyle he and his wife enjoy...

Even Robert Novak has surprised me by writing that this is "politically critical, because no previous presidential candidate relied so much on his spouse's wealth" and without his wife's money, "it is fair to say (he) would not be his party's presidential standard-bearer and probably would not even be a U.S. senator today."

I think this is part of the undercurrent in the conservative media that they don't trust McCain at all.

It's bad enough what financial ties to lobbyists and big business we already know about McCain. The shady land deals and questionable contacts are already piling up. Can anyone imagine what's in the set of documents that's so bad it has to be HIDDEN?

Chipping Away At Maverick's Armor

We're actually starting to get some traction on John McSame, not only in the usual arenas but also in the traditional media. I think judging Presidential candidates based on their tax returns is of a fairly low priority; I really don't care how much you make compared to what you'll actually do for the country. But it's notable that McCain is not, for the most part, getting away with the gambit of releasing his tax returns, which make him look only modestly rich, without releasing the companion returns of his kajillionaire beer distributorship heiress wife (the one he picked up while still married to his first wife, who was disfigured in an accident. He's a claasy guy).

John McCain, who has clinched the Republican presidential nomination, reported $405,409 in income last year and paid $118,660 in federal taxes, according to tax returns made public today. He gave $105,467 to charity, the records show.

His campaign didn't release tax returns for his wife, Cindy, who is chairman of the Phoenix-based Hensley & Co., one of the largest beer distributors in the U.S.

"My wife and I, we have separate incomes, we have a prenuptial agreement, and her business is her business,'' McCain said in an interview. "I have never been involved in it since before I ran for the Congress of the United States, so I just feel that she has a right to a separate tax return.''

Come off it. McCain has used his wife's bankroll to get ahead in politics for 25 years. It's obnoxious to suggest that they're somehow separate incomes. Especially after Republicans went after Teresa Heinz Kerry for the same exact circumstance (Kerry eventually disclosed her tax return). And, Cindy McCain claimed she wasn't disclosing her taxes because of her children's privacy, which is kind of hilariously brazen.

But the traditional media actually managed to cover this one in a manner consistent with how they'd cover a Democrat trying to play this game. Again, I'd like to see them be as aggressive on McCain's actual statements, like his revisionist history on advocating for overthrowing foreign governments, which he called "rogue-state rollback"; the very funny flap over which earmarks he'd target for elimination, which got him in a lot of trouble this week once he realized that he was advocating cutting off aid to Israel and shuttering military housing for families; his statement that there has been great progress economically since George Bush took office, and his general flip-flopping on dozens of issues (Steve Benen is the keeper of that long list).

Still, at this point I'm happy to see any coverage of McCain that's not covered in hazy gauze. If the traditional media wants to feed their fetish and look into character issues they can pick up The Real McCain", which the McCain camp is trying furiously to suppress. I'd prefer it to be a legitimate look at his extremist record and promises of less jobs and more wars.

One thing I know is that we're not going to see anything like this tomorrow morning from our buddy Boy George.

OK, The Veal Maverick Really Is Veal Oscar

This is just amusing and really unnecessary. Is anyone trolling JohnMcCain.com looking for food preparation ideas? Just because you have unlimited space on a website, does that mean you have to fill it?

This past Sunday, Lauren Handel, an eagle-eyed attorney from New York, was searching for a specific recipe from Giada DeLaurentis, a chef on the Food Network. Yet whenever she Googled the different ingredients in the recipe, the oddest thing happened: not only did the Food Network's site come up, as expected, but so did John McCain's campaign site.

On a section of McCain's site called "Cindy's Recipes," you can find seven recipes attributed to Cindy McCain, each with the heading "McCain Family Recipe." Ms. Handel quickly realized that some of the "McCain Family Recipes," were in fact, word-for-word copies of recipes on the Food Network site.

At least three of the "McCain Family Recipes" appear to be lifted directly from the Food Network, while at least one is a Rachael Ray recipe with minor changes.

I'm all for getting the "McCain is a phony" meme to stick, so if this moves the ball forward, all the better. Seems like such a waste, not just a lie but a needless lie, though.

McCainca

I know you probably couldn't say this on the radio; I don't know about a radio website. But thought you might want to know that John McCain is a total hothead and fairly unstable, considering that this was a reaction to a pretty playful tweak from the woman who's financed his political career:

John McCain's temper is well documented. He's called opponents and colleagues "shitheads," "assholes" and in at least one case "a fucking jerk."

But a new book on the presumptive Republican nominee will air perhaps the most shocking angry exchange to date.

The Real McCain by Cliff Schecter, which will arrive in bookstores next month, reports an angry exchange between McCain and his wife that happened in full view of aides and reporters during a 1992 campaign stop. An advance copy of the book was obtained by RAW STORY.

Three reporters from Arizona, on the condition of anonymity, also let me in on another incident involving McCain's intemperateness. In his 1992 Senate bid, McCain was joined on the campaign trail by his wife, Cindy, as well as campaign aide Doug Cole and consultant Wes Gullett. At one point, Cindy playfully twirled McCain's hair and said, "You're getting a little thin up there." McCain's face reddened, and he responded, "At least I don't plaster on the makeup like a trollop, you cunt." McCain's excuse was that it had been a long day. If elected president of the United States, McCain would have many long days.

Seems a little out of proportion, don't you think? Can you imagine a diplomatic session with this guy?

And while that was back in 1992, there's no indication that McCain's demeanor has softened. After all, this happened over the weekend - and there's probably tape of it:

Sen. John McCain threatened on Tuesday to cut short a speech to union leaders who booed his immigration views and later challenged his statements on organized labor and the
Iraq war.
“If you like, I will leave,” McCain told the AFL-CIO’s Building and Construction Trades Department, pivoting briefly from the lectern. He returned to the microphone after the crowd quieted.
. . .
Later, the senator outlined his position on the Senate immigration debate, saying tougher border enforcement must be accompanied by guest-worker provisions that give illegal immigrants a legal path toward citizenship.

Murmurs from the crowd turned to booing. “Pay a decent wage!” one audience member shouted.

“I’ve heard that statement before,” McCain said before threatening to leave [...]

But he took more questions, including a pointed one on his immigration plan.

McCain responded by saying immigrants were taking jobs nobody else wanted. He offered anybody in the crowd $50 an hour to pick lettuce in Arizona.

Shouts of protest rose from the crowd, with some accepting McCain’s job offer.

“I’ll take it!” one man shouted.

McCain insisted none of them would do such menial labor for a complete season. “You can’t do it, my friends.”

What's worse here, the "I'll turn this car around right now" attitude when challenged, or the questioning of the work ethic of BUILDING AND CONSTRUCTION UNION MEMBERS, no strangers to difficult labor.

These tapes will get out, and in the cauldron of a political campaign, there's no doubt he'll blow up. And while the media, McCain's base would surely try and shield him from any negative fallout, in the YouTube age it'll be hard to conceal the truth. McCain is unstable and unfit to govern.

Beer Money

Ooh, gimme some more of that McCain using his wealthy heiress' money to buy the Presidency.

The McCains' marriage has mixed business and politics from the beginning, according to an expansive review by The Associated Press of thousands of pages of campaign, personal finance, real estate and property records nationwide. The paperwork chronicles the McCains' ascent from Arizona newlyweds to political power couple on the national stage.

As heiress to her father's stake in Hensley & Co. of Phoenix, Cindy McCain is an executive whose worth may exceed $100 million. Her beer earnings have afforded the GOP presidential nominee a wealthy lifestyle with a private jet and vacation homes at his disposal, and her connections helped him launch his political career -- even if the millions remain in her name alone. Yet the arm's-length distance between McCain and his wife's assets also has helped shield him from conflict-of-interest problems.

Nearly 30 years before John McCain became the Republican presidential nominee, he worked in public relations at his wife's family company.

Within a few years of marrying Cindy Hensley, the daughter of a multimillionaire Anheuser-Busch distributor, John McCain won his first election. He was new to Arizona politics and fundraising in the 1982 House race, and his campaign quickly fell into debt. Personal money -- tens of thousands of dollars in loans to his campaign from McCain bank accounts -- helped him survive.

Anheuser-Busch's political action committee was among McCain's earliest donors. Cindy McCain's father, James Hensley, and other Hensley & Co. executives gave so much the Federal Election Commission ordered McCain to give some of it back. McCain's campaign used Hensley office equipment such as computers and copiers, and Cindy McCain personally paid some of the campaign's bills.

Reform! Straight talk!

Now you have to add in how he dropped the first wife for Cindy and the sack of cash.

Coming at the time when McCain is magnanimously returning checks to donors and opting into the public system for the general election (because he can't raise that kind of money), the imagery of him using beer money to finance his political career is priceless. Let's see more of these articles please.