A lot of hooey

NYT Breaking News! For McCain, Self-Confidence on Ethics Poses Its Own Risk

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.

Of course, all the talk on both sides revolves around conspiracy theories as to why the NYT held off publishing this story until now. Some say that they wanted to wait until after McCain had sewn up the nomination, so that the Republicans would be screwed, others say that they released it now because it would be "old news" by the time of the election. Still others say that the NYT had its hand forced when others were about to scoop them.

St. McCain's campain says its all a bunchofbullshit. He would never cheat on his lovely wife. Never.

During their time in Jacksonville, the McCains' marriage began to falter.[84] McCain had extramarital affairs,[84] and he would later say, "My marriage's collapse was attributable to my own selfishness and immaturity more than it was to Vietnam, and I cannot escape blame by pointing a finger at the war. The blame was entirely mine."[84] His wife Carol would later echo those sentiments, saying "I attribute [the breakup of our marriage] more to John turning 40 and wanting to be 25 again than I do to anything else."[84]

Fast forward to the 2000 campaign, and St McCain is 60 and wanting to be 40 again. You cannot change a leopard's spots.

However, while many will focus on the salicious side of this story, the real story here is that St. McCain is a world-class hypocrite. The MSM love-them some St. McCain because of McCain-Feingold and his "maverick" persona as one who will swim against the tide. The facts are that he is nothing of the sort. He is a stubborn old narcissistic bastard who flip-flops when it suits him, and only him. All that campaign finance reform was compensation for the fact that he got his hand caught in the cookie jar, and he needed to "prove" that he was all for "good gummint".

That said, if the bible-thumpers hated him before, they will really hate him now. Frankly, the affair that lead to him marrying Cindy (his current wife) were no better than Newt Gingrich, cheating on his second wife (who was dieing of cancer at the time).

Makes you wonder what Cindy thinks of all this.

I don't really understand what the fascination is with the Tim Russerts over John McCain, but they have been giving him a pass on his many inconsistencies. The NYT dares to contradict the false persona of St McCain as an American Hero. Sure, he was held in the Hanoi Hilton for 5 years, and suffered miserably as he was tortured repeatedly, simply for being the son of a top U.S. Navy Admiral. Brave stuff. However, his experiences in Viet Nam do not excuse subsequent behavior. Heck, he couldn't even bring himself to vote for the recent bill that would limit the interrogation techniques of the CIA to those outlined in the Army Field Manual. The man makes me ill.

Just because he suffered at the hands of the North Vietnamese, does not make him a good person. We should honor and thank him for his service, but it does not beatify him in any way. He is a serial cheater, and a serial campaign finance scoundrel. You can't change a leopard's spots.

Update: you can't make this shit up.

Beyond his fundraising, McCain's conduct as chairman of the powerful Senate Commerce Committee between 1997 and 2004 has occasionally raised questions about whether he took actions to benefit major contributors to his political network, which included his Senate and presidential campaign committees, his Straight Talk political action committee and a foundation that he helped start called the Reform Institute.

In 2003 and 2004, for example, McCain took two actions favorable to Cablevision, the cable TV company, while Davis, his chief political strategist at the time, solicited the company for a total of $200,000 for the Reform Institute, a tax-exempt group that advocated an end to outsize political donations.

There's a bit of irony for you, huh?! The article continues...

Davis solicited an initial donation from Cablevision chief Charles Dolan a week after Dolan testified before the Senate Commerce Committee in favor of a position backed by McCain. Davis said there was no connection between the testimony and the solicitation.

Less than a year later, McCain wrote to the Federal Communications Commission recommending Cablevision's position on cable pricing, citing Dolan by name. Cablevision followed soon thereafter with a second $100,000 donation, the Associated Press reported.

In 1999, McCain wrote a letter as committee chairman on behalf of longtime political supporter Lowell "Bud" Paxson, urging the FCC to vote on a long-delayed decision whether to approve the sale of a Pittsburgh television station to Paxson's company. McCain had flown on Paxson's corporate jet four times to appear at campaign events around that time, and had received $20,000 from campaign donations from Paxson and its law firm, the Boston Globe reported. The FCC chairman at the time, William Kennard, called McCain's intervention "highly unusual," but the senator denied doing any favors.