by Slartibartfast
I don’t have much time or energy to post anything, but apparently we’re shorter on fresh thread-space than we ought to be, so I kick this one off with…this, here:
A defense contractor seeking help from Rep. Katherine Harris for $10 million in federal money last year took her to one of Washington’s most exclusive restaurants, where he paid for a meal that may have cost as much as $2,800 and offered to sponsor a campaign fundraiser for her.
This won’t change the way I vote next election, not because I’m a dyed-in-the-wool, knee-jerk Republican, but because I’ve regarded Harris as too stupid (politically, at least) to continue holding office. The after-the-fact mis-maneuverings didn’t help, either. I’ve long since come out for Bill Nelson in any Nelson vs. Harris match.
Comment with your favorite too-stupid-to-breathe bit of political corruption, or just whatever. Yeah, that’s right: another stupid open thread.
Harris is freaky. i love that clip of her from a few months back where she’s standing at an angle to the camera while making flirty eyes and thrusting her pushed-up breasts at the viewers. classy.
on the topic of Open Thread… how bout them Eustonites ?
An interesting story leads today’s Philly Inquirer. This looks like a potential landmark case in the making for those who want to realign the wall separating church and state.
i love that clip of her from a few months back where she’s standing at an angle to the camera while making flirty eyes and thrusting her pushed-up breasts at the viewers. classy.
In all seriousness, I remember thinking she was trying to imitate a Dalek, using her breasts to stand in for the gun-and-plunger combo. All that was missing was the freaky “Ex-ter-min-ate!”
Slartibartfast, you are a genius and write the best open threads EVERRR!
Gee, thanks, and welcome new commenter Slartibartfastkoshi. Very astute of you to notice my radiance.
Lol, Hiltzikbartfast.
Hey, I figured it’d already been beaten to death, but it’s still worth a chuckle or two.
I can’t imagine a $2800 meal, even with three bottles of $500 wine. I am a peasant.
Open thread? I got nothing.
My palate is clearly not refined enough. I can’t imagine enough of a marginal difference in taste to jump from a $100 meal to a $2800 meal.
Clearly, Sebastian, it helps to be on either end of the lobbying industry.
For those who didn’t bother reading the article, the lobbyist in question worked for MZM, which is the same outfit that lined Randall Cunningham’s pockets.
The only way I can imagine a $2800 meal is the way one of the 1980’s scoundrels (Ivan Boesky?) was rumored to frequently partake in. Rather than choosing among the menu items, he told the waiter to bring him one of each item, so he could taste them all and then decide. Even then, it would be difficult unless one did that with the wine list as well.
Perhaps they had a Cleopatra cocktail.
Once upon a time, I was in a department with someone who was, imho, insane, and there was a legendary story about the time he was put in charge of taking a job candidate out to dinner. (One of my competitors. I’ve always wished it had been me, but I’m happy that s/he got the dinner, and I got the job.)
He started out by choosing a very, very, very expensive restaurant. Then he dismissed the restaurant’s wine list on the grounds that it didn’t contain anything good enough (trust me, it did), and asked whether they didn’t have anything just a bit better in the cellar. They were happy to oblige, of course. He urged everyone to order whatever their little hearts desired, and at the end of it all, when it was time for dessert, He again dismissed the entire menu, and said: just tell your chef to surprise us.
This more or less wrecked the entire recruiting budget. But he didn’t get anywhere near a thousand dollars a person, let alone $2800.
i wonder if she has Snail Porridge. it would be wrong to spend that kind of money and not get Snail Porridge.
Gotta be the wine. I live in DC, and I just can’t imagine where 2 people could spend that much on just food. Hell, Inn at Little Washington for two on my anniversary didn’t even hit $500.00 (though not for lack of trying).
How are your eyes Slartibartfast? Are you ready for round 2, or is there still some healing to do?
more Harris flirting.
And speaking of all this stuff: Josh Marshall says he’s never seen a train wreck like the Harris campaign. To which I reply: He was clearly not paying attention to Massachusetts politics in, I think, 1987. Had he been, he would have been able to watch the truly amazing Republican candidates for governor.
It started out with one guy, whose name I can’t remember, who was the only person the GOP could find to run against Dukakis that year. First, a lot of the signatures on his nomination petition turned out to have been forged. At this point, the Democrat-controlled election board disqualified just enough of them to leave him on the ballot; however, it was generally agreed that thee overwhelming majority of them had been forged by just two people.
Then, people who had worked with him began to come forward with peculiar stories about him. My personal favorite was that several people (!) said that they had seen him sitting in his office, nude, talking on the telephone; one, who was (iirc) his secretary, added that when she had seen this, there was no one on the other end of the line.
After a few weeks of this, he withdrew, and was replaced by a basically decent state rep, who turned out to have claimed, consistently, that he had served in Vietnam, which he hadn’t. So he withdrew, and Mr Talking To No One In His Office While Naked came back in. But then it turned out that he had entered into a partnership with some mafia-connected loan sharks, who ran a business called, iirc, ‘Piranha Inc.’ (Definitely ‘Piranha something’.)
Guess what? He lost. But I think you’d be hard pressed to find a worse train wreck than that. I think it might actually be the Platonic form of amazingly awful campaigns.
The Piranha brothers, Doug and Dinsdale? Perhaps he was ultimately undone by Spiny Norman?
It was probably Spiny Norman on the other end of the phone call.
“Dinsdale? DINSDALE??”
Dinsdale nailed me head to the telly.
But he had to. It was very reasonable, when he explained it.
Scott, I think I’m ready for Round 2, but the docs will give their decision on Monday. We’ve got a lot of stuff going on in May, so if we can get wedged in on Thursday or Friday, it’d be sweeeet.
But he also knew exactly how to treat a female impersonator.
Huey Long:
“We’ve got the roads in Louisiana, haven’t we? Some states only have the graft!”
Given Katherine Harris became a US Rep as a reward for making the correct decisions in 2000 (I will leave to others to debate whether those decisions were legally or ethically correct. Regardless, the state GOP chose to award her by helping her into a safe seat), I don’t see why anyone would be shocked to find she’s bit fond of the patronage system.
I suppose my biggest problem with the coverage of the current crop of political scandals is the faux scandal fatigue among both the political press and the supposedly informed bystanders. While corruption in politics will almost certainly ALWAYS be a problem, there is a large difference between what’s starting to leak out from the GOP and what has traditionally been the norm in Washington.
In both degree and latitude. Individual bad apples aren’t unknown. Poorly hidden bribery isn’t unknown. But what appears to be a giant slush fund run by a key GOP insider extending to dozens of GOP figures and tangentially to the bulk of the party, coupled with unrelated scandals of a unprecedented severity blooming right and left…..
In business, when you see everything collapse that way, it’s almost certainly caused by rot at the top. It’s not just a case of bad leadership decisions, but from promoting a culture in which bad decisions become comon — and are rewarded — from the top down.
While there are undoubtably corrupt Democrats (one from Louisana looks pretty screwed), there appears to be a culture of corruption in the GOP that extends from the movers and shakers down. From patronage — a problem that’s becoming increasingly dire on the right — to the simple corruption of money and the “no-holds-barred” politics, it seems like the GOP is currently imploding.
I see few figures on the right with both the prestige, the integrity AND the influence to avert it, as the seeds of corruption control much of the party apparatus. And try as I might, I simply cannot see that large scale and integrated corruption on the Democratic side.
Personally, I think the scandals are something of a natural outgrowth of the drive to shift the GOP into something closer to a parliamentary system. To force that sort of party-line mentality means rewards and punishments that override the sort of perks one could get by being an influental Senator or Rep in the first place. That takes money and arm-twisting galore, but more importantly severs any remaining link between political office and constituents — instead you represent the party, which represents the people that can funnel the most money and prestige to it.
Perhaps it’s simply that the Democrats have never built anything like Ambramoff’s empire or the K-street project — nor are ever likely to, having seen the inevietable fallout.
Well said Morat20.
And I think it is important to distinguish between those who call themselves Republicans in general, and those currently in power in the Republican party.
It is within that power circle that the corruption seems to be coalescing. And to get into that circle, one, it appears, has to partake of the corruption.
I have no doubt that there are some corrupt Democrats. But there is a difference between individuals in a group that are corrupt, and a group that is almost as an entirety corrupt.
I truly hope that the rank and file Republicans can figure out a way to take back their party.
BTW, I think the reason that the Democrats don’t have group corruption on this great a scale is simple.
They could never be organized enough to agree on how to do it.
BTW, cleek, that’s not flirting, that’s called constituent service. Fortunately, I don’t think she can get around to all 5 million or so Florida voters by election time.
“Individual bad apples aren’t unknown. Poorly hidden bribery isn’t unknown. But what appears to be a giant slush fund run by a key GOP insider extending to dozens of GOP figures and tangentially to the bulk of the party, coupled with unrelated scandals of a unprecedented severity blooming right and left…..”
Well there was the Keatings Five Scandal toward the end of the Democratic reign in Congress. (The only Republican implicated was McCain). And evading campaign contributions and payment limits has a long history at the top of both parties (see Gingrich and Wright. Speaking of Wright wasn’t he from Texas too?
BTW I’m just objecting to the idea that such things are unprecedented. I personally suspect that they are like rapes–around for ever but we are finally getting a solid enough system to report them on a regular basis.
Keating Five was a drop in the bucket compared to this. You’re making the mistake I was talking about.
Perhaps I wasn’t clear: Individual bad apples aren’t unknown — and why is it surprising that a lobby might locate three or four of those bad apples and push them all at once? (Like in the Keating scandal).
The current issue with the GOP isn’t that someone is exploiting or even all of the “Bad apples” from the outside — it’s that the party itself has been overtaken in pursuit of rewarding these bad apples.
The more I think about it, the more I think it’s a result of the 94 Revolution and the “Party Above All” mentality that was behind it. The GOP really IS acting like a parliamentary party — whereas, as noted, the Democrats simply argue too much and move as a party only when forced — and to do that requires an institutional and organized reward and punishment system.
To get to this level of institutionalized and interalized corruption you have to go back almost 100 years — the K street project and Abramoff were instrumental in doing one thing: Severing political and personal power and reward from votes.
How else could it work? Enforcing party discipline has always been difficult — especially for the majority party. To enforce it to the degree the GOP has requires far more money than simply electing candidates.
It’s not just ever-increasing amounts of money in politics, it’s the way the GOP has been getting [i]and spending[/i] money to keep their members in line — to enforce a rigid party discipline that cuts against the normal incentives of political office in the US.
Go back and this is all the brainchild of a handful of men who came of political age in the College Republicans — who found a way to bring money, rabid supporters (worth 10 of regular supporters) and business interests together to create a VERY monolithic party.
If the party wins X seats and chooses who fills them, you get party loyalty like that. When you have your own district and you’re dependent on the party strictly for a bit of name recognition and money, achieving such unity requires massive arm twisting.
Delay, Ney, Abramoff, Reed, and even Libby and Rove are the price that unity carries.
It might not be popular — and it’ll certainly get labeled partisan, especially by those who are impressed by their own ability to remain ‘above the fray’ (an illusion all of it’s own) — but the GOP has a culture of corruption that the Democrats currently lack, and they’re starting to pay the price for it.
COULD the Democrats get that bad? Certainly — but they’re not. And as I said — to find corruption this widespread requires you to go back a LOT farther than Wright or Nixon — Teapot Dome springs to mind.
“how bout them Eustonites”
You can imagine how charmed I was by the relative indignation they gave GTMO, rendition, Abu Ghraib etc. (“a departure from the universal standards”) and Amnesty’s use of inflammatory historical analogies in an effort to stop those things.
The whole thing reminded me of this scene from “The Life of Brian:
Count me out of the Decent Left, I guess.
A stupid open thread? Well this ain’t so stupid, but a couple of the more interesting useful posts I have read this week. Sara from the Next Hurrah on George Marshall’s Theory and Practice of Ending Wars Correctly, that is, How to Occupy
Part One
Part Two
A sample(they are long posts):
“As I said in my initial post the chain of command for occupation was totally independent of the combat chain. The initial pattern was for each neighborhood in a city, and each village to have a military command consisting of three officers — usually one a lawyer or jurist, one an engineer, and a third, a public administrator. Each had a couple of NCO’s, and a company (about 120) troops who were trained or re-trained as a constabulary force. They arrived when the combat troops were finished clearing the area. They set up an HQ. They identified space for troops and administrative space. A seperate command brought in a kitchen and all. Then the first thing they did was to find large walls and post the Occupation Law, which was printed in German on rolls of wallpaper.”
FWIW, when I want a draft or wanted millions of people in the ME or Iraq, this is what I had in mind. And FDR and Marshall had no problem asking 50-yr-olds to do this work.
I would have to read more history to see if this was successful. AFAIK, Germany was hell for five years, but by 1960 was ok and integrated/accepted in the world community.
Then there’s Jim Henley tracking players in the US-Iran dance.
As long as this is an Open Thread, let me present the assembled wits with an open conundrum.
Recently Duke University announced the inauguration of the French Science Center. It turns out – boringly enough – that this is simply a center for sciences like chemistry and biology named after someone, doubtless rich and/or reputable, named “French.” But before I realized this, I started to wonder about what the core of an actual “French Science” curriculum might include:
– Gastronomie? (but isn’t that an arte?)
– Gastrophysiques?
– Ecole-ogie?
– Sexologie? (with postgraduate courses in Septologie and Huitologie?)
Obviously I need help here, folks.
You guys have had it for Harris ever since the 2000 recount. Get over it. She’s going to be next Senator from Floria whether you like it or not. And she’s going to be a damned good one. As well as being probably the best looking woman in the Senate.
“As well as being the best-looking woman in the Senate.”
O.K., now I see the problem with the Republican Party. Even their wet dreams exhibit no taste. “Their” being whomever wants to take it personally. 😉
I assume people saw that one of Dana Priest’s sources got fired.
Mary O. McCarthy. She worked at the inspector general’s office.
It’s being mentioned in connection to the famous “black sites” story about the prisons in Eastern Europe that started the leak investigation at the CIA and DOJ, but I would guess she was actually a more important source for this story on the prisoner who froze to death at the Salt Pit, and this story on “erroneous renditions.” Both those stories involve cases referred to the IG’s office for investigation. The black sites story may also have done so, of course, but I got the impression that that was sourced more to people in operations.
The fact that she would risk her career and jail to talk to Dana Priest suggests a certain lack of confidence that the DOJ will prosecute the cases that the I.G. refers to them, or that Congress will do anything.
I’m sure this will have a chilling effect, especially within the IG’s office.
Ms. McCarthy undermined the CIA. As far as I’m concerned, she should be in Gitmo with here America-hating brethren. She’s the very definition of an enemy combatant.
I hope Priest has to go to jail. I’ve seen her on t.v. a few times and everything about her screams “unhinged Bush hater”.
A question for people who say that leaking classified information is never justified:
surely there’s some limit to this principle, right? Say your country was secretly running death camps for innocent people. Say that your efforts to report this to all possible official channels went absolutely nowhere and you had no hope of them ever going anywhere. Would it be immoral to tell the press?
I’m NOT suggesting that’s going on, obviously, this is a deliberately extreme example to get people to admit that there must be some situations in which leaking classified informations is morally justified.
Okay. Now, let’s look at some passages of the articles that I think McCarthy is most likely to have been the source for (links are in the post above).
From the article on the Salt Pit case:
From the article on erroneous renditions:
It’s not the same scale as I suggested in my hypthetical. But the information she is most likely to have leaked was about torture and death of prisoners, at least some of whom we know were innocent & many more who there’s no good evidence against. This is part of a policy authorized at the highest levels of government. The internal CIA investigations have resulted in referrals to DOJ, but DOJ is not willing to prosecute. They have also resulted in some classified briefings to members of Congress, but those members of Congress are not willing to do anything about this.
If that’s not justified whistleblowing, and you believe that there are conceivably human rights abuses that would justify whistleblowing–what’s the threshhold? How many people would this have to happen to before you would consider it justified to go to the press? Dozens, hundreds, thousands, tens of thousands?
It is sometimes justified. I think that the leaks, if you can even call them that, that the president authorized to shut Joe Wilson up and get the truth you were completely justified. But there’s leaks and there’s leaks. It seems like when Democrats leak, they’re likely to let out information that is truly damaging. And that’s where the problem is.
As opposed to Republicans, who only leak the names of NOC operatives, placing everyone who has worked with them at risk? I think it’s better to evaluate these things case-by-case, and not party-by-party.
The Hillary Plame “outting” was a fiction. She wasn’t undercover, no attempt was made to keep her identity secret, and, as Bob Woodward says, the damage assessment showed that no damage was caused by this “revelation”.
I think it’s better to evaluate these things case-by-case, and not party-by-party.
Unless you’re like some (not that I’d name names, but I hear a lot of Spartans rolling over on their shields) and The Party is everything.
She was undercover, attempts were made to keep her identity secret (you think the creation of an entire front company was just for fun?), and the damage assessment either was not done or was never made public, depending on who you believe.
Facts: they’re your friends.
Speaking of no longer being able to tell the difference between real right-wingers and parodies…
She was also named Valerie, not Hillary.
If you want to see a great contender in the ‘this should have been a parody” department, check this out. (h/t digby.)
And just now “On the Media” has the author of Help! Mom! There Are Liberals Under My Bed! on.
She was also named Valerie, not Hillary.
Leonidas’ little slip was the funniest thing I’ve seen on the ‘net in weeks.
Don’t take Leo there seriously. He’s obviously a troll — Harris is down something like 20 points in the polls, and every Florida Republican has been urging her to drop and let anyone — ANYONE — run in her place.
She’s also not that attractive.
*sigh*. It’s fake Creationists all over again. Not matter HOW over the top you go, there’s people out there that would claim it earnestly.
Morat, Nelson’s approval ratings aren’t especially high and a well-funded Republican will give him a run for his money, at the very least. You may not like Katherine Harris, but she will be well-funded, one way or another, and the race with Nelson will, at the very least, tighten up. Mark my words.
Since this is the open thread, I should have posted this here in the first place, but, hey, I’m looking for a reaction.
OT to site admins:
Lily has for the past few days been getting a error message when attempting to post, worries she may have been banned, and has emailed the kitty for clarification or help to no response. Could the kitty help her out?