McCain's Classless Campaign

Randy Scheunemann, by the way, is the lobbyist that lobbied on behalf of Georgia. You remember McCain's famous words: "We are all Georgians." Scheunemann is responding to blogger Marc Ambinder. If you ask me, McCain is surrounded by thugs. 

HP: The email was a response to this post, which discusses a falling out in the McCain campaign regarding Palin, whose "pallin' around with terrorists" line was allegedly not cleared by campaign HQ.

Scheunemann became understandably upset with the post:

Just read your post. This is on the record. This is cleared by HQ. It is a fact that Barack Obama was palling around with terrorists. It was a fact before Governor Palin said it in a fully vetted speech and it is fact today. It is bullshit to claim or write anything else.

McCain's Big Washington Insider Charles Black

McCain is so Mavericky that he's got a Big Washington Insider working on his behalf -- Charles Black, the guy who was arranging for a terrorist attack, I mean, the guy who said that a terrorist attack would benefit McCain. When McCain was criticized for having too many lobbyists, Black retired from his lobbyist firm, but kept a side job while working with the OMs (the original mavericks). Read on.

Chicago Trib: WASHINGTON - In selecting little-known Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin as his running mate, John McCain has underscored his determination to run as a reformer intent on ending the cozy deal-making of big-money special interests in Washington.

But an architect of that very strategy is Charles Black Jr., a legendary lobbyist and consultant who has deftly used his connections with business leaders and politicians to influence policy and, in the process, make a good deal of money.

Black, a senior adviser to the McCain campaign, has represented at least 120 clients from more than two dozen countries within the past decade. He has used his clout to help kill tax reforms that could have hurt foreign clients, and he once even pressed a judge to go easy an associate convicted of fraud.

Earlier this year, amid criticism that McCain's reformist message was being undercut by a campaign top-heavy with lobbyists, Black, 60, retired from his lobbying company.
But that hardly marked Black's departure from the Washington influence business, nor from private business dealings directly dependent on the decisions of the federal government.

Black remains a director of Civitas Group LLC, a low-profile consulting firm he set up months after the establishment of the Department of Homeland Security to invest in security companies and give them advice. National security is both the firm's business and the signature issue of the McCain campaign. Neither Black nor the McCain campaign would discuss Black's role with Civitas.

Federal law requires lobbyists to disclose who their clients while consulting firms, like Civitas, are not. But to some, that is a distinction without a difference; a consultant who devises the strategy lobbyists use, for example, is not considered a lobbyist.
....snip....
In 2003 and 2004, Black was paid $200,000 by his foreign owners, WPP Group PLC, to urge Congress to retain favorable tax treatment of overseas corporations with U.S. subsidiaries.

The Bush administration had proposed narrowing a provision in tax law that allowed foreign corporations to load debt onto their American subsidiaries in order to lessen their U.S. tax obligations. But in mid-2004, after lobbying by Black and others, Congress declined to make those changes.
This is a must read.

More on McCain's lobbyist adviser, Randy Schuenemann.
McCain recently hired lobbyist Bill Timmons to help McCain hire people for his White House.
Who are McCain's lobbyists.
Fact check on McCain's lobbyists.

BBC Asks Saakashvili About McCain Money

You've spent at least $900,000 with a lobbyist firm of Randy Schuenemann, who works for McCain, is that true?

McCain Confused (again) About Spanish Leader

This has been going round on the Internet, not much in the mainstream media yet. McCain apparently has been caught once again in need of someone to whisper in his ear and unfortunately, Palin is incapable of that task.
McCain's adviser is trying to cover for him:

TP: John McCain’s foreign policy adviser Randy Scheunemann is defending his boss’s inexplicable and illogical answer in response to a question about whether he would agree to meet with the Spanish Prime Minister José Luis Rodríguez Zapatero. McCain appeared not to know that Zapatero is the leader of Spain when answering the question from an interviewer earlier this week. audio

WaPo gets an email response from McCain's adviser.

WaPo: Republican presidential nominee John McCain suggested this week that he would continue President Bush's policy of having cool relations with the government of Spain, a NATO ally.

In comments that have caused a kerfuffle in Spain, McCain seemed to lump Spanish Prime Minister Jose Luis Zapatero in the same category as the anti-American leaders of Venezuela, Bolivia and Cuba during in an interview with Miami-based Union Radio, a Spanish language radio station that conducted its interview in English.

President Bush has never forgiven Zapatero for pulling troops out of Iraq shortly after his victory in 2004, even though the Spanish prime minister has tried repeatedly rebuild relations and win an invitation to visit Washington. Bush has yet to hold a formal bilateral meeting with Zapatero, though in March he called him to congratulate him on reelection, and in April they met briefly at the NATO summit in Bucharest.

Zapatero is a center-left politician, but McCain has suggested that as president he would seek to repair relations that have been badly frayed in Europe during Bush's tenure.

So the reporter for the radio station seemed surprised that McCain, after discussing the anti-American antagonists in Latin South America, acted coolly to the idea of meeting with Zapatero.

"I would be willing to meet with those leaders who are friends and want to work with us in a cooperative fashion," McCain said, throwing in words of praise for the Mexican government.

The reporter asked a second time: "Would that invitation be extended to the Zapatero government?"

McCain repeated his talking point: "I can assure you I will establish closer relations with our friends and I will stand up to those who want to do harm to the United States of America."

The reporter pressed again, and McCain replied: "I have a clear record of working with leaders in the hemisphere that are friends with us and standing up to those who are not."

At this point, the reporter sought to clarify that McCain was not mixing up South America with Europe.

"I'm talking about the president of Spain," she noted. (TP points out that as Schuenemann tries to cover for McCain, he makes his own goof, referring to Zapatero as the president, which he's not. He's the prime minister.)

More on this at TPM. Full interview with McCain, first on foreign relations with Latin America, and then relations with Spain (in Europe). McCain's responses are unsophisticated at the very least. Then again, republicans don't think much about diplomacy and international relations. That's just warm fuzzy stuff to them. 

Fact Check McCain's Lobbyist Staff

Republicans say Sen. John McCain and his vice presidential running mate, Sarah Palin, are mavericks. But in a new ad, Sen. Barack Obama's campaign says not so fast -- they're no maverick reformers.

Sen. John McCain has been criticized for employing top lobbyists in his campaign.

And it's a point that Obama has been making on the campaign trail in recent days.

"John McCain says that he is going to tell all those lobbyists in Washington that their days of running Washington are over, which sounds pretty good until you discover that seven of his top campaign managers and officials are -- guess what? -- former corporate lobbyists," Obama said recently in Flint, Michigan.

It's true: Seven top McCain officials were lobbyists, though the campaign stresses that none is currently registered to lobby Congress: Read who they are.

Presumptuous McCain

Obama gets slammed for a genuine, overwhelming reception overseas but no one cares that McCain is running his mouth on Georgia, how much he talks to the Georgian president, how long he's known the president, how many times he's been to Georgia, what the U.S. should do and that "We are all Georgians." That seems presumptuous to me.

Seems like political pandering, too. One of McCain's advisers was a paid lobbyist for Georgia. McCain looks like he's taking over for George, who's off to his ranch for vacation, rather than acting like a senator and a presidential candidate. Presumptuous?

It also seems to me that Russia is attacking Georgia to get at the U.S. and Georgia is playing the U.S. to get what it wants and the U.S. is in the middle without clout, thanks to you know who.

WaPo: Asked about his tough rhetoric on the ongoing conflict in Georgia, McCain began: "If I may be so bold, there was another president . . ."

He caught himself and started again: "At one time, there was a president named Ronald Reagan who spoke very strongly about America's advocacy for democracy and freedom."

With his Democratic opponent on vacation in Hawaii, the senator from Arizona has been doing all he can in recent days to look like President McCain, particularly when it comes to the ongoing international crisis in Georgia.

Georgian President Mikheil Saakashvili says he talks to McCain, a personal friend, several times a day. McCain's top foreign policy adviser, Randy Scheunemann, was until recently a paid lobbyist for Georgia's government. McCain also announced this week that two of his closest allies, Sens. Lindsey O. Graham (R-S.C.) and Joseph I. Lieberman (I-Conn.), would travel to Georgia's capital of Tbilisi on his behalf, after a similar journey by Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice.

McCain's Advisor Money From Georgia

HuffPo: John McCain's chief foreign policy adviser and his business partner lobbied the senator or his staff on 49 occasions in a 3 1/2-year span while being paid hundreds of thousands of dollars by the government of the former Soviet republic of Georgia.

The payments raise ethical questions about the intersection of Randy Scheunemann's personal financial interests and his advice to the Republican presidential candidate who is seizing on Russian aggression in Georgia as a campaign issue.

McCain warned Russian leaders Tuesday that their assault in Georgia risks "the benefits they enjoy from being part of the civilized world."

On April 17, a month and a half after Scheunemann stopped working for Georgia, his partner signed a $200,000 agreement with the Georgian government. The deal added to an arrangement that brought in more than $800,000 to the two-man firm from 2004 to mid-2007. For the duration of the campaign, Scheunemann is taking a leave of absence from the firm.