McCain Staffer: NYT’s Is A Pro-Obama Advocacy Organization

well doug i am not sure where you live, but i see it very clearly where i live. the papers here are so overwhelmingly bias you would think obama is the only person in the race. several people i have talked to have expressed concern about the fact that you only hear about obama’s campaign stops and very little about mccain unless its about how bristol palin’s baby could also be her brother. i know there is the my side, your side then the trueth in the middle thing, well there really is no middle, its all about obama. when i was in newspaper class in school we weren’t allowed to be bias, we were to report. guess everyone has their own agenda.

Hence forth the New York Times is now retitled to:

Jason Blair Times

Oh, my Lord, what a bunch of wheedling, whiny malcontents…on both sides. Dare I say, lest I display some un-American bias, but it is a given amongst our Old World friends that newspapers are inherently biased. In Great Britain, the Guardian is left, the London Times conservative. A thoughtful person entertains, ruminates, and learns from the ‘opinions’ of others. Only in my beloved country is there such an immature demand for ultimate and intractable truth. No such thing exists, especially when it comes to politics.

Our Revolution was founded upon the power of pamphlets and newspapers to incite and inspire on both the Loyalist and Republican sides. As Thomas Paine wrote: “I offer nothing more than simple facts, plain arguments, and common sense…” Of Paine’s Common Sense, another founding father, and Second President, John Adams called it a ‘crapulous mess’. Without either man we wouldn’t have the country we occupy.

Give me liberty, or give me death.

Suffer the crapulous mess. It’s what makes us exceptional.

OlMoney,

Hear hear !

Good point . We can all agree to disagree and we can all thank God that in this

country we have that right.

From Politico’s Ben Smith:

Sen. John McCain’s top campaign aides convened a conference call today to complain of being called “liars.” They pressed the media to scrutinize specific elements of Sen. Barack Obama’s record.

But the call was so rife with simple, often inexplicable misstatements of fact that it may have had the opposite effect: to deepen the perception, dangerous to McCain, that he and his aides have little regard for factual accuracy.

The errors in McCain strategist Steve Schmidt’s charges against Obama and Sen. Joe Biden were particularly notable because they seemed unnecessary. Schmidt repeatedly gilded the lily: He exaggerated the Biden family’s already problematic ties to the credit card industry; Obama’s embarrassing relationship with a 1960s radical; and an Obama supporter’s over-the-top attack on Sarah Palin when — in each case — the truth would have been damaging enough.

“Any time the Obama campaign is criticized at any level, the critics are immediately derided as liars,” Schmidt told reporters.

But as he went on to list a series of stories he thought reporters should be writing about Obama and Biden, in almost every instance he got the details wrong.
…

Not only the above, but Schmidt never contested any of the allegations the NYT’s piece regarding McCain’s campaign manager, Rick Davis, to lobbying a group set up by troubled mortgage giants Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac.

Schmidt attacked the NYTs, he didn’t attack the facts of the story in the NYTs. That’s how…

Bill Keller, executive editor of The Times, responded in a statement [for tomorrows paper]: “The New York Times is committed to covering the candidates fully, fairly and aggressively. It’s our job to ask hard questions, fact-check their statements and their advertising, examine their programs, positions, biographies and advisers. Candidates and their campaign operatives are not always comfortable with that level of scrutiny, but it’s what our readers expect and deserve.”

In other words, the NYTs did their homework, the McCain camp gambled no one would fact-check Davis’s connections to F&F, and they lost.

… don’t forget ‘in bed with’ the right leaning Politico, too!

Davis said only that he was involved in an effort to promote the cause of home-ownership(… for minorities, too, Mike. ; ))

“I never lobbied a single day,” Davis said. I find this claim in full abrasion with a Fannie exec’s claim to the NYTs piece that they were giving Davis huge amounts of money on the chance that McCain might become president. I mean what do you guys do with that; ignore it, of course, ’cause it doesn’t fix your preconception of how facts are supposed to be arranged.

A Fannie exec speaks and you all go mute and attack the paper. $30,000 a month fits the profile of a lobbist, whereas ‘working’ for an “advocacy group” at 30,ooo a month! That’s as much of a reach as Palin’s outsider meme on the ‘Bridge to Nowhere’. (What are we now on the 7th day she hasn’t mentioned it, as the press was just about to stomp it to death).

McCAIN CAMPAIGN SLAMS NEW YORK TIMES: NOT A JOURNALISTIC ORGANIZATION
See the article and video:
http://tpmelectioncentral.talkingpointsmemo.com/2008/09/mccain_campaign_slams_new_york.php

Hey Doug,

Just to give you a heads up…anything said or posted here that might cast aspersions on McCain or Appaling could only be said by a “pinko commie fag”.

George Will must now be on their hate list for what he said !!

A prominent Washington lobbyist who has worked for every Republican President since Richard Nixon has been tapped by the McCain campaign to conduct a study in preparation for the presidential transition should John McCain win the election, according to sources familiar with the process.

William E. Timmons Sr. is a Washington institution, having worked in the Nixon and Ford administrations as an aide for congressional relations and having assisted the transition teams of both Ronald Reagan in 1980 and George W. Bush in 2000. He was also a senior adviser to both Vice President George Bush in 1988 and Senator Bob Dole in 1996.

Timmons is the chairman emeritus of Timmons and Company, a small but influential lobbying firm he founded in 1975 shortly after leaving the White House. According to Senate records, he registered to lobby in 2008 for a wide range of companies and trade groups, including the American Petroleum Institute, the American Medical Association, Chrysler, Freddie Mac, Visa USA and Anheuser-Busch.

His registrations include work on a number of issues that have become flashpoints in the presidential campaign. He has registered to work on bills that deal with the regulations of troubled mortgage lenders Freddie Mac and Fannie Mae, a bill to provide farm subsidies and bills that regulate domestic oil-drilling.

By tapping Timmons, McCain has turned to one of Washington’s steadiest and most senior inside players to guide him in the event of a victory — but also to someone who represents the antithesis of the kind of outside-of-Washington change he has recently been promising. One Republican familiar with the process said the decision to involve Timmons could become a political liability for the campaign’s reformist image, especially in the wake of the controversies over the lobbying backgrounds of other McCain staffers, including campaign manager Rick Davis. “It’s one more blind spot for Rick Davis and John McCain,” the person said.
…

http://www.time.com/time/printout/0,8816,1840722,00.html

The story appears to be that to be Timmons is a key power house player in the Washington lobbying industry. Visitors to his company’s Web site are told that “Timmons and Company pioneered the concept and the industry standard for Washington representation.”
http://www.timmonsandco.com/

Timmons is said to have founded the company in 1975 after leaving the administration of President Ford, and has worked to elect every Republican presidential nominee since.

What it comes down to is Timmons has been a lobbyist longer than McCain has been as Senator!

I think he’ll be dropped before Sunday.

To address two birds with one stone, and by that I mean MataHarley and Stix1972

Perhaps we do need a ‘re-assertion’ of the ‘Fairness Doctrine’. Right now we have a journalism which kow-tows to focus groups, polls, pr companies, and corporate masters. The total effect is to sublimate the ‘fringe’ to a homogenized product which comforts, soothes, and primes the consumer for prime-time fare. This is a big, messy democracy which needs the major news organizations to present ‘inconvenient truths’ to all sides of the political spectrum. Perhaps devoting an hour to opposing, legitimate viewpoints would lead to greater civility in our national debates. Perhaps political campaigns would not need to hire pr and advertising agencies to hone their messages to target voters. Perhaps even Politicians would not need to primp and preen for the TV cameras. Perhaps J.Q. Public could actually decide that a particular candidate seems like he /she knows what she is talking about, though I don’t actually agree with his particular views on…. Perhaps the public would have to read the Constitution and make it their own. Because right now the only people who have to read the entire Constitution are immigrants who want to be citizens.

An illustrative aside: Rupert Murdoch was an ardent communist while at Oxford. As an old man, he owns the ‘arch-conservative’ Fox network. He has also publicly stated that he ‘wants’ Barack Obama to be the next President after initially supporting Hillary. Slimy? Maybe or perhaps the ol’ man just has an open and lively mind. Or, perhaps in our misguided Republic making a buck and what you believe are two very distinct things.

Live Free or Die

Best,
OlMoney

I suggest that Fannie/Freddie’s payments were to Davis as his political consulting tasks for Homeownership Alliance, as has been noted in my post #18.

Oh, now you ‘suggest’. What happened to “Doug, you persist in spreading media lies, guy. It’s really getting annoying, ya know. Just because you keep posting some research lazy journalist’s misstatement doesn’t make it more true.”

Now it’s not just one one ‘lazy journalist’s misstatement’. We now have four stories. Here’s a fifth from tomorrow’s WP:

…
But an industry source told the Post last night that Davis Manafort continued to receive payments in the $15,000 range from Freddie Mac until recently, describing the relationship as one in which the firm was on retainer and did little actual work after early 2007.
…

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2008/09/23/AR2008092303359.html?hpid=topnews

Here’s the McCain campaign response:

McCain spokesperson Jill Hazelbaker did not dispute the reports, saying in a statement to the Times that Davis’s work had no bearing on McCain.

“Senator McCain’s positions on policy matters are based upon what he believes to be in the public interest,” Hazelbaker wrote in a statement.

From the same WP story.

Wow. She really killed the story! —she sent it into the state of a elderly man’s subjective beliefism.

How do you know Open Secrets has all the records of the lobbying money for Davis Manafor???

First, the NYT article does say that Davis was hired as a “consultant”, not a lobbyist. So if he says that he didn’t do any “lobbying work”, this may be true, both in a technical sense and broader sense, in that he doesn’t seem to have done much work of any kind. It isn’t exactly “straight talk”, though.

Second, Newsweek writes:

“Davis also said he “had a severed leave of absence” from his lobbying and consulting firm, and “I’ve taken no compensation from my firm for 18 months.” (A campaign spokesman said that Davis receives no partnership distribution under his arrangement).”

I don’t know how partnerships work, and they are probably different from case to case, but in the Davis’ arrangement it could mean that all the money from Freddie Mac was distributed among the other partners, which would include him. But it does not have to be cash. Certainly, if Freddie Mac made some asset of mine more valuable, the fact that I did not actually convert that added value into cash and move it into my checking account would not show that I had not profited from the deal.

Third, if the NYTs and Newsweek sources are correct relating to us that they never saw Davis work for Freddie Mac, it makes the story worse not better for Davis. McCain complains endlessly in his read speeches that “lobbyists, politicians, and bureaucrats who succeeded in persuading Congress and the administration to ignore the festering problems at Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac” are the villians. In essence, throwing cash or favors to someone who does nothing, never worked. It’s the same thing here, because of his “close ties to Mr. McCain, when he was the Republican presidential nominee, is a clear an example influence peddling.

This brings McCain back again into hypocrisy. I’m not saying Obama is exempt for it, I’m saying here McCain has been claiming here he is a reformer and exempt, he’s not.

Fourth, they are not “all spreading the same story… they [are not] just picking it up from each other.” You not reading the stories close enough:

The lobbying firm founded and co-owned by the campaign manager for John McCain received payments from Freddie Mac in recent months, despite assertions earlier this week that the company’s work for the mortgage giant had ended three years ago.

An industry source told the Washington Post that Rick Davis’ firm, Davis Manafort, continued to receive monthly payments in the $15,000 range from Freddie Mac until very recently, confirming an ongoing financial relationship reported Tuesday night in several other publications.

That money from Freddie Mac was on top of more than $30,000 a month that went directly to Davis for five years starting in 2000. The $30,000 a month came from both Freddie Mac and Fannie Mae, the other housing entity now under government control because of the crisis in the financial markets.

The source said Davis Manafort was paid for being on retainer to Freddie Mac but did little actual work after early 2007.

Two unidentified sources told Roll Call newspaper Tuesday that Davis Manafort is still receiving payments from the mortgage giant, one of the financial institutions at the center of the nation’s housing crisis. The New York Times reported Tuesday night that the payments stopped last month.

Both reports appear to contradict Davis’ comments to reporters on a conference call this week.

http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2008/09/23/MNET1343S1.DTL&type=printable

Here are the NYT, Hotline, and WP, 3 accounts.

Panic is setting in, huh guys?

I’d be getting pretty shrill too, if I were backing McCain, that is.

I had a cousin who would always scream at the refs whenever his team was losing. “They’re just against us, that’s all!!!”

Can’t believe that a black man with progressive views is going to win, can you? Cry, whine and slander all you want. It won’t work this year. Atwater is dead. Rove is a has been. And this Steve what’s his name is living in the past. You’re done. This is going to happen.

Ha ha.

I guess I have the last word since MH tells us this is her ‘last time repeating’ herself.

MH has given her best effort in attempting to prevent Davis looking as tho’ he lobbied Freddie Mac, but the McCain campaign’s retorts are so poor to be beneath embarrassing countering the multiple claims that Davis’ lobbying firm was picking up $15,000 a month from Freddie Mac, right up until it was taken over by the feds, despite it not being on ‘Open Secrets’ list of clients (as if Open Secrets holds the God-sent touch of who’s who in lobbyists). As Romano explains it:

So far, Team McCain has attacked the messengers–as usual–but they haven’t disputed the allegations, except to say Davis isn’t profiting personally from Freddie Mac and therefore doesn’t have, according to the Atlantic’s Marc Ambinder, a “direct financial conflict of interest in helping McCain develop policy.” But that ignores the larger issue: whether Freddie put Davis’s firm on retainer because of Davis’s relationship with McCain. “The story’s not about profit,” writes Ambinder. “It’s about influence buying.”

http://blog.newsweek.com/blogs/stumper/archive/2008/09/24/on-davis-s-ties-to-freddie-mac-mccain-gets-boomeranged.aspx

That’s right, it’s about influence pedaling.

So let’s step back and look at what we learned. McCain has been passing the claim that the credit crunch on Wall Street “started in the Washington culture of lobbying and influence pedaling.” In a interview with Harwood last week McCain said about Davis:

“My campaign manager has stopped that, has nothing to do with it since and I’ll be glad to have his record examined by anybody who wants to look at it.”
(In a conference call with the NYTs Davis use a similar argument with the reporters stating he’s now completely detached from F&F.)

So the NYTs examined McCain’s statement, and Davis’; which leads us to Curt’s post here that claims the NYTs is a biased news organization and is supporting Obama, and plus the new revelation that Davis was, until the fed stepped in, getting 15,000 a month from Freddie.

As everyone recalls, McCain told the public last week that Obama had “associations” with former officials at Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac is a scandal, that he can’t be trusted and put out attack ads to that affect. So this has only heightened the story, if true, that McCain’s campaign Manager is one of those Washington insiders milking F&F.

Now it’s possible McCain didn’t really know Davis was secretly dipping from Freddie, that could be a defense. He could argue he was simply mislead by Davis.

Would McCain, you may say, be pushed to such dramatic levels??? Yes, now I believe so.

Here’s why:

The lobbying firm of McCain campaign manager Rick Davis has been on retainer for embattled Freddie Mac, source say, as reported by the Associated Press, Washington Post, New York Times, [Newsweek] and Roll Call.

You gotta have some serious stones to run a spurious TV ad assailing Obama for tenuous ties to former Fannie Mae CEO Franklin Raines when your campaign manager’s lobbying firm is still being paid by Freddie Mac. (To be clear, the McCain TV ad attacking Obama for his Jim Johnson ties was a completely fair and clean hit.)

But maybe today’s news partly explains Mr. Schmidt’s jeremiad against the New York Times when the subject of the Davis-Freddie Mac/Fannie Mae ties were raised on a conference call earlier this week. The Times reported that Davis “was paid more than $30,000 a month for five years as president of an advocacy group set up by the mortgage giants Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac to defend them against stricter regulations…”

“Serious stones,” indeed.

Obviously what happened is the advertisements pissed off current and former executives of the two companies, they started coming forward to the press and wanted to discuss Davis’ role with F&F. Some who came forward were Democrats, but Republicans, speaking on the condition of anonymity, confirmed their statements.

Whether the story is true or not is now front and center, it’s boiling in the MSM, ready to spill over, creating a hot toxic soup, and finally an awkward position for McCain campaign. The story is not going to go away now, even when Davis ducks from under the spotlight, skipping a Wednesday lunch with reporters sponsored by the Christian Science Monitor. If avoidance of the press doesn’t work for this week, what then? If one can’t just let it air out, dry, and become a forgetfulness, as the press doesn’t seem to believe Davis, will ducking the press help? The MSM thinks it is true, whether or not MH’s ‘suggestion’ is that it is not true.

Therefore, what is the next move McCain campaign to do? Will McCain let go of Davis, with just over a month left until the election? Or, will he keep him on, hold him to his chest as his campaign manager, hoping the press will ease off, not spot lighting the hypocrisy?

This is where the story has led us, and i find it couldn’t be more appropriate state for such a lobbyishly laden campaign.