The Scandal that Tells Us All We Need to Know About...

[chefmike]

...McSame and Palin.

Is it possible to empty a presidential election of all political content? The economy is crashing, the climate is unraveling, Iraq and Afghanistan are hemorrhaging -- and the debate in the mainstream US media about who should be the most powerful man in the world was fixated for weeks on burbling trivia. Barack Obama called Sarah Palin a pig! (No, he didn't.) Obama wanted to tell toddlers about sex! (No, he wanted to warn them about pedophiles). The critics of Palin are sexist! (McCain voted against the Equal Pay Act. That's sexism.)

Can the collapse of Lehman Brothers ram a rare taste of reality into the campaign? The facts are plain. John McCain enthusiastically backed every one of George Bush's moves to deregulate the banks and the mortgage industry that caused this collapse, while Barack Obama opposed them. This isn't just a credit crunch; it's a conservatism crunch. The right got their dream of a totally unregulated 'shadow' banking sector -- and it swiftly imploded, bringing the world economy down with it.

Yet McCain's indignant promises to "close this casino" are being reported straight, without even bothering to look at this record - or noticing that he is cashing cheques from Wall Street lobbyists as fast as they can be written. They know their man: McCain's mantra even after this collapse began was "I am always for less regulation." Indeed, McCain's current adverts saying he will not let the "recklessness" that led to Lehman Brothers happen again are in part funded by left-over donations from... Lehman Brothers.

McCain knows his stances on the economy and foreign policy are opposed by 80 percent of the population as barely-trimmed Bush. So he needs to toss up a confetti of distraction-issues instead - and Palin was the biggest distraction of all. This attempt to run out the clock was working with slick efficiency until the stock exchange's opening bell started to sound like a death-knell. He is gathering fistfuls more of confetti as we speak.

The best key to unlocking these tactics may lie in a story that might seem at first glance a yellowing old scandal, but it is actually as fresh as tomorrow's Google News. By 1920, the oil age had revved into first gear. Cars were being bought all over America, so the petrol price was at an all-time high. The bosses of Big Oil were desperate for new oilfields -- and there was one in particular they coveted. In Wyoming, there was a vast oil field called the Teapot Dome reserve, shaped like a teapot and containing more oil than the whole of California. But the oilmen were shut out: it had been set aside to supply the navy with oil if there was ever a national emergency.

So Big Oil thought of a solution. They decided to buy the presidency. A consortium led by Jake Hamon -- a J.R. Ewing for the Jazz Age -- started to buy the delegates to the 1920 Republican Convention with brown-envelope bribes, one-by-one. Once they owned a hefty block, they approached the initial front-runner -- General Leonard Wood -- and said they would make him the Republican nominee if in return he had to promise to make Hamon Secretary of the Interior -- and therefore boss of Teapot Dome. Wood yelled: "I am an American soldier. I'll be damned if I'll betray my country! Get the hell out of here."

So Big Oil picked a different candidate instead: an obscure, bumbling Senator called Warren G. Harding, who had been a forty-to-one shot at the start of the convention. He had barely been out of Ohio and had only fuzzy ideas about politics -- but he could be marketed as Mr. Normal, the 1920s equivalent of a hockey mom. Big Oil lavishly funded a PR campaign selling him to ordinary Americans as One of You. He was pictured at baseball games eating hot dogs with his sweet family -- while his opponent was presented as arid and "elitist."

As soon as he won, Harding began the payback to the real elite. Teapot Dome was handed over to Big Oil. He even sent in the marines to clear the land. Eventually, the scandal broke, and Harding only stayed ahead of the investigators by dying. There's a consequential coda to this story. Not long after the scandal, Big Oil shifted tactics -- but only by a few inches. They decided that instead of under-the-table bribes, they would start giving "campaign donations." This time, they would give to all sides, Democrat or Republican, and they would make their demands through "lobbyists." A scandal suddenly turned into standard practice: almost the entire American political class became an oil-igarchy. The other big interests -- especially Wall Street -- followed close behind with an open cheque-book.

Until now. Barack Obama is the first major presidential candidate since Teapot Dome to refuse to take money from Big Oil or lobbyists, with 93 percent of his funding coming from small donors giving $200 or less. Every other leading candidate (even Al Gore) took their cash and saw the world through the bottom of an oil-barrel. Not him.

Most of the recent disasters of US policy are due not to the will of its unfairly-maligned people, but to this oil-slick over Capitol Hill. What has been the price of Big Oil owning American politicians? The US government has vandalised all attempts to stop global warming, even censoring its own scientists' reports. It invaded Iraq killing hundreds of thousands of people because, as Dick Cheney put it in 1990: "We're there because... that part of the world controls the world supply of oil." And it fawns over the House of Saud, which exports a toxic brand of Wahabbism -- all the way to the Twin Towers. What has been the cost of Big Banks owning American politicians? Watch the front pages for daily updates.

Obama offers a rare chance to begin to dismantle the petrol pump and the Wall Street cash-dispenser in the Oval Office. Yes, he would still have to work with an oil-and-bank-funded Democratic Congress, but the long-term public interest would at least be able to get a few lungfuls of air.

Yet the people who brought us Warren Harding and George Bush are now expertly packaging McCain-Palin as defenders of Main Street -- and they are outspending Obama's small donors for the first time. They are even paying for adverts which claim McCain and Palin "stand up to Big Oil." True, McCain did once flirt with campaign finance reform, but only after being caught taking money from a fraudster and in return lobbying on his behalf. Today, he's back to his gut instincts, with the Republican convention breaking into a chant of "drill, baby, drill!" led by McCain's men, and the delegates whooping and hollering for the men who caused this deregulation-crash. He is even committed to giving his Big Oil donors a $4bn tax cut -- at a time of record profits.

Jake Hamon couldn't have asked for more -- and he would be delighted to see us revert to distraction-blather about Palin's cute kids and her ability to shoot moose for the next fifty days. Unless Obama and his army of citizen-donors can break through this wall of white noise, it would appear we all live in Teapot Dome now.

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/johann..._b_127681.html

[tsafficianado]

i hope huffington never tells you to jump off a cliff chefmike.
we'd all miss your (their) spin around here

[yodajazz]

How's this for us conspiracy thieorists? Is this is why Warren Harding's bio has been taken off the White House web site? http://www.whitehouse.gov/WH/glimpse...html/wh29.html

Actually thanks for the history lesson, Chefmike, even though you are not one of us. I had heard a lot about the name, "Teapot Dome Scandal", but never knew enough about it to place it in context. Brilliant analogy there.

i hope huffington never tells you to jump off a cliff chefmike.
we'd all miss your (their) spin around here

Chefmike, notice how critics say that you got the idea from someone, but are not able to address the actual issue itself? Hisotry is about principles, not who thought of the analysis.

[Cuchulain]

From Garrison Keillor:
Sept. 10, 2008 | So the Republicans have decided to run against themselves. The bums have tiptoed out the back door and circled around to the front and started yelling, "Throw the bums out!" They've been running Washington like a well-oiled machine to the point of inviting lobbyists into the back rooms to write the legislation, and now they are anti-establishment reformers dedicated to delivering us from themselves. And Mayor Giuliani is an advocate for small-town America. Bravo.

They are coming out for Small Efficient Government the very week that the feds are taking over Fannie and Freddie, those old cash cows, and in the course of a weekend 20 or 50 (or pick a number) billion go floating out the Treasury door. Hello? Do you see us out here? We are not fruit flies, we are voters, we can read and write, we didn't just fall off the coal truck.

It is a bold move on the Republicans' part -- forget about the past, it's only history, so write a new narrative and be who you want to be -- and if they succeed, I think I might declare myself a 24-year-old virgin named Lance and see what that might lead to. Paste a new face on my Facebook page, maybe become the Dauphin Louie the Thirty-Second, the rightful heir to the Throne of France, put on silk tights and pantaloons and a plumed hat and go on the sawdust circuit and sell souvenir hankies imprinted with the royal fleur-de-lis. They will cure neuralgia and gout and restore marital vigor....

And a former mayor of a town of 7,000 who hired a lobbyist to get $26 million in federal earmarks is now running against the old-boy network in Washington who gave her that money to build the teen rec center and other good things so she could keep taxes low in Wasilla. Stunning. And if you question her qualifications to be the leader of the free world, you are an elitist. This is a beautiful maneuver. I wish I had thought of it back in school when I was forced to subject myself to a final exam in higher algebra. I could have told Miss Mortenson, "I am a Christian and when you gave me a D, you only showed your contempt for the Lord and for the godly hardworking people from whom I have sprung, you elitist battle ax you."

In school, you couldn't get away with that garbage because the taxpayers know that if we don't uphold scholastic standards, we will wind up driving on badly designed bridges and go in for a tonsillectomy and come out missing our left lung, so we flunk the losers lest they gain power and hurt us, but in politics we bring forth phonies and love them to death.

(Garrison Keillor's "A Prairie Home Companion" can be heard Saturday nights on public radio stations across the country.)
http://www.salon.com/opinion/keillor/2008/09/10/palin/

[yodajazz]

The ironic thing is he may have been the first Black president.
http://www.stewartsynopsis.com/warre...el_harding.htm
I love the internet!

[chefmike]

Actually thanks for the history lesson, Chefmike, even though you are not one of us.

LMAO...one of who?

The PTA?

The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints?

Those bolsheviks who read that dang New York Times?

The Rotary Club of Cleveland?

The New World Order?

Oh well...I never was much good at secret passwords anyway...

[yodajazz]

Actually thanks for the history lesson, Chefmike, even though you are not one of us.

LMAO...one of who?

The PTA?

The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints?

Those bolsheviks who read that dang New York Times?

The Rotary Club of Cleveland?

The New World Order?

Oh well...I never was much good at secret passwords anyway...

I meant we grand conspiracy theorists. For me it's more about 9/11. I'll be getting my foil hat soon. But for me seriously, I just can't into the "New World Order" conspiracy, however. I just see it as multinational corporations are always going to want regulations that help them make more money. Why have one world government, when you can profit by having nations compete against each other, and make money just by buying and selling various currencies? And what about all the profit from wars? I could make a long list of things regarding why I believe that it is impracticle.

[NYBURBS]

[hippifried]

Butt butt butt...
Butt aren't the Cleveland Rotary Club & Illuminati world headquarters one & the same???

[PapaGrande]

Jesus chefmike, have you ever had an original thought in all your life? Obama gives us a chance to break free from Wall Street? You know Obama is the #3 recipient of money from Fannie Mae, who was I believe #12 for largest lobbying companies (before they imploded)?

Top Recipients of Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac Campaign Contributions, 1989-2008

1) Christopher Dodd (D-CT) $133,900
2) John Kerry (D-MA) $111,000
3) Barack Obama (D-IL) $105,849

I believe McCain has only received $19k from Fannie in the last 20 years.

He may have gotten his campaign donations from "individuals" but its telling to look at what industries these individuals come from:

http://www.opensecrets.org/pres08/in...&cid=N00009638

1 Lawyers/Law Firms $24,060,136
4 Securities & Investment $9,873,356
5 Business Services $6,746,937
6 Real Estate $6,421,385

How about his top bundlers?
Goldman Sachs $691,930
University of California $611,207
Citigroup Inc $448,599
JPMorgan Chase & Co $442,919
Harvard University $435,769
Google Inc $420,174
UBS AG $404,750
National Amusements Inc $389,140
Microsoft Corp $377,235
Lehman Brothers $370,524
Sidley Austin LLP $350,302
Moveon.org $347,463
Skadden, Arps et al $340,264
Time Warner $338,527
Wilmerhale Llp $335,398
Morgan Stanley $318,070


Wake up, Obama is a politician! He is no different than any others.