Ever hear of Rose Cleveland? You are about to.

By Rubashov

Billionaire Jeff Bezos is one of our new masters.  A global master.

Bezos owns Amazon.com, with its tentacles of business interests, and he owns mass media outlets like the Washington Post.  Jeff Bezos is an adherent of that modern preoccupation – the sex lives of other people. 

Of course, sex has always been an important tool for those trying to sell us something, but never has it been made so central to how we define ourselves.  As some borders go down, others go up, and the most ubiquitous border between us today is the one that tells us we are what we screw. 

Based on what you do to who, and how you do it, you will receive a marketing designation – in the form of a letter – and you will, from henceforth on, be defined by that letter primarily, and all the rest of you will be dragged along behind it.  

This is how marketers work.  This is how they sell you things and, more importantly, it is how they manipulate you into believing that you need to buy those things. 

But can the endless ways in which human beings order their lives really be bound and categorized by a half dozen letters – or indeed, a thousand?  And that is not the end of it.  The marketers  demand that we embrace their designation that they assign to us, as something springing from within us, in our blood and inescapable.  We are who they say we are… forever. 

And death offers no escape.  Rather like the Mormons, with their fondness for converting the dead, the marketers are intent on assigning designations to those who are past caring.  It’s a marketing tool to be used on those who are. 

And then we have the middlemen.  Those self-described “leaders” who set themselves up to speak for this letter or that – or indeed, a collection of letters.  They act as a kind of herdsmen, whippers-in, to corral and then to assign interests and behaviors.  “We are your leaders,” they tell us, “We know what you want.” 

And who thinks to question them?  We are sent to our silo, designated by a letter, and then piled in like so many ears of corn.  We need do nothing more.  Others will speak in our name. 

Quiet, in our designated silos, we will know what to buy, how to think, what to feel.  We will be “targeted” by marketing and do what is expected of us.  Ideally, we will forget that we were once human and with endless meaning, a multitude of possibilities.  We will be a letter – for their convenience.

Cheap politicians are always looking for a short-cut.  They love middlemen.  Why deal with many when you can deal with one?  So the middlemen are thus confirmed to speak for who they say they speak for.  And if there is a certain emptiness in what is done in our name, who is to know it? 

There is a pseudo-religious aspect to all this – in that it is based on faith, resistant to science and debate.  You accept it or you do not.  You are either good or you are bad.  If good, you are always good, good in all things, one of the Elect.  And if bad, then there is no hope for you, we should have nothing to do with you.

As with many pseudo-religions, it becomes all about the children.  Jim Jones, David Koresh, the “Children of God” cult… Did they not all operate under the banner than children be sexualized at the earliest possible moment?  Did they not preach endlessly about “Love”?  That “Love is the Answer”, “Love is Love”? 

And so they come for the children.  The marketers, their middlemen, the herders and stockers of silos.  And the cheap politicians hand over the children to them.  Sex is as addictive as tobacco and like the sellers of cigarettes (or narcotics) they like to get them while they’re young.

And so we have Rose Cleveland, sister to President Grover Cleveland., who served as a kind of “First Lady” to her bachelor brother.  A footnote in history… until now.  With the school curriculum in states like New Jersey mandating the teaching of people from history based on their alleged sexual practices (because, being dead, we cannot ask them), we can expect Rose Cleveland to become a household word.  As Jeff Bezos’ house organ called her – this “gay first lady” – should easily surpass her brother in pride of place in the textbooks.  After all, he was just the twice elected President of the United States, the only holder of that office to get elected, defeated, and then re-elected.  But what is that compared to allegedly having been gay? 

A long-ago President, the once-upon-a-time affairs of state, those are the real footnotes.  Such past things have no utility to the marketers.  But a lesson to living children in the here-and-now, to embrace a category chosen for them, to adopt a silo and pliantly comply, now that has a practical utility for the marketers. 

And so we are on the threshold of a new great forgetting.  When marketing removes the need for personal experience and pseudo-religion takes the place of knowledge.  Who needs the Declaration of Independence and the Bill of Rights… when we have Rose Cleveland’s love letters? 

Study hard, children.  Be sure to get an “A”.  

Andy Kim GUILTY? Was it a case of Depraved Indifference to Human Life?

The other day we came across this political commercial put out by congressional candidate Andy Kim…

Hand on his heart, Andy Kim assures us that he “listened and worked together to save lives.”  But it’s not true.  And according to the New Yorker magazine, it’s some of the worst bullshit imaginable.

Nobody listened.  Lives were lost.  Some shot to death or butchered with knives, other burnt alive, some buried alive in the desert.  Thousands of women and girls raped… over and over again.  Women and children sold like cattle.  Modern day slavery – all while Andy Kim was safe… in that “situation room.”

According to his own statements made in November 2016 at William & Mary College, Andy Kim comfortably watched as a genocide unfolded on the TV screens and monitors in that “situation room.”  Andy Kim has tried to play that down – calling it a “potential genocide” – but the United Nations disagrees with him and so do the community of people who suffered that genocide.  Andy Kim has lied throughout his campaign about this:

“…when ISIS threatened genocide on the Yazidi people sheltering on Sinjar Mountain in Iraq, Andy worked with the U.S. military to coordinate a rescue mission.”

(Andy Kim for Congress Facebook, www.facebook.com/pg/AndyKimNJ/about/)

But there was no “rescue mission” by the Obama administration worthy of the name.  In the end, the Yazidi people were rescued by a Kurdish militia group labeled as “terrorists” by Vice President Joe Biden, in order to appease the Islamist regime in Turkey.   

We know that Yazidi expats resident in the United States pleaded with the Obama administration – and directly with Andy Kim – and that Kim’s response was weak and insufficient to prevent what President Obama himself has called “genocide” (Washington Post, August 8, 2014).

And it is very clear, from the Yazidis’ story, that they believed that genocide was about to happen and that, afterwards, it was allowed to happen.  If the administration had listened to these Yazidi expats – all of whom had formerly worked for the United States military – the Obama administration’s response could have been more precise and robust and lives could have been saved. 

This small immigrant community – a repressed religious minority in their homeland (and so genuine refugees from violence) – came up against an elitist administration that wouldn’t listen to them because they weren’t “experts” like Andy Kim thought he was.   The fact that Andy Kim is trying to now portray his weak response to this genocide in a “positive” way – as a recommendation for higher office – is sickening when the real record is examined… the killings, the rapes, and the slavery that did happen to the Yazidis’ community and to their family members because Andy Kim and others like him in the Obama administration were too “smart” to take the common sense advice from those who understood what was actually going on.

It’s all there, in the New Yorker magazine.  Not a right-wing anything but the jewel in the crown of literary liberalism.  Go read it for yourself and prepare to weep and feel the disgrace of it.  Of the failure that was Andy Kim and the Obama administration.  Of the genocide that candidate Andy Kim now tries to turn into a qualification for Congress.

The long article begins…

New Yorker

Annals of War

February 26, 2018 Issue

The Daring Plan to Save a Religious Minority from ISIS

When the terrorist group attacked the Yazidis, a small group of American immigrants knew they could do something.

By Jenna Krajeski

ISIS intended to wipe out the Yazidi religion in Iraq. Yazidis in America had a plan, so they started driving to Washington…

…After 2003, when the United States invaded Iraq, Pir and Ismael, like many Yazidi men, took jobs as interpreters for the U.S. military. Because they were a targeted religious minority, there was little opportunity outside the Army, and they were unlikely to join the Iraqi insurgency. In the military, they befriended another Yazidi, named Haider Elias, who, in spite of his poor background, spoke nearly perfect English, with a TV-made American accent.

The three men worked with the U.S. for years, often with the Special Forces…

In the course of a few days, the Yazidis met with organizations such as U.S.A.I.D. and the Institute for International Law and Human Rights. They went to the White House to meet with the deputy national-security adviser, Ben Rhodes, and the adviser on Iraq, Andy Kim, in the Roosevelt Room. “That was as emotional a meeting as I think I had,” Rhodes told me. “Given the role we played in invading and occupying and being present in Iraq for so many years, we had to care about what was happening to the Yazidis.”

To be continued…

Booker’s “Spartapuss moment”. It was all a fake.

The philosopher Christopher Lasch predicted this.  Way back in 1978, Lasch wrote a book called “The Culture of Narcissism” in which he predicted what would come from “the dotage of bourgeois society.”  Lasch saw the coming man-child, the “narcissistic personality” of our time… “their emotional shallowness, their fear of intimacy, their hypochondria, their pseudo-self-insight, their promiscuous pansexuality, their dread of old age and death.”  People who had lost their memory, without history… “a culture that has lost interest in the future.” 

Even before social media made it possible for anyone/everyone to become an overly self-regarding, self-celebrating, living-in-the-moment celebrity – Lasch saw it coming – and he saw “leaders” like Cory Booker, once himself king of the Twitter realm, a politician who offers his childish “feelings” and a false intimacy in place of rational discourse.  A Peter Pan. 

Forty-years ago, Lasch wrote that the cultural Narcissists’ outlook on life was revealed in “the new consciousness movements and therapeutic culture; in pseudo-confessional autobiography and fiction; in the replacement of Horatio Alger by the happy hooker as the symbol of success; in the theater of the absurd and the absurdist theater of everyday life; in the degradation of sport; in the collapse of authority; in the escalating war between men and women…” 

Last week Senator Booker contrived an “I am Spartacus” moment, as a juvenile would, not to teach but in order to attract a moment’s satisfying attention.  His ego sated, to boost celebrity his acolytes sent record of the moment to the four corners of the globe.  But it was all play-acting, make-believe, false, fake… more like playing dress-up, as children do.

During the Senate Judiciary Committee's hearing on the nomination of Judge Brett Kavanaugh to the Supreme Court, Senator Booker threatened to release confidential documents relating to Judge Kavanaugh's service as a lawyer in the Bush administration.  "I understand the penalty comes with potential ousting from the Senate," our brave Booker said, "This is about the closest I'll probably ever have in my life to an ‘I am Spartacus' moment."

For his “I am Spartacus” moment, Senator Booker posed that he was in real danger – that he could be prosecuted for revealing confidential correspondence that had been provided to a Senate Committee by someone facing confirmation hearings.  Booker was acting against the kind of basic confidences most small town council members understand when they enter into “executive session” to discuss a personnel issue.  Booker called another Senator a “bully” (shades of the school yard again?) for suggesting otherwise.

Except that it wasn’t even that, because Senator Booker had sought and received permission from committee counsel of both parties.  There was never a “Spartacus moment” because – like a true Narcissist, Booker loves himself so much that he would never place himself in such danger.  He just likes the celebrity that comes with pretending to do so… and so he made it all up.

No less than the Washington Post reported that the so-called "confidential" correspondence was already cleared for public release before Booker's floor show, confirming the fact with both Democratic and Republican aides on the judiciary committee.

"We cleared the documents last night shortly after Senator Booker's staff asked us to," confirmed Bill Burck, Bush's presidential records representative. "We were surprised to learn about Senator Booker's histrionics this morning because we had already told him he could use the documents publicly. In fact, we have said yes to every request made by the Senate Democrats to make documents public."

A confirmed narcissist never likes to be called out, and when Wall Street Journal reporter Byron Tau questioned Senator Booker’s actions and suggested it was a stunt, Booker accused him of violating the U.S. Constitution and threatened the reporter with prosecution.  Yes, Booker probably is a few bricks short of a full load. 

What this all shows is that someone on his staff needs to provide the Senator with new reading material.  This way, when he is dreaming about the kind of super hero he would like to pretend to the world he is (and that he would like the world to celebrate that he is), he’ll get it right, and keep it closer to reality.

So no more “Spartacus” by Howard Fast for Senator Booker.  There are too many words for a start.

From now on, his staff should have him read “I am Spartapuss” by Robin Price.  It is something a Peter Pan will understand.

The Washington Post calls bullshit on BLM talking points

A member of the Left has to be really bad for the establishment Washington Post to hit them like this.  “Taking a knee” will never be the same…

https://www.msn.com/en-us/news/video/fact-checking-beto-orourkes-response-to-nfl-anthem-protests/vi-BBMDyRF

FACT CHECK: McCann campaign spins tales about candidate’s past

John McCann has brought up that silly claim again.  About him and his chart and how it saved America.

He first did it last summer, while he was still directly employed by the Democrat Sheriff of Bergen County.  John McCann shopped around a tale about how he stopped HillaryCare and saved America.  Here is a transcript of a video recording of McCann telling his tall tale to the Sussex County Republican Committee on December 27, 2017. 

"I'm the only candidate with an actual proven record of doing things... I was gone (sic) to the United States Senate to take on the Clinton Health Care Plan.  I designed a chart, it was presented to the country, and the chart was credited -- by others, not by me -- with saving the United States from 16 years of government controlled healthcare." (Candidate John McCann, on video)

Many people familiar with the long battle to stop the Clinton Health Care Plan disputed John McCann's story.  They said they never heard of him and accused him of taking credit for the work of dozens of others.  They noted that there was a plethora of graphs and charts but that only one got national coverage.  It wasn't John McCann's.

The Clinton Health Care Plan began with a speech by President Bill Clinton in September 1993.  Legislation was introduced in November 1993.  Hearings were held and the debate went into 1994.  In January 1994, Senator Arlen Specter (R-PA) unveiled his famous chart that detailed the bureaucratic morass that was the Clinton Health Care Plan.  As the legislation was amended, dozens of subsequent charts were built off this one, noting those changes and updates.

Earlier this year, we published a link to a C-Span video of the United States Senate Floor on January 27, 1994.  The video is 11 hours long and unedited.

https://www.c-span.org/video/?54084-1/senate-session

At two hours and thirty minutes (2:30) into it, Senator Specter speaks on the issue and appears with his famous chart.  About six minutes into his speech, he explains that staffer Sharon Helfant was responsible for creating it.  He goes on to explain how the Washington Post had a story a day earlier mentioning Helfant and her role in developing the chart.  Numerous national newspapers covered it, and in each story, Sharon Helfant is credited with creating the chart.  John McCann is not mentioned.

C-Span caught the whole thing and it is now part of history.  Numerous newspapers wrote about it.  The campaign of candidate John McCann has disputed that history.  Presumably with their candidate's approval, they issued a media statement that made this boast by the candidate:  "Yes, I authored the chart that killed Hillarycare."

The statement by John McCann's campaign continues:  "A conservative blogger made an accusation regarding my involvement in stopping Hillary Clinton’s healthcare proposal back in the early 90s when I was a fellow in former Senator Arlen Specter’s office (R-PA), insisting that I have overstated my role and plagiarized a graph used to stop Hillarycare.

The basis of these accusations stems from a CSPAN video in January 1994 where my boss at the time, former Senator Specter, credited Sharon Helfant (whom I never worked with) for creating a chart (I never saw) to help explain how bad Hillarycare was for American taxpayers."

The McCann campaign included a paragraph from the Congressional Record for August 10, 1994, at the tail end of the battle to stop the Clinton Health Care Plan.  By this time, it had been amended and re-amended.  The legislation went through more than 130 permutations and, in the end, was scrapped when the Democrats lost control of Congress in November 1994, and were unable to bring the bill up in 1995, as they had planned.  Here is that snippet from the Record:

Read it carefully.  "John McCann, an intern on my staff who helped me prepare the chart on the Mitchell health care bill."

Thousands of names of individuals and groups are read into the Congressional Record each year for everything from boy scout troops to the winners of fishing tournaments.  It is a  small favor, often bestowed by members of Congress.  Rarely does it become the centerpiece of someone's candidacy for Congress.

The McCann campaign also included a paragraph from a letter from Senator Specter's office to John McCann's professor at the Fels Center of Government, where he was a student:  "In the summer of 1994, the Senate rejected the Clinton proposal to take over one-seventh of the entire U.S. economy in large measure because of John McCann’s charts and graphs which clearly showed the flaws and weakness of the proposal."

Again, read it carefully:  "John McCann’s charts and graphs..." 

Plural.  As an intern, John McCann obviously worked on many updates and permutations of the original chart (which he now claims not to have seen, despite the news coverage of it, or Ms. Helfant, who he claims not to have known, despite her prominence on the Specter staff and her preeminence within that staff on matters related to health care). 

Of course, it is a grandiloquent letter of recommendation, which either means that Senator Specter's office was prone to that sort of thing or that they liked and appreciated John McCann's work as a college intern.  Neither alters the record, which is clear.

When he is not outright fibbing, John McCann is prone to puffing himself up to make himself look like more than he is.  Pity

BlueJersey's Melli joins firm subpoenaed in Mueller's Russia probe

You probably read today that Mercury Public Affairs has hired Juan Melli as a Vice President.  Melli is the founder of BlueJersey.com, a former associate editor and columnist for David Wildstein's PolitickerNJ.com, and communications manager for Hoboken Mayor Dawn Zimmer.

Last year, Mercury Public Affairs was the subject of a subpoena in the on-going investigation into Russia's meddling in the United States presidential election in 2016.  According to the Washington Post, former FBI Director and Special Prosecutor Robert Mueller obtained the subpoenas seeking information about work Mercury had done for a pro-Putin political party in the Ukraine:

"The investigators asked Mercury for information about their public relations work at Manafort’s behest for a Brussels-based organization called the European Centre for a Modern Ukraine, which pushed for improved relations between Ukraine and European countries. The Brussels group primarily advanced the interests of a Russia-friendly Ukrainian political party that had been a client of Manafort’s before he joined the Trump campaign.

Mercury, which has prominent Republicans among its senior partners, had worked on the Ukraine lobbying project with the Podesta group, led by Anthony Podesta, brother of John Podesta, who led Hillary Clinton’s presidential campaign."

The full article can be access below:

https://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/washington-lobbying-firms-receive-subpoenas-as-part-of-russia-probe/2017/08/25/55e547de-89c2-11e7-a50f-e0d4e6ec070a_story.html?utm_term=.f43579514869

Melli joins several other members of the New Jersey political establishment at Mercury Public Affairs.  These include Mo Butler, United States Senator Cory Booker's campaign consultant, former chief of staff, and "longtime advisor"; Michael Soliman, United States Senator and former Chairman of the Senate Committee of Foreign Relations Robert Menendez's political advisor and former State Director; and Michael DuHaime, Governor Chris Christie's campaign consultant and someone who has worked on several Republican presidential campaigns.

Once upon a time, there were campaign managers who came up through the ranks alongside the politicians whose careers they helped to manage.  In Great Britain, they call them election "agents" and this is how they once operated in this country too -- wedded to the ups and downs of a particular political personality, often finding a job in the bureaucracy in between campaigns. 

From these manager/agents came the first campaign consultants.  Regional or statewide at first, but with the centralizing power of the national committees and national money there soon came to be the "national" consultant -- recommended by one of the party committees or put in place by them.  We recall a list, circa 1994, that the NRCC (National Republican Congressional Committee) gave out, with the names of those "recommended" media consultants and pollsters on it. There were about a dozen names in all.

But as more money washed into DC and was funneled into campaigns, that changed.  Consultants proliferated and firms became larger.  Following the money, a few either merged with or morphed into public relations and lobbying (government relations) operations.  Why not?  Corporations paid big for access to politicians and there is nobody politicians love more than the person who got them elected.

It was only a matter of time that things went global.  And that is why these New Jersey political operatives became members of an international firm representing the interests of quite a few unsavory foreign governments.  Mercury Public Affairs is itself a subsidiary of an even larger international firm that handles the image-making for Russian President Vladimir Putin, receiving credit for, among other accomplishments, getting Putin's face on the cover of Time magazine -- as the "Person of the Year" for 2007.

Mercury Public Affairs began in 1999 as a decidedly Republican shop with connections to the RNC and politicians like John McCain and Mitt Romney, around 2013 it embarked on a mission to "diversify" -- meaning making the firm "more bipartisan and full-service."  Mike DuHaime joined the firm in 2009, first as a "managing director" but swiftly rising to partner.  Michael Soliman joined Mercury in 2013 and became a partner this year.  Mo Butler joined as a "managing director" in 2016.  Mercury Public Affairs has 10 partners and 160 employees.  Omnicom purchased Mercury in 2003.

Mercury Public Affairs has 18 offices worldwide -- including London; Mexico City; Washington, DC; New York; and Westfield, New Jersey.  The New Jersey offices (a satellite operates out of Trenton) of Mercury are the haunt of Messrs. DuHaime, Soliman, Butler, and other connected operatives like newspaperman Darryl Isherwood (former top political reporter for the Star-Ledger and editor of PolitickerNJ), and "Christie campaign vet" Mark Mowers. 

In January 2015, Michael Soliman registered with the United States Justice Department, pursuant to the Foreign Agents Registration Act of 1938, as a person representing the Embassy of the State of Qatar.  You must have read about Qatar in the news...Amnesty International has accused Qatar of being complicit in human trafficking and modern-day slavery.  Yes, slavery.  In fact, in March of 2016, the United Nations gave Qatar one year "to end migrant worker slavery" or face an international investigation. 

Qatar is just one of freedom's garden spots represented by Mercury Public Affairs.  Remember the controversy in Uganda, when the President of that country decided that homosexuality was a crime that should be punishable by death?  Well, the law he wanted passed was "moderated" in December 2013, substituting life imprisonment for the death penalty.   In 2015, Mercury was brought on to provide public relations, lobbying, and media monitoring services with regards to the Office of the President and the Ugandan government in general on subjects beginning with "human rights" and ending with "good governance."  For which the contract calls for Mercury to be compensated at the rate of $50,000 per month, with $150,000 up front.

Mercury also represents individuals.  Folks like Khalid bin Saqr Al Qasimi, who in 2003 led an anti-American demonstration in which he personally burned an American flag.  For its work, Mercury pocketed a $30,000 monthly retainer, plus expenses.

In January 2016, Mercury Public Affairs partner Morris Reid negotiated a contract with Amsterdam & Partners, an international law firm with offices in London and Washington, DC.  The document is marked "confidential and privileged" but is public information under the Foreign Agents Registration Act.  In August of 2015, Amsterdam & Partners signed a contract with the Turkish Ambassador to the United States to provide legal services related to a "matter of importance" to the embassy.  The government of Turkey paid Amsterdam a retainer of $50,000 a month.

While the contract stipulates that the greatest security and confidentiality be observed, under the terms of the contract between Amsterdam and Turkey, third parties may be hired "as the Firm and the Client agree in writing are necessary to further the Engagement."  And so, in March of 2016, Amsterdam hired Mercury to perform work on behalf of the Turkish government for $20,000 a month -- above and beyond what was being paid to Amsterdam by Turkey.  It is in the contract between Amsterdam & Partners and Mercury Public Affairs that we learn what all this cloak and dagger is in aid of:

The Amsterdam-Mercury contract references an "investigation into Fethullah Gulen and his organization in the United States."  So who is Fethullah Gulen?

Gulen has been in the news since the attempted coup in Turkey in 2016.  Gulen is a religious leader from Turkey, and a one-time political ally of Recep Tayyip Erdogan.  Erdogan is the increasingly authoritarian and Islamist President of Turkey.  He has been repeatedly in the news for purging the judiciary, jailing journalists who write unflattering reports, and successfully intimidating the opposition.  Erdogan had a law passed to allow the government to ban websites and he has promised to "rip out the roots" of Twitter.  He has even attempted to censor speech in other nations, in 2015 Turkey demanding that Germany prosecute a poet who had written some verse critical of Erdogan.

Erdogan and Gulen had a falling out over allegations of political corruption by Erdogan in 2013.  Gulen's books were banned.  First, he was indicted on charges that a Turkish judge threw out, but then was indicted a few months later for treasonable offenses that carried the death penalty.  Gulen fled Turkey, came to the United States, and was convicted in absentia.  According to Wikipedia, Gulen was one of the first Muslim leaders to condemn the attacks on September 11, 2001, writing a "condemnation article" in the Washington Post, the next day.  He wrote:  "A Muslim cannot be a terrorist, nor can a terrorist be a true Muslim."

Gülen teaches a Hanafi version of Islam, deriving from Sunni Muslim scholar Said Nursi's teachings. Gülen has stated that he believes in science, interfaith dialogue among the People of the Book, and multi-party democracy.  He has initiated such dialogue with the Vatican and some Jewish organizations.

Gülen is actively involved in the societal debate concerning the future of the Turkish state, and Islam in the modern world. He has been described in the English-language media as an imam "who promotes a tolerant Islam which emphasises altruism, hard work and education" and as "one of the world's most important Muslim figures."

The government of Turkish President Erdogan has attempted to extradite Gulen back to Turkey to face punishment, but the government of the United States hasn't cooperated.  In the hours after the coup attempt, Erdogan was quick to blame Gulen, while Gulen put forward the theory that Erdogan had staged the coup himself in order to consolidate power.

http://www.asianews.it/files/img/TURCHIA_-_USA_-_Fethullah_Gulen.jpg

The Associated Press identified Amsterdam & Partners (the firm Mercury is working for) as "lawyer(s) for the Turkish government" and quoted Robert Amsterdam:  "There are indications of direct involvement (in the coup attempt) by Fethullah Gulen."  Amsterdam added that he and his firm "have attempted repeatedly to warn the U.S. government of the threat posed (by Gulen)."  Amsterdam said that "according to Turkish intelligence sources, there are signs that Gulen is working closely with certain members of military leadership against the elected civilian government."

Why does Mercury Public Affairs want to be a part of extraditing a moderate cleric to satisfy the rage of an Islamist dictator?  The close relationships with powerful figures in American politics that many of Mercury's partners and employees enjoy is a matter for deep concern. Given who Mercury's relationship with American politicians and the confidential relationships they have with them, shouldn't some clients be out-of-bounds?

Wouldn't it be better if American political consultants stuck with helping to elect the best candidates to serve the American people?  With all this money from foreign powers floating around, at what point does a political advisor to an elected official in America find himself in an existential conflict of interest?

McCann's nonsense confirms he's full of blarney

Last week he did it again. In front of an unsuspecting group of Bergen County citizens. 

Since last summer, while he was still directly employed by the Democrat Sheriff of Bergen County, John McCann has shopped around a tale about how he stopped HillaryCare and saved America.  Here is a transcript of a video recording of McCann telling his tall tale to the Sussex County Republican Committee on December 27, 2017. 

"I'm the only candidate with an actual proven record of doing things... I was gone (sic) to the United States Senate to take on the Clinton Health Care Plan.  I designed a chart, it was presented to the country, and the chart was credited -- by others, not by me -- with saving the United States from 16 years of government controlled healthcare." (Candidate John McCann, on video)

Many people familiar with the long battle to stop the Clinton Health Care Plan disputed John McCann's story.  They said they never heard of him and accused him of taking credit for the work of dozens of others.  They noted that there was a plethora of graphs and charts but that only one got national coverage.  It wasn't John McCann's.

The Clinton Health Care Plan began with a speech by President Bill Clinton in September 1993.  Legislation was introduced in November 1993.  Hearings were held and the debate went into 1994.  In January 1994, Senator Arlen Specter (R-PA) unveiled his famous chart that detailed the bureaucratic morass that was the Clinton Health Care Plan.  As the legislation was amended, dozens of subsequent charts were built off this one, noting those changes and updates.

Last week, we published a link to a C-Span video of the United States Senate Floor on January 27, 1994.  The video is 11 hours long and unedited.

https://www.c-span.org/video/?54084-1/senate-session

At two hours and thirty minutes (2:30) into it, Senator Specter speaks on the issue and appears with his famous chart.  About six minutes into his speech, he explains that staffer Sharon Helfant was responsible for creating it.  He goes on to explain how the Washington Post had a story a day earlier mentioning Helfant and her role in developing the chart.  Numerous national newspapers covered it, and in each story, Sharon Helfant is credited with creating the chart.  John McCann is not mentioned.

C-Span caught the whole thing and it is now part of history.  Numerous newspapers wrote about it.  But yesterday, the campaign of candidate John McCann disputed that history.  Presumably with their candidate's approval, they issued a media statement that made this boast by the candidate:  "Yes, I authored the chart that killed Hillarycare."

The statement by John McCann's campaign continues:  "On Friday, a conservative blogger made an accusation regarding my involvement in stopping Hillary Clinton’s healthcare proposal back in the early 90s when I was a fellow in former Senator Arlen Specter’s office (R-PA), insisting that I have overstated my role and plagiarized a graph used to stop Hillarycare.

The basis of these accusations stems from a CSPAN video in January 1994 where my boss at the time, former Senator Specter, credited Sharon Helfant (whom I never worked with) for creating a chart (I never saw) to help explain how bad Hillarycare was for American taxpayers."

The McCann campaign then includes a paragraph from the Congressional Record for August 10, 1994, at the tail end of the battle to stop the Clinton Health Care Plan.  By this time, it had been amended and re-amended.  The legislation went through more than 130 permutations and, in the end, was scrapped when the Democrats lost control of Congress in November 1994,and were unable to bring the bill up in 1995, as they had planned.  Here is that snippet from the Record:

Read it carefully.  "John McCann, an intern on my staff who helped me prepare the chart on the Mitchell health care bill."

Thousands of names of individuals and groups are read into the Congressional Record each year for everything from boy scout troops to the winners of fishing tournaments.  It is a  small favor, often bestowed by members of Congress.  Rarely does it become the centerpiece of someone's candidacy for Congress.

The McCann campaign also included a paragraph from a letter from Senator Specter's office to John McCann's professor at the Fels Center of Government, where he was a student:  "In the summer of 1994, the Senate rejected the Clinton proposal to take over one-seventh of the entire U.S. economy in large measure because of John McCann’s charts and graphs which clearly showed the flaws and weakness of the proposal."

Again, read it carefully:  "John McCann’s charts and graphs..." 

Plural.  As an intern, John McCann obviously worked on many updates and permutations of the original chart (which he now claims not to have seen, despite the news coverage of it, or Ms. Helfant, who he claims not to have known, despite her prominence on the Specter staff and her preeminence within that staff on matters related to health care). 

Of course, it is a grandiloquent letter of recommendation, which either means that Senator Specter's office was prone to that sort of thing or that they liked and appreciated John McCann's work as a college intern.  Neither alters the record, which is now clear.

McCann campaign confirms he's full of blarney

Since last summer, while he was still directly employed by the Democrat Sheriff of Bergen County, John McCann has shopped around a tale about how he stopped HillaryCare and saved America.  Here is a transcript of a video recording of McCann telling his tall tale to the Sussex County Republican Committee on December 27, 2017. 

"I'm the only candidate with an actual proven record of doing things... I was gone (sic) to the United States Senate to take on the Clinton Health Care Plan.  I designed a chart, it was presented to the country, and the chart was credited -- by others, not by me -- with saving the United States from 16 years of government controlled healthcare." (Candidate John McCann, on video)

Many people familiar with the long battle to stop the Clinton Health Care Plan disputed John McCann's story.  They said they never heard of him and accused him of taking credit for the work of dozens of others.  They noted that there was a plethora of graphs and charts but that only one got national coverage.  It wasn't John McCann's.

The Clinton Health Care Plan began with a speech by President Bill Clinton in September 1993.  Legislation was introduced in November 1993.  Hearings were held and the debate went into 1994.  In January 1994, Senator Arlen Specter (R-PA) unveiled his famous chart that detailed the bureaucratic morass that was the Clinton Health Care Plan.  As the legislation was amended, dozens of subsequent charts were built off this one, noting those changes and updates.

Last week, we published a link to a C-Span video of the United States Senate Floor on January 27, 1994.  The video is 11 hours long and unedited.

https://www.c-span.org/video/?54084-1/senate-session

At two hours and thirty minutes (2:30) into it, Senator Specter speaks on the issue and appears with his famous chart.  About six minutes into his speech, he explains that staffer Sharon Helfant was responsible for creating it.  He goes on to explain how the Washington Post had a story a day earlier mentioning Helfant and her role in developing the chart.  Numerous national newspapers covered it, and in each story, Sharon Helfant is credited with creating the chart.  John McCann is not mentioned.

C-Span caught the whole thing and it is now part of history.  Numerous newspapers wrote about it.  But yesterday, the campaign of candidate John McCann disputed that history.  Presumably with their candidate's approval, they issued a media statement that made this boast by the candidate:  "Yes, I authored the chart that killed Hillarycare."

The statement by John McCann's campaign continues:  "On Friday, a conservative blogger made an accusation regarding my involvement in stopping Hillary Clinton’s healthcare proposal back in the early 90s when I was a fellow in former Senator Arlen Specter’s office (R-PA), insisting that I have overstated my role and plagiarized a graph used to stop Hillarycare.

The basis of these accusations stems from a CSPAN video in January 1994 where my boss at the time, former Senator Specter, credited Sharon Helfant (whom I never worked with) for creating a chart (I never saw) to help explain how bad Hillarycare was for American taxpayers."

The McCann campaign then includes a paragraph from the Congressional Record for August 10, 1994, at the tail end of the battle to stop the Clinton Health Care Plan.  By this time, it had been amended and re-amended.  The legislation went through more than 130 permutations and, in the end, was scrapped when the Democrats lost control of Congress in November 1994,and were unable to bring the bill up in 1995, as they had planned.  Here is that snippet from the Record:

Read it carefully.  "John McCann, an intern on my staff who helped me prepare the chart on the Mitchell health care bill."

Thousands of names of individuals and groups are read into the Congressional Record each year for everything from boy scout troops to the winners of fishing tournaments.  It is a  small favor, often bestowed by members of Congress.  Rarely does it become the centerpiece of someone's candidacy for Congress.

The McCann campaign also included a paragraph from a letter from Senator Specter's office to John McCann's professor at the Fels Center of Government, where he was a student:  "In the summer of 1994, the Senate rejected the Clinton proposal to take over one-seventh of the entire U.S. economy in large measure because of John McCann’s charts and graphs which clearly showed the flaws and weakness of the proposal."

Again, read it carefully:  "John McCann’s charts and graphs..." 

Plural.  As an intern, John McCann obviously worked on many updates and permutations of the original chart (which he now claims not to have seen, despite the news coverage of it, or Ms. Helfant, who he claims not to have known, despite her prominence on the Specter staff and her preeminence within that staff on matters related to health care). 

Of course, it is a grandiloquent letter of recommendation, which either means that Senator Specter's office was prone to that sort of thing or that they liked and appreciated John McCann's work as a college intern.  Neither alters the record, which is now clear.

Did John McCann lie about his role in ClintonCare?

For months we've been hearing congressional candidate John McCann brag about stopping Hillary Care from happening in the 1990's.  The story goes that as a college intern (or "fellow" as he puts it) John McCann claims to have been responsible for ending Hillary Care... yep, all by himself.  McCann claims to have come up with a graph.  That's right.  A graph. 

First, a graph is just a prop -- a visual aid that a speaker makes come alive. 

McCann has been behaving like a self-important, overblown junior academic.  By pointing to himself, taking credit, he is ignoring all the hard work of all those Senators and Congressman and Rush Limbaugh and talk radio and the medical professionals and all those thousands of conservative activists and all the reams of studies and research and opinion pieces and thousands of graphs of all those conservative and libertarian think tanks -- not to mention the Republican legal staffs of both the House and the Senate.  Nope, not them... it was "me" says McCann. 

Second, it wasn't his graph.  The Senator he was interning for -- liberal Republican Arlen Specter -- gave credit to the graph's creator in a speech on the floor of the Senate.  Her name was mentioned in a Washington Post article. 

C-Span caught the whole thing... and now it is part of history. 

The web link below from C-Span is an 11-hour video of the U.S. Senate Floor on January 27, 1994.

https://www.c-span.org/video/?54084-1/senate-session

At two hours and thirty minutes (2:30) into it, Senator Specter speaks on the issue and appears with his huge chart.  About six minutes into his speech, he explains that staffer Sharon Helfant was responsible for creating it.  He goes on to explain how the Washington Posthad a story a day earlier mentioning Helfant and her role in developing the chart.  

Yep, C-Span caught the whole thing... and now it is part of history.  That history doesn't jive with the way congressional candidate John McCann has been bragging.