"Birds of prey" lobbyists descend on McCain campaign

Johnny-Boy's just having one terrible day on the campaign trail today. We all know about Republican presidential candidate John McCain's memory lapse of how many houses he owns. But there was another "what the frack was McCain talking about" moment when McCain decided to talk about Washington lobbyists. From The Politico.com:

LAS CRUCES, N.M. — Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.) called lobbyists “birds of prey” Wednesday and vowed to enforce a lifetime ban on lobbying for members of his administration.

“Whenever there’s a corrupt system, then you’re going to have these birds of prey descend on it to get their share of the spoils,” McCain said in a half-hour interview with Politico following a town-hall meeting in the southern part of this swing state.

[....]

The senator went so far as to say: “Lobbyists don’t come to my office. Because they know they’re not going to be an earmark. They know they’re not going to get a pork-barrel project. Senator Obama’s gotten lots of ’em.:”

You can listen to McCain's "birds of prey" statement here:



There is just no way I can objectively analyze this latest statement from John McCain, except to say that it is birdshit crazy. So Washington's political system is corrupted. The lobbyists have descended on Washington to feast on the corrupted spoils. This means that the congress-critters in Washington are all corrupted, and the lobbyists birds feed upon them--with the exception of John McCain. And as president, John McCain will clean out the Washington corruption off lobbyist birds with a little help from the lobbyists that have been running his own campaign. There is an estimated 159 lobbyists running the McCain campaign. And let us not forget the McCain campaign's pro-Georgia stance, during the Georgia-Russia crisis, was advised by a lobbyist who was working for the Georgian government. Carpetbagger's Steve Benen nicely sums up McCain's lobbying problem by saying:

McCain’s campaign manager is a lobbyist. His chief strategist is a lobbyist. His top foreign policy advisor is a lobbyist. The man he tapped to run the Republican convention is a lobbyist. His top two senior advisors are both lobbyists. His campaign is being financed by donations from lobbyists, bundled by other lobbyists.

And John McCain's hypocrisy doesn't even stop there. While McCain now attacks the lobbyists for being "birds of prey," he has also consistently defended the lobbying industry multiple times. Even more, one McCain lobbyist has conducted his lobbying business on the Straight Talk Express:

Of all the lobbyists involved in the McCain campaign, the most prominent is Black, who has made a lucrative career of shuttling back and forth between presidential politics and big-time Washington lobbying. He has worked for the campaigns of former congressman Jack Kemp (N.Y.), former president George H.W. Bush and former senators Phil Gramm (Tex.) and Robert J. Dole (Kan.), all Republicans.

[....]

But even as Black provides a private voice and a public face for McCain, he also leads his lobbying firm, which offers corporate interests and foreign governments the promise of access to the most powerful lawmakers. Some of those companies have interests before the Senate and, in particular, the Commerce Committee, of which McCain is a member.

Black said he does a lot of his work by telephone from McCain's Straight Talk Express bus.

You just can't make this birdshit up. The corruption within the McCain campaign is just incredible.