over the years comes away with two impressions.

First, the guy has the weirdest most mercurial temper you have ever encountered. His eyes turn dark and he looks as if he were going to kill you. He goes absolutely berserk and you will do everything in your power for him not to flip out. He is scary angry. This issue will definitely come out, it does every time he is in the public eye.

Two, the guy has such a long history of being bought and sold by special interests that he does not even know he is doing it. He is one of the Keating five, trading deregulation in S&L for political donations and favors.

The New York Times story isn't about a romantic relationship, it's about McCain using his political power for this woman's petty special interest clients. Go down the list, read the article. McCain would do pretty much whatever this woman wanted. I can imagine her flying in his jets and basically giving him lists of what she wanted him to do. He wrote letters for her, made policy, pressured the FCC, whatever she wanted.

McCain is the worst of the political establishment. He is the essence of misused power, of petty earmarks, of foolish policy that is based on nothing other than a political check.

It's sad and it should come out. He has 100 more stories like this one.

trying to make him look virile...a couple viagra ads should take care of that. lol

I did not think of that.

But, generally, I do care if a politician who talks about ethics and conservative family values has an affair. To me, it says that person is a hypocrite.
The major conflict of interest McCain seems to have had makes things much worse, obviously.

If he was boinking some random woman, yeah, fine, I don't want to hear about it. But if he been doing it with a lobbyist and then carrying her water in the Congress, we've got a big problem.

it would have been unethical for a "family values" pushing guy. Remember, the Republican 'dirt finding' machine will be out in full force on Obama. So yes, this definitely needs to be made an issue. (Imagine the uproar over Hillary if they found out she had had an affair. Unthinkable! She would not have been able to even continue campaigning for the presidency)

sacking out with a pretty blond lobbyist is enough to give one PTSD!

How so? eom

and play being victimized by the liberal media. For what we know, the NYT was set up. I sure hope they can find proof for their claims.

definitely about the corruption with the advantage of using an Enquirer type teaser headline. If the sex stuff turns out just to be hyped people will then just blow off the meat of the article.

.. that got the story written in the first place. But with a battle for the nomination in process I don't expect Huckabee or party antagonists to let any of this go.

illicit sex is always a juicy political attention getter.

risks the credibility of the corruption story by leading with a sex angle that might just be hyped? Oh, NYT stupid me ..:)

to get the public to read the rest of the story about the corruption. After seven years of Bush scandal-a-day, the voters' eyes glaze over when they read a headline about another corruption scandal. Corruption has become the accepted standard for the Republican Party. It's what they do.

But, sex, now that's something a little different, something with a little sizzle in it. So, the voter start to read about the sex and comes to find out that it might have been sex and corruption too. And the corruption is definitely confirmable. McCain can't deny the letters, nor the business association with the lobbyist, since documentable air travel records exist. That enable whoever his Democratic opponent to tattoo Bush on McCain's forehead for every independent and remaining moderate Republican voter to see. McCain == Bush. If you like the Iraq War, the corruption, the destruction of America, vote McCain.

For kickers, just taunt McCain with this scandal on the campaign trail and watch him explode. He's only got to do it once and the refrain will pop up: "In your guts, you know he's nuts."

During the campaign, and show to the entire world the real nut he is.

I have been waiting for him to explode too, it is the only time he loses that casper look.

:)

you definitely want a foul mouthed misfit with anger management issues to become Commander in Chief with access to the biggest nuclear arsenal the world has ever known.

AP February, 2008 by Libby Quaid

WASHINGTON - Temper, temper.

Republican John McCain is known for his. He's been dubbed "Senator Hothead" by more than one publication, but he's also had some success extracting his hatchet from several foreheads.

Even his Republican Senate colleagues are not spared his sharp tongue.

"F-you," he shouted at Texas Senator John Cornyn last year.

"Only an a- would put together a budget like this," he told the former Budget Committee chairman, Senator Pete Domenici, in 1999.

"I'm calling you a f- jerk!" he once retorted to Iowa Senator Chuck Grassley.

With Cornyn, he smoothed things over quickly. The two argued during a meeting on immigration legislation; Cornyn complained that McCain seemed to parachute in during the final stages of negotiations. "F-you. I know more about this than anyone else in the room," McCain reportedly shouted.

Cornyn chuckled at the memory of what he called McCain's "aggressive expressions of differences." The Texan has endorsed McCain.

"He almost immediately apologized to me," Cornyn said last week. "I accepted his apology, and as far as I'm concerned, we've moved on down the road."

The political landscape in Arizona, McCain's home state, is littered with those who have incurred his wrath. Former governor Jane Hull pretended to hold a telephone receiver away from her ear to demonstrate a typical outburst from McCain in a 1999 interview with the New York Times.

McCain has even blown up at volunteers and, on occasion, the average Joe.

He often pokes fun at his reputation: "Thanks for the question, you little jerk," he said last year to a New Hampshire high school student wondering if McCain, at 71, was too old to be president.

Other times, his ire is all too real. This has prompted questions about whether his temperament is suited to the office of commander-in-chief or whether it might handicap him in a presidential campaign against either Barack Obama or Hillary Rodham Clinton, who are not known for such outbursts.

"I decided I didn't want this guy anywhere near a trigger," Domenici told Newsweek in 2000.

(The LINK for more is at the top of this post.)

Limbaugh Spins NYT Story As Hate Radio Victory: McCain Should ‘Understand Who His Friends Are’

http://thinkprogress.org/2008/02/21/limbaugh-mccain/

I can't believe that Bush personally gives two squats about who follows him, as long as it some (genuine) leftist who wants to initiate war-crimes trials. Cheney probably cares, but he does he really hate/worry about McCain that much?

Bill Keller(editor) lives in a world of his own , in his belief in the Times reputation, despite not naming sources yet again....

"Personally, I was surprised by the volume of the reaction (including more than 2,400 reader comments posted on our Web site). I was surprised by how lopsided the opinion was against our decision, with readers who described themselves as independents and Democrats joining Republicans in defending Mr. McCain from what they saw as a cheap shot.

And, frankly, I was a little surprised by how few readers saw what was, to us, the larger point of the story. Perhaps here, at the outset of this conversation, is a good point to state as clearly as possible our purpose in publishing."....

The point of this "Long Run" installment was that, according to people who know him well, this man who prizes his honor above all things and who appreciates the importance of appearances also has a history of being sometimes careless about the appearance of impropriety, about his reputation......."

_{1."George Washington did not cross the Delaware for Capitalism," -Shmuley Boteach.
2.The Dems haven't punished the GOP enough, so you're going to reward the Republicans?}

in both the article and the comments

(I know someone else already posted it but I can't find it now!)
_{1."George Washington did not cross the Delaware for Capitalism," -Shmuley Boteach.
2.The Dems haven't punished the GOP enough, so you're going to reward the Republicans?}

"From the looks of it, the paper is going to have to fight for its story--and its ethics--in the court of public opinion, but this is not something the Times is ever comfortable doing..."

They can always apologize.

I haven't seen anything in all of this to show that what they reported was not true.

into the story was worthy of the Enquirer. They presented no proof of a personal relationship, all very strange.

They allowed ex-McCain staffers to do that. (And it seems pretty clear the piece was heavily lawyered after the authors wrote it.)

The piece was really about cozy relationships with lobbyists. And McCain has lots and lots and lots of those. Including most of his campaign staff.

And yes, McCain had quite a few affairs back before he married his current heiress wife. Don't know about since then, and don't care.

It's the lobbyists.

story was the lobbyists, but the way they presented it was horrible. I know he is an ass but it still wasn't right.

...that that was interference from editors, who saw the presentation as a way to inoculate McCain from the real story. I sort of doubt it will work (McCain has contradicted Paxson, he's contradicted his own affadavit), but the timing and presentation are nuts. If they wanted to "get" McCain, they would've done it in Dec (when he hadn't a prayer), or in the general (where he still doesn't have a prayer).

I don't know, but I strongly suspect that the reporters and editors are working at cross purposes. These are the same folks who recently hired William Kristol, after all.

probably true, the writers probably are not involved in the FP layout and detail. To me they didn't need to include the woman angle.

For McCain, Self-Confidence on Ethics Poses Its Own Risk

the NYT website presentation of the story. But the NYT public editor just chimed in, I think he expresses the handling of the story better than I can.

What That McCain Article Didn’t Say