The McCain Story Ain't About the Fucking:
Wednesday night is rum night at Casa de Rude, and last night the lunar eclipse was as good a reason as any to invite company over. In honor of the week's events over in Cuba, the Rude Pundit and his guests, a straight mixed-race couple - he's black, she's white - from uptown, enjoyed sips of what was supposed to be black market Havana Club, but, really, it just tasted like mid-level Bacardi. Such is life. It had a kick. It was smoky enough, and it fortified us against the coming walk in the cold. Just before we heading outside to check out the darkening moon, the first reports came in: look at the New York Times, they said, John McCain is not who he says he is, and then they showed a picture of Vicki Iseman, whom we all agreed was eminently fuckable.

Now, the Rude Pundit doesn't really give a shit who John McCain fucks or doesn't fuck. The fact that McCain might have tagged some hot lobbyist poontang a decade ago doesn't matter except to the nutzoid "values" right. It probably should matter to McCain's creepy-ass wife, but since she was once the hot 'tang to McCain's then-first wife, she had to be expectin' this. All of us awaiting the eclipse agreed: who the fuck cares?

Then the Rude Pundit had to go and say, "Yeah, and thanks, New York Times, for puttin' the image of McCain's scarred, bony ass gimpily half-thrusting between that chick's legs in my head." After a pause, the Rude Pundit added, "Old fucker probably can't come unless she shoves bamboo into his sphincter." It was a mood spoiler, and we downed our rum more quickly after.

No, none of that fucking matters, the fucking, and it's pretty much like the New York Times thought, "Aw, hell, we gotta do something to make people read this story about the arcane rules regarding favors and campaign contributions, so howzabout some hints at some lobbyist ballin'?"

What's important is that, more and more, it seems like John McCain's push for campaign finance reform was to protect himself from himself - since the Keating Five scandal, the man has raked in lobbyists-and-their-clients' cash like a cheap whore on buck-a-blow night at the brothel: "In late 1999, McCain twice wrote letters to the Federal Communications Commission on behalf of Florida-based Paxson Communications — which had paid Iseman as its lobbyist — urging quick consideration of a proposal to buy a television station license in Pittsburgh. At the time, Paxson's chief executive, Lowell W. 'Bud' Paxson, also was a major contributor to McCain's 2000 presidential campaign...McCain wrote the letters after he received more than $20,000 in contributions from Paxson executives and lobbyists. Paxson also lent McCain his company's jet at least four times during 1999 for campaign travel."

The Rude Pundit may be reading this wrong, but it doesn't seem to square with McCain's assertion today that "At no time have I ever done anything that would betray the public trust or make a decision which in any way would not be in the public interest or would favor anyone or organization." (And what a bizarro thing to say - as a member of Congress, McCain is constantly put in a position where he has to favor some individuals and organizations over others.)

Yeah, according to McCain's lawyers, he didn't support everything Iseman's clients wanted. But if you're on your knees with a row of johns lined up with dollar bills taped to their cocks, you're not exactly honorable because you found a few of them a little too scabby to suck.

As many others have said, right now this might become a real story - it's just not all out there yet. But most of the mainstream media outlets are gonna boil it down to who banged who, not who got fucked and who did the fucking. And now with McCain calling "Bullshit" on the Times, it's time for the paper to put it all out there. Just make sure it's less about John McCain's dick and whatever pussy it's been placed into and a little more about who he's holding hands with.

By the way, the lunar eclipse was quietly lovely and mysterious and disconcerting at the same time. When it involves the moon, of course, an eclipse is not about bringing darkness and night about. We were already in the dark. It's merely the ability to see a shadow cast across that which glows, maybe to see it a little differently.