Category — Presidential Race 2008

Tuesday morning, 5/27, Peter Roskam took a few minutes out of his busy schedule for one of his recurring appearances on WIND’s repugnant John and Cisco show to engage in a little Clinton-bashing. (You may recall Roskam’s recent appearance on the show when he insinuated that the Clinton’s would attempt to blackmail the super-delegates in order to win the nomination) I assume that spreading innuendo about his Congressional colleague is something that falls outside of his official duties and is part of his assigned role with the McCain campaign, but I can’t be certain. It was unclear whether he was calling from his Congressional office.

I have my own opinion about what he said but I’ll let you judge first. Here’s a transcript of the brief exchange, the first item of business in the call:

CISCO: “So as much as I hate being in a position where it sounds as though I’m defending Hillary, when you hear her bring up RFK and bring up how in the past party nominations have taken a lot longer certainly… and then people freak out over her using RFK, it kind of sounds like what she was getting at wasn’t all that bad.

ROSKAM: “Well I think it sort of…her problem is that…there is sort of a dark narrative about the Clintons right?”

CISCO: (sound of agreement)

ROSKAM: “There is these stories that follow them about not just being real aggressive towards…being aggressive towards being political opponents in the political sense but being REAL AGGRESSIVE toward political opponents and different operatives over the years. So when she invokes the assassination of Senator Kennedy it just kinda spotlights this feeling that a lot of people have about her…kinda that what won’t she do to get elected…and that’s…that’s why it just sounded bad.”

CISCO: “Because of the past history and people wonder is she bring that up just to plant the seed…”

ROSKAM: “Yeah. I mean it’s beginning to sound like a weird movie script doesn’t it? She’s kind of like the water skier after he goes down and just not letting go of the rope…

CISCO: “Being dragged through the water but not giving up…”

ROSKAM: “Yeah, that’s right. So it’s probably a two or three day story and it’ll end up going away…but I also think that it…it does highlight what a lot of people think about the Clintons…but obviously not going to that extent…but what won’t these people do to win this thing?”

What I hear is my Congressman, Peter Roskam, right wing radio code referring in code to the some of the accusations that have been fabricated out of whole cloth about the Clintons by members of Roskam’s own party (who is it that will really do anything to win?) - stories like those surounding the tragic suicide of Vince Foster - in an attempt to defeat Bill Clinton in the 1996 election. Roskam know’s his audience is familiar with this garbage - so all he has to do is ues words like “dark narrative” and “REAL AGGRESSIVE” to get that audience imagining all sorts of conspiracies behind Clinton’s remark the other day about the RFK assassination. I believe that Roskam knows exactly what he is doing and I think it is very sad that we have a man like him, devoid of conscience, representing us in the House.

Incidentally, this same show that Roskam is fond of appearing on, did a spot within the past few days mocking Senator Byrd for his display of grief on the Senate floor upon hearing that Senator Kennedy, his longtime friend and colleague, had been diagnosed with a brain tumor.

MoveOn.org has launched a campaign to pressure Republican presidential candidate John McCain to fire his chief advisor, Charlie Black, who in his work as a lobbyist has represented some pretty creepy foreign clients including dictators Ferdinand Marcos in the Phillippines and Mobuto Sese Seko in Zaire and mass murderer Jonas Savimbi in Angola. Here is MoveOn’s ad:

Charlie Black is a long-time Republican political operative who has served as an adviser to Presidents Reagan and George H.W. Bush, who themselves showed little compunction about cozying up to tyrants and terrorists when it served their ultra-right pro-corporate agenda. He is obviously without conscience and I concur with MoveOn that he should be dismissed.

In addition to contacting McCain at (703)-418-2008 to urge him to dismiss Charlie Black, residents of the 6th should contact Peter Roskam, who serves on the McCain Campaign’s Illinois Leadership Team. Roskam can be reached at his Washington office at (202) 225-4561 or in Bloomingdale at (630) 893-9670.

After you’ve made your phone calls, mosey on over to WBEZ’s web site and listen to the Worldview interviews from May 19th with Thomas Carothers of the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace and with James
Jordan of the Alliance for Global Justice.  The theme was the so-called “democracy-building” agenda under President Bush and predecessors. I think the show points out pretty starkly what a sham and failure this agenda has been, back as far as Nixon and Reagan and should help motivate you to throw out the McCains and the Roskams and their spooky hangers-on like Charlie Black. The world can’t handle much more of their brand of “democracy-building”.

Addendum 5/22: The Washington Post published an article about the Black controversy today.

John Hagee, the creepy evangelical pastor who’s support presidential candidate and Peter Roskam ally John McCain so ardently courted, today apologized to Catholics for his anti-catholic remarks which included calling the church “The Great Whore” and accusing it of supporting Adolph Hitler. Hagee’s apology was immediately accepted on behalf of Catholics everywhere by Bill Donahue, head of the Catholic league, who declared the matter closed. This presumably clears the way for Pastor Hagee to refocus on his core ministry of hating gays, Jews, Muslims, and women.

Following Mr. Donahue’s lead, and on behalf of all patriotic white Americans, I am officially accepting Barack Obama’s explanations of his affiliation with Jeremiah Wright, and declaring the matter closed.

We can now take up the real work at hand: electing leaders who will will begin to undo the disastrous legacy of 8 years under George Bush, and not men like John McCain and Peter Roskam who wish to sustain it.

Peter Roskam appeared yesterday (4/29) on WIND’s loathsome John and Cisco in the Morning show. He came on ostensibly to talk about his plan to allow his constituents a crack at suggesting legislation (more on that later) but the conversation veered off into the topic of Obama’s present difficulties and Hillary’s chances. It was a group effort, but what Roskam essentially suggested, with John and Cisco;’s help, is that Bill and Hillary Clinton have dirt on the superdelegates and will use it if necessary to turn the tide Hillary’s way. The audio is at the above site. I have recorded it lest it disappear. Will put up a transcript when I have a little time. The comment appears in the second half of the clip.

I hate it that this slimy creep is, as he likes to put it, “my voice in Congress.”

So here’s the transcript of the exchange:

Cisco: “So Jeremiah Wright on the PR offensive… your guy John McCain must be… must be pretty happy with Reverend Wright’s PR offensive.”

Roskam: “You know its amazing… Politics 101 is when your opponents are melting down, get out of the way and… um… I think that… that is what is happening… um… and this drama and saga on the Democratic side of the aisle continues to amaze me and continues to defy logic.”

Cisco: “When you see this battle back and forth with the Dems and the fact that most everyone who’s looked at the numbers says Hillary really… really can’t win…there’s not really a shot of her becoming the nominee, short of a major meltdown… do you think she’s at a point where she realizes that but maybe its a scorched earth idea where het, if I can damage Obama enough so that McCain wins then I can run again in four years?”

Roskam: (with feigned indignation) “Oh Cisco, that is a very dark world view of the Clintons. What is it that animates that?”

Cisco: (laughing) “I know… where did that come from?”

Roskam: (laughs) You know I… there is a… I am one of these people that still thinks that there is a possibility that she comes up with the brass ring at the end of it all. And the pressure that’s on these superdelegates… can you imagine a superdelegate right now with a little bit of dirt under their finger nails… can you imagine what their life is like?

Cisco: Yeah, just some random elected official in Wisconsin or Iowa one whois mostly under the radar but could become nationally known if a certain tidbit is made public…

John: “Well the Clintons have a manila folder on every superdelegate, you know that. Some are thicker than others but they’re going to roll that stuff out as needed. Its soming sooner rather than later, to quote Bill Clinton himself.

Roskam: “Yeah these guys are used to winning and they’re not going to lose quietly, that’s for sure.”

The kind of tactic Roskam suggests is right out of the Republican playbook and just because Roskam is happy to use sleaze in his own campaigns doesn’t mean the Clintons will.

It is clear that Roskam won’t be wanting for work after he is defeated this fall. He clearly has an aptitude for the kind of right wing smear radio that John and Cisco produce.

Peter Roskam is at it again. He’s using a feeble gesture to attempt to convince Illinois veterans he’s on their side, at least long enough to get their votes this fall. Veteran’s should not be fooled.

There’s a “News Item” posted on Roskam’s House web site today announcing that “today reaffirmed his strong commitment to the men and women of our Armed Forces”. How did he do this? By proposing to make it easier for employers who hire veterans to receive tax breaks.

A commendable idea, I guess. But the problem is, for any program to help Veterans (or anyone else for that matter) to earn Roskam’s approval it has to somehow involve tax benefits to business. Any thing else is a non-starter for him. It is tax breaks that motivate Roskam, not the true needs of veterans.

Veterans do need jobs. They also need adequate medical and psychiatric care. They need rehabilitation. They need re-training. They need homes There are as many as 200,000 homeless veterans on any given night).

Roskam had a chance last fall, right around Veterans Day to help veterans begin to meet these needs. He said no. Twice. Too expensive.

Meanwhile, John McCain, who Roskam has endorsed for President, and who has supported Roskam, refuse to back a new GI Bill in the Senate. On his website, he says “America owes its liberty, its prosperity, and its future to our veterans who have dedicated their lives to protecting our great country.” He’s right. So why is it that he and Roskam will spend billions and billions of dollars sending these men and women off to fight and then won’t help when they come back to us wounded, unemployed and homeless? The only interest Roskam and McCain have in veterans is in getting their votes.

What follows is a short film by Robert Greenwald on McCain’s failure to support the new GI Bill:

No wonder Peter Roskam loves this guy. According to John McCain, de-regulation of markets is the answer to everything. Even to the problems caused by…er…deregulation of markets.

In a speech on March 25, to the Orange County Hispanic Small Business Roundtable, McCain had this to say about the origins of the present crisis:

“The other part of what happened was an explosion of complex financial instruments that weren’t particularly well understood by even the most sophisticated banks, lenders and hedge funds. To make matters worse, these instruments — which basically bundled together mortgages and sold them to others to spread risk throughout our capital markets — were mostly off-balance sheets, and hidden from scrutiny. In other words, the housing bubble was made worse by a series of complex, inter-connected financial bets that were not transparent or fully understood. That means they weren’t always managed wisely because people couldn’t properly quantify the risk or the value of these bets. And because these instruments were bundled and sold and resold, it became harder and harder to find and connect up a real lender with a real borrower. Capital markets work best when there is both accountability and transparency. In the case of our current crisis, both were lacking.”

I’m good with this so far. Deregulation has led to complex new instruments that are poorly understood and lacking in accountability and transparency.

And so the obvious solution is more careful regulation of the kinds of transactions that got us into trouble, right?

Wrong! McCain’s answer: increased de-regulation!

“In financial institutions, there is no substitute for adequate capital to serve as a buffer against losses. Our financial market approach should include encouraging increased capital in financial institutions by removing regulatory, accounting and tax impediments to raising capital.”

Also, get tough on homeowners, further reduce taxes on the wealthy by eliminating the AMT, and reduce the corporate tax rate leaving poor and middle class taxpayers to bear a greater share of the costs of Republican military adventures, oil company subsidies, and bailouts of failed banks. Yep, sounds like Roskam’s kind of plan.