Opposition Research Cheat Sheet
As a service to lazy investigative journalists and those dozens of underpaid opposition researchers slaving away in cheap office space rented by the DNC and RNC, here’s a handy guide to the dirty details that will emerge (and be rehashed) in coming months about the three remaining presidential contenders.
Hillary Clinton:
Besides Whitewater, the death of Vince Foster, those Rose Law firm billing records, Travelgate, her vote giving Bush the authorization to invade Iraq, the health care debacle, and donations from Norman Hsu and other shady Asian donors, what else could there be to dig up?
- Her non-attendance at police funerals after 9/11
- Her legislative proposal after the 2000 election debacle to get rid of the Electoral College, which would minimize the importance of voters in 30 out of 50 states
- While at Yale Law School, her clerkship at Treuhaft, Walker and Burnstein, a firm run by a Communist Party member. Among the firm’s controversial clients: Black Panther Huey P. Newton who was on trial for killing an Oakland police officer in 1967.
- Her huge profits from cattle futures trading in 1978-79. She was accused of a conflict of interest since she made those investments upon the advice of a friend who was the top lawyer for one of Arkansas’ most powerful and heavily regulated companies.
- FileGate, when she was accused of requesting hundreds of FBI background reports on former Republican White House employees and recommending that an unqualified person be hired to lead the White House Security Office in 1996
- Earmarks that she’s obtained for Corning, the New York-based company that is one of her biggest sources of campaign contributions. A month after getting a check from Corning’s PAC for $10,000 in 2003, Clinton traveled to Corning’s headquarters, at Coming’s expense, to say she would introduce legislation to authorize “hundreds of millions” of dollars in federal grants to school districts to purchase Corning-manufactured devices to make their school bus exhaust cleaner.
- In total, Clinton has delivered over $500 million worth of earmarks that have benefited 59 corporations, the majority of which donated to her campaigns, according to the Los Angeles Times.
- After her Hollywood fundraiser in August 2000, her campaign failed to report $800,000 in contributions, according to the government.
- Siding with the Republican majority to vote down a resolution restricting U.S. exports of cluster bombs to countries that use them against civilian-populated areas.
- One of her fundraisers, Pakistani immigrant Abdul Rehman Jinnah, fled the country after being indicted on charges of engineering more than $50,000 in illegal donations to Democratic committees.
Barack Obama:
Besides his ties to Antoin ‘Tony’ Rezko, the indicted real-estate developer whose trial begins later this spring, and his admitted use of marijuana and cocaine, what else is there?
- His legislative push in 2005 for more federal spending to combat the avian flu two weeks after he bought up $5,000 worth of stock in AVI BioPharma, a speculative company developing a drug to combat that flu.
- Suing Illinois over its voter registration rolls in 1995 on behalf of ACORN, a group later indicted for voter fraud.
- Connected to Rezko is corrupt Iraqi-British billionaire Nadhmi Auchi, who allegedly collected commissions selling weapons to Iraq in the 1980s and 1990s and was later convicted in France for getting $100 million in illegal commissions as part of a massive scandal involving French oil giant Elf Aquitaine.
- His Senate staff’s negotiations with Companion Security which wanted to lease a military facility in Illinois as a training camp. The security firm, which was led by a former Chicago cop, Daniel T. Frawley and has ties to Rezko, obtained a $50 million contract from Iraq’s then-Minister of Electricity Aiham Alsamarrae, a Chicago native who was later accused of graft and detained by Iraqi officials for four months.
- His membership in the Trinity United Church of Christ in Chicago, which is headed by radical preacher Rev. Jeremiah Wright, Jr. Among Wright’s more controversial acts: traveling to Libya with Louis Farrakhan. “When [Obama's] enemies find out that in 1984 I went to Tripoli to visit Colonel Gadaffi with Farrakhan, a lot of his Jewish support will dry up quicker than a snowball in hell,” Wright says about the impact of the revelation. Wright has also claimed that the 9/11 attacks were a result of America’s violent policies and preaches Black liberation theology.
- In “Dreams of my Father,” Obama talks about how he fell in love with a white woman, only to push her away out of a fear that he would have to assimilate into her world. In college, he also was critical of other “half-breeds,” who prefer the company of whites to blacks.
John McCain:
- As one of the Keating Five, McCain received $112,000 in contributions from crooked realtor Charles Keating Jr. in return for the senator’s help to stave off the government’s seizure of his savings and loan. McCain’s wife and father-in-law also invested $359,100 in a Keating shopping center in 1986, just before McCain met with regulators. He was rebuked by the Senate Ethics Committee for exercising “poor judgment for intervening with federal regulators on Keating’s behalf.
- Placing a “hold” on legislation that would have excluded a federal land swap to benefit Del Webb Corporation, one of his biggest career patrons, by allowing the company to take over parts of the Red Rock National Conservation Area.
- His friendship with mobster Joe “Bananas” Bonano, sending his birthday regards and regrets for not attending the birthday party for Bonano, who had retired to Arizona.
- His acknowledgment that his adultery broke up his first marriage.
- His current wife, Cindy, was addicted to prescription narcotics and stole drugs from her own medical charity, American Voluntary Medical Team, in 1994.
- His long battle with cancer and his refusal to allow his doctors to talk directly to the press. In 1993, he had a melanoma removed from his left shoulder and in 2000 he had surgery to remove two more melanomas from his left temple and left upper arm.
- His “volcanic temper” which he has unleashed on his colleagues, according to the Arizona Republic. “People who disagree with him get the ‘fuck you,’” said former Rep. John LeBoutillier, a New York Republican who had an encounter with McCain when he was on a POW task force in the House.
- His nasty exchange with Barack Obama in 2006, when he mocked the Illinois Senator, saying he wanted to “apologize” for “assuming” that Obama’s assurances of working together were sincere. “I’m embarrassed to admit that after all these years in politics, I failed to interpret your previous assurances as typical rhetorical gloss routinely used in politics to make self-interested partisan posturing appear more noble.”
- His lack of temperament, including such choice quotes as these:
Referring to the Leisure World retirement community as “Seizure World” where “97 percent of the people vote and the other 3 percent are in intensive care” during the 1986 Senate campaign.
At a 1998 Republican fundraiser, he joked, “Why is Chelsea Clinton so ugly? Because her father is Janet Reno.” McCain later apologized to President Clinton, who accepted his apology.
His frequent use of the term, “gook,” to refer to his Vietnamese torturers during the Vietnam War. During the 2000 presidential campaign, he repeatedly refused to apologize for the term.
In 1998, poking fun of his daughter’s love of “Titantic,” he called Leonardo DiCaprio an “androgynous wimp.”
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March 25th, 2008 at 8:27 pm
[...] This toxic combination of alcoholism and military authoritarian culture could’ve tossed the young McCain between humiliation and fear. Often under these circumstances, identification with the aggressor dynamics occur. McCain might’ve learned early on if he can’t beat them, join them. It’s best to appropriate his father’s aggressive and critical approach and a lot more powerful than being a wimp (according to Muckraked, he called Leonardo Dicaprio “an androgynous wimp”). His family military culture likely taught him that when facing fear: fight and certainly not flight. [...]