Sex and the Single Political Culture

I want you to watch a politician who understands the financial services industry, now the most important factor in returning us to economic growth, and who is at the top of his game discussing how we sold out the manufacturing base of the country while in thrall to that financial services industry, particularly Goldman Sachs, which created artificial paper profits and used their vast political connections to cut the line and receive trillions in handouts when those paper profits went up in smoke. As a result, the banks have rebounded thanks to the intense effort of the federal government, but that money has not flowed through them and into the creation of new productive sectors of the economy that would create jobs.

The only additional piece of information you need is that this particular politician cannot practice politics anymore because he solicited prostitutes, and as a Democrat not named Larry Craig, David Vitter, John Ensign or Mark Sanford, he must resign for a sex-related mistake. Funny how that worked out right at the time that the financial sector was on the verge of melting.



I don't glorify Eliot Spitzer's conduct. But clearly he is virtually the most important politician in America for the times who cannot use his skill and talent because of a personal indiscretion. And this has become a real paradox in America, where personal failings get confused with real and thoroughgoing criminal activity, and the over-moralists in Washington pick and choose which to emphasize. Thus we have a situation where Marcy Wheeler says blowjob on television and everyone in the media runs for the fainting couch, but hours earlier on the same network good ol' boy Pat Buchanan can advocate for murdering a 19 year-old and nobody had any similar reaction, just a shrug of the shoulders and words like "Oh, Pat!"

Our sexual hangups date back to our Puritan ancestry. They will always spark attention and furious twitterings (the offline kind) back and forth. When they get in the way of legitimate investigations into the rule of law and the work of public servants uniquely qualified to fight back against the corporate control of government by the financial industry, they become real barriers to progress. And no matter how many moralizers fall under the spell of passion and fall from their own personal standards, this zing of attention to sex will never cease.

Barack Obama Is More Popular Than Sex!

That's right you sexy things, you.

A national poll suggests that President-elect Barack Obama is more popular than ever despite recent speed bumps on the road to his inauguration.

The CNN/Opinion Research Corp. survey released Sunday also indicates that most Americans see Obama's inauguration as a chance for the nation to come together.

Eighty-four percent of those surveyed say they approve of how Obama is handling the presidential transition. That's up 2 points from the middle of December and up 5 points from the beginning of December.

Damn. 84 percent.

Now check this out, a survey of Americans' attitudes towards sex:

	Men	Women
Think about sex every day	70%	34%
Enjoy sex a "great deal"	83%	59%

So the percentage of Americans who approve of Barack Obama's performance is higher than the percentage of American men who enjoy their own performance!

Daaaamn!

Of course, this survey was taken in 2004, when Bush was president, when there was no point in continuing to populate the world, so maybe sex is now actually more popular than Obama. We'll have to just wait and see.

You've got a lot riding on this, Mr. President-Elect.

Best Little Whorehouse In Denver

Charlie Savage advances the ball on this story of debauchery at the Minerals Management Service in the Department of the Interior. If we weren't talking about billions of wasted dollars it'd actually be funny.

As Congress prepares to debate expansion of drilling in taxpayer-owned coastal waters, the Interior Department agency that collects oil and gas royalties has been caught up in a wide-ranging ethics scandal — including allegations of financial self-dealing, accepting gifts from energy companies, cocaine use and sexual misconduct [...]

The investigations are the latest installment in a series of scathing inquiries into the program’s management and competence in recent years. While previous reports have focused on problems the agency had in collecting millions of dollars owed to the Treasury, and hinted at personal misconduct, the new reports go far beyond any previous study in revealing serious concerns with the integrity and behavior of the agency’s officials.

In one of the new reports, investigators concluded that Ms. Denett worked with two aides to steer a lucrative consulting contract to one of the aides after he retired, violating competitive procurement rules.

Two other reports focus on “a culture of substance abuse and promiscuity” in the service’s royalty-in-kind program. That part of the agency collects about $4 billion a year in oil and gas rather than cash royalties.

It's really an eye-opening report. The graft here is widespread, and these aren't rinky-dink companies engaging in this - Chevron and Shell are implicated.

Showing that impeccable timing that always seems to characterize Congressional Democrats, they today released their offshore drilling plan, which is tone deaf in so many ways:

• The price of oil has dropped 30% from its height, and the price of gas nearly 20%, without one drop of new oil being drilled, entirely due to lower demand and increasing transit ridership. Such conservation not only works, it works at a level that the pathetic amounts of coastal drilling never can.

• The federal agency that would be tasked with approving and managing all these new oil leases is having coke orgies with Big Oil.

Bill Nelson, at least, has stepped up and said that there should be no new drilling as a cause of this.

But of course, such a maneuver would mean that logic is taking over in the government.

There Is No Other Good Title For This But "Drill Baby Drill"

Really, I tried to come up with something different, but it's too perfect:

Government officials handling billions of dollars in oil royalties engaged in illicit sex with employees of energy companies they were dealing with and received numerous gifts from them, federal investigators said Wednesday.

The alleged transgressions involve 13 Interior Department employees in Denver and Washington. Their alleged improprieties include rigging contracts, working part-time as private oil consultants, and having sexual relationships with — and accepting golf and ski trips and dinners from — oil company employees, according to three reports released Wednesday by the Interior Department's inspector general.

In bed with Big Oil. Literally.

Meanwhile OPEC's going to cut supply, making a total mockery out of any of these "drill now" efforts, because no amount of spigot opening on our coasts could have as much of an impact as one nod of the head from the Saudis. We have to get off oil. But with Republicans in the White House, we won't, because the GOP and Big Oil are fucking each other. Actually fucking each other.

Please go back to talking about lipstick now.

The United States of Puritania

It is hard-wired into the American DNA to look pruriently into other people's sex lives, to gossip and titillate ourselves, to become the world's Gladys Kravitz whenever anyone in a position of power shows a human failing. We have a deep problem with sex in America to an extent that is not replicated worldwide. When an adulterous affair or a dark secret sexual past comes to light we obsess over it. We come descended from a people who thought Eve's original sin extended to all women, and religious doctrine collectively weighed the nation down with near-constant guilt.

This residual Puritanical bent characterizes the reaction to John Edwards' revelation yesterday. It's the reason that no amount of violence in a contemporary film can garner the same rating as a film with any amount of full frontal nudity. We are really dysfunctional when it comes to sex and more so when it comes to judging other people's families. Elizabeth Edwards' statement yesterday shouldn't even have been necessary.

We also are hung up on the idea that a politician's personal life must be a reflection of how he or she would govern. And that's just not the case. Aside from moralistic hypocrisy based on, for example, voting against gay rights while being gay yourself, there's simply no reason to bring these personal peccadillos into the public square. If fidelity was a harbinger of Presidential success, George W. Bush and Richard Nixon would be triumphs while FDR would be a failure.

But more to the point, it's the priority orders we conjure up based on this Puritanical past that become truly maddening. The post I was going to write about this has already been ably penned by clammyc, so I'll just reprint a bit of it and urge you to head over there.

But moving past the issue of sex, which is really only important to people who have so little in their own lives to be proud of that they have to obsess and point fingers at others to feel better about themselves, there are so many other reasons to be absolutely frustrated with the hypocritical moralists and smarmy narcissists that are once again rearing their ugly heads. Over the past week, we found out that the White House not only passed off forged documents to sell the Iraq invasion, but they forged their own documents to sell the Iraq invasion, and there is not a peep about it?

We found out that the US attorney scandal is now focusing on the White House inner circle, yet there is a collective yawn. The much ballyhooed military tribunal of Hamdan resulted in a 5 month sentence even after a kangaroo court trial - basically a repudiation of the entire administration view on military tribunals.

We just passed 500 military deaths in Afghanistan, and the Iraqi Congress adjourned without meeting one benchmark that was supposed to be the main result of the so-called "surge", yet all we hear is the foregone conclusion that the surge worked.

Torture is still on the table. One Attorney General approved of torture memos, while also being part of voter suppression lawsuits while the latest Attorney General approves of waterboarding as long as it isn’t being done to him, and also is a chief obstructor of justice when it comes to the Executive Branch. Iraqi prisoners are being put in small wooden boxes, which of course is most certainly not torture.

Spying on Americans has been given the thumbs up by Congress, criminal defiance of subpoenas by Rove, Miers, Bolton are being allowed to set a dangerous precedent, there is more saber rattling about attacking Iran - with similar lies being trotted out by this administration, and the current republican nominee.

I would add this remarkable story, which received almost no coverage on the blogosphere and in broadcast media after being stuffed into the middle of the Washington Post yesterday:

At least 17 detainees held at Guantanamo Bay were subjected to a program that moved them repeatedly from cell to cell to cause sleep deprivation and disorientation as punishment and to soften detainees for subsequent interrogation, according to U.S. military documents.

Defense Department investigations of abuse had previously revealed that the program was used in a limited manner and only on high-value detainees, but the documents indicate that the program was far more widespread and that the technique was still used months after it was banned at the facility in March 2004. Detainees were moved dozens of times in just days and sometimes more than a hundred times over a two-week period.

So the techniques were banned by the Defense Department, banned by international convention and federal statute, and yet were still used and authorized, and if you go back you'll see that authorization coming from the highest levels. This rates barely a whisper.

It is of no consequence to those guardians of the discourse to spend weeks discussing the literal hijacking of our government (for which they receive a handsome sum, indirectly) but we, as the descendants of the Puritans, must go hog wild at the mention of an affair. I think John Edwards is a total idiot for thinking he could keep this secret during a high-stakes Presidential campaign, and for risking the loss of the White House by running, knowing the political environment in the US and our Puritanical lizard brains.

I know these appeals to reason, to assess the gravity of competing situations, often fall short. It's hard to compete with human nature, particularly American human nature. I wish we were in a country where we could accurately determine what shocks the conscience, at a human level, free from ideology or politics. That is unlikely. But I'm still going to let that determine what I prioritize to the best of my ability.

One-Upping The Sex Stories

So, Eliot Spitzer had an affair and he paid for it. David Paterson had some affairs and he didn't pay for it. His wife had affairs, too. And the McGreeveys were having three-ways with a staffer.

Connecticut Governor Jodi Rell needs to step it up. The tri-state area demands all its governors have sexual histories!

...and by the way, this shows nothing but that humans have desire. It's such a non-issue.

That's A Pitch In The Dirt

I'm frankly stunned by this article about John McCain and a female lobbyist.

Early in Senator John McCain’s first run for the White House eight years ago, waves of anxiety swept through his small circle of advisers.

A female lobbyist had been turning up with him at fund-raisers, in his offices and aboard a client’s corporate jet. Convinced the relationship had become romantic, some of his top advisers intervened to protect the candidate from himself — instructing staff members to block the woman’s access, privately warning her away and repeatedly confronting him, several people involved in the campaign said on the condition of anonymity.

When news organizations reported that Mr. McCain had written letters to government regulators on behalf of the lobbyist’s clients, the former campaign associates said, some aides feared for a time that attention would fall on her involvement.

Mr. McCain, 71, and the lobbyist, Vicki Iseman, 40, both say they never had a romantic relationship. But to his advisers, even the appearance of a close bond with a lobbyist whose clients often had business before the Senate committee Mr. McCain led threatened the story of redemption and rectitude that defined his political identity.

First of all, this didn't come from a Democratic campaign. There's no chance that it did. It's way too early in the process. It's far more likely that this came from a Republican oppo research shop; not necessarily Huckabee or Romney's, but perhaps one of the American Conservative Union sleaze-meisters or any number or enemies he had on the right. Let's get that straight. The rumors were out there on this for a while, apparently, in fact McCain himself denied it in December.

The Internet right is going to rally around McCain now. This came from the New York Times, which is seen as the devil incarnate for conservatives. They're going to hit back and hit back hard. But there will be a residual effect out there. The story is now out there. It's out there among the social conservatives that already have questions about McCain. Rush will use this to unite folks around McCain.

And, it hits McCain at his strength. He's supposed to walk on water and have the highest integrity. Now these allegations are with a lobbyist. The lobbyist argued in front of McCain's committee. He flew all over the country on corporate jets of media moguls when he was on the Commerce Committee. This punctures the bubble of honor around McCain. This will have an impact.

I think McCain is still absolutely the nominee. Ultimately men with power use that power to get what they want and I think everyone's eyes are pretty wide open on that fact. What matters is how you govern and what policies you support. This doesn't change my opinion of McCain; it wasn't all that high to begin with. But it does have the potential of being an under-the-radar erosion of his support.

Because I couldn't fucking stand what the Republicans did to the Clintons in the 1990s, that's all I've got on this matter barring a major change in the story.

UPDATE: OK, just this. The story is actually about double-talk from McCain about his own work on campaign finance reform and Congressional ethics. I mean, McCain's campaign is run by a lobbyist, and so is his Senate office. This is a story that needs to be told. But most people won't get past the headline.

Report: Water Wet

And teenagers hitting puberty want to have sex.

Programs that focus exclusively on abstinence have not been shown to affect teenager sexual behavior, although they are eligible for tens of millions of dollars in federal grants, according to a study released by a nonpartisan group that seeks to reduce teen pregnancies.

"At present there does not exist any strong evidence that any abstinence program delays the initiation of sex, hastens the return to abstinence or reduces the number of sexual partners" among teenagers, the study concluded.

If this is indicative of the culture declining, then decline, culture, decline!

But actually, it isn't, you can stop biological functions like human desire about as easily as you can stop biological functions like breathing, and I don't see any taxpayer-funded "carbon dioxide-only education" classes popping up.

Special note: someone was paid to do this research.

The Duke-Stir

Via Yglesias, Duke Cunningham got mad that his buddy Brent Wilkes always got the better prostitutes, and he had trouble performing, but eventually he did not have sex with the girl “because he felt guilty about his behavior."

He felt guilty about sex with the not-so-young and not-so-cute prostitute that he couldn't get it up for. The cute one would have been fine.

Do prostitutes have special Congressional rates?

Meanwhile there might be a bunch more of these coming down the pike. I'm inclined to believe that there's nobody more deviant than a family values conservative.

Holy Crap

I had been trying to understand if this latest Republican lawmaker to become embroiled in a sex scandal was offering to perform for money or offering money to receive services. Apparently he was OFFERING MONEY TO PERFORM.

Titusville police were at Veteran’s Memorial Park on East Broad Street on a burglary detail when they noticed an unshaven man acting suspicious, going in and out of the restroom three times, said Lt. Todd Hutchinson.

An undercover officer decided to go into one of the bathroom stalls, Hutchinson said. Moments later, Allen knocked on the stall door and offered to perform oral sex on the officer for $20, according to the police spokesman.

So wait. I get $20 AND I get sucked off? How am I losing here? (If I was a gay man and enjoyed rather large gay closeted Republicans performing oral sex on me, that is.)

This guy was so closeted that he doesn't even understand the ECONOMICS of undercover bathroom sex. As Bradrocket sez:

You know, I always find it funny that somebody would have to offer someone money in order to give them oral sex. I mean, most people will take oral sex for free. Anyone who has to pay money just to give it must be the least talented person ever.

Go there, too, for the picture, which is priceless. Did I mention that this guy is a McCain supporter? (Maybe he was doing some badly-needed fundraising.)

Sharks Are Circling Around Vitter

Wow, I figured that the "It's OK If You're A Republican" rule would apply to David Vitter, but now that the revelations are expanding, Republican lawmakers in Louisiana are calling for Vitter's head, and even casting around for a replacement (and trying to force the Democratic governor to appoint a Republican one).

Lots of people commit adultery; most of them are running for the Republican nomination for President. Why is Vitter's adultery somehow meriting a resignation?

Could it have anything to do with diapers?

UPDATE: With Vitter in Giuliani's stable, McCain supporters have taken to soliciting sex in a men's room to catch up in the all-important sex scandal race. "We cannot afford a sex scandal gap!" exclaimed Gen. Buck Turgidson McCain, probably on his cell phone in the Capitol cloakroom when he was illegally engaging in campaign activities on Senate grounds.

Everything Rudy Giuliani touches turns to shit.

David Vitter, the Republican Senator from Louisiana, is his Southern Regional Chair. Today, Vitter owned up to some hanky-pany with an employee of the DC madam. His phone number was on the recently-released public list.

There's of course much to be made of this family values Republican with a 100% score from the Christian Coalition being a rank hypocrite. But more than that, what the hell kind of judge of character is Rudy Giuliani? His police commissioner and business partner, Bernie Kerik, is about to go to jail (and he's also cheated a-plenty on the missus, using a love nest opposite Ground Zero to bang Judith Regan). His South Carolina co-chair was busted for coke, and then he replaced him with the guy's father, who has a history of racist remarks, including calling the NAACP the "National Association of Retarded People." And now Vitter.

Is it that Giuliani just can't judge people whatsoever, or is it that, in the Republican Party, the non-corrupt, non-hypocritical, non-criminal officials are just impossible to come by?