tarajane wrote: "Lobbyists and influence peddling aren't sinister, they're the clunky, unlovely by-products of capitalist democracy"

You nailed it. So long as we have a faux democracy tied to capitalist lucre (to purchase influence) it is democracy for the few. OTOH, in a number of democratic socialist states which I have visited (e.g. in the Caribbean) any person convicted of conveying largesse to a politician can face up to 15 years of hard labor in a throwaway prison. We need some of that here to quell the lobbyist excess. Who knows how many pieces of legislation were purchased by these vermin during the DNC.

This is one reason I yawned through most of the speeches, even Ted Kennedy's and Michelle Obama's. So long as corporate critters are purchasing influence on the outside, all the speeches inside the main hall are pure theatrics and nothing more. Get rid of the lobbyists and corporate influence then we will talk real speeches as opposed to speechifying.

As for Obama, the notion he is some "transformative figure" divorced from lobbies is pure poppycock. Please google "Barack Obama, Inc" from the Harpers article from about two years ago.

Mike, I sure hope you don't get paid per response in your letters section...C'mon bloviating Obamabots...Mike needs to get paid!!!!!

Serious political players mostly skipped the big bashes; no one with much power to make any decisions seemed to be swinging by for the free beef satay at the end of the night. Instead of being sinister, the whole scene was kind of pathetic. No one was lurking in the corners cutting deals, though at a charity benefit for reconstructing New Orleans on Sunday night, GOP operative Mary Matalin (whose husband, James Carville, was a host of the event) was lurking in the back of the room, hiding from the Democratic crowd. What you had instead was a bunch of lobbyists and a bunch of reporters (who are always up for free booze, but then tend to write stories like this one to justify drinking it) mostly standing around talking to themselves.

Obama lost my energetic support not when he voted for FISA, a law that will haunt Americans more in the future than it does today, whether or not he becomes President. I bit my tongue and dug in, helping with online organizing and local platform negotiations.

He lost it when he -- or Nancy Pelosi, it's difficult to know who exactly -- then invited AT&T nee SBC, Southwestern Bell in San Antonio, best friend and supporter of Bush and FISA -- to sponsor in large part the Democratic Convention. It's one thing to bow to power. It's quite another to bend over and be sodomized in public, a technique perfected by the Romans for turning conquered peoples into abject servants and slaves.

The late Jesse Unruh, Speaker of the California Assembly, reformed California's famously corrupt California politics in the 1960s. He was fond of saying, "Money is the mother's milk of politics," a quote oft repeated by cynics. But Unruh was not applauding lobbyists and others who buy influence; he was merely making an observation. Unruh also said, ""If you can't take their money, drink their liquor, f*ck their women, and then come in here the next day and vote against them, you don't belong here." Who wants to bet on today's Democrats?

Democrats love populist language, but the plain truth is that both parties are equally beholden to the wealthy of this country. FDR was indeed hated by the plutocrats, but his late Father had been a Gold Democrat, and he was more despised as a "traitor" than for his policies. Bill Clinton's rise owed a lot to Wall Street, and the wealth he has accumulated since he left office speaks for itself. As Obama's testifies, wealth is attracted by political talent, and for many of the same reasons he will soon be as wealthy as Bon Jovi, and for many of the same reasons.

Wow, drinking and campaigning - how do I get on that list again? I'd love to record some of those bar stories. Anyone for quarters?

That’s the one thing I noticed. Plenty, plenty of out of state girls. A big increase in T-girls, a big decrease in dominatrixes. Interesting fact that.

A LOT fewer scam girls. Most of the regular girls raised their prices, which you can’t blame them for but it makes it tougher for the average joes.

The really high end girls are cleaning up (figuratively, anyway). A few have even attended these parties. They say it is all quite lavish. This is how the other half lives. Or at least, how the top 1% lives.

Liquor, lobbyists, and ladies of the evening. Welcome to America.

You didn't have to look around too hard to see "at&t" and "Qwest" all over the convention. Well that explains why Obama and many of his fellow Democrats voted for the FISA bill that let the telecom companies off the hook for their roles in the same surveilance crimes the Democrats accuse Bush of committing.

Remember we were supposed to be upset when Cheney met privately with the energy companies to get "advice" on energy policy? This is no different and it happens all the time.

There's no reason to believe that the largest Healthcare, Financial, Automotive, Energy, __________, __________ companies aren't too far in the background at the DNC. (They will be at the RNC too but maybe less prominently as they are taking an educated gamble to spend more time and money on the Democrats this time around.) The big scam of American politics is that these parties and politicians put up this smoke screen of issues that keep us divided and distracted while our "leaders" make nice with donors and corporations.

The Democratic and Republican national conventions have long been the targets of big spending by corporations and interest groups looking to grab a piece of the political action. But they are also a rich target of opportunity for elected officials and candidates looking to pad their campaign wallets. And thanks to a loophole in the 2007 lobbying and ethics law, they also provide a channel for lobbyists to host fundraising events for individual lawmakers.

The law (PL 110-81) was supposed to cut down on the shoulder rubbing between lobbyists and lawmakers at conventions, prohibiting anyone that lobbies the federal government from holding events to honor a specific member of Congress. But as long as money passes hands, such gatherings are apparently legal because fundraising events are exempt from the ethics rules.

http://news.yahoo.com/s/cq/20080826/pl_cq_politics/politics2940995;_ylt=AmztXmq1lD2OxLJ.DD3Z3G6s0NUE