McJunta!

John McCain has chosen a real class act to run the GOP convention in St. Paul.

Meet Doug Goodyear, the CEO of consulting firm DCI Group. Last year, the firm earned $3 million lobbying for clients including General Motors and everyone's favorite company as we approach 4 bucks a gallon, ExxonMobil.

But it gets better.

Six years ago, DCI was paid $348,000 to represent the totalitarian miltary junta ruling Burma/Myanmar.

As Newsweek puts it:

Justice Department lobbying records show DCI pushed to "begin a dialogue of political reconciliation" with the regime. It also led a PR campaign to burnish the junta's image, drafting releases praising Burma's efforts to curb the drug trade and denouncing "falsehoods" by the Bush administration that the regime engaged in rape and other abuses.

And as usual, we have to wonder if McCain will get questioned on this one or will he get his bazillionth pass from his beltway fan club.

I know this isn't quite as important as whether or not a candidate attaches flag-themed costume jewelry to their lapels, but you'd think the media might want to look into the fact that McCain has hired a known opponent of democracy to run the show when he gets nominated.

UPDATE: Looks like Goodyear has now resigned. Now we can all praise the maverickish departure and not question the judgment of the man who hired him in the first place.

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Meanwhile, the junta has went on with its fake election. The rigged referendum is designed to solidify military rule. Despite the fact that the nation is reeling from a cyclone that has killed 100,000, the vote was not called off.

From AP:

Human rights organizations and anti-government groups have bitterly accused the government of neglecting cyclone victims to advance its political agenda, and have criticized its proposed constitution as designed to perpetuate military rule.

Local journalists said they saw cases of intimidation of voters at various polling stations around the country.

Photos by AP: Top: Republican presidential candidate Sen. John McCain, R-Ariz., laughs during a campaign stop at the Liberty Science Center in Jersey City, N.J. on Friday. Bottom: A Myanmar protester holds a placard showing a caricature, during a demonstration outside the Myanmar Embassy in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia, Saturday. Some 500 activists demanded that Yangon call off its constitutional referendum even as voting began in the military-ruled nation despite a devastating cyclone.

Obama in Charleston Monday

More info here.

MONDAY, MAY 12
Charleston Civic Center
Doors Open: 10:30 AM
Program Begins: 12:15 PM

The event open to the public, however, seating is limited and tickets are required.

McMaverick's mavericky maverickness questioned

From his home state, The Arizona Republic finds that when his vote is key, McCain most always falls in line for the GOP.

The presumptive Republican nominee arguably cast the decisive vote 14 times since 1999 to ensure Republicans got their way, and he had five other close cases where his vote may have made a difference, Senate records show. By comparison, McCain effectively handed Democrats a win on roll-call votes four times in the same period. On one of those occasions, Republicans could still have won if Vice President Dick Cheney had cast a tie-breaking vote.

Photo:AP

Campaign stuff

Obama's coming back to W.Va.

Confirmed by the Gazette.

WVaBlue has heard rumors it will be Huntington.

Until then, the campaign has announced a ton of events for the weekend.

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Following her Charleston appearance, the Clinton campaign kicked off a 15 city Veterans for Hillary tour today.

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As expected, poll shows Clinton maintaining her big lead in W.Va. Other than Arkansas, this may be the most receptive state to her campaign (or the one most opposed to Obama, depending on your way of looking at it.)

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And for your handy reference:

Barack Obama's W.Va. page:

Hillary Clinton's W.Va. page

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Recommended reading: Helen Thomas

Journalism legend Helen Thomas, yet another who got it right on Iraq in 2003 and was blasted by the mainstream media at the time, writes for the Seattle Post-Intelligencer about the continuing effort by the pentagon to shield the public from the realities of war:

The Pentagon made a command decision after the Vietnam War to get better control of the dissemination of information in future wars. That led then-Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld to create an office of disinformation at the start of the Iraqi war. It was later disbanded after howls from the media.

More recently, we have seen the Pentagon’s propaganda efforts take the form of carefully coaching retired generals about how to spin the Iraq war when they appear on television as alleged military experts. The New York Times’ revelations about those pet generals have cast a pall over their reputations.

Too often in this war, the news media seem to have tried to shield the public from the suffering this war has brought to Americans and Iraqis.

Photo: AP file

Obama pulls ahead in superdelegates

Yet another sign that it's over.

Politico:

Obama once was behind by more than 100 superdelegates. But according to at least two counts, more superdelegates are now in his camp. Politico’s tally now shows him ahead of her by 270 superdelegates to 268.5, with 208.5 uncommitted. (Superdelegates from U.S. territories count as one-half.) ABC News shows him ahead by two.

Fireworks in Fayetteville yesterday

Feds cite Massey

MSHA has cited The Moustachioed One's company, Massey Energy, for safety violations that investigators say contributed to the death of a miner.

The accident occurred in Kanawha County when a miner fell 39 feet when a conveyor belt he was working on started up without warning.

From AP via Time Magazine:

The MSHA noted a series of problems at the mine in the report. Among other things, the agency cited Massey's Mammoth Coal Co. because the belt had inadequate startup alarms, including one that wasn't working, according to the report.

Inspectors also cited the mine after finding that the power to the belt hadn't been turned off before Neal started work and that the circuit breaker had a broken handle, making it inoperable.

A look at the Supreme Court race

Orion Strategies has released a poll on the WV court race.

Before going into this, bear in mind that only 368 were questioned and the poll has a margin of error of +/- 5 points, which covers the spread between the top 3 candidates. Also 40% are undecided.

The poll has Ketchum in the lead (apparently, heavy advertising pays off, especially when its focus is to get voters to know your name.)

Workman follows, already being a well-known name and having formerly served on the court.

Maynard and Bastress take up the rear. Bastress has nowhere near the financing of Ketchum, so that's no surprise.

Probably not a good sign for Maynard, who as chief justice is already well-known. He's also got an ad blitz in his favor going on. (and a sizeable one against him, too) If the vote plays out anything like this poll, the Blankenship photos are going to sink him.

From the Gazette:

The poll asked voters to name their top two choices for the office. Ketchum was named easily led as the first choice of 24 percent of poll respondents. Workman was named more times as the second choice than the others, with 18 percent.

Pollsters then combined the two rankings for each candidate, leaving Ketchum at 18 percent and Workman at 17 percent.

Incumbent Justice Elliott "Spike" Maynard ran third in the poll with 13 percent, just ahead of West Virginia University law professor Bob Bastress, who polled at 12 percent.

Operation Graceful Exit?

While the Clinton campaign is still going strong in W.Va. and will most likely win a landslide victory here, campaign chairman Terry McAuliffe's comments today seem to support Lawrence O'Donnell's scenario outlined yesterday for a winding down to end mid-June.

From Reuters:

"It'll be over early June," McAuliffe said. "We've all said we'll be together at the end. If Hillary doesn't win, Hillary, (former) President (Bill) Clinton, myself, we'll be over there helping Senator Obama. And, likewise, Senator Obama will come together to help Hillary if she's the nominee."


And Time Magazine's new cover probably doesn't help a continued Clinton candidacy, either.

Off topic Thursday

Thought for today: No matter what any of us may do in life, we'll never be as cool as Jerry Reed.

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Just so you know.

More than 100,000

Reuters:

State Myanmar radio and television, the main official sources for casualties, reported a death toll of 22,980 with 42,119 missing and 1,383 injured in Asia's most devastating cyclone since a 1991 storm in Bangladesh that killed 143,000.

A U.S. diplomat in Myanmar said diplomats were hearing there could have been more than 100,000 deaths.

Also Reuters:

Aid officials say hundreds of thousands will have been left homeless in the vast swamplands of the delta, where mosquito-borne diseases such as malaria and dengue are endemic.

There will also be the risk of cholera and chronic diarrhea from filthy water and corpses rotting in the tropical heat and humidity of Southeast Asia.

Woman lays the cloth to dry at a market in Yangon, Wednesday, May 7, 2008. International aid began trickling into military-ruled Myanmar, but much of the Irrawaddy delta, where most of the 22,464 reported victims perished, has remained cut off since Cyclone Nargis hit early Saturday. (AP Photo)

Our turn

One week to go.

Clem Guttata at WVaBlue has a great rundown on all the details of the W.Va. primary.

It's over

Clinton needed big wins to make the case for a superdelegate coup and didn't get them.

She hasn't had a real chance to get a delegate lead since late February. The best she could hope for was that two decisive victories would have been enough to convince superdelegates that Obama had been damaged by the Rev. Wright story to the point of not being electable.

But, as the results showed (and exit polls also proved) voters didn't think the Wright flap was an issue.

The media's finally caught on to the math that the rest of us figured out way back.

NBC's Tim Russert:

"We now know who the Democratic nominee's going to be, and no one's going to dispute it."

ABC's George Snuffleupagus:

"This nomination fight is over."

CBS's Bob Schieffer:

"Basically, Maggie, this race is over."

Now it's just a matter of when Clinton gets out and how.

Lawrence O'Donnell, who's worked in Democratic politics for years and is pretty well acquainted with the Clintons lays out her exit strategy from talks with her campaign:

Everything about our conversation implied that he had already had this reality-based discussion with Hillary. He said the Clinton campaign plan is to collect as many votes and delegates as they can right through June 3, then take no more than a week or so to make their case to the superdelegates. Nothing he said indicated that he actually expected the superdelegates to move to Hillary in the week after the final election. The Clinton campaign has not lost its grip on reality. Yes, Clinton spokespersons publicly seem to be lost on gravity-free planet Clinton, but privately they know the end is near.

Further proof that they're winding things down is the fact that she canceled all of her morning show appearances today.

So expect her to keep in until primary season is over, but mellow the tone of the campaign (think Huckabee's last few weeks vs. McCain). She'll likely get a victory or two to go out on a high note (W.Va. being one of them), but there are few delegates left, superdelegates are moving to Obama (four today). The polls in most of the remaining states aren't close and he probably has more wins ahead. If things play out as expected, many expect he'll clinch the nomination two weeks from now in Oregon.

Photos: AP