1115.org

Apparently, it only costs a couple of hundred thousand. And you don’t even have to do anything as demeaning as tuck it into her undergarments. In fact, she may even keep her clothes on the whole time.

John McCain has been busy for the last 18 months or so prostituting himself for the presidency. Condi Rice is just prostituting herself for the president.

The Sunday Times — which apparently still practices some form of journalism, in sharp contrast to the American media collective, which has all but resigned from journalism in order to work pro bono for the McCain campaign (if that’s what it’s called when your former employer continues to pay you for doing stuff that’s antithetical to your job description (or what your job description should be) — exploded this bombshell on Saturday:

A lobbyist with close ties to the White House is offering access to key figures in George W Bush’s administration in return for six-figure donations to the private library being set up to commemorate Bush’s presidency.

Stephen Payne, who claims to have raised more than $1m for the president’s Republican party in recent years, said he would arrange meetings with Dick Cheney, the vice-president, Condoleezza Rice, the secretary of state, and other senior officials in return for a payment of $250,000 (£126,000) towards the library in Texas.

Payne, who has accompanied Bush and Cheney on several foreign trips, also said he would try to secure a meeting with the president himself.
[…]
During an undercover investigation by The Sunday Times, Payne was asked to arrange meetings in Washington for an exiled former central Asian president. He outlined the cost of facilitating such access.

“The exact budget I will come up with, but it will be somewhere between $600,000 and $750,000, with about a third of it going directly to the Bush library,” said Payne, who sits on the US homeland security advisory council.

He said initially that the “family” of the Asian politician should make the donation. He later added that if all the money was paid to him he would make the payment to the Bush library. Publicly, it would appear to have been made in the politician’s name “unless he wants to be anonymous for some reason”.

Payne said the balance of the $750,000 would go to his own lobbying company, Worldwide Strategic Partners (WSP).

Asked by an undercover reporter who the politician would be able to meet for that price, Payne said: “Cheney’s possible, definitely the national security adviser [Stephen Hadley], definitely either Dr Rice or . . . I think a meeting with Dr Rice or the deputy secretary [John Negroponte] is possible . . .

I don’t know about you, but I have just one question: did the Bush-men know that Payne was skimming off two-thirds for himself?

If he shows up with broken kneecaps one of these months — after a decent interval, if that word can be applied to these rapacious whore-sons — we’ll know the answer. (Unless, that is, they work by slicing off body parts. Body parts whose slicing may not be immediately apparent to the public.)

On a more serious note, it appears that Worldwide Strategic Partners is presiding over an illicit slush fund for the presider-in-chief. Wouldn’t it be interesting if someone were to conduct an investigative audit? I’m sure inquiring minds want to know what exactly George W. used this unaccounted money for.