I was chatting online this afternoon with a friend who's about to die.
I'll never see her again.
I wanted to say something comforting.
This might be our last conversation.
I wanted to make it count.
I typed: "You will always have a special place in my heart. You are the last women who gave me a blowjob. As I am becoming a more observant Jew, that will be the last blowjob I'll ever have. I'm going to have to live off the memories."
Last Dec. 20, I was speculating via email that John McCain’s lobbyist scandal about to break in the New York Times was a sexual one.
Here she is, Miss Vicki Iseman:
From Matt Drudge:
FLASHBACK: MCCAIN PLEADS WITH NY TIMES TO SPIKE STORY ON FEMALE LOBBYIST…
WASHINGTON — 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.
It had been just a decade since an official favor for a friend with regulatory problems had nearly ended Mr. McCain’s political career by ensnaring him in the Keating Five scandal. In the years that followed, he reinvented himself as the scourge of special interests, a crusader for stricter ethics and campaign finance rules, a man of honor chastened by a brush with shame.
But the concerns about Mr. McCain’s relationship with Ms. Iseman underscored an enduring paradox of his post-Keating career. Even as he has vowed to hold himself to the highest ethical standards, his confidence in his own integrity has sometimes seemed to blind him to potentially embarrassing conflicts of interest.
Mr. McCain promised, for example, never to fly directly from Washington to Phoenix, his hometown, to avoid the impression of self-interest because he sponsored a law that opened the route nearly a decade ago. But like other lawmakers, he often flew on the corporate jets of business executives seeking his support, including the media moguls Rupert Murdoch, Michael R. Bloomberg and Lowell W. Paxson, Ms. Iseman’s client. (Last year he voted to end the practice.)
Tim Reid writes for the Times of London:
John McCain, the presumptive Republican presidential nominee, was last night romantically linked to a 40-year-old female political lobbyist and accused of granting her clients political favours.
Mr McCain, 71, fiercely denied a report in the New York Times which stated that eight years ago, during his first run for the White House, his aides were so concerned about his relationship with Vicki Iseman that they blocked her access to him to "protect the candidate from himself".
Mr McCain and Ms Iseman both denied to the newspaper - which has been sitting on the story for several weeks - that they had ever had a romantic relationship. The story was first alluded to on the Drudge Report website just before the Iowa and New Hampshire nomination contests, but after frantic lobbying by Mr McCain and his aides at the time the New York Times did not publish it then.
It was unclear last night what impact the allegations would have on Mr McCain, who is now on the verge of wrapping up the Republican nomination after staging an extraordinary political comeback. He had been written off in the presidential race six months ago when his campaign collapsed.
Vicki Iseman, Partner, represents corporate and public clients on issues as diverse as government contracting and regulatory reform. Her experience includes representation of clients before Congress, Federal government agencies and local opinion leaders.
She has extensive experience in telecommunications, representing corporations before the House and Senate Commerce Committees. Her work on the landmark 1992 and 1996 communications bills helped secure cable access for broadcast television stations. Her experience in the communications field includes digital television conversion, satellite regulations and telecommunications ownership provisions.
She has been active in grassroots communications campaigns for clients, building community based support for legislative initiatives. Among others, she participated in the "Keep America Moving" campaign that educated community leaders on the allocation of Federal highway trust funds.
In addition, she has consulted for clients who are interested in government contracting opportunities. She has assisted corporations through the authorization and appropriation process. An active fundraiser, she has organized and participated in many political fundraising events.
A native of Pennsylvania, she holds a B.A. degree in Education from Indiana University in Pennsylvania.
By
From her office windows, Vicki Iseman ’90 has a great view of Washington, D.C. The Indiana native is one of the youngest people in the lobbying firm of Alcalde and Fay and one of its most senior partners.
Two weeks after graduating from IUP with a degree in elementary education, Iseman joined a friend in Washington and was hired as a receptionist. With only a few months’ experience on the job, she said she “walked into my boss’s office [the president of the company] and said, ‘You don’t really know me, but I answer the phones. I’m a college graduate and I’d like you to consider me for a secretarial or an administrative position.’” He agreed to try her out for three months. Within a year she became his special assistant.
Alcalde and Fay represents clients from cruise lines and universities to airports and broadcasters. With no background in politics or telecommunications, Iseman realized she needed to know as much as possible to survive her new job. She spent most of her waking hours learning the business, and it paid off handsomely. Eight years later she became the youngest partner ever in the firm, counting among her clients PAXtv, Religious Voices in Broadcasting, Telemundo, the Hispanic Broadcasting Corporation, and Computer Sciences Corporation. In addition, she has met Melanie Griffith, Britney Spears, Bo Derek, and former New York Mayor Rudolph Giuliani.
Iseman said that the most important aspect of her job is the effect that one person can have on legislation in small communities and educational institutions. “Where my heart lies is in education,” she said. “I believe it is the great equalizer.”
On Sunday night, many observant Jews will be among the hundreds of millions of people watching the Jets fan’s nightmare as the Giants play the Patriots in Super Bowl XLII.
Many Orthodox Jews are sports fans, as is evident by the number of us at sporting events and the prevalence of kosher food stands and even minyanim (prayer groups) at numerous stadiums and arenas. Tamir Goodman’s high school basketball feats were closely watched by Orthodox Jews, who continued to follow him in college and in his professional play in Israel and now with the Maryland Nighthawks. Last season, one of the Internet’s most respected analysts of the New York Rangers was The Hockey Rabbi, a self-identified "Chassidic Jew who loves my family, G-d and the Rangers."
Clearly, sports, probably more than any other leisure activity (if watching the Mets collapse and decades of Jets futility can be called "leisure") is something that many observant Jews take an interest in. This includes many people who take halacha and Judaism very seriously.
Of course, we who are religiously observant believe – or should believe – that Judaism is the essential aspect of our lives. Is following sports an acceptable form of recreation? Are there positive aspects to being a sports fan? Is it bitul Torah (wasting time on a mundane matter), albeit perhaps in a benign form? Is it avodah zarah (idolatry)?
Rabbi Gil Student of Yashar Books and the Hirhurim blog once said that "movies are often halachically objectionable but at times they can have artistic value. Football is simply a bunch of men pummeling each other." Those of us who appreciate a perfectly executed slant pattern feel differently. Community leader Azriel Ganz wrote about baseball, "There is nothing like a beautiful night at the ball park, especially when you are with your kids." For those of us who are sports fans, that rings true. In light of that, how does sports fit into our lives as religious Jews?
As Dr. Jeffrey Gurock detailed in his book Judaism’s Encounter with American Sports, nearly all of the Orthodox Jewish world has come to the recognition that playing sports is beneficial, though there has been controversy about yeshivas and day schools fielding competitive sports teams.
If my own experience is any indication, however, the frum world is ambivalent about the idea of being a sports fan. When I was in third grade, my yeshiva suddenly banned the possession of baseball cards – a prohibition that I was soon surprised to learn was intended to also cover hockey, basketball and football cards. A year or two later, that same school took my class to a Harlem Globetrotters game at Madison Square Garden.
The officials noted that Robert Malley, a principal Obama foreign policy adviser, has penned numerous opinion articles, many of them co-written with a former adviser to the late Palestinian Authority president Yasir Arafat, petitioning for dialogue with Hamas and blasting Israel for numerous policies he says harm the Palestinian cause.
Malley also previously penned a well-circulated New York Review of Books piece largely blaming Israel for the collapse of the Israeli-Palestinian negotiations at Camp David in 2000 when Arafat turned down a Palestinian state in the West Bank, Gaza and eastern sections of Jerusalem and instead returned to the Middle East to launch an intifada, or terrorist campaign, against the Jewish state.
Malley’s contentions have been strongly refuted by key participants at Camp David, including President Bill Clinton, then-Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Barak and primary U.S. envoy to the Middle East Dennis Ross, all of whom squarely blamed Arafat’s refusal to make peace for the talks’ failure.
"We are noting with concern some of Obama’s picks as advisers, particularly Robert Malley who has expressed sympathy to Hamas and Hizbullah and offered accounts of Israeli-Palestinian negotiations that don’t jibe with the
facts," said one security official, speaking on condition of anonymity.The official stated he was not authorized to talk to the media about U.S. politics, noting Israeli officials are instructed to "stay out" of American political affairs.
In February 2006, after Hamas won a majority of seats in the Palestinian parliament and amid a U.S. and Israeli attempt to isolate the Hamas-run Palestinian Authority, Malley wrote an op-ed for the Baltimore Sun advocating international aid to the terror group’s newly formed government.
"The Islamists (Hamas) ran on a campaign of effective government and promised to improve Palestinians’ lives; they cannot do that if the international community turns its back," wrote Malley in a piece entitled, "Making the Best of Hamas’ Victory."
Malley contended the election of Hamas expressed Palestinian "anger at years of humiliation and loss of self-respect because of Israeli settlement expansion, Arafat’s imprisonment, Israel’s incursions, Western lecturing and, most recently and tellingly, the threat of an aid cut off in the event of an Islamist success."
Malley said the U.S. should not "discourage third-party unofficial contacts with [Hamas] in an attempt to moderate it."
Hamas is responsible for scores of deadly shootings, suicide bombings and rocket attacks aimed at Jewish civilian population centers. Hamas’s official charter calls for the murder of Jews and destruction of Israel.
G-day mate,
Here's my guide to the best videos on Youtube in the following categories:
Academy Awards