May 14th, 2008 9:10 pm
McCain's wife sells Sudan-related investments

By Jim Kuhnhenn / Associated Press

WASHINGTON — Cindy McCain, whose husband has been a critic of the violence in Sudan, sold off more than $2 million in mutual funds whose holdings include companies that do business in the African nation.

The sale on Wednesday came after The Associated Press questioned the investments in light of calls by John McCain, the likely Republican presidential nominee, for international financial sanctions against the Sudanese leadership.

McCain, who was campaigning in Ohio, said neither he nor his wife were aware of the Sudan-related holdings.

Last year, at least four presidential candidates divested themselves of similar holdings involving companies doing business in Sudan.

According to McCain's personal financial disclosure, Cindy McCain's investments include two mutual funds — American Funds Europacific Growth fund and American Funds Capital World Growth and Income fund — that are listed by the Sudan Divestment Task Force as targets for divestment.

"Those have been sold as of today," said McCain spokesman Brian Rogers. Both funds have holdings in Oil & Natural Gas Corp., an India-based company that does business in Sudan. The American Funds Capital World Growth & Income Fund also has holdings in Petrochina, a Chinese government-owned oil company with vast investments in Sudan.

Last year, in a speech on energy policy to the Center for Strategic and International Studies in Washington, McCain cited China's investments in Sudan as an example of regimes that survive off free-flowing petro dollars.

"The politics of oil impede the global progress of our values, and restrains governments from acting on the most basic impulses of human decency," he said. "There is only one reason China has opposed sanctions to pressure Sudan to stop the killing in Darfur: China needs Sudan's oil."

On Wednesday, Rogers said: "Senator and Mrs. McCain remain committed to doing everything possible to end the genocide in Darfur."

After touring a waste-reprocessing plant near Columbus, Ohio, described the American Funds as "one of the country's largest mutual funds."

"Obviously, we didn't know about it and I didn't know anything about it until I saw the story, because I don't have anything to do with her finances," he said. "But they divested as soon as it was brought to us."

For the McCains, the Sudan-related investments are among scores of different investments listed in his financial disclosure documents. Cindy McCain is heiress to a Phoenix-based beer distributing company whose fortune is in the $100 million range.

Sen. McCain is regularly ranked among the richest lawmakers in Congress, but under the terms of a prenuptial agreement, much of the family's assets are in Cindy McCain's name. While the disclosure reports provide the identity of income and assets held by candidates and their spouses, they only offer a range of the amount of the holding. Indeed, the report lists Cindy McCain's investments in the two mutual funds as simply "over $1,000,0000."

In tax returns he released last month, the Arizona senator reported a total income of $405,409 in 2007.

But Cindy McCain files separate tax returns which she has not made public. Last week, she said she would never make her returns public even if her husband becomes president.

Later Wednesday, the Democratic National Committee reiterated its call for Cindy McCain to release her tax returns. "The fact the McCain family was holding Sudan-related investments even as John McCain was out on the campaign trail calling for sanctions is a reminder of why the American people expect and deserve full disclosure from their elected officials," said DNC spokesman Damien LaVera.

McCain aides pointed out that the Sudan investments were contained in publicly disclosed data. John McCain on Wednesday also defended his wife's decision not to release her tax returns.

"When we file our (financial disclosure) report in the Senate, there's quite a bit of information in there," he said.

The Sudan-related investments illustrate the hazards for wealthy candidates whose vast holdings undergo thorough scrutiny during a presidential campaign.

A year ago, several presidential candidates divested themselves of Sudan-related holdings. Among them were Democrats Barack Obama and John Edwards and Republicans Sam Brownback and Rudy Giuliani.

In 2006, Brownback was among members of Congress who wrote 44 governors to urge them to divest their employee pension funds from businesses linked to Sudan. He is now serving as a top adviser to McCain's campaign.

At the time, Obama placed the total value of his divestitures at $180,000. The sales of the investments were recorded in their financial disclosures.

According to Giuliani's financial disclosure, he invested between $500,000 and $1 million in a Vanguard Wellington Fund. Data compiled by the Sudan Divestment Task Force shows that Vanguard Wellington has a small percentage of stock in Schlumberger Ltd., a French oil field services company that does business in Sudan.

Edwards sold stock he and his wife owned in Schlumberger for between $40,000 and $100,000. He also invested $50,000 to $100,000 in Evergreen Equity Income Fund, another fund identified by the divestment task force as having stock in Sudan-related companies.

"Considering Democrat candidates, including Barack Obama, had the very same type of holdings, it is the height of hypocrisy to attack Senator McCain and his family," said Republican National Committee spokesman Danny Diaz said.

May 14th, 2008 8:54 pm
GOPERS STOMPING MAD OVER PROSPECTS

By Mike Viqueira / NBC

Lots of very glum faces among House GOP members this morning as they emerged from their weekly closed-door session. The political situation is not good, and they aren't even trying to deny it.

Rep. Tom Davis stomped on the concrete floor of the Capitol basement when asked by reporters about Republican fortunes at the moment.

"This is the floor," he said, by way of explanation. "We're below the floor."

Inside the meeting, Davis had just presented his colleagues with what he said was a 20-page memo outlining his prescription for a way out of this mess. He did not offer details to the press, yet did not spare the party and the president scathing criticism in his public comments.

"The president swallows the microphone every time he opens his mouth," Davis said.

He believes Bush's staunch opposition to the Democratic housing bill and the SCHIP bill, for example, is hurting rank and file. Look at yesterday's vote on the SPRO, where Republicans defied the president in droves. Lo and behold, the White House says today that it will not veto the bill.

Today is also the day when the House takes up the farm bill, which the president has promised to veto. It’s expected that this will become the second veto of Bush's administration to be overridden -- though the farm bill has more of a parochial dynamic than the national political one.

Asked if he thought there should be a change in House GOP leadership, he brought up the 2006 election and the loss of Congress, then wondered aloud why, when "the plane is being flown into the mountain," there has been no change in direction.

A major target of internal GOP criticism is Rep. Tom Cole, who runs the House campaign arm of the party. He emerged to tell reporters that there is "concern" within the party, yes, but, looking for a silver lining, he pointed out that John McCain is running far ahead of the generic GOP approval rating. He then spoke of the need to "re-brand" the party in the likeness of McCain, which may be a tall order, since many rank-and-file conservatives have reviled McCain for years for his transgressions against party orthodoxy.

The parlance of marketing has, of course, overrun the business of politics (and news media), and here again Cole spoke of the unpopularity of the GOP "brand." He says, as does House GOP No. 2 Roy Blunt, that the Democratic candidate yesterday in Mississippi, Travis Childers, is pro life and pro gun.

"Both candidates ran for what Republicans are for," Blunt pointed out. That leaves open the question of why the Democrat won the race. The "brand" is the most common explanation.

House GOP leaders huddle at 11 a.m. today. That will be watched closely for any possibility of a coup or insurrection against leadership in the wake of this third consecutive loss of a GOP seat.

May 14th, 2008 7:40 pm
Palestinians mourn as Bush fetes Israel's 60th year

By Nidal al-Mughrabi / Reuters

JABALYA, Gaza Strip - As U.S. President George W. Bush celebrated Israel's birth on Wednesday, Ahmed Abdallah was marking a milestone of his own -- 60 years since Jewish forces killed his relatives and forced him into exile.

"I saw my mother in tears every time she remembered our family being slaughtered," the retired Palestinian teacher said in the Gaza Strip's Jabalya refugee camp, his home since 1948.

In that year, a shell killed most of his family as they fled from a village north of Gaza under fire. Abdallah, aged two, was wounded. But he and his mother lived, joining over 700,000 other Palestinians as refugees from homes now lying inside Israel.

This week, as Bush fetes the Jewish state's 60 years and tries to energise faltering peace talks, Palestinians will mourn the "Nakba", or "catastrophe", that befell their people.

Groups numbering in the hundreds marched on Wednesday to highlight the plight of refugees and their descendants, 4.5 million of whom now live in the Israeli-occupied West Bank, the Gaza Strip, or further afield, many of them in grim camps.

Some protesters in the West Bank threw stones at Israeli troops and police. Several were hurt by rubber bullets. Chanting "We want to return to Palestine", around 1,000 Palestinians from camps in southern Lebanon protested at the Israeli border.

Hamas official Mahmoud al-Zahar, speaking in the Islamist-run Gaza Strip, called Bush a hypocrite unwelcome in the Holy Land: "Bush's visit is unacceptable. He is coming to celebrate 60 years of our bloodshed," he said.

"He is coming to encourage them to cause us more suffering."

BUSH SUPPORT

Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, who backs Hamas, said of the Jewish state: "The Zionist regime is dying."

Bush assured his Israeli hosts of his support.

Palestinian Prime Minister Salam Fayyad, a former World Bank economist well liked in Washington, has condemned the Israeli celebrations as "meaningless" unless there is a just peace.

Nakba events will culminate in sirens signaling two minutes silence on Thursday -- a similar procedure as Israel adopts to commemorate its war dead and victims of the Holocaust.

Thousands of black balloons, denoting each day since Israel was established on May 15, 1948, will rise above the West Bank. Organizers hope to darken the sky over Jerusalem for Bush.

Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas and Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert launched peace talks in November and Bush is pressing for a deal on Palestinian statehood before he leaves office in January -- a timeline skeptics say is too ambitious.

Negotiations have been marred by quarrels over Jewish settlement building and violence in the Gaza Strip. Olmert is under pressure to quit over a bribery scandal and Abbas faces a challenge from Hamas Islamists who oppose the peace drive.

While many Israelis view Bush as the best friend they ever had in the White House, Abdallah and many Palestinians doubt he can broker a fair peace deal: "We have begun to lose faith in those who claim to promote democracy and human rights," he said.

"We have seen your human rights attitude in Palestine, in Iraq and in Afghanistan."