Toussie Tuesday -- the least successful weekly series on Daily Kos, devoted to keeping alive the question of what arrangements were behind the first-ever recorded political contributions of corrupt real estate subprime mortgage "entrepreneur" Robert Toussie to GOP figures such as John McCain, Norm Coleman, Gordon Smith, and up-and-coming ambitious and amoral GOP rainmaker Eric Cantor, as well as the RNC, at a time when he was trying to secure the pardon of his son, convicted real-estate swindler Isaac Toussie, via the intervention of young star GOP attorney Bradford Berenson, who used his connections to the Bush Administration Office of Legal Counsel to do an end run around the pardon process and appeal directly to White House Counsel Fred Fielding, who swallowed the pardon request hook, line and sinker and got it granted, leading to the very likely illegal retraction of the pardon -- has decided to begin to refer to itself in the third person.
Today, Toussie Tuesday celebrates the 200th birthday of composer Felix Mendelssohn and the VIth Super Bowl victory of the Pittsburgh Steelers. (Eric Holder may perhaps be honored at a later date.)
Previous diaries in the series:
It begins! (Dec. 26)
Learning more about Bradford Berenson (Jan. 6, first "Toussie Tuesday")
Are they getting away with it? (Jan. 13)
On non-Toussie matters (Jan. 20)
Bush proud of non-pardons, among other non-accomplishments (Jan. 27)
(Jakob Ludwig) Felix Mendelssohn(-Bartholdy) (the parenthetical names, not often used in reference to him, were conferred on Felix M. after his parents converted him and the rest of his family away from Judaism when he was seven), was an early 19th-century composer. A prodigy who lived only until age 38, his most widely recognized piece of music is his Wedding March, commonly used as a recessional, although it was not composed with that purpose in mind.
In contrast, and let's preface this all with the word "allegedly," Robert Toussie converted what was presumably at one point an innocent young child into a co-cospirator in mortgage scamming, targeting poor and minority purchasers and lying to them about material terms of their loans. When Isaac Toussie somehow ended up imprisoned without Robert Toussie sharing his cell, the elder Toussie somehow himself converted into a Republican campaign contributor, donating large sums of cash to the Presidential candidacy of Sen. John McCain and to the RNC. Somehow -- somehow! -- he was able to hire GOP rising star attorney Bradford Berenson to pursue his son's pardon. Berenson, one of the eight original deputies to Bush fils's first White House Counsel, Alberto Gonzales, somehow -- somehow! -- used his access to the White House Counsel's office to get the Toussie Pardon into the hands of Bush fils's last White House Counsel, Fred Fielding. Fielding, perhaps forgetting that the President proudly abjured pardoning the rich and connected (see prior diary entry), at some point greenlighted (or perhaps greenlit) the Toussie Pardon. It is unclear at what point this approval took place, nor what if anything it had to do with Robert Toussie's slew of implausibly (for an amateur who had never contributed before) well-targeted last-minute contributions to Norm Coleman, Gordon Smith, and the PAC of person-standing-behind-John-Boehner-and-licking-his-ravenous-lips Rep. Eric Cantor. (Why did this money go to Eric Cantor's PAC? Why, indeed? And who advised Toussie on this, and with what quid pro quo in mind? It's all very mysterious.)
As for Mendelssohn, well, here's Itzhak Perlman playing his famous Violin Concerto. Enough about him for now. Happy 200th.
The Pittsburgh Steelers, your faithful Toussie Tuesday author's team (and not just during the playoffs, thank you), are only 3/8th Felix Mendelssohn's agethe franchise having celebrated its 75th birthday this past July. They are probably best known now for having just won the Super Bowl a couple of days ago against the Arizona Cardinals.
Among the highlights of the game ...
I said, among the highlights of the game ...
(... oh, you want to see the highlights? All right: here you go.)
... were an impressive goal line stand by the Cardinals after the Steelers first possession, in which QB Ben Rothlisberger appeared to score from the 1-yard line, which was successfully challenged by Cardinals coach Ken Whisenhunt, leading the Steelers to settle for a field goal -- a decision that could well have ended up costing them the game.
Similarly (and I know that you can see this coming) the Toussie Pardon was challenged by many people who thought that it was in bad taste, and was reversed by the Bush Administration, despite its likely not having the legal ability to do so.
Now, I ask you: in a game that contained a 100-yard interception return by Steelers linebacker James Harrison for a touchdown with no time left on the clock, incredible fourth-quarter heroics by Cardinals receiver Larry Fitzgerald, and an incredible game winning drive culminating in a toe-dragging catch by Steelers receiver Santonio Holmes -- how daft do you have to be to focus solely on the reversal of that call by officials instead of the real news? As daft as our media, that's how daft.
The story of the canny challenge by Whisenhunt (who cannily challenged a called fumble by his quarterback Kurt Warner that was reversed as well and deemed an incompletion) is a good one. But it pales next to these really significant events. (Significant within the context of the game, that is. Your Toussie Tuesday correspondent does retain some perspective.) Similarly, the story in the Toussie pardon is not so much the reversal (which I hope to see eventually resolved by the "instant reply" of a Supreme Court decision) as the question of whether and how Bradford Berenson's inside access to the Office of Legal Counsel was traded for campaign contributions to the GOP -- especially given that the process did not end until after the second, barely reported on, set of contributions was made.
Toussie Tuesday will keep hammering away at this topic, seeking answers to those questions.