Posted on 01/07/2007 10:44:47 AM PST by freespirited
These days, with the GOP in free-fall and America's 51st state (better known as Iraq) a bloody neocon nightmare, who's waiting in the wings polishing his halo and patting down his white horse? Well, AZ's own Senator John McCain, who expects to dispatch Democrat dragon-lady Hillary Clinton in the 2008 Presidential race with minimum bother.
Thing is, McCain's meaner than the Biblical Cain, and has his share of Abel corpses in the closet to prove it. This dastardly duck was reminded of same in reading an advance copy of Senator Dennis DeConcini: From the Center of the Aisle. The pinto Dem's political memoir, penned with the aid of Arizona State University history professor Jack August, is due out in November and pulls no punches in depicting McCain as a backstabbin' scalawag in relation to the notorious Keating 5 scandal of the late '80s.
In case you were in diapers, the Keating 5 was no late-'60s surf band but, rather, made up of a quintet of U.S. senators who took sizeable contributions raised by banking/real estate tycoon Charles Keating and then went to bat for the future felon by hounding regulators looking into Keating's S&L shenanigans. In addition to senators McCain and DeConcini, the group included senators John Glenn, Don Riegel and Alan Cranston.
DeConcini, who took $85K from Keating and pals, realizes his involvement was a boo-boo, but lamely claims he was just trying to help one of the Zona's then-largest employers. The D-man bore the brunt of the criticism back then, mainly 'cause McCain was busy playing Richard III, stepping all over DeConcini and others so he'd come out smellin' like Ann Coulter's eau de cologne.
That's pretty effin' ironic considering McCain made out like a bandito, scoring a whopping $112K from Keating's efforts. Indeed, McCain and the slimy S&L-er were thick as thieves. While serving in the House from 1983 to 1986, McCain flew with Keating to the latter's private retreat in the Bahamas aboard Keating corporate aircraft. And the senator's trophy wife, Cindy McCain, along with her pops, invested $359K in a Phoenix shopping mall developed by an offshoot of Keating's American Continental Corporation.
McCain, DeConcini dryly notes, "on a number of occasions failed to report these things." Still, DeConcini caught more hell, and alleges this was because Republican bulldog Robert Bennett, who was leading the Senate's ethics investigation, steered it away from McCain, the scandal's sole Republican.
Bennett wanted to put the kibosh on the charges against McCain to help make this "a Democrat scandal," DeConcini declares. Bennett suggested that Dem John Glenn be exonerated "in order to appear nonpartisan," according to DeConcini.
The Tucson pol also details at length why he believes McCain leaked damaging and misleading information to the press during the investigation.
It's not just DeConcini alleging that McCain's a sneaky little shit. According to a February 2006 story in the Boston Globe, a General Accounting Office investigator who worked the case said circumstantial evidence against McCain as a leaker was overwhelming and that "there was documentary evidence to buttress the GAO's suspicions, although he said he was barred from discussing it."
The investigator told the Globe that when he laid out the evidence to McCain, the senator blew his stack.
"Senator McCain has a reputation as a stand-up guy, but his reaction that day was to point the finger," chirped Clark B. Hall. The investigator found McCain's finger-pointing "contemptible" and "consistent with the leaks themselves, which were intended to shift the blame elsewhere." Hall said the Ethics Committee report on the leaks "was smoothed over" to McCain's benefit.
Although an investigation of the leaks came "to no conclusions about the sources," DeConcini concludes, "I am on the record as saying that 'I have little doubt that McCain was responsible.'"
In the end, McCain reimbursed Keating $13,433 for the flights and vacations. And since his failure to report the gifts occurred while he was in the House of Representatives, the Senate Ethics Committee decided those were House matters. The House, for its part, did nothing.
McCain may think he's polished the scandal's stain off his halo. But if you get close enough to the guy, the tarnish can still be detected.
Well, I suppose Senator Hothead does have to live up to his reputation.
I'm no McCain fan but it's fun to watch him be the media darling when he's wearing his RINO suit and then pull the long knives on him when he takes a stand they don't like.
Alot of people like John McCain....I don't.
I don't like the way he was involved in the Keating Five and found a hole to slime out of the mess he was in, is that why he's the media darling of all times?
And then there is the Campaign Finance Reform with him and Finegold....this opened the hole for Soros to pour money into the rat patrol pockets and increased the power of lobbyists.
McCain is all about McCain, he isn't interested in America, he could care less about the safety of America, he could care less about you and me.
Sure he went out on the campaign trail with President Bush in 04, but didn't you wonder if maybe he was a 'rat in sheep's clothing' to let Kerry know what Bush had planned? After all, it took McCain a week before he gave Kerry an answer as to whether he would be his VP....surely he wasn't concerned about America at that time, he was trying to figure out a way he could present this to the American people so they would swallow it, and when that didn't work, he said no, and that's the only reason....McCain for McCain.
I don't know why the people of Arizona vote him in all the time, guess he's bringing home the 'bacon' is the only reason I can see...I haven't seen him do any good for anything else but McCain.
Vote for him if thats what you want, another RINO, but I won't....there's to many of them in the Republican party and its time we get them out....
And now he's teaming up with Drunk kennedy on an immigration bill, why doesn't he just become a RAT instead of a RINO????
In the year 2000, he asked Lindsey Graham to get him an invitation to appear at Bob Jones University. However, when he heard George Bush had already spoken there, he went on a tirade about all the things wrong with the University. Regardless of how one feels about the school, they didn't deserve the vilification McCain heaped upon them! It was further proof he was not an honorable man, and I don't think the leopard has changed his spots. I didn't trust him in 2000, and I've not seen or heard anything about him to change my mind in the years since. He has not been loyal to Republicans or to the President. His loyalty seems only to be for whatever benefits him personally or politically.
LOL
McCain lost any serious run at the presidency when he became one of the gang of 14 Senators that screwed the conservative legislative agenda, after working backroom Republican politics to screw Tom DeLay,and take a whack at Karl Rove ( big mistake McPain.)
Today conservatives just smile at McPain politely and do the nod, nod, wink, wink, patronizing the old AH, becuase they know American conservatives will not vote for him, EVER.
McCain is all washed up, and the future of conservativism rests with two or three Republican candidates who are trying to decline the RINO rings proferred to them by the soft cheeses at the RNC. Who will be annointed with the RNC funding priority? Hardly McPain. And there are a few Conservative wild cards out there playing their cards close to their chests. I await their appearance eagerly.
The RNC has big problems. They will not win any future election without the conservative Republican vote, the major lesson of Nov. of 2008.McCain and others like him have led the RNC far astray.The RNC has only 5 or 6 more months to get the message instead of rationalizing around it. Then its President Hillery Clinton, if the RNC chooses to continue playing the RINO hand.
Come to Conservatives RNC. McPain is a BIG, BIG mistake.
What kind of outfit is the Phoenix New Times? Writing like Stephen Lemons' here, belongs in a magazine aimed at 12 & 13 year old girls.
Thanks for posting this.
This reporter should be sent back to kindergarten until he learns how to write properly. What a stinking, smirking, misbegotten mess.
is due out in November and pulls no punches in depicting McCain as a backstabbin' scalawag in relation to the notorious Keating 5 scandal of the late '80s.
GOOD!
******
DeConcini:
This scandal contributed to his retirement in 1994.
Senator Dennis DeConcini is also known for sponsoring the critical amendment to the Panama Canal Treaty of 1977 that allowed the Senate to come to a consensus on returning Panama control of the Canal.
******
In late March 1987, Keating set up a meeting with one of his closest associates in Washington, Senator Dennis DeConcini, the Democratic senior senator from Arizona. Keating requested that DeConcini set up a meeting with the federal regulators, with the purpose of getting them to leave Lincoln Savings and Loan alone.
DeConcini was quite willing to follow up on the request, since Keating had donated thousands of dollars to DeConcini's senate campaigns. So DeConcini sought out a number of senators that Keating had donated money to in the past and invited them to a meeting with the regulators on April 2.
To be blunt, you should charge them or get off their backs. If things are bad there, get to them. Their view is that they took a failing business and put it back on its feet. It's now viable and profitable. They took it off the endangered species list. Why has the exam dragged on and on and on?
- John Glenn, to federal regulators, in reference to Lincoln Savings and Loan
The first of two meetings between the Federal Home Loan Bank Board (the oversight committee for the savings and loans) and the Keating senators was held in DeConcini's office on April 2, 1987. In addition to DeConcini, Senators John McCain, John Glenn, and Alan Cranston were in attendance, as was Ed Gray, the chairman of the Federal Home Loan Bank Board.
******
Witness Says DeConcini Asked For Statement Accusing McCain
By RICHARD L. BERKE, SPECIAL TO THE NEW YORK TIMES
Tensions between Arizona's two Senators surfaced again today in Senate Ethics Committee hearings when a witness testified that Senator Dennis DeConcini encouraged him to write a sworn statement that could be damaging to the state's junior Senator, John McCain. The witness, David E. Stevens, a former tax accountant for the holding company for the savings and loan operated by Charles H. Keating Jr., recounted a phone call he got two weeks ago from Mr. DeConcini.
He wrote well enough to express his opinion -- shared by many -- that McCain is a corrupt, self serving, untrustworthy sonuvabitch?
Is it your refusal to admit as much, the real reason you don't "like his writing style"?
Semper Fi
No, I think McCain is the lowest of the low. The point is, if you're going to bash him as he deserves, then do it right. It just mystifies me why any self-respecting newspaper would let their reporters write such sophomoric trash.
Impossible. John Glenn is a great American astronaut hero. Clinton gave him one last space shot to prove it. How can you print such abominations?
I'm not a McCain fan BUT....
The New Times is a shitty weekly paper and Stephen Lemmons was a their restaurant reviewer until recently. Now he's a gossip columnist. And a scumbag. So is the Editor in Chief who I had a run in with recently.
SEN. JOHN McCAIN: THE ULTIMATE "RHINESTONE HERO"
SEN. JOHN McCAIN: THE ULTIMATE "RHINESTONE HERO" Part II
U.S. Sen. John McCain is no War Hero
John McCain: The Manchurian Candidate
McCain Is Booed by Labor Activists
McCain Rides to Kerry's Rescue: "John Kerry is Not Weak on Defense" (Today Show alert)
John McCain SCREAMS AT 9/11 FSA MEMBERS FOR OPPOSING HIS BILL TO GIVE AMNESTY FOR ILLEGALS
A number of articles on McCain. (some the same as above)
McCain/Soros by Rabbi Areyh Spero
Soros' "Reform" (an article about Soros‘ instrumental hand in McCain/Feingold)
Not Child‘s Play [McCain/Schumer bill could effect FR?]
McCain's Letter (McCain aligns with Global Enviro activists)
. . .yes; a very calculating time. . .a version of the 'straw poll'; watching to see how media presented this; and how voters responded.
I am amazed that more Repubs have yet to see the synthetic aspects of McCain. . .his self-serving; self-agrandizing MO (qualities that explain his empathy for Democrat Leadership) and which McCain successfully passes off as genuine - altruistic leadership.
He is a frightening prospect for President.
And he has been calculating his no-matter-what-it-takes. . .hillaryesque strategy, since the moment he lost to Bush.
Offered the following in the posting by areafiftyone - /01/05/07 "Fear McCain. . ." observations by Mark Steyn - where in part, he 'nails' the essence of McCain: (italics mine)
Powerline: "Mark Steyn appeared on Hugh Hewitt's show today. The whole interview is worth reading, but I'll focus on Steyn's comment about John McCain. He led off with this":
[McCain is deluding himself if he thinks that he is going to get the kind of ride he got in the year 2000. I think if he's running as the frontrunner, rather than as the insurgent to George W. Bush, I think if he's the frontrunner, then I think the media are going to point out how old and exhausted and elderly and cranky he seems, and I think he will have a much tougher ride than he did in 2000. . . I think he's very thin-skinned. . .that is what was clear to me in 2000. I actually regard him as a very unpleasant man, and I don't say that lightly.
Hugh then asked about McCain's reported comment (in a Vanity Fair piece) that "I think the [border] fence is least effective, but I'll build the God (blanked) fence if they want it." Steyn replied: [F]rom McCain's point of view, that sounds great, because the press liked that kind of talk, because it has a kind of cynicism to it, and a contempt for the conservative base. It's blunt and plain spoken, but not blunt and plain spoken in the service of important truths, but blunt and plain spoken in the service of putting down and insulting and condescending to the conservative base. And that's why the press likes him. . .
. . . So that line, you know, when he delivers a line like that, you can more or less hear, see the eyes of the Washington Post and New York Times guys light up. That's what they like about him. I saw him slap down some poor mill worker in northern New Hampshire, in what I thought was a grotesque and offensive and insulting way, and yet the press thought it was great. . .
. Here is a guy who was in many ways a conventional, mainstream Republican conservative when he started out. Now, his only political bedrock belief seems to be in his own indispensibility. Everything other than that, is negotiable. I don't think that's someone who necessarily makes a good candidate...]
http://powerlineblog.com
http://hughhewitt.townhall.com/Transcript_Page.aspx?ContentGuid=27647fd2-19d7-41a8-8d20-202424db1ea8
.
Thanks for the links.
You are both welcome. Please add 'mccain' to the keywords of any thread about McCain that you see if it doesn't already have them. That is usually how I find the day's threads and add my links. I think it's worth getting the word out as much as possible to squash this RINO loose cannon's chances. Thanks!
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