[MARTIAL MONK]

John took a chunck of change from a savings and loan operator. Federal investigators were set to swoop in on that operator, and were asked to hold off. Five Senators took part in that effort. John was one of them. They became known as the Keeting Five. Keeting proceded to bilk untold millions from pensioners over the year it took for the regulators to finally force an audit. Peoples lives were destroyed, life savings gone. John McCain skated while they were forced to pick up the pieces, a lifetime’s worth of savings gone

You are not going to vote for McCain and I respect that because it is based on solid reasoning and philosiphical differences. I, frankly, am surprised to be supporting him. I started by trying to defend the truth from the tin-foilers and looking around I see no better alternative at this point. If you want to see McCain's temper flare, you need to just mention my name to him. The relationship has been that contentious over the years.

Without arguing your conclusions, I would like to correct the Keating scenerio. McCain attended two meetings, the second one at the request of DeConcini after McCain had refused Keating. McCain made it clear that he wanted no special favors and was not trying to influence the investigation. When he was informed at the second meeting that there were criminal referrals coming, he backed out completely.

The audit was completed about a month after the second meeting. The reason it was no acted on was not due to the Senators but to politics within the regulatory agencies themselves. The completed audit was ignored and responsibility was shifted from San Francisco to Washington and a new audit ordered when Wall replaced Gray. Many of the investigators (and also Alan Greenspan) felt that Lincoln was healthy but two of them found assets that were overvalued and commercial projects that were not up to projections.

On this one McCain's involvement was minimal and I just do not support the notion that it was corrupt. Take this for what you will.

[callisto]

Please read John McCain: The Anti-Conservative

The media have created the fiction that Sen. John McCain, alone among the Republican candidates, can beat Hillary or Obama this fall. This is a fiction because only a conservative can unite the Republican Party this year and win. Call him “maverick”, call him “independent,” but please don’t call McCain “conservative.”

In his Florida victory speech, Sen. McCain said, “Our party has always been successful when we have, like Ronald Reagan, stood fast by our convictions." But McCain’s Senate record proves he is not a conservative, far less a principled Reagan conservative. As Charles Krauthammer said recently, “McCain's apostasies are too numerous to actually count.” And what McCain says about his record is astonishingly misleading.