The McCranky leak tale has Digby wondering why reporters are so keen to "protect people who lie to them and use them for nefarious political purposes"

"Had either of the leaks probes found McCain guilty, in all likelihood he would have been recommended for censure by the Ethics Committee, but also possibly faced expulsion by the Senate or charged with perjury for having lied under oath. As it was, the worst that happened is that those observing McCain reevaluated the senator. Said one source close to the leaks investigation, 'It pricked the balloon I had that McCain might have had integrity.'"

-- Sahil Mahtani, in "McCain First, Second, and Always," in The New Republic

"Golly, if only we'd known. . . .

"I will never understand why reporters think it's so important that they protect people who lie to them and use them for nefarious political reasons. They sit idly by while a man like McCain creates a completely phony persona, wines and dines them and treats them to his 'unvarnished' off-the-record musings all the while at least some of them (and their editors) know that he is completely full of shit.

"He's run for president twice now. And it took until four days before the election for this story of McCain's perfidious treatment of his fellow senators and cover-up of his crimes to surface? A story about leaks to the press? Can we all see the problem here?"

-- Digby, in a post yesterday, "The Scooter Paradigm"

by Ken

Howie reported Saturday about New Republic reporter-researcher Sahil Mahtani's shocking story suggesting very powerfully that at the time of the Senate Ethics Committee's investigation of the Keating Five scandal, Sen. John McCain orchestrated a series of leaks that "essentially deflected public attention away from McCain and toward his colleagues" -- and "created 'a presumption of guilt' among the others, said one government official."

Those leaks, which were illegal whoever was responsible for them, almost certainly saved McCranky's sorry political career. If the senator was in fact the source of the leaks, they should have led to his expulsion from the Senate and possible indictment for perjury.

Mahtani, you'll recall, gathered devastating (to McCranky) information about two investigations conducted at the time: a private one by FBI super-agent Bud Hall requested from the General Accounting Office's Office of Special Investigations by Senate Ethics Committee Chairman Howell Heflin, and a public one by New York lawyer Peter Fleming in his capacity as Temporary Special Independent Counsel for the Senate.

His revelations make clear that there was little doubt at the time that the young Young Johnny McCranky was the source of the leaks, and that this wasn't exactly secret. Just about everyone in D.C. seems to have been convinced. The only thing that saved him, apparently, was the absence of "smoking gun"-type evidence of his guilt.

Now Digby has revisited the story, wondering how it happens that we didn't know about any of this at the time -- or, indeed, at any time before Saturday.

The fact is that there are some people who knew the truth about this from the beginning and they're called "reporters." They knew then and they know now that they were being leaked to by a lying creep who was trying to cover his ass. And, in their minds, that's exactly the same as protecting the identity of some low level whistleblower at the SEC who discovers that powerful people are committing crimes. Nobody said a word.

When Digby latches onto a big -- and usually neglected -- question, the argument really needs to be read in full. I think this is a really important one, and besides, it's a treat to read. So here it is:

The Scooter Paradigm

by digby

We've already talked about these latest revelations about McCain and the Keating Five, but I want to look at it from a slightly different angle.

Yes, yes, McCain is a lying piece of work who has spent his career basically acting the character of the heroic Top Gun maverick who flew a little bit too close to the sun, got burned and then spent the rest of his career pretending to seek redemption by becoming a reformer of the system that almost destroyed him. It's crap. He's corrupt, always has been.

But this latest doesn't just indict McCain. It indicts the press corps too:

[T]he Ethics Committee's was not the only investigation into the scandal. There were two other probes at the time that got barely any public attention--both of which largely focused on McCain himself. These were probes into illicit leaks about the proceedings of the Ethics Committee--leaks that repeatedly benefited McCain and hurt his Keating Five colleagues. One of those senators described the leaks at the time as a "violation of ethical behavior at least as serious as anything of which we senators have been accused."

The leaks, if they were coming from a senator, were also illegal. All five senators--including McCain--had testified under oath and under the U.S. penal code that the leaks did not come from their camps. The leaks were also prohibited by rules of the Senate Ethics Committee; according to the rules of the Senate, anyone caught leaking such information could face expulsion from the body. These, then, were not the usual Washington disclosures: Discovered, they could have stopped the career of any Washington politician in his tracks.

Golly, if only we'd known.

I'm going to call this The Scooter Paradigm, wherein the press reports stories that feature the press (sometimes even themselves personally) as if they are reporting on tribal chieftains in Afghanistan. In other words, as if they are reporting on something foreign and unknowable. The fact is that there are some people who knew the truth about this from the beginning and they're called "reporters." They knew then and they know now that they were being leaked to by a lying creep who was trying to cover his ass. And, in their minds, that's exactly the same as protecting the identity of some low level whistleblower at the SEC who discovers that powerful people are committing crimes. Nobody said a word.

I will never understand why reporters think it's so important that they protect people who lie to them and use them for nefarious political reasons. They sit idly by while a man like McCain creates a completely phony persona, wines and dines them and treats them to his "unvarnished" off-the-record musings all the while at least some of them (and their editors) know that he is completely full of shit.

He's run for president twice now. And it took until four days before the election for this story of McCain's perfidious treatment of his fellow senators and cover-up of his crimes to surface? A story about leaks to the press? Can we all see the problem here?

#

How Did McCain Avoid Prison After Being Caught Taking Bribes From Charles Keating?

Notorious crooks John McCain and Charles Keating partying at Keating's Bahamas estate

McCain has worked very hard for many years to whitewash his involvement in the Keating Five Scandal. I heard some Republican talking heads on Fox the other day screaming hysterically when someone brought it up: "he was cleared, he was cleared, he was cleared." Yet the people involved with the real investigation-- not the Senate Ethics Committee whitewash (which didn't "clear" McCain either but rebuked him for the same kind of bad judgment that is the absolute hallmark of his entire career, both military and political) have all claimed that not only was McCain guilty but that he was the most guilty and the only one who committed a crime-- accepting bribes-- that should have ended his career and sent him to prison.

McCain and the lipsticked pitbull want to talk about some idiotic terrorist who Obama barely knew and who committed a crime when Obama was 8 years old? Why doesn't the media, who have been very much part of the Keating Five whitewash for McCain, take a closer look at that and see what it was really all about instead of parroting Palin's baseless smear of Obama?

And the Obama campaign has made it easier for them today-- launching a new McCain-Keating website, along with all the relevant-- and still shocking-- research, and an easy to digest 13 minute film (below).

This all happen almost two decades ago and I wonder how many DWT readers recall when McCain was caught red-handed taking bribes from the worst bankrobber and swindler in American history, a close family friend, introduced to McCain by his jailbird, Mafiosa father-in-law. It is difficult to understand McCain's (and the GOP's) role in the current Wall Street meltdown without understanding McCain's role in the S&L and the Keating Five scandals.

McCain Unleashes The Republican Smear Machine-- Obama Talks Health Care For Working Families

The media strategist responsible for Bush's 2000 and 2004 campaigns, Mark McCinnon, isn't exactly shy about negative advertising. And his media campaign for Bush is fondly remembered by Republican partisans as one of the dirtiest, most shameful and nastiest anyone had ever seen. Needless to say, McCain hired him immediately. But after working with McCain for a while-- and after taking a look at the game plan of personal destruction McCain had mapped out for Obama-- McClinton warned that he would resign if Obama was the candidate. And in May, when Obama won the nomination, McKinnon did quit. Mark McKinnon knew that McCain, the sleaziest man to ever run for the presidency, had every intention of running a perverted and racist campaign against Obama and the details started leaking out last spring.

The end will be McCain's claims-- through his arm's length surrogates and the lower end of the GOP media chain (the Limbaughs, Hannitys, O'Reillys, Coulters... that kind of garbage-- that Obama is the antichrist. Today's Washington Post reported that McCain's Operation 24/7 Smear, Smear, Smear is going into effect now. Meanwhile, though, he has that wretched piece of pathetic white trash from Alaska shoveling the shit.

The issues that Americans face are all stacked against McCain and his decades of voting wrong on everything has led to dismal poll results that just keep getting worse and worse by the day. Nothing is working out for him and he's falling back on the one thing he knows he can count on: I'M WHITE-- DON'T VOTE FOR THE NIGGER. That, and Sarah Palin, will be John McCain's political legacy.

With just a month to go until Election Day, McCain's team has decided that its emphasis on the senator's biography as a war hero, experienced lawmaker and straight-talking maverick is insufficient to close a growing gap with Obama. The Arizonan's campaign is also eager to move the conversation away from the economy, an issue that strongly favors Obama and has helped him to a lead in many recent polls.

"We're going to get a little tougher," a senior Republican operative said, indicating that a fresh batch of television ads is coming. "We've got to question this guy's associations. Very soon. There's no question that we have to change the subject here," said the operative, who was not authorized to discuss strategy and spoke on the condition of anonymity.

Associations? Like this one?



Sometimes I wish Obama would hit back when McCain and his surrogates and the GOP-owned media lets loose with their smears and lies. But the voters seem to appreciate Obama's calm, solid, decisive campaign and his commitment to sticking with the real issues-- you know, the ones Americans care about and McCain runs from. Today one of Obama's spokespersons addressed McCain's threat to drag the campaign into the gutter:

"On a day after we learned that America lost three-quarters of a million jobs this year and a week after our financial system teetered on the brink of collapse, John McCain and his campaign have announced that they want to 'turn the page' on the economic crisis facing working families and spend the last month of this election launching dishonest, dishonorable character attacks against Barack Obama. We understand that it's not easy for John McCain to defend the worst economic record of our lifetime, but he will have to explain to the people struggling to pay their bills and stay in their homes why he would rather spend his time tearing down Barack Obama than laying out a plan to build up our economy."

So today when McCain's brother Joe (along with rubber stamp Republican Congressman Frank Wolf were rushing around Virginia, accusing people in Arlington and Alexandria of being communists, presumably because polls there show that they have turned away from McCain's reactionary campaign of hatred, bigotry and failure, Obama was talking about the issues that are important to Americans, like health care:

With just a month to go until election day, I know you've all been hearing a lot about politics out here in Virginia. I know you've been seeing a lot of ads, and getting a lot of calls, and reading a lot about this election in the newspaper. But being here today to talk with you about health care-- this isn't about politics for me. This is personal. 
 
I'm thinking today about my mother. She died of ovarian cancer at the age of 53. She fought valiantly, and endured the pain and chemotherapy with grace and good humor. But I'll never forget how she spent the final months of her life. At a time when she should have been focused on getting well, at a time when she should have been taking stock of her life and taking comfort in her family, she was lying in a hospital bed, fighting with her insurance company because they didn't want to cover her treatment. They claimed that her cancer was a pre-existing condition. 
 
So I know something about the heartbreak caused by our health care system. 
 
I know something about the anxiety of families hanging on by a thread as premiums have doubled these past eight years, and they're going into debt, and more than half-– half-- of all personal bankruptcies are caused in part by medical bills. 
 
I know about the frustration of the nearly 40% of small business owners who can no longer afford to insure their employees-- folks who work day and night, but have to lay people off, or shut their doors for good, because of rising health care costs.
 
I know the outrage we all feel about the 45 million Americans who don't have health insurance-- kids who can't see a doctor when they're sick; parents cutting their pills in half and praying for the best; folks who wind up in the emergency room in the middle of the night because they've got nowhere else to turn. 
 
But I also know that this is not who we are.  
 
We are not a country where a young woman I met should have to work the night shift after a full day of college and still not be able to pay the medical bills for her sister who's ill. That's not right-- and it's not who we are.
 
We are not a country where a man I met should have to file for bankruptcy after he had a stroke, because he faced nearly $200,000 in medical costs that he couldn't afford and his insurance company didn't cover. That's not right-- and it's not who we are. 
 
We are not a country that rewards hard work and perseverance with debt and worry. We've never been a country that lets major challenges go unsolved and unaddressed. And we are tired of watching as year after year, candidates offer up detailed health care plans with great fanfare and promise, only to see them crushed under the weight of Washington politics and drug and insurance lobbying once the campaign is over. 
 
That is not who we are. And that is not who we have to be. 
 
We know change is possible. We've seen it across this country as governors and legislatures move ahead of Washington to pass bold health care initiatives on their own. We see people across the spectrum-- doctors and patients, unions and businesses, Democrats and Republicans-- coming together around this issue, because at a time when rising costs have put too many families and businesses on a collision course with financial ruin and left too many without coverage at all, they know that bandaids and half-measures just won't do. 
 
Now I know that at this moment, when we stand in the midst of a serious economic crisis, some might ask how we can afford to focus on health care. Well, let's be clear: the rescue package we just passed in Congress isn't the end of what we need to do to fix our economy-- it's just the beginning.  Because the fundamentals of our economy are still not strong-- contrary to what Senator McCain says. And we've got to address those fundamentals-- and address them right now. 
 
In other words, the question isn't how we can afford to focus on health care-- but how we can afford not to. Because in order to fix our economic crisis, and rebuild our middle class, we need to fix our health care system too. Let's not forget, it's not just small businesses and families who are struggling. Some of the largest corporations in America-- including major American auto manufacturers-- are struggling to compete in the global marketplace because of high health care costs. They're watching their foreign competitors prosper-- unburdened by these costs-- as they struggle to create the good jobs we need to get our economy back on track. 
 
So it's clear that the time has come-- right now-- to solve this problem: to cut health care costs for families and businesses, and provide affordable, accessible health insurance for every American. 
 
And you'd think that anyone running for president would understand this. You'd think any candidate for the highest office in the land would have a plan to achieve these critically important goals. Well, if you think that, you haven't met my opponent, Senator John McCain.
 
Now, it's not that he doesn't care about what people are going through. I just think he doesn't know.  That's the only reason I can think of that he'd propose a health care plan that is so radical, so out of touch with what you're facing, and so out of line with our basic values.
 
Senator McCain has been eager to share some details of his plan-- but not all.
 
He tells you that he'll give you a tax credit of $2,500 per person-- $5,000 per family-- to help you pay for your insurance and health care costs. But like those ads for prescription drugs, you have to read the fine print to learn the rest of the story. 
 
You see, Senator McCain would pay for his plan, in part, by taxing your health care benefits for the first time in history. And this tax would come out of your paycheck. But the new tax credit he's proposing? That wouldn't go to you. It would go directly to your insurance company-- not your bank account. 
 
So when you read the fine print, it's clear that John McCain is pulling an old Washington bait and switch. It's a shell game. He gives you a tax credit with one hand-- but raises your taxes with the other. And recently, after some forceful questioning on TV, he finally admitted that for some Americans-- those with the very best plans-- his tax increase will be higher than his tax credit, and they'll come out behind. 
 
John McCain calls these plans "Cadillac plans." In some cases, it may be that a corporate CEO is getting too good a deal. But what if you're a line worker making a good American car like Cadillac who's given up wage increases in exchange for better health care? Well, Senator McCain believes you should pay higher taxes too. The bottom line: the better your health care plan-- the harder you've fought for good benefits--the higher the taxes you'll pay under John McCain's plan. 
 
And here's something else Senator McCain won't tell you. When he taxes people's benefits, many younger, healthier workers will decide that it's a better deal to opt out of the insurance they get at work-- and instead, go out into the individual market, where they can buy a cheaper plan. Many employers will be left with an older, sicker pool of workers who they can't afford to cover. As a result, many employers will drop their health care plans altogether. And study after study has shown, that under the McCain plan, at least 20 million Americans will lose the insurance they rely on from their workplace. 
 
It's the same approach George W. Bush floated a few years ago. It was dead on arrival in Congress.  But if Senator McCain were to succeed where George Bush failed, it very well could be the beginning of the end of our employer-based health care system. In fact, some experts have said that that's exactly the point of John McCain's plan-- to drive you out of the insurance you have through your employer-- and out into the marketplace, where your family will be given that $5,000 tax credit and told to buy insurance on your own. 
 
A $5,000 tax credit. That sounds pretty good. But what Senator McCain doesn't tell you is that the average cost of a family health care plan these days is more than twice that much-- $12,680. So where would that leave you?  
 
Senator McCain also doesn't tell you that insurance in the individual market isn't just more expensive than insurance you get through work-- it also includes fewer benefits. For example, many of these plans don't cover prescription drugs or pre-natal care. Many don't cover giving birth, so you'd have to pay out of pocket for that-- roughly $6,000. So when you're out there fending for yourself against the insurance companies, you pay more and get less. 
 
Here's another thing Senator McCain doesn't tell you-- his plan won't do a thing to stop insurance companies from discriminating against you if you have a pre-existing condition like hypertension, asthma, diabetes or cancer… the kind of conditions that 65 million working age Americans suffer from-- people from all backgrounds and walks of life all across this country. Employers don't charge you higher premiums for these conditions, but insurers do-- much higher. So the sicker you've been, the more you'll have to pay, and the harder it'll be to get the care you need. 
 
Finally, what John McCain doesn't tell you is that his plan calls for massive deregulation of the insurance industry that would leave families without the basic protections you rely on. You may have heard about how, in the current issue of a magazine, Senator McCain wrote that we need to open up health care to-- and I quote-- "more vigorous nationwide competition as we have done over the last decade in banking." That's right, he wants to deregulate the insurance industry just like he fought to deregulate the banking industry. And we've all seen how well that worked out.
 
It would be equally catastrophic for your health care. Right now, different states have different rules about what insurance companies have to cover. Senator McCain's plan would create a deregulated national market where companies can cherry pick the state where they're based-- and sell plans anywhere in America. 
 
It's the starting gun for a race to the bottom. Insurance companies will rush to set up shop in states with the fewest protections for patients. States where they don't have to cover things like mammograms and other cancer screenings, vaccinations, maternity care, and mental health care.  States where you don't have a right to appeal when your HMO refuses to cover the treatment you need. These are commonsense protections to make sure that you and your doctor-- not insurance company bureaucrats-- are making decisions about your health. And John McCain wants to give insurance companies free reign to avoid them. 
 
And believe it or not, just to top it all off, Senator McCain plans to give the top ten largest insurance companies $2 billion in new tax cuts. 
 
So, anyone want to guess who's running and funding John McCain's campaign? I'll give you a hint. Remember when we tried to fix health care back in the 1990s, and the insurance companies spent millions running misleading ads to scare people into opposing reform? That's right, John McCain has lobbyists for 69 insurance and drug companies and trade groups advising his campaign, writing his policies, and raising his money. Three of them are his top advisors. 
 
And if you think that Washington lobbyists who are working day and night to elect him are doing it to put themselves out of business, well, I've got a bridge in Alaska to sell you.
 
So here's John McCain's radical plan in a nutshell: he taxes health care benefits for the first time in history; millions lose the health care they have; millions pay more for the health care they get; drug and insurance companies continue to profit; and middle class families watch the system they rely on begin to unravel before their eyes. Well, I don't think that's right. I don't think we should settle for health care that works better for drug and insurance companies than it does for hard working Americans. I don't think that's the change we need. We can do better than that.
 
In the end, it's not surprising that Senator McCain's plan isn't a vast improvement on the same failed policies of these past eight years.Remember, Senator McCain voted against expanding the Children's Health Insurance Program-- a program that provides health care for millions of children in need. He voted against protecting Medicare 40 times over the course of his career. And he supported a massive cut in Medicare that would have raised premiums and out-of-pocket expenses for seniors while weakening the care they depend on.
 
In other words, Senator McCain's plan reflects the same bankrupt philosophy he's subscribed to for the past three decades in Washington: take care of the healthy and wealthy, and good luck to everyone else. They call this the Ownership Society, but what it really means is-- you're on your own. Your job doesn't give you health care? The market will fix it. Pre-existing condition? Tough luck. Insurance company won't pay for your treatment? Too bad, you're on your own.
 
This approach hasn't worked these past eight years, it won't work now, and it's time to turn the page.
 
Let me be clear – I don't think government can solve all our problems. But I reject the radical idea that government has no role to play in protecting ordinary Americans. I reject the thinking that says preserving our free market means letting corporations and special interests do as they please. 
 
I know that nothing is more important than the health and well-being of the people you love. And if you work hard and do everything right, you shouldn't live in fear of losing everything because of a fluke of genetics, or a bad diagnosis, or a stroke of bad luck.
 
That's why I believe that every single American has the right to affordable, accessible health care-- a right that should never be subject to Washington politics or industry profiteering, and that should never be purchased with tax increases on middle class families, because that is the last thing we need in an economy like this.
 
I know we can do this. I know what we can accomplish when we come together. I saw it in Illinois, when as a state senator, I brought Republicans and Democrats together to pass legislation that has expanded coverage to more than 150,000 people, including 70,000 children. I helped expand coverage for routine mammograms for women on Medicaid. And we created hospital report cards, so that every consumer could see things like the ratio of nurses to patients, the number of annual medical errors, and the quality of care they could expect at each hospital. 
 
So I reject the tired old debate that says we have to choose between two extremes: government-run health care with higher taxes… or insurance companies without rules denying people coverage.  That's a false choice. It's the same distracting rhetoric that's kept us gridlocked for decades. And we know that neither of these approaches is the answer to this problem. 
 
The real solution is to take on drug and insurance companies; modernize our health care system for the twenty-first century; reduce costs for families and businesses; and finally provide affordable, accessible health care for every American. And that's what I intend to do as President of the United States.
 
Of course, it's easy to have good ideas and make big promises. You've all heard plenty of that these past 20 months. The hard part is coming up with a concrete, detailed plan, and translating that plan into action. So today, I want to take a few minutes to tell you exactly what I plan to do, how I'll get it done, and how I'm going to pay for it. 
 
We'll start by reducing premiums by as much as $2,500 per family-- and we'll do it by taking the following five steps to lower costs throughout our health care system.  
           
First, we'll take on the drug and insurance companies and hold them accountable for the prices they charge and the harm they cause. 
 
We'll start by increasing competition in the insurance industry, and outlawing insurance company discrimination against people with pre-existing conditions. Insurance companies spend $50 billion a year on elaborate efforts to cherry pick the healthiest patients and avoid covering everyone else. I intend to save them a whole lot of time and money by putting an end to this practice once and for all. 
 
And we'll tell the pharmaceutical companies, thanks, but no thanks for the overpriced drugs – drugs that cost twice as much here as they do in Europe and Canada. We'll let Medicare negotiate for lower-prices; we'll stop drug companies from blocking generic drugs that are just as effective, and far less expensive; and we'll allow the safe re-importation of low-cost drugs from countries like Canada.
 
Second, we'll focus on prevention-- on promoting wellness rather than just managing sickness.  Today, we spend less than four cents of every health care dollar on prevention and public health, even though 80 percent of risk factors involved in the leading causes of death are behavior-related-- and thus, preventable. Under my plan, we'll make sure insurance companies cover evidence-based, preventive care services-- weight loss programs, smoking-cessation programs, and other efforts to help people avoid costly, debilitating health problems in the first place.
 
Third, we'll reduce waste and inefficiency by moving from a 20th century health care system based on pen and paper to a 21st century system based on the latest technology. According to one study, just by transferring medical records from yellowing pages in file cabinets to electronic records in computers, we can save $77 billion a year. And we can save lives too by reducing deadly medical errors and ensuring that doctors and nurses spend less time with paperwork and more time with patients.
 
Fourth, we'll reduce the cost of our care by improving the quality of our care. It's estimated that poor quality care-- from medical errors that cause complications to poor hygiene practices that cause infections-- costs up to $100 billion a year. So we'll provide you with information about your hospitals' and providers' quality of care. We'll track which drugs and procedures work best. And we'll reward providers not just for the quantity of services they provide, but for the quality of outcomes for their patients. So you'll get better care, and we'll all save money in the long run.
 
Fifth, we'll reduce costs for businesses and their workers by picking up the tab for some of the most expensive illnesses. Right now, the five percent of patients with the most serious illnesses like cancer and heart disease account for nearly fifty percent of health care costs. Insurance companies devote the lion's share of their expenses to these patients, and then pass the cost on to the rest of us in the form of higher premiums. Under my plan, the federal government will pay for part of these catastrophic cases, which means that your premiums will go down.
 
So that's how we'll cut costs. But that's not enough. Because today, in the year 2008, 45 million Americans still don't have any health insurance at all. This is one of the great moral crises of our time. And it's creating a vicious cycle that affects every last one of us. As premiums rise, more people become uninsured. And every time those uninsured folks walk into an emergency room because it's their only option, insurance companies raise premiums to cover the cost-- a hidden tax of $922 per family. That extra cost means even more people can't afford insurance, so the problem just gets worse. We cannot go on like this. This is not who we are, and this is not who we have to be. 
 
That's why my plan will cover all Americans. And unlike Senator McCain, I'll do it by building on and strengthening-- rather than dismantling-- our current, workplace-based system. So if you have insurance you like, you keep that insurance. If you have a doctor you like, you keep that doctor. The only thing that changes for you is that your health care costs will go down. 
 
But if you don't have insurance, or don't like your insurance, you'll be able to choose from the same type of quality private plans as every federal employee-- from a postal worker here in Colorado to a Congressman in Washington. All of these plans will cover essential medical services including prevention, maternity, disease management and mental health care. No one will be turned away because of a pre-existing condition or illness. If you have children, they will be covered too. If you change jobs, this insurance will go with you. And if you can't afford this insurance, you'll receive a tax credit to help pay for it.   
 
...I know that if we come together, and work together, we can do this.  So many people are counting on us.

McCain's response? More vicious smears and lies. The Post: "Moments after the House of Representatives approved a bailout package for Wall Street on Friday afternoon, the McCain campaign released a television ad that challenges Obama's honesty and asks, 'Who is Barack Obama?' The ad alleges that 'Senator Obama voted 94 times for higher taxes. Ninety-four times. He's not truthful on taxes.' The charge that Obama voted 94 times for higher taxes has been called misleading by independent fact-checkers, who have noted that the majority of those votes were on nonbinding budget resolutions."

A senior campaign official called the ad "just the beginning" of commercials that will "strike the new tone" in the campaign's final days. The official said the "aggressive tone" will center on the question of "whether this guy is ready to be president."

McCain's only positive commercial, called "Original Mavericks," has largely been taken off the air, according to Evan Tracey of the Campaign Media Analysis Group, which tracks political ads.

Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin's performance at Thursday night's debate embodied the new approach, as she used every opportunity to question Obama's honesty and fitness to serve as president. At one point she said, "Barack Obama voted against funding troops [in Iraq] after promising that he would not do so."

Palin kept up the attack yesterday, saying in an interview on Fox News that Obama is "reckless" and that some of what he has said, "in my world, disqualifies someone from consideration as the next commander in chief."

McCain hinted Thursday that a change is imminent, perhaps as soon as next week's debate. Asked at a Colorado town hall, "When are you going to take the gloves off?" the candidate grinned and replied, "How about Tuesday night?"

Today, the editors of the NY Times fretted that Palin's idea of a role model is Dick Cheney but they should have thought of what kind of a man-- and what kind of a voting record and what kind of character and what kind of judgment he had-- before they endorsed him earlier this year. For the last two weeks, all the Blue America candidates have been telling me their Republican incumbents are turning even more nasty and negative than usual. It isn't just McCain. His whole party would rather wreck the country than give up power. McCain may be the worst, but James Inhofe's vile campaign of lies against state Senator Andrew Rice has been pretty putrid. Rice has tried to stick to the issues and let Inhofe play in the mud by himself. Today Rice answered him back-- and very effectively:

McCain's Erratic Stands On The Economy Jeopardizing A Recovery

I'm not voting for either former Vietnam captive

OK, OK, everyone knows that McCain doesn't know anything about economics-- he's admitted it over and over-- and most people have figured out that he also isn't interested and just wants to get into the White House so he can start some wars and make up for whatever psychological problem is still haunting him from his failures in Vietnam. And Sarah Palin isn't exactly an economist either. But McCain doesn't need failed corporate plutocrats like Carly Fiorina and sleazy, crooked lobbyists like Phil Gramm to tell him what he has to say about the economy. All he has to do-- which is what he has been doing lately-- is go back to his old voting record and do the old McCain flip-flop.

Every single position he has supported-- from massive and irresponsible deregulation to more tax cuts for the wealthy-- has turned out to be wrong, dead wrong. So now all he has to do is talk about how he opposes everything he's ever stood for. And this morning he tried a new one. Many of McCain's supporters have a great deal of money in their checking accounts that federal insurance doesn't insure. The FDIC only insures bank deposits up to $100,000. What about all McCain's millionaire supporters? Well, following Senator Obama, McCain quickly came out for upping the federal insurance on deposits from $100,000 to $250,000. This is especially interesting since McCain has always opposed this-- loudly. In fact, in 1991 McCain introduced an amendment that limited insurance on Individual Retirement Accounts.

That same year, just two years McCain was caught in a massive bribery scandal, the Keating Five, which he was able to wriggle out of, he blamed the failure of Savings & Loan banks-- which he was an active participant in defrauding and robbing-- on "the perversity of Federal Deposit Insurance." Here's what he said then-- very different from what he's saying today: "The perversity of Federal deposit insurance is exemplified by the taxpayer bailout of the savings and loan industry. Mr. President, I think it is generally acknowledged that the failure of the savings and loan industry, to a
large degree, can be directly attributed to the unwarranted expansion of deposit insurance by the Depository Institutions Deregulation and Monetary Control Act of 1980. Basic coverage was increased from $40,000 to $100,000. No longer was deposit insurance for the small depositor. It became the safety blanket for large, sophisticated depositors and freewheeling bankers."

More recently (last February), the Boston Globe reminded voters of McCain's key role in the Keating Five scandal that was a test run for today's Wall Street meltdown, trying crooked political hacks to avaricious bank executives.

"The story of how the 'Keating Five' senators allegedly pressured regulators to lay off a failing Arizona S&L became a major scandal, and marked a turning point in McCain's life-- the near-death of his political career… The events of 1987, when McCain met with regulators, and 1991, when the Senate Ethics Committee concluded that he used 'poor judgment' in the matter, are only dimly remembered by many. … McCain met Keating in 1982, during McCain's successful run for
Congress, and soon began accepting offers from Keating to fly McCain's family on a corporate plane to Keating's house in the Bahamas. McCain did not pay for most of the trips until years later, when the matter became public. Keating, meanwhile, complained regularly to McCain that a proposed regulation would hurt his business. … He cosponsored a resolution sought by Keating, but it failed to postpone the regulation."

McCain's spectacular flip flops are normally on issues like the FDIC which he was against years ago and now supports, But today he was flip flopping in a matter of minutes from one position to another. While the Republican Party was releasing an ad blaming Obama for supporting the unpopular bill to infuse liquidity into the credit system-- which Republicans, not understanding it, killed yesterday-- McCain was urging Americans to support the exact same bill!

While McCain and his surrogates have been running around like a bunch of chickens without heads sending mixed messages, sowing discord, politicizing the issues and telling every audience what they think it wants to here-- even though they contradict each other, Obama has been calm, clear and consistent. This crisis has shown, once again-- as if people still needed more proof, that McCain is erratic, ineffective and untrustworthy. Listen to Obama this morning and compared that to McCain's crazy-quilt of hysterical, always changing pronouncements:

Did McCain's Keating Five Corruption And Savings And Loan Bailout Lead Directly To His Involvement In The Current Wall Street Meltdown?

With McCain's voting record and his relentless activities on behalf of ideology-driven deregulation, as chairman of the Senate Commerce Committee, coming into focus because of the Wall Street meltdown and his confused and confusing answers about his culpability, it is probably a good time to go back into McCain's sordid history of corruption and pull back the carefully tacked up curtains of the Keating Five Scandal.

As we mentioned yesterday, the only lessons McCain seems to have learned from a near-death experience with that first scandal, was covering his tracks more carefully and using a media hype machine to paint himself as a "reformer" instead of as the crooked operator he's always been.
He might be able to hide his severe illness-- illness that is likely to make an unprepared and supremely unqualified lunatic fringe kook from Alaska president if McCain wins in November-- under thousands and thousands of dollars in makeup sessions, but he can't hide his voting record and he can't hide the record of lobbyist payments his crooked campaign manager, Rick Davis, has sucked up from every bad actor in the Wall Street meltdown.

Back to the Keating Five Scandal that McCain learned so little from. He was the only real crook in the whole scandal and although the Senate Ethics Committee let him off with an "admonition," the federal regulators, have testified that McCain was the worst crook of the whole lot and the only senator whose actions should have landed him in prison. Had McCain been tried, convicted and imprisoned back then, there's a good chance that admirers and followers of his, like Bob Ney, Duke Cunningham, Tom DeLay, Rick Renzi, John Doolittle, Virgil Goode, and dozens of other crooked Republicans might now have gone down that same road. Please take a look at the video that exposes McCain's involvement:

Did McCain Learn Anything From His Keating Five Experience?

Early in his congressional career McCain was taking bribes-- to the tune of $112,000 in campaign contributions-- from Charles Keating, a family friend and crooked banker for whom he was caught strong-arming federal regulators. Eventually McCain's interference on behalf of his pal Keating-- who was also involved in very lucrative business deals with McCain's gangster (former jailbird) father-in-law and with his wife Cindy-- cost the taxpayers billions of dollars. You see, even if McCain didn't invent the Blackberry, he did invent the Savings and Loan scandal. At the time the McCains would regularly bundle off in one of Keating's private jets to his private retreat at Cat Cay in the Bahamas. Although right wing propagandists try to say McCain was "cleared," he wasn't. He was formally "admonished" by his colleagues on the very lax Senate Ethics Committee.

McCain calls his Keating Five experience "the worst mistake of my life," although God only knows how that stacks up to the torture in Vietnam he never stops talking about. But the real question is... what did he learn from being caught in the clutches of a crook like Keating and barely escaping with his political career intact? Apparently it wasn't to stop taking bribes in return for political favors and it wasn't to stop associating with unsavory characters who are eager to get at the taxpayers' money. What he learned was to stop going to the Bahamas... Instead he goes to Bermuda to colelct money from Republican fat cats who shelter their wealth so they don't have to pay their fair share of taxes the way the rest of us do. In fact, the head of the McCain economic brain trust-- his probable first choice to run the economy if McCain-Palin is victorious in November-- Phil Gramm is a senior vice president and lobbyist for a shady Swiss bank that is under investigation for helping rich folksshelter money in Bermuda. His clients may be whining about other things-- like the cost of yachts and cays-- but not about taxes.

McCain May Not Have Helped Invent The Blackberry, But He Was Part Of The Team That Invented Banking Scandals And Bailouts

Is there a relationship to John McCain's Keating 5 Scandal, which led to the taxpayers losing $3.4 billion, and the current Wall Street meltdown? You bet there is! Crooks & Liars has the story. Both scandals are direct results of Greed, special interest's/political corruption and the arrogance of Power. And McCain was at the heart of both. Although his disgraceful role in the Keating 5 scandal was largely whitewashed and he got away with an admonishment, his role as the head of the Senate Banking Committee where he came down firmly against federal regulatory agencies on behalf of the special interests paying him off with millions and millions of dollars in political "donations," will be tougher to deny.

The new film, Third Term helps put McCain's relationship to his ethics shortcomings into perspective. David Donnelly, director of Campaign Money Watch sums it up nicely: "Fast-forward twenty years to now, we have a huge mortgage crisis on our hands. It’s the result of years and years and years of a deregulatory approach that Senator McCain has supported."

He did not learn his lesson. The S&L collapse was a failure of adequate regulation, with the banks running wild, making dodgy investments with high risk-high reward margins. If that sounds familiar, it should... It’s the same thing that’s happening now, as banks fail, and as our housing market collapses. And the people responsible for this new crisis are the ones McCain has surrounded himself with, men like Phil Gramm and his banking lobbyists. He will offer the same kind of deregulatory policies that led to the banking collapse of the early ‘90s.

Take a look at this short clip from the movie, which puts the whole mess into perspective:



Just like he did before, at the time of his Keating 5 Scandal, McCain is desperate to blame everyone else and take no responsibility. That is the hallmark of his disgraceful career. McCain railing against the "Washington culture of lobbying and influence peddling," blaming this culture of the Wall Street crisis, and insisting that Obama is "square in the middle of it" is quintessential McCain, someone any colleague from the Senate, short of gay cypher Lindsey Graham and Holy Joe Lieberman-- both of whom have pinned their political futures to McCain's star-- will tell you is the least trustworthy, least believable, least honorable man in the U.S. Senate, regardless of political party.

Even the Wall Street Journal's notoriously right-wing editorial board is fed up with his devious campaign and is telling its readers that he "doesn't understand what's happening on Wall Street... McCain clearly wants to distance himself from the Bush Administration. But this assault on Mr. Cox is both false and deeply unfair. It's also un-Presidential... It wasn't very long ago that he blamed speculators on the long side for sky-high oil prices. Then oil prices fell. Now Mr. McCain wants voters to believe speculators are responsible for driving mismanaged financial companies to ruin. The irony is that this critique puts Mr. McCain in the same camp as some of the Wall Street CEOs who have led their firms so poorly. They also want someone (else) to blame... In a crisis, voters want steady, calm leadership, not easy, misleading answers that will do nothing to help. Mr. McCain is sounding like a candidate searching for a political foil rather than a genuine solution."

This morning Bush and Obama were calling on the whole nation to put partisanship aside and come together to fight the common enemy. McCain, clearly sensing that he is the common enemy lashed out viciously and desperately with more false negative, Rovian TV commercials trying to blame Obama while spewing an endless regurgitation of lies and distortions.

McCain and Keating Five Scandal Revisited-- McCain Should Have Gone To Prison

When most people talk about the startling similarities between Bush and McCain, they're usually referring to the corporate-friendly policy agenda the two share, domestically and internationally. But there's another aspect that has long bothered me-- the ne'er-do-well lives they've both led. Both have failed upwards, primarily due to family connections. Both live in the lap of luxury though neither ever earned any substantial money at all-- and both have twisted, out-of-touch views of what it means to be middle class in America, a middle class each has diminished with his ideologically-driven policies. Everything that Bush ever touched turned to shit but he giggled and drank and snorted-- and cheated and lied and blustered-- his way into the presidency. McCain has been, if anything, even more of a screw-up and he would now like to get his hands on a 14th house, the White House.

McCain's biggest achievement in life was to be a complete and dismal failure in the Navy, impress every superior officer he ever served under as utterly unfit, and then get shot down and spend the war in prison. Every time he gets in a tight corner, he screeches that he was tortured-- for America and people let him slide. That's how he was elected to the House; it's how he's managed to worm out of every crisis since then, and it's even how his campaign responded yesterday when he wound up telling a reporter he didn't know how many houses he owns. (McCain surrogate Sean Hannity used the same argument last week to claim that although John Edwards' adultery was somehow a bad reflection on Barack Obama, John McCain's adulterous lifestyle must be forgiven because he was, after all, tortured for the country in Vietnam.) I guess that's also why the mass media never mentions that McCain-- aside from having between 7-13 houses (who knows; his staff can't figured it out either)-- pays his butlers and maids $270,000 a year. What do you pay your butlers and maids? Do you know how many houses you own?

As we saw yesterday, CNN has been running a feature called McCain Revealed. Not all that much was revealed-- other than the fact that adultery wasn't as much something that happened to him once as it was a lifestyle-- and that he was a crook who unjustly escaped prison for his shenanigans with nortorious bank swindler/close associate Charles Keating. Please take three and a half minutes to watch this CNN report and then ask yourself if you can trust John McCain to be president (of the United States):

With all due allowance for our concerns about Obama and his campaign, the grim reality is that we mustn't allow McCranky to be elected

Last night -- let's not kid ourselves, they're not the same.

by Ken

Howie and I were chatting last night, and he told me about the experience of watching Senators Obama and McCranky at the Saddleback Church do. As he's still without a usable home computer, he suddenly has time for all sorts of normally neglected activities.

ASIDE ON HOWIE'S COMPUTERLESSNESS

Now I realize that what I described in a comment as hot-shot corporate techs consulting on Howie's case were in fact merely the tech-support drones from his cable company, which is already mystified as to why he can't get CNN, alone among the channels in his cable package. (He recently upgraded to one of those triple packages with cable, computer, and phone service.) Since CNN is one of only three channels he watches, and he'd already seen the History Channel's Chinese-emperor extravaganza several times, that left him, shall we say, open to other options.

He also reminded me of an anecdote he'd already told me about a memorable experience he once had with a deacon of Saddleback. (I remembered the anecdote pretty vividly, just not the Saddleback connection.) He planned to use that anecdote to lead off the hypothetical post he couldn't write based on watching last night's festivities. However, I think I better leave that story to him to tell!

Let me say at once that I was not watching the Saddleback festivities. Sooner than that I would -- in fact did -- watch a little of the Jets-Redskins preseason football game. My goodness, watching preseason football games! Has it come to that? Actually, I kept noticing recently that there were preseason games on TV, but none of them involved teams I care about, which is to say the New York teams, of course. It so happened that I was online last night and stumbled across news that the Jets' newly acquired QB, Grampa Bret Favre, had hurled a TD pass on the team's opening drive. [Oops, turns out it was the Jets' second drive.] Realizing that this had happened perhaps only minutes before, I searched out the game on the TV, and found it apparently still in the first quarter. But Gramps's night, it seemed, was already over.

However, I digress. What struck Howie about the presidential contenders' Saddleback appearances was (a) the difference in their respective modes of presentation and (b) the difference in the audience response.

With regard to (a), Obama genuinely tried to engage on serious issues, thoughtfully and substantively. McCranky, meanwhile, bloviated with prescripted, pandering imbecilities. (At one point, I was told, he even announced, "I'm pandering.") With respect to (b), the audience greeted Obama respectfully, but went batshit crazy over Young Johnny's disgraceful brain-rotted imbecilities.

Which is, come to think of it, and even allowing for the giant disappointment many of us feel about the progress of the center-hugging, mush-mouthed Obama campaign, the inescapable difference between the candidates. Don't get me wrong. The disappointment many of us feel with regard to both the Obama campaign and Obama as candidate is important, and I don't mean to minimize it. I myself have been contemplating for several weeks now writing an agonized post of heart unhappiness. Yet I think it's maybe more important right now to step back and reregister this crucial, unchanging difference between the candidates.

The more I see and hear of McCranky, the more horrified I am.

Anyone who's looked into his past knows that he was never the mythical maverick of legend. He's always been way more conservative than his admirers realized, and all his post-Vietnam life he's had a shockingly sleazy record in financial matters.

His involvement in the Keating Five scandal turns out not to have been incidental or aberrant. It was, rather, utterly typical behavior for a man perpetually on the make for a quick buck, not least in the whole sordid episode of dumping his first wife in favor of the lovely Cindy the beer heiress. We mustn't forget that unlike the four Democratic senators who got caught in the Keating muck, McCranky actually had a personal relationship with muckmaster Charles Keating.

Even the most laudable undertaking of McCranky's political career, his passionate involvement in campaign finance reform, looks in retrospect suspiciously like a desperate attempt to put the scandal behind him. His more recent approach to campaign finance has made a mockery of the whole spirit of the McCain-Feingold reforms, limited as they were.

CONFIDENTIAL TO SEN. RUSS FEINGOLD

Depressingly, Russ Feingold seems not to have noticed his old crusade mate's metamorphosis, or for that matter his lifelong sleaze streak, and continues to speak of him as if he were the mythical Maverick McCain.

Confidential to Russ: Hey, Russ, shut the fuck up, why dontcha?

(Come to think of it, you have to wonder how much contact Russ has had recently with his old comrade. It's not as if they're likely to have crossed paths in the Senate, where Young Johnny has hardly shown his face in the last year.)

And the worst of it with Young Johnny, even worse in my mind than the question of how much of his faculties he may have lost to age, is that when you look really closely at the McCranky record, as our pal Cliff Schecter did in his still-indispensable book The Real McCain, it's hard to find anything Young Johnny really believes in as a matter of principle beyond his own ambition.

One of these days I'm sure I'll be upset enough with Obama and his campaign to write that agonized cri du coeur I've got percolating. But it's not going to change the grim reality that, after eight years of Cheney-Bush atrocities, we really and truly have no choice in this election. Not only is there no hope of a McCranky administration seriously addressing the wreckage left behind by the Bush regime. There is a frightening possibility that a President McCranky could actually do worse.

And the horrifying reality, at least from my vantage point, is that, for all that the McCranky campaign appears to be a cross between a stumbling shambles and a train wreck, it seems to be working. Pretty much the way it worked last night at Saddleback.

Go, Barack!

#

VERY QUESTIONABLE FINANCIAL SHENANIGANS ON THE STRAIGHT TALK EXPRESS: HAS McCAIN REVERTED TO HIS OLD CROOKED WAYS?

McCain's got his own version of a coalition of the willing down in South Carolina. And, like Bush's in Iraq, they're willing as long as the bribes are flowing their way. McCain's first ever brush with national celebrity was when he was caught stuffing his face at the trough that came to be known as the S&L scandal-- he was one of the Keating 5. A consultant told him the only way to save his tarnished reputation and his political career would be to create an image that looked clean.  So he got involved with a bunch of clean stuff-- like McCain-Feingold and his bogus "Straight-Talk Express, and this whole maverick shtick. But always lurking beneath the surface was the grubby, grasping, cheat, the real John McCain.

And according to yesterday's Columbia State the ugly face of the real McCain was exposed for everyone in South Carolina.

John McCain’s presidential campaign has paid more than $30,000 in 2007 to a South Carolina senator and the sons of two other prominent elected officials, all of whom have endorsed the Arizona Republican’s bid for the White House.

Mr. Forked Tongue Express has state Senator Mike Fair and the sons of Representative Gloria Haskins (Bryan) and Adjunct General Stan Spears (Stan, Jr.) on his payroll. Fair and the two kids' parents all endorsed McCain (of course). "The endorsements and jobs are not related, McCain’s top political consultant in South Carolina told The State Tuesday." Who would ever imagine they would be?


DID YOU KNOW CRAZY OLD McCAIN WAS A BEACH BOYS FAN?

I didn't either. But apparently he likes singin' Beach Boys songs when he's confronted with tough diplomatic questions. Pat over at Nitpicker did a great post this morning called Crazy Talk Express and answers the question on many people's minds: "Good God; John McCain is Nuts." McCain was out trying to harvest wingnuts in South Carolina when one kook Republican primary voter, eager for the bombing of Iran to begin, asked him when America would "send an airmail message to Tehran." Fortunately, a Romney "tracker," looking for a McCain "macaca-moment," was there to capture it all.

McCain began his answer by changing the words to a popular Beach Boys song. “Bomb bomb bomb, bomb bomb Iran,” he sang to the tune of Barbara Ann.

How do you think this sets him up to deal with Iran diplomatically?

Watch the video over at Crooks and Liars.


UPDATE: McCAIN ISN'T CLASSY ENOUGH TO BE A BEACH BOYS FAN-- HE WORSHIPS AT THE ALTER OF VINCE VANCE & THE VALIANTS

Here's what McCain was trying to sing. (And, yeah, that's Vince.) Jon Solz contemplates what most people thought was impossible: a worse presidency than Bush's!

You want more music? OK, try this!

McCain, in Las Vegas yesterday trying to suck up some gambling moolah, said if you don't like his singin' "lighten up and get a life."


UPDATE: MOVEON DOESN'T THINK WE CAN AFFORD ANOTHER RECKLESS PRESIDENT

Take a look at the Bomb Bomb Bomb Iran" ad MoveOn just finished.