Gramm-pa McCain Did Not Disclose Keating Business Deal To Investigators

By GottaLaff

Ethics, schmethics. Who needs 'em when you're running for president anyway:

The New Republic published an explosive story Saturday evening detailing how John McCain, in all likelihood, leaked information to investigators of the Keating Five scandal that was designed to help his image at the expense of the other four Senators involved.

If the allegation is true -- and TNR makes a healthy case as to its veracity -- it would mean that McCain violated Senate rules and could have been expelled from that body.

"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," Sahil Mahtani reports. "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."

But this is not be the only instance in which McCain defied the rules of the Senate when seeking to absolve himself of any wronging in the Keating affair. Public records in Arizona reveal that the Senator was also dishonest in discussing the extent of financial transactions he and his family had with the disgraced Savings and Loans chief.

In a three-and-a-half hour interview with investigators on February 13, 1990, McCain told the Ethics Committee that "other than the Fountain Square project [a property deal in which Keating and McCain's family were jointly invested] there were no other financial dealings between him or his family and ACC [American Continental Corporation]."

This, it seems, was not true.

More here.

The unexpurgated Cindy McCain

By GottaLaff

Rumor has it that Mrs. Gramm-pa wasn't thrilled with today's New York Times piece. Can't imagine why. These excerpts also reveal Gramm-pa's cold, removed, unfeeling side. I highlighted that part in red, to set it apart.

Sorry this is so long, but when it comes to Her Royal McTongueyness, it's hard to know where to stop:

Mrs. McCain, 54, describes herself as her husband’s best friend, though for the last two decades they have mostly lived apart, she in Arizona, he in Washington. She initially seemed like an ideal political partner, giving Mr. McCain a home state, money and contacts that jump-started his career. But as the years passed, she also became a liability at times. She played a role in the Keating Five savings-and-loan scandal, and just as her husband was rehabilitating his reputation, she was caught stealing drugs from her nonprofit organization to feed her addiction to painkillers. She has a fortune that sets the McCains apart from most other Americans, a problem in a presidential race that hinges on economic anxieties. She can be imprecise: she has repeatedly called herself an only child, for instance, even though she has two half-siblings, and has provided varying details about a 1994 mercy mission to Rwanda. [...]

Carol McCain was still a presence on the social scene, working in the Reagan White House and as an events planner. Everyone knew her story: she had stood by her husband during his captivity in North Vietnam, never passing word of a debilitating car accident, only to discover, a few years after their reunion, that he was leaving her for a younger, richer woman. [...]

Recently, Mrs. McCain has called the separations painful, volunteering that she endured several miscarriages alone. She spent subsequent pregnancies mostly confined to home, Ms. Ross said, sitting in a favorite stuffed chair, watching videos. But she rarely complained. “Her attitude was as a good soldier,” Mr. Gullet said. [...]

Her husband was accused of improperly intervening on behalf of a donor, Charles Keating, whose failed savings and loan had cost taxpayers billions. Four other senators were implicated, and one Senate spouse: Mrs. McCain. [...]

When Mrs. McCain visited Bangladesh after a cyclone, she stopped at an orphanage founded by Mother Teresa, who was not, as the campaign has said, present for the visit. Mrs. McCain returned with two baby girls; Mr. Gullet later adopted one, and Mrs. McCain informed her husband on landing that they would adopt the other. [...]

She had used the drugs, first given for back pain, to numb herself during the Keating Five investigation, she confessed to Newsweek magazine. “The newspaper articles didn’t hurt as much, and I didn’t hurt as much,“ she wrote in an essay. “The pills made me feel euphoric and free.” [...]

In interviews, some of Mrs. McCain’s statements seem questionable. She often tells of how she moved to California, leaving her children behind, for four months in 2004 to recover from a stroke that left her unable to walk or speak. But news reports from the time indicate she had few discernible impediments. She gave interviews four days afterward, attended a baseball game with her husband and a reporter several weeks later, and spoke at a Tempe, Ariz., Chamber of Commerce event. “One month out, I feel wonderful,” she told the audience. The McCain campaign declined to resolve the discrepancy. [...]

Rick Davis, a contentious figure in the McCain camp because of his lobbying ties, emerged as campaign manager, in part because Mrs. McCain, with whom he spent months traveling and fund-raising, backed him.

The ideal First Family.

Cindy McCain’s Keating Connection

By GottaLaff

Cindy McMealTicket just couldn't break up with Keating. Did she forget that Gramm-pa and Chuck were already a couple? But that's not important now. What is important is:

Sen. John McCain’s wife and father-in-law continued a lucrative business partnership with disgraced financier Charles H. Keating Jr. for 11 years after the GOP presidential nominee said he ended his close friendship with Keating in March 1987.

Cindy McCain’s business partnership with Keating in a real-estate development between 1986 and 1998 netted her a tidy profit, in addition to years of significant tax benefits. Her father, who died in 2000, earned similar returns.

What a snuggy-wuggy, close-knit family. I bet Gramm-pa McCain had a lot to say about this!

McCain’s campaign and his Senate office did not respond to repeated phone calls and emails concerning Cindy McCain’s investment with Keating.

Oh.

On Monday, McCain’s attorney, John Dowd, said in a conference call with reporters that McCain was not aware of his wife’s and father-in-law’s investment with Keating at the time it was made. “John was unconnected to that and unaware of it at the time and did not participate in it,” Dowd said.

Gee. Maybe I was a little premature...

However, during the Keating Five Senate Ethics Committee hearings in 1990-91, McCain testified that he was aware of the family investment with Keating in early 1986.

Under questioning from Dowd, McCain said he learned of the investment from a Hensley & Co. executive.

Oh. Never mind then.

Nor did the end of McCain’s relationship with Keating affect his immediate family’s business relationship with the financier. Cindy McCain and her father, James Hensley, remained investors in the Keating real-estate partnership that included a north Phoenix shopping center. The center sold in July 1998 for $15.4 million.

Their business relationship with Keating began April 15, 1986, when the two bought an 8 percent stake in Fountain Square Associates Ltd. Partnership. Cindy McCain and her father made the $359,100 investment through Western Leasing Co., a partnership they jointly owned. [...]

The Fountain Square sale generated the second largest amount of income from Cindy McCain’s array of investments in 1998, according to Sen. McCain’s financial disclosure statement. Only dividends from Cindy McCain’s investment in Hensley & Company stock, which exceeded $1 million, generated more income.

Cindy McCain’s and Hensley’s 1986 investment in Fountain Square earned the father and daughter team a nice return. Its greater value to the family, however, may have had more to do with politics than money. Their investment was made the same year that McCain was running for the Senate seat held by the retiring Barry M. Goldwater. Keating and his employees contributed more than $50,000 to McCain’s campaign, bringing their total contributions to McCain since 1982 to at least $112,000.

Remember, it would have been called the Keating Four if Gramm-pa hadn't been involved. Let's not forget that, either, okay? Okay.

Keating to Gramm-pa McCain in 1986: ‘I’m yours til death do us part.’

By GottaLaff

Well, well, well. Look what Think Progress dug up:

The Washington Times reports that in 1986, John McCain wrote a note on House stationery to Charles Keating, chairman of a failed savings and loan association who went to prison in the late 1980s. In the letter, McCain apologized for listing Keating as part of his Senate campaign finance committee. Keating wrote in response: “You can call me anything, write anything or do anything. I’m yours till death do us part“:

There you have it: Gramm-pa John Sidney McCain is married to Charles Humphrey Keating, Jr. Forever. (Bigamist!)

And since marriage is so important to these guys, they're stuck with each other forever. Until death do the two sleazeballs part.

Google Trends- "keating economics" the second-most-popular search term

Who woulda thunk. Why do I keep on smelling despair and desperation? BFCE.

Obama apparently had today's Charles Keating attack in the can, ready to deploy against an attempt to revive Bill Ayers, and it seems to be working.

A glance at Google Trends finds "keating economics" the second-most-popular search term right now. Numbers 8, 11, 12, and 21 are terms like "keating five" and "charles keating."

Bill Ayers shows up at 36, just after "mccain keating."

The first term is Neal Kashkari, newly tapped to head the bailout. Voter registration terms also rank high.

VIDEO: KEATING ECONOMICS: John McCain & The Making of a Financial Crisis

By GottaLaff

Keating Economics and John McCain

You know they had this in their pockets just waiting, and as Andrea Mitchell just said on MJ- "The McCain camp telegraphed their next blow and gave the Obama campaign the entry". 13 minute mini-documentary due at 12n. More background here.

The current economic crisis demands that we understand John McCain's attitudes about economic oversight and corporate influence in federal regulation. Nothing illustrates the danger of his approach more clearly than his central role in the savings and loan scandal of the late '80s and early '90s.

A blast from the past, re: The Keating Five-- Gramm-pa McCain: "You're a liar"

By GottaLaff

Time to pull out a few stops, remember?

Via AMERICABlog:

John McCain likes to talk about his character. So let's talk about it. Remember, he was 54 years old when he got himself into this unethical mess.

When the story broke, McCain did nothing to help himself. "You're a liar," McCain said when a Republic reporter asked him about the business relationship between his wife and Keating. "That's the spouse's involvement, you idiot," McCain said later in the same conversation. "You do understand English, don't you?" He also belittled reporters when they asked about his wife's ties to Keating. "It's up to you to find that out, kids." The paper ran the story.

This is the same unpresidential spitwad of what passes for a man who is actually fooling a lot of voters into supporting him.

We shall have a field day with Gramm-pa's past/present behavior. I can feel it in my youthful indiscretionary toes.

VIDEO: Fox host orders mic cut on Keating Five remarks

By GottaLaff


(Video posted Thursday on Go Left TV.)

Shhh. The Keating Five scandal never existed. It's history, so it's gone. Forever. "Cut his mic!" Highlights:

Appearing Thursday morning on Fox & Friends, radio host Mike Papantonio tried to remind viewers about McCain's intervention with federal regulators on behalf of real estate mogul Charles Keating, who was trying to avoid regulations of a savings and loan he owned during the S&L crisis of the 1980s.

F&F's Steve Doocy told Papantonio to "pipe down," called him "rude" and demanded he "cut it out." A show producer could be overheard saying "cut his mike."

As Papantonio tries one last time to explain the details of the Keating Five scandal, Doocy again cuts him off.

"This is not the History Channel," he says.

Maybe not, but as far as I'm concerned, Gramm-pa McCain is history.

Gramm-pa John McCain's Keating Five Problem In 97 Seconds

By GottaLaff

Smile, Gramm-pa, you're on Candid Camera:

Dave Sirota- "Keating Five, Keating Five!"

Truthiness Stages a Comeback, Gramm-pa McCain style

By GottaLaff

Frank Rich once again dares to go where others will not:

For better or worse, the candidacy of Barack Obama, a senator-come-lately, must be evaluated on his judgment, ideas and potential to lead. McCain, by contrast, has been chairman of the Senate Commerce Committee, where he claims to have overseen “every part of our economy.” He didn’t, thank heavens, but he does have a long and relevant economic record that begins with the Keating Five scandal of 1989 and extends to this campaign, where his fiscal policies bear the fingerprints of Phil Gramm and Carly Fiorina. It’s not the résumé that a presidential candidate wants to advertise as America faces its worst financial crisis since the Great Depression. That’s why the main thrust of the McCain campaign has been to cover up his history of economic malpractice. [...]

But the more crucial Rove game plan is to envelop the entire presidential race in a thick fog of truthiness. [...] Their larger aim is to construct a bogus alternative reality so relentless it can overwhelm any haphazard journalistic stabs at puncturing it. [...]

Just as the Bushies once flogged uranium from Africa, so Palin ceaselessly repeats her discredited claim that she said “no thanks” to the Bridge to Nowhere. Nothing is too small or sacred for the McCain campaign to lie about. [...]

If you doubt that the big lies are sticking, look at the latest Washington Post/ABC News poll. Half of voters now believe in the daily McCain refrain that Obama will raise their taxes. [...]

Network news, with its dwindling handful of investigative reporters, has barely mentioned, let alone advanced, major new print revelations about Cindy McCain’s drug-addiction history (in The Washington Post) and the rampant cronyism and secrecy in Palin’s governance of Alaska (in last Sunday’s New York Times). At least the networks repeatedly fact-check the low-hanging fruit among the countless Palin lies, but John McCain’s past usually remains off limits. [...]

[The Keating Five scandal] was ugly for the McCains. He had received more than $100,000 in Keating campaign contributions, and both McCains had repeatedly hopped on Keating’s corporate jet. Cindy McCain and her beer-magnate father had invested nearly $360,000 in a Keating shopping center a year before her husband joined four senators in inappropriate meetings with regulators charged with S.&L. oversight. [...]

The corporate jets, lobbyists and sleazes that gravitated around McCain in the Keating era have also reappeared in new incarnations. [...]

Even now his campaign has kept the “filter” from learning the very basics about his fitness to serve as president — his finances and his health. The McCain multihousehold’s multimillion-dollar mother lode is buried in Cindy McCain’s still-unreleased complete tax returns. John McCain’s full medical records, our sole index to the odds of an imminent Palin presidency, also remain locked away.

This is the same tactic of selective document release that the Bush White House used to bamboozle Congress and the press about Saddam’s nonexistent W.M.D. As truthiness repeats itself, so may history, and not as farce.

He employs many of BushCo's tactics. As many of us have said in Comments, the parallels need to be exposed and repeated over and over and over.

John McCain and the Keating 5: Third Term

Don't know much about this "Third Term" movie, but it looks like it's tied in to Paul Begala's new book and CAP. Via C&L.

Nice rundown on the basics of the Keating Five here by clammyc.

Sherrod Brown finally says Gramm-pa McCain F word: (Keating )Five

By GottaLaff

It's about time!

One of the Senate's most progressive members ripped John McCain on Tuesday for offering a phony populist self-portrayal in the wake of the current crisis in the financial markets. In the process, Sherrod Brown of Ohio raised the Republican nominee's involvement in the Keating Five scandal as evidence that voters couldn't trust McCain's record on both the economy and ethics.

"It is not so much his economic proposals but his economic record," Brown said of McCain. "His main adviser is Phil Gramm -- he was his mentor in the Senate -- and you just tie it all together. Of course John McCain supported the oil industry, he has oil lobbyists working for him. Of course John McCain supported these trade agreements, he has got Wall Street people working for him... It is all wrapped up together. John McCain is a creature of these interest groups in Washington. He is no maverick and, from the Keating Five on, his ethics have been questionable. He's not a maverick and Barack has got to just keep hammering on that."

In referencing McCain's involvement in that 1980's Savings and Loans controversy, Brown has gone where the Democratic nominee himself has only tread subtly. During his speech on Tuesday, Obama drew parallels between that industry collapse and the current stumbles of the housing and financial sectors. [...]

"Just imagine if Bush and McCain had had their way and privatized Social Security," said Brown. "People would have seen their private social security accounts just disintegrate the last two days. And imagine what that would mean in rural America, urban America, suburban America and small town America?"

I have to leave soon, so my apologies, but copy and pastes will have to do.

Keating Five, Keating Five, Keating Five... with a dash of temper

By GottaLaff


John Sidney McCain feels it necessary to use other people's words (Hillary's) to make his points against Obama. And the points they make are outdated ones from a primary election. Apparently, he has very little faith in his own ability to communicate, let alone have any original thoughts.

And while we're on the topic of having very little faith in J Sid's words, enjoy this video's blast from the past. Toward the end, we get bonus confirmation of his bouts of volatility from none other than Torie Clarke.

And by all means, please note the trendy comb-over at about 2:50.

Nominees' wives off limits? Somebody tell Cindy McMealticket

By GottaLaff

What's the Obama campaign supposed to do when the opponent's wife persists in smearing their guy's wife?

As the presidential campaigns of John McCain and Barack Obama tangle over which is unfairly dragging the prospective first ladies into the general election battle, Cindy McCain sent a signal this morning that she’s not about to step out of the fray. The wife of presumptive Republican nominee John McCain stood behind her initial response to Democratic counterpart Michelle Obama’s comment that for the first time she was “really proud” of her country.

At the end of the video, John King indulges in a fawning moment when he praises John Sidney McMilkItForAllIt'sWorth for hiding the pain of his time as a prisoner via hiding behind his irresistible impish penchant for humor. See, Cindy McMealticket didn't have so much as a clue that he'd suffered all that much, because -- and tell me if you've heard this one before -- J Sid wouldn't tell her! He made jokes! Omg, lmao! What a guy!

We must elect him now! Maybe he could joke this country right out of re-discovering that he was one of the Keating Five!*

*That just triggered another memory of Paddy's and my stint on Sirius radio. When I brought up McKeating, the host chided me for dredging up an old story that is now, apparently, irrelevant.