John McCain has repeatedly said that his life is an open book, but a close examination reveals that this is not the case. One of the most puzzling aspects of his long career is that he has repeatedly been the point man in an effort fo prevent the friends and families of Vietnam War MIAs to learn what happened to their loved ones. It makes no sense as McCain is the most famous of the Vietnam War POWs.
When the French were forced out of Indochina, the Communists Vietnamese required that they pay for the return of their prisoners. The North Vietnamese planned to do the same with the United States. They released John McCain and 590 others in January, 1973 and told the United States it would have to pay for the rest. General Tran Van Quang placed the number of the remaining prisoners at 1,205. On February 1, 1973, President Richard Nixon wrote to the North Vietnamese premier, promising $3.25 billion for “postwar reconstruction.” The United States never paid the ransom. Later, in 1981, the North Vietnamese, through a third party offered to return our personnel—now MIAs—for $4 billion. Richard Allen, Reagan’s national security advisor, told Congress about the offer. Treasury agent John Syphrit said he was present when the offer was discussed.
Two Secretaries of Defense, Mel Laird and Richard Schlesinger, have told Congress that American personnel are still in Vietnam. The evidence of this is based upon eyewitness sightings, radio messages, and the prisoners triggering motion sensors in a manner they had been taught to indicate their presence. The servicemen had been taught to enter into the sensors twenty different authentication numbers.
In 1992, Dolores Alford, sister of a missing airman, appeared before the Select Committee on POW/MIA Affairs. She raised questions about her brother and the others and asked about the sensor evidence. The committee was chaired by Senator John Kerry, but John McCain was its dominant force due to his celebrity and background as a POW. With his face turned pink in rage, McCain took some time yelling and berating the woman and ranting about Ms. Alford “denigrating” his “patriotism.” He shouted and shook his fist at witnesses, reducing one to tears. The Committee put out a report that essentially covered up what weas going on, but buried deep in it the staff wrote that the people who analyze satellite and low altitude photographs had never been told about the various distress signals that had been received. Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist Sydney H. Schanberg thinks that most of the prisoners have died or have been executed but he believes that some remain in Vietnam.
McCain was also busy sabotaging legislation that would help people learn what had happened to their loved ones. In 1990 and 1991, he handicapped the Truth bill. Then he passed his own version had all sorts of Catch 22 mechanisms to get in the way or researchers. In 1995 and 1996 he attached crippling amendments to the Missing Service Personnel Act.
John McCain has constantly ridiculed the POW activists, referring to the “bizarre rantings of the MIA hobbyists,” and calling them “hoaxers” and “charlatans.” Then he demanded that the Justice Department investigate some of the people who opposed him on this issue. St. John Mc Cain told reporters:
The people who have done these things are not zealots in a good cause. They are the most craven, most cynical and most despicable human beings to ever run a scam.
The Justice Department did his bidding and probed two organizations, but did not find evidence of a scam. Mc Cain heaped scorn on H. Ross Perot, whose concern about the POW/MIAs was certainly sincere and well-informed. Navy Captain and fellow POW Eugene "Red" McDaniel was also attacked by the Arizonan as a fraud.
In 1996, a group of MIA advocates asked to speak with him outside a committee hearing room. He erupted in anger and shoved them aside including Jane Duke Gaylor.
She was in a woman in a wheelchair who was the mother of missing pilot the mother of a missing POW.
His conduct in respect to POW issues simply defies reason, and his angry outbursts suggest he lacks the temperament to be Commander in Chief.
His strange and irrational conduct in respect to the POW issue needs to be explained. Some of the former Swift Boaters are now actively involved in Vietnam Veterans Against John McCain. They have leveled all sorts of charges against the man, but the mainstream media refuses to acknowledge their presence or even look into what they have to say.
They are clearly correct on the POW/MIA issue. They claim that McCain cooperated with the enemy too much while a prisoner of war. It is suggested that his conduct in Hanoi is being held over his head to induce him to frustrate the POW/MIA advocates. No one has ever seen an nonredacted copy of McCain’s post-Hanoi debriefing and the Pentagon refuses to release copies of his confessions. It is an unpleasant subject, almost anyone would be disinclined to blame him for almost anything he said under torturous conditions.
A few of the things he has said about his captivity do not add up. John LeBoutillier is on solid ground when he notes that McCain’s story about the guard making the sign of the cross in the dirt was probably borrowed from Admiral Jeremiah Denton, another POW/Senator.
There is ample evidence that Soviet ( KGB &GRU) and Cuban psychiatrists interrogated POWs in Hanoi, yet McCain insists that it never happened. Some former prisoners spoke about interrogators from North Korea, whose programs for turning prisoners were very successful. It is documented that McCain was interviewed by Spanish psychiatrist Fernando Barral in 1970. North Vietnamese Colonel Bui Tin told a Senate committee in 1992 that Soviet officers interrogated prisoners on a daily basis. Why would McCain deny the presence of non-Vietnamese interrogators and also hug the Vietnamese Colonel Bui Tin as though he were a long lost brother. Bui Tin, who had been a North Vietnamese interrogator. One cannot help wondering about the Stockholm Syndrome.
By his own 1973 US News and World Report account, he thought many of the prisoners had been drugged. Of course, the North Vietnamese could have done this, as drugging and interrogations have long gone hand and hand. McCain’s account includes the claim of being tortured daily, but his two senior officers have said they do not believe he was tortured. Some, including fellow prisoners, say his injuries were the result of the plane crash.
Oddly, he embraced the Vietnamese , Mai Van On, in 1997, who pulled him out of his plane and assisted him, but refused further contact after that meeting in Vietnam. By most accounts, he has become Vietnam’s best friend in the US Senate.
Some suggest that McCain could be blackmailed with information substantiating charges that he he was responsible for the terrible accident on the USS Forrestal in the Gulf of Tonkin on July 29, 1967, when 132 lives were lost. The incident is called the “Forrestfire.” Forrestal survivors angrily confronted him in South Carolina in 2000. It is said that Lt. Commander John McCain “wet started” his A-4E, which set off a chain reaction. Wet-starting was forbidden but considered sort of a joke prank among some pilots. It involved feeding fuel before starting the plane, resulting in more than 12 feet of flames coming out of his plane’s tail that day. The object was to alarm the pilot in the plane behind you. It is claimed that the flame triggered a 6 foot Zuni rocket from an F-4 ahead of Mc Cain to crash into the plane next to Mc Cain’s A-4 fuel tank. Fortunately, he had much practice getting out of planes in a hurry. Then one of his bombs “booked off” and blew a hole in the deck. This is the version of his critics, and many on the Forrestal believed it. That is why McCain was evacuated with the badly wounded.
Some flyers showed great valor and lost their lives fighting the fire. McCain went below but briefly helped sailors off load some bombs from an elevator. He went to the ready room to watch others fight the fire via closed-circuit TV. In his memoirs, he said he was down there worrying about his flying career. The next morning, McCain was evacuated along with the reporter who came aboard to report on the fire. He was the only uninjured Naval person to be evacuated. As his shipmates mourned the lost, he was went off to Saigon for R&R.
The official story simply does not mention McCain or his plane, number 416. Mc Cain , and this author has studied the tapes repeatedly and thinks that the critics are probably dealing the senator a bad rap. The trouble is that the official film footage was not focused on McCain plane when the accident began to happen.
It is puzzling why his shipmates disliked him so and blamed him. Some point out that few Naval aviators from his time have endorsed McCain’s quest for the presidency. That might be because he was more serious about partying than being a pilot and because command influence was used in his favor so often. He had been passed over for promotion twice before this incident. The main reason for withholding promotions is belief that the candidate lacks maturity. Of course, he was promoted as a matter of policy after he became a POW.
There are other aspects of McCain’s life that leave up partly in the dark. We know precious little about his mob ties—just enough to worry. The press dropped the Paxon Communications story like a hot potato, and it looks like all his ties with cable and communications people needs examination. Much more needs to be known about his gambling habits because this reflects judgment, and his personal ties to people in the gambling industry are important because they could bear on ethics. Even his health status is shrouded as only select reporters were permitted to peruse, and take no not4es, on select records for a limited period of time.
With all these questions in mind, all we really have is the image he has carefully constructed and the obvious fact that he seems given to rash decisions and frightening outburst of anger. Just the kind of person we need in the presidency!
Thursday, October 23, 2008
Wednesday, October 22, 2008
John McCain and the Keating Five Scandal
John McCain and the “Keating Five: Scandal
By Sherman DeBrosse
It is an odd coincidence that Joe the Plumber, Samuel Joseph Wurzelbacher of Holland, Ohio, bears the last name of the son-in-law of Charles Keating, who was the central figure in the famous but largely forgotten Keating Five Scandal. Another key player was John Mc Cain. The Obama campaign produced a video onm the scandal but has pretty much left it alone. When it was mentioned, the mainstream media did not follow up by providing even sketchy details.
Banker Charles Keating, originally an Ohioan, also got into the business of befriending Arizona politicians. He gave a $55,000 campaign contribution to Bob Corbin, a former Marley employee, who ran unopposed for attorney general. He would supervise state-chartered banks. Keating got his start as a lawyer for Carl Lindner, who made great profits from the Vietnam War. One of the nation’s wealthiest men, Lindner owned 7 S &L that were to fail. By owning United Brands, he was in a position to reap profits from the government’s secret programs to fund and supply the Nicaraguan contras through Hondouras.
Keating purchased property for his office in Phoenix from a mob-connected attorney in 1980. He had a mansion in the Bahamas, where the same attorney family had a casino.
Prudential Insurance loaned him $2 million in 1985. He had numerous dealings with BCCI, which turned out to be the bank of crooks and criminals.
Keating had invested 17.5 million in TrendInvest without notifying his American Continental board. Walter Bush, cousin to the current president, was involved with Continental, which later collapsed. There were many other baffling investments. Some think he was laundering CIA money involved in its Latin American operations.
Keating had a business relationship with Hensley. Keating was good at buying political influence, and he had a ten year close relationship with John McCain, donating about $112,000 to McCain campaigns. Nine times, he paid to transport McCain’s family and babysitter to his place in the Bahamas, often on a private plane. In addition, he permitted Cindy and her father to buy into a lucrative shopping center in California. In return McCain helped him convince Ronald Reagan to deregulate the Savings and Loan industry and place a Keating friend on the board that regulated it. Deregulation was a green light for Keating to build the Phoenician, a resort, in partnership with the rulers of Kuwait. The federal government seized it in February, 1989. His bellmen were permitted to remove 24 cartons of documents.
When the Feds started investigating Keating, McCain organized the “Keating Five” senators to put pressure on the Federal Home Loan Bank board to back off. At one point McCain even demanded that the chairman of that board not participate in the investigation of Keating.
When Keating began to get into trouble and marketed $230,000,000 in bad bonds, he came up with a scheme to cover them with profits from a water scheme. He and a partner bought up a lot of water rights and then had the legislature pass a law requiring Phoenix to first buy as much water as Keating could sell before going to other vendors. They planned to pump about a million acre feet of water in a year. De Concini would also profit because he had purchased some water rights. Such a scheme could only take place in a state where the press looked the other way and the politicians were largely corrupt. The Arizona Republic and the Phoenix Gazette were owned by the family of Dan Quayle.
The Arizona House of Representatives breezed the bill through in two days, but Jerry Gilespie held up things in the Senate. He found a way to stop it dead in its tracks, but he lost his seat in the next election. No wire service reported the story but it was covered by Phoenix Magazine in 1989. This doomed Keating.
As late as May, 1988, Keating thought he had won his battle against the Federal Home Loan Bank Board. On the 20th, he threw a big party because Senators Mc Cain and De Concini, with three others, had succeeded in having the investigation of his Lincoln Savings from San Francisco to Washington. In excitement, he removed his shirt to reveal a tee shirt with a skull and bones superimposed over the letters FHLBB. He had spent a million dollars buying politicians. It looked like he had won, but he was done in when the water scheme petered out.
Keating was eventually fined 3.6 billion and sent to prison. He has been called the father of the S &L crisis. McCain was investigated by the Senate Ethics Committee and was only told he exercised “poor judgment.” Almost as soon as he saw that he had a problem, he played the role of the repentant sinner and began to create the false reputation that he was an opponent of lobbyists and the improprieties seem to flow from their involvement in public life. To convince voters that he was a different sort of politician, he started calling for campaign finance reform. Mrs. McCain retained her profitable partnership with Keating.
By Sherman DeBrosse
It is an odd coincidence that Joe the Plumber, Samuel Joseph Wurzelbacher of Holland, Ohio, bears the last name of the son-in-law of Charles Keating, who was the central figure in the famous but largely forgotten Keating Five Scandal. Another key player was John Mc Cain. The Obama campaign produced a video onm the scandal but has pretty much left it alone. When it was mentioned, the mainstream media did not follow up by providing even sketchy details.
Banker Charles Keating, originally an Ohioan, also got into the business of befriending Arizona politicians. He gave a $55,000 campaign contribution to Bob Corbin, a former Marley employee, who ran unopposed for attorney general. He would supervise state-chartered banks. Keating got his start as a lawyer for Carl Lindner, who made great profits from the Vietnam War. One of the nation’s wealthiest men, Lindner owned 7 S &L that were to fail. By owning United Brands, he was in a position to reap profits from the government’s secret programs to fund and supply the Nicaraguan contras through Hondouras.
Keating purchased property for his office in Phoenix from a mob-connected attorney in 1980. He had a mansion in the Bahamas, where the same attorney family had a casino.
Prudential Insurance loaned him $2 million in 1985. He had numerous dealings with BCCI, which turned out to be the bank of crooks and criminals.
Keating had invested 17.5 million in TrendInvest without notifying his American Continental board. Walter Bush, cousin to the current president, was involved with Continental, which later collapsed. There were many other baffling investments. Some think he was laundering CIA money involved in its Latin American operations.
Keating had a business relationship with Hensley. Keating was good at buying political influence, and he had a ten year close relationship with John McCain, donating about $112,000 to McCain campaigns. Nine times, he paid to transport McCain’s family and babysitter to his place in the Bahamas, often on a private plane. In addition, he permitted Cindy and her father to buy into a lucrative shopping center in California. In return McCain helped him convince Ronald Reagan to deregulate the Savings and Loan industry and place a Keating friend on the board that regulated it. Deregulation was a green light for Keating to build the Phoenician, a resort, in partnership with the rulers of Kuwait. The federal government seized it in February, 1989. His bellmen were permitted to remove 24 cartons of documents.
When the Feds started investigating Keating, McCain organized the “Keating Five” senators to put pressure on the Federal Home Loan Bank board to back off. At one point McCain even demanded that the chairman of that board not participate in the investigation of Keating.
When Keating began to get into trouble and marketed $230,000,000 in bad bonds, he came up with a scheme to cover them with profits from a water scheme. He and a partner bought up a lot of water rights and then had the legislature pass a law requiring Phoenix to first buy as much water as Keating could sell before going to other vendors. They planned to pump about a million acre feet of water in a year. De Concini would also profit because he had purchased some water rights. Such a scheme could only take place in a state where the press looked the other way and the politicians were largely corrupt. The Arizona Republic and the Phoenix Gazette were owned by the family of Dan Quayle.
The Arizona House of Representatives breezed the bill through in two days, but Jerry Gilespie held up things in the Senate. He found a way to stop it dead in its tracks, but he lost his seat in the next election. No wire service reported the story but it was covered by Phoenix Magazine in 1989. This doomed Keating.
As late as May, 1988, Keating thought he had won his battle against the Federal Home Loan Bank Board. On the 20th, he threw a big party because Senators Mc Cain and De Concini, with three others, had succeeded in having the investigation of his Lincoln Savings from San Francisco to Washington. In excitement, he removed his shirt to reveal a tee shirt with a skull and bones superimposed over the letters FHLBB. He had spent a million dollars buying politicians. It looked like he had won, but he was done in when the water scheme petered out.
Keating was eventually fined 3.6 billion and sent to prison. He has been called the father of the S &L crisis. McCain was investigated by the Senate Ethics Committee and was only told he exercised “poor judgment.” Almost as soon as he saw that he had a problem, he played the role of the repentant sinner and began to create the false reputation that he was an opponent of lobbyists and the improprieties seem to flow from their involvement in public life. To convince voters that he was a different sort of politician, he started calling for campaign finance reform. Mrs. McCain retained her profitable partnership with Keating.
Thursday, October 16, 2008
Agenda for an Honest Media
When Barack Obama was campaigning in the Toledo area, he met the now famous “Joe the Plumber” of Holland, Ohio. Joe said that he was about the buy his boss’s business and that it earns more than $250,000 a year. Joe was unhappy because he thought Obama’s tax plan would hurt him and slow his quest for the American dream.
The electronic media presented Joe as an uncommitted voter. We do not know if Joe presented himself as such. Joe has said that Social Security is a “joke,” and that Obama is a socialist. He volunteered that he admires Mc Cain and the military. He admitted that he was not earning a great deal, which calls his story into question.
We know now that he was not a licensed plumber and that he said he practiced plumbing on his employer’s license. The problem is that this is not legal in Lucas County, where he works.
Some suspect that Joe ( Samuel Joseph Wurzelbacher) was a plant because people with his last name in Ohio and Florida are big Republican contributors. Some even hypothesize that he is related to the son-in-law of Charles Keating, as in John Mc Cain and the Keating Five scandal. This is unlikely, and it would take the resources of a news organization with integrity to find out if he was a McCain shill and/or connected to his namesake in the scandal.
There are other matters that an honest press should be exploring.
2. Today Senator Ted Stevens testified in his own defense regarding extensive construction work done on one of his houses by an important Alaska firm. It allegedly came to about $250,000. Some suggest that Sarah Palin benefitted in the same way when her $500,000 + mansion was built. Todd, the “First Dude,” admitted that some buddies helped him. It is suggested that they were a contractors’ laborers who were also working on her sports complex in Wasilla. This one is hard to research because Mayor Palin saw to it that there was very little paperwork necessary to build in the city.
3. The press spent many weeks airing material about Rev. Dr. Jeremiah Wright and the white priest who was a guest homilist at Obama’s church. We hear nothing about Sarah’s pastors even though it is very likely that they oppose the separation of church and state and want to establish a theocracy. It is a matter or record that she thinks pastors should be able to endorse candidates without risking tax problems.
4. The press must raise questions about Mrs. Mc Cain’s tax returns. We know that she still profits from a deal with Keating. Is she profiting from a no-bid beer distribution contract in Iraq. Is her firm helping the campaign in any ways?
5. We could use an honest report on John McCain’s incestuous relationship with the communications industry, especially cable television.
The electronic media presented Joe as an uncommitted voter. We do not know if Joe presented himself as such. Joe has said that Social Security is a “joke,” and that Obama is a socialist. He volunteered that he admires Mc Cain and the military. He admitted that he was not earning a great deal, which calls his story into question.
We know now that he was not a licensed plumber and that he said he practiced plumbing on his employer’s license. The problem is that this is not legal in Lucas County, where he works.
Some suspect that Joe ( Samuel Joseph Wurzelbacher) was a plant because people with his last name in Ohio and Florida are big Republican contributors. Some even hypothesize that he is related to the son-in-law of Charles Keating, as in John Mc Cain and the Keating Five scandal. This is unlikely, and it would take the resources of a news organization with integrity to find out if he was a McCain shill and/or connected to his namesake in the scandal.
There are other matters that an honest press should be exploring.
2. Today Senator Ted Stevens testified in his own defense regarding extensive construction work done on one of his houses by an important Alaska firm. It allegedly came to about $250,000. Some suggest that Sarah Palin benefitted in the same way when her $500,000 + mansion was built. Todd, the “First Dude,” admitted that some buddies helped him. It is suggested that they were a contractors’ laborers who were also working on her sports complex in Wasilla. This one is hard to research because Mayor Palin saw to it that there was very little paperwork necessary to build in the city.
3. The press spent many weeks airing material about Rev. Dr. Jeremiah Wright and the white priest who was a guest homilist at Obama’s church. We hear nothing about Sarah’s pastors even though it is very likely that they oppose the separation of church and state and want to establish a theocracy. It is a matter or record that she thinks pastors should be able to endorse candidates without risking tax problems.
4. The press must raise questions about Mrs. Mc Cain’s tax returns. We know that she still profits from a deal with Keating. Is she profiting from a no-bid beer distribution contract in Iraq. Is her firm helping the campaign in any ways?
5. We could use an honest report on John McCain’s incestuous relationship with the communications industry, especially cable television.
Tuesday, October 14, 2008
Mc Cain is Confused on Foreign Policy
McCain’s Confusions Must Be Addressed
The Osama campaign has gently pointed out that John McCain has been erratic on economic matters, lurching from one position to another ion no discernable pattersn. The latest lurch has been repudiating eight years of Bush economic policy, which he supported.
Equally bothersome is the fact that John McCain has made so many simple factual mistakes when discussion foreign policy, his claimed area of expertise.
John McCain was in Iraq, seemed confused, and Joseph Lieberman had to lean over and prompt him. Iraq is a complicated situation , so it was easy to misspeak, and we overlooked the matter. Now he is confused about what job General Petraeus has and is talking about the Iraq/Pakistan border. He has repeatedly said that Al Qaeda operatives in Iraq were trained in Iran; although, there is no evidence to prove this. Indeed, IaQaeda people are Sunni and would be uncomfortable in Shiite Iran. Moreover, McCain must not have known that Iran is still holding one of Osama’s eleven sons under house arrest.
The problem has become that Senator McCain misspeaks so often on this subject and
contradicts himself ( flip-flops ?) so frequently that it has become a troubling pattern. His pronouncements on the Iraq war are so frequently simplistic and uninformed that they call into serious questions his claims about foreign policy expertise.
Just before the invasion, he put on his military expert hat, and said, “I have no quams about our strategic plans.” It would be a quick victory and another glorious chapter in United States military history.
The”expert” Mc Cain now brags about criticizing and rejecting Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld. The fact is that it took McCain 18 months to reach that conclusion. All that time and beyond, he said George W. Bush was doing just fine. True, he did call for an increase in troop level all along.
He thought then and still believes that the Iraq War could be won if more troops on the ground increased the level of physical security. That seems to be his definition of “victory.” Even many with stars on their shoulders claim victory must be defined as a political settlement that brings peace and reconciliation between the different factions in Iraq. That has not come about, and McCain has never explained how he would accomplish this. Barack Obama has always defined victory in these terms; and he has set the standard for the defense of the surge in the same way. McCain does not seem to see any relationship between a good political settlement and victory. So maybe his criticisms of Barack Obama on the success of the surge are honest and not some cheap political slight of hand.
McCain also claims too much credit for the surge, itself—the introduction of more troops. Things have improved on the streets because David Petraeus started putting troops in the neighborhoods. He had long advocated this but had been restrained from doing so. In claiming too much for the surge, McCain slights Petraeus and indirectly claims too much credit for himself.
Maybe McSame reaches the conclusion that the Iraq insurgence and war will be imposed on the ground by military force because he sees this through the prism of a foreign policy fundamentalist—good v. evil. Simple as that—
For quite a while, he was warning that the Shiites could take over Iraq. He sang this odd song long after the Bush Administration had decided to ally with the pro-Iran Shiites. One wonders if he knew that Shiites and the Sunni Al Queda do not get along over significant period of time.
Of late, he sounds the alarm that Al Qaeda could take over. Al Qaeda was never more than a tiny presence there. We and some of the Sunni states in the region touted Abu Musab al-Zarqawi as a powerful Al Qaeda leader, even though he did not get along with Osama bin Laden. Since the Jordanian intelligence killed Zarqawi, his small organization in Ramadi has collapsed and other wannabe Al Qaeda leaders cannot even be found there.
Still McCain droned on about Al Qaeda in Iraq and how Iraq is the center of the War on Terrorism. In an interview with Bill Bennett, he said of Al Qaeda, “These guys want to follow us home….It is not Iraq they are after, my friend. It is us.” His insistence that central role of Al Qaeda in Iraq suggests that he might still think that Iraq was somehow behind 9/11.
In February, he has again warned that the Al Qaeda could take over Iraq. Al Qaeda had only appealed to a tiny segment in the radical religious element among the Sunnis—
And now almost no one identifies himself as Al Qaeda. An aid, who must have understood a little more, tried to explain the claim by saying the Senator meant that Sunni extremists might create a small state there. Of course, the Shiites majority would destroy it and would even have the help of Jordan and the Kurds, neither of whom can brook Sunni religious extremists.
Lately, McCain has been claiming that the Surge made possible the Anbar Awakening—the decision of some sheiks to come over as US allies. The problem was that the Anbar Awakening occurred four months before the Surge began. McCain insisted to Katie Couric his position was an historical fact and CBS cut that segment rather than air footage that would embarrass McCain. That occurred the same day that his campaign distributed information that the media was overwhelmingly in support of Obama.
He has also bragged how the Surge has protected those sheiks even though their leader, Abddul Sattar Abu Riisha was murdered in September, 2007, during the Surge.
Months ago, 141 members of the Iraqi parliament voted that the US should establish a timeline for withdrawal. Now Prime Minister al-Maliki has all but endorsed Obama’s 16 month time frame, and the Bush administration might be moving closer to that position.
One wonders if Mc Cain can find a way to find a way to get in line with these new developments. Perhaps, not as he has been able to take positions that are completely inconsistent with the facts in Iraq. He may well get away with flip flopping, clinging to historical inaccuracies, and a policy that does not really define victory. Most people do not know much about Iraq and there is no evidence that the corporate media will call him on flip flopping or misinformation, There is widespread opposition to the war, but it is pretty thin. Current polling information suggests that McCain may not have to pay for Republican mistakes in Iraq so long as casualties there remain relatively low.
Barach Obama must to show that the Surge has only worked in a limited way and he must show that McCain’s many misstatements on Iraq are not mere gaffes. They show genuine confusion and—yes—almost profound ignorance. After all McCain’s trips to Iraq and attendance at Senate hearings, it seems to be a sad fact that he is either a prisoner of an outworn ideology, or worse, he has a very poor learning curve. We honor this hero for his service to this great republic, but it is too dangerous to reward him with the presidency.
The Osama campaign has gently pointed out that John McCain has been erratic on economic matters, lurching from one position to another ion no discernable pattersn. The latest lurch has been repudiating eight years of Bush economic policy, which he supported.
Equally bothersome is the fact that John McCain has made so many simple factual mistakes when discussion foreign policy, his claimed area of expertise.
John McCain was in Iraq, seemed confused, and Joseph Lieberman had to lean over and prompt him. Iraq is a complicated situation , so it was easy to misspeak, and we overlooked the matter. Now he is confused about what job General Petraeus has and is talking about the Iraq/Pakistan border. He has repeatedly said that Al Qaeda operatives in Iraq were trained in Iran; although, there is no evidence to prove this. Indeed, IaQaeda people are Sunni and would be uncomfortable in Shiite Iran. Moreover, McCain must not have known that Iran is still holding one of Osama’s eleven sons under house arrest.
The problem has become that Senator McCain misspeaks so often on this subject and
contradicts himself ( flip-flops ?) so frequently that it has become a troubling pattern. His pronouncements on the Iraq war are so frequently simplistic and uninformed that they call into serious questions his claims about foreign policy expertise.
Just before the invasion, he put on his military expert hat, and said, “I have no quams about our strategic plans.” It would be a quick victory and another glorious chapter in United States military history.
The”expert” Mc Cain now brags about criticizing and rejecting Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld. The fact is that it took McCain 18 months to reach that conclusion. All that time and beyond, he said George W. Bush was doing just fine. True, he did call for an increase in troop level all along.
He thought then and still believes that the Iraq War could be won if more troops on the ground increased the level of physical security. That seems to be his definition of “victory.” Even many with stars on their shoulders claim victory must be defined as a political settlement that brings peace and reconciliation between the different factions in Iraq. That has not come about, and McCain has never explained how he would accomplish this. Barack Obama has always defined victory in these terms; and he has set the standard for the defense of the surge in the same way. McCain does not seem to see any relationship between a good political settlement and victory. So maybe his criticisms of Barack Obama on the success of the surge are honest and not some cheap political slight of hand.
McCain also claims too much credit for the surge, itself—the introduction of more troops. Things have improved on the streets because David Petraeus started putting troops in the neighborhoods. He had long advocated this but had been restrained from doing so. In claiming too much for the surge, McCain slights Petraeus and indirectly claims too much credit for himself.
Maybe McSame reaches the conclusion that the Iraq insurgence and war will be imposed on the ground by military force because he sees this through the prism of a foreign policy fundamentalist—good v. evil. Simple as that—
For quite a while, he was warning that the Shiites could take over Iraq. He sang this odd song long after the Bush Administration had decided to ally with the pro-Iran Shiites. One wonders if he knew that Shiites and the Sunni Al Queda do not get along over significant period of time.
Of late, he sounds the alarm that Al Qaeda could take over. Al Qaeda was never more than a tiny presence there. We and some of the Sunni states in the region touted Abu Musab al-Zarqawi as a powerful Al Qaeda leader, even though he did not get along with Osama bin Laden. Since the Jordanian intelligence killed Zarqawi, his small organization in Ramadi has collapsed and other wannabe Al Qaeda leaders cannot even be found there.
Still McCain droned on about Al Qaeda in Iraq and how Iraq is the center of the War on Terrorism. In an interview with Bill Bennett, he said of Al Qaeda, “These guys want to follow us home….It is not Iraq they are after, my friend. It is us.” His insistence that central role of Al Qaeda in Iraq suggests that he might still think that Iraq was somehow behind 9/11.
In February, he has again warned that the Al Qaeda could take over Iraq. Al Qaeda had only appealed to a tiny segment in the radical religious element among the Sunnis—
And now almost no one identifies himself as Al Qaeda. An aid, who must have understood a little more, tried to explain the claim by saying the Senator meant that Sunni extremists might create a small state there. Of course, the Shiites majority would destroy it and would even have the help of Jordan and the Kurds, neither of whom can brook Sunni religious extremists.
Lately, McCain has been claiming that the Surge made possible the Anbar Awakening—the decision of some sheiks to come over as US allies. The problem was that the Anbar Awakening occurred four months before the Surge began. McCain insisted to Katie Couric his position was an historical fact and CBS cut that segment rather than air footage that would embarrass McCain. That occurred the same day that his campaign distributed information that the media was overwhelmingly in support of Obama.
He has also bragged how the Surge has protected those sheiks even though their leader, Abddul Sattar Abu Riisha was murdered in September, 2007, during the Surge.
Months ago, 141 members of the Iraqi parliament voted that the US should establish a timeline for withdrawal. Now Prime Minister al-Maliki has all but endorsed Obama’s 16 month time frame, and the Bush administration might be moving closer to that position.
One wonders if Mc Cain can find a way to find a way to get in line with these new developments. Perhaps, not as he has been able to take positions that are completely inconsistent with the facts in Iraq. He may well get away with flip flopping, clinging to historical inaccuracies, and a policy that does not really define victory. Most people do not know much about Iraq and there is no evidence that the corporate media will call him on flip flopping or misinformation, There is widespread opposition to the war, but it is pretty thin. Current polling information suggests that McCain may not have to pay for Republican mistakes in Iraq so long as casualties there remain relatively low.
Barach Obama must to show that the Surge has only worked in a limited way and he must show that McCain’s many misstatements on Iraq are not mere gaffes. They show genuine confusion and—yes—almost profound ignorance. After all McCain’s trips to Iraq and attendance at Senate hearings, it seems to be a sad fact that he is either a prisoner of an outworn ideology, or worse, he has a very poor learning curve. We honor this hero for his service to this great republic, but it is too dangerous to reward him with the presidency.
Monday, October 13, 2008
Palin: A Likely Extremist Who Abuses Power
Sarah Palin has said that she would not let her religious views " bleed over into politics," but she has done just that. Many have seen the video of Governor Sarah Palin addressing a graduation class of young missionaries. She had every right to do that. The problem was she charged the trip, plane fare and per diem, to the state. That speech cost the taxpayers of Alaska $639.50.
So far, she and her family have spent about $13,000 in state funds attending religious events, including a meeting with Reverend Franklin Graham. Some of these events included other stops, so to be fair we can trim that figure to $3022, which applies entirely to religious events. Even the Baptist Joint Committee for Religious Liberty has raised questions.
When she was mayor, she used the prestige of her office to join a hospital board to see that abortions were not performed there. Lloyd Eggan, an Anchorage advocate of the separation of church and state, worries that her Alaska Office of Faith-Based and Community Initiatives had not done enough to see that its funds do not pay for ministry.
Palin has ties with three churches that are clearly part of the Dominionist New Apostolic Reformation. As Dominionists, these people are completely opposed to the separation of church and state. In 2006, Palin said that the tax code provision preventing ministers from endorsing candidates should be repealed.
Dominionists also look forward to the day when the United States will be a theocratic state. They also do not have a favorable view of other religions, particularly Roman Catholicism. Yet, the Palin administration did spend $20,000 of its $500,000 budget helping a Catholic charity.
Sarah Palin was never a member of the secessionist Alaska Independence Party, but she had close ties to it, attending some of its conventions and winning its support in 2006.The Alaska Independence Party has close ties with neo-Confederate and white supremacy groups in the lower 48 states.
Her husband ,Todd, was a member from 1995 to 2002. As we know, he has great influence with her and played a major role in Troopergate. When Max Blumenthal and David Neiwart visited Wasilla, they wee told that "Sarah Palin is far more intimately associated with the extreme right-wing fringe of Alaska than the media has acknowledged or that she is willing to acknowledge." Palin used Alaska Independence Chairman Mark Chryson and John Birch Society actrivist Steve Stoll , whom locals "Black Helicopter" to launch her local and state political careers. She attempted to reward Stoll by appointing him to her old council seat, but another council member blocked the move, fearing that Stoll would be a "violent influence."
In her first campaign for mayor, these men steered an ugly campaign of character assasination against the incumbent. Sounds familiar?
This woman has extremist connections, and probably extremist beliefs. Combine those with a tendency to abuse power, and we have a recipe for disaster.
So far, she and her family have spent about $13,000 in state funds attending religious events, including a meeting with Reverend Franklin Graham. Some of these events included other stops, so to be fair we can trim that figure to $3022, which applies entirely to religious events. Even the Baptist Joint Committee for Religious Liberty has raised questions.
When she was mayor, she used the prestige of her office to join a hospital board to see that abortions were not performed there. Lloyd Eggan, an Anchorage advocate of the separation of church and state, worries that her Alaska Office of Faith-Based and Community Initiatives had not done enough to see that its funds do not pay for ministry.
Palin has ties with three churches that are clearly part of the Dominionist New Apostolic Reformation. As Dominionists, these people are completely opposed to the separation of church and state. In 2006, Palin said that the tax code provision preventing ministers from endorsing candidates should be repealed.
Dominionists also look forward to the day when the United States will be a theocratic state. They also do not have a favorable view of other religions, particularly Roman Catholicism. Yet, the Palin administration did spend $20,000 of its $500,000 budget helping a Catholic charity.
Sarah Palin was never a member of the secessionist Alaska Independence Party, but she had close ties to it, attending some of its conventions and winning its support in 2006.The Alaska Independence Party has close ties with neo-Confederate and white supremacy groups in the lower 48 states.
Her husband ,Todd, was a member from 1995 to 2002. As we know, he has great influence with her and played a major role in Troopergate. When Max Blumenthal and David Neiwart visited Wasilla, they wee told that "Sarah Palin is far more intimately associated with the extreme right-wing fringe of Alaska than the media has acknowledged or that she is willing to acknowledge." Palin used Alaska Independence Chairman Mark Chryson and John Birch Society actrivist Steve Stoll , whom locals "Black Helicopter" to launch her local and state political careers. She attempted to reward Stoll by appointing him to her old council seat, but another council member blocked the move, fearing that Stoll would be a "violent influence."
In her first campaign for mayor, these men steered an ugly campaign of character assasination against the incumbent. Sounds familiar?
This woman has extremist connections, and probably extremist beliefs. Combine those with a tendency to abuse power, and we have a recipe for disaster.
Wednesday, October 8, 2008
Washington Post censored me-- by william fosdick
I tried top praise Kathleenm Parkers's comumn on calling off pit bull pailyn. I somehow lost the exact message because I copied this web address over the content I had copied.
Essentially I gave the details of Paily's Clearwater appearance that resulted in "Kill him, kill him" chant and her arousing people to verbally abuse the press with one telling an African American soundman to yell Sit Down, Boy."
I thought her coded remarks were to put down Obama as a black and thqat she wanted something like a lynch mob atmpsphere. Then I connected all this to the code in her remarks about Dr. Jeremiah Wright and community organizers.
From there I diiscussed the relationship of right-wing populism to racism.
I praised the major media for puzzling ov er Palin's repeated lies about entitlements and the Bridge to Nowhere, and then suggested it look into other lies:
1. She wrongly said she did not use religion in the first race for mayor
2. She promised employees they could keep jobs then fired a number of them
3. She wanted to censor the library and then denied that was the case.
4. Her many shifts on Troopergate suggests she could be bending the truth
Then I suggested the press look into her cozy relationship with the Alaska Independence Party. She was not a member but there is a photo of her reading one of their documents and evidence of other ties are ample. These people are secessionists and tied to all sorts of unsavory elements in the lower 48.
She has brought up Rev. Wright. We need to know more about her religion. Three of her churches are clearly Domionist, being connected to the New Apostolic Reformation. They oppose the separation of church and state and work for a theocracy in America. They are also fiercely Anti-Catholic.
Would her belief in the nearness of End Times lead her to do anything to promote conflict in the Middle East?
So far the press has given her a pass on most of this. I fear she grew up in a very closed, cramped environment that encourages all sorts of prejudices and ignorance.
I keep thinking about the Keynan witchhunder praying over her. These people believe demons power individuals, states, and some churches. Would our religious liberty erode under her.
Bill
Essentially I gave the details of Paily's Clearwater appearance that resulted in "Kill him, kill him" chant and her arousing people to verbally abuse the press with one telling an African American soundman to yell Sit Down, Boy."
I thought her coded remarks were to put down Obama as a black and thqat she wanted something like a lynch mob atmpsphere. Then I connected all this to the code in her remarks about Dr. Jeremiah Wright and community organizers.
From there I diiscussed the relationship of right-wing populism to racism.
I praised the major media for puzzling ov er Palin's repeated lies about entitlements and the Bridge to Nowhere, and then suggested it look into other lies:
1. She wrongly said she did not use religion in the first race for mayor
2. She promised employees they could keep jobs then fired a number of them
3. She wanted to censor the library and then denied that was the case.
4. Her many shifts on Troopergate suggests she could be bending the truth
Then I suggested the press look into her cozy relationship with the Alaska Independence Party. She was not a member but there is a photo of her reading one of their documents and evidence of other ties are ample. These people are secessionists and tied to all sorts of unsavory elements in the lower 48.
She has brought up Rev. Wright. We need to know more about her religion. Three of her churches are clearly Domionist, being connected to the New Apostolic Reformation. They oppose the separation of church and state and work for a theocracy in America. They are also fiercely Anti-Catholic.
Would her belief in the nearness of End Times lead her to do anything to promote conflict in the Middle East?
So far the press has given her a pass on most of this. I fear she grew up in a very closed, cramped environment that encourages all sorts of prejudices and ignorance.
I keep thinking about the Keynan witchhunder praying over her. These people believe demons power individuals, states, and some churches. Would our religious liberty erode under her.
Bill
Mc Cain, "The Keating Five," and Lobbyists
John McCain's life is anything but the "open book" he claims it is. Central to his political life was his deep involvement in the "Keating Five Scandal."
The story begins with colorful information on the role of organized crime in Arizona and Mc Cain’s ties to it. Kemper Marley was the big man in Arizona at the time. He was the protégé of Sam Bronfman, a close friend of Al Capone and Meyer Lansky, who visited Arizona in his company. He was also very close to Gus Greenbaum, a Lansky aide and Phoenix gambler.
Greenbaum and his wife were slain in 1948, setting off a mob war that Marley won. Marley became the state’s only billionaire. In 1948, Marley escaped prison while 52 of his prisoners went were incarcerated including henchman Gene Hensley, who would become John McCain’s father-in-law. He was general manager of Marley’s United Liquor. Hensley’s brother was a bootlegger and was also convicted. The court said Hensley must never get into the liquor business again, but when he got out he received a big Budweiser distributorship. Hensley also made money in dog racing, but sold his track to the Jacobs family of Buffalo. They were also linked to the Bronfman booze empire of Canada and the Lansky interests.
Marley headed the Valley National Bank, which lent Meyer Lansky’s man, Bugsy Seagal, the money to build the Flamingo casino . Seagel was killed for stealing from his bosses, and his nationwide gambling wire was turned over to Marley.
Marley ( d. 1990) was very generous with the Republican party and also controlled the Arizona Democrats. Many in major office there owed their jobs to him. Marley’s men included Dennis De Concini, a Democrat, and John McCain
Arizona Republic investigative reporter Don Bolles was killed in a 1976 car bombing. He had investigated crooked land deals that were tied to many of the rich and powerful and had also looked into Marley’s service on state commissions. This led to a 36 member team of investigative reporters coming to Arizona. It produced investigative team coming to Arizona. It produced The Arizona Project: How a Team of Investigative Reporters Got Revenge on Deadline. They believed but could not prove that the Marley gang was behind the murder of Bolles. But they produced a great deal of information on the mob in Arizona.
Astonishingly Bolles lived for eleven days after the explosion and said: “They finally got me. The Mafia. Emprise. Find John (Harvey) Adamson." There was no effort to find out who hired the man who gave Adamson contract. Anderson he was convicted of the car bombing said the Marley gang also wanted Attorney General Bruce Babbitt killed because he wanted anti-trust action against them.
John McCain married mob heiress Cindy Hensley. From the time of his arrival in Phoenix in 1979, the Hensley family sponsored his political career. He received a $50,000 a year salary in 1982 to tour the state as a PR man for the family beer Budweiser distributor firm, but of course he was beginning a Congressional campaign. Anheuser-Bush lobbyist Richard Scheffel said that Hensley used McCain as a channel to move money to politicians.
McCain does not seem to have done anything for the mob, but he must know it was that money that fuelled his career. Must also have met some mob people In 1995, sent “Happy Birthday” wishes to Joseph Bonasno, the head of the New York Bonano mob who had retired in Arizona. From the time of his arrival in Phoenix in 1979, the Hensley family sponsored his political career. McCain recused himself on voting on alcohol matters, but as a committee chairman he used his power to their advantage by not scheduling hearings. In 1997, important hearings that were scheduled never occurred. In 1996, he pushed to normalize relations with Vietnam just as Budweiser was preparing to enter that market.
. Banker Charles Keating also got into the business of befriending Arizona politicians. He gave a $55,000 campaign contribution to Bob Corbin, a former Marley employee, who ran unopposed for attorney general. He would supervise state-chartered banks. Keating got his start as a lawyer for Carl Lindner, who made great profits from the Vietnam War. One of the nation’s wealthiest men, Lindner owned 7 S &L that were to fail. By owning United Brands, he was in a position to reap profits from the government’s secret programs to fund and supply the Nicaraguan contras through Hondouras.
Keating purchased property for his office in Phoenix from a mob-connected attorney in 1980. He had a mansion in the Bahamas, where the same attorney family had a casino.
Prudential Insurance loaned him $2 million in 1985. He had numerous dealings with BCCI, which turned out to be the bank of crooks and criminals.
Keating had invested 17.5 million in TrendInvest without notifying his American Conmtinental board. Walter Bush, cousin to the current president, was involved with Continental, which later collapsed. There were many other baffling investments. Some think he was laundering CIA money involved in its Latin American operations.
Keating had a business relationship with Hensley. Keating was good at buying political influence, and he had a ten year close relationship with John McCain, donating about $112,000 to McCain campaigns. Nine times, he paid to transport McCain’s family and babysitter to his place in the Bahamas, often on a private plane. In addition, he permitted Cindy and her father to buy into a lucrative shopping center in California. In return McCain helped him convince Ronald Reagan to deregulate the Savings and Loan industry and place a Keating friend on the board that regulated it. Deregulation was a green light for Keating to build the Phoenician, a resort, in partnership with the rulers of Kuwait. The federal government seized it in February, 1989. His bellmen were permitted to remove 24 cartons of documents.
When the Feds started investigating Keating, McCain organized the “Keating Five” senators to put pressure on the Federal Home Loan Bank board to back off. At one point McCain even demanded that the chairman of that board not participate in the investigation of Keating.
When Keating began to get into trouble and marketed $230,000,000 in bad bonds, he came up with a scheme to cover them with profits from a water scheme. He and a partner bought up a lot of water rights and then had the legislature pass a law requiring Phoenix to first buy as much water as Keating could sell before going to other vendors. They planned to pump about a million acre feet of water in a year. De Concini would also profit because he had purchased some water rights. Such a scheme could only take place in a state where the press looked the other way and the politicians were largely corrupt. The Arizona Republic and the Phoenix Gazette were owned by the family of Dan Quayle.
The Arizona House of Representatives breezed the bill through in two days, but Jerry Gilespie held up things in the Senate. He found a way to stop it dead in its tracks, but he lost his seat in the next election. No wire service reported the story but it was covered by Phoenix Magazine in 1989. This doomed Keating.
As late as May, 1988, Keating thought he had won his battle against the Federal Home Loan Bank Board. On the 20th, he threw a big party because Senators Mc Cain and De Concini, with three others, had succeeded in having the investigation of his Lincoln Savings from San Francisco to Washington. In excitement, he removed his shirt to reveal a tee shirt with a skull and bones superimposed over the letters FHLBB. He had spent a million dollars buying politicians. It looked like he had won, but he was done in when the water scheme petered out.
Keating was eventually fined 3.6 billion and sent to prison. He has been called the father of the S &L crisis. McCain was investigated by the Senate Ethics Committee and was only told he exercised “poor judgment.” Almost as soon as he saw that he had a problem, he played the role of the repentant sinner and began to create the false reputation that he was an opponent of lobbyists and the improprieties seem to flow from their involvement in public life. To convince voters that he was a different sort of politician, he started calling for campaign finance reform.
McCain went on to gin up a reputation for integrity, but, in fact, he continued to run errands for contributors. Recently, McCain denied ever meeting Lowell “Bud” Paxson, even though there was a 2002 court deposition proving they had met. This is important because in 1999, MC Cain, then chairman of the Senate Commerce Committee, pressed the FCC hard to let Paxson Communications purchase a Pittsburgh television station. The FC claimed McCain’s request seemed like a threat and believed he had crossed the line separating propriety and impropriety. The firm had donated $20,000 to McCain. The firm had provided McCain transportation on a company jet on several occasions. Very briefly, the press raised questions about his relationship with a pretty young Paxson lobbyist who was often in his company in 2000. No solid evidence of a sexual relationship was found, so the press decided not to look into the rest of the story. The fact that McCain is clearly the darling of the press could have something to do with the drying up of the entire story.
When confronted with information about his conduct in the Paxson case, McCain said he was just prodding bureaucrats and then produced documents to show he had done the same thing in other cases involving large contributors. What chutzpah!
In 1999, McCain staff twice intervened to help wealthy contributor and close personal friend Donald Diamond obtain land from closed Army base Fort Ord in California. That deal allowed him to turn a $20 million profit, and another arrangement in 2005, again with McCain help, promises to be more profitable. This involves as many as 12,000 homes and benefits more than one McCain backer. Two former McCain staffers were hired as lobbyists in this complex deal to get him aboard. Twice in the 1990s, McCain introduced land legislation to help Diamond, and a third measure is now before the Senate.
In 2001, questions were raised about legislation he backed for the cruise industry and the large contributions it gave him. There are also questions about his close ties to the cable TV industry.
Recently, it was learned that John McCain had more lobbyists working for his 2008 campaign than any other presidential candidate. Even after 6 were forced to leave due to their ties to unsavory regimes, there are 59 who do nothing but raise money. One of them is Ralph Reed, who was shown to be taking advantage of Native American clients in hearings McCain chaired! Over time, 133 lobbyists have worked for the Straight talk Express.
Others do other things in the campaign. Rick Davis is campaign manager, and Charlie Black is senior political advisor. Among Black’s clients were AT%T, Rupert Murdock, and Blackwater. Twenty-one McCain people also represented AT&T. Black had also been paid to sheppard around Ahmed Chalabi, whose distortions helped get the US to invade Iraq. Could this be connected to McCain’s view that American troops must soldier on there, possibly indefinitely.
Two lobbyists were closely tied to the mortgage industry, which could explain why McCain has been so very friendly to the same industry. Randy Scheunemann, McCain’s foreign policy analyst, has represented the Republic of Georgia, and spoke on McCain’s behalf on this issue as recently as August 17. This could explain why McCain is so hawkish about the Russo-Georgian struggle. He speaks as though he is already president, keeping force and all other options on the table.
None of this information is to suggest Mc Cain is a crook. He is obviously very closely tied to the lobbyists and special interests that he frequently complains about. He cannot claim no links to the mob. There is no doubt that he has a history of going to bat for them—sometimes appearing to go to far. He has repeatedly promised to never doing anything that gives the appearance of impropriety, but his track record is just the opposite of this.
He probably is not a crook, and Mc Cain deserves great praise for his service in the Vietnam War. But he is only mortal and has a bad track record for consistency and truth telling, despite all his self-praise about honesty.
The story begins with colorful information on the role of organized crime in Arizona and Mc Cain’s ties to it. Kemper Marley was the big man in Arizona at the time. He was the protégé of Sam Bronfman, a close friend of Al Capone and Meyer Lansky, who visited Arizona in his company. He was also very close to Gus Greenbaum, a Lansky aide and Phoenix gambler.
Greenbaum and his wife were slain in 1948, setting off a mob war that Marley won. Marley became the state’s only billionaire. In 1948, Marley escaped prison while 52 of his prisoners went were incarcerated including henchman Gene Hensley, who would become John McCain’s father-in-law. He was general manager of Marley’s United Liquor. Hensley’s brother was a bootlegger and was also convicted. The court said Hensley must never get into the liquor business again, but when he got out he received a big Budweiser distributorship. Hensley also made money in dog racing, but sold his track to the Jacobs family of Buffalo. They were also linked to the Bronfman booze empire of Canada and the Lansky interests.
Marley headed the Valley National Bank, which lent Meyer Lansky’s man, Bugsy Seagal, the money to build the Flamingo casino . Seagel was killed for stealing from his bosses, and his nationwide gambling wire was turned over to Marley.
Marley ( d. 1990) was very generous with the Republican party and also controlled the Arizona Democrats. Many in major office there owed their jobs to him. Marley’s men included Dennis De Concini, a Democrat, and John McCain
Arizona Republic investigative reporter Don Bolles was killed in a 1976 car bombing. He had investigated crooked land deals that were tied to many of the rich and powerful and had also looked into Marley’s service on state commissions. This led to a 36 member team of investigative reporters coming to Arizona. It produced investigative team coming to Arizona. It produced The Arizona Project: How a Team of Investigative Reporters Got Revenge on Deadline. They believed but could not prove that the Marley gang was behind the murder of Bolles. But they produced a great deal of information on the mob in Arizona.
Astonishingly Bolles lived for eleven days after the explosion and said: “They finally got me. The Mafia. Emprise. Find John (Harvey) Adamson." There was no effort to find out who hired the man who gave Adamson contract. Anderson he was convicted of the car bombing said the Marley gang also wanted Attorney General Bruce Babbitt killed because he wanted anti-trust action against them.
John McCain married mob heiress Cindy Hensley. From the time of his arrival in Phoenix in 1979, the Hensley family sponsored his political career. He received a $50,000 a year salary in 1982 to tour the state as a PR man for the family beer Budweiser distributor firm, but of course he was beginning a Congressional campaign. Anheuser-Bush lobbyist Richard Scheffel said that Hensley used McCain as a channel to move money to politicians.
McCain does not seem to have done anything for the mob, but he must know it was that money that fuelled his career. Must also have met some mob people In 1995, sent “Happy Birthday” wishes to Joseph Bonasno, the head of the New York Bonano mob who had retired in Arizona. From the time of his arrival in Phoenix in 1979, the Hensley family sponsored his political career. McCain recused himself on voting on alcohol matters, but as a committee chairman he used his power to their advantage by not scheduling hearings. In 1997, important hearings that were scheduled never occurred. In 1996, he pushed to normalize relations with Vietnam just as Budweiser was preparing to enter that market.
. Banker Charles Keating also got into the business of befriending Arizona politicians. He gave a $55,000 campaign contribution to Bob Corbin, a former Marley employee, who ran unopposed for attorney general. He would supervise state-chartered banks. Keating got his start as a lawyer for Carl Lindner, who made great profits from the Vietnam War. One of the nation’s wealthiest men, Lindner owned 7 S &L that were to fail. By owning United Brands, he was in a position to reap profits from the government’s secret programs to fund and supply the Nicaraguan contras through Hondouras.
Keating purchased property for his office in Phoenix from a mob-connected attorney in 1980. He had a mansion in the Bahamas, where the same attorney family had a casino.
Prudential Insurance loaned him $2 million in 1985. He had numerous dealings with BCCI, which turned out to be the bank of crooks and criminals.
Keating had invested 17.5 million in TrendInvest without notifying his American Conmtinental board. Walter Bush, cousin to the current president, was involved with Continental, which later collapsed. There were many other baffling investments. Some think he was laundering CIA money involved in its Latin American operations.
Keating had a business relationship with Hensley. Keating was good at buying political influence, and he had a ten year close relationship with John McCain, donating about $112,000 to McCain campaigns. Nine times, he paid to transport McCain’s family and babysitter to his place in the Bahamas, often on a private plane. In addition, he permitted Cindy and her father to buy into a lucrative shopping center in California. In return McCain helped him convince Ronald Reagan to deregulate the Savings and Loan industry and place a Keating friend on the board that regulated it. Deregulation was a green light for Keating to build the Phoenician, a resort, in partnership with the rulers of Kuwait. The federal government seized it in February, 1989. His bellmen were permitted to remove 24 cartons of documents.
When the Feds started investigating Keating, McCain organized the “Keating Five” senators to put pressure on the Federal Home Loan Bank board to back off. At one point McCain even demanded that the chairman of that board not participate in the investigation of Keating.
When Keating began to get into trouble and marketed $230,000,000 in bad bonds, he came up with a scheme to cover them with profits from a water scheme. He and a partner bought up a lot of water rights and then had the legislature pass a law requiring Phoenix to first buy as much water as Keating could sell before going to other vendors. They planned to pump about a million acre feet of water in a year. De Concini would also profit because he had purchased some water rights. Such a scheme could only take place in a state where the press looked the other way and the politicians were largely corrupt. The Arizona Republic and the Phoenix Gazette were owned by the family of Dan Quayle.
The Arizona House of Representatives breezed the bill through in two days, but Jerry Gilespie held up things in the Senate. He found a way to stop it dead in its tracks, but he lost his seat in the next election. No wire service reported the story but it was covered by Phoenix Magazine in 1989. This doomed Keating.
As late as May, 1988, Keating thought he had won his battle against the Federal Home Loan Bank Board. On the 20th, he threw a big party because Senators Mc Cain and De Concini, with three others, had succeeded in having the investigation of his Lincoln Savings from San Francisco to Washington. In excitement, he removed his shirt to reveal a tee shirt with a skull and bones superimposed over the letters FHLBB. He had spent a million dollars buying politicians. It looked like he had won, but he was done in when the water scheme petered out.
Keating was eventually fined 3.6 billion and sent to prison. He has been called the father of the S &L crisis. McCain was investigated by the Senate Ethics Committee and was only told he exercised “poor judgment.” Almost as soon as he saw that he had a problem, he played the role of the repentant sinner and began to create the false reputation that he was an opponent of lobbyists and the improprieties seem to flow from their involvement in public life. To convince voters that he was a different sort of politician, he started calling for campaign finance reform.
McCain went on to gin up a reputation for integrity, but, in fact, he continued to run errands for contributors. Recently, McCain denied ever meeting Lowell “Bud” Paxson, even though there was a 2002 court deposition proving they had met. This is important because in 1999, MC Cain, then chairman of the Senate Commerce Committee, pressed the FCC hard to let Paxson Communications purchase a Pittsburgh television station. The FC claimed McCain’s request seemed like a threat and believed he had crossed the line separating propriety and impropriety. The firm had donated $20,000 to McCain. The firm had provided McCain transportation on a company jet on several occasions. Very briefly, the press raised questions about his relationship with a pretty young Paxson lobbyist who was often in his company in 2000. No solid evidence of a sexual relationship was found, so the press decided not to look into the rest of the story. The fact that McCain is clearly the darling of the press could have something to do with the drying up of the entire story.
When confronted with information about his conduct in the Paxson case, McCain said he was just prodding bureaucrats and then produced documents to show he had done the same thing in other cases involving large contributors. What chutzpah!
In 1999, McCain staff twice intervened to help wealthy contributor and close personal friend Donald Diamond obtain land from closed Army base Fort Ord in California. That deal allowed him to turn a $20 million profit, and another arrangement in 2005, again with McCain help, promises to be more profitable. This involves as many as 12,000 homes and benefits more than one McCain backer. Two former McCain staffers were hired as lobbyists in this complex deal to get him aboard. Twice in the 1990s, McCain introduced land legislation to help Diamond, and a third measure is now before the Senate.
In 2001, questions were raised about legislation he backed for the cruise industry and the large contributions it gave him. There are also questions about his close ties to the cable TV industry.
Recently, it was learned that John McCain had more lobbyists working for his 2008 campaign than any other presidential candidate. Even after 6 were forced to leave due to their ties to unsavory regimes, there are 59 who do nothing but raise money. One of them is Ralph Reed, who was shown to be taking advantage of Native American clients in hearings McCain chaired! Over time, 133 lobbyists have worked for the Straight talk Express.
Others do other things in the campaign. Rick Davis is campaign manager, and Charlie Black is senior political advisor. Among Black’s clients were AT%T, Rupert Murdock, and Blackwater. Twenty-one McCain people also represented AT&T. Black had also been paid to sheppard around Ahmed Chalabi, whose distortions helped get the US to invade Iraq. Could this be connected to McCain’s view that American troops must soldier on there, possibly indefinitely.
Two lobbyists were closely tied to the mortgage industry, which could explain why McCain has been so very friendly to the same industry. Randy Scheunemann, McCain’s foreign policy analyst, has represented the Republic of Georgia, and spoke on McCain’s behalf on this issue as recently as August 17. This could explain why McCain is so hawkish about the Russo-Georgian struggle. He speaks as though he is already president, keeping force and all other options on the table.
None of this information is to suggest Mc Cain is a crook. He is obviously very closely tied to the lobbyists and special interests that he frequently complains about. He cannot claim no links to the mob. There is no doubt that he has a history of going to bat for them—sometimes appearing to go to far. He has repeatedly promised to never doing anything that gives the appearance of impropriety, but his track record is just the opposite of this.
He probably is not a crook, and Mc Cain deserves great praise for his service in the Vietnam War. But he is only mortal and has a bad track record for consistency and truth telling, despite all his self-praise about honesty.
Tuesday, October 7, 2008
Palin Plays the Race Card, Deftly and Ever So Subtly
Sarah Palin, a truly gifted communicator like Huey Long or Father Caughlin, says Barack Obama "pals" around with Weather Underground terrorist William Ayers. Ayers once hosted a small fundraiser, and the two sat on the board of a program aimed at promoting literacy. Obama has deplored Ayers actions and said the two men are acquaintances, that's all. On the other hand, her sponsor McCain freely admits that he is a good friend of G. Gordon Liddy and that he greatly respects what Lidy did in the Watergate Affair, including offering to blow up the Brookings Institution. The difference was that Liddy is white and plotted to hurt political opponents.
She prefaces her attack on Obama saying he has a very low opinion of his fellow Americans. Hence he pals around with Ayers. Early in the campaign the McCain people stressed that Obama might not be as American as the rest of us. Now Palin plays to the same theme. He's different and not quite a good American. Everyone knows how. The subtext is racism. It was an all white audience. They understood.
Now she is referring to the Reverend Jeremiah Wright. Maybe New York Governor Patterson was correct he said her references to "community organizer" is a code term for black. No one in the mainstream media is talking about the African witchhunter who prayed over Sarah or her churches that are infested with Dominionism, a belief that rejects separation of church and state and calls for an American theocracy. For some reason, only Obama's religious background got weeks of press attention.
After one deliverey in Clearwater of her standard demonization of the African American Obama, people in the crowd started shouting: "Kill him! Kill him." Palin has shown that she is a bright woman and highly skilled orator. She could have quieted such savage feelings without detracting from her ugly message. She did nothing. In the same appearance, she dcenounced the mainstream media that was allegedly responsible for her problem interviews, the crowd turned toward the media people hurling insults and foul language at them. Someone yuelled at an African American soundman, "Sit down, boy." Her demagoguery paid off. This bright charismatic pol was effective in creating a lynch mob mentality.
She has often been quoted as having said in an eatery, "So Sambo beat the bitch." But is hard to nail that one down. We do know that her Alaska Independence Party friends are closely tied to white supremacists in the lower 48.Likewise,we know that Mc Cain fiercely defended flying the rebel flag in South Carolina, opposed Martin Luther King day, and now is opposing affirmative action for Arizona state employees.
A McCain campaign advisor said they cannot win if they emphasize the economy. Their only choice is to throw out reasons people can latch onto to justify not voting for Obama. They are playing to fear of the BAD OTHER-- a combination of the usual right wing populism and racism. They are busy fanning the Bradley Effect, wherein white people tell a pollster they will vote for a black but fail to do so on Election Day.
It may well work, but tens of millions of Americans will never forgive this ugly duo.
McCain simply will be unable to govern.
She prefaces her attack on Obama saying he has a very low opinion of his fellow Americans. Hence he pals around with Ayers. Early in the campaign the McCain people stressed that Obama might not be as American as the rest of us. Now Palin plays to the same theme. He's different and not quite a good American. Everyone knows how. The subtext is racism. It was an all white audience. They understood.
Our opponent … is someone who sees America, it seems, as being so imperfect, imperfect enough, that he’s palling around with terrorists who would target their own country. This is not a man who sees America like you and I see America. We see America as a force of good in this world. We see an America of exceptionalism.”
Now she is referring to the Reverend Jeremiah Wright. Maybe New York Governor Patterson was correct he said her references to "community organizer" is a code term for black. No one in the mainstream media is talking about the African witchhunter who prayed over Sarah or her churches that are infested with Dominionism, a belief that rejects separation of church and state and calls for an American theocracy. For some reason, only Obama's religious background got weeks of press attention.
After one deliverey in Clearwater of her standard demonization of the African American Obama, people in the crowd started shouting: "Kill him! Kill him." Palin has shown that she is a bright woman and highly skilled orator. She could have quieted such savage feelings without detracting from her ugly message. She did nothing. In the same appearance, she dcenounced the mainstream media that was allegedly responsible for her problem interviews, the crowd turned toward the media people hurling insults and foul language at them. Someone yuelled at an African American soundman, "Sit down, boy." Her demagoguery paid off. This bright charismatic pol was effective in creating a lynch mob mentality.
She has often been quoted as having said in an eatery, "So Sambo beat the bitch." But is hard to nail that one down. We do know that her Alaska Independence Party friends are closely tied to white supremacists in the lower 48.Likewise,we know that Mc Cain fiercely defended flying the rebel flag in South Carolina, opposed Martin Luther King day, and now is opposing affirmative action for Arizona state employees.
A McCain campaign advisor said they cannot win if they emphasize the economy. Their only choice is to throw out reasons people can latch onto to justify not voting for Obama. They are playing to fear of the BAD OTHER-- a combination of the usual right wing populism and racism. They are busy fanning the Bradley Effect, wherein white people tell a pollster they will vote for a black but fail to do so on Election Day.
It may well work, but tens of millions of Americans will never forgive this ugly duo.
McCain simply will be unable to govern.
Monday, October 6, 2008
Sarah Lied About Sudan and Much More
It is no surprise that Governor Sarah Palin lied about the State of Alaska ending its investment in Sudan. She claimed that as soon as she learned of the Dafur situation she took the lead in the divestment cause. In fac, she ignored a 2007 postcard campaign aimed at getting her to act. Save Dafur people also met with her staff in 2007. She did nothing.The fact is that the Palin Administration openly stated its opposition to divestment 2008 and prevented it from coming to a vote! This is what her deputy revenue commissioner said in a hearing:
The hearing minutes are on line as of this date. State Representative Les Gara said that killed the bill. He said, "I walked out of that hearing livid." The committee would not vote on divestature. The Alaska Permanent Fund still had the $22 million invested in Sudan as of a few weeks ago.
Some say she has the power as chief executive to change the investment. In the debate, she said action will be taken when the legislature reconvenes.
She lied about when she knew about the problem and about taking leadership at the outset. Perhaps she came to see Dafur as a winning political issue a little belatedly and decided she could still claim this as a political feather.
Her relationship to truth is a puzzling matter and very troubling.
She retained two clear lies in her standard stump speech long after they were disproven.
1. She boasted that she told Congress "thanks but no thanks" on the Bridge to Nowhere. The fact is Congress pulled the plug on the bridge and she then reversed her position. She had supported it.
2. She said she opposed earmarks. The fact is she zealously pursued them as mayor and is seeking them as governor.
There are other questions to be raised.
3. She said she did not use religion in her first campaign for mayor. In fact she criticized the incumbent for not going to church enough.
4. She told Wasilla employees their jobs were safe, and then she set about firing 6 department heads.
5. She told the police chief she was firing him because the NRA disliked him. Then she changed her story and said the man intimidated her.
6. The evidence is clear that she wanted to censor books in the library and that she tried to fire the chief librarian for not going along with censorship. Then she said the discussion was only hypothetical.
How can we believe anything this woman says. Can we believe her denials about Troopergate when she did so much to block the investigation?
For whatever reason, she believes it is right for her to lie whenever it accomplishes her political purpose. This is a massive character flaw and far outstrips sitting on the bnoard of an educational foundation with a man who tried to do terrible things 40 years ago. We've had enough liars in the White House to last us a long time.
The legislation is well-intended, and the desire to make a difference is noble, but mixing moral and political agendas at the expense of our citizens' financial security is not a good combination
The hearing minutes are on line as of this date. State Representative Les Gara said that killed the bill. He said, "I walked out of that hearing livid." The committee would not vote on divestature. The Alaska Permanent Fund still had the $22 million invested in Sudan as of a few weeks ago.
Some say she has the power as chief executive to change the investment. In the debate, she said action will be taken when the legislature reconvenes.
She lied about when she knew about the problem and about taking leadership at the outset. Perhaps she came to see Dafur as a winning political issue a little belatedly and decided she could still claim this as a political feather.
Her relationship to truth is a puzzling matter and very troubling.
She retained two clear lies in her standard stump speech long after they were disproven.
1. She boasted that she told Congress "thanks but no thanks" on the Bridge to Nowhere. The fact is Congress pulled the plug on the bridge and she then reversed her position. She had supported it.
2. She said she opposed earmarks. The fact is she zealously pursued them as mayor and is seeking them as governor.
There are other questions to be raised.
3. She said she did not use religion in her first campaign for mayor. In fact she criticized the incumbent for not going to church enough.
4. She told Wasilla employees their jobs were safe, and then she set about firing 6 department heads.
5. She told the police chief she was firing him because the NRA disliked him. Then she changed her story and said the man intimidated her.
6. The evidence is clear that she wanted to censor books in the library and that she tried to fire the chief librarian for not going along with censorship. Then she said the discussion was only hypothetical.
How can we believe anything this woman says. Can we believe her denials about Troopergate when she did so much to block the investigation?
For whatever reason, she believes it is right for her to lie whenever it accomplishes her political purpose. This is a massive character flaw and far outstrips sitting on the bnoard of an educational foundation with a man who tried to do terrible things 40 years ago. We've had enough liars in the White House to last us a long time.
Sarah Palin Has Been Palling Around with Extremists
Sarah Palin has courted and developed close ties with the secessionist Alaska Independence Party. These people are committed to secession and want a vote on the subject. Most voters in the lower 48 see secession as treasonous, yet almost half of of them will vote for her simply because of a party label, and perhaps her extraordinary charm and charisma.
The Alaska Independence Party was founded in the 1970s by an outspoken gold miner, Joe Vogel, who had many battles with the Park Service and the EPA. Vogel declared, "I'm an Alaskan, not an American. I've got no use for America or her damned institutions” and "[T]he fires of Hell are glaciers compared to my hate for the American government." He founder added in 1991, "And I won't be buried under their damn flag." Like his followers, Vogel was an extreme-right winger. He said, "The problem with you John Birchers' is that you are too damn liberal!" Vogel died when an experiment with plastic explosives went wrong.
The party opposes environmental legislation and the federal ownership of land in Alaska. In the 1990s, it had a surge of membership, attracting militia-types. Including Todd Palin, who was a member from 1995 to July, 2002, when he became an independent. That was a time when his wife was running for Lieutenant Governor on the Republican ticket.
There is a 1995 photo circulating that shows Councilwoman Palin with an Alaska Independence Party document in front of her.
Sarah was seen with Todd at the party’s 1994 convention, and she addressed its convention in 2000 and addressed the convention again this year, but the last was videotape. She spoke warmly of the work of the party and told them, “Keep up the good work!” Party officials speak warmly of Sarah and boast that they worked hard for her election as governor in 2006.
Here is a party oficial noting that the AIP worked to elect her governor.
http://www.youtube. com/watch? v=eniG9l_ 7
That party’s slogan is “Alaska first-Alaska always.” John Mc Cain’s slogan is “Country First.” How can Sarah and Todd reconcile the two slogans. How can a voter take a chance on a candidate who had clearly flirted with a secessionist fringe group?
The AIP is part of a network of extreme right wing groups around the US, some of which have links to white supremacist organizations. It sent delegates to the First American Secessionist Convention in Burlington Vermont in 2006. Present were some organizations linked to the neo-Confederate cause and white supremacy. When Timothy McVeigh was arrested he was wearing the tee shirt of one of these unsavory outfits.
It has close ties to the U.S. Constitution Party, which claims it as a state affiliate. That party was founded by Howard Phillips, and it is the home of Christian Reconstructionism or Dominionism. Dominionism looks to place its kind of Christians in political power. They would rule according to Biblical law. These people want to establish a theocracy in the United States, and they are completely opposed to separation of church and state. There are also many Dominionists in the Alaska Independence Party, and it is very likely that Sarah Palin is a Dominionist because she has attended three churches with Dominionist ties.
Alaska Independence Party leaders urge followers to “infiltrate” the major parties. Dominionist preachers urge the same tactic. If Palin were on some Dominionist mission, she would not be likely to admit to it.
The Alaska Independence Party was founded in the 1970s by an outspoken gold miner, Joe Vogel, who had many battles with the Park Service and the EPA. Vogel declared, "I'm an Alaskan, not an American. I've got no use for America or her damned institutions” and "[T]he fires of Hell are glaciers compared to my hate for the American government." He founder added in 1991, "And I won't be buried under their damn flag." Like his followers, Vogel was an extreme-right winger. He said, "The problem with you John Birchers' is that you are too damn liberal!" Vogel died when an experiment with plastic explosives went wrong.
The party opposes environmental legislation and the federal ownership of land in Alaska. In the 1990s, it had a surge of membership, attracting militia-types. Including Todd Palin, who was a member from 1995 to July, 2002, when he became an independent. That was a time when his wife was running for Lieutenant Governor on the Republican ticket.
There is a 1995 photo circulating that shows Councilwoman Palin with an Alaska Independence Party document in front of her.
Sarah was seen with Todd at the party’s 1994 convention, and she addressed its convention in 2000 and addressed the convention again this year, but the last was videotape. She spoke warmly of the work of the party and told them, “Keep up the good work!” Party officials speak warmly of Sarah and boast that they worked hard for her election as governor in 2006.
Here is a party oficial noting that the AIP worked to elect her governor.
http://www.youtube. com/watch? v=eniG9l_ 7
That party’s slogan is “Alaska first-Alaska always.” John Mc Cain’s slogan is “Country First.” How can Sarah and Todd reconcile the two slogans. How can a voter take a chance on a candidate who had clearly flirted with a secessionist fringe group?
The AIP is part of a network of extreme right wing groups around the US, some of which have links to white supremacist organizations. It sent delegates to the First American Secessionist Convention in Burlington Vermont in 2006. Present were some organizations linked to the neo-Confederate cause and white supremacy. When Timothy McVeigh was arrested he was wearing the tee shirt of one of these unsavory outfits.
It has close ties to the U.S. Constitution Party, which claims it as a state affiliate. That party was founded by Howard Phillips, and it is the home of Christian Reconstructionism or Dominionism. Dominionism looks to place its kind of Christians in political power. They would rule according to Biblical law. These people want to establish a theocracy in the United States, and they are completely opposed to separation of church and state. There are also many Dominionists in the Alaska Independence Party, and it is very likely that Sarah Palin is a Dominionist because she has attended three churches with Dominionist ties.
Alaska Independence Party leaders urge followers to “infiltrate” the major parties. Dominionist preachers urge the same tactic. If Palin were on some Dominionist mission, she would not be likely to admit to it.
John Mc Cain's Work for Keating Sheds Light on Today
Though presenting himself as Mr. Clean, the fact is that John McCain has a long history of questionable dealings with lobbyists. In 1987, he worked with four other Senators—all Democrats—to prevent federal regulators from taking over the Lincoln Savings and Loan Association, headed by Charles Keating. McCain attended two meetings with federal regulators to pleas Keating’s case. When he learned that the bank was under criminal investigation, he withdrew from efforts to help Keating. The bank collapsed and Keating went to prison. He was accused of selling worthless bonds to 23,000 people, many of whom were old people. The Five Senators were known as the Keating Five, but McCain and John Glenn were only admonished for showing poor judgment.
Senator McCain said he was only helping a constituent. The fact was that Keating and McCain had been friends since 1981. In three campaigns, Keating raised $112,000 for MCain. McCain made at least nine trips paid for by Keating, three of which were to Keating’s Bahamas complex. Despite Senate rules, McCain did not disclose the flights until forced to. Cindy McCain and her father, Jim Hensley, put $359,100 into Fountain Hills, a Phoenix strip mall sponsored by Keating. It was a” sweetheart deal,” according to the New York Times.
Keating was known as a nasty bigot and bully, and many avoided him. But McCain viewed him as a personal friend. Keating had great influence with President Ronald Reagan, who tried unsuccessfully to give Keating control of the board that regulates savings and loan associations. McCain succeeded in persuading Reagan to nominate two Keating men for that board. Some would say McCain was trying to put minions of the fox in the henhouse.
Keating also had a plan to lift the rule barring direct investments by the S and Ls, which was strongly backed by Newt Gingrich, Mc Cain, and some Democrats. Had the rule been changed, the S and L scandal would have been far worse. McCain probably backed the rule change because, like Phil Gram, he thought regulations should be stripped away. Even in the face of today’s possible financial meltdown, Mc Cain has not changed his mind, nor has Gram, who is a likely candidate for Secretary of the Treasury under the Arizonan. As late as March 25, 2008, McCain thought the mortgage crisis could be solved by stripping away regulations.
McCain was masterful in extricating himself from the Keating Five Scandal, calling it "my asterisk." And saying it will be mentioned on his tombstone. Almost as soon as he saw that he had a problem, he played the role of the repentant sinner and began to create the false reputation that he was an opponent of lobbyists and the improprieties seem to flow from their involvement in public life. To convince voters that he was a different sort of politician, he started calling for campaign finance reform.
Recently, McCain denied ever meeting Lowell “Bud” Paxson, even though there was a 2002 court deposition proving they had met.
Yet in 2006 he said he no longer supported public financing of elections. In 2008, he first signed up for public financing of his primary campaign and then backed out when it provide advantageous to do so. That allowed him to raise more money and spend much of it after the primaries had ended and before the conventions. Then, signing on for public financing of the general campaign, he denounced Obama for being inconsistent and not going for public financing. In all this, McCain looks far less like the honest maverick than a very skilled and crafty pol.
In 1999, MC Cain, then chairman of the Senate Commerce Committee, pressed the FCC hard to let Paxson Communications purchase a Pittsburgh television station. The FC claimed McCain’s request seemed like a threat and believed he had crossed the line separating propriety and impropriety. The firm had donated $20,000 to McCain. The firm had provided McCain transportation on a company jet on several occasions. Very briefly, the press raised questions about his relationship with a pretty young Paxson lobbyist who was often in his company in 2000. No solid evidence of a sexual relationship was found, so the press decided not to look into the rest of the story. The fact that McCain is clearly the darling of the press could have something to do with the drying up of the entire story.
When confronted with information about his conduct in the Paxson case, McCain said he was just prodding bureaucrats and then produced documents to show he had done the same thing in other cases involving large contributors. What chutzpah!
In 1999, McCain staff twice intervened to help wealthy contributor and close personal friend Donald Diamond obtain land from closed Army base Fort Ord in California. That deal allowed him to turn a $20 million profit, and another arrangement in 2005, again with McCain help, promises to be more profitable. This involves as many as 12,000 homes and benefits more than one McCain backer. Two former McCain staffers were hired as lobbyists in this complex deal to get him aboard. Twice in the 1990s, McCain introduced land legislation to help Diamond, and a third measure is now before the Senate.
In 2001, questions were raised about legislation he backed for the cruise industry and the large contributions it gave him.
Recently, it was learned that John McCain had more lobbyists working for his 2008 campaign than any other presidential candidate. Even after 6 were forced to leave due to their ties to unsavory regimes, there are 59 who do nothing but raise money. One of them is Ralph Reed, who was shown to be taking advantage of Native American clients in hearings McCain chaired! Over time, 133 lobbyists have worked for the Straight talk Express.
Others do other things in the campaign. Rick Davis is campaign manager, and Charlie Black is senior political advisor. Among Black’s clients were AT%T, Rupert Murdock, and Blackwater. Twenty-one McCain people also represented AT&T. Black had also been paid to shepard around Ahmed Chalabi, whose distortions helped get the US to invade Iraq. Could this be connected to McCain’s view that American troops must soldier on there, possibly indefinitely.
Two lobbyists were closely tied to the mortgage industry, which could explain why McCain has been so very friendly to the same industry. Randy Scheunemann, McCain’s foreign policy analyst, has represented the Republic of Georgia, and spoke on McCain’s behalf on this issue as recently as August 17. This could explain why McCain is so hawkish about the Russo-Georgian struggle. He speaks as though he is already president, keeping force and all other options on the table.
None of this information is to suggest Mc Cain is a crook. He is obviously very closely tied to the lobbyists and special interests that he frequently complains about. There is no doubt that he has a history of going to bat for them—sometimes appearing to go to far. He has repeatedly promised to never doing anything that gives the appearance of impropriety, but his track record is just the opposite of this.
He probably is not a crook, and deserves great praise for his service in the Vietnam War. But he is only mortal and has a bad track record for consistency and truth telling, despite all his self-praise about honesty. The most worrisome quality is that he seems to have a very poor learning curve. Had the nation followed the course outlined by Newt Gingrich, Charles Keating, Phil Gram, and McCain in the 1980s, the banking collapse of the George H.W. Bush years would have been infinitely worse. He learned nothing from this, and continued to hawk deregulatory policies through t he 1990s and supported the Phil Gram legislation that brought on the California energy crisis and today mortgage meltdown. As late a March he said the answer was more deregulation, and, we are told, he remains in telephone contact with his economic guru, Phil Gram.
It is far from unthinkable to speculate that should McCain enter the White House next January, that economy is experiencing severe shocks, and it is clear that a President McCain would have no clue as to what to do about it.
Senator McCain said he was only helping a constituent. The fact was that Keating and McCain had been friends since 1981. In three campaigns, Keating raised $112,000 for MCain. McCain made at least nine trips paid for by Keating, three of which were to Keating’s Bahamas complex. Despite Senate rules, McCain did not disclose the flights until forced to. Cindy McCain and her father, Jim Hensley, put $359,100 into Fountain Hills, a Phoenix strip mall sponsored by Keating. It was a” sweetheart deal,” according to the New York Times.
Keating was known as a nasty bigot and bully, and many avoided him. But McCain viewed him as a personal friend. Keating had great influence with President Ronald Reagan, who tried unsuccessfully to give Keating control of the board that regulates savings and loan associations. McCain succeeded in persuading Reagan to nominate two Keating men for that board. Some would say McCain was trying to put minions of the fox in the henhouse.
Keating also had a plan to lift the rule barring direct investments by the S and Ls, which was strongly backed by Newt Gingrich, Mc Cain, and some Democrats. Had the rule been changed, the S and L scandal would have been far worse. McCain probably backed the rule change because, like Phil Gram, he thought regulations should be stripped away. Even in the face of today’s possible financial meltdown, Mc Cain has not changed his mind, nor has Gram, who is a likely candidate for Secretary of the Treasury under the Arizonan. As late as March 25, 2008, McCain thought the mortgage crisis could be solved by stripping away regulations.
McCain was masterful in extricating himself from the Keating Five Scandal, calling it "my asterisk." And saying it will be mentioned on his tombstone. Almost as soon as he saw that he had a problem, he played the role of the repentant sinner and began to create the false reputation that he was an opponent of lobbyists and the improprieties seem to flow from their involvement in public life. To convince voters that he was a different sort of politician, he started calling for campaign finance reform.
Recently, McCain denied ever meeting Lowell “Bud” Paxson, even though there was a 2002 court deposition proving they had met.
Yet in 2006 he said he no longer supported public financing of elections. In 2008, he first signed up for public financing of his primary campaign and then backed out when it provide advantageous to do so. That allowed him to raise more money and spend much of it after the primaries had ended and before the conventions. Then, signing on for public financing of the general campaign, he denounced Obama for being inconsistent and not going for public financing. In all this, McCain looks far less like the honest maverick than a very skilled and crafty pol.
In 1999, MC Cain, then chairman of the Senate Commerce Committee, pressed the FCC hard to let Paxson Communications purchase a Pittsburgh television station. The FC claimed McCain’s request seemed like a threat and believed he had crossed the line separating propriety and impropriety. The firm had donated $20,000 to McCain. The firm had provided McCain transportation on a company jet on several occasions. Very briefly, the press raised questions about his relationship with a pretty young Paxson lobbyist who was often in his company in 2000. No solid evidence of a sexual relationship was found, so the press decided not to look into the rest of the story. The fact that McCain is clearly the darling of the press could have something to do with the drying up of the entire story.
When confronted with information about his conduct in the Paxson case, McCain said he was just prodding bureaucrats and then produced documents to show he had done the same thing in other cases involving large contributors. What chutzpah!
In 1999, McCain staff twice intervened to help wealthy contributor and close personal friend Donald Diamond obtain land from closed Army base Fort Ord in California. That deal allowed him to turn a $20 million profit, and another arrangement in 2005, again with McCain help, promises to be more profitable. This involves as many as 12,000 homes and benefits more than one McCain backer. Two former McCain staffers were hired as lobbyists in this complex deal to get him aboard. Twice in the 1990s, McCain introduced land legislation to help Diamond, and a third measure is now before the Senate.
In 2001, questions were raised about legislation he backed for the cruise industry and the large contributions it gave him.
Recently, it was learned that John McCain had more lobbyists working for his 2008 campaign than any other presidential candidate. Even after 6 were forced to leave due to their ties to unsavory regimes, there are 59 who do nothing but raise money. One of them is Ralph Reed, who was shown to be taking advantage of Native American clients in hearings McCain chaired! Over time, 133 lobbyists have worked for the Straight talk Express.
Others do other things in the campaign. Rick Davis is campaign manager, and Charlie Black is senior political advisor. Among Black’s clients were AT%T, Rupert Murdock, and Blackwater. Twenty-one McCain people also represented AT&T. Black had also been paid to shepard around Ahmed Chalabi, whose distortions helped get the US to invade Iraq. Could this be connected to McCain’s view that American troops must soldier on there, possibly indefinitely.
Two lobbyists were closely tied to the mortgage industry, which could explain why McCain has been so very friendly to the same industry. Randy Scheunemann, McCain’s foreign policy analyst, has represented the Republic of Georgia, and spoke on McCain’s behalf on this issue as recently as August 17. This could explain why McCain is so hawkish about the Russo-Georgian struggle. He speaks as though he is already president, keeping force and all other options on the table.
None of this information is to suggest Mc Cain is a crook. He is obviously very closely tied to the lobbyists and special interests that he frequently complains about. There is no doubt that he has a history of going to bat for them—sometimes appearing to go to far. He has repeatedly promised to never doing anything that gives the appearance of impropriety, but his track record is just the opposite of this.
He probably is not a crook, and deserves great praise for his service in the Vietnam War. But he is only mortal and has a bad track record for consistency and truth telling, despite all his self-praise about honesty. The most worrisome quality is that he seems to have a very poor learning curve. Had the nation followed the course outlined by Newt Gingrich, Charles Keating, Phil Gram, and McCain in the 1980s, the banking collapse of the George H.W. Bush years would have been infinitely worse. He learned nothing from this, and continued to hawk deregulatory policies through t he 1990s and supported the Phil Gram legislation that brought on the California energy crisis and today mortgage meltdown. As late a March he said the answer was more deregulation, and, we are told, he remains in telephone contact with his economic guru, Phil Gram.
It is far from unthinkable to speculate that should McCain enter the White House next January, that economy is experiencing severe shocks, and it is clear that a President McCain would have no clue as to what to do about it.
Sunday, October 5, 2008
SOME HONEST QUESTIONS ABOUT PALIN’S RELIGION
The nation spent weeks scrutinizing the pronouncements of Reverend Dr. Jeremiah Wright and asking if Barack Obama agreed with them. Now we learn that Sarah Palin has been exposed to some religious ideas that some might consider bothersome. Mrs. Palin is clearly a sincere, Christian woman, and that is all to the good. But it is important to know how religious ideas would guide her, if she were to succeed John Mc Cain as president of the United States.
End Times
Her family rejected Roman Catholicism when she was twelve years old, and she has spent most of her life in a Pentecostal environment. The Wasilla Assembly of God, which she attended until 2002, has a strong commitment to supporting Israel the fate of Israel is tied to the coming of the end times and the Rapture, when good Christians are removed from the scene to protect them from the awesome battles to come.
Reverend Tim McGraw, her pastor when she was elected mayor, said that believers are always searching for signs of end times and added that:
The idea that Sarah would take this huge influence of the worldview that really only the Bible and the relationship with Jesus opens up ... and suddenly marginalize it and put it over on the shelf somewhere and live apart from it—that would be entirely inconsistent.
McGraw said that Palin’s premillenialism would lead her to look at what happens to Israel for signs of when the end times will occur. The founding pastor, Reverend Ed Kalnins said the current Iraq war as part of an overall divine design in which Christ serves as a demanding general. Reverend John Hagee, an ally, has the same view.
Against this background, we should consider Palin’s recent comment:
Governor Palin’s defenders say she just was expressing the hope that God approved the war. In context, it appears that this was a God-ordained war and part of a messianic mission.
Which was it? And the bigger question is, would Palin use her power to influence events in the Middle East to hasten the coming of the Rapture and end times?
Since 2002, she attends the Wasilla Bible Church , whose worship is a little less extreme than her old church. It has a program to convert gays into heterosexuals through the power of prayer and works to convert Jews. Recently David Brickner, founder of Jews for Jesus, visited the congregation and discussed terrorist attacks on Israel, saying they were God’s judgment on Jews who had not embraced Christ.
The Dominionism of the New Apostolic Reformation
Dominionism means that the saved must battle to take over the world in God’s name and rule it according to Biblical principles and injunctions. Three of Palin’s four churches have ties to a dominionist movement called the New Apostolic Reformation. Reverend Dr. C. Peter Wagner of Global Harvest Ministries in Colorado Springs, is the “convening Apostle” or leading light in the movement, and he says the reformation or New Apostolic Age began in 2001. They aim for a post-denominational Christianity shaped by them. Their leaders are God’s new apostles and prophets who have greater power than the original apostles and prophets. Spiritual warriors must convert adherents of other churches and seek political power. They think the end times will see the perfection of Christianity and they will have a perfected religion to turn over to Christ, when he returns. They will be given great power and crush evil with a “rod of iron.”
The New Apostolics are busy in worldly affairs because they believe they are destined to rule. In addition they want to expel demons, physically heal others, and raise people from the dead. They believe they have the world’s only valid religious belief system. They want a post-denominational church, but it will not be warm and fuzzy as some think. People can be forced to join the new non-denominational Christianity for their own good, and other churches can be forced to stop teaching false doctrines. One official of M orningstar Ministries admits that life under their theocratic rule “may seem totalitarian at first.”
They target youth to be a Joel’s Army ( a distortion of an illusion in the Book of Joel) to seize political power and force non-believers to accept their version of Christianity. These churches engage in “spiritual warfare” as was depicted in the movie “Jesus Camp.” In the film, young people were trained to “take dominion” over the world. They will also purge the Christian church of elements that strongly disagree with them.
Since 2006, Governor Palin worships the Juneau Christian Center when in Juneau. It has close ties to John Hagee’s Christians United for Israel. Hagee and CUIF want to see the Dome of the Rock destroyed so the Third Temple can be built there. Juneau Christian Center’s Senior Pastor Mike Rose has said that he is convinced “We are living in the last days.”
Palin says her “home church” is the Church of the Rock in Wasilla, which also believes in Armageddonism. It is a Pentecostal church but she says she is no longer a Pentecostal. David Pepper, its pastor, said last year “T he purpose for the United States is… to glorify God. This nation is a Christian nation.” Young people from this church attended “The Call/Nashville,” where they viewed the movie “Jesus Camp ” and learned about corruption in the world.
Three of Sarah Palin’s churches are quite different from most Assembly of God congregations and their attackment to the New Apostolic Reformation or Third Wave is considered a heresy. They seem to be waiting for the Rapture in a different way, and some redefine it. Others think the doctrine of the Rapture is a trick the devil to create a retreatist mentality. One NAR leader said:
One of her Catholic defenders noted that she said nothing while being prayed over. But the point is that these sincere Christians believe that the world is inhabited by all sorts of demons and that the powers of demons even get passed down in families, just as curses are passed down. Some demons run territories; others are in some of their enemies, and still other very powerful demons run churches they dislike.
The reverse side of believing in evil demons is the teaching that the New Apostolics have the power to heal, raise the dead, and successfully combat the forces of darkness. The New Apostolics believe people can be given special powers to fight demons, and that is what was happening there. Of the event, Governor Palin said:
As I was mayor and Pastor Muthee was here and he was praying over me, and you know how he speaks and he’s so bold. And he was praying "Lord make a way, Lord make a way.
They see some Protestant denominations as being run by demons. They especially hate Roman Catholicism, which they see as driven by a very powerful demonic force. They hate the Catholic veneration of the Virgin Mary, believing it is powered by a demonic foces associated in scripture with the pagan goddess Diana in Ephesians. Saying it was necessary to cast down the “Queen of Heaven, ” Reverend Dr. Wagner wrote: “While we were in Turkey, Doris [his wife] and I...knew that the power of the Queen of Heaven had to be broken in order for the gospel to spread in Turkey." NGR generals and “prophets of intercession”r views climbed Mt. Everest in 1997, where they planted a flag honoring Jesus. God assured them he would dethrone 'Mystery Babylon the Great { in Revelation}, Mother of Harlots.'" Here the “harlot” is Mary, but more conventional dominionists and dispensationalists usually mean the word to refer to the Catholic Church. They attribute the death of Mother Theresa and the earthquake that damaged Assisi to God’s wrath. John Hagee was not lying when he said his use of the term “Whore of Babylon” did not apply to the Catholic Church. He was referring to Mary, who is also called “The Scarlet Woman” or just “Babylon.” Of course the New Apostolics have worse things to say about non-Christian religions.
Separation of Church and State and Tolerance
Dominionists simply do not believe in the separation of church and state. They want to take over and create a theocracy. No wonder they see nothing wrong in playing politics from the pulpit. Reverend Ed Kalnins, the founding pastor, has consigned critics of George W. Bush to hell. He even denounced those who criticized Bush’s handling of Katrina. He doubted that people who voted for John Kerry in 2004 will be welcomed to heaven/He said:
I'm not going tell you who to vote for, but if you vote for this particular person, I question your salvation. I'm sorry." Kalnins added: "If every Christian will vote righteously, it would be a landslide every time.
She has said she will not force her religious convictions upon anyone else. We know that as candidate for governor, she wanted repeal of legislation that prohibited ministers from endorsing candidates. Of course this involves the US Tax Code, not state action. She has also signed. Legislation proclaiming Christian Heritage Week. The literature attending it made it clear the founding fathers were good Christians and intended this to be a Christian nation.
Governor once discussed a pipeline with a church group saying, "God's will has to be done in unifying people and companies to get that gas line built. So pray for that. " If God is for a particular pipeline venture; that closes the subject. Does God really have an opinion on a pipeline? As governor, she said that her work might go badly "if the people of Alaska's heart isn't right with God." This seems to suggest that citizens should be Bible-believing Christians.
When running for mayor, there was a stealth campaign to put a “Christian” in office and she commented on the incumbent’s church attendance. A cable station hailed her as Wasilla’s “first Christian mayor.”
While she was mayor, people were busy tearing pages out of “dirty” books in the local library and she privately raised the matter of censorship with librarian Mary Ellen Emmons. She advocated censorship again at a meeting attended by others, and it was reported in the local paper. Palin fired Emmons because she opposed censorship, but public pressure brought Emmons back. But, Emmons no longer felt comfortable there and resigned and left town.
Many have noted self-righteousness, ruthlessness, and vindictiveness in Palin’s manner of governing. Did this come from certainty that God was behind all her actions. Did God join her firing an experienced police chief who did not want weapons in bars and the municipal building and wanted bars closed at 2:30 AM rather than 5:00A.M.
What Goes with the Territory
As a right -wing Christian Republican, we expect her to oppose abortion, stem cell research, explicit sex education, gay marriage, and advocate creationism. But does her religious extremism carry this orientation farther. Is this why she made victims of rape pay for rape kits and testing? Does the belief that the world is about to end lead her to fierce anti-environmentalism and opposition to protecting endangered species. After all the world will not be here this much longer.
Sarah claims she is not a Pentecostal and seems to be distancing herself from her religious past. We don’t want to be intolerant, but her background raises many valid questions that should come into the open. Maybe she disagrees with her ministers a great deal or never quite understood what they were saying. There is such a thing as “cultural Catholics,” and maybe there is such a thing as “cultural New Apostolics.”
End Times
Her family rejected Roman Catholicism when she was twelve years old, and she has spent most of her life in a Pentecostal environment. The Wasilla Assembly of God, which she attended until 2002, has a strong commitment to supporting Israel the fate of Israel is tied to the coming of the end times and the Rapture, when good Christians are removed from the scene to protect them from the awesome battles to come.
Reverend Tim McGraw, her pastor when she was elected mayor, said that believers are always searching for signs of end times and added that:
The idea that Sarah would take this huge influence of the worldview that really only the Bible and the relationship with Jesus opens up ... and suddenly marginalize it and put it over on the shelf somewhere and live apart from it—that would be entirely inconsistent.
McGraw said that Palin’s premillenialism would lead her to look at what happens to Israel for signs of when the end times will occur. The founding pastor, Reverend Ed Kalnins said the current Iraq war as part of an overall divine design in which Christ serves as a demanding general. Reverend John Hagee, an ally, has the same view.
We are in a time and a season of war, and we need to think like that. We need to develop that instinct. We need to develop as believers the instinct that we are at war, and that war is contending for your faith. ... Jesus called us to die. You're worried about getting hurt? He's called us to die.Kalnins claims God has revealed to him events that happened in people’s , and he states that “ Alaska is one of the refuge states in the last days, and hundreds of thousands of people are going to come to the state to seek refuge and the church has to be ready to minister to them." He believes in intergenerational family “curses,” and that certain geographical territories are possessed by demons.
Against this background, we should consider Palin’s recent comment:
Pray for our military men and women who are striving to do what is right. Also, for this country, that our leaders, our national leaders, are sending [U.S. soldiers] out on a task that is from God …. That's what we have to make sure that we're praying for, that there is a plan and that that plan is God's plan.
Governor Palin’s defenders say she just was expressing the hope that God approved the war. In context, it appears that this was a God-ordained war and part of a messianic mission.
Which was it? And the bigger question is, would Palin use her power to influence events in the Middle East to hasten the coming of the Rapture and end times?
Since 2002, she attends the Wasilla Bible Church , whose worship is a little less extreme than her old church. It has a program to convert gays into heterosexuals through the power of prayer and works to convert Jews. Recently David Brickner, founder of Jews for Jesus, visited the congregation and discussed terrorist attacks on Israel, saying they were God’s judgment on Jews who had not embraced Christ.
The Dominionism of the New Apostolic Reformation
Dominionism means that the saved must battle to take over the world in God’s name and rule it according to Biblical principles and injunctions. Three of Palin’s four churches have ties to a dominionist movement called the New Apostolic Reformation. Reverend Dr. C. Peter Wagner of Global Harvest Ministries in Colorado Springs, is the “convening Apostle” or leading light in the movement, and he says the reformation or New Apostolic Age began in 2001. They aim for a post-denominational Christianity shaped by them. Their leaders are God’s new apostles and prophets who have greater power than the original apostles and prophets. Spiritual warriors must convert adherents of other churches and seek political power. They think the end times will see the perfection of Christianity and they will have a perfected religion to turn over to Christ, when he returns. They will be given great power and crush evil with a “rod of iron.”
The New Apostolics are busy in worldly affairs because they believe they are destined to rule. In addition they want to expel demons, physically heal others, and raise people from the dead. They believe they have the world’s only valid religious belief system. They want a post-denominational church, but it will not be warm and fuzzy as some think. People can be forced to join the new non-denominational Christianity for their own good, and other churches can be forced to stop teaching false doctrines. One official of M orningstar Ministries admits that life under their theocratic rule “may seem totalitarian at first.”
They target youth to be a Joel’s Army ( a distortion of an illusion in the Book of Joel) to seize political power and force non-believers to accept their version of Christianity. These churches engage in “spiritual warfare” as was depicted in the movie “Jesus Camp.” In the film, young people were trained to “take dominion” over the world. They will also purge the Christian church of elements that strongly disagree with them.
Since 2006, Governor Palin worships the Juneau Christian Center when in Juneau. It has close ties to John Hagee’s Christians United for Israel. Hagee and CUIF want to see the Dome of the Rock destroyed so the Third Temple can be built there. Juneau Christian Center’s Senior Pastor Mike Rose has said that he is convinced “We are living in the last days.”
Palin says her “home church” is the Church of the Rock in Wasilla, which also believes in Armageddonism. It is a Pentecostal church but she says she is no longer a Pentecostal. David Pepper, its pastor, said last year “T he purpose for the United States is… to glorify God. This nation is a Christian nation.” Young people from this church attended “The Call/Nashville,” where they viewed the movie “Jesus Camp ” and learned about corruption in the world.
Three of Sarah Palin’s churches are quite different from most Assembly of God congregations and their attackment to the New Apostolic Reformation or Third Wave is considered a heresy. They seem to be waiting for the Rapture in a different way, and some redefine it. Others think the doctrine of the Rapture is a trick the devil to create a retreatist mentality. One NAR leader said:
Governor Palin and Witchcraft Much has been said about a video of two ministers and Kenyan Bishop Thomas Muthee praying over Palin to protect her from the spirit of witchcrafdt. Muthee is famous for driving a witch out of Kiambu, Kenya, thus lowering the crime rate there. This occurred while she ran for governor. The bishop gave about ten sermons there. Before praying over her, he gave a sermon urging followers to “infiltrate” government, education, press, and the media.
the church isn't going sit and take it any more. The church isn't going to wait to be helicoptered out of the world in some rapture rescue plan. The church will stay right here and by its spiritual authority even defeat the principalities and powers in the heavenlies, dragging them to earth and putting them under their heel .
One of her Catholic defenders noted that she said nothing while being prayed over. But the point is that these sincere Christians believe that the world is inhabited by all sorts of demons and that the powers of demons even get passed down in families, just as curses are passed down. Some demons run territories; others are in some of their enemies, and still other very powerful demons run churches they dislike.
The reverse side of believing in evil demons is the teaching that the New Apostolics have the power to heal, raise the dead, and successfully combat the forces of darkness. The New Apostolics believe people can be given special powers to fight demons, and that is what was happening there. Of the event, Governor Palin said:
As I was mayor and Pastor Muthee was here and he was praying over me, and you know how he speaks and he’s so bold. And he was praying "Lord make a way, Lord make a way.
And I’m thinking, this guy’s really bold, he doesn’t even know what I’m going to do, he doesn’t know what my plans are. And he’s praying not "oh Lord if it be your will may she become governor," no, he just prayed for it. He said "Lord make a way and let her do this next step. And that’s exactly what happened.
They see some Protestant denominations as being run by demons. They especially hate Roman Catholicism, which they see as driven by a very powerful demonic force. They hate the Catholic veneration of the Virgin Mary, believing it is powered by a demonic foces associated in scripture with the pagan goddess Diana in Ephesians. Saying it was necessary to cast down the “Queen of Heaven, ” Reverend Dr. Wagner wrote: “While we were in Turkey, Doris [his wife] and I...knew that the power of the Queen of Heaven had to be broken in order for the gospel to spread in Turkey." NGR generals and “prophets of intercession”r views climbed Mt. Everest in 1997, where they planted a flag honoring Jesus. God assured them he would dethrone 'Mystery Babylon the Great { in Revelation}, Mother of Harlots.'" Here the “harlot” is Mary, but more conventional dominionists and dispensationalists usually mean the word to refer to the Catholic Church. They attribute the death of Mother Theresa and the earthquake that damaged Assisi to God’s wrath. John Hagee was not lying when he said his use of the term “Whore of Babylon” did not apply to the Catholic Church. He was referring to Mary, who is also called “The Scarlet Woman” or just “Babylon.” Of course the New Apostolics have worse things to say about non-Christian religions.
Separation of Church and State and Tolerance
Dominionists simply do not believe in the separation of church and state. They want to take over and create a theocracy. No wonder they see nothing wrong in playing politics from the pulpit. Reverend Ed Kalnins, the founding pastor, has consigned critics of George W. Bush to hell. He even denounced those who criticized Bush’s handling of Katrina. He doubted that people who voted for John Kerry in 2004 will be welcomed to heaven/He said:
I'm not going tell you who to vote for, but if you vote for this particular person, I question your salvation. I'm sorry." Kalnins added: "If every Christian will vote righteously, it would be a landslide every time.
She has said she will not force her religious convictions upon anyone else. We know that as candidate for governor, she wanted repeal of legislation that prohibited ministers from endorsing candidates. Of course this involves the US Tax Code, not state action. She has also signed. Legislation proclaiming Christian Heritage Week. The literature attending it made it clear the founding fathers were good Christians and intended this to be a Christian nation.
Governor once discussed a pipeline with a church group saying, "God's will has to be done in unifying people and companies to get that gas line built. So pray for that. " If God is for a particular pipeline venture; that closes the subject. Does God really have an opinion on a pipeline? As governor, she said that her work might go badly "if the people of Alaska's heart isn't right with God." This seems to suggest that citizens should be Bible-believing Christians.
When running for mayor, there was a stealth campaign to put a “Christian” in office and she commented on the incumbent’s church attendance. A cable station hailed her as Wasilla’s “first Christian mayor.”
While she was mayor, people were busy tearing pages out of “dirty” books in the local library and she privately raised the matter of censorship with librarian Mary Ellen Emmons. She advocated censorship again at a meeting attended by others, and it was reported in the local paper. Palin fired Emmons because she opposed censorship, but public pressure brought Emmons back. But, Emmons no longer felt comfortable there and resigned and left town.
Many have noted self-righteousness, ruthlessness, and vindictiveness in Palin’s manner of governing. Did this come from certainty that God was behind all her actions. Did God join her firing an experienced police chief who did not want weapons in bars and the municipal building and wanted bars closed at 2:30 AM rather than 5:00A.M.
What Goes with the Territory
As a right -wing Christian Republican, we expect her to oppose abortion, stem cell research, explicit sex education, gay marriage, and advocate creationism. But does her religious extremism carry this orientation farther. Is this why she made victims of rape pay for rape kits and testing? Does the belief that the world is about to end lead her to fierce anti-environmentalism and opposition to protecting endangered species. After all the world will not be here this much longer.
Sarah claims she is not a Pentecostal and seems to be distancing herself from her religious past. We don’t want to be intolerant, but her background raises many valid questions that should come into the open. Maybe she disagrees with her ministers a great deal or never quite understood what they were saying. There is such a thing as “cultural Catholics,” and maybe there is such a thing as “cultural New Apostolics.”
Friday, October 3, 2008
Veterans Against John McCain Make Some Important Points
John Mc Cain has been cashing in on his 5 ½ years as a POW with such regularity that some think it unseemly. His September 4 acceptance speech centered on those dreadful years. He even used it to answer a question about how many houses he owns. Now he points to his experience of running a naval squadron as proof of his executive experience. Having opened the subject of his military experience, it might be appropriate to at least look at some of the questions that have been raised about this.
Ted Sampley, who was a leader of that anti-Kerry Swift Boater movement, is now raising questions about McCain through Vietnam Veterans Against John M Cain. However the corporate media, which spent weeks circulating his claims against Kerry will not given him the time of day. Of course, progressives have not forgotten that the corporate media refused to thoroughly examine George W. Bush’s problems with the SEC or his very dubious service in the Texas Air Guard.
Sampley and his colleagues detests both Kerry and McCain shutting down the search for missing prisoners of war and says it was because the senators were anxious to open trade with Vietnam. This cannot be proven, one way or the other.
Former GOP Congressmen John LeBoutillier and Bill Hendon insist that McCain abandoned the American POWs. Perhaps McCain did not think he was abandoning anyone, but it is hard to dodge the fact that he has devoted his senate career to preventing anyone from effectively reopening the question and unsealing what could be important evidence. Here, again, we do not know what his motives are. Perhaps the man is too convinced of his own infallibility. His angry and somewhat illogical attacks on Barack Obama suggest as much.
Critics also accuse him of often collaborating with the North Vietnamese, calling him the Hanoi Hilton’s “songbird,” a charge that cannot be proven and which overlooks evidence of his determination to resist his jailers when possible. Applying the corporate press’s usual standard of “balanced” reporting, the MSM (mainstream media) should at least approach the Vietnam Veterans Against John McCain claims with a “he said—she said” approach.
John LeBoutillier is on solid ground when he notes that McCain’s story about the guard making the sign of the cross in the dirt was probably borrowed from Admiral Jeremian Denton, another POW/Senator.
The allegations of Sampley and others about McCain’s conduct while a POW are impossible to definitively prove and overlook the basic fact that all human beings have breaking points. McCain’s detractors suggest he could have been brainwashed and programmed in Hanoi, becoming some sort of “Manchurian Candidate.” Unfortunately, this is within the realm of possibility, but it cannot be proven. Since the early 1950s, US intelligence (through MKULTRA) and other countries have experimented with mind control and have had limited success in brainwashing and programming people to carry out certain actions when triggered.
There is ample evidence that Soviet ( KGB &GRU) and Cuban psychiatrists interrogated POWs in Hanoi, yet McCain insists that it never happened. Some former prisoners spoke about interrogators from North Korea, whose programs for turning prisoners were very successful. It is documented that McCain was interviewed by Spanish psychiatrist Fernando Barral in 1970. North Vietnamese Colonel Bui Tin told a Senate committee in 1992 that Soviet officers interrogated prisoners on a daily basis. Why would McCain deny the presence of non-Vietnamese interrogators and also hug the Vietnamese Colonel Bui Tin as though he were a long lost brother. Bui Tin, who had been a North Vietnamese interrogator. One cannot help wondering about the Stockholm Syndrome.
By his own 1973 US News and World Report account, he thought many of the prisoners had been drugged. Of course, the North Vietnamese could have done this, as drugging and interrogations have long gone hand and hand. McCain’s account includes the claim of being tortured daily, but his two senior officers have said they do not believe he was tortured. Some, including fellow prisoners, say his injuries were the result of the plane crash.
Oddly, he embraced the Vietnamese , Mai Van On, in 1997, who pulled him out of his plane and assisted him, but refused further contact after that meeting in Vietnam. By most accounts, he has become Vietnam’s best friend in the US Senate.
These angry vets damage their own case by embracing extreme charges that McCain often cooperated with the North Vietnamese and that he could be some sort of Manchurian candidate. They make a far better case when they discuss the way he has treated people in the movements concerned with POW/MIAs. There is much evidence that McCain does not want POW/MIA issues examined. They also make a very strong case that the man is simply not temperamentally equipped to be president.
. McCain’s track record in dealing with the POW/MIA people is very troubling and marked by wild outbursts and irrationality. During Senate hearings on POW/MIAs, he belittled and interrupted witnesses who disagreed with him. He erupted in anger, shouted, shook his fist, and reduced some to tears. Then he demanded that the Justice Department investigate some of the people who opposed him on this issue. St. John Mc Cain told reporters:
The people who have done these things are not zealots in a good cause. They are the most craven, most cynical and most despicable human beings to ever run a scam.
The Justice Department did his bidding and probed two organizations, but did not find evidence of a scam. Mc Cain heaped scorn on H. Ross Perot, whose concern about the POW/MIAs was certainly sincere and well-informed. Navy Captain and fellow POW Eugene "Red" McDaniel was also attacked by the Arizonan as a fraud.
In 1995, Senator McCain gutted the Missing Personnel Act, which would have made it easier for families of missing soldiers and those would be missing in the future to gather information from the Pentagon. He has also consistently opposed releasing documents about POW/MIAs.
As late as 1996, he was still unbelievable uncontrolled in his conduct regarding these people, erupting in anger and accidentally turning over the wheelchair of a missing POW’s mother, Jane Duke Gaylor.
In the Senate his outbursts and verbal abuse of colleagues. Several Republican colleagues have said that John McCain was unfit to have his finger on the nuclear button.
.
John McCain was known for his rebellious and impulsive,reckless behavior even at Annapolis, where he graduated 494th in a class of 499 in 1958. He entered Naval Aviation, whose policy was to select people from the top third of the class. He crashed 5 planes, and examiners wanted to attribute three of the crashes to “pilot error,” but did not do so. Some say he was responsible for the terrible accident on the USS Forrestal in the Gulf of Tonkin on July 29, 1967, when 132 lives were lost. The incident is called the “Forrestfire.”
It is said that he “wet started” his A-4E, which set off a chain reaction. Wet-starting was forbidden but considered sort of a joke prank among some pilots. It involved feeding fuel before starting the plane, resulting in more than 12 feet of flames coming out of his plane’s tail that day. The object was to alarm the pilot in the plane behind you. Lt. Commander Mc Cain was the only uninjured person to be helicopter off that great carrier that day.
The official story clears Mc Cain, son of a high rank admiral and grand son of a legendary admiral, but many shipmates took a different view. Some point out that few Naval aviators from his time have endorsed McCain’s quest for the presidency. He had been passed over for promotion twice before this incident. The main reason for withholding promotions is belief that the candidate lacks maturity. Of course, he was promoted as a matter of policy after he became a POW.
One is inclined to take a second look at what happened on the Forrestal when considering McCain’s cynicism and irresponsibility in selecting Governor Sarah Palin as his running mate. After months of complaining about Obama’s lack of experience and background in foreign affairs, he selected a politician with a very thin resume and no experience in foreign affairs and national security to serve one heartbeat away from the presidency.
It would appear that McCain had a badly flawed temperament before becoming a POW, and that terrible experience could have exacerbated his difficulties. Maybe the experience made him even angrier and more disposed toward irresponsible conduct. Was it a result of his suffering in Hanoi or just part of his personality? Whatever—it is not the temperament of a potential President of the United States. We need to know a great deal more about this man who is given to almost blind rage on occasion and sometimes rash and irresponsible conduct. The voters need to thoroughly vet this man with a view to learning if he is psychologically capable of handling the enormous power that resides in the hands of the President of the United States.
Ted Sampley, who was a leader of that anti-Kerry Swift Boater movement, is now raising questions about McCain through Vietnam Veterans Against John M Cain. However the corporate media, which spent weeks circulating his claims against Kerry will not given him the time of day. Of course, progressives have not forgotten that the corporate media refused to thoroughly examine George W. Bush’s problems with the SEC or his very dubious service in the Texas Air Guard.
Sampley and his colleagues detests both Kerry and McCain shutting down the search for missing prisoners of war and says it was because the senators were anxious to open trade with Vietnam. This cannot be proven, one way or the other.
Former GOP Congressmen John LeBoutillier and Bill Hendon insist that McCain abandoned the American POWs. Perhaps McCain did not think he was abandoning anyone, but it is hard to dodge the fact that he has devoted his senate career to preventing anyone from effectively reopening the question and unsealing what could be important evidence. Here, again, we do not know what his motives are. Perhaps the man is too convinced of his own infallibility. His angry and somewhat illogical attacks on Barack Obama suggest as much.
Critics also accuse him of often collaborating with the North Vietnamese, calling him the Hanoi Hilton’s “songbird,” a charge that cannot be proven and which overlooks evidence of his determination to resist his jailers when possible. Applying the corporate press’s usual standard of “balanced” reporting, the MSM (mainstream media) should at least approach the Vietnam Veterans Against John McCain claims with a “he said—she said” approach.
John LeBoutillier is on solid ground when he notes that McCain’s story about the guard making the sign of the cross in the dirt was probably borrowed from Admiral Jeremian Denton, another POW/Senator.
The allegations of Sampley and others about McCain’s conduct while a POW are impossible to definitively prove and overlook the basic fact that all human beings have breaking points. McCain’s detractors suggest he could have been brainwashed and programmed in Hanoi, becoming some sort of “Manchurian Candidate.” Unfortunately, this is within the realm of possibility, but it cannot be proven. Since the early 1950s, US intelligence (through MKULTRA) and other countries have experimented with mind control and have had limited success in brainwashing and programming people to carry out certain actions when triggered.
There is ample evidence that Soviet ( KGB &GRU) and Cuban psychiatrists interrogated POWs in Hanoi, yet McCain insists that it never happened. Some former prisoners spoke about interrogators from North Korea, whose programs for turning prisoners were very successful. It is documented that McCain was interviewed by Spanish psychiatrist Fernando Barral in 1970. North Vietnamese Colonel Bui Tin told a Senate committee in 1992 that Soviet officers interrogated prisoners on a daily basis. Why would McCain deny the presence of non-Vietnamese interrogators and also hug the Vietnamese Colonel Bui Tin as though he were a long lost brother. Bui Tin, who had been a North Vietnamese interrogator. One cannot help wondering about the Stockholm Syndrome.
By his own 1973 US News and World Report account, he thought many of the prisoners had been drugged. Of course, the North Vietnamese could have done this, as drugging and interrogations have long gone hand and hand. McCain’s account includes the claim of being tortured daily, but his two senior officers have said they do not believe he was tortured. Some, including fellow prisoners, say his injuries were the result of the plane crash.
Oddly, he embraced the Vietnamese , Mai Van On, in 1997, who pulled him out of his plane and assisted him, but refused further contact after that meeting in Vietnam. By most accounts, he has become Vietnam’s best friend in the US Senate.
These angry vets damage their own case by embracing extreme charges that McCain often cooperated with the North Vietnamese and that he could be some sort of Manchurian candidate. They make a far better case when they discuss the way he has treated people in the movements concerned with POW/MIAs. There is much evidence that McCain does not want POW/MIA issues examined. They also make a very strong case that the man is simply not temperamentally equipped to be president.
. McCain’s track record in dealing with the POW/MIA people is very troubling and marked by wild outbursts and irrationality. During Senate hearings on POW/MIAs, he belittled and interrupted witnesses who disagreed with him. He erupted in anger, shouted, shook his fist, and reduced some to tears. Then he demanded that the Justice Department investigate some of the people who opposed him on this issue. St. John Mc Cain told reporters:
The people who have done these things are not zealots in a good cause. They are the most craven, most cynical and most despicable human beings to ever run a scam.
The Justice Department did his bidding and probed two organizations, but did not find evidence of a scam. Mc Cain heaped scorn on H. Ross Perot, whose concern about the POW/MIAs was certainly sincere and well-informed. Navy Captain and fellow POW Eugene "Red" McDaniel was also attacked by the Arizonan as a fraud.
In 1995, Senator McCain gutted the Missing Personnel Act, which would have made it easier for families of missing soldiers and those would be missing in the future to gather information from the Pentagon. He has also consistently opposed releasing documents about POW/MIAs.
As late as 1996, he was still unbelievable uncontrolled in his conduct regarding these people, erupting in anger and accidentally turning over the wheelchair of a missing POW’s mother, Jane Duke Gaylor.
In the Senate his outbursts and verbal abuse of colleagues. Several Republican colleagues have said that John McCain was unfit to have his finger on the nuclear button.
.
John McCain was known for his rebellious and impulsive,reckless behavior even at Annapolis, where he graduated 494th in a class of 499 in 1958. He entered Naval Aviation, whose policy was to select people from the top third of the class. He crashed 5 planes, and examiners wanted to attribute three of the crashes to “pilot error,” but did not do so. Some say he was responsible for the terrible accident on the USS Forrestal in the Gulf of Tonkin on July 29, 1967, when 132 lives were lost. The incident is called the “Forrestfire.”
It is said that he “wet started” his A-4E, which set off a chain reaction. Wet-starting was forbidden but considered sort of a joke prank among some pilots. It involved feeding fuel before starting the plane, resulting in more than 12 feet of flames coming out of his plane’s tail that day. The object was to alarm the pilot in the plane behind you. Lt. Commander Mc Cain was the only uninjured person to be helicopter off that great carrier that day.
The official story clears Mc Cain, son of a high rank admiral and grand son of a legendary admiral, but many shipmates took a different view. Some point out that few Naval aviators from his time have endorsed McCain’s quest for the presidency. He had been passed over for promotion twice before this incident. The main reason for withholding promotions is belief that the candidate lacks maturity. Of course, he was promoted as a matter of policy after he became a POW.
One is inclined to take a second look at what happened on the Forrestal when considering McCain’s cynicism and irresponsibility in selecting Governor Sarah Palin as his running mate. After months of complaining about Obama’s lack of experience and background in foreign affairs, he selected a politician with a very thin resume and no experience in foreign affairs and national security to serve one heartbeat away from the presidency.
It would appear that McCain had a badly flawed temperament before becoming a POW, and that terrible experience could have exacerbated his difficulties. Maybe the experience made him even angrier and more disposed toward irresponsible conduct. Was it a result of his suffering in Hanoi or just part of his personality? Whatever—it is not the temperament of a potential President of the United States. We need to know a great deal more about this man who is given to almost blind rage on occasion and sometimes rash and irresponsible conduct. The voters need to thoroughly vet this man with a view to learning if he is psychologically capable of handling the enormous power that resides in the hands of the President of the United States.
Thursday, September 25, 2008
Bail Out Deal Stalled
House Republicans have refused to support the deal negotiated by the two banking committees. This should give progressive Democrats in the House an opportunity to improve the package on behalf of the American people. Above all, they must insist on tough reregulation as part of the package.
John McCain suspended his campaign--though his ads are still airing here-- and rushed to Washington. It is likely that the House Republicans will hold out until McCain garners publicity as deal maker, selling some sort of package. He brought his cmpaign manager to the meeting of peaders George W. Bush called. Obama brought a legislative aid.
Obama has a history of calling for regulation and should at least insist that the package include repeal of the most dangerous deregulatory provisions of the two "financial modernization" acts that Phil Gramm passed in 1999 and 2000. Obama introduced in 2006 a bill to regulate mortgage lending practives. In March of this year, he brought force comprehensive provisions to regulate financial markets. Of course, the Lying McCain advertisement ignore all this, suggesting he has no position.
If reregulation is not a big part of the package, we would be better off with no bail-out bill. We have seen a series of bail-outs since the mid-1980s because there was no re-regulation. This ruinous cycle must be broken, and Obama should focus the nation's attention on reregulation.
Otherwise, McCain's decision to politicize the financial crisis will bay off big time. Sharp observers believe he is shooting himself in the foot, but most voters are not that sharp. John McCain has a marvelous public relations operation which will
doubtless make him look like an unparalled leder and economic savior. It has shown that it can manufacture facts out of thin air. Just look at all the lying advertisements they have produced and how effective they have been.
It will do Obama no good to criticize McCain's tactics. He must make McCain deregulatory past and present insincerity on the subject a major issue---NOW.
John McCain suspended his campaign--though his ads are still airing here-- and rushed to Washington. It is likely that the House Republicans will hold out until McCain garners publicity as deal maker, selling some sort of package. He brought his cmpaign manager to the meeting of peaders George W. Bush called. Obama brought a legislative aid.
Obama has a history of calling for regulation and should at least insist that the package include repeal of the most dangerous deregulatory provisions of the two "financial modernization" acts that Phil Gramm passed in 1999 and 2000. Obama introduced in 2006 a bill to regulate mortgage lending practives. In March of this year, he brought force comprehensive provisions to regulate financial markets. Of course, the Lying McCain advertisement ignore all this, suggesting he has no position.
If reregulation is not a big part of the package, we would be better off with no bail-out bill. We have seen a series of bail-outs since the mid-1980s because there was no re-regulation. This ruinous cycle must be broken, and Obama should focus the nation's attention on reregulation.
Otherwise, McCain's decision to politicize the financial crisis will bay off big time. Sharp observers believe he is shooting himself in the foot, but most voters are not that sharp. John McCain has a marvelous public relations operation which will
doubtless make him look like an unparalled leder and economic savior. It has shown that it can manufacture facts out of thin air. Just look at all the lying advertisements they have produced and how effective they have been.
It will do Obama no good to criticize McCain's tactics. He must make McCain deregulatory past and present insincerity on the subject a major issue---NOW.
Wednesday, September 24, 2008
Sarah Stonewalls Probe of Her Ethics
First Sarah Palin promises to cooperate with a bipartisan probe; then she decides to stonewall. Back is Wasilla, she fired the police chief, saying the NRA and bar owners wanted him out. Then in court, she swore she said no such thing. She has also misrepresented herself on the subjects of the Bridge to Nowhere and earmarks.
Is this the reformer McCain is telling us about? Of course, his record for truthfulness has tanked in the last three months.
Is this the reformer McCain is telling us about? Of course, his record for truthfulness has tanked in the last three months.
Tuesday, September 23, 2008
McCain and Palin Have Big Advantage in Debates
The debates are misnamed. They are simply joint appearances that do not accomplish what should be accomplished in real debates.
Who can forget what happened when Al Gore smirked at George Bush's multiple displays of ignorance. Most people identified with Bush. He was just like them.
The classic was when Ronald Reagan covered a multitude of stupid statements--including one about welfare queens, with "There you go again." That did it; he won. Never mind that he repeatedly said that trees cause air pollution.
Governor Palin will go into the debate with Joe Biden after her spin people have been projecting very low expectations. In truth, she knows far less than Reagan, but she shares his Teflon cover, is instinctively a master pol, and is a superb communicator.
Her views on foreign policy are very close to those of the ordinary American, and my guess is that Joe comes in at a substantial disadvantage. He knows that nothing is simple and is burdened with experetise and information.
Yesterday, she took out the flamethrower to discuss the Iran question saying anything must be done to prevent the "Nuclear Holocaust" that would result of Iran got the bomb and gave it to Hezbullah. That kind of toughness resonates with people who think we are not tough enough with potential enemies. The simple fact is that her rhetoric will impede efforts of a McCain administration to do anything with Iran outside the ham-handed use of force.
She obviously decided that the five former Secretaries of State who spoke out on the matter a week ago were completely wrong. All she has to do is turn on her charm and use her superb talents as a communicator, and she will come out the winner.
I have great affection for Joe and know a little about the careful education he received in foreign affairs long before going to the Senate.
He knows that the present policy of hot rhetoric, threats, and sanctions will not work. He also knows that Iran can easily cut off a large part of the flow of oil. An attack on Iran would recruit even more terrorists and damage our relations with the moderate Arab states. But he dare not say much about any of this for fear of putting off the ordinary viewer and sounding weak.
He has to sound tough on Iran and say needlessly harsh rhetoric will make it hard to try to reengage Iran, possibly bringing war and oil shortags closer.
First try to slowly reengage them. They need respectability, restored trade, better relations with the West, and better relations with the moderate Arab states. Hence, we try to help them were we can in return for an end to a nuclear program and efforts to bring Hezbullah into the political process in Lebanon, which would help us and Israel.
Even that much is too complicated. People skilled in communications will have to help him tone it down and keep it short.
Mc Cain too has the advantage over Obama for the same reason. Mc Cain knows a little more than Sarah and is excellent at very short statements that sould tough.
But he only knows a little bit more Palin and it seems a little less than Bush. He will clearly be an even worse foreign policy president than the incumbent.
The list of his inaccuracies and misstatements is endless. He thinks Iraq and Pakistan have a common border. He thinks Al Qaeda operatives are trained in Iran. He thought oil revenue would pay for the war. He said it would be over in a hurry. McCain still thinks withdrawl will put Al Qaeeda in power in Iraq. He cannot grasp that worrying about the lack of a political settlement is not the same thing as suggesting the surge was not a complete success. The list goes so far that one really wondeers if he is still mentally fit for the presidency.
Obama has to be careful not to raise too many of these mind-boggling inconsistencies or he will seem to be attacking a tired old national hero.
Who can forget what happened when Al Gore smirked at George Bush's multiple displays of ignorance. Most people identified with Bush. He was just like them.
The classic was when Ronald Reagan covered a multitude of stupid statements--including one about welfare queens, with "There you go again." That did it; he won. Never mind that he repeatedly said that trees cause air pollution.
Governor Palin will go into the debate with Joe Biden after her spin people have been projecting very low expectations. In truth, she knows far less than Reagan, but she shares his Teflon cover, is instinctively a master pol, and is a superb communicator.
Her views on foreign policy are very close to those of the ordinary American, and my guess is that Joe comes in at a substantial disadvantage. He knows that nothing is simple and is burdened with experetise and information.
Yesterday, she took out the flamethrower to discuss the Iran question saying anything must be done to prevent the "Nuclear Holocaust" that would result of Iran got the bomb and gave it to Hezbullah. That kind of toughness resonates with people who think we are not tough enough with potential enemies. The simple fact is that her rhetoric will impede efforts of a McCain administration to do anything with Iran outside the ham-handed use of force.
She obviously decided that the five former Secretaries of State who spoke out on the matter a week ago were completely wrong. All she has to do is turn on her charm and use her superb talents as a communicator, and she will come out the winner.
I have great affection for Joe and know a little about the careful education he received in foreign affairs long before going to the Senate.
He knows that the present policy of hot rhetoric, threats, and sanctions will not work. He also knows that Iran can easily cut off a large part of the flow of oil. An attack on Iran would recruit even more terrorists and damage our relations with the moderate Arab states. But he dare not say much about any of this for fear of putting off the ordinary viewer and sounding weak.
He has to sound tough on Iran and say needlessly harsh rhetoric will make it hard to try to reengage Iran, possibly bringing war and oil shortags closer.
First try to slowly reengage them. They need respectability, restored trade, better relations with the West, and better relations with the moderate Arab states. Hence, we try to help them were we can in return for an end to a nuclear program and efforts to bring Hezbullah into the political process in Lebanon, which would help us and Israel.
Even that much is too complicated. People skilled in communications will have to help him tone it down and keep it short.
Mc Cain too has the advantage over Obama for the same reason. Mc Cain knows a little more than Sarah and is excellent at very short statements that sould tough.
But he only knows a little bit more Palin and it seems a little less than Bush. He will clearly be an even worse foreign policy president than the incumbent.
The list of his inaccuracies and misstatements is endless. He thinks Iraq and Pakistan have a common border. He thinks Al Qaeda operatives are trained in Iran. He thought oil revenue would pay for the war. He said it would be over in a hurry. McCain still thinks withdrawl will put Al Qaeeda in power in Iraq. He cannot grasp that worrying about the lack of a political settlement is not the same thing as suggesting the surge was not a complete success. The list goes so far that one really wondeers if he is still mentally fit for the presidency.
Obama has to be careful not to raise too many of these mind-boggling inconsistencies or he will seem to be attacking a tired old national hero.
Monday, September 22, 2008
Who Can Believe McCain Can Manage Our Economy?
Four months ago, John McCain was bragging that Ameericans were better off under George W. Bush than under Clinton.
Now John McCain says he will reregulate the banks and financial institutions, after 26 years to voting to deregulate them. But he makes no apology for helping to cause this crisis, particularly in his support of two pieces of Phil Gramm legislation in 1999 and 2000.
After his many flip flops and panic last week to come up with winning opinions on the economy, who can believe he is fit to steer our economic other than people blinded by the cultural wedge issues or race?
Now John McCain says he will reregulate the banks and financial institutions, after 26 years to voting to deregulate them. But he makes no apology for helping to cause this crisis, particularly in his support of two pieces of Phil Gramm legislation in 1999 and 2000.
After his many flip flops and panic last week to come up with winning opinions on the economy, who can believe he is fit to steer our economic other than people blinded by the cultural wedge issues or race?
Sunday, September 21, 2008
McCain's Big Contribution to the Financial Crisis
Threatened by a likely meltdown of financial markets, Congress is moving moved toward a massive bail-out that could cost more than a trillion dollars. A small part of the problem is the sub-prime loans. The big problem is how they were marketed.
The threatened disaster is largely the result of efforts to weaken economic regulations that were put in place under Franklin Roosevelt to protect us from another depression. Former Senator Phil Gramm of Texas was the architect of this wrecking operation, and he had the enthusiastic support of his friend and sidekick, Senator John McCain. The Arizonan admits that he knows little about economics but incessantly brags that he isd a big deregulator.
Gramm crafted the most important legislation that opened the door to the unsafe practices that led to the housing disaster and placing 3,000,000 homes in danger of foreclosure. Phil Gramm’s Financial Modernization Act of 1999 gutted the Glass-Steagall Act, which was designed to protect our financial institutions. It removed the firewalls the New Deal had placed between securities firms, banks, and insurance companies. This led to a wave of mergers. Some say this act unleashed an epidemic of speculation that led to the bursting of the current speculative bubbles. As head of the Senate Banking Committee, Gramm had repeatedly turned down requests from the Securities and Exchange Commission to hire more people to investigate securities fraud.
Gramm’s Commodity Futures Modernization Act was a 261 page “Enron Clause” that was added to a huge omnibus spending bill December, 2000. Enron Corporation wanted this legislation and Gramm’s wife , Wendy, soon joined the Enron board. The act destabilized the California energy market. By deregulating energy markets, it paved the way for the Enron scandal and opened the door for abuses in energy trading, and accounts in part for high gas process. It also deregulated the trade in derivatives, which is based upon all the new debt instruments that Warren Buffett “financial weapons of mass destruction” designed by “madmen.”
Gramm’s deregulation made it possible to buindle sub-prime mortgages into a new form of security, thus hiding the problems with individual mortgages. Credit card accounts were also “securitized.”
Gramm is now a vice president and lobbyist for USB, a corporation that lost over 3o billion dollars this year. He is also co-chairman of the McCain campaign and Mc’s chief economic advisor. Analysts frequently mention Gramm as a likely Secretary of the Treasury under a President McCain. The Arizonan backed Gramm for president in the 1996 primaries.
The current crisis is so threatening that it forced the Federal Reserve Board partly back away from its main mandate—preventing inflation.
In truth, the precedent for bailing out failing firms was set by Jimmy Carter with the rescue of Chrysler in 1979. It promulgated the idea that investors in huge entities should be protected by the taxpayers. Carter also had a weakness for some market fundamentalist ideas and deregulated the airlines, which has led to all sorts of problems even before the great increase in energy prices . The truth is that there is a minority of Democrats in Congress who were smitten with some Republican notions, and their votes helped put in place policies that caused today’s economic downturn. Most of Democrats have learned how much harm their cooperation with Republican economics has brought. A large problem trouble is that John Mc Cain clings to these disastrous economic policies that do so much harm to rank and file Americans.
\
In the Reagan-Daddy Bush years, there were a few big bailouts in the mid-eighties and then the collapse and bail outs of hundreds of savings and loans and commercial banks under G.H.W. Bush. Most of this was due to a very lax regulatory atmosphere. It was a time when conservatives and some Democrats were attacking regulations as unproductive and unnecessary. Savings and Loan institutions were buying junk bonds and engaging in other unsafe practices, and Edwin J. Gray, chairman of the Federal Home Loan Board, tried to reign them in.
Charles Keating, president of Lincoln S & L in California took on Martin and tried to persuade President Ronald Reagan to put three Keating friends on the board. John McCain , a friend of Keating since 1981, worked hard lobbying Reagan. They managed to get one appointment. Mc Cain accepted $112,000 in contributions from Keating, and Cindy McCain and her father were permitted to invest $350,000 in a promising Keating shopping center. The Mc Cains enjoyed 9 vacations at Keating’s lush place in the Bahamas with Keating providing the transportation.
Eventually the board started looking into Keating’s business practices, and McCain fought hard for Keating, insisting that Gray have nothing to do with the investigation. In 1987, McCain rounded up four other senators, “The Keating Five” who started putting heavy pressure on the Federal Home Loan Bank Board to drop its probe. Keating was eventually sentenced to five years in prison. Mc Cain and John Glenn, both celebrities,
Got off with criticisms from the Senate Ethics Committee for poor judgment. Even then , John McCain has a superb public relations operation and succeeded in painting himself as the enemy of lobbyists. The fact is that he has not changed, and recently was involved in very heavy handed bullying of the FCC to bend the rules in favor of a contributor.
Mc Cain is now making vague charges about Obama being responsible for the financial meltdown because of vague ties to lobbyists. McCain’s campaign is loaded with lobbyists and he has a track record of doing their bidding. But this is only a tangential issue. The financial markets got into deep trouble because of legislation McCain championed that stripped away safeguards that were put in place under Franklin D. Roosevelt.
If the nation does not turn its attention to restoring and improving these safeguards, we will be looking at ever larger bail-outs down the road.
The threatened disaster is largely the result of efforts to weaken economic regulations that were put in place under Franklin Roosevelt to protect us from another depression. Former Senator Phil Gramm of Texas was the architect of this wrecking operation, and he had the enthusiastic support of his friend and sidekick, Senator John McCain. The Arizonan admits that he knows little about economics but incessantly brags that he isd a big deregulator.
Gramm crafted the most important legislation that opened the door to the unsafe practices that led to the housing disaster and placing 3,000,000 homes in danger of foreclosure. Phil Gramm’s Financial Modernization Act of 1999 gutted the Glass-Steagall Act, which was designed to protect our financial institutions. It removed the firewalls the New Deal had placed between securities firms, banks, and insurance companies. This led to a wave of mergers. Some say this act unleashed an epidemic of speculation that led to the bursting of the current speculative bubbles. As head of the Senate Banking Committee, Gramm had repeatedly turned down requests from the Securities and Exchange Commission to hire more people to investigate securities fraud.
Gramm’s Commodity Futures Modernization Act was a 261 page “Enron Clause” that was added to a huge omnibus spending bill December, 2000. Enron Corporation wanted this legislation and Gramm’s wife , Wendy, soon joined the Enron board. The act destabilized the California energy market. By deregulating energy markets, it paved the way for the Enron scandal and opened the door for abuses in energy trading, and accounts in part for high gas process. It also deregulated the trade in derivatives, which is based upon all the new debt instruments that Warren Buffett “financial weapons of mass destruction” designed by “madmen.”
Gramm’s deregulation made it possible to buindle sub-prime mortgages into a new form of security, thus hiding the problems with individual mortgages. Credit card accounts were also “securitized.”
Gramm is now a vice president and lobbyist for USB, a corporation that lost over 3o billion dollars this year. He is also co-chairman of the McCain campaign and Mc’s chief economic advisor. Analysts frequently mention Gramm as a likely Secretary of the Treasury under a President McCain. The Arizonan backed Gramm for president in the 1996 primaries.
The current crisis is so threatening that it forced the Federal Reserve Board partly back away from its main mandate—preventing inflation.
In truth, the precedent for bailing out failing firms was set by Jimmy Carter with the rescue of Chrysler in 1979. It promulgated the idea that investors in huge entities should be protected by the taxpayers. Carter also had a weakness for some market fundamentalist ideas and deregulated the airlines, which has led to all sorts of problems even before the great increase in energy prices . The truth is that there is a minority of Democrats in Congress who were smitten with some Republican notions, and their votes helped put in place policies that caused today’s economic downturn. Most of Democrats have learned how much harm their cooperation with Republican economics has brought. A large problem trouble is that John Mc Cain clings to these disastrous economic policies that do so much harm to rank and file Americans.
\
In the Reagan-Daddy Bush years, there were a few big bailouts in the mid-eighties and then the collapse and bail outs of hundreds of savings and loans and commercial banks under G.H.W. Bush. Most of this was due to a very lax regulatory atmosphere. It was a time when conservatives and some Democrats were attacking regulations as unproductive and unnecessary. Savings and Loan institutions were buying junk bonds and engaging in other unsafe practices, and Edwin J. Gray, chairman of the Federal Home Loan Board, tried to reign them in.
Charles Keating, president of Lincoln S & L in California took on Martin and tried to persuade President Ronald Reagan to put three Keating friends on the board. John McCain , a friend of Keating since 1981, worked hard lobbying Reagan. They managed to get one appointment. Mc Cain accepted $112,000 in contributions from Keating, and Cindy McCain and her father were permitted to invest $350,000 in a promising Keating shopping center. The Mc Cains enjoyed 9 vacations at Keating’s lush place in the Bahamas with Keating providing the transportation.
Eventually the board started looking into Keating’s business practices, and McCain fought hard for Keating, insisting that Gray have nothing to do with the investigation. In 1987, McCain rounded up four other senators, “The Keating Five” who started putting heavy pressure on the Federal Home Loan Bank Board to drop its probe. Keating was eventually sentenced to five years in prison. Mc Cain and John Glenn, both celebrities,
Got off with criticisms from the Senate Ethics Committee for poor judgment. Even then , John McCain has a superb public relations operation and succeeded in painting himself as the enemy of lobbyists. The fact is that he has not changed, and recently was involved in very heavy handed bullying of the FCC to bend the rules in favor of a contributor.
Mc Cain is now making vague charges about Obama being responsible for the financial meltdown because of vague ties to lobbyists. McCain’s campaign is loaded with lobbyists and he has a track record of doing their bidding. But this is only a tangential issue. The financial markets got into deep trouble because of legislation McCain championed that stripped away safeguards that were put in place under Franklin D. Roosevelt.
If the nation does not turn its attention to restoring and improving these safeguards, we will be looking at ever larger bail-outs down the road.
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