Thursday, October 9, 2008

Political Mean Season Pushes The Envelope


[At his 51st birthday party at Keating's in the Bahamas sits John McCain (with the bread-loaves hat) and Charles Keating swigging beer.]

"But now ye also put off all these; anger, wrath, malice, blasphemy, filthy communication out of your mouth.
"Lie not one to another, seeing that ye have put off the old man with his deeds." — Paul, Colossians 3:8-9, The Bible, King James version

"Bleeding soul becomes a bitter mind.
He said it happens every time." — Clean My Wounds, Corrosion Of Conformity


http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KjxzmaXAg9E&eurl=http://www.thepresidentialcandidates.us/

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VJghQMq49dw

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=itEucdhf4Us

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=41lDY-7G8ps

“Say it ain’t so Joe, there ya go again, pointin’ fingers and lookin’ backwards … we need a campaign that looks forward,” said Sarah Palin channeling her best Ronald Reagan invocation to Joe Biden in the Veep debates just a week ago. It was a good strategy concocted by the campaign handlers: “forget what’s just passed, let’s look forward.”

Well apparently when looking forward doesn’t help, the John McCain Campaign – and even “lookin’ forward” Palin herself – can’t avoid looking backward to trash Barack Obama’s character.

This week has seen Palin “runnin’ around,” trying to pull up associations from Obama’s past – whether Bill Ayers from the 60’s anti-war era Weather Underground, to Rev. Jeremiah Wright (famous for his post 9/11 sermons blasting the U.S. for its sponsorship of nations who practice terror).

The McCain campaign surrogates are also bringing up the “Muslim card” again (regardless of it being a canard) and stirring their know-nothing base indoctrinated on FOX, Ann Coulter and Rush Limbaugh into a mouth-frothing frenzy. Beyond just calling him Barack Hussein Obama openly, they’re even planting some of their campaign surrogates in the crowd to yell out “terrorist,” “treason,” and “kill him” at timely intervals after a Palin speech soundbite. They’re well aware that the cameras will be rolling, and the coded message will get out to the rest of the crowd (“it’s okay to stand up and speak your mind”) and to the folks watching at home on FOX nightly newscasts (“bring your epithets and vitriol to the next rally near you.”) What’s especially of concern is how this code-wording is touching the minds of the Timothy McVeigh element of conservatives – those who won’t cede power and will use any means necessary to insist on retaining it. Or else!

For now it’s all about trolling down ugly memory lane for Palin and the McCain camp. It’s all they’ve got left in their arsenal at this point.

Meanwhile the drugs must have addled Cindy McCain’s brain. In an interview with the Tennesseean, the “trollop” (as McCain once endearingly poked fun of her at an event years ago) and wannabe first-lady said the Obama campaign had run the “dirtiest campaign in American history”! Talk about audacity!

Somehow or another, Ms. McCain feels this race has been more hurtful than the 2000 presidential primary race, where George W. Bush's campaign called their adopted Bangladeshi daughter “John McCain’s love child from an interracial affair.” Bush & Rove operatives also did push-polling, indicating that McCain gave a statement while at the Hanoi Hilton “apologizing” for the U.S. aggression in Vietnam a la Jane Fonda. They also brought out one of John McCain’s fellow servicemen who pointed out McCain had ditched fellow POW’s and MIA’s by opposing any search for service members who were still not accounted for nor returned to the U.S. Apparently all these things have slipped Ms. McCain’s memory.

Yes, drugs will do that sometimes, and we’re aware of Cindy’s addiction history (thanks to a Republican who blew the whistle on her when she used his name on some of her counterfeit prescriptions).

So far, the Obama campaign has avoided all of those subjects above, brought forth not by Democrats, but by Republicans. Apparently those subjects are fair game to Cindy McCain and Karl Rove and that ilk; relevant subjects which they feel are the pressing issue of the day for American voters.

Meanwhile, America’s economic meltdown rages, thanks to our crisis of Wall Street Bank failures. So in response to the negative, looking-back-into-past-relationships campaign strategy of McCain, Obama has engaged in a little tit-for-tat, pointing out one of John McCain’s friendships.

Charles Keating was the chief of Lincoln Savings & Loan during the Oil Bust, Savings & Loan meltdown that caused our first devastating home foreclosure wipe-out in the late 80’s. Charles Keating was also a close friend to John McCain, and was blessed with the senator’s assistance in 1987 in holding off regulators investigating their shady practices. While McCain ran interference, the bank tanked to the tune of $2 billion in 1989, while the bank’s bondholders and their elderly investors lost their entire investments.

For his support to his good friend, John McCain raked in $112,000 in campaign contributions, not to mention trips on Keating’s private jets. Even Cindy McCain and her father Jim Hensley had invested over $350,000 in one of Keating’s retail projects, so it was more than just a casual acquaintance. John Keating himself became the poster child of mismanagement of the Savings & Loans crisis cum Resolution Trust Corporation fire sale in the early 90's.

John McCain doesn't get it. The nation’s number one concern right now is our financial future, and Obama's former friends are only a passing concern at best to those watching their retirements disappear.

As America is reeling due to “Economic Recovery,” plunging global stock markets, bank failures and FDIC solvency concerns, the only one of these “looking-backwards” guilt-by-association, question-the-judgment games that is even relevant at this disastrous moment is the one about the cozy friendship with a sleazy banker.

Guess who has that history? Not Obama! It’s the “other” one!

“When life is too easy for us, we must beware or we may not be ready to meet the blows which sooner or later come to everyone, rich or poor.” — Eleanor Roosevelt

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