After Senate Rebuke, McCain Still Helped Keating Associate

John McCain is a real prize. The Arizona Senator was sharply rebuked by his colleagues for helping Charles Keating navigate through Congress and ultimately ended up helping the American people bail out the Savings and Loan industry nearly twenty years ago. Now a reformed politician would have severed all ties with a crook like Keating after that experience, but not the mavericky John McCain! He readily put his hands back in the mud, or shall I say dirty land swaps for one of Keating's friends.

From McClatchy:

The owners of the Spur Cross Ranch, a dramatic 2,154-acre tract of Sonoran desert just north of Phoenix, in the late 1990s sought to sell it to a developer who planned to build a premier golf course surrounded by 390 luxury homes.

Nearby residents and environmentalists, however, wanted to preserve the area's unusual cacti, stone formations and hundreds of Hopi Indian tribal artifacts.

After opposition surfaced, the developer sought McCain's help in forging a land swap with the U.S. Forest Service — a deal that also would benefit the owners of the ranch, including a company controlled by billionaire Carl H. Lindner Jr., an associate of S&L chief Charles H. Keating.

McCain and an aide pushed for the exchange in more than a half dozen sometimes-testy letters and phone calls up and down the Forest Service's hierarchy, according to former agency officials and correspondence. McCain's office even circulated draft legislation that would have overridden the agency's objection to surrendering national forest land. Ultimately, the deal fell apart.

Now this was all during the time he was engaged in grandstanding over campaign finance-reform. McCain talked tough in front of the cameras and on the Senate floor, but in the backrooms he was a much more amiable guy for wealthy developers that had to deal with pesky environmentalists. Thankfully that deal fell apart, but it still shows just what kind of politician John McCain is versus the pseudo-reformer he claims to be.

John Dowd Forgets His And McCain's Personal History Of S&L Scandal

John McCain and Sarah Palin, like others before them, are unsuccessfully trying to tarnish Barack Obama with people he has made acquaintances with. In response, Obama's campaign is reminding America about John McCain's direct dealing in the last major financial scandal. While we are experiencing one of the worst economic climates in decades, it is appropriate to know that the last time taxpayers had to fix the problems created by wealthy Wall Street Execs. Seventeen years ago Charles Keating colluded with five Senators to buy into the system that is Washington. One of those five was John McCain. Now that people are paying attention to this, McCain's supporters are spinning the story on overdrive. Too bad for them, the truth isn't hard to figure out.

From The Washington Post:

In a conference call with reporters, attorney John Dowd was asked about a specific part of the Keating Five inquiry, the fact that Cindy McCain and her father had invested in a Keating strip mall.

"It was part of the inquiry, but it did not -- John was unconnected to that and unaware of it at the time, and did not participate in it," Dowd said.

But thanks to the quick research skills of Democratic partisans, here's John McCain's answer to an attorney who asked him about that very investment during the ethics committee hearings in 1991.

"Sometime in 1986, I was told by Mr. Delgado, who was Executive Vice President of my father-in-law's company, that they were going to invest in a shopping center and that the investment -- the project -- was being put together by a subsidiary of American Continental," McCain said. "He later told me that they -- that that had happened. And I had no interest in it and just noted in passing that this investment took place."

The attorney asking the question during the hearing? John Dowd.

Whoops! It looks like Mr. Dowd "forgot" about asking Senator McCain questions in front of the ethics committee investigations. Of course, there's nothing like a good YouTube video to jog the memories of those who lie to protect their favorite politicians. Care to revise your previous statement Mr. Dowd?

Bill Ayers Has Nothing On Charles Keating

While Sarah Palin thinks it's ok to say Obama palled around with terrorists, the reality is that Ayers committed those heinous acts when Barack was eight years old. Now Charles Keating on the other hand, scammed American taxpayers out of billions with the help of John McCain while he was a sitting U.S. Senator.

The Obama campaign released a documentary showing just how well the two knew each other: