Really, really doesn’t want to be deposed by CREW.

Last week, the judge in CREW’s lawsuit against Vice President Dick Cheney approved our request to take the depositions of David Addington, Vice President Cheney’s chief of staff.

On the eve of that deposition, Vice President Cheney and the other defendants filed an emergency petition for a writ of mandamus with the U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit.

Mandamus is an extraordinary remedy and defendants seek it here to have the D.C. Circuit intrude directly into the district court litigation by demanding that the district court judge vacate her discovery orders. The petition is based on a claim that the discovery authorized by the district court raises serious separation of powers concerns merely because the deponent is David Addington.

I double dog dare the Appeals Court to tell David Addington that, even if such a deposition would present a problem according to Article II, separation of powers complaints are not available to the Fourth Branch.

It’s getting hard out there on the pimps and cons in the CIA, first Director Goss goes down the tubes, and now his right hand man Foggo is headed to the slammer.

As reported Monday, Dusty Foggo has copped an incredibly lenient plea to one count of simple wire fraud. Foggo, formerly Number Three man in the Bush CIA, under Director Porter Goss who also resigned in disgrace, had been charged with 28 counts of sordid and sundry fraud, conflict of interest, bribery aiding and abetting, and false statements, all primarily related to the Duke Cunningham and Brent Wilkes criminal convictions.

Just how did Foggo get such a sweetheart deal?

It must have been the evidence that Foggo created a new deputy director of administration position and hired his mistress to fill it, the weekly poker games at Washington hotels with Congressmen such "Duke" Cunningham, lobbyists, House intelligence committee staff members and prostitutes. Or maybe Foggo’s assistance to childhood friend, Brent Wilkes, one of two defense contractors bribing House intelligence committee member Cunningham with tens of thousands of dollars in antiques, travel, fancy meals, house payments, and hookers in exchange for earmarks steering more than $100 million worth of government contracts to Wilkes’ San Diego-based firm, right?

As the always excellent Laura Rozen details in an article just out in Mother Jones:

No, what truly worried Agency brass were the darker secrets their former top logistics officer was threatening to spill had his case gone to trial as scheduled on November 3. They included the massive contracts Foggo was discussing with Wilkes, estimated by one source at over $300 million dollars. "Wilkes was working on several other huge deals when the hammer fell," a source familiar with Foggo’s discussions with Wilkes told me. What kinds of deals? According to the source, they included creating and running a secret plane network
…
The "classified air support contract" and its implied purposes for renditions are among the truly damaging national security secrets, along with the methods the CIA uses to create front companies and dole out black contracts, that the CIA and Bush White House would have been anxious not to have exposed, especially in a trial set to take place the day before the election in a suburban DC courtroom within a ten-minute drive of the entire national security press corps. (Emphasis added)

Now, most people covering the Foggo case, including Laura, attribute Foggo’s wildly successful plea deal to a strong "graymail defense", especially in light of the fact that Foggo threatened "to expose the cover of virtually every CIA employee with whom he interacted and to divulge to the world some of our country’s most sensitive programs—even though this information has absolutely nothing to do with the charges he faces".

But it’s not graymail behind Foggo’s plea, it is CYA. A true graymail defense is where:

The defendent claims that classified records are necessary to the defense. The goal of the defense team is to request so many classified documents that the federal government says "no." At that point, the defense tries to convince a judge that they cannot get a fair trial without these records; the goal is to have the case or charges dismissed.

Congress enacted the Classified Information Procedures Act (CIPA) to permit defendants to deal with secret information germane to their trial in sealed court hearings; so anything germane to Foggo’s case could have been handled thusly. And the rest, such as Foggo’s brazen and scurrilous threat to reveal every fellow CIA agent and contact he knew, and all the programs, well that is the epitome of extortion via threat of treason; simply make a record of the threat and throw his rear in solitary. If he makes one single overt act on the threat, prosecute him for treason outright, which is punishable by death.

There were tried and true ways to legally deal with Foggo and his treasonous threats. No, it was that Cheney, Bush, Mukasey and the other grifters, pimps and lackeys they populated our government and intelligence service with didn’t want the public reminded of their secret torture airlines, corruption, dishonesty and perfidy right before the election. Gee, who could have predicted that? Must be hard on those pimps out there these days.

Huh. I guess Dusty Foggo won his greymail fight.

A former executive director of the CIA has pleaded guilty to wire fraud as part of a plea bargain.

Kyle “Dusty” Foggo was the number three man in the CIA from 2004 to 2006. At a hearing Monday in federal court in Alexandria, he pleaded guilty to a single count of wire fraud, admitting that he helped his best friend obtain contracts with the CIA at inflated prices. 

I’m guessing the CIA finally decided it would be unwise to engage in a pissing contest with a guy who knows about their dirty laundry. 

It has been clear for a long time that Gonzales had serious criminal exposure for his acts during his service in the Bush Administration, which is why immediately after departure from the DOJ AGAG lawyered up by hiring criminal-defense lawyer George Terwilliger. Probably one of the reasons Gonzales announced his resignation within a week of the initiation of an Inspector General’s investigation into his conduct.

That IG report described how Gonzales’ improperly, and illegally, possessed, handled and transported Top Secret information; i.e. the two most important, secret, and arguably illegal, programs in the history of the Bush Administration, the illegal wiretap program and–almost certainly–the torture program.

In most circumstances when the DOJ gets a fish like this on the hook, the first thing you would expect would be for them to work him for incriminating information on other malfeasance he is aware of and to entice him into a cooperations agreement to help bring others to justice. And this is just what it looks like is happening. Murray Waas is just out with a major article in The Atlantic:

According to people familiar with statements recently made by Gonzales to federal investigators, Gonzales is now saying that George Bush personally directed him to make that hospital visit.
…
Gonzales has also told Justice Department investigators that President Bush played a more central and active role than was previously known in devising a strategy to have Congress enable the continuation of the surveillance program when questions about its legality were raised by the Justice Department, as well as devising other ways to circumvent the Justice Department’s legal concerns about the program, according to people who have read Gonzales’s interviews with investigators.
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In describing Bush as having pressed him to engage in some of the more controversial actions regarding the warrantless surveillance program, Gonzales and his legal team are apparently attempting to lessen his own legal jeopardy. The Justice Department’s inspector general (IG) is investigating whether Gonzales lied to Congress when he was questioned under oath about the surveillance program. And the Justice Department’s Office of Professional Responsibility (OPR) is separately investigating whether Gonzales and other Justice Department attorneys acted within the law in authorizing and overseeing the surveillance program. Neither the IG nor OPR can bring criminal charges, but if, during the course of their own investigations, they believe they have uncovered evidence of a possible crime, they can seek to make a criminal referral to those who can.
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And what began as investigations narrowly focused on Gonzales’s conduct could easily morph into broader investigations leading into the White House, and possibly leading to the appointment of a special prosecutor.

Man, that all sounds great. But the suspects that Gonzales could hand up are current and former Bush Administration officials, all the way up to Bush, Cheney and other senior officials. Who in George Bush’s and Michael Mukasey’s DOJ is going to have the moral and ethical fortitude to do their duty in this regard? What provisions will be made to avoid the obvious conflicts of interest inherent in this situation? Who will do the right thing and uphold the rule of law? And who will insure that the situation is not allowed to be played, again, like a drum by the Bushies and their cagey attorneys so that they all skate?

Glad you asked, because that is already a prime concern. Again, from Wass and The Atlantic:

Dan Richman, a former federal prosecutor in Manhattan and professor at Columbia Law School, told me that Gonzales appears to be attempting to walk the thin line of taking himself out of harm’s way while at the same time protecting the president, a strategy that very well could work: “I think he is serving his own purposes and the White House’s purposes,” Richman says.

According to Richman, by invoking Bush’s name and authority, Gonzales and his legal team are making it more difficult for investigators to seek a criminal investigation of his actions, or for other investigators to later bring criminal charges against him: “The clearer it is that Gonzales did what he did at the behest of the president of the United States, the safer that he [Gonzales] is legally,” says Richman. At the same time, by saying that he is advising the president, Gonzales also makes it easier for those at the White House to claim executive privilege if they do indeed become embroiled in the probe.

Moreover, according to one senior Justice Department official, Gonzales, his legal team, and the White House also know that Justice’s IG and OPR are unlikely to press senior White House officials, let alone the president, to answer their questions.

And, therein you have the $64 billion conundrum. You have Alberto Gonzales working to protect both himself and the rest of the Bush brigade, and they are negotiating with Bush’s Department of Justice, led by the new AGAG and consigliere, Michael Mukasey. This is not, in terms of the best interests of the American people, the Constitution and the rule of law, exactly an arm’s length transaction. And, quite frankly, that is a glaring understatement.

So, how do the forces of truth, justice and ethics move the matter towards an honest consideration that actually might portend accountability for the malfeasance so prima facially apparent?

One scenario feared by the White House is that the IG or OPR could send a public report to Congress concluding that Gonzales or some other official may have committed a crime. At a minimum, that would make the conduct of Gonzales, or of any other official deemed to be under suspicion, the subject of a criminal investigation.

If the report also raised unanswered questions about possible misconduct by other senior administration officials, or even the president, that could lead to the appointment of a special prosecutor. Some consider this unlikely; Attorney General Mike Mukasey has said that he is not an advocate of special prosecutors, and his critics in Congress have said that Mukasey tends to use his position for the political benefit of the White House. But in the hands of congressional Democrats, a public report accusing Gonzales and other administration officials of misconduct could make it difficult for Mukasey to resist their calls for the appointment of a special prosecutor.

Inside the White House, this is what is called the “nightmare scenario.” White House Counsel Fred Fielding, who served in the Nixon White House during Watergate and as a White House counsel during the Reagan administration, has told others in the White House that although he does not consider this a likelihood, it should not be ruled out, and Bush and his staff should be ready for such a contingency.

Fred Fielding doesn’t consider accountability "a likelihood". How quaint. I wonder if the odds might improve substantially if citizens far and wide, say for instance all the readers of this and the other key blogs in the blogosphere, were to put direct and heavy pressure on their congressional Representatives and Senators to give Fred fielding and the Bushies their "nightmare scenario" they so richly deserve. And guess what? They are all going to be home in your districts begging for votes and support for an election set to go in five weeks. If there was ever a time they were hungry and amenable to influence, now is the time. Lock em down; make them promise to bring accountability!

There is one other paragraph in Murray’s article of particular note that should be related here:

A congressional source familiar with the meeting said in an interview that he believed it was significant that Bush personally directed Gonzales to write notes as to what occurred at the meeting. Ordinarily members of Congress don’t take notes at briefings concerning such highly classified issues. Very likely, Gonzales’s notes are the only ones that exist. [The Justice Department is investigating whether former Attorney General Alberto Gonzales created a set of fictitious notes so that President Bush would have a rationale for reauthorizing his warrantless eavesdropping program. For that story click here.]

Only time will tell whether or not Congress can be supplied with the electoral fear to induce backbone formation necessary for accountability. It is up to use to see that all the senior officials in the Bush Administration are place in the dock of a criminal trial court.

One thing is for sure, for Alberto Gonzales, the man that George Bush appallingly appointed to lead the nation’s most critical cabinet agency, the Department of Justice, it will be the first real experience he has ever had in a trial courtroom.

You knew this was coming, and since I simply can’t stomach any more Lurch Paulson discussion today, I bring it to you. Remember Marcy’s Drill, Baby, Drill post on sex, lies and oil at the Minerals Management Agency?

Clearly, John Conyers found it as titillating as we did. He wants to hear more. From McClatchy:

The chairman of the House Judiciary Committee demanded Tuesday that the attorney general provide an "immediate explanation" for a Justice Department decision that could have cost taxpayers up to $40 million in royalties from a major oil company.

Michigan Democratic Rep. John Conyers’ cited a McClatchy story Sept. 12 that detailed the department’s rejection of the Colorado U.S. attorney’s recommendation to intervene in a whistleblower’s suit against the Kerr-McGee Corp.

In a letter to Attorney General Michael Mukasey, Conyers said charges that politics might have played a part in a decision favoring a major oil company "must be taken seriously and thoroughly investigated." Conyers said he wanted to question the officials involved in the case and that he sought access to all related records.

When Marcy last reported, the Inspector General’s reports had just been released, and they sure had some juicy material in them. Since that time, IG Earl Devaney is royally pissed that the DOJ prosecuted two line level scrubs at the MMA, but refused to prosecute the big dog managers he wanted nailed. And he let his displeasure be known:

"I would have liked a more aggressive approach, and I would have liked to have seen some other people prosecuted here," he said during a hearing before the House of Representatives’ Natural Resources Committee.
…
Devaney also recommended that the Justice Department prosecute RIK’s former Denver office director, Gregory Smith, and the former associate director of the Minerals Revenue Management office, Lucy Dennet.

The reports accuse Smith of having sex with two subordinates and improperly accepting $30,000 from a private company for marketing its services to oil and gas companies.

Dennet is accused of helping Mayberry create the contract he was awarded after his retirement.

The Justice Department hasn’t explained why it declined to prosecute them.

But in today’s McClatchy report on Conyers’ letter, we learn just how mad IG Devaney really is with the DOJ:

Inspector General Earl Devaney was so displeased with the department’s refusal, Conyers wrote, that he pulled his investigators off a department task force examining disgraced lobbyist Jack Abramoff’s influence-peddling.

In the grand scheme of things, a pretty small act; however, a pretty telling one in these circumstances. There are a lot of people from both sides of the partisan fence that are hopping mad over this. Devaney is joined by loyal Republican US Attorney in Colorado Troy Eid and his Civil Division Chief, Lisa Christian; Conyers is joined by Pat Leahy and Sen. Ken Salazar from Colorado.

So why did Michael Mukasey squelch this prosecution that has so many authorities across the spectrum hot under the collar? Stay tuned, this could get fun.

John McCain was never the principled steadfast man his false front public image painted him to be; although it is true that he really has been in a downward spiral of dishonor and deception during this year’s campaign. Even many of his staunchest supporters in major media are starting to realize the brutal truth for what it is. Joe Klein, Andrea Mitchell, Chris Matthews, a host of journalists at ABC, Andrew Sullivan … each day brings a familiar voice admitting that they can no longer harmonize the McCain persona with the truth in front of them. Thank you to each and every one of them, and welcome to my world. As a native Arizonan I have been witnessing what you are now realizing since John McCain plopped his carpet bag down and set up shop here in our state.

John Sidney McCain III would have you believe his Charlie Keating Five Scandal days of corruption and influence peddling are all a thing of his distant past and that he is some sort of legendary reformer now. Nothing could be further from the truth, he is still hard deeply entrenched in the lavish, exotic trappings of swag and influence peddled by the modern day equivalents of Charlie Keating.

In fact, new reporting by Ari Berman and Mark Ames of The Nation, in their article The McCain-Follieri Love Boat, which just hit the presses at the end of last week details how McCain has spent yet another birthday, his 70th, vacationing with a criminal con artist, Hollywood celebrities and big money lobbyists on a yacht in Montenegro. It shows what Arizonans have known all along: McCain is still the same old glad handing, do anything to serve his own raw ambition, politician who celebrated his birthdays with Charlie Keating and other power brokers at Keating’s private Bahamas resort two decades ago.

Before we delve into the recent foray of John Sidney McCain III into political influence swag land, a refresher on McCain’s malfeasance in the Keating Five Savings & Loan Scandal is in order. From a Keating Five Scandal retrospective by The Arizona Republic:

McCain already knew Keating well. His ties to the home builder dated to 1981, when the two men met at a Navy League dinner where McCain spoke.

After the speech, Keating walked up to McCain and told him that he, too, was a Navy flier and that he greatly respected McCain’s war record. He met McCain’s wife and family. The two men became friends.

Charlie Keating always took care of his friends, especially those in politics. McCain was no exception.

In 1982, during McCain’s first run for the House, Keating held a fund-raiser for him, collecting more than $11,000 from 40 employees of American Continental Corp. McCain would spend more than $550,000 to win the primary and the general election.

In 1983, as McCain contemplated his House re-election, Keating hosted a $1,000-a-plate dinner for him, even though McCain had no serious competition. When McCain pushed for the Senate in 1986, Keating was there with more than $50,000.

By 1987, McCain had received about $112,000 in political contributions from Keating and his associates.

McCain also had carried a little water for Keating in Washington. While in the House, McCain, along with a majority of representatives, co-sponsored a resolution to delay new regulations designed to curb risky investments by thrifts such as Lincoln.
…
The first meeting, on April 2, 1987, in DeConcini’s office, included Ed Gray, chairman of the Federal Home Loan Bank Board, as well as four senators: DeConcini, McCain, Alan Cranston, D-Calif., and John Glenn, D-Ohio.

(Years later, McCain recalled that DeConcini started the meeting with a reference to "our friend at Lincoln." McCain characterized it as "an unfortunate choice of words, which Gray would remember and repeat publicly many times.")

For Keating, the meeting was a bust. Gray told the senators that as head of the loan board, he worried about the big picture. He didn’t have any specific information about Lincoln. Bank regulators in San Francisco would be versed in that, not him. Gray offered to set up a meeting between the senators and the San Francisco regulators.
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The second meeting was April 9. The same four senators attended, along with Sen. Don Riegle, D-Mich. Also at the meeting were William Black, then deputy director of the Federal Savings and Loan Insurance Corp., James Cirona, president of the Federal Home Loan Bank of San Francisco, and Michael Patriarca, director of agency functions at the FSLIC.

In an interview with The Republic, Black said the meeting was a show of force by Keating, who wanted the senators to pressure the regulators into dropping their case against Lincoln. The thrift was in trouble for violating "direct investment" rules, which prohibited S&Ls from taking large ownership positions in various ventures.
…
According to nearly verbatim notes taken by Black, McCain started the second meeting with a careful comment.

"One of our jobs as elected officials is to help constituents in a proper fashion," McCain said. "ACC (American Continental Corp.) is a big employer and important to the local economy. I wouldn’t want any special favors for them – "I don’t want any part of our conversation to be improper."

Black said the comment had the opposite effect for the regulators. It made them nervous about what might really be going on.

"McCain was the weirdest," Black said. "They were all different in their own way. McCain was always Hamlet . . . wringing his hands about what to do."
…
Keating’s businesses continued to spiral downward, taking the five senators with him. Together, the five had accepted more than $300,000 in contributions from Keating, and their critics added a new term to the American lexicon: "The Keating Five."

The Keating Five became synonymous for the kind of political influence that money can buy. As the S&L failure deepened, the sheer magnitude of the losses hit the press. Billions of dollars had been squandered. The five senators were linked as the gang who shilled for an S&L bandit.

S&L "trading cards" came out. The Keating Five card showed Charles Keating holding up his hand, with a senator’s head adorning each finger. McCain was on Keating’s pinkie.
…
Keating was no ordinary constituent to McCain.

On Oct. 8, 1989, The Arizona Republic revealed that McCain’s wife and her father had invested $359,100 in a Keating shopping center in April 1986, a year before McCain met with the regulators.

The paper also reported that the McCains, sometimes accompanied by their daughter and baby-sitter, had made at least nine trips at Keating’s expense, sometimes aboard the American Continental jet. Three of the trips were made during vacations to Keating’s opulent Bahamas retreat at Cat Cay.

McCain also did not pay Keating for some of the trips until years after they were taken, after he learned that Keating was in trouble over Lincoln. Total cost: $13,433.

When the story broke, McCain did nothing to help himself.

"You’re a liar," McCain said when a Republic reporter asked him about the business relationship between his wife and Keating.

"That’s the spouse’s involvement, you idiot," McCain said later in the same conversation. "You do understand English, don’t you?"

He also belittled reporters when they asked about his wife’s ties to Keating.

The stench and taint is on not just the Senate, but Congress and the Federal government as a whole. The destruction of so many people, their life savings, and the national treasury for the bailout of the savings and loan industry caused by a powerful group of greedy and opportunistic businessmen and their lobbyists, through their bought, coddled and co-opted Congressional agents like John Sidney McCain III has faded from the American conscience and memory. It should never be forgotten, because it is a window into the ethos of the once and future John Sidney McCain III.

Yes, that’s right; not just the old John Sidney McCain III, but the present and future John Sidney McCain III as well. McCain did one of his patented swivel and pivot jobs and has, since the Keating Five misconduct, painted himself as some type of "reformer" of ethics and campaign finance corruption, nothing has changed about him once the surface is scratched. He is the same old John Sidney McCain III of the Keating Five he has always been.

How do you know he is the same old McCain? Just scratch the surface and take a look instead of relying on the false persona he pitches with the aplomb of an old fashioned snake oil peddler. Let me get the ball rolling for you (although if you turn over any of McCain’s rocks, you find the same rot upon close inspection). As promised at the beginning of this article, John Sidney McCain III is right back at conduct that is almost the twenty year separated mirror image of his dining on the teat of Charlie Keating.

The video at the top (h/t hidnusr) tells the story of John Sidney McCain III, con men and lobbyists. The basis is supplied in print by the Berman and Ames article from the Nation cited above, The McCain-Follieri Love Boat:

John McCain has been hammering rival Barack Obama for being little more than a vapid "celebrity" and "elitist." But The Nation has obtained a photo revealing just how star-struck a straight-talking maverick can become when offered the chance to celebrate his birthday aboard a yacht filled with celebrities–even if one of those celebrity types turns out to be an A-list con man.
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During McCain’s visit in 2006 he celebrated with birthday cocktails and sweets aboard the Celine Ashley yacht. In the photograph, taken in Montenegro at the end of August, McCain is shown boarding the yacht ramp towards the smiling Follieri and Hathaway. Just ahead of McCain and shaking hands with Follieri appears to be Rick Davis–McCain’s top aide and now co-manager of his campaign, who accompanied him on the trip and advised the government of Montenegro. A few months after McCain’s yacht party, Follieri strengthened his ties to McCain’s orbit by retaining Rick Davis’s well-connected Washington lobbying firm, Davis Manafort, and offering Davis both an investment deal and help in securing the Catholic vote for McCain’s presidential bid.

Follieri, who posed as Vatican chief financial officer in order to win friends and investments, pleaded guilty Wednesday in a Manhattan district court to conspiracy to commit wire fraud, eight counts of wire fraud and five counts of money laundering. As part of the plea, Follieri admitted to misappropriating at least $2.4 million of investor money and redirecting it to foreign personal bank accounts that were disguised as business accounts.
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An even bigger mystery is how Follieri’s boat came to be docked in Montenegro on McCain’s birthday. According to a journalist in Montenegro, the yacht had been anchored there for several days before McCain’s arrival, and only sailed away after McCain boarded. According to Vijesti, locals were told that McCain was meeting "friends from Florida" on the yacht.
…
According to the Italian newspaper Il Sole 24 Ore, in January 2007 Follieri sent Rick Davis a packet of information on his companies Follieri Capital and Follieri Media, apparently hoping to get financing from Pegasus Capital Advisors, a hedge fund in Connecticut that Davis represented. "Follieri’s proposal to Davis had two dimensions to it–first, as an investment opportunity for Davis’s fund; but secondly, there was the political dimension, in which Follieri offered to help deliver Catholic votes to McCain," said Claudio Gatti, a reporter for Il Sole 24 Ore, who investigated Follieri for eighteen months.

In February 2007, according to a recent article in the New York Daily News, Follieri retained Davis’s lobbying firm, Davis Manafort. According to the paper, "on Feb. 27, 2007, Davis Manafort partner Rick Gates signed a confidentiality agreement drafted by the Follieri Group.

John McCain is still freeloading with bigwigs, lobbyists and criminal influence peddlers in exotic and foreign seaside haunts of the wealthy. Sounds just like the Keating Five Scandal, where someone in McCain’s immediate personal orbit, in Keating it was his wife Cindy that got an unbelievable "financial opportunity" from the criminal con man and influence peddler (Keating) and McCain got the promised delivery of political support, huge contributions and vote delivery in the election he was engaged in. In Follieri, it is his best friend Lobbyist/Campaign Manager Rick Davis getting the big "financial opportunity" while McCain reaps the gain in campaign funding and delivery of much needed votes as he runs for the Presidency he craves at any cost.

How similar in appearance are these constants in John McCain’s real, ingrained political persona? Take a look at this photo of John Sidney McCain III living large and phat with multiple generations of the Keating clan, lobbyists and power brokers taken during McCain’s 51st birthday bash at Charlie Keating’s private Bahamas resort. Photo scanned from the September 12, 1993 edition of the Phoenix Gazette (original photo; color by teh wolf). From the same Gazette article, Krista Keating recalls the idyllic days she spent with McCain while he bonded and partied with Charlie Keating, his family, and his rich and powerful friends:

I watch Lifestyles Of The Rich And Famous, and I see all the places we stayed.

She travelled to Paris, Monte Carlo, South Africa. She and C3 [Charles Keating III] lived for six months in Switzerland.

She partied with Michael Milken, Dolly Parton, Cheryl Ladd and lesser-knowns who wanted to be part of the Keating magic. She met the Pope.

There were vacations with John McCain and his wife, Cindy, to the Keating’s posh and private Bahamas resort, where she and C3 frolicked in the crystal blue waters with McCain, then a member of the US House of Representatives. They partied to the tunes of a calypso band hired by Keating and celebrated the August birthdays of McCain and C3, which are one day apart.

On the surface, it seemed the greatest freedom you could hope for. But Charles [Charlie] Keating was always there; always watching. (Emphasis added).

And so, here they are, matching bookends, then and now, on the career and ethos of John Sidney McCain III. Then Keating; now Follieri. McCain isn’t different; and he certainly is no "maverick" whatever in the world that amorphous term was supposed to mean in the first place. No, McCain is a standard issue, glad handing, moneyed up, self serving politician hocking his wares to whoever and whatever will benefit John Sidney McCain III the most at the time. Americans, and American media, are beginning to realize that there is nothing honorable nor unique about McCain and his political ethos. The shiny Earl Schieb paint job he has been fooling people with for years is wearing thin, and the real McCain is showing through; it is not an attractive sight, but it is the real John McCain.

The US economy is currently battered and on the precipice of significant meltdown from a housing and financial market scandal that is, although much larger in scope, eerily similar to the Charlie Keating led Savings & Loan crisis of the late 1980s that John McCain played such a significant role in. And once again, John McCain is out partying and pandering with money movers, power brokers and their lobbyists in posh and exotic foreign seaside haunts of the rich and famous.

For too long, McCain has been allowed to skate along in this election without acknowledgment and understanding by the press and the public of his deep involvement in the Keating Five Scandal. As another housing and finance scandal hangs like a guillotine over the necks of Americans, John McCain’s intimate ties with the power brokers, money men and lobbyists that create these scandals should be front and center in the discussion. John Sidney McCain III is, as so many are coming to realize, not an honorable politician, the US and world financial markets hang in the balance, and McCain’s Keating like tendencies should be known and considered.

My friends, John McCain is not "change you can believe in", just more of the same. More of the Same, and Old, McCain.

Week 2 is upon us, football is really back, and the big games are really starting to be played now. The first weekend you are just glad to have the pigskin back in the air, you don’t care that the games are usually not that good. Last weekend’s game between Tennessee and the Bruins of UCLA was a definite exception. Holy cow, it was a great game, especially the second half (masaccio, being a Vols fan, may not agree). Rick Neuheisel may be starting something special in Westwood, and that would be a fantastic thing for Pac-10 football, and college football generally.

Wobbly yawner games, where the cobwebs are still being shaken off, are not the case for Week 2 though, there are huge games on tap. Let’s belly up to the bar then.

NCAA – The Rose Bowl. The Grandaddy of Them All. Right here in the second week of September no less. All kidding aside, it is hard to envision a more compelling early September matchup than Number 5 ranked The Ohio State University invading the Coliseum and the Mighty Men of Troy, the Number 1 ranked USC Trojans. What can you say, the game speaks for itself. National Championship hopes are already on the line big time; even if they were not, college football games just don’t get more compelling than this. Don’t be a McCain hiding behind a skirt wimp, be open and notorious, pick a side and state yer case. Then let me give you a hint. There is a track record on these kind of matchups, and it ain’t a real pretty one for the three yards and a cloud of dust conference. That record will continue I’m afraid. Other games to pay attention to include #10 Wisconsin at #21 Fresno State, UCLA at #18 BYU, and the Ramblin Wreck from Georgia Tech at Virginia Tech. Oh, and and yet another scintillating meeting between Michigan and Notre Dame. Hard to imagine that it could live up to last year’s matchup of the un-victorious and un-tieds. But they will try.

THE BIG BOYS OF SUNDAY – Pats at Brett and the Jets tops the list. Ground control sans Major Tom looks to be in the offing for the Pats. I think they will still run the same basic offense with Matt Cassel in place of Tom Brady, now done for the year, but look for a bigger commitment to the run. And look for Cassel to find Randy Moss a lot. If you were a young quarterback making your first start since high school wouldn’t you look for Randy Moss? Of course you would. Thing is, Mangini may be a prick, but he ain’t stupid, he knows about Moss too. I don’t know who is going to win this game; but, man, is this gonna be must see TeeVee.

In the other games, there may not be quite the compelling drama of the Jets/Pats, but there are some good hookups. One is the Frightning Bolts visiting the Donkos at Invesco Field. The last time we saw Invesco, there was quite a show put on; this may be a worthy sequel. Jay Cutler is really starting to come into his own this year. I literally saw some shades of Elway’s arm last week, and I think the Broncs are going to send the Powder Blue to 0 and 2. Pittsburgh at Cleveland and the ‘Boys hosting the Iggles are also pretty interesting. I dunno on the latter, both look real tough this year, Iggles may be a surprise here though.

THE BOYS OF SUMMER – Well, the Sawx are still rockin, the Yanks are a fadin, The LA teams are killin, and the fuckin Diamondbacks suck. In light of the total suckiness of the young D’backs, I am full on rooting for a 405 series. Thats right, Mrs. O’Leary’s Bovine Creature still holds forth, the Cubs go bye bye and we get the Angelic Ones versus Lasorda’s Beloved Boys in Dodger Blue for the World Series. Vlad the Impaler versus Manny being Manny. And a line of Bentleys and Mercs stuck on the 405 freeway going between the ballyards. Yep, that’s the ticket.

F1 Circus In Monza – What could be better than a great duel down the stretch between Ferrari and McLaren for the driver’s championship and a trip to the fabled Monza Circuit? Not much really. This is simply the highest form of auto racing as it is supposed to be. But as I write this, we have breaking news. There is a bit o the wet at Monza this morning for qualifying, and Lewis Hamilton, perhaps the best tiger in the wet on the circuit now that Michael Schumacher is no longer prowling the field, has just failed to make it past the knockout round. That means he is not going to start in the top ten positions when the race goes off Sunday. Curiously, Kimi Raikkonen didn’t make it past the knockout either, and Felipe Massa barely made it, squeaking into the pole fight at P 10.

For those of you unfamiliar with Monza, wow, where to start. This is the place of legends. You’ve heard of the banked turns at Indianapolis? Nothing compared to what they used to face at Monza. Here is an old video that kind of shows what banking really is. This ten minute clip from the movie Grand Prix is even better. Phil Hill drove the camera car for Frankenheimer in the filming of Grand Prix, and the footage is utterly spectacular. The clip is very much worth the time to watch. Monza is the fastest circuit on the Grand Prix tour; always has been. Some of the best drivers in history have lost their life at Monza, including Count Louis Zborowski (driver of the real "Chitty Chitty Bang Bang"), Alberto Ascari, Wolfgang von Tripps (whose death in the 1961 Italian Grand Priz at Monza gave his teammate Phil Hill, the winner of that tragic race, the championship in 1961), Jochen Rindt, and Ronnie Peterson. If you have ever had a hankering to watch a F1 race, this would be a great one. Coverage on Speed TV.

Turns out Sarah Palin has a very spotty attendance record in her brief experience as Governor of Alaska. Juneau is the state capital of Alaska. From the Juneau Empire:

Palin has spent little time in Juneau, rarely coming to the state capital except when the Legislature was in session, and sometimes not even then.

During a recent special session called by Palin herself, she faced criticism from several legislators for not showing up personally to push for her agenda.

Someone at the Capitol even printed up buttons asking "Where’s Sarah?" Rep. Andrea Doll, D-Juneau, called it a telling question.

"At a time when her leadership was truly needed, we didn’t know where she was," Doll said.

Local Alaskan reporter Shannyn Moore, on Tuesday night’s Countdown on MSNBC, confirmed that many members of the Alaskan legislature wore yellow "Where’s Sarah" buttons. Of course, this must be read in conjunction with the fact that Palin has bilked taxpayers for 312 nights spent in her own home during her first 19 months in office (well over half of the time), charging a per diem allowance normally intended to cover meals and incidental expenses while traveling on state business. She charged the State of Alaska for staying in her own house and away from her job at the state capital.

Habitually away from where her governing job, for which she is paid to attend and perform by the citizens; gee, that makes Sarah Palin just like….

George Bush. Although you can certainly make the argument that the country is better off when Bush is not on the job, the fact remains that he has been the most absentee President in modern history. As of March 2008, Bush had spent 452 days on vacation at his Crawford ranch in Texas; well over a full year of his seven years in office spent down on the farm ranch. And this, of course, doesn’t include the other fun filled time Bush spends slapping bikini clad babe’s butts at the Olympics and all the other larks he galavants off on.

Habitually away from his governing duties in Washington DC, for which he is paid to attend and perform by the citizens of this country; gee, that makes George Bush just like….

John McCain. McCain is the most absent senator in Congress, having missed 63 percent of the votes since the 110th Congress opened session on January 3, 2007. 63%. McCain’s absentee record even beats that of Sen. Tim Johnson (D-SD), who was completely absent nearly a year while recovering from a brain hemorrhage.

In the calendar year of 2008, McCain has missed a whopping 82% of the votes cast in the United States Senate (160 out of 195 votes missed as of September 8, 2008; 32 of the 35 votes McCain made were over three days, with McCain only voting on a total of 5 days of the entire legislative session in 2008). McCain was absent from the job he was elected to perform for the citizens of Arizona 82% of the time; a job for which he is paid in excess of $165,000.00 a year and for which he and his family are given the finest healthcare plan in the world. McCain has not been present for one single vote in the Senate since April 8, 2008. None. Nada.

Here are some more facts and figures from Smintheus (Note: these figures are as of July 29, 2008, so almost every category is now higher and more egregious):

63% – How many votes in the Senate McCain has skipped during the 110th Congress (since January 2007).

96 – The number of Senate votes McCain has missed since his last recorded vote on April 8.

111 – The number of days since McCain last attended a committee hearing (of the Senate Armed Services Committee, on April 9).

25% – How many full SASC hearings McCain has attended during the 110th Congress.

89% – How many full SASC hearings McCain has skipped since April 2007 (32 out of the last 36 hearings).

2007 – The last year in which McCain attended any Commerce, Science & Transportation Committee hearings or subcommittee hearings.

The League of Conservation Voters noted in February that McCain has skipped every one of the 15 Senate votes on environmental issues that it deemed critical during this Congress.

This is a common thread between Bush, Palin and McCain; none of them are ever in the city they are supposed to be in, at their job, doing the work the people pay them to do. Heck, Palin even charges bilks the State of Alaska for being away from the capital and holed up in her own mansion on a lake. When every element of our society is flatlining, Bush, Palin and McCain are constantly MIA from their job, and they seem to feel entitled to do that on the people’s dime. Like Dick Cheney, they consider it to be "their due".

McCain, Palin and Bush don’t put "country first"; if they did, they would consistently be in the city where their job was located, doing the work they were elected to do. McCain, Palin and Bush are not "public servants"; if they were, they would be serving their constituents instead of themselves. No, McCain, Palin and Bush are more like grifters living off of the largesse and goodwill of the citizens, bleeding them dry and living high on the hog (with lipstick) in the process.

In a sense, McCain, Palin and Bush are analogous to The Riches in the excellent FX television series by the same name about an Irish Traveller family of con artists and thieves that steal a large amount of money, get involved in a car accident that kills a very wealthy couple (the eponymous Riches), and choose to pursue a "better life" by adopting the Riches’ identity, and opulent mansion, and taking up their life in an affluent gated community.

McCain, Palin and Bush are the freeloading Riches of the GOP; taking the citizen’s money and living high off the hog in mansions without doing their duty and work to earn it. Time to rid ourselves of the grifters.

John McCain has always had a schizophrenic relationship with women. He has constantly painted himself as the randy, tough flyboy, but, as both he and his mother (and everyone else who seems to have knowledge) readily admit, he was, and still is, a flat out mama’s boy all the way. Now McCain has found an even bigger skirt to hide behind, that of Sarah Palin. Who knew that the GOP Nominee had become so weak, addled and ineffective that the GOP, and McCain himself, was desperate enough to pluck an unknown, inexperienced and unvetted Sarah Palin off the wind swept tundra of Alaska just to manufacture an excitement diversion?

Since the jaw dropping announcement of Palin, it has been hard to tell that McCain is still the the nominee and leader of the ticket. All the buzz at the Republican National Convention was over Sarah Palin, she was the toast, and the star, of the show. Palin’s speech on Wednesday night dwarfed that of McCain’s nomination acceptance on Thursday in every measurable category. There was more excitement, more anticipation, it was better and more coherently written, and it was by far better delivered. The king of the Midshipmen upstaged completely by a probie plebe. In a skirt.

Since the close of the Sarah Palin Show Republican Convention, McCain has only further disappeared behind (under?) Palin’s skirt. As MSNBC notes, McCain-Palin has become Palin-McCain:

The banners, buttons and signs say McCain-Palin, but the crowds say something else.

"Sa-rah! Pa-lin!" came the chant at a Colorado Springs rally on Saturday moments before Republican nominee John McCain took the stage with Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin, a woman who was virtually unknown to the nation just a week earlier. The day before, thousands screamed "Sa-rah! Sa-rah! Sa-rah!" at an amphitheater outside Detroit.
…
In the short time since McCain spirited the 44-year-old first-term governor out of Alaska and onto a national stage as his running mate, Palin has become an instant celebrity. And since her speech at the Republican National Convention, watched by more than 40 million Americans, she is emerging as the main attraction for many voters at their campaign appearances.

"She’s the draw for a lot of people," said Marilyn Ryman, who came to see her at the Colorado rally inside an airport hangar. "The fact that she’s someone new, not the old everything we’ve seen before."

Boy, no kidding. There have been several different Palin/McCain campaign appearances covered by CNN and MSNBC the last few days, and it is jarring just how dominant Sarah Palin is compared to the weak, old and wooden looking McCain.

And this does not appear to be any chance phenomenon either; after the initial position that Palin would be retreating to Alaska to cover up her scandals study foreign policy and send her son off to Iraq, that no longer appears to be operative and Palin is front and center from here on out. How humiliating for McCain, the second he realizes his greedy lifelong consuming ambition of being the GOP Presidential nominee, he is shunted aside so fast that even his creaky head must be spinning. For a sassy rookie woman from the frozen nowhere.

You could almost feel sorry for McCain. Almost, that is, if it were not for McCain’s lifelong history of using, discarding, sucking and leeching off of women to serve his personal desires and ambitions. McCain himself has written about the scores of women that he went through in his youth. Then he claimed to have found his soul mate, Carol, and settled down. Of course, all that only counted if it was all perfect for McCain; the second it was not, because of injuries Carol suffered in a car accident, McCain abandoned her and their family. Of course, McCain didn’t leave Carol before he had found his next mark, Cindy Lou Hensley, to leech off of. Years after using Cindy’s money and contacts to fuel his political career, a career he may never have had without the Hensley resources, McCain still dismisses his wife with such uncouth terms as "trollop" and "c*nt" when he is annoyed or angry.

So, with McCain now missing in action behind Palin’s skirt, it is in no small measure of irony and justice that the angry, dishonorable cad McCain, having spent his political lifetime living off of the good graces and money of his wife, is now subjugated to the role of the wooden dummy Charlie McCarthy to Sarah Palin’s Edgar Bergen. The user is now the tool. Are you ready for President Palin?

As many people have pointed out, the McCain campaign are sending Sarah Palin back to Alaska to hide out until the journalists forget about her.

CHUCK TODD:Well Ron, We’ve been able to see that there are a few folks who are saying [Palin is] actually going to hole up in Alaska for a little, she’s got to see her son off who’s going to be deployed to Iraq, so we may not see her on the campaign trail for a little while.

RON ALLEN: Yes she hasn’t been home for a long time, and she’s obviously got some business to deal with there.

Obviously, part of the reason the campaign is sending Palin away to the woods is because the media has made it clear they’re not satisfied with only scripted interactions with her–the McCain campaign needs to get Palin away from the media at least until they do some real vetting of her. (Though, as Mudflats points out, there are journalists in AK, too.)

But I think there are several things contributing to their last minute change of plans.

• They intend to shield her from the media, as everyone has mentioned.
• McCain campaign staffers have been in AK for several days, trying to bury all the dirt on Palin; I’m certain they need her personal involvement to bury some of it, not least on TrooperGate, in which her promised cooperation has disappeared in the last several days. 
• She’s a quick study, no doubt, but she still has a great deal of cramming to do before she can answer any real questions about McCain’s policy or foreign policy in general.
• If the MI Independents quoted in this focus group are even remotely representative, then I suspect the McCain camp has internal polling showing that Palin helps immensely in some places, but drags down the ticket in others. Sterling Heights is adjacent to Oakland County, where all those Independent voters were panning the Palin pick. I think the campaign realized they better get a better sense of where Palin helps them before they roll her out and offend voters in swing states.
• After last nights underwhelming speech, McCain is being overshadowed by his Veep candidate. He needs to reassert himself as the dominant player on the ticket, before Palin comes out of her hibernation and wows the crowds again.

She’ll be back, probably in heavily vetted appearances and fundraisers. But for now, McCain’s campaign have to figure out what they’ve got on their hands, and figure out how to manage it to get the wrinkly white dude elected.