The John McCain Primer:
Rigging an Election 1, 2, 3
In politics there are donkeys, elephants and snakes. Sometimes, particularly when it comes to institutionalized politicians like Sen. John McCain, its hard to tell one from another. Why? Because McCain is all of them rolled into one. That makes him more dangerous than most political snakes whose ideological moorings are more easily identified. McCain is one of the "political purple people"—ideologically Republican (Red) and Democratic (Blue) at the same time. He is both a conservative and liberal at the same time. McCain is a chameleon whose political pedigree changes with the wind.
In 2008 McCain was picked by the barons of banking as the designated loser of the Presidential Election of 2008. McCain, like Sen. Barack Obama, was financially supported by Goldman Sachs, Morgan Stanley, Citigroup, JPMorgan Chase—and George Soros. Dollars that went to McCain but not Obama came from Blank Rome, LLP and Greenburg Traurig LLP. Before the results of the New Hampshire primary came in, the nominees of both major political parties had already been picked. Not by the voters. By the money barons. 
That's why McCain picked Gov. Sarah Palin as his running mate. He needed someone to blame his loss on so he would remain viable to run for, and win reelection to, his US Senate seat in 2010. Palin, however, boosted McCain's ratings. The liberal media spent most of the presidential campaign attacking Palin in order to diminish her in the eyes of the voters. The more they attacked the higher her popularity soared. When the campaign ended and the votes were counted, the McCain-Palin ticket won 59,934,814 votes. The votes bearing Obama's name totaled 69,456,897. But, there is a problem with them. Obama is a Marxist. There are 31,600,000 socialists or far left liberals in the United States who would have cast their votes for him. That's all. It appears that about 3 million independents voted for him as well. That means Obama should have won about 34.6 million votes. But there was a problem with the ballots in the ballot boxes around the country.
According to the Federal Election Commission website immediately after the election (now altered), there were 169 million registered voters in the United States. Fifty-six point eight percent of those registered voters voted. That's 96,992,000 actual voters who voted. (In the revised version of that website at the end of Nov., 2009, the 56.8% now represents the number of Democrats who voted, and not the actual number of voters who voted.) The problem is, on Nov. 4, 2008, there were 132,618,580 ballots in the ballot boxes. That was the result of ACORN's get-out-and-vote effort even though the left will claim the extra votes were the result of vote fraud by Republicans.
When you do the simple math, that means there were 35,626,580 too many votes in the ballot boxes. The "too many votes" were the results of the "Motor Voter Law" that was crafted as the National Voter Registration Act of 1993 by the Democratically-controlled Congress during the Clinton years specifically to make vote fraud easy for the far left that lacked the followers to win national elections without cheating. Yet without looking at the voter statistics which indicated there were 35,626,500 more votes than voters, McCain and the Republican Party blamed Sarah Palin and launched a national smear campaign to malign her. Palin, who came to Arizona this summer to campaign for Senator McCain seemed clueless that her loss of popularity in the country (down to 38% from 57% during the 2008 presidential campaign) was instigated by her 2008 running mate. And, yet, there she was, campaigning for him like he was an honest broker. 
The Maverick, you will recall, climbed into bed with four Democratic senators to improperly intervene with banking regulators on behalf of Lincoln Savings & Loan Association CEO Charles Keating. McCain and Senators Alan Cranston [D-CA], Dennis Deconcini [D-AZ], John Glenn [D-OH] and Donald Riegle [D-MI] took a total of $1.3 million in political contributions from Keating to stop an investigation of Lincoln Savings & Loan by the Federal Home Loan Bank Board [FHLBB]. which believed Keating had exposed the FDIC to huge losses. Ultimately, the Lincoln Savings & Loan collapse cost taxpayers $160.1 billion. Three of the Senators: Cranston, DeConcini and Riegle were reprimanded. Glenn, a national hero, and McCain were not. Their interference in the FHLBB kept the Lincoln Savings & Loan Association and Keating's American Continental Corporation in business for four years, doubling the financial liability of the US taxpayers. At the very least, all of the Keating Five should have been expelled from the Senate. Charges were filed against the Keating Five on Oct. 13, 1989. McCain, who had as much political capital with the Democratic leadership as he did with the Republicans, avoided any penalty for his role in stymieing the investigation of Keating and Lincoln Savings & Loan. Unlike wine, politicians do not get better with age. They just get more corrupt.
That's why, in 2010, the voters of Arizona and elsewhere who have been adding 2 + 2 together are finally getting four. In Arizona, they decided early on that this was going to be the year for change. McCain disagreed. He likes his job, and the money barons who profit from his being in the US Senate want him to keep it. When former Congressman JD Hayworth decided to throw his hat in the ring for McCain's Senate seat, the April Public Policy Poll showed him trailing the 4-term Senator by 11 points, 46% to 35%. The Rocky Mountain Poll gave McCain a better lead than that—54% to 28%. Other polls put McCain below 50%. As Hayworth launched his financially-impoverished campaign he focused on McCain as an establishment candidate, which he is. As Hayworth used the Tea Party to drum up support, McCain countered by asking newly elected Sen. Scott Brown [R-MA] and his former running mate, Sarah Palin to come to Arizona and campaign for him. Both did. Both erred. But McCain profited from their campaigning. When McCain mobilized their support, Palin, who is loved by a majority of Tea Party advocates effectively countered Hayworth by saying "We might as well call it like it is. And not beat around the bush. In respect to the Tea Party movement... you know what...everyone here today [is] supporting John McCain. We are all part of the Tea Party movement. When you talk about that Tea Party movement, some would claim John was there at that first Tea Party movement...But, I've gotta remind people, before there were protests in the street or marches on Capitol Hill, there was the maverick fighting for us."
Even with Scott Brown and Sarah Palin—who left Arizona somewhat tarnished from the experience—McCain could not escape his problem. He was an establishment politician who is owned by the princes of industry and the barons of banking and business and not the voters who cast the ballots that place the candidates back in office. And, what's more, increasingly, more voters are getting to know it. Normally candidates who compete with the political superstars are nobody wanabees who couldn't win the nomination if they were the only people running. Institutionalized politicians like McCain seldom have to worry about fighting real candidates for re-nomination. In fact, most institutionalized politicians who work-across-the-aisle with the opposition Party's leaders are immune from Party-supported opposition candidates in the general election as well.
When McCain retired from the US Navy as a Captain in 1981, he went to work for his father-in-law, Jim Hensley, head of Hensley & Co., the largest Anheuser-Busch beer distributorships in the southwest. McCain decided to run for the 1st Congressional seat when 15-term Congressman John J. Rhodes retired in 1982. His opponent in that race was State Senator Jim Mack. It was a tough race that required a lot of Hensley money for McCain to eke out a narrow win.
Until today, the only other campaign spending binge McCain embarked on was his first Senate race when he had to engage in a financial slugfest with State legislator Richard Kimball to win the Senate seat held by retiring Barry Goldwater in 1986. In July, McCain spent $3.5 million to hammer Hayworth. The McCain Campaign reported that it took in $3.2 million in donations in July. In reality, $2.9 million was transferred to McCain's Senatorial campaign from his 2008 presidential campaign. Real donors only contributed $300 thousand. McCain, who started his reelection campaign with over $15 million in the bank from his senatorial election campaign fund and what was left of his 2008 campaign fund, has not been bashful about spending if he had the right negative ads to damage his opponent. Hayworth spent $1.09 million in July, collecting an additional $416 thousand as he attempted to launch a successful counteroffensive that painted McCain as an establishment candidate who votes for special interest groups and not the voters. But, with McCain outspending him 5-to-1, Hayworth was out of his league as McCain smothered his voice throughout the State.
Adding to Hayworth's problems were blogger like Jesse Matthewson, a Libertarian, who insists that both Hayworth and McCain are wrong for Arizona. Matthewson is one of several misguided bloggers who are supporting McCain's third party spoiler, Jim Deakin, since a vote for Deakin is actually a vote for McCain. And, yes, both McCain and Deakin understand that. That is, after all, why Deakin is in the race.
Let's look at what we know about Deakin. Let's skip to the chase and forget the reams of words about the improper use of lobbyists like Jack Abramoff by Tyco International to gain the assistance of Congressman and Senators by greasing the sweaty palms of politicians with campaign contributions to kill legislation that would add a tax surcharge to US manufacturers who send their jobs overseas and go right to a Tyco employee named Jim Deakin, now a political newcomer in Arizona politics. In 2008 when McCain was the designated loser in the Presidential election, a Tyco lawyer named Gardner Courson who, like Deakin, worked in the Tyco Fire Security Division. Courson was McCain's legal adviser. As JD Hayworth began closing the gap between himself and McCain, Deakin—with no political experience or reason to run—popped into the race and began describing this as a race between him and McCain, discounting Hayworth like he was not even in the campaign. Deakin, who talks like a smoothly brewed cup of tea with a Tea Party tag-on-a-string hanging out of the cup, gained the support of anti-incumbent Tea Party advocates even though he's not the real thing.
William Gheen, Hayworth's campaign manager, asked Deakin to drop out of the race in order to give Hayworth a chance to beat McCain. Deakin is polling 5% in the latest polls after McCain's spending $3.5 million on negative Hayworth campaign ads in July. A Deakin spokesman suggested that Hayworth drop out, claiming Deakin was the best candidate to beat McCain. Gheen issued a statement saying that "...Deakin claims he is the best candidate to defeat McCain, but nobody can find any example in the history of the United States when a candidate polling as low as Deakin five weeks before the election has ever won a race in America. Deakin's statement," Gheen concluded, "is either delusional or he is [wittingly or unwittingly] a spoiler for John McCain."
Blogger Susan Bradford wrote in Sonoran Alliance that "...the Senator and Deakin talk out of both sides of their mouths and are waging a faux battle against each other in order to nix the chances of JD Hayworth...who has the resounding support of the Tea Party Movement. As the New Yorker Magazine has already revealed, McCain anticipated Hayworth's candidacy [in] late 2009 and was afraid the former Congressman might beat him...Then along came Deakin."
Deakin, by the way, is a shareholder in Detek, Inc. and Liberty Fire Protection Company. Liberty is a contractor for Simplex Grinnell, LLP, a subsidiary of Tyco Fire & Security, LLP which, in turn, is a division of Tyco International. Tyco owes McCain for his support on two measures. One that exempted Tyco from a tax surcharge levied against companies that took their manufacturing overseas and, second, legislation that limits the liability of oil companies. McCain voted to include Tyco. Oh, by the way, Deakin has also benefited from McCain legislative largess. Liberty Fire Protection was the beneficiary of $28,856.00 in government contracts from the Navy and from the Department of Veterans Affairs. Detek fared even better. They received contracts totaling $637,241.00 from the Department of the Army, Navy, State, the Secret Service and the Defense Logistic Agency. It's sad that the voters don't take the time to check out the candidates they take at face value. If they did, they would not vote for either McCain or Deakin. Both of them appear to be campaigning as reformers who are determined to end "business as usual" in the nation's capital when both of them are "gimme" candidates who are solidly in bed with the princes of industry and the barons of banking and business. You can bet if and when McCain is reelected, www.FedSpending.org will show that Deakin is the recipient of new McCain largess for his role in helping the Senator save his job. Once again, for whatever it's worth, you have my two cents worth.
An election for President and Commander in Chief of the Military must strive to be above reproach. Our public institutions must give the public confidence that a presidential candidate has complied with the election process that is prescribed by our Constitution and laws. It is only after a presidential candidate satisfies the rules of such a process that he/she can expect members of the public, regardless of their party affiliations, to give him/her the respect that the Office of President so much deserves.
No comments:
Post a Comment
Note: Only a member of this blog may post a comment.