<<Michael does it trouble you that you seem to often have to "reach" to connect the dots?
<<Yesterday the "reach" was that President Clinton, Senator Ted Kennedy, Senator Robert Byrd, Senator Waxman, and other leading Democrats were somehow bought off to proclaim that Saddam Hussein's Iraq was a threat.>>
With all due respect, CU4, I don't think you understood what I was saying. I certainly did not mean to imply that someone went around offering money to Clinton, Kennedy and the others to say that Saddam was a threat. These guys have been around a long time and they've established donor networks just like Bush and Cheney. Smart politicians know who their donors are and usually they are in favour of things their donors are in favour of, and agaisnt the things the donors are against. Otherwise the donor would be donating to somebody else. I said that these guys are all drinking from the same well. If the aerospace industry is giving money to Cheney and Bush, they must also be giving to Kennedy and Clinton. How the hell do they know which side is going to win from one year to the next and how the hell can they afford NOT to have a friend in Washington?
To get more specific, McCain had established a donor relationship with Charlie Keating, a player in the financial services industry. Was McCain the only guy in the U.S. Senate taking money from the financial services sector? Of course not. Probably lots of people were getting funding from that sector, from Keating or if not from Keating, then from Bernie Ebbers or some other fucking crook, or even (who the hell knows?) from honest bankers and brokers. All of these guys know the rules, they weren't born yesterday: You take the donor's money, and when the time comes, you go to bat for the guy. Otherwise the donor list runs dry pretty fast. Who's gonna give money to a politician who takes, takes, takes, but never delivers? Well the day came when McCain (with four other crooked Senators) was caught doing what he was supposed to be doing and not supposed to be doing: carrying water for his donor, intervening with Federal Regulators who were supposed to be overseeing and regulating his donor's (Keating's) crooked business.
What's the Senate supposed to do? Ignore it? They can't - - Keating was a big-league crook, as would be indicated by the fact that at least FIVE U.S. Senators were caught doing favours for him. They had to hold hearings, so hold them they did - - lengthy, boring, incomprehensible affairs which not one person in 500,000 would bother to follow, and a report was published, also lengthy, boring and of little interest to 99% of the general public. One or two guys would have to be thrown to the wolves to satisfy the public, and this was duly done. Usually, the least popular guy is the one they throw to the wolves, the one who doesnt' return favours, who takes but gives nothing in return -- and the rest of the guys get off lightly, with slaps on the wrist or maybe even a complete exoneration.
What you have to understand is that the Senators are more like a professional wrestlers, they're all colleagues, they get into fights with one another and make up and sometimes form alliances and fight again and all the time it's like they're working for the same company, they're all on the same team. Democrats or Republicans, they all get their money from the same special interests: the financial services industry, the "defence" industry, the pharmaceutical industry, the real estate industry, Big Oil, the transportation industry, etc. This is what I mean when I say they all drink from the same well.
This is not a conspiracy, but it's not a real two-party system either. They're all more or less corrupt because there's no other way to finance a campaign. Never has been. That's how lobbyists and special interests get their power. But I'd never mistake a Senate Committee finding as if it were delivered in a court of justice. They're not a court, they're a body of very wealthy, often crooked and self-interested, mostly white male millionaires, and there is absolutely no reason at all why their probity, their judgment or their Committee opinions should be shown any particular respect or reverence.
<<In in this instance, you find McCain guilty of something no official court or congressional committee could.
<<You dismiss the US Senate Committee findings as if the findings were invalid or corrupt.
<<But you provide no proof of the findings being invalid just inuendo that it's just "a bunch of rich guys" or "who is the US Senate?".>>
Not at all. They are entitled to an opinion and they have given it. All I propose is that the very same facts that were before the Senate "Ethics" Committee be assembled in a TV commercial and put before the electorate. Who Charlie Keating was, how he made his money, how he befriended McCain, when he befriended McCain, what he asked McCain to do for him, exactly what McCain did for his crooked friend, how much money Keating made, how much he gave McCain for doing what he did, what crimes Keating was convicted of, how long he was sentenced to jail for, and how long he served. How many people did Keating defraud, how much money did he defraud them of, and who are they? (I think a part of the commercial should let the viewers see and hear either Keating's actual victims, or if deceased, their next-of-kin, telling how much poor old Uncle Charlie was looking forward to his retirement and then how he died miserable and broken hearted because Keating had stolen his life savings. It'll be dynamite. at the end of the program, they can sum up everything McCain did for Keating and everything Keating paid to McCain for his services and then: the viewers can make up their own minds about McCain, because we're gonna tell them, "The U.S. Senate (snicker) ETHICS Committee (double snicker) thinks McCain did nothing wrong. What do YOU think?"
Now what in the hell is wrong with that? They'll hear everything the U.S. Senate heard and then they'll form an opinion. Don't you think the voters have a right to form an informed opinion, their own, as to whether or not McCain did the right thing? You're not going to tell me the U.S. Senate can form an opinion as to whether McCain's actions were right or wrong, but an ordinary citizen can't?
We're not going to ask them to decide a complex legal issue, like whether or not a crime was committed. Just whether in THEIR PERSONAL OPINION, McCain did the right thing or the wrong thing.
<<I would assume you didnt dismiss the findings of the Senate Watergate Committee because you agreed with the findings.>>
I really don't remember much of the Watergate Committee report. I knew that Nixon was a crook and a liar since his campaign for the governorship of California against Helen Gahagan Douglas (or maybe it was a senatorial campaign, which I now think it was) and I knew then what a lying crooked piece of shit he was, so Watergate was no revelation. I was more interested in whether or not he could be impeached at the time.
<<BT supplies the findings of an official investigation, you supply a theory or implication that somehow Senator McCain is guilty of something that was not found by a court or official investigation.>>
Well, I wasn't impressed by the source and I don't think I am alone. Seems to me that a recent poll showed that Americans had the lowest opinion of Congress out of all major American institutions, or something like that. Also I am willing to concede that no crime may have been committed. There is a lot of sleazy, low-down, no-good, low-life behaviour that is not criminal but at the same time that is not going to win many votes either, and I would be happy to let the voters see exactly how John McCain conducted himself in the Keating Five affair and decide whether or not they want to vote for that kind of man as their President.
