Hi everyone-
It is pretty obvious that the McCain campaign wants to get down and dirty this last month of the election after the "terrorist" namecalling and "elitist" smears. I think the Keating Five scandal needs to be dragged out front and center again, especially in light of the financial crisis that has been brought about by a lack of ethical banking practices.
I own the domain, www.Keating5.com, I bought it last winter when I was volunteering for Ron Paul. Right now I don't have anything up on it. I'll be honest, I am not very talented in terms of getting a website up and running. However if anyone wants to collaborate on a site outlining the Keating Five scandal and/or get the attention of the official Obama campaign to run with it I'd be happy to get some anti-McCain material up.
Send me a message if you are interested!
One of Barack Obama's best qualities is his ability to relate to people of varied backgrounds and produce consensus on divisive issues, as we have especially seen the last two months of this interminable process of getting the Clintons out of the primary campaign.
I cannot wait to see the Clintons concede this race so we can focus on more stories like the one below, about Barack's childhood ambitions of leadership and his true vision for our country. I also can't wait to really get after John McCain and that can't begin in earnest until the Clintons take a hike.
W hile you're reading this article take a minute to think of how Barack's inclusive, consensus-building leadership style contrasts with the Clintons' Saul Alito-based, divide-and-conquer, blur-the-issue style in dealing with their private business before getting to Washington and the legacy of their 'grand plan' (Don't Ask Don't Tell, NAFTA, pointless Balkan conflict, ignorance of Afghanistan) after achieving a mandate for change in 1992.
Change is again the buzzword in this election and the only candidate who has a clean slate to pursue the kind of change we need (chaotic-neutral change based on consensus and against special interest bullies) is Barack Obama.
Barack Obama = Big Opportunity!
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/americas/7350775.stm
Jakarta classmates recall 'Barry' Obama
By Lucy Williamson BBC News, Jakarta
Primary School 1 in Jakarta's Menteng district is an unlikely place to look for an American presidential hopeful.
Hidden down a narrow street in the Indonesian capital, overlooked by the big houses of the city's elite, it is easily missed, except for the bubbling noise of schoolchildren drifting over the fence.
But this is where Barack Obama - the man aiming to be America's Democratic nominee for president - spent some of his childhood.
He's made much of his varied upbringing during the course of his campaign, and the qualities and vision it gave him.
A new book about his time here has just been launched by an Indonesian publisher - and there's also a lot of interest in what he might do for US-Indonesia relations should he reach the White House.
'Early ambition'
In the playground of his old school, I met up with two of his classmates - Mary and Rina. Was there anything special about him, I asked?
"No," said Mary. "He wasn't a special boy, just an ordinary one. But maybe that's the special thing; he had a capability to blend with any kind of situation."
One thing marked him out as different though, said Rina - his ambition, noted in the school memoir book.
"At that time, here in Indonesia, all the parents pushed their kids: 'You have to become a doctor' or 'You have to become an engineer'," she told me. "But he wrote that he'd like to be a president. So we thought, 'Oh in your dreams!'"
Well, a lot has changed since those days. Barry, as he was known then, is now campaigning to be the Democratic nominee for exactly that job. And his progress is talked about a lot in Indonesia - on campus, on television, and of course on the internet.
'There's obviously interest'
Enda Nasution is one of the country's best-known bloggers. Two months ago he started a group on the networking website Facebook called "Indonesians for Obama 08".
Already he has around 700 members, and a lively message board. He told me Mr Obama's appeal wasn't based on his policies - in his opinion there's little difference on that score between the three main presidential hopefuls.
But, he said, people are looking for a certain kind of character: "Someone we can trust; someone that can inspire people; that can symbolise all the things currently happening in the world."
The US embassy here has also been tapping into this new-found interest in their elections.
In February, when the US primary race reached a crescendo on Super Tuesday, Ambassador Cameron Hume invited Indonesian students and politicians to his house to watch the results come in.
He hasn't been surprised at the level of interest in Mr Obama, given that his primary school is around the corner.
"There obviously is an interest, the same way as whenever there's an ethnic tie, people get more interested. So if you have a candidate from Wyoming, people from Wyoming are more interested in the election. I think that spreads a little bit here."
Rooting for opponents
The identification is running pretty strong, judging by a mock-vote, held at the Super Tuesday event. According to Ambassador Hume, it gave Mr Obama a win that "his campaign team probably would have been satisfied with".
So is there anyone here who's rooting for the other candidates? Well yes, of course there is, Julia Ismaya for one, an employee of an international NGO.
She likens "Obama syndrome" to a kind of MTV culture, where television picks on a particular theme, and the audience internalises it.
It may be more about identity politics than actual policy, but most Indonesians do believe a change in the White House could bring a big change in the US's attitude to their country.
After years of a foreign policy that many Indonesians viewed as anti-Muslim, who better to have in the most powerful job in the world, they say, than someone who's lived among Muslims, and seen their world from the inside.
Back in 1987, John McCain took $112,000 in bribes from Charles Keating, Jr. to smooth things over for a certain Savings and Loan. What resulted was $2.1Bil in losses for the american taxpayer. Michael Milken went to jail and paid $1 Bil in fines but John McCain gets to run for president?
Hopefully Barack can do well enough tomorrow to force the Clintons out of the race so that everyone can move on to focusing about the evils of John McCain.
The controversial George W. Bush-sponsored poll in South Carolina mentioned John McCain's role in the so-called Keating Five scandal, and McCain says his involvement in the scandal "will probably be on my tombstone." What exactly did McCain do?
In early 1987, at the beginning of his first Senate term, McCain attended two meetings with federal banking regulators to discuss an investigation into Lincoln Savings and Loan, an Irvine, Calif., thrift owned by Arizona developer Charles Keating. Federal auditors were investigating Keating's banking practices, and Keating, fearful that the government would seize his S&L, sought intervention from a number of U.S. senators.
At Keating's behest, four senators--McCain and Democrats Dennis DeConcini of Arizona, Alan Cranston of California, and John Glenn of Ohio--met with Ed Gray, chairman of the Federal Home Loan Bank Board, on April 2. Those four senators and Sen. Don Riegle, D-Mich., attended a second meeting at Keating's behest on April 9 with bank regulators in San Francisco.
Regulators did not seize Lincoln Savings and Loan until two years later. The Lincoln bailout cost taxpayers $2.6 billion, making it the biggest of the S&L scandals. In addition, 17,000 Lincoln investors lost $190 million.
In November 1990, the Senate Ethics Committee launched an investigation into the meetings between the senators and the regulators. McCain, Cranston, DeConcini, Glenn, and Riegle became known as the Keating Five.
(Keating himself was convicted in January 1993 of 73 counts of wire and bankruptcy fraud and served more than four years in prison before his conviction was overturned. Last year, he pleaded guilty to four counts of fraud and was sentenced to time served.)
McCain defended his attendance at the meetings by saying Keating was a constituent and that Keating's development company, American Continental Corporation, was a major Arizona employer. McCain said he wanted to know only whether Keating was being treated fairly and that he had not tried to influence the regulators. At the second meeting, McCain told the regulators, "I wouldn't want any special favors for them," and "I don't want any part of our conversation to be improper."
But Keating was more than a constituent to McCain--he was a longtime friend and associate. McCain met Keating in 1981 at a Navy League dinner in Arizona where McCain was the speaker. Keating was a former naval aviator himself, and the two men became friends. Keating raised money for McCain's two congressional campaigns in 1982 and 1984, and for McCain's 1986 Senate bid. By 1987, McCain campaigns had received $112,000 from Keating, his relatives, and his employees--the most received by any of the Keating Five. (Keating raised a total of $300,000 for the five senators.)
After McCain's election to the House in 1982, he and his family made at least nine trips at Keating's expense, three of which were to Keating's Bahamas retreat. McCain did not disclose the trips (as he was required to under House rules) until the scandal broke in 1989. At that point, he paid Keating $13,433 for the flights.
And in April 1986, one year before the meeting with the regulators, McCain's wife, Cindy, and her father invested $359,100 in a Keating strip mall.
The Senate Ethics Committee probe of the Keating Five began in November 1990, and committee Special Counsel Robert Bennett recommended that McCain and Glenn be dropped from the investigation. They were not. McCain believes Democrats on the committee blocked Bennett's recommendation because he was the lone Keating Five Republican.
In February 1991, the Senate Ethics Committee found McCain and Glenn to be the least blameworthy of the five senators. (McCain and Glenn attended the meetings but did nothing else to influence the regulators.) McCain was guilty of nothing more than "poor judgment," the committee said, and declared his actions were not "improper nor attended with gross negligence." McCain considered the committee's judgment to be "full exoneration," and he contributed $112,000 (the amount raised for him by Keating) to the U.S. Treasury.
I believe that Sen. Obama should consider some bold initiatives to counteract the severe economic crisis facing our nation today.
If the Mexicans and Canadians deserve NAFTA, then as citizens of the US I think we have the right to demand a Domestic Free Trade Agreement. Sen. Obama should get together some of the smart people at University of Chicago and hammer out a plan whereby states with strong manufacturing or agricultural backgrounds can benefit from favored-trade status with states that have high concentrations of population in urban areas and thus stronger consumer markets. Some states have both and there should be provisions to encourage intra-state trade in those places to encourage more balanced growth between rural and urban areas without eminent domain violations or turning all of our farmland into strip malls.
As far as the housing/financial crisis goes, this thing is not getting better any time soon without a serious reconstruction of the problematic debt that is underpinning the whole merry-go-round shell game that is being played on Wall Street. If people think the subprime debt problem is bad then they should read up on Credit Default Swaps. Wikipedia the CDS market, read a book, google it, ask your financial advisors about it. Don't stop until we start getting some answers. The entire JPM/Bear Sterns deal was essentially a leveraged buyout to help a member of the federal reserve banking system cover a bunch of Credit Default Swap exposure. I realize this won't make sense to many people and it would take me days to explain it all so I would encourage everyone to go find out solid info on these debt structures.
For the sake of reference,
I think its a great idea to keep pushing for the Clintons to release all of their financial records. They should also release ALL of Mrs. Clinton's notes and proposals from her abysmal previous attempt at Universal Health Care Coverage.
The UHC issue is a pet peeve of mine. The way I see it, Sen. Clinton is just fixing to get into office and create a new cabinet-level post to run Health Care. This would be just as bad as what the Dept. of Homeland Security has become. It is anathema to any freedom-loving American to have a system of nationalized socialism in place to provide health care. The states already have enough paper-pushers in place to handle any new proposal.
Listening to Mr. Obama on the issue, it seems to me that he is planning a more localized effort at socialized health care (even though I'm a Republican I'm not totally against Socialism where it makes sense, just the corruption that comes along with an agenda of Nationalized Socialism). Maybe Sen. Obama could get rid of the stupid Drug Tzar position and empower the Surgeon General to give his program some teeth but avoid the pitfalls that are inherent with creating a big, new UHC proposal that would just give more power to the insurance companies that have ruined US health care in the first place.
It is refreshing to read that the SuperDelegates are taking note of what Sen. Clinton is attempting to do with her campaign. It is great to see Sen. Obama steer clear of her low-brow tactics and be rewarded for his calm leadership with Gov. Richardson's endorsement and positive press coverage.
I do believe that Barack Obama will continue his judicious management of issues as they arise and avoid the pitfalls the Clintons are setting for him. Now who would make a better VP than our new friend Gov. Richardson?
-Dave
As my friend KC has pointed out to me, the powers that be have decided not to re-do the primaries in FLA and Michigan. I believe this is very wise and will help to keep potential tensions in check.
It is a beautiful day in New Orleans and I am enjoying it, I hope everyone else is enjoying their afternoon as well. This is a brief blog post, I would like to take the time to just let everyone in on my three favorite Bible passages. I am very interested in non-Bible based religions as well and intend to discuss them further in the future but for today I find these passages to be particularly appropriate.
Deuteronomy 31:21
Psalm 86
Psalm 101
I realize Christians of different denominations use slightly different translations of the Bible but I believe these three passages are fairly consistent between KJV bibles and NIV-type editions. It is easy to focus on differences of what is lost in translations but more difficult to find commonality. Sen. Obama does an excellent job of doing the heavy lifting for us through the challenging electoral process we are watching in action now.
I will have a new site up and functioning by next week which will have some Chaotic Neutral merchandise designed to promote Sen. Obama's message of peace, solidarity and freedom.
Best Regards,
Dave
This is just a brief blog post to get the ball rolling, so to speak.
My name is David Anderson, I am a graduate of Marmion Military Academy in Aurora, IL, ('95) and received a BA in Psychology from University of Chicago ('99). I am getting involved with the Obama Campaign because I believe Senator Obama has the best chance of bringing our country through a Chaotic Neutral Transition from the present system of federal government to what our country will become after we sort out the many Economic, Cultural and Foreign Policy Problems facing our nation at the moment.
I do believe 2008 will be regarded in much the same way as 1968 is when future generations look back on history forty years from now. I happen to be a lifelong Republican, but do not believe the GOP has the necessary leadership to lead our nation for another four years at this time. I certainly do not want to see another term given to the Clintons, I believe Bill Clinton set the stage for many of the problems we are facing today with his lack of true leadership during the 1990s. The US can do better than the Bushes and the Clintons, I know that for a fact.
It is time to look forward and make difficult decisions on what will be right for our country and the younger generations growing up today. I have decided to cast my lot in with Sen. Obama and look forward to participating and meeting others who share his vision for the future of the US.
-David Anderson
