You’re Joking… Right, Grandpa Gumby?

Seems Grandpa Gumby McCain is a little bit concerned for his Senate Seat, so he has launched some new radio ads in his pathetic attempt to keep his seat. In one of the ads it goes like this…

SPEAKER: We know what he endured, turned down a chance to go home early. It was against the prisoner’s code. John McCain has spent his life representing Arizona, fighting for the little guy, standing up to titans, afraid of no man, saying yes to jobs and small business, no to big government. John McCain is leading the fight against President Obama every day, standing tall and outspoken, helping Arizona families.

MCCAIN: My lot in life has been to wage war against wrong, like today’s massive spending at the worst possible time. Send me back to the Senate. We will win that fight for Arizona.

SPEAKER: John McCain is Arizona’s last line of defense. Character matters

Isn’t that rich! Well let us explore John McCain Shall We?

John McCain was the Cornerstone and the Start of the Current Financial crisis. “Wage war against Wrong?” Well, why don’t you wage war against yourself Senator because YOU are what’s WRONG and YOU Senator were distinctly responsible for starting the Financial Crisis ball rolling down the hill. Senator McCain, Do you remember Charles Keating? Well, YOU were one of his 5 stooges who screwed the American people. Here let me remind you Senator…

Senator McCain should he have been expelled from the Senate? Exclusive evidence reveals the Keating Five story you’ve never heard.

One day in early March 1986, John McCain, an Arizona congressman, sat down to write a letter. McCain had heard that a long-time friend and donor, Charles Keating, was upset for being listed as a member of McCain’s campaign finance committee when a more prominent position would seem more appropriate. So McCain apologized. Needlessly it turned out, for “Charlie,” as he signed his letter, would reply a few days later: “John, don’t be silly. You can call me anything…I’m yours until death do us part.”

Three years later, McCain and four other senators would be called to the carpet for this loyalty, which was accompanied by a total of $1.3 million in contributions from Keating. Senators Alan Cranston, Dennis DeConcini, John Glenn, John McCain, and Donald Riegle were being investigated by the Senate Ethics Committee for helping Keating’s company, Lincoln Savings and Loan, resist regulators. That lack of regulation precipitated Lincoln’s collapse that year–part of the larger savings-and-loan collapse–at a cost of about $3 billion to the federal government.

This episode has been invoked in the current campaign first as a parable against Reagan-era financial deregulation, which McCain supported and which was a significant factor in the collapse of savings and loans institutions; and second, as a reminder that McCain himself was rebuked by the Senate Ethics Committee for “poor judgment” after a 14-month investigation.

Yet the Ethics Committee’s was not the only investigation into the scandal. There were two other probes at the time that got barely any public attention–both of which largely focused on McCain himself. These were probes into illicit leaks about the proceedings of the Ethics Committee–leaks that repeatedly benefited McCain and hurt his Keating Five colleagues. One of those senators described the leaks at the time as a “violation of ethical behavior at least as serious as anything of which we senators have been accused.”

The leaks, if they were coming from a senator, were also illegal. All five senators–including McCain–had testified under oath and under the U.S. penal code that the leaks did not come from their camps. The leaks were also prohibited by rules of the Senate Ethics Committee; according to the rules of the Senate, anyone caught leaking such information could face expulsion from the body. These, then, were not the usual Washington disclosures: Discovered, they could have stopped the career of any Washington politician in his tracks.

The two investigations into the leaks suggested McCain’s involvement but were officially inconclusive. New evidence, obtained in recent weeks (November 1, 2008), again points back to the McCain camp. The investigator of those leaks now says that he does not doubt that they came from McCain or his team. A reporter who possessed evidence in the Keating case now says he believes that McCain was the source and got away with it. Finally, a senator who has emerged as a key backer of McCain’s presidential campaign turns out to have authored a letter stating flatly that McCain was the source of the damning leaks. Put together, a large record of evidence now points in the direction of Senator McCain. Far from McCain’s reputation of putting “country first,” these leaks depict a formidable politician willing to go through great lengths to maintain his standing. More than McCain’s relationship with Keating, it is the story of the Keating investigation leaks that voters should know.

“Character Matters?” Sure it does Senator, but it appears YOU have NO Character and guess what Senator? Seems your wife is just as corrupt as you Senator McCain. Seems her fingers were just as deep in the Keating pie as yours. Let’s digress shall we Senator?

Keating Connection: The Sequel, Cindy McCain Makes a Deal

PHOENIX—Sen. John McCain’s wife and father-in-law continued a lucrative business partnership with disgraced financier Charles H. Keating Jr. for 11 years after the GOP presidential nominee said he ended his close friendship with Keating in March 1987.

Cindy McCain’s business partnership with Keating in a real-estate development between 1986 and 1998 netted her a tidy profit, in addition to years of significant tax benefits. Her father, who died in 2000, earned similar returns.

McCain’s campaign and his Senate office did not respond to repeated phone calls and emails concerning Cindy McCain’s investment with Keating. McCain and his wife file separate tax returns and signed a pre-nuptial agreement before their marriage in May 1980. Cindy McCain owns one of the nation’s largest beer distributorships, Hensley & Company.

On Monday, McCain’s attorney, John Dowd, said in a conference call with reporters that McCain was not aware of his wife’s and father-in-law’s investment with Keating at the time it was made. “John was unconnected to that and unaware of it at the time and did not participate in it,” Dowd said.

However, during the Keating Five Senate Ethics Committee hearings in 1990-91, McCain testified that he was aware of the family investment with Keating in early 1986.

Under questioning from Dowd, McCain said he learned of the investment from a Hensley & Co. executive.

“I was told …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 told the ethics committee. “He [the executive] later told me that had happened. And I had no interest in it and just noted in passing that this investment took place.”

The GOP presidential candidate writes in one memoir that a turbulent 30-minute verbal altercation in his Senate office on March 24, 1987, ended his six-year friendship with Keating. The argument began after McCain heard from another senator that Keating had called him “a wimp.”

“We never met again,” McCain wrote in his 2002 memoir, “Worth the Fighting For.” “I never had another conversation with him.”

The rupture in their personal relationship, however, didn’t stop McCain from attending two meetings the next month with federal banking regulators at Keating’s insistence. McCain’s attendance at the April meetings nearly halted his political career. The Senate Ethics Committee, which investigated McCain’s actions on behalf of Keating, who was seeking regulatory relief for his savings and loan business, found that McCain used “poor judgment” in his dealings with Keating.

Nor did the end of McCain’s relationship with Keating affect his immediate family’s business relationship with the financier. Cindy McCain and her father, James Hensley, remained investors in the Keating real-estate partnership that included a north Phoenix shopping center. The center sold in July 1998 for $15.4 million.

Oh Johnny! You and Your Lying, Bleached Blondie Wife STILL Holding Hands with Your Keating Buddy? So you are Sort of the Lemon calling the Lime, Tart? Well We always Knew You Republicans are nothing but Lemons!

Their business relationship with Keating began April 15, 1986, when the two bought an 8 percent stake in Fountain Square Associates Ltd. Partnership. Cindy McCain and her father made the $359,100 investment through Western Leasing Co., a partnership they jointly owned.

Fountain Square Associates was structured as a tax shelter for wealthy investors. Its only asset was the Phoenix shopping center, which was built by another Keating-controlled company. The shelter allowed investors to use real-estate depreciation as a tax deduction, a provision later banned by Congress.

The Fountain Square Associates’ prospectus promised investors a 37 percent annual return on their investment. Cindy McCain and Hensley were among 54 investors in the partnership, most of whom were Keating employees and associates. Western Leasing purchased six shares in the partnership, Keating bought two and most of the remaining investors one share or less. Each share sold for $59,850.

Fountain Square Associates’ general partner, which oversaw daily operations, was American Continental Resources Corp., a subsidiary of Keating’s Phoenix-based American Continental Corp. American Continental also owned Lincoln Savings & Loan, the thrift that Keating asked McCain and the four other senators to protect from regulators.

In 1989, American Continental filed for bankruptcy, leaving more than 23,000 investors holding worthless bonds. Many bondholders were elderly and thought their investments were insured because Keating had sold them at federally insured Lincoln Savings branches.

Keating was convicted on 73 counts of bankruptcy and wire fraud in 1993, and sentenced to 12 years in federal prison. Four years later, his conviction was overturned on a technicality. In 1999, Keating pleaded guilty to four counts of fraud and was sentenced to time served.

Despite the bankruptcy, American Continental Resources managed to keep control of the shopping center owned by Fountain Square Associates, which allowed Cindy McCain and Hensley to take advantage of its tax breaks. After the shopping center sold, McCain’s 1998 Senate financial disclosure statement reported under “unearned income” that his wife made between $100,001 and $1 million on the sale of the property.

Gosh! Blondie Walked with a Cool Million while Other Investors were Stiffed! You are the Model of Corruption Cindy Baby!

In previous years, McCain’s financial statements had valued the Fountain Square partnership at less than $1,000, generating income of less than $200.

In 1998, Cindy McCain held millions of dollars worth of assets in stocks, municipal bonds and other securities, including a partnership share worth at least $1 million in the Arizona Diamondbacks. She also had investments in two other real estate projects, each worth at least $1 million, including a master planned community in Yuma, Ariz., and 160 acres of undeveloped property in Mesa, Ariz.

The same year, Cindy McCain also owed more than $1 million to a Phoenix bank, and had more than $200,000 in loans from the family’s beer distributorship.

Sen. McCain’s only income in 1998, besides his Senate salary, was his $49,688 Navy pension. He also listed three bank accounts totaling less than $31,000. He reported no liabilities.

The Fountain Square sale generated the second largest amount of income from Cindy McCain’s array of investments in 1998, according to Sen. McCain’s financial disclosure statement. Only dividends from Cindy McCain’s investment in Hensley & Company stock, which exceeded $1 million, generated more income.

Cindy McCain’s and Hensley’s 1986 investment in Fountain Square earned the father and daughter team a nice return. Its greater value to the family, however, may have had more to do with politics than money. Their investment was made the same year that McCain was running for the Senate seat held by the retiring Barry M. Goldwater. Keating and his employees contributed more than $50,000 to McCain’s campaign, bringing their total contributions to McCain since 1982 to at least $112,000.

Yeah John McCain, You certainly have lots of “Character” but to my mind you are nothing more than a lying, washed up, corrupt politician and it’s time to shake the dust off of your golf clubs as YOU will NOT be returning to Washington

To the Voters of Arizona! How can you live with yourself and sleep at night if you vote for this lying piece of trash and his lying corrupt wife? Wake Up Arizona!