John McCain and Keating Economics

Posted by AzBlueMeanie:

Remember this really damning picture of McCain celebrating his birthday with Charles Keating, the villain of the last big taxpayer bailout of unrestrained Republican greed? Here’s the article where bmaz got that photo (download the whole pdf from The Phoenix Gazette, September 12, 1993).

Apparently, that’s a picture and an article that have been all-but buried, until bmaz got a hold of it.

I guess McCain didn’t want any proof out that there he’s been helping big money rip off taxpayers for his entire career.

And that he looks like an idiot doing it. (h/t Emptywheel)

Joe Sudbay at Americablog writes McCain just obliterated the Straight Talk Express. Admits it was built on a lie:

As the stock market tanks yet again (it’s down 540 points as I write this), it’s only appropriate that we revisit that other banking scandal, the one John McCain had an intimate role in.

John’s post below contains the stunning admission from the McCain campaign that the Keating 5 investigation was an attempt to politically smear John McCain. For years, we’ve been hearing that McCain’s "reformer" image came from his claiming to have made amends for that scandal, which sunk 1,000 banks and cost taxpayers billions of dollars. But, now we know that McCain’s reform mantle is a fraud. McCain isn’t sorry for what happened. He’s sorry he got caught.

* * *

McCain actually believes that the Keating 5 scandal wasn’t about his lack of ethics, it was simply a political witch hunt conducted against him by "stooges." How can McCain make amends for something when he doesn’t think he did anything wrong. McCain’s whole reformer image is built on a lie.

On Monday, McCain’s lawyer from his Keating Five days, John Dowd, held a press conference in which he stated:

"Senator [George] Mitchell [D-ME] was the [Senate] majority leader and [Democratic Senator] Howell Heflin [D-AL] was his stooge and he was doing what he was told because they had, the rest were Democrats in the hearing. So it’s sort of a classic political smear job on John."

McCain campaign conference call – McCain’s lawyer is doing most of the talking. (h/t John Aravosis at Americablog)

So John McCain, who wrote best-selling books about his "come to Jesus moment" of repentance for his Keating sins and reformation of his character into a "maverick" reformer, turns out to be an unrepentant and unreformed fraud.

The Obama campaign has put up a new Web site, KeatingEconomics.com, teasing a comprehensive review of McCain’s role in the Keating Five scandal.