Blog sprinkles

Via JJ at Unrepentant Old Hippie: Weird News from all over the globe. I'll say! Warning: really weird.

Hipparchia of Over the Cliff, Onto the Rocks notes that McCain is a Manchurian candidate:

Yet despite McCain's tough talk, behind the scenes his top advisers have cultivated deep ties with Russia's oligarchy--indeed, they have promoted the Kremlin's geopolitical and economic interests, as well as some of its most unsavory business figures, through greedy cynicism and geopolitical stupor. The most notable example is the tale of how McCain and his campaign manager, Rick Davis, advanced what became a key victory for the Kremlin: gaining control over the small but strategically important country of Montenegro.

Eli of Multi Medium notices that Kenya has detained Jerome Corsi who has written a book about Obama filled with falsehoods and innuendos. Awww...

Via Ripley at Zen Cabin: An excellent bumpersticker!

Also via JJ, JABbering Stooge has a list we can refer to if McCain really wants to start throwing shit:

And if that’s the game John McCain wants to play, we’ll be happy to play it. We can talk about his role in the Keating Five. We can talk about his “palling around” with anti-Semitic Rapture Cheerleaders like Rev. John Hagee and Rev. Rod Parsley. We can talk about his time on the board of the United States Council for World Freedom, a far-right fringe group with ties to the Moonies that the ADL castigated as “a gathering place, a forum, a point of contact for extremists, racists and anti-semites.” We could also talk about McCain’s ties to Italian con man Raffaello Follieri.

Mapaghimagsik's cartoons are always on target.

Cookie Jill at skippy the bush kangaroo has the Tom Hartmann interview with Naomi Wolf.

PSoTD has the scariest Halloween costume ever. I'd worry if you had to provide the sound effects yourself....

Warren Street of They Gave Us a Republic asks a question as he described the activity seen at thrift stores:

Seems like a pretty good anecdotal way to gauge what is going on in the economy. But it could be evidence that Americans are simply living beyond their means. If things continue, a lot of "taboos" about second-hand stores, austerity, and making do are going to fall away. Things like backyard gardens, rummage sales, and actually putting off a major purchase are going to be fashionable. What will the neighbors think? Are we actually going to go from a nation where outspending the Joneses is going to be replaced by seeing who can scrimp and save?

When I grew up, there were plenty of old people who wouldn't throw away string; they had that Depression mentality of saving everything useful. Could it be coming back?

The answer I hope is yes.

crossposted at American Street

Welcome back, Mr. Keating

The Keating Five Scandal

Kinda fits with the stuff happening on Wall Street today, doncha think? Why hasn't the media picked up on this?

Can you imagine what they would be doing if Obama or Clinton had this scandal in their background?

Why is McCain getting a free ride? Why is he not answering persistent and probing questions about his unsavory past and questionable strip mall investments with Charles Keating?

Even back in 1989, McCain wasn't talking about being a POW...

Oh wait.... yes, he was.

Tom Fitzpatrick in 1989 for the Phoenix New Times writes about McCain's actions:(my bold)

McCain: The Most Reprehensible of the Keating Five

[snip]

So you spend your days desperately trying to make sure you will be one of the survivors. You keep volunteering to go on radio and television stations to protest your innocence. Last week you made ABC's Nightline.

Not long before that you somehow managed to get James Kilpatrick, the national columnist, to write a favorable paragraph about you. Last Sunday morning, you made it to national television again; this time on ABC's This Week With David Brinkley. You smiled at the panel with your usual studied insouciance. Sitting next to you was Senator John Glenn of Ohio.

Brinkley, Sam Donaldson, and George Will were the interrogators.
It was a sobering scene. There you sat with Glenn, both sweating before the cameras, waiting to answer questions: two badly tarnished American icons.

No one forgets that Glenn was the first American astronaut to orbit the Earth. You won't let anyone forget that you were a prisoner of war. But you have played that tune too long. By now your constant reminders about your war record make you seem like a modern version of Arthur Miller's tragic failure Willy Loman.

Clearly, both you and Glenn sold your fame for Charles Keating's money.

It was a Faustian bargain. It was also a bad joke on the rest of us and a disaster for many old people who lost their life's savings to Keating.

The money was never really Keating's to give. But he never would have got his hands on it if you and the rest of the Keating Five didn't halt the government takeover for two long years while Keating's people continued their looting.

And now, the tab for the Savings and Loan heist must be paid from taxpayer pockets.

On Sunday, Senators Dennis DeConcini, Alan Cranston, and Riegle refused offers to appear on the Brinkley show. What must we make of that?

You, the closest of them to Keating and the deepest in his debt, have chosen the path of the hard sell. You may even make it out of the pot, but to many, your protestations of innocence taste like gall.

After reading this article it's clear that McCain is actually kind of a shit. And today's media's romance with the Straight Talker is beginning to hit the rocks:

But now, Drew's done. After noting McCain's shift to the hard right, away from the 2000 persona that made him a hero to many, Drew explains that McCain "morph[ed] into just another panderer -- to Bush and the Republican Party's conservative base."

[S]ome very smart political analysts believed from the outset that McCain could win the nomination by sticking with his old self. And they still believe that McCain won the nomination not because he gave himself over to the base but as a result of a process of elimination of inferior candidates who divided up the conservative vote, as these observers had predicted. (These people insisted on anonymity because McCain is known in Republican circles to have a long memory and a vindictive streak.)