**UPDATE: I just got an email from David Plouffe sent to Obama supporters that directs to this website, where a 13-min documentary on McCain's role in the Keating 5 scandal and its parallels to today's financial crisis will be up today by noon. You can see the preview now. Ouch.**
So it seems that the McCain campaign will be slinging as much mud as possible in its last desperate attempt to win. They're now dialing up the volume on Obama's "character and judgment" based on his past associations.
Okay, let's play.
Palin is talking about Ayers. If talking about William Ayers, a man Obama barely knows and met as a fellow Professor at the University of Chicago, is germane then surely talking about Charles Keating is. The fact that McCain was formally investigated by the Senate Ethics Committee, while Obama has never been formally investigated by any panel, despite all the media digging, is telling. It's also telling that McCain's running mate is under ethics investigations, (despite all the stonewalling) as well.
If talking about how Rezko helped Obama by buying a part of his parcel then later re-selling it to him at fair market value is germane, then surely talking about how McCain's first failed marriage, followed by his mistress-turned-wife Cindy and her father launched McCain's campaign with their own money, then invested $350K into a Keating shopping mall in April 1986 is.
And it isn't like McCain's ability to be bought off by corporations ended 20 years ago. Far from it. In 1998 and 1999, McCain worked hard on behalf of a corporation with a hot lobbyist, writing letters to the FCC to push for deregulation to make those companies more money. Vicki Iseman (very sexy lady) schmoozed McCain for years, herself working as a lobbyist for Paxson and Glencairn, telecom companies who benefitted from McCain's influence to deregulate the telecom industry. Rumors abounded that McCain was fu&*ing the broad, but whether or not that's true, he definitely did her clients favors.
I just don't know if the McCain campaign wants to go down this road. If they do, then it's past time to counter-punch. Given the relevance of the McCain's ties to the S&L banking scandal of the 1980's and his ties to today's financial crisis through Phil Gramm and deregulation, I say, as King George famously said, "Bring 'em on."
