Calling Kreskin...Calling Kreskin

As Howard Stern's mother Rae would say..."What What WHAT?!?"

Or, maybe Goldfarb is part French, and the "we" was actually "oui"!

At any rate...the silence at those moments was DEAFENING.

The Informercial Heard 'Round The World (But Not Yet by Andy Winehouse)

Special thanks go to Change Your World for the video link.

Does The Truth Matter? I May Have Grown Up Believing In A Falsehood...

I mentioned, in my previous posting, how those who had committed egregious errors in judgment in regards to the events of September 11th, 2001, were actually promoted and rewarded in various ways, whereas those who attempted to "do the right thing" were harassed, ostracized, humiliated and eventually removed from their positions of employment.

Has the sentiment "doing what's right" become obsolete?

I want you to read this blog in its entirety. This is a story about a liar who destroyed someone's livelihood, and never looked back.

This is the story of a person who abused the trust of someone who is in danger of losing their livelihood once again, due to their machinations, and those of her lawyer.

Please go to this link, and pre-order her book. If you do not wish to do so, at least go to your local bookstore, and implore that they order this book.

Update: Read the bowel-curdling letter from "Freaky" Frank Frisoli.

Jesse "Mind & Body" Ventura Talks Sense; Voter Intimidation Once Again Rears Its Ugly-Ass Head; Google Follies

Since it was so perfectly stated by the blogger, I'll let him speak (my comment to follow):

"This is just one of several segments on "the Tube" but all worth checkin' out - I have to say that Ventura is one helluva' spokesman for the truth movement because he speaks in common sense terms and really gets to the heart of the matter. I no longer wonder why he isn't covered more by the mainstream media - they can't have him on because the questions he is asking are so obvious. I can go on and on but will simply repeat myself - please watch the following video and keep yourself informed. I hope by posting this I am keeping some readers apprised of the growing truth movement - that it is a grass roots movement - from the bottom up - getting bigger every day...anyway please watch the following and the rest on YouTube."

Posted by jack rabbit at 9:44 PM
1 comments:

Anonymous said...

It would seem to me that the only way to get an honest report on 911 is to redact the Government. Start fresh and examine all the obviously illogical components eg. BBC reporting WTC7 falling before it did, and the engineering reports showing temperatures insufficient to produce structural failure from jet fuel. A quote I vagely remember goes 'if everything is impossible then whatever remains, no matter how unlikely, is the truth'

hANOVER fIST says:

I don't wish to bore you by repeating ad nauseum what has occurred in the past...but clearly, when abuses of power and outright failure and/or incompetence are rewarded, and whistle-blowing or forthright behaviour is met with hostility, harassment and loss of employment, we have a case of the foxes running the henhouse...and contrary to former Fed Chairman Alan Greenspan, the only interest the financial industry has is MONEY.

They are beholden ONLY to MONEY.

Long-term investment, nor the well-being of the stock market, or of the United States of America, for that matter, means BUPKIS to them...and so, there was never any incentive whatsoever to rein in ill-advised transactions.




In other news...some tools don't seem to understand the idea of voting, and that it should NOT be discouraged:

Published on HamptonRoads.com | PilotOnline.com (http://hamptonroads.com)
Phony flier says Virginians vote on different days

RICHMOND

A phony State Board of Elections flier advising Republicans to vote on Nov. 4 and Democrats on Nov. 5 is being circulated in several Hampton Roads localities, according to state elections officials.

In fact, Election Day, for voters of all political stripes, remains Nov. 4.

The somewhat official-looking flier - it features the state board logo and the state seal - is dated Oct. 24 and indicates that "an emergency session of the General Assembly has adopted the follwing (sic) emergency regulations to ease the load on local electorial (sic) precincts and ensure a fair electorial process."

The four-paragraph flier concludes with: "We are sorry for any inconvenience this may cause but felt this was the only way to ensure fairness to the complete electorial process."

No emergency action has been taken by the General Assembly. It is not in session and lacks the authority to change the date of a federal election.

State Board of Election officials today said they are aware of the flier but disavowed any connection to it.

"It's not even on our letterhead; they just copied the logo from our Web site," said agency staffer Ryan Enright, noting the flier has been forwarded to State Police for investigation as a possible incident of voter intimidation.

Election officials did not specify in which Hampton Roads localities the flier had been spotted.

State Police are aware of the complaint and are looking into it, said spokeswoman Corinne Geller.

In 2007, the General Assembly passed a law making it a Class 1 misdemeanor to knowingly communicate false information to registered voters about the date, time and place of the election or voters' precincts, polling places or voter registration statuses in order to impede their voting. The measure is one of the few such deceptive voting practice laws in the country, according to the watchdog group Common Cause.

Julian Walker, (804) 697-1564, dale.eisman@pilotonline.com

Let's see some prosecutions for this disenfranchisement of the voting public.

Check out this information on privacy information and Google:

Go, Jesse!

Since it was so perfectly stated by the blogger, I'll let him speak (my comment to follow):

"This is just one of several segments on "the Tube" but all worth checkin' out - I have to say that Ventura is one helluva' spokesman for the truth movement because he speaks in common sense terms and really gets to the heart of the matter. I no longer wonder why he isn't covered more by the mainstream media - they can't have him on because the questions he is asking are so obvious. I can go on and on but will simply repeat myself - please watch the following video and keep yourself informed. I hope by posting this I am keeping some readers apprised of the growing truth movement - that it is a grass roots movement - from the bottom up - getting bigger every day...anyway please watch the following and the rest on YouTube."

Posted by jack rabbit at 9:44 PM
1 comments:

Anonymous said...

It would seem to me that the only way to get an honest report on 911 is to redact the Government. Start fresh and examine all the obviously illogical components, eg. BBC reporting WTC7 falling before it did, and the engineering reports showing temperatures insufficient to produce structural failure from jet fuel. A quote I vaguely remember goes 'if everything is impossible then whatever remains, no matter how unlikely, is the truth'

Actually, he's said all that's required.

Another Lying Whore Heard From...

Bob Cesca almost made me do a spit-take!


Geez...you'd think that people would give up on blaming the "anonymous Black guy" after the Susan Smith incident...but, apparently, it has not quite lost its fashion.

A McCain/Palin volunteer, Ashley Todd, stated that she was robbed at an ATM in Bloomfield, whereupon the "attacker" noticed a McCain/Palin sticker on her vehicle, whereupon said "attacker" assaulted the victim, leaving the letter B carved into her cheek.


Heinous, no? Just terrible...I mean, can't we all get along?

Unfortunately, there were a few inconsistencies in regards to the attack.


Thanks, Keith!

In case you actually missed the meat of the story...the B carved in her face by the "unknown Black guy" was carved INVERSELY.

I'm gonna have a bit of fun here...isn't it every day that people are complaining about "uneducated minorities" and the like? Well..."uneducated" is one thing...but an INVERSE letter?

The ATM camera also disputed her testimony...the "victim" was given a polygraph exam...the results were not offered to the public, but I can surmise that hey weren't offered because they were inconclusive. The authorities have released that the "victim" suffers from "mental issues".

Wouldn't it be a hoot if it were a DYSLEXIC who performed the heinous act? Of course, that point is moot, because the "victim" confessed to the non-existence of this dyslexic assailant.

Now, should we examine the reasons for this hoax? Should I go and peruse my copy of the DSM-IV? No...it doesn't really require that much effort. I can tell you exactly why this was done:

The RNC and the McCain/Palin campaign have absolutely NOTHING to offer to WE THE PEOPLE except for moreof the same shite that they've offered since 1980...October Surprises, "voodoo economics", "greed is good", the S&L crisis, manipulation of the markets to the detriment of regular Americans, ill-advised and falsely-initiated wars, the dumbing-down of Americans, CALEA, HAVA, and vote fraud, not to mention the events of September 11th, 2001. This is not to say that the Democratic Party is all shits and giggles; "Slick Willy" Clinton was responsible for selling valuable secrets to other countries, and placated the Black population while at the same time reversing advances made by civil rights groups. But please understand...what has been put forth as the "Republican" administration bears NO RESEMBLANCE WHATSOEVER to true Republican ideals.

My Republican party has been co-opted by losers, chickenhawks, thieves and traitors to our great nation, and with this cowardly act, they have distinguished themselves as Republicans-In-Name-Only, or RINOs.

You people need to call yourselves something else, like the C0ck-Smokers, or something just as appropriate - I'm sick and tired of having you scumbags "represent" my ideals, which you DO NOT!

I wish that people who lied about their political affiliations would spontaneously combust - there would be a lot less scumbaggery occurring.

Anywho...Ashley...why don't you come clean, and tell us who put you up to such a STUPID STUNT? I don't believe that you're such a great thinker that you could've come up with that brainstorm all by yourself.

After all, Morton Downey, Jr. beat you to it by a couple of years...here's more.

UPDATE: Volunteer? Oh, dear, no...she's a paid organizer.

Great Video Produced by Orwells Ghost - What's Behind Door Number ?

Anti-tax author banned from selling his advice

"The Internal Revenue Service and Justice Department have strong civil and criminal enforcement tools available to stop tax defiers who promote fraudulent schemes", Justice Department lawyer Nathan Hochman said in a statement following George's Oct. 14 order.

Emphasis mine in the statement by Justice Dept. lawyer Hochman.

The tax burden does not lawfully reside on WE THE PEOPLE...the burden belongs to corporations.

The corporations and quisling lawmakers colluded to place this burden upon us all, to keep us in a state of slavery that, up until now, has been intangible.

Have any money in a TDA? You now have HALF.


Know anything about the Amero? Plans are afoot to BANKRUPT all Americans with savings in dollars. $800 BILLION in Amero currency was shipped to China.


The know-nothings of the world are still attempting to place blame upon debt-ridden Americans for the current financial collapse...I added my two cents (wheatbacks!) to the discussion.

Back to the issue of taxation - here's something to consider. If corporations were paying their fair share, they would be actively contributing to the well-being of the United States as a whole, but instead, corporations can, at will, "donate to charity", which is simply a legalized bribe to what efforts they deem worthy of support; understood is the idea that said recipient will be "forever grateful" to the corporation.

Consider this, also...if corporations were paying their taxes, as they should, and our government was as vigilant in their retrieval of said tax burdens as they are with WE THE PEOPLE, they could not exist in the state of collusion that currently exists (do you recall that Halliburton Corp. was relieved of a $500 MILLION tax debt?). Corporations and government would be engaged in a never-ending battle, and WE THE PEOPLE would not be involved in any regard...because we would have extended the prosperity that Americans lived with since 1789, and up until 1913, when the Federal Reserve Act was passed during a secret session of Congress; Woodrow Wilson bequeathed to corporations the "rights of a person"; and speaking of fraudulent arguments, the Sixteenth Amendment was passed.

Americans were not taxed before 1913; so since no new laws of taxation were passed, how is it that after 1913, Americans can now be taxed?

Irwin Schiff is providing the information that the IRS will NOT provide; namely, that AMERICANS SHOULD NOT BE PAYING TAXES; TAXES ARE THE RIGHTFUL BURDEN OF CORPORATIONS.

Once again, I must invoke the Titles Of Nobility Amendment, present not only in the Constitution, but also in the Articles of Confederation. The one mistake the founders made was not to account for quislings...individuals who would work to destabilize their own country for payment.

They should have been hung by their genitals.

Hal Turner Shows The New AMERO Currency

Jack Rebney Fights Back!

This has naught at all to do with anything...I just appreciate a good rant.

Save Our Land - From Idiots

Okay...should anyone seriously consider the flyers left on windshields of vehicles at train stations out in Long Island imploring for people to "Save Our Land - Join The Klan"?

Before I go into my rant...here's a piece I found on WRH's Letters Page...I'd seen it once before, but it didn't seem to be pertinent at the time; however, it now speaks volumes of the desperation of the "Republican" presidential campaign...so without further ado:

READER: What racism does - let's switch it up. What if things were switched around ?.....think about it. Would the country's collective point of view be different? This is what racism does. It covers up, rationalizes and minimizes positive qualities in one candidate and emphasizes negative qualities in another when there is a color difference:

Ponder the following:

What if the Obamas had paraded five children across the stage, including a three month old infant and an unwed, pregnant teenage daughter?

What if John McCain was a former president of the Harvard Law Review? What if Barack Obama finished fifth from the bottom of his graduating class?

What if McCain had only married once, and Obama was a divorcee?

What if Obama was the candidate who left his first wife after a severe disfiguring car accident?

What if Obama had met his second wife in a bar and had a long affair while he was still married?

What if Michelle Obama was the wife who not only became addicted to pain killers but also acquired them illegally through her charitable organization?

What if Cindy McCain graduated from Harvard?

What if Obama had been a member of the Keating Five? (The Keating Five were five United States Senators accused of corruption in 1989, igniting a major political scandal as part of the larger Savings and Loan crisis of the late 1980s and early 1990s.)

What if McCain was a charismatic, eloquent speaker?

What if Obama couldn't read from a teleprompter?

What if Obama was the one who had military experience that included discipline problems and a record of crashing five planes?

What if Obama was the one who was known to display publicly, on many occasions, a serious anger management problem?

What if Michelle Obama's family had made their money from beer distribution?

What if the Obamas had adopted a white child?

You could easily add to this list. If these questions reflected reality, do you really believe the election numbers would be as close as they are?

*Educational Background:

*Barack Obama:*
Columbia University - B.A. Political Science with a
Specialization in International Relations.
Harvard - Juris Doctor (J.D.) Magna Cum Laude

*Joseph Biden:*
University of Delaware - B.A. in History and B.A. in Political Science.
Syracuse University College of Law - Juris Doctor (J.D.)

*John McCain:*
United States Naval Academy - Class rank: 894 of 899

*Sarah Palin:*
Hawaii Pacific University - 1 semester
North Idaho College - 2 semesters - general study
University of Idaho - 2 semesters - journalism
Matanuska-Susitna College - 1 semester
University of Idaho - 3 semesters - B.A. in Journalism

Education isn't everything, but this is about the two highest offices in the land as well as our standing in the world. You make the call

So...back to my rant. Here's what a racist truly has to offer to America:

NOTHING.

NADA.

NOT A GODDAMN THING.

Obviously, I am not including whining like a bitch as something to offer - and that's all that a real racist does; bitches and moans about the fact that they are wastes of oxygen.

I'm a computer guy. I could've been a linebacker; I could've been a legbreaker; I could've been a professional bodyguard, and I'd have all of the money I've ever wanted or needed.

I could've been a scientist.

I could've been an artist.

I could've been a gigolo (because I care that much, ladies).

I became a computer guy. I'm not a PC guy, and I'm not a Mac guy.

I'm not a software guy, and I'm not a hardware guy.

I'm a very happy mix of all of those, and I learn something new EVERY DAY.

There was a slightly selfish aspect to the choosing of my profession, and that was to ensure that I'd never be at the mercy of some tool who, after making sure to extract the $34.95 or so from your helpless, rotting corpse, would repeat these three words like a mantra:

"FORMAT AND RESTORE"

So...first I learned how to navigate computer software. I tell this to everyone who is intimidated by the idea of using a computer for the first time, to think of it as a TOOL.

A computer is simply a tool that has many functions, much as you can do a number of things with a Swiss Army knife, a Leatherman, or a Dremel tool.

I first created flyers and brochures using WordPerfect 5.1...anyone remember that?

Blue screen (no WYSIWYG)...but at the same time, no distractions. I played around with fonts and learned about placement. I put together programs for widely-attended events; I even worked on and corrected proposals for funding, something to which the non-profit agency I worked with benefits from to this day.

Next, I worked on hardware. Have you ever seen an IBM PS computer? I made Windows 95 run on those monstrosities, and I still have the hard drives to prove it.

Next, I worked with Macintoshes - they were a lot of fun.

I don't consider myself to be some kind of genius; however, I am infinitely curious, and that has served me well in life.

I have, therefore, determined that racists are completely INCURIOUS.

For the most part, you idiots can't hold a decent conversation...somehow, it would eventually degenerate into "Damn niggers/wetbacks/kikes/chinks/crackers/spics/etc. all taking jobs from decent Americans"...I'm sure I don't need to bore you.
YOU IDIOTS DON'T WANT TO WORK!

A lot of you idiots who espouse such views are usually two or three spaces behind the people they refer to in their mindless ramblings in the unemployment line.

I want for you to understand what is meant by INCURIOUS. It is meant to mean that anything that falls out of your immediate worldview does not merit a picosecond of thought.

Welfare recipients? Oh, they're terrible scofflaws, I'm sure...but have you ever heard of CORPORATE WELFARE? It is on the order of THOUSANDS OF TIME more pervasive and anything some individual could attempt. So, when I hear the whining of people complaining about all those "people" on the dole, it just gives me cranky-ass.

Here's why that story really rankled me this morning. It's a sad state of affairs when individuals in a country will allow some scumbag, frat-whore, coke addict and failed alcoholic to turn our great country into a shithole, and yet, there are no flyers on windshields advocating for a purge of assholes from our great nation; yet, it seems to be a strong possibility that Dick Cheney's half-Black cousin could be elected, and the biggest effort, aside from blatantly stealing the vote ONCE AGAIN, is to put the fear into the "minorities" with some dopey-ass faux KKK flyer slapped on the windshields of Long Islanders?

Stupid.

Stupid.

Stupid.

If you really suck ass, and you've NOTHING to offer to America besides whining about how you don't really suck ass, but that it's really all the fault of "them brown people", go and sign up, cock-smoker.

Here's the address:

Daniel Carver
PO Box 446
Oakwood, GA 30566

9/11 Booger...DEBUNK THIS, SCUMBAG!

Okay...I'm sick with what may be the flu...but it's not gonna stop me from getting twisted out of my mind over this c0ck-smoker who refers to himself as 9/11 Booger...as if the whole thing was as easy to deal with as an errant snot-rocket.

9/11 Booger has libeled both Alex Jones and Dylan Avery with this shite posting...what say you, dear readers - anyone who lost loved ones in the events of September 11th want to share some feelings in regards to his dopey efforts to trivialize that event into advertisements for Paxil?

I leave it in your hands.

The Government Cannot Disobey The Will Of WE THE PEOPLE - We Created Them!

What's Next...Chickens For Colonel Sanders?

Recently discovered two things: the first being hanger steak...apparently, it is just an awesome, heretofore unknown cut of meat (at least, the GF had no bloody idea what it was!), and I did a hell of a job making dinner two Sundays ago.

The second thing I recently discovered was a blog titled Pennsylvania For John McCain. You know...I didn't know that the retarded were allowed to procreate.

Yes...I know. That was unbelievably harsh...but we need to address something very important. I'm going back to 1963 and to the assassination of President John Fitzgerald Kennedy, and I want for you to put on your critical thinking caps. I want for you to think of the possibilities of any "lone nut" assassinating ANY PRESIDENTIAL NOMINEE/CANDIDATE - I surmise that you'll agree with me that the possibility is near nil...that is, at least, if all of the spying being performed by our clandestine services are performing in the way that they should - that being ensuring the safety of WE THE PEOPLE, and not merely attempting to stifle lawful dissent to policies designed to undermine and remove our rights as Americans.

So...there's a bit of talk about assassinating the Democratic nominee for the office of the President of the United States. We have actually had successful assassinations...but by whom were they performed? Let's list attempts as well (* denotes that I disagree with the findings):

Andrew Jackson was shot at by Richard Lawrence; both shots misfired

Abraham Lincoln was assassinated by John Wilkes Booth

James A. Garfield was assassinated by Charles J. Guiteau

William McKinley shot twice by Leon Czolgosz; died eight days later

Theodore Roosevelt was shot by John F. Schrank

Franklin Delano Roosevelt was shot by Giuseppe Zangara

Harry S. Truman was shot at by two Puerto Rican pro-independence activists, Griselio Torresola and Oscar Collazo

John Fitzgerald Kennedy's life was threatened by Richard Paul Pavlick; he was later assassinated by Lee Harvey Oswald*

Not necessarily pertinent, but being included regardless, Robert Francis Kennedy was killed by Sirhan Bishara Sirhan*

George Wallace was shot by Arthur Bremer; who had previously threatened to assassinate Richard Milhous Nixon; Nixon was also threatened by Samuel Byck

Gerald Ford had two attempts on his life; the first by Lynette "Squeaky" Fromme, the second by Sara Jane Moore

Ronald Reagan was shot by John Hinckley, Jr.*

George Herbert Walker Bush was said to have been threatened by sixteen men in the alleged employment of Saddam Hussein, in retaliation for Gulf War the First; attack foiled by Kuwaiti officials

William Jefferson Clinton was said to have been threatened first by Frank Eugene Corder, who flew a single-engine Cessna into the White House; Francisco Martin Duran fired at least 29 shots with a semi-automatic rifle at the White House

George Walker Bush was supposedly threatened by Robert Pickett, who shot at the White House; Vladimir Arutyunian attacked him with a hand grenade - amazingly, the handkerchief used to obfuscate its appearance delayed the explosion

So...that was a mouthful. There are events that I dispute occurred as recorded; please feel free to write in and challenge my discernments - any and all arguments are welcome.

So...I did bring up a lot of distasteful memories for some...but there's a reason I've done so, and I could have begun and ended with JFK's assassination...and that point is THIS:

There is no bloody way that what occurred in 1963 could EVER recur in this, these modern times. There are simply too many media devices being used by everyday people - if we possessed this level of technology back in 1963, we would never have heard of Dan Rather...Abraham Zapruder would simply have been one of a cast of thousands to have captured the footage of the day; I daresay that the attempt may have been forestalled with the advent of personal media recording devices.

At the very least, Thane Eugene Cesar would either be rotting away in prison or feeding worms for his role in the assassination of RFK.

Okay...Now It's Time To Get Ugly!

Yeah...this is a real piece of propaganda being passed out in California...I found it in seconds.

This is in accordance with the current "Republican" regime's efforts to SCARE you into voting for their candidate, rather than weighing the pros and cons on both candidates; and making an informed decision.

Apparently, clear-thinking voters are NOT on the current "Republican" regime's agenda.

Fear-mongering is, however.

One of my co-workers even informed me that his in-laws spoke of two "very important" issues that barred them from voting for Barack Hussein Obama - they are:

He might wear one of those African hats...and...Michelle Obama is not "pretty enough" to be the First Lady.

And Barbara Bush was an eyeful, eh?

Where's the America-sized handbasket...because we're all going express to HELL, if shite like this dominates the national debate.

Don't believe me?

Top Tampa GOP Figure Circulates Joke About Killing Obama

By William March / Tampa Tribune

Al Austin, a longtime, high-level Republican fundraiser from Tampa, today sent to his list of political contacts an e-mail containing a joke that refers to the assassination of Barack Obama.

When asked about the e-mail, Austin said it was a mistake and apologized and that he wouldn’t knowingly have circulated it. He said he planned to send an apology and retraction to the same e-mail list.

The joke concerns a group of schoolchildren discussing the definition of “tragedy” as opposed to “great loss” or “accident.” The punch line comes when one child says that if an airplane carrying Obama and his wife, Michelle, “was struck by a ‘friendly fire’ missile and blown to smithereens,” the event might be a tragedy “because it certainly wouldn’t be a great loss, and it probably wouldn’t be an accident either.”

Austin acknowledged sending the e-mail to his list of political contacts but said he forwarded it without fully reading it and didn’t know what it said. That list included at least two reporters.

According to the forwarding history on the e-mail, it had gone through at least two other individuals before being sent to Austin on Tuesday.

Austin, a prominent real estate developer long known as one of the state’s leading Republican campaign fundraisers, has served in recent years as finance chairman for both the national and state Republican parties.

Try this link, also - the comments are quite telling...

Or how about this sweet little quote from T. Garrett, a member of Vanguard New Network forums: "[Talking] har har
If NObama was characterized as a simian instead of a donkey (the obnoxious Dem party mascot) on this fake sawbuck it would kinda look like something produced by a member of VNN forum wouldn't it?

niggers cant take it when the joke's on them can they? That's because mother nature herself has been laughing at them since they first came down from the trees."

Dear readers, detractors, schmendricks...think about your bottom line when you vote on November 4th, 2008.

$400 MILLION In Tax Liabilities?!? Is It Even Possible?

Good morning, dear readers...I awoke this morning to an avalanche (fellow neighbors, fear not - nothing is broken!); so I've been awake ever since 3:45 this full moon day.

I tackled the mess, and after enjoying most of Lovedrive by the Scorpions and a little bit of Michael Schenker Group, I turned on 1010WINS, and had gravy and mashed potatoes for breakfast (the hanger steak to be consumed later in the day...), whereupon I heard about this poor bastard owing over $400,000,000 in unpaid taxes.

Did that number not quite compute? Let me spell it out.

FOUR HUNDRED MILLION DOLLARS.

The fellow is 26 years of age...he states that he's been working since 18 or so...he computed that he would've have had to earn over $5,000,000,000 to owe such a tax burden...but let's address some side issues here.

First, there's the bloody legality of the tax burden as is. I posit that WE THE PEOPLE were betrayed by quisling elected officials beholden to a foreign power in 1913.

This is the crux of all that has gone wrong with the United States of America.

You know...it really wouldn't take much effort on the part of Those-Supposedly-In-Power to actually make things GOOD for all Americans.

Think about it.

Really think about it.

You see how the servile will bend to their will? What if "their will" were to "SPREAD GOOD CHEER AMONGST YOUR FELLOW MAN"...don't you think that will would be enacted?

Ah...but therein lies the rub.

Those-Supposedly-In-Power are all a bunch of greedy fucking scumbags.

So...no, we're not all gonna have a good time here in America, while TSIP are living the fallacy that they are running things. And no - I don't agree that they're the best persons for the job, since we aren't all spying on each other, or knifing one another at Starbucks, so their efforts at having us all degenerate into animals have all been for NAUGHT.

The burden of paying taxes does NOT belong to WE THE PEOPLE - this burden belongs to the CORPORATIONS.

The corporations conspired with the bankers and the quisling elected officials and prepared to make slaves of Americans...so far, the plan has worked in their favor.

How much longer will you play the one-armed bandit?

Just take a look at this document...where does it explicitly state that WE THE PEOPLE must pay taxes?

Go ahead...I'll wait. While you're waiting...peruse this:

FOX News: World Bank Under Cyber Siege in 'Unprecedented Crisis' by Richard Behar

World Bank Under Cyber Siege in 'Unprecedented Crisis'

Friday , October 10, 2008
By Richard Behar

The World Bank Group's computer network — one of the largest repositories of sensitive data about the economies of every nation — has been raided repeatedly by outsiders for more than a year, FOX News has learned.

It is still not known how much information was stolen. But sources inside the bank confirm that servers in the institution's highly-restricted treasury unit were deeply penetrated with spy software last April. Invaders also had full access to the rest of the bank's network for nearly a month in June and July.

In total, at least six major intrusions — two of them using the same group of IP addresses originating from China — have been detected at the World Bank since the summer of 2007, with the most recent breach occurring just last month.

In a frantic midnight e-mail to colleagues, the bank's senior technology manager referred to the situation as an "unprecedented crisis." In fact, it may be the worst security breach ever at a global financial institution. And it has left bank officials scrambling to try to understand the nature of the year-long cyber-assault, while also trying to keep the news from leaking to the public.

• Click here to see the e-mail.

• Click here to visit FOXNews.com's Cybersecurity Center.

The crisis comes at an awkward moment for World Bank president Robert Zoellick, who runs the world's largest and most influential anti-poverty agency, which doles out $25 billion a year, and whose board represents 185 member nations. This weekend, the bank holds its annual series of meetings in Washington — and just in advance of those sessions, Zoellick called for a radical revamping of multilateral organizations in light of the global economic meltdown.

Zoellick is positioning himself and the bank as an institution that can help chart a new path toward global financial stability. But that reputation, more than ever, depends on the bank's stable information infrastructure.

The fact that the information vaults of the World Bank have been repeatedly pried open won't help Zoellick's case.

While it remains unclear how much data has been pilfered from the bank, it's a lot. According to internal memos, "a minimum of 18 servers have been compromised," including some of the bank's most sensitive systems — ranging from the bank's security and password server to a Human Resources server "that contains scanned images of staff documents."

• Click here to see bank memos about the intrusions.

One World Bank director tells FOX News that as many as 40 servers have been penetrated, including one that held contract-procurement data.

Despite the gravity of the break-ins, the bank is trying hard to pretend to outsiders it didn't happen. "There were attempts to hack the bank's computer systems last summer," says a World Bank spokesman. "However, there was no compromise of confidential information." Requests for on-the-record interviews with Zoellick and other top officials were declined.

Meanwhile, the bank's treasurer, Kenneth G. Lay, has been briefing Zoellick's senior management team regularly on the situation since April.

Other bank officials are also sleuthing. The bank's chief information officer, Guy De Poerck, has engaged Price Waterhouse Coopers to do a confidential million-dollar assessment that is expected to tell him what's going on in his own department. And a 22-page internal report by a computer security company named MANDIANT, dated August 18, fleshes out many details of the June-July breaches. But very few people have ever seen the report, and nobody has been permitted to retain a paper copy.

At the same time, De Poerck has been downplaying the problem to the bank's 10,000 rank-and-file staffers as mere intrusion "attempts" in his e-mails. Yet most of those staffers have been asked to change their password three times in the past three months.

"As previously reported in mid-July," CIO De Poerck and a senior bank treasury official wrote in an August announcement to employees, "we would like to reassure you that there is no evidence that Bank staff personal information is at risk from the recent external attempts."

It's unclear how that statement squares with an internal memo to De Poerck a month earlier revealing that a sensitive Human Resources server "that contains scanned images of staff documents" had been successfully breached. De Poerk declined to comment to FOX News about any of these details.

• Click here to see De Poerck's memo.

In reality, the situation is serious enough that federal investigators have been called in. "We're not talking about hackers playing games or messing up our website," insists a senior member of the bank's IT department at its Washington headquarters. "It's about the FBI coming last summer and saying, 'You should take a look at your systems because we think something weird is going on.' It's about the intruders knowing what information they wanted — and getting to it whenever they wanted to. They took our existing data stores and organized them in a way that they could be easily accessed at will."

In plainspeak: "They had access to everything," says the source. "They had the keys to every room at the bank. And we can't say whether they still do or don't until we fully and openly address what's happening here."

The data raids are not a matter of stealing inconsequential bits and bytes. The World Bank's data center is literally a treasure trove of vital financial information from around the globe. As a clearinghouse for financial data from both governments and companies, the bank's computers could provide intruders with both a financial and intelligence gold mine — from inside information on bids and contracts to the minutes of confidential board meetings.

If the bank takes a position in a currency, for example, that currency usually moves in response to the bank's actions. Stocks and bonds can also swing up and down based on World Bank announcements. "If you know beforehand that the bank is going to put an order in for oil pipelines in Chad or healthcare systems in India, you can actually make a good amount of money," says one insider.

Although the bank typically provides only a fraction of the financing for a project, its influence on those projects is immense. Private corporations see the bank's stamp of approval as a guarantee that their own larger investments will be safe — and profitable. Knowing in advance what projects the bank's board will reject could be just as profitable.

Some insiders fear that contractors — perhaps even governments — might be seeking advance knowledge on the status of the bank's anti-corruption probes. "The bank knows the books of countries almost as well as the countries do — including the corruption at times," says one insider.

The first breach of the bank's secrets was discovered in September, 2007, after the FBI —while at work on a different cybercrime case — notified the bank that something was wrong. The feds pointed to a part of the bank's network that led out of the Johannesburg hub of the International Finance Corp. (IFC), a bank arm that lends to the private sector.

Within a week of the tip, teams of bank investigators sent to Johannesburg discovered that intruders had gained full and total access to all of IFC's worldwide information — including all incoming and outgoing e-mail — for at least six months. "They were downloading everything and anything," says one insider, who says that IFC's monitoring systems were extremely weak. "They [intruders] had full access."

Investigators discovered that the intruders were using a so-called "cluster" of IP addresses from Macao, China. But since those addresses can be spoofed (i.e., disguised) the discovery doesn't prove that the breaches actually originated in China. Nonetheless, bank officials and its executive director for China clashed behind closed doors over whether or not China's government is involved in the break-ins.

Bank sources tell FOX News that Johannesburg is one of several secret "hubs" containing a "common data store" (or CDS) that the World Bank Group has established around the globe. In layman's terms, a CDS is the cyber-world's version of a bomb shelter where every piece of an organization's data is replicated and backed up in case of a data-wipeout at headquarters in Washington. While it's known that IFC data was accessible at the hub, it remains unclear if all World Bank Group data was compromised there.

The second major breach — of the bank's treasury network in Washington — was discovered in April 2008. The World Bank's Treasury manages $70 billion in assets for 25 clients — including the central banks of some countries. It carries out substantial collaborations with the world's finance ministers on public wealth and debt management, runs an active bond-trading desk in Washington, and does everything from currency trading to capital markets financings.

After a forensic analysis of the treasury breach, bank investigators discovered that spy software was covertly installed on workstations inside the bank's Washington headquarters — allegedly by one or more contractors from Satyam Computer Services, one of India's largest IT companies.

The software — which operates through a method known as keystroke logging — enabled every character typed on a keyboard to be transmitted to a still-unknown location via the Internet.

Upon its discovery, insiders report, bank officials shut off the data link between Washington and Chennai, India, where Satyam has long operated the bank's sole offshore computer center responsible for all of the bank's financial and human resources information.

Satyam was also banned from any future work with the bank. "I want them off the premises now," Zoellick reportedly told his deputies. But at the urging of CIO De Poerck, Satyam employees remained at the bank as recently as Oct. 1 while it engaged in "knowledge transfer" with two new India-based contractors.

Satyam — one of the largest and most prestigious IT companies in India — is publicly listed on the NYSE and boasts having $2 billion in sales and more than 150 Fortune 500 companies as clients. In 2003, Satyam — it means "truth" in Sanskrit — won a much-heralded and lucrative five-year "sole source" contract to design, write and maintain all of the World Bank's information systems.

The contract — which began at $10 million and grew to more than $100 million by 2007 — was suddenly not renewed this year. Satyam so far declines to comment.

Then came the June-July breaches in Washington. They were similar to the Johannesburg attack, as the same group of IP addresses from Macao were used.

This time, however, the cyber-burglars used a different spyware. They broke into an external server run by the bank's private sector development unit. They were able to acquire passwords — including the password for the systems administrator.

That enabled them to jump into the servers at MIGA, the bank's giant insurance arm. It was there that they captured the security administrator's password as he was logging on to his computer.

It took ten days for bank officials to detect that they'd been invaded. Once they did, they shut down all external servers, except for e-mail — which it turns out the invaders were already using as their entrance point. By the end of July the invaders "had completely mapped out the topography of the bank's information systems," says one expert — "where everything was, the types of servers, and the types of files on the servers."

What the intruders did with all that information is the World Bank's most sensitive and painful mystery. It has clearly left the institution in a highly vulnerable position.

And the same may go for bank president Zoellick. Bank insiders say that he needs desperately to get the security of his own house in order. Despite the vast sums that the Bank spends on data and data storage, its information systems are deeply in disarray.

Today the total cost to maintain the bank's information infrastructure is at least $280 million per year. But according to one disgruntled bank staffer, "We don't even have an internal search engine that works."

The truly alarming fact, however, is that someone — or many people — seem to know their way around the bank's most valuable resource very well, even though they aren't supposed to be there at all.

UPDATE: After FOX News published its story, a World Bank spokesman issued the following statement:

"The Fox News story is wrong and is riddled with falsehoods and errors. The story cites misinformation from unattributed sources and leaked emails that are taken out of context.

"Like other public and private institutions, the World Bank has repeatedly experienced hacking attacks on its computer systems and is constantly updating its security to defeat these. But at no point has a hacking attack accessed sensitive information in the World Bank's Treasury, procurement, anti-corruption or human resources departments."

FOX News stands by its story.

What Do You Mean, "Songbird" McCain Wasn't Tortured...?

Oh, dear...it appears that someone has taken on my challenge...namely, putting the lie to John "Songbird" McCain's POW experience. Oh, what fun we're having now...I found a link that leads to scads of goodies regarding the walking cadaver. One of the links discusses the circumstances of McCain LEAVING BEHIND fellow POWs.

In a court of law, one lie is enough to have one's entire testimony disregarded...so are going to hear more from our Stenographer Whores on this point?

Oh...I'm SURE that they'll do their jobs and keep Americans apprised of threats to our way of life, through malfeasance and outright lying by our elected officials, right? I mean, Watergate proved what side the "mainstream media" is on, right?

Watergate, as it was reported, was an obfuscation of events that America was told to keep the lid on the true danger occurring...that of the pedophile sex ring and outright prostitution happening daily with our sons and daughters, our wives, our husbands, our loved ones...all being used, abused and discarded...some painfully and fatally, if the rumours regarding Icepick can be verified.

NYC Pinocchio Protests - Get Yer Nose On; R.I.P. Baird Jones

NYC Pinocchio Protests

Challenge McCain's Lies & Smears when he comes through NYC on Tuesday, by wearing Pinocchio noses and doing a "Lie-In." People with Pinocchio noses are hounding McCain & "Flintstones" Palin all across the country. Come be part of it here in New York City!
http://my.barackobama.com/page/event/search_results?circle_id=74631

Everything you need to participate in this fun, visually powerful, and right-message-for-right-now protest, is available at:
http://www.pinocchiopolitics.org/

Pick up a Pinocchio nose at your local Halloween costume store if you can - organizers will have a few extras.

Tuesday, October 14 at 5:30 PM
Protest McCain Lies in NYC
Grand Hyatt Hotel
109 East 42nd Street (in front of Grand Central)
New York, NY 10017
RSVP:
http://my.barackobama.com/page/event/detail/organizing/gs5qhv


Wednesday, October 15 at 8:00 PM
Protest McCain Lies outside 3rd Debate
We will hold a huge game of Liar's Bingo outside the debate. Come play!
http://pinocchiopolitics.org/bingo
Hofstra University
1000 Fulton Ave
Hempstead, NY 11549
RSVP:
http://my.barackobama.com/page/event/detail/organizing/gs5qkk


Thursday, October 16 at 6:00 PM
Protest McCain's Lies in NYC
Waldorf Astoria Hotel
100 East 50th Street
New York, NY 10022
Challenge McCain's Lies & Smears when he comes thru NYC on Thursday, by wearing Pinocchio noses and doing a "Lie-In." McCain will be speaking at the annual Alfred E. Smith Memorial Foundation Dinner at the Waldorf-Astoria Hotel.
RSVP:
http://my.barackobama.com/page/event/detail/organizing/gs5qh2

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October 15-21

FRONTRUNNERS is a smart and funny political documentary that follows the student council presidential
campaign at one of the country's most prestigious public high schools: Stuyvesant High School in New
York City.

An entertaining and symbolic campaign film, put forth in classic verite style, we follow four charming and
idiosyncratic candidates as they navigate an electoral process that is said to be one of the most
competitive at the high school level. These teenaged candidates face the same issues as candidates of
any age, such as picking the "right" running mate, shaking as many hands as possible, preparing for
televised debates, impressing the pundits and journalistic community, addressing sensitive race-related
issues, and mobilizing an apathetic voter base.

A microcosm of the U.S. Presidential elections, Caroline Suh's film shows politicking and pluralities
through the lens of the adolescent experience.

Director: Caroline Suh
Release Date: October 15, 2008 in New York. National expansion on October 24, 2008.
Running time: 83 min
Rating: Not Rated by the MPAA
World Premiere: SXSW Film Festival 2008

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Wednesday, October 15 - Debate Parties

7:00 pm
Presidential Debate Watch Party - Final Round!
doors open at 7:00 pm; debate begins at 9 pm
Tonic Times Square Bar & Lounge
727 Seventh Avenue
(between 48th and 49th Streets)
Free for annual members; $10-non-members
Please RSVP!
http://www.dl21c.org/rsvp.php?event_id=291


7:30 Doors / 8 Comedy / 9 Debate
THE FINAL DEBATE WATCH PARTY.
Beforehand, an all-female Laughing Liberally
presented by the Hysterical Festival,
featuring Lizz Winstead, Katie Halper,
Erin Judge, Negin Farsad & Mindy Raf as Leibya Rogers
(Suggested donation: $5 for the comedy / Debate FREE)
The Tank @ DCTV (note location!)
87 Lafayette btw Walker & White
http://www.thetanknyc.org
http://thehystericalfestival.com/festcal_wed.html


###

Friday October 17 - 7 pm

Larry Litt, "What is Political Art Really Worth?"; and Joe Pontillo
Free Political Comedy at Pratt Manhattan

Larry Litt, co-star with Eleanor Heartney of The Blame Show, has performed his satiric, critical, ranting characters across America and around the world at festivals, art biennials, colleges, libraries, and galleries. He is pretty damn famous for his successful fundraising art auctions. Political art auction action tonight.

One of the fastest rising stars on the comedy scene today Joe Pontillo brings his everyday rumblings and political satire to the stage. Having been featured in the New York Times and Newsday, Joe is well known for his quick wit and hardcore lunacy. As well as performing at many of the top comedy clubs on the east coast Pontillo is also a regular performer at many colleges and universities throughout the country.

Refreshments are available at all perfromances.

Pratt Manhattan
144 West 14th St, 2nd floor

For more information please visit
http://www.partyheadquarters.org

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October 17, 18, 19, 24, 25, 26, 31, November 1, 2 (Fridays, Saturdays, and Sundays) at 7:00 pm in the HERE mainstage.
Election Night Event Tuesday, November 4, starting at 6:00 pm.

Life After Bush: A Musical We Can Believe In.

TARIK DAVIS as Barack Obama, Jeremiah Wright, Josh Bolten, Uncle Sam, and others
NOAH DIAMOND as the Narrator, the Country Doctor, Rudy Giuliani, Dick Memmons, and others
BRIAN LOUIS HOFFMAN* as George W. Bush, Bill Clinton, Mr. Abortion, and others
SADRINA JOHNSON* as the Patient, Peggy Patty Prentiss, the Singer, Michelle Obama, and others
KIM MOSCARITOLO as Mopsy Jimenez-Tippington, Sherilyn, Nancy Pelosi, Cindy McCain, and others
AVI PHILLIPS as John McCain, John Hagee, Victor, Michael Hayden, and others
AMANDA SISK as Hillary Clinton, The Country Nurse, Emily, Sarah Palin, and others
*Appears courtesy of Actors' Equity Association

Produced and Directed by Noah Diamond and Amanda Sisk.

Change is the key word of the election, and it's the key word of the show. All of the NERO FIDDLED shows are topical, and we're used to adding new material as news breaks. But doing a show about an election, and opening three weeks before Election Day, is really keeping us on our feet.

Obviously, we say this with no objectivity whatsoever, but this is a special show and a special experience. From where we're sitting now, Life After Bush looks like our funniest show, and also our most serious; wrapped up in this comedy is everything we're feeling about this election, this presidency, this country, and its future.

HERE Arts Center 145 Sixth Avenue, NYC
(Between Spring & Broome; enter on Dominick)

Tickets $18 (or $15 with DEMS15 discount code)
Click here
http://www.noahdiamond.com/lifeafterbush-tickets.html
or call (212) 352-3101

###

Volunteer for Obama!
Compiled by Cheryl Guttman

Phonebank Swing State Voters at 7th Ave & 28th Street, every Tues & Thurs
Obama volunteers in NYC thave set up a phonebank to call voters in the crucial swing state of New Mexico.
When: Tuesdays & Thursdays, 6-9pm
Where: PKPR, 307 7th Ave. Suite 1004, at 28th Street.
Bring: Landlines will be available, but if you have a cell phone and/or a wireless-enabled laptop, please bring it.
RSVP: http://www.nyobama.com/events/nyc/#102hatch

Volunteers for Official Obama Phonebank, Manhattan, Weeknights, 5-7pm&7-9pm
The NY office of Obama for America is running a phonebank in Manhattan. Volunteer to call swing state voters and get out the vote to take back the White House. Where: Teamsters Union, 216 W. 14th Street, 6th Floor When: Weeknights, two shifts: 5-7pm & 7-9pm RSVP: (please rsvp to ensure they have enough phones)
http://my.barackobama.com/page/event/detail/officialevent/gshqqj

To find a phonebanking party, go to the Event Finder on the official Obama site:
http://my.barackobama.com/page/event/search_simple
Then click on advanced search, and under “Type of Event” click on “Phonebank.” Enter other relevant data (your location, dates, etc) and it will give you a list of phonebanking events in your area.

Just a few upcoming New York City phonebank parties: Call Philadelphia, EVERY TUESDAY NIGHT, 6:30-8:30 pm RSVP to
William Finkel: 917-653-2425 Call New Hampshire on Oct. 2, 6:30-8:30 pm RSVP to Justin Henning: 718-757-7686

Here is Sat. day trips to Obama headquaters in Pa from Penn Sta, Manhattan
http://www.dl21c.org/campaign-08.php

Entire weekend trips (incl. hotel) to swing states this weekend and next with group--they also go to a pub together Sat. night!
http://www.dl21c.org/buspp-08.php

and if you want to go to Ohio, where they have early voting http://www.americavotes.org/page/s/traveltoohio08


Protect the Vote

If you are a law student, attorney, have poll watcher experience or legal training, volunteer for the Obama Voter
Protection Program, Counsel for Change. Sign up at
http://my.barackobama.com/page/s/vpcvol2

Election Protection is working to protect the vote, stopping voter caging and challenges to student registration. They have a free hotline to a legal team that will be active on Nov. 4. Tell everyone you speak with to write down this number now, and call it if they have any problems voting on Election Day.

1-866-OUR-VOTE

--

If this sounds like a Obama-love fest, fear not...but he's clearly not the two-faced scumbag McCain is...he thinks he can obscure TWENTY-SIX YEARS of taxpayer-raping legislation with one bloody non-Fannie Mae/Freddie Mac vote?

McCain...get in the coffin and nail it shut from the inside.


In other news...my bud Baird Jones passed away...he was 53.

Why Is This Not On Our Nightly News? Talk About A Liberal Media!!

He's DEAD, Jim.

Oh, by the way...did those naughty Israelis not tell us the whole truth?

Jörg Haider - Banken Mafia

William Cooper Predicts The Events Of September 11th, 2001 In June of 2001

The Scumbags Know That Their Days Are Numbered...

I highly recommend BradBlog - Brad Friedman is a true patriot, along the lines of a Bev Harris. He is in touch on a number of issues; foremost in my readings is the issue of vote fraud. I've read VoteScam by the Collier brothers, and I've lived the vote scam of the last eight years by the Bush Administration (not to mention the chicanery of the Clinton Administration eight years beforehand...but I'll admit to being a political neophyte for that period).

I ran across a posting at BradBlog in regards to voter's rights, and encountered in the comments to that article a despicable individual who goes by the label of Terminator..."Termy" is an individual of ill breeding who stated that "Crackheads are more prone to vote for Obama."

Imagine that.

"Termy" is working for an MBA.

An MBA, in my personal opinion, is the MOST USELESS DEGREE IN EXISTENCE.

I'll tell you why (reposting from the original rant):

No two businesses are the same, and it takes someone who knows how certain industries are run to make a business flourish.

I've seen too many instances (many in PERSON) where some douchebag with an MBA comes in, changes a bunch of rules (the 1st rule in every idiot manager's handbook is to CHANGE SOME RULES), and then good employees get disgruntled, they quit, and the business GOES TO HELL.

All because some douchebag with an MBA thinks that ANY BUSINESS CAN BE RUN LIKE ANY OTHER BUSINESS.

So...just look in the mirror, pal...and say to yourself,"I'm barely one step on the evolutionary ladder above a crackhead, so maybe I should keep my stupid mouth shut."

I'm going to perform some due diligence on this, but I'm willing to surmise that the creation of the MBA degree coincided with off-shoring of manufacturing jobs in the United States - thus proving my conjecture that the MBA is indeed not only the most useless of degrees, but that it also begat the end of prosperity of WE THE PEOPLE.

Update: I started ranting on this very subject (MBAs) with some YOUNG people, and they began finishing my sentences for me...the very ones you see above.

Term Limits: It's OUR Decision; Jane Daniel's Suit Against Misha Defonseca Is Thrown Out!

In 1993, New Yorkers overwhelmingly voted for terms limits - two four-year terms for elected officials in New York City. In 1996, New Yorkers voted again to keep term limits, and keep them at just two terms.

No matter how you feel about term limits, one thing is clear: it's OUR decision, not the politicians. If they want to change term limits, it should be done the fair way, by asking the voters’ permission.

But a new bill introduced in the City Council would do just the opposite. The bill would ignore the voters and give politicians a third term (the same politicians who will vote on it).

City Hall needs to hear from you. Sign the petition and make your voice heard:
http://itsourdecision.org/

You can also see where your Council member stands, see a term limits time line, tell a friend, and see who we are.

Thanks for all you do!

--

In other news...Jane Daniel's lawsuit against Misha Defonseca is thrown out...because she exceeded the statute of limitations in filing said suit.

What a load of crap.

Amazingly, there most likely is NO statute of limitation in regards to perpetrating a FALSEHOOD.

Book refuting Jewish taboo on Israel’s bestseller list

Jonathan Cook, Foreign Correspondent

* Last Updated: October 06. 2008 10:38PM UAE / GMT

TEL AVIV // No one is more surprised than Shlomo Sand that his latest academic work has spent 19 weeks on Israel’s bestseller list – and that success has come to the history professor despite his book challenging Israel’s biggest taboo.

Dr Sand argues that the idea of a Jewish nation – whose need for a safe haven was originally used to justify the founding of the state of Israel – is a myth invented little more than a century ago.

An expert on European history at Tel Aviv University, Dr Sand drew on extensive historical and archaeological research to support not only this claim but several more – all equally controversial.

In addition, he argues that the Jews were never exiled from the Holy Land, that most of today’s Jews have no historical connection to the land called Israel and that the only political solution to the country’s conflict with the Palestinians is to abolish the Jewish state.

The success of When and How Was the Jewish People Invented? looks likely to be repeated around the world. A French edition, launched last month, is selling so fast that it has already had three print runs.

Translations are under way into a dozen languages, including Arabic and English. But he predicted a rough ride from the pro-Israel lobby when the book is launched by his English publisher, Verso, in the United States next year. In contrast, he said Israelis had been, if not exactly supportive, at least curious about his argument. Tom Segev, one of the country’s leading journalists, has called the book “fascinating and challenging”.

Surprisingly, Dr Sand said, most of his academic colleagues in Israel have shied away from tackling his arguments. One exception is Israel Bartal, a professor of Jewish history at Hebrew University in Jerusalem. Writing in Haaretz, the Israeli daily newspaper, Dr Bartal made little effort to rebut Dr Sand’s claims. Paradoxically, he dedicated much of his article instead to defending his profession. He suggested that Israeli historians were not as ignorant about the invented nature of Jewish history as Dr Sand contends.

The idea for the book had come to him many years ago, Dr Sand said, but he waited until recently to start working on it. “I cannot claim to be particularly courageous in publishing the book now,” he said. “I waited until I was a full professor. There is a price to be paid in Israeli academia for expressing views of this sort.”

Dr Sand’s main argument is that until little more than a century ago, Jews thought of themselves as Jews only because they shared a common religion. At the turn of the 20th century, he said, Zionist Jews challenged this idea and started creating a national history by inventing the idea that Jews existed as a people separate from their religion.

Equally, the modern Zionist idea of Jews being obligated to return from exile to the Promised Land was entirely alien to Judaism, he added.

“Zionism changed the idea of Jerusalem. Before, the holy places were seen as places to long for, not to be lived in. For 2,000 years Jews stayed away from Jerusalem not because they could not return but because their religion forbade them from returning until the messiah came.”

The biggest surprise during his research came when he started looking at the archaeological evidence from the biblical era.

“I was not raised as a Zionist, but like all other Israelis I took it for granted that the Jews were a people living in Judea and that they were exiled by the Romans in 70AD.

“But once I started looking at the evidence, I discovered that the kingdoms of David and Solomon were legends. “Similarly with the exile. In fact, you can’t explain Jewishness without exile. But when I started to look for history books describing the events of this exile, I couldn’t find any. Not one.

“That was because the Romans did not exile people. In fact, Jews in Palestine were overwhelming peasants and all the evidence suggests they stayed on their lands.”

Instead, he believes an alternative theory is more plausible: the exile was a myth promoted by early Christians to recruit Jews to the new faith. “Christians wanted later generations of Jews to believe that their ancestors had been exiled as a punishment from God.”

So if there was no exile, how is it that so many Jews ended up scattered around the globe before the modern state of Israel began encouraging them to “return”?

Dr Sand said that, in the centuries immediately preceding and following the Christian era, Judaism was a proselytising religion, desperate for converts. “This is mentioned in the Roman literature of the time.”

Jews travelled to other regions seeking converts, particularly in Yemen and among the Berber tribes of North Africa. Centuries later, the people of the Khazar kingdom in what is today south Russia, would convert en masse to Judaism, becoming the genesis of the Ashkenazi Jews of central and eastern Europe.

Dr Sand pointed to the strange state of denial in which most Israelis live, noting that papers offered extensive coverage recently to the discovery of the capital of the Khazar kingdom next to the Caspian Sea. Ynet, the website of Israel’s most popular newspaper, Yedioth Ahronoth, headlined the story: “Russian archaeologists find long-lost Jewish capital.” And yet none of the papers, he added, had considered the significance of this find to standard accounts of Jewish history.

One further question is prompted by Dr Sand’s account, as he himself notes: if most Jews never left the Holy Land, what became of them?

“It is not taught in Israeli schools but most of the early Zionist leaders, including David Ben Gurion [Israel’s first prime minister], believed that the Palestinians were the descendants of the area’s original Jews. They believed the Jews had later converted to Islam.”

Dr Sand attributed his colleagues’ reticence to engage with him to an implicit acknowledgement by many that the whole edifice of “Jewish history” taught at Israeli universities is built like a house of cards.

The problem with the teaching of history in Israel, Dr Sand said, dates to a decision in the 1930s to separate history into two disciplines: general history and Jewish history. Jewish history was assumed to need its own field of study because Jewish experience was considered unique.

“There’s no Jewish department of politics or sociology at the universities. Only history is taught in this way, and it has allowed specialists in Jewish history to live in a very insular and conservative world where they are not touched by modern developments in historical research.

“I’ve been criticised in Israel for writing about Jewish history when European history is my specialty. But a book like this needed a historian who is familiar with the standard concepts of historical inquiry used by academia in the rest of the world.”

jcook@thenational.ae

Here's another link to discussion regarding this book - let's see what comes of this book.

Here's another.

What this story says is that the citizens of Israel (with the possible exception of the vulture settlers who attack Palestinians and journalists alike) should not be held to account for the actions of its government.

With any luck, WE THE PEOPLE will also be afforded the like.

A Vote For McCain/Palin Is Like Chickens Voting For Colonel Sanders

Just remember - 26 years of voting for DE-REGULATION for financial institutions, as opposed to "that one's" FISA vote and his "bailout/American ripoff" vote.

Let's spell it out, so even the slow kids can understand:

Twenty-six years of saying, "Oh, sure, the market can regulate itself...I'm SURE that NO ONE will GAME THE SYSTEM for their OWN INTEREST"...nosiree, bob.

America need John "Songbird" McCain and Sarah "Flintstones" Palin like Jennifer Levin needed Robert Chambers.

I'm a Republican, and I'm sick of the muttonheads that have been chosen to represent my party in the last thirty-odd years.

Sick.

Here's Keating Economics:

Naomi Wolf - Give Me Liberty!

How an Obama sweatshirt got one Columbus woman banned from UDF for life

No Shirt, No Shoes, NObama

How an Obama sweatshirt got one Columbus woman banned from UDF for life
By Kitty McConnell
Published: Thursday, October 2, 2008 12:13 PM EDT

Forget about politics for a moment.

Forget your feelings about Obama and McCain. Forget that Columbus voters are among the most polarized in the nation. Forget swing states, vice presidential debates and the quickly approaching day of decision. That all comes later.

Remember, instead, the night Hurricane Ike blew through Columbus, tearing trees out by the roots and plunging much of the city into darkness for days.

Like many, Renee Barker spent that humid Sunday night without power. When sleep without air-conditioning proved futile, Barker and her fiancé packed their dogs in the car and went in search of batteries and candles. The neighborhood Giant Eagle was black. The only place Barker could find still operating with power was the United Dairy Farmers store on West Fifth Avenue near Grandview.

Barker walked into the store while her fiancé and their dogs waited in the car. After being told the store had no batteries, the clerk behind the counter, Mark Medina, offered up a curious request: “Can I tell you about my candidate, John McCain?” he asked her.

The comment caught Barker off-guard momentarily. She noticed he was looking at her chest. Then it clicked—she was wearing her Obama sweatshirt. “He picked the wrong girl on the wrong night,” said Barker.

She fired back, “I probably know more about John McCain than you do,” and says she told him, “If you’re really for McCain, I’ll take you down to the local recruiter myself so you can be all that you can be.”

“In the (store surveillance) video, you could see me pointing at my sweatshirt saying ‘Are you kidding me? You’re going to give me a hard time because I wore the wrong thing into your store?’” said Barker, a petite 36-year-old Victorian Village resident.

Barker admits she’s passionate about her politics and other social issues. A former Whole Foods employee who’s recuperating from recent surgery that left six pins in her back, she rescues thoroughbred horses in her spare time. She’s preparing to leave for Uganda in the spring to teach English.

She says she’s donated money to the Obama campaign and concedes she’s not afraid to engage in any challenge to her political beliefs. On this night, though, wearing her political beliefs on her sleeve created a situation that turned quickly from the absurd to the surreal.

She says what she thought would become little more than a political debate turned confrontational when another employee—who Barker describes as “a little hip-hop girl in big clothes”—emerged from the back. Medina told his employee that Barker was a “stupid loud-mouthed liberal,” according to Barker. After a few more words, Barker says she turned to leave as the female employee stepped toward her shouting, “get out of the store.”

Barker insists there was no physical contact, no property damage and, toward the end, only minimal profanity. “I asked him valid questions, and he just put his head down and started sweeping,” said Barker, “and I’m like, ‘You brought it up—you don’t do that to the consumer.’”

Barker’s fiancé watched the encounter from their car, puzzled. “I thought, you know, it might be politics, it might be the weather,” he said. Barker’s fiancé, who asked to go unnamed, said he didn’t think too much of the incident until Medina came to the front of the store as Barker emerged, phone in hand, and began copying down the couple’s license plate number.

At that point, Barker’s fiancé, a recent MBA graduate, who Barker describes as normally easy-going and reserved, approached Medina himself, asked him what he was doing and, when told he was filing an assault charge with police, grabbed the paper with their license number from him, tossed the store’s phone on the ground, left the store and drove home.

Medina called 911—at the same time the police were receiving a higher –than-usual volume of calls due to city-wide power outages—and reported that the couple, whom he described as a white woman and a Mexican (Barker’s fiancé is of Pakistani descent), were intoxicated and had assaulted him and his female coworker. Medina filed a criminal trespass report against Barker and her fiancé, stating they “became verbally aggressive and refused to leave” the store. (Barker denies refusing to leave.)

“He’s calling in 911 like it’s life or death,” said Barker, who heard a transcript of the call, “‘Some Mexican and drunk woman are raising hell.’ That’s why an officer had to show up in the middle of the blackout and take case of that BS.”

Barker and her fiancé went home and, after talking through the incident, decided to call police on their own and find out if, indeed, the UDF employees had filed some police report. When told a report had been filed, and that both she and her fiancé were described as intoxicated, Barker invited police to her Victorian Village home to test them, worried that a phony police report could wind up on their record. Police declined, and have not filed charges against the couple. Barker says when she explained to police what had happened; they advised her to contact United Dairy Farmer’s to get things straightened out. But things only got worse.



Cincinnati-based United Dairy Farmers was founded and owned by the Lindner family, who are no less shy about their politics than Barker herself. Patriarch Carl Lindner Jr., a self-made billionaire and former CEO of the Cincinnati Reds, is a major financial backer of the Republican Party on local and national levels.

The family ranked 205th on this year’s Forbes’ “400 Richest Americans” list. In 2004, Lindner was named by the National Republican Committee as one of George Bush’s 62 “Super Rangers,” the highest fundraising designations for donating in excess of $300,000 to the GOP. In December, the Washington Post reported Lindner was the national co-chair of Mitt Romney’s run for the GOP presidential nomination, while his son, Carl Lindner III, backed Mike Huckabee.

When asked if they allowed political canvassing in any of their stores, consumer relations representatives in the Cincinnati corporate offices responded, “No, we do not,” before declining to give a name or further comment.

Numerous other calls to UDF store and corporate personnel were not returned or declined for comment.



Immediately following the Sunday night incident, which occurred around midnight, Barker called UDF’s corporate offices. Monday evening, she received a call from Medina’s supervisor, which registered as a blocked number on her phone records.

“She was sweet as sugar, told me she’d get back to me,” said Barker. Another day passed. “Once I realized they were doing nothing,” Barker said, she followed the advice of the police dispatcher and called the store for the contact information of a higher supervisor.

Though it was 4:21 Tuesday afternoon, Barker said Medina answered her call and refused to give the supervisor’s number. She called the corporate office again, and was connected, not with a supervisor, but with the senior security specialist for the Columbus UDF zone, Carl Rankin.

“They (were) doing nothing about it, they (were) basically like giving me the finger, especially the head of security was very threatening,” said Barker. “He never listened to my side. I told him I was just trying to reach a manager and he’s like, ‘look Miss Renee. . .’”

Barker hung up with Rankin unsatisfied. An hour after her call to the Fifth Avenue store, Barker’s phone records show she received a blocked call, which she says was a threat. She called police.

According to the Columbus Police report of the incident, Barker stated that the caller told her, “Watch your back, I’m watching you,” and “I know where you live,” then asked her how her pets were doing and that the caller had seen them at UDF the night of the blackout.

“It does not take a brain surgeon to figure out that my number popped up on the UDF phone,” Barker said. “I call to ask for a supervisor and an hour later I get a threatening phone call?” As of Wednesday, police had issued a second round of subpoenas for the identity of the blocked caller.

Later that evening, Barker called the corporate offices once again and reported the threat. “He told me it was not a UDF issue, but that he’d try to give me a call in a couple of days,” Barker said.

A few days later, on Sept. 22, Barker received a letter from Rankin, UDF’s district head of security. The letter cited a “situation” she was involved in at the Fifth Avenue store along with “harassing phone calls to Corporate offices” between September 14-16.

It stated further: “You are being advised that you may not enter any United Dairy Farmers store or property,” and that “several police reports have been made as a result of your actions.”

Neither the Columbus Police nor the city prosecutor’s office have record of the harassment reports Rankin referenced, nor has she received any official notification that charges and/or formal complaints have been filed against her.

“Just because you receive a threatening letter from the corporate office doesn’t mean (everything). They can come down here and attempt to pursue charges, but (even if they do) that doesn’t mean they automatically get them,” said assistant city prosecutor Bill Hedrick.

Barker’s phone records indicate she made 15 calls in all, to the Cincinnati corporate offices, the Lewis Center district offices and Grandview store between early in the morning September 15 through the evening of September 17. Phone records indicate that seven of those calls were spent in transfer or on hold between customer service representatives.

It should come as no surprise that things are so heated on the ground in Columbus this election year. CNN’s broadcast of the first presidential debate last week featured correspondent Soledad O’Brien’s live polling of a focus group in Columbus because it consistently polls as being split by a narrow margin in favor of the Democratic Party. Political analyst for CNN John King noted Franklin County’s prominence on the Ohio map as the only blue county in a sea of red.

“She’s in a central area and a persuadable area,” King said of his colleague in Columbus, “a swing area of a very critical state…in this election and in every election.”

It might be easy to dismiss the whole chain of incidents as personal politics boiling over on a stormy night in total darkness, smack in the middle of a city completely polarized in its electoral politics.

But Barker is no longer amused when that political passion becomes a police incident. “I’m not a patient person, I admit flat out, and I do not like being threatened,” Barker said. “There are a lot of uninformed shoppers who run into UDF stores across the country—a lot of Democrats—and this is where it all began. Now it’s a safety thing for me.”

She’s awaiting the results of the telephone subpoenas and intends to file criminal charges against the caller.

Barker says she’s also considering a civil action against UDF. “Civil litigation is not to be entered into lightly,” she said.


Copyright © 2008 - The Other Paper

The Obama Campaign Just Launched a Nuke At the McCain Campaign

Posted by berni_mccoy in General Discussion: Presidential
Mon Oct 06th 2008, 07:59 AM
And it just arrived in my email.

Here it is folks: McCain and the Keating 5

Over the weekend, John McCain's top adviser announced their plan to stop engaging in a debate over the economy and "turn the page" to more direct, personal attacks on Barack Obama.

In the middle of the worst economic crisis since the Great Depression, they want to change the subject from the central question of this election. Perhaps because the policies McCain supported these past eight years and wants to continue are pretty hard to defend.

But it's not just McCain's role in the current crisis that they're avoiding. The backward economic philosophy and culture of corruption that helped create the current crisis are looking more and more like the other major financial crisis of our time.

During the savings and loan crisis of the late '80s and early '90s, McCain's political favors and aggressive support for deregulation put him at the center of the fall of Lincoln Savings and Loan, one of the largest in the country. More than 23,000 investors lost their savings. Overall, the savings and loan crisis required the federal government to bail out the savings of hundreds of thousands of families and ultimately cost American taxpayers $124 billion.

Sound familiar?

In that crisis, John McCain and his political patron, Charles Keating, played central roles that ultimately landed Keating in jail for fraud and McCain in front of the Senate Ethics Committee. The McCain campaign has tried to avoid talking about the scandal, but with so many parallels to the current crisis, McCain's Keating history is relevant and voters deserve to know the facts -- and see for themselves the pattern of poor judgment by John McCain.

So at noon Eastern on Monday, October 6th, we're releasing a 13-minute documentary about the scandal called "Keating Economics: John McCain and the Making of a Financial Crisis" -- it will be available at KeatingEconomics.com, along with background information that every voter should know.

Watch a preview right now and share it with your friends.

The point of the film and the web site is that John McCain still hasn't learned his lesson.

And this time, McCain's bankrupt economic philosophy has put our economy at the brink of collapse and put millions of Americans at risk of losing their homes.

Watch the video to see why John McCain's failed philosophy and poor judgment is a recipe for deepening the crisis:

http://my.barackobama.com/keatingvideo

It's no wonder John McCain would rather spend the last month of this election smearing Barack's character instead of talking about the top priority issue for voters.

But if we work together, we can make sure the focus stays on the economy -- and how to fix it.

Please forward this email to everyone you know.

Thanks,

David

David Plouffe
Campaign Manager
Obama for America

P.S. -- The documentary will be live at noon Eastern at www.KeatingEconomics.com.


Hey...not familiar enough with the background of the Keating Five scandal?

Dear readers...never say that I left you hanging:

CHAPTER VII: THE KEATING FIVE

As a war hero and U.S. senator, John McCain has been chronicled in pictures.

There are grainy mug shots of a young McCain, printed in U.S. newspapers after his jet was shot down over North Vietnam. There are black-and-white images of his return, grinning and waving.

In happier times, there is McCain holding his newborn daughter while his wife, Cindy, smiles from her hospital bed.

But it is an innocent vacation picture that carries the reminder of the scandal that threatened his political career.

In the picture, taken in the Bahamas, McCain is seated on a bandstand while wearing an outrageous straw party hat. Next to him on the dais sits Charles Keating III, son of developer Charles H Keating Jr.

McCain calls the Keating scandal "my asterisk." Over the years, his opponents have failed to turn it into a period.

It all started in March 1987. Charles H Keating Jr., the flamboyant developer and anti-porn crusader, needed help. The government was poised to seize Lincoln Savings and Loan, a freewheeling subsidiary of Keating's American Continental Corp.

As federal auditors examined Lincoln, Keating was not content to wait and hope for the best. He had spread a lot of money around Washington, and it was time to call in his chits.

One of his first stops was Sen. Dennis DeConcini, D-Ariz.

The state's senior senator was one of Keating's most loyal friends in Congress, and for good reason. Keating had given thousands of dollars to DeConcini's campaigns. At one point, DeConcini even pushed Keating for ambassador to the Bahamas, where Keating owned a luxurious vacation home.

Now Keating had a job for DeConcini. He wanted him to organize a meeting with regulators to deliver a message: Get off Lincoln's back. Eventually, DeConcini would set up a meeting with five senators and the regulators. One of them was McCain.

McCain already knew Keating well. His ties to the home builder dated to 1981, when the two men met at a Navy League dinner where McCain spoke.

After the speech, Keating walked up to McCain and told him that he, too, was a Navy flier and that he greatly respected McCain's war record. He met McCain's wife and family. The two men became friends.

Charlie Keating always took care of his friends, especially those in politics. McCain was no exception.

In 1982, during McCain's first run for the House, Keating held a fund-raiser for him, collecting more than $11,000 from 40 employees of American Continental Corp. McCain would spend more than $550,000 to win the primary and the general election.

In 1983, as McCain contemplated his House re-election, Keating hosted a $1,000-a-plate dinner for him, even though McCain had no serious competition. When McCain pushed for the Senate in 1986, Keating was there with more than $50,000.

By 1987, McCain had received about $112,000 in political contributions from Keating and his associates.

McCain also had carried a little water for Keating in Washington. While in the House, McCain, along with a majority of representatives, co-sponsored a resolution to delay new regulations designed to curb risky investments by thrifts such as Lincoln.

Reluctant participant

Despite his history with Keating, McCain was hesitant about intervening. At that point, he had been in the Senate only three months. DeConcini wanted McCain to fly to San Francisco with him and talk to the regulators. McCain refused.

Keating would not be dissuaded.

On March 24 at 9:30 a.m., Keating went to DeConcini's office and asked him if the meeting with the regulators was on. DeConcini told Keating that McCain was nervous.

"McCain's a wimp," Keating replied, according to the book Trust Me, by Michael Binstein and Charles Bowden. "We'll go talk to him."

Keating had other business on Capitol Hill and did not reach McCain's office until 1:30. A DeConcini staffer already had told McCain about the "wimp" insult.

When he arrived, Keating presented McCain with a laundry list of demands for the regulators.

McCain told Keating that he would attend the meeting and find out whether Keating was getting treated fairly but that was all.

The first meeting, on April 2, 1987, in DeConcini's office, included Ed Gray, chairman of the Federal Home Loan Bank Board, as well as four senators: DeConcini, McCain, Alan Cranston, D-Calif., and John Glenn, D-Ohio.

(Years later, McCain recalled that DeConcini started the meeting with a reference to "our friend at Lincoln." McCain characterized it as "an unfortunate choice of words, which Gray would remember and repeat publicly many times.")

For Keating, the meeting was a bust. Gray told the senators that as head of the loan board, he worried about the big picture. He didn't have any specific information about Lincoln. Bank regulators in San Francisco would be versed in that, not him. Gray offered to set up a meeting between the senators and the San Francisco regulators.

The second meeting was April 9. The same four senators attended, along with Sen. Don Riegle, D-Mich. Also at the meeting were William Black, then deputy director of the Federal Savings and Loan Insurance Corp., James Cirona, president of the Federal Home Loan Bank of San Francisco, and Michael Patriarca, director of agency functions at the FSLIC.

In an interview with The Republic, Black said the meeting was a show of force by Keating, who wanted the senators to pressure the regulators into dropping their case against Lincoln. The thrift was in trouble for violating "direct investment" rules, which prohibited S&Ls from taking large ownership positions in various ventures.

"The Senate is a really small club, like the cliche goes," Black said. "And you really did have one-twentieth of the Senate in one room, called by one guy, who was the biggest crook in the S&L debacle."

Black said the senators could have accomplished their goal "if they had simply had us show up and see this incredible room and said, 'Hi. Charles Keating asked us to meet with you. 'Bye.'"

McCain previously had refused DeConcini's request to meet with the Lincoln auditors themselves. In Worth the Fighting For, McCain wrote that he remained "a little troubled" at the prospect, "but since the chairman of the bank board didn't seem to have a problem with the idea, maybe a discussion with the regulators wouldn't be as problematic as I had earlier thought."

McCain concedes that he failed to sense that Gray and the thrift examiners felt threatened by the senators' meddling.

'Always Hamlet'

The five senators, including McCain, seemed like a united front to Black.

"They presented themselves as a group," Black said, "and DeConcini is the dad, who's going to take the primary speaking role. Both meetings are in his office, and in both cases it's we want this, with no one going, 'What do you mean we, kemo sabe?'"

According to nearly verbatim notes taken by Black, McCain started the second meeting with a careful comment.

"One of our jobs as elected officials is to help constituents in a proper fashion," McCain said. "ACC (American Continental Corp.) is a big employer and important to the local economy. I wouldn't want any special favors for them. . . .

"I don't want any part of our conversation to be improper."

Black said the comment had the opposite effect for the regulators. It made them nervous about what might really be going on.

"McCain was the weirdest," Black said. "They were all different in their own way. McCain was always Hamlet . . . wringing his hands about what to do."

Glenn, a former astronaut and the first American to orbit the Earth, was not as tactful.

"To be blunt, you should charge them or get off their backs," he told the regulators. "If things are bad there, get to them. Their view is that they took a failing business and put it back on its feet. It's now viable and profitable. They took it off the endangered species list. Why has the exam dragged on and on and on?"

DeConcini added: "What's wrong with this if they're willing to clean up their act?"

Cirona, the banking official, told the senators that it was "very unusual" to hold a meeting to discuss a particular company.

DeConcini shot back: "It's very unusual for us to have a company that could be put out of business by its regulators."

The meeting went on. McCain was quiet. DeConcini carried the ball. The regulators told the senators that Lincoln was in trouble. The thrift, Cirona said, was a "ticking time bomb."

Then Patriarca made a stunning comment, according to transcripts released later.

"We're sending a criminal referral to the Department of Justice," he said. "Not maybe, we're sending one. This is an extraordinarily serious matter. It involves a whole range of imprudent actions. I can't tell you strongly enough how serious this is. This is not a profitable institution."

The statement made DeConcini back off a little.

"The criminality surprises me," he said. "We're not interested in discussing those issues. Our premise was that we had a viable institution concerned that it was being overregulated."

"What can we say to Lincoln?" Glenn asked.

"Nothing," Black responded, "with regard to the criminal referral. They haven't and won't be told by us that we're making one."

"You haven't told them?" Glenn asked.

"No," said Black. "Justice would skin us alive if we did. Those referrals are very confidential. We can't prosecute anyone ourselves. All we can do is refer it to Justice."

After the meeting, McCain was done with Keating.

"Again, I was troubled by the appearance of the meeting," McCain said later. "I stated I didn't want any special favors from them. I only wanted them (Lincoln Savings) to be fairly treated."

Black doesn't completely buy that argument. If McCain was concerned about Keating asking him to do things that were improper, why go to either meeting at all?

Black said McCain probably went because Keating was close to being the political godfather of Arizona and McCain still had plenty of ambition.

"Keating was incredibly powerful," Black said. "And incredibly useful."

McCain's reservations aside, Keating accomplished his goal. He had bought some time, though the price was very high.

Short-lived reprieve

A month later, the San Francisco regulators finished a yearlong audit and recommended that Lincoln be seized. But the report was virtually ignored because of politics on the bank board.

Gray was being replaced as chairman by Danny Wall, who was more sympathetic to Keating.

The audit, which described Lincoln as a thrift reeling out of control, sat on a shelf.

In September 1987, the investigation was taken away from the San Francisco office, away from Black and Patriarca. In May 1988, it was transferred to Washington, where Lincoln would get a new audit.

It was a win for Keating. A battle, not the war.

Back in San Francisco, Black was fuming.

"Clearly, we were shot in the back," he would say later.

Despite the reprieve, Keating's businesses continued to spiral downward, taking the five senators with him. Together, the five had accepted more than $300,000 in contributions from Keating, and their critics added a new term to the American lexicon: "The Keating Five."

The Keating Five became synonymous for the kind of political influence that money can buy. As the S&L failure deepened, the sheer magnitude of the losses hit the press. Billions of dollars had been squandered. The five senators were linked as the gang who shilled for an S&L bandit.

S&L "trading cards" came out. The Keating Five card showed Charles Keating holding up his hand, with a senator's head adorning each finger. McCain was on Keating's pinkie.

As the investigation dragged through 1988, McCain dodged the hardest blows. Most landed on DeConcini, who had arranged the meetings and had other close ties to Keating, including $50 million in loans from Keating to DeConcini's aides.

But McCain made a critical error.

He had adopted the blanket defense that Keating was a constituent and that he had every right to ask his senators for help. In attending the meetings, McCain said, he simply wanted to make sure that Keating was treated like any other constituent.

Keating was no ordinary constituent to McCain.

On Oct. 8, 1989, The Arizona Republic revealed that McCain's wife and her father had invested $359,100 in a Keating shopping center in April 1986, a year before McCain met with the regulators.

The paper also reported that the McCains, sometimes accompanied by their daughter and baby-sitter, had made at least nine trips at Keating's expense, sometimes aboard the American Continental jet. Three of the trips were made during vacations to Keating's opulent Bahamas retreat at Cat Cay.

McCain also did not pay Keating for some of the trips until years after they were taken, after he learned that Keating was in trouble over Lincoln. Total cost: $13,433.

When the story broke, McCain did nothing to help himself.

"You're a liar," McCain said when a Republic reporter asked him about the business relationship between his wife and Keating.

"That's the spouse's involvement, you idiot," McCain said later in the same conversation. "You do understand English, don't you?"

He also belittled reporters when they asked about his wife's ties to Keating.

"It's up to you to find that out, kids."

The paper ran the story.

In his 2002 book, McCain confesses to "ridiculously immature behavior" during that particular interview and adds that The Republic reporters' "persistence in questioning me about the matter provoked me to rage."

"I don't know how (The Republic journalists) would have reported the story had I been more civil and understanding or just more of a professional during the interview," McCain wrote.

At a news conference after the story ran, McCain was a changed man. He stood calmly for 90 minutes and answered every question.

On the shopping center, his defense was simple. The deal did not involve him. The shares in the shopping center had been bought by a partnership set up between McCain's wife and her father. (The couple also had a prenuptial agreement that separated Cindy McCain's finances and dealings from his.)

But McCain also had to explain his trips with Keating and why he didn't pay Keating back right away.

On that score, McCain admitted he had fouled up. He said he should have reimbursed Keating immediately, not waited several years. His staff said it was an oversight, but it looked bad, McCain jetting around with Keating, then going to bat for him with the federal regulators.

"I was in a hell of a mess," McCain later would write.

Meanwhile, Lincoln continued to founder.

In April 1989, two years after the Keating Five meetings, the government seized Lincoln, which declared bankruptcy. In September 1990, Keating was booked into Los Angeles County Jail, charged with 42 counts of fraud. His bond was set at $5 million.

During Keating's trial, the prosecution produced a parade of elderly investors who had lost their life's savings by investing in American Continental junk bonds.

Verdict: 'Poor judgment'

In November 1990, the Senate Ethics Committee convened to decide what punishment, if any, should be doled out to the Keating Five.

Robert Bennett, who would later represent President Bill Clinton in the Paula Jones case, was the special counsel for the committee. In his opening remarks, he slammed DeConcini but went lightly on McCain, the lone Republican ensnared with four Democrats.

"In the case of Senator McCain, there is very substantial evidence that he thought he had an understanding with Senator DeConcini's office that certain matters would not be gone into at the meeting with (bank board) Chairman (Ed) Gray," Bennett said.

"Moreover, there is substantial evidence that, as a result of Senator McCain's refusal to do certain things, he had a fallout with Mr. Keating."

Among the Keating Five, McCain took the most direct contributions from Keating. But the investigation found that he was the least culpable, along with Glenn. McCain attended the meetings but did nothing afterward to stop Lincoln's death spiral.

Lincoln was the most expensive failure in the national S&L scandal. Taxpayers lost more than $2 billion on the bailout. McCain also looked good in contrast to DeConcini, who continued to defend Keating until fall 1989, when federal regulators filed a $1.1 billion civil racketeering and fraud suit against Keating, accusing him of siphoning Lincoln's deposits to his family and into political campaigns.

In January 1993, a federal jury convicted him of 73 counts of wire and bankruptcy fraud in the collapse of American Continental and Lincoln. Keating was sentenced to 12 years and seven months in prison but served just 50 months before the conviction was overturned on a technicality. In 1999, at age 75, he pleaded guilty to four counts of fraud. He was sentenced to time served.

In the end, McCain received only a mild rebuke from the Ethics Committee for exercising "poor judgment" for intervening with the federal regulators on behalf of Keating. Still, he felt tarred by the affair.

"The appearance of it was wrong," McCain said. "It's a wrong appearance when a group of senators appear in a meeting with a group of regulators because it conveys the impression of undue and improper influence. And it was the wrong thing to do."

McCain noted that Bennett, the independent counsel, recommended that McCain and Glenn be dropped from the investigation.

"For the first time in history, the Ethics Committee overruled the recommendation of the independent counsel," McCain said. For his part, DeConcini is critical of McCain's role in the affair. The two senators never were particularly cozy, and the stress of the public scrutiny worsened their relations.

In his memoir Senator Dennis DeConcini: From the Center of the Aisle, he praises the decision to keep McCain on the hook.

"It became clear to me, and it was later confirmed by Ethics Committee members, that Bennett was attempting to dismiss the charges against McCain, and in order to appear nonpartisan, he included Glenn in this effort," DeConcini wrote with co-author Jack August. "Thanks to the three Democrats on the committee and perhaps with the help of Senator (Jesse) Helms (R-N.C.), however, the charges remained in place for all the senators under investigation. So all of us had to attend the 23-day public hearing, which was indeed a trial, before the six-member Senate Ethics Committee."

In the book, DeConcini reiterates his allegation that McCain leaked to the media "sensitive information" about certain closed proceedings in order to hurt DeConcini, Riegle and Cranston. It's a fairly serious charge. The Boston Globe revisited the Keating Five leaks in 2000. The story paraphrased a congressional investigator, Clark B. Hall, as personally concluding that "McCain was one of the principal leakers." The newspaper also reported that McCain, under oath, had denied involvement with the leaks.

McCain owns up to his mistake this way:

"I was judged eventually, after three years, of using, quote, poor judgment, and I agree with that assessment."