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The Company You Keep
October 14th 2008 Election08

Wright 101 by Stanley Kurtz on National Review Online

It looks like Jeremiah Wright was just the tip of the iceberg. Not only did Barack Obama savor Wright’s sermons, Obama gave legitimacy — and a whole lot of money — to education programs built around the same extremist anti-American ideology preached by Reverend Wright. And guess what? Bill Ayers is still palling around with the same bitterly anti-American Afrocentric ideologues that he and Obama were promoting a decade ago. All this is revealed by a bit of digging, combined with a careful study of documents from the Chicago Annenberg Challenge, the education foundation Obama and Ayers jointly led in the late 1990s.

John McCain, take note. Obama’s tie to Wright is no longer a purely personal question (if it ever was one) about one man’s choice of his pastor. The fact that Obama funded extremist Afrocentrists who shared Wright’s anti-Americanism means that this is now a matter of public policy, and therefore an entirely legitimate issue in this campaign.

It was always a legitimate issue. But McCain won’t touch it. Nor will the Leftstream Media. Of course, that same media hasn’t shown any interest in revisiting McCain’s associations and dealings with the Keating Five, either.

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-Bill Quick







Comments on this post:

  • SDN
    October 14th, 2008 | #1

    That would be because McCain was specifically found innocent of any wrongdoing and bringing him up means that might become obvioous.

  • Bill Quick
    October 14th, 2008 | #2

    Actually, SDN, that is almost entirely wrong.

    Daily Pundit » John McCain: The List of Infamy

    McCain was one of the so-called “Keating Five” senators. He was investigated by the Senate Select Committee on Ethics in 1991 regarding the acceptance of favors from Lincoln Savings & Loan Association (Lincoln) and its owner, Charles H. Keating, Jr. Simply put, the issue was whether McCain and the other senators used their official positions to attempt to pressure Federal Home Loan Bank Board officials to go easy on the troubled institution. Eventually Lincoln went bust, costing depositors and taxpayers millions.

    In its final report (November 20, 1991), here is what the Senate Select Committee on Ethics concluded about McCain’s conduct:

    “Mr. Keating, his associates, and his friends contributed $56,000 for Senator McCain’s two House races in 1982 and 1984, and $54,000 for his 1986 Senate race. Mr. Keating also provided his corporate plane and/or arranged for payment for the use of commercial or private aircraft on several occasions for travel by Senator McCain and his family, for which Senator McCain ultimately provided reimbursement when called upon to do so. Mr. Keating also allowed Senator McCain and his family to vacation with Mr. Keating and his family, at a home provided by Mr. Keating in the Bahamas, in each of the calendar years 1983 through 1986.

    “…[F]rom 1984 to 1987, Senator McCain took actions on Mr. Keating’s behalf or at his request. The Committee finds that Senator McCain had a basis for each of these actions independent of the contributions and benefits he received from Mr. Keating, his associates and friends.

    “Based on the evidence available to it, the Committee has given consideration to Senator McCain’s actions on behalf of Lincoln. The Committee concludes that, given the personal benefits and campaign contributions he had received from Mr. Keating, Senator McCain exercised poor judgment in intervening with the regulators without first inquiring as to the Bank Board’s position in the case in a more routine manner. The Committee concludes that Senator McCain’s actions were not improper nor attended with gross negligence and did not reach the level of requiring institutional action against him. The Committee finds that Senator McCain took no further action after the April 9, 1987 meeting when he learned of a criminal referral.

    Levin notes the typical McCain hypocrisy:

    McCain was the only Republican implicated in the Keating Five scandal, yet today he lectures his party and his president about “the corrupting influence” of money in politics. He rails against the so-called “wealthy special interests” and their ability to buy access to elected officials, yet this is precisely what the Keating Five scandal was all about. And, of course, under McCain’s current standard, a politician who takes a principled position that may benefit a donor is corrupt, even if no law has been violated.

    The John McCain of old should be thankful that his political fate wasn’t determined by John McCain the reformer.

    Now come on, tell me all about what a raving leftwing loon Mark Levin is.

    Your laughable “innocent of any wrongdoing” boils down to a whitewash from his fellow boodlers, and even they couldn’t cover up the play-for-pay nature of McCain’s relationship with Keating. They just papered over the McCain payoffs for the bribes he received from Keating by pretending there were “other reasons” for the two-way boodle-bagging.

    Convenient, that.

  • SDN
    October 14th, 2008 | #3

    Right back at ya, Bill:

    Jonah Goldberg, Lefty

    Moreover, McCain’s penance was unwarranted. As we’ve come to learn, McCain’s implication in the Keating Five was a craven and cynical effort by Democrats to give the scandal a patina of bipartisanshp.

    Also

    Robert Bennett, a Democrat who investigated the Keating Five affair for the Senate Ethics Committee, explained why this is a non-story:

    “I investigated John McCain for a year and a half…and if there is one thing I am absolutely confident of, it is John McCain is an honest man. I recommended to the Senate Ethics Committee that he be cut out of the case, and there was no evidence against him.”

    And—for the umpteenth time—McCain was exonerated by the Democrat-led investigation.

    Exonerated

    But Senator McCain was the only Republican embroiled in the affair, and Democrats on the panel would not release him, even at the urging of his friend Mr. Rudman, who was then a senator and the senior Republican on the committee.

    ‘’McCain was going to remain their Republican hostage, no matter what,'’ Mr. Rudman wrote in his memoir, ‘’Combat.'’ The ethics investigation took two years to complete, which taught Mr. McCain he could not rely on the go-along-get-along ethos of the Senate in an era of growing partisan rancor.

    Now admittedly this NYT article dates from 1999, when Maverick was still their boy, and you’ll get no argument from me that Maverick is a horseshit sandwich…. but if the alternative is pure-quill Commie, pass the mustard.

    And of course, Levin is one of those “conservatives” who look down their long noses at Sarah Palin… she doesn’t have the country-club membership….

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