The Company You Keep - An Open Letter (w/ PHOTOS!) To John McCain Concerning "Guilt-By-Association"

Hissyspit

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Tue Oct-07-08 07:26 PM
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The Company You Keep - An Open Letter (w/ PHOTOS!) To John McCain Concerning "Guilt-By-Association"

Edited on Tue Oct-07-08 08:22 PM by Hissyspit

Senator McCain -

There's an old saying. "For a man is for the moost parte condicioned euen lyke vnto them that he kepeth company wythe all." I found it in the 1541 publication of H. Bullinger's 'Christian State of Matrimony,' you can look it up if needed.

What's Up

As we all know, your campaign has made the last-minute, desperate decision to engage in the good old "guilt-by-association" smear tactic. Sarah Palin is serving as front guard in this retread tactic (or strategy, I can never tell the difference), now borne of the flop-sweat state in which the campaign finds itself, circumstances resulting in the tossing out the weakest of Rove-inspired political excrement, like some sad comedian pulling up their last hopeless crumb of a punchline as the audience stares on in saturnine silence.

Palin, this weekend, raised from the dead, quite clumsily, being the clinically narcissistic neophyte that she is, the "Ayers Connection," the SHOCKING REVELATION that the 8-year-old Obama was part of some dramatic early-1970s plot to hijack airliners in attempt to funnel millions of dollars worth of heroin into the United States hoping to subvert the stock market and the telephone monopoly in an attempt to destroy the U.S. Capitol and the American Way of Life. (Um, something like that. Actually, I think the real connection is urban public school reform and community anti-poverty groups, but that's not very interesting, is it?)

The fact that Obama was 7 or 8 years old at the time - I was about 7 or 8 at the time, too, and I remember that I didn't have much of any kind of concept of what the Weather Underground was up to - and that Ayers is a named Distinquished Professor, and that, according to a citation on Wikipedia.org, "internal reviews by The New York Times, The Washington Post, Time magazine, The Chicago Sun-Times, The New Yorker and The New Republic 'have said that their reporting doesn't support the idea that Obama and Ayers had a close relationship'" was conveniently omitted by Palin. She just pleasantly but vapidly repeated her diet of bizarrely slanderous talking-point lines, hoping to 'inspire' reaction from her clueless audience of 20-percenters, baby buzzards gulping down the regurgitate, excited by the code words and sloganeering. (What reaction was it exactly that you wanted, Senator?)

http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=view_all&address=385x207162

Not too long after that, Paul Begala appeared on TV to point out that this might not be a good idea. It might be "Dangerous for McCain to use 'Guilt by Association.'"

http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=view_all&address=385x207142

Begala: "John McCain sat on the board of a very right-wing organization, the U.S. Council for World Freedom. It was chaired by a guy named John Singlaub, who wound up involved in the Iran-Contra scandal. The Anti-Defamation League in 1981, when McCain was on the board, said this about this organization. It was affiliated with the World Anti-Communist League, the parent organization, which ADL said has increasingly become a gathering place, a forum, a point of contact, for extremists, racists, and anti-Semites."

Some Advice

Sen. McCain, please heed Begala's advice! I am worried that you do not realize how much you might hurt yourself. Begala has been kind enough to try and caution you and your campaign about this perilous direction in which you are veering. It may not have occurred to you, someone with the political instincts that put a Sarah "Secession Witch-Hunter" Palin in a position to be the President of the United State, but this CAN backfire on you and you don't want that to happen. Let me explain, and I'll give examples, too.

We all know that the "guilt-by-association" technique is a framing strategy, one way in which to create a 'brand' for the candidate, to tie the word 'terrorist' to the name of a candidate, but the use of the technique itself will often times 'brand' you back, so watch those cattle prods, rancher.

I thought I would sustantiate the risk for you by using pictures of you other people you have associated, so that you fully understand the likely consequences of your campaign's chthonic (look it up on the tubes) behavior. Pictures end up being thrown out into the hyperspace dialogue in all their libelous glory for an eternity of existence, so you may want to contemplate greatly about the risk of those images being shaken loose by your own actions.

Examples

For instance, if you go the "guilt-by-association" route, someone may counter by publicizing something like this:

McCon: Here you are, according to The Nation, hanging out with "Hollywood-type" Anne Hathaway and her indicted con man (well, um, innocent until proven guilty, right?!) boyfriend Rafaello Follieri on 'his' (or someone's) yacht, in 2006. Follieri faces charges he posed as a representative of the Vatican in order to "fleece wealthy investors," according to the Associated Press. Prosecutor Reed Michael Brodsky claims Follieri has misspent up to $6 million dollars of investor money so that he could "live the lifestyle of a multimillionaire." "In short, your honor," said Brodsky, "he is a con man, and he was able to defraud a lot of people out of a lot of money over a long period of time."

Someone who saw this picture might well question why you were hanging with him, Senator.

Or your association-guilt attempt might be countered with the publicizing of something like this:

McKeating:

http://my.barackobama.com/page/m2/55c13561/5016a723/6cbf82c7/1188b9ac/1442891238/VEsH

The video at the link given is all about the background of how you ended up chastised by the Senate Ethics Committee for exercising "poor judgment" in intervening on the behalf of Charles Keating Jr., chairman of the Lincoln Savings and Loan Association. Lincoln collapsed back in 1989 costing taxpayers $2 billion, and the savings and loan debacle, failures, of "scandalous proportion," as Sen. Heflin described it, of 747 savings and loan associations in the U.S., which ultimately cost taxpayers $124 billion. Keating was looting the savings and loan and attempted to have politicians, including you, intervene on his behalf. William Black, a federal banking regulator from the 1980s, says in the video that even now you have not learned the lessons of those years and have "continued to follow policies that are going to create a disaster."

In the photo you are seen wearing a fun hat at a birthday party in the Bahamas and drinking with Keating during a vacation paid for by Keating. "Fraud and betrayal." Don't tempt others to dredge up your past!

McGramm: Guess who else shows up in the video? Your former campaign co-chair, up until July, former Texas Sen. Phil Gramm. "News of Gramm�s involvement as a paid advocate for the banking industry, simultaneous with his unpaid work on McCain�s economic policies, comes as McCain�s campaign continues to reel from the purge of four other lobbyists. Two weeks ago, McCain banned lobbyists from advising him on the same subjects covered by their lobbying work," said MSNBC's Countdown with Keith Olbermann back in May. Conflict of interest, anyone? What is it you like about this guy, Senator?

Gramm was responsible in part for the Gramm-Leach-Bliley Financial Services Modernization Act of 1999, a law that repealed parts of Glass-Steagall. This deregulatory action is considered by many economists as a principle cause of the sub-prime mortgage crisis that is shaking the world economy right now.

The comments that forced Sen. Gramm to step down from your campaign?: "You'be heard of mental depression? this is a mental recession. You just hear this constant whining, complaining... We've sort of become a nation of whiners."

You don't want any voters at all to know about your association with this guy. Really. It wouldn't be fair.

McRenzi: Here we see you all happy with Republican Rep. Richard Renzi, who became the second McCain campaign official to be arrested, when he was indicted on charges of conspiracy, money laundering extortion (!), and wire and insurance fraud relating to land-swap dealings. Again, innocent until proven guilty, right? But watch out whom you hire!

McDavis: Senator John McCain's campaign CEO was paid more than $30,000 a month for five years as president of an advocacy group set up by the mortgage giants Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac to defend them against stricter regulations, current and former officials say.

People might show more photos of your campaign manager, Rick Davis, and Americans will see that your campaign is being run by someone associated with creating the current economic disaster.

Davenport was recruited by McCain's campaign manager, Rick Davis, who has been accused by some current and former McCain advisers of taking insufficient care of McCain's reformer brand by appointing lobbyists to key positions. Doug Davenport and Doug Goodyear of the DCI Group resigned on May 10, 2008, after revelation of DCI's ties to the military junta in Myanmar. Davenport, the regional campaign manager for the mid-Atlantic states, founded the DCI Group's lobbying practice and oversaw the contract with Myanmar in 2002. Goodyear was asked to become convention CEO after campaign manager Rick Davis's lobbying firm partner, Paul Manafort, was nixed because of his own close ties to foreign governments and controversial companies.

Jeez!

McSchmidt: This guy, your senior campaign strategist and advisor, who is generally credited with the low-road turn to your campaign, connects you to both Rove and Cheney. Nasty.

McReagan: Here you are hanging out with the man who, apparently chomping at the bit to do it, personally signed the bill into law that is often credited with creating the environment for the saving and loan fiasco of the late 1980s, the most expensive financial debacle in U.S. history up until, um, well, you know - after all, you've been hanging out with Phil Gramm...

President Reagan helped to insure that the savings and loan crisis was a hallmark of his "era" by signing the Garn-St. Germain Act of 1982, which this article on the origins of the crisis says "was like giving a killer a knife for one last spree before prison: It kept insolvent thrifts open longer while encouraging them to take bad risks. S&Ls were now permitted to invest 90 percent of their assets outside home loans." Reagan, on signing the bill, said "this bill is the most important legislation for financial institutions in the last 50 years... this bill also represents the first step in our administration's comprehensive program of financial deregulation." What is it with you and guys who want to steal from the taxpayers and destroy the economy?

McEvilgrandmother: Yipes! You and Barbara Bush. Say it ain't so that you were anywhere near her 'beautiful mind!'

McBush Senior: Bush daddy pardoned all the Iran-Contra criminals from the Reagan administration. Are you a fierce law-and-order candidate? Why are you hanging with George W's dad?

McGhouliani: Blech. You hang out with THIS guy?

McHannity: Sean Hannity, a couple of weeks ago, yelled at a guest, calling him an idiot, because Hannity believed that the economy is doing great and is not in dire straits. Do you really want to be seen with someone like that? How accurate would it just be to make loose connections like this?

McReilly: O'Reilly encouraged terrorists to target a major American city. You've been on his show. Not good.

McPatriarchal: There is nothing inherently wrong with going to speak with bikers, most of them likely U.S. citizens and voters, but didn't you cut it just a little close to being seen as sleazy sexist wife abuser when you implied that you were going to enter you wife in the Miss Buffalo Chip contest? You're lucky more pictures of the contest can't be found on the Internets. Don't risk this getting out and connected to you ad nauseum!

McHagee: You were glad to have Hagee's support until it came out that he had called the Catholic Church a "great whore," said Katrina occurred as God's judgment against New Orleans for allowing a gay pride parade, and said that the holocaust happened because God wanted the Jews to go to Israel.

McRove: Here's a picture of you with Karl Rove, turd blossom himself. Don't you remember him? He was the one your campaign in 2000 accused of "spreading rumors that you had fathered a child by a black prostitute," and he's the one who - SOME SAY - traitorously outed a C.I.A. agent working on protecting us from weapons of mass destruction. This picture is from the 2004 election campaign. I read somewhere that Rove said that you and he "grew close" during this campaign. You don't want anyone to see this photo and connect you to him no matter what the truth is.

McRice:

Do you want pictures of Condosleazy Rice and John McCain getting out? She doesn't even agree with you on Iraq lately, anyway! This is the woman who said July 30, 2003, in an interview with Gwen Ifill of PBS's NewsHour With Jim Lehrer, that "what we knew going into the war was that this man was a threat. He had weapons of mass destruction. He had used them before. He was continuing to try to improve his weapons programs. He was sitting astride one of the most volatile regions in the world, a region out of which the ideologies of hatred had come that led people to slam airplanes into buildings in New York and Washington." According to the Center for Public Integrity (integrity?) just two days earlier, David Kay, the Bush administration's top weapons inspector in Iraq, had briefed administration officials: "We have not found large stockpiles," he told them." Rice also refused to testify at a hearing of the House Oversight Committee on Iraq corruption and the Blackwater incident.

McLieberman: Look, I know you guys are best buds and you need him around to correct your mistakes and all, but this guy thinks Alberto Gonzales' policy memo on the Geneva Conventions was peachy-keen. "Progressive," he said. Torture and all that.

McRumsfeld: Donald Rumsfeld yuks it up with you in February 2004 as violence in Iraq escalated. What was so funny, Senator? Rumsfeld is the guy who said "we know where (the weapons of mass destruction) are. They're in the area around Tikrit and Baghdad and east, west, south, and north somewhat.... here, there, everywhere. Paul was the more talented Beatle."

McPalin: Is it a good idea to let yourself be seen with this one? She doesn't strike me as too bright. In a 2006 gubernatorial candidate questionnaire, she wrote that she opposes funding sex ed: 'The explicit sex-ed programs will not find my support.' Also, SHE'S UNDER INVESTIGATION for corruption. Someone might connect you two!

McVanKeit: This image comes with its own slandering context attached already. See how this game works?

Sen. McCain, you aren't anywhere in this photo sequence. I just like to look at these pictures of William Kristol getting a pie in the face, so I thought I'd repost them. (Not that anyone should ever condone that kind of behavior...)

McBush:

Speaking of dessert pastries, did you enjoy your cake? I don't imagine it hurts much for you to have this photo out there, because, frankly, it is indelibly burned into most Americans' iconic memory anyway - as are quite a few other photographs of you with our current President, who, I would assume you are aware, is the worst U.S. President ever. Anyway, I think you're o.k. on this one.

...but then there are all the other ones.

Here's that famous one of you with the man who shall go unnamed in which you clearly do not want to be anywhere near the man's armpit. Just why ARE you associating with him?

In Conclusion

Apparently no one has uploaded a picture of you with Singlaub to the Internet, but that doesn't mean it doesn't exist! Keep it under wraps. Looks like you had the good judgment not to have your picture taken with Marylin Shannon, the vice chairperson of the Oregon Citizens Alliance, who you shared a stage with in 1993 as you became the first major politician to address the group. Shannon delivered praise to a woman who had shot an abortion doctor, according to Raw Story: http://rawstory.com/news/2008/McCain_connections_coming_back_to_haunt_1007.html

So, Senator, watch the "guilt by association" stuff. If you keep that Pandora's box shut, damning photos of your interactions with sleazy characters, like those above, may be kept out of the light.

With due respect,

Hissyspit.