Political Cortex: Brain Food for the Body Politic

"Are there not today Republicans of conscience who will coalesce to say to Gov. Sarah Palin and her backers `Stop it.  This vilification is not what the party of Abraham Lincoln is about.'

"And to say to Democrats:  `Stop it.  The Keating Five was then, and this is now.  What we should care about is the lives of Americans in the 21st century.'"

I agree with the "Declaration of Conscience" which maintained the concept of conscience during the McCarthy era, and it should be applied now.

However, I respectfully disagree with the professor's good letter when he stated that Democrats should stop mentioning the Keating Five, of which John McCain was a part of in the eighties up to the early nineties.

I had a home worth around $200,000.  When I tried to sell it, some nearby homes funded by Lincoln Savings, connected to savings and loan fraud Charles Keating, were disposing of their unsold $300,000 homes for $200,000.  That immediately caused my home value to slide down to $160,000.  I could not compete with a bank taking a big loss.

Now, by a timing twist of fate, a similar scenario is happening all over again. Strangely it is former Keating Five member John McCain who is offering an economical governmental bailout to keep people facing foreclosure that is placing me in a similar economic situation.

When I went to sell my current home, I discovered that due to all those sub-prime home loans the banks made, the housing market has not only slowed but overbuilding has slashed home values.

Now if John McCain's billion dollar bailout package would be put into place, I will be reliving the same depressing scenario.  Ninety-four percent of U.S. home buyers pay their monthly mortgages on time, but the 6 percent representing approximately 2,500,000 home owners is bringing down the value and sales prices of the entire market.  

The current descent could plunge further if government printing presses help mortgage delinquencies with a bailout.  Nobody can compete with the treasury printing presses, John!

Diane McWhorter of New York City, author of a Pulitzer Prize winning history of Birmingham's civil rights movement, wrote the following:

"In the 1960s, Gov. George C. Wallace of Alabama, the master demagogue of racial and cultural politics, made an art form of whipping up his audiences against the 'distorted,' 'communistic' national news media and other 'intellectual morons' of the establishment.

"At least he had the courtesy, when addressing his more literal constituents, to send state policemen to stand near the reporters covering his rallies lest the crowd should take him at his word.

"Given the abuse directed at the news media on hand at a recent Palin rally in Florida, including the black network sound man told to 'sit down, boy' (among the more printable names), the Alaska governor may want to think twice about overexciting the old base of George Wallace's 1968 run for president -- though it is not clear that she has his political self-awareness."

William C. Ibershop of Mill Valley, California wrote:

"As the lead federal prosecutor of the Weathermen in the 1970s (I was then chief of the criminal division of the Eastern District of Michigan and took over the Weathermen prosecution in 1972), I am amazed and outraged that Senator Barack Obama is being linked to William Ayers's terrorist activities 40 years ago, when Mr. Obama was, as he has noted, just a child.

"Although I dearly wanted to obtain convictions against all the Weathermen, including Bill Ayers, I am very pleased to learn that he has become a responsible citizen.

"Because Senator Obama recently served on a board of a charitable organization with Mr. Ayers cannot possibly link the senator to acts perpetrated by Mr. Ayers so many years ago.

"I do take issue with the statement in your news article that the Weathermen indictment was dismissed because of 'prosecutorial misconduct.'  It was dismissed because of illegal activities, including wiretaps, break-ins and mail interceptions, initiated by John N. Mitchell, attorney general at that time, and W. Mark Felt, an F.B.I. assistant director."

Now that Gov. Sarah Palin has been accused of "abuse of power" by a state investigating committee, that did some thorough research into the dismissal of a state official who apparently disagreed with her desire to have her sister's husband dismissed from his post as an Alaska state trooper.

With 5 children, one of whom requires special attention, along with her moose killing expeditions and keeping the home fires burning, perhaps vice presidential duties would be overtaxing, and apparently she would have to make sure she did nothing with her increased vice presidential authority that might be construed as an abuse of power.

McCain must likewise never allow himself to get involved with any business partners as untrustworthy as the Keating Five, an enterprise in which he was strongly involved as the senator representing Arizona constituent Charles Keating, the fraudulent operator leading the enterprise.