some how my message here was blocked, i had to resign up too to the group, weird

in reference to the article i posted the other day
(http://www.madcowprod.com/02272008.html) about McCain flight note the
following. see below under
*Pressure on the FCC*

*Is John McCain a Liar? *

One of the pressing questions for American voters as they look toward
the formal nomination of McCain as the Republican presidential
candidate is whether he is a phony who's long been protected by his
gilded reputation or whether he suffers from severe – or at least
convenient – memory loss

By *Robert Parry*.

*29/02/08 "**MEO*
<http://www.middle-east-online.com/ENGLISH/?id=24499>*" -- -- I*n
journalism, it's a safe bet that if you write a story with the
suggestion that a prominent male politician is bedding an attractive
female lobbyist, whatever other point you hoped to make will be
overlooked.

That appears to have been the case with the New York Times article on
Feb. 21, which led with suspicions held by some McCain staffers that
the Arizona senator had gotten too cozy with lobbyist Vicky Iseman.
The Times story then veered off into a historical examination of
McCain's over-confidence about his own moral rectitude.

Yet, despite the Times' best efforts to explore this complicated
history of McCain as both ethics sinner and ethics reformer, the
public and pundits never got much past the sex angle, an insinuation
that McCain, 71, and Iseman, 40, both adamantly denied.

Thus, McCain succeeded in deflecting the story's more significant
question: Is McCain's reputation as a straight-talking politician a sham?

Put differently, is the presumptive Republican presidential nominee –
like Colin Powell – a media darling whose reputation for honesty is
largely undeserved? The question is not an insignificant one.

In 2003, Secretary of State Powell exploited his sterling image to
help mislead the nation into the Iraq War. [For details on Powell, see
our book Neck Deep.] Now, McCain hopes his "straight-talk-express"
appeal will help keep US troops in Iraq indefinitely.

So, there's urgency for Americans to know whether John McCain is a
sanctimonious phony and a self-assured liar, who's just masquerading
as the guy who tells it like it is and disdains the self-serving ways
of Washington.

*Evidence of Lies*

Though no new evidence has surfaced about McCain and Iseman as a
romantic item, McCain's blanket denial about assisting Iseman and
other lobbyists is fast disintegrating.

As we noted in an article on Feb. 21, McCain's assertion in response
to the Times article -- that during his quarter-century congressional
career, he "has never violated the public trust, never done favors for
special interests or lobbyists" -- just isn't true.

For instance, the Times story recalled how McCain helped one of his
early financial backers, wheeler-dealer Charles Keating, frustrate
oversight from federal banking regulators who were examining Keating's
Lincoln Savings and Loan Association.

At Keating's urging, McCain wrote letters, introduced bills and pushed
a Keating associate for a job on a banking regulatory board. In 1987,
McCain joined several other senators in two private meetings with
federal banking regulators on Keating's behalf.

Two years later, Lincoln collapsed, costing the US taxpayers $3.4
billion. Keating eventually went to prison and three other senators
from the so-called Keating Five saw their political careers ruined.

McCain drew a Senate reprimand for his involvement and later lamented
his faulty judgment. "Why didn't I fully grasp the unusual appearance
of such a meeting?" he wrote in his 2002 memoir, Worth the Fighting For.

But some people close to the case thought McCain got off too easy.

Not only was McCain taking donations from Keating and his business
circle, getting free rides on Keating's corporate jet and enjoying
joint vacations in the Bahamas – McCain's second wife, the beer
fortune heiress Cindy Hensley, had invested with Keating in an Arizona
shopping mall.

In the years that followed, however, McCain not only got out from
under the shadow of the Keating Five scandal but found a silver lining
in the cloud, transforming the case into a lessons-learned chapter of
his personal narrative.

McCain, as born-again reformer, soon was winning over the Washington
press corps with his sponsorship of ethics legislation, like the
McCain-Feingold bill limiting "soft money" contributions to the
political parties.

However, there was still the other side of John McCain as he wielded
enormous power from his position as chairman of the Senate Commerce
Committee, which helped him solicit campaign donations from
corporations doing business before the panel.

*Pressure on the FCC*

The Times story suggested that McCain did favors on behalf of Iseman's
lobbying clients, including two letters that McCain wrote in 1999 to
the Federal Communications Commission demanding that it act on a
long-delayed request by Iseman's client, Florida-based Paxson
Communications, to buy a Pittsburgh television station.

In the furious counter-offensive against the Times article, McCain's
campaign issued a point-by-point denial, calling those letters routine
correspondence that were handled by staff without McCain meeting
either with Paxson or anyone from Iseman's firm, Alcalde & Fay.

"No representative of Paxson or Alcalde & Fay personally asked Senator
McCain to send a letter to the FCC," his campaign said.

But that turned out not to be true. Newsweek's investigative reporter
Michael Isikoff dug up a sworn deposition from Sept. 25, 2002, in
which McCain himself declared that "I was contacted by Mr. Paxson on
this issue. … He wanted their [the FCC's] approval very bad for
purposes of his business. I believe that Mr. Paxson had a legitimate
complaint."

Though McCain claimed not to recall whether he had spoken with
Paxson's lobbyist [presumably a reference to Iseman], he added, "I'm
sure I spoke to [Paxson]," according to the deposition. [See
Newsweek's Web posting, Feb. 22, 2008]

McCain's letters to the FCC, which Chairman William Kennard criticized
as "highly unusual," came in the same period when Paxson's company was
ferrying McCain to political events aboard its corporate jet and
donating $20,000 to his campaign.

After the Feb. 21 Times article appeared, McCain's spokesmen confirmed
that Iseman accompanied McCain on at least one of those flights from
Florida to Washington, though McCain said in the 2002 deposition that
"I do not recall" if Paxson's lobbyist was onboard.

First Amendment lawyer Floyd Abrams, who conducted the deposition in
connection with a challenge to the McCain-Feingold law, asked McCain
if the benefits that he received from Paxson created "at least an
appearance of corruption here?"

"Absolutely," McCain answered. "I believe that there could possibly be
an appearance of corruption because this system has tainted all of us."

*Sticking to the Story*

When Newsweek went to McCain's 2008 campaign with the seeming
contradictions between the deposition and the denial of the Times
article, McCain's people stuck to their story that that the senator
had never discussed the FCC issue with Paxson or his lobbyist.

"We do not think there is a contradiction here," campaign spokeswoman
Ann Begeman told Newsweek. "It appears that Senator McCain, when
speaking of being contacted by Paxson, was speaking in shorthand of
his staff being contacted by representatives of Paxson. Senator McCain
does not recall being asked directly by Paxson or any representative
of him or by Alcalde & Fay to contact the FCC regarding the Pittsburgh
license transaction."

That new denial, however, soon crumbled when the Washington Post
interviewed Paxson, who said he had talked with McCain in his
Washington office several weeks before McCain sent the letters to the FCC.

The broadcast executive also believed that Iseman had helped arrange
the meeting and likely was in attendance. "Was Vicki there? Probably,"
Paxson said. [Washington Post, Feb. 23, 2008]

A day earlier, the Post also noted the discrepancy between a central
tenet of McCain's campaign – his denunciation of lobbyists and the
corrupt revolving-door ways of Washington – and his reliance on
lobbyists for his congressional work and his campaign.

"When McCain huddled with his closest advisers at his rustic Arizona
cabin last weekend to map out his presidential campaign, virtually
every one was part of the Washington lobbying culture he has long
decried," the Post reported on Feb. 22.

In its article about McCain and Iseman, the New York Times also noted
that in 2001, McCain helped found a non-profit organization called the
Reform Institute supposedly to advance McCain's signature cause of
political ethics.

But the institute drew much of its funding from companies trying to
ingratiate themselves with McCain and his Commerce Committee. Though
denying any impropriety, McCain severed his ties to the Reform
Institute in 2005 because of the "bad publicity."

So, one of the pressing questions for American voters as they look
toward the formal nomination of McCain as the Republican presidential
candidate is whether he is a phony who's long been protected by his
gilded reputation or whether he suffers from severe – or at least
convenient – memory loss.

McCain also may have learned some tricks from watching his former
rival, George W. Bush, whose tendency to lie grew increasingly brazen
after 9/11.

As Commander in Chief for a nation at war, Bush brushed aside
questions about his statements not squaring with the facts: From his
insistence that waterboarding is not torture to Saddam Hussein not
letting the UN inspectors in. [See, for instance, Consortiumnews.com's
"Bush's Favorite Lie."]

Since McCain as Commander in Chief would ensure that the United States
remains at war for the foreseeable future, he might expect a Bush-like
pass when his words diverge almost 180 degrees from the facts. Endless
war will justify endless lies.

Or maybe he just believes his own press clippings – that he is such a
straight-talker that whatever comes out of his mouth must be the truth.

Robert Parry broke many of the Iran-Contra stories in the 1980s for
the Associated Press and Newsweek. His latest book, /Neck Deep: The
Disastrous Presidency of George W. Bush /, can be ordered at
neckdeepbook.com <http://www.neckdeepbook.com/>. His two previous
books, /Secrecy & Privilege: The Rise of the Bush Dynasty from
Watergate to Iraq/ and /Lost History: Contras, Cocaine, the Press &
'Project Truth'/ are also available there. Or go to Amazon.com
<http://www.amazon.com/Neck-Deep-Disastrous-Presidency-George/dp/1893517020/ref=ed_oe_h/105-6934069-6141258?ie=UTF8&qid=1189519378&sr=8-1>.