Top Ten Crooked Things About McCain From This Phoenix Alt-Weekly Article
Do you have time to read a 45-page-long first-person alt-weekly newsfeatureabout John McCain's long life of being a political crook in Arizona and how everyone there fears and hates him? Of course not! Lucky for you, Wonkette has a team of offshore article readers, in Bangalore, who go through this stuff and whittle it down to a simple Top Ten list. You are welcome for this Service Journalism.
1. Back in 1994 when this reporter was doing a feature on McCain, she went to his house before dawn, for some reason, and Cindy was doing a whole fake routine of cooking eggs for the kids, even though it was still nighttime.
2. Sometimes John McCain would be a guest host on talk radio, and he'd be polite to the callers but then say terrible stuff about them, off the air.
3. Before that whole campaign-finance reform stunt, McCain was totally against any changes to the campaign-finance system, and in fact repeatedly voted against reforms in the 1980s.
4. This is because he got all his money from lobbyists and corporations, especially the crooked Savings & Loan run by McCain's best friend, Charles Keating, who would also take McCain on sexy free vacations to the Bahamas, which Keating owned.
5. Ha, nobody even remembers the Keating Five scandal anymore, even though the GOP candidate for president was one of the Five senators deeply involved in the crooked Savings & Loan scandal, which almost destroyed America forever and wound up costing taxpayers $125billiondollars.
6. Cindy's dad the Budweiser Brewery kingpin also has special dealings with Keating.
7. When Rose Mofford, a nice old Democrat lady who was Arizona's secretary of state, wound up serving out Ev Mecham's term as governor -- the whackjob Mecham was forced out of office in 1988 -- McCain conspired to shame Mofford during a brief appearance before Congress. Asked why, he cackled and said, "I'll embarrass a Democrat any time I get the chance." Minutes later, he swears to reporters that he'd "never do anything like that."
8. McCain is always mentioning Arizona's political greats, as if he's one of them, too. But Arizonans say McCain shouldn't even be allowed to talk about Barry Goldwater, beloved conservative senator, and Mo Udall, beloved liberal congressman. "It drives some people here nuts. Particularly those who know, or knew, all three men."
9. Goldwater distanced himself from McCain once it became clear that Arizona's new senator was a conniving little crook. After being scammed into attending a McCain fundraiser disguised as a "tribute" to Reagan, Goldwater insisted that McCain give half the take to the state GOP party, but of course it didn't happen. "You will recall during my speech at the dinner for the president in Phoenix, I announced that you were going to give half of the funds you raised to the State Republican Party," Goldwater wrote to McCain. "I am told by the Party, that you still owe them $35,000, and unless you pay all of it, or most of it, they cannot meet their payroll next Wednesday."
10. The guy who worked for Cindy's charity and caught her stealing a million pills wrote this in his journal, at the time: "During my short tenure at AVMT, I have been surrounded by what on the surface appears to be the ultimate all-American family. In reality, I am working for a very sad, lonely woman whose marriage of convenience to a U.S. Senator has driven her to: distance herself from friends; cover feelings of despair with drugs; and replace lonely moments with self-indulgences."
Baker's Dozen Bonus No. 11.And now RNC private investigators are chasing that guy, Tom Gosinski, even though he long ago moved to another state and started a totally different career and has had nothing to say about the McCains since the pill-addict scandal, which he only told the DEA about because he was scared of going to prison if he covered up Cindy's opiate scandal.
Postmodern John McCain: the presidential candidate some Arizonans know — and loathe [Phoenix New Times]