Seems Sarah Palin wants to toss mud and wants us to remember that Barack Obama once had a very causal relationship with 60’s radical Bill Ayers, and she is now saying Obama is “palling around with terrorists who would target their own country."

Her reference was exaggerated at best if not outright false. No evidence shows they were "pals" or even close when they worked on community boards years ago and Ayers only hosted one political event for Obama early in his career.

Now I think Palins attack was unsubstantiated and clearly carried a very racially tinged subtext; she is trying to send out a post-9-11 America message to "Joe Six Pack", that terrorists are dark-skinned radical Muslims, not the homegrown student radical of 40 years ago.

Bad Sarah… Bad Sarah…

But I think Sarah Palin needs to remember that a few of us out there also remember something called the Keating 5.


For those of you who may have forgotten this little piece of history, the Keating Five was a political scandal, in which five U.S. senators were implicated in an influence-peddling scheme.

It was named for Charles Keating, who headed Lincoln Savings and who made $300,000 as political contributions to them in the 1980s.

Three of those senators – Alan Cranston (D-CA), Don Riegle (D-MI), and Dennis DeConcini (D-AZ) – found their political careers cut short as a result. Two others – John Glenn (D-OH) and John McCain (R-AZ) – were rebuked by the Senate Ethics Committee for exercising "poor judgment" for intervening with the federal regulators on behalf of Keating.

Yes that’s right, it was a banking scandal, where 23,000 mostly elderly investors lost their life savings, that lead the 1990-1991 economic recession and had a lot of parallels to the sub prime mortgage crisis currently hitting our country now.

Now in that one McCain, along with John Glenn got off with a slap on the wrist because no one wanted to diminish American Hero’s. You see when it comes to scandals, it pays to be an Ex POW or the first man to orbit the Earth.

But According to the Los Angeles Times, "McCain was the only one of the five senators with close personal ties to Keating." McCain and Keating had become personal friends following their initial contacts and McCain was the closest socially to Keating of the five senators. McCain also considered Keating a constituent as he lived in Arizona and between 1982 and 1987, McCain had received $112,000 in political contributions from Keating and his associates. In addition, McCain's wife Cindy McCain and her father Jim Hensley had invested $359,100 in a Keating shopping center in April 1986, a year before McCain met with the regulators.

McCain and his family also made nine trips at Keating's expense, sometimes aboard Keating's jet. Three of the trips were made during vacations to Keating's opulent Bahamas retreat at Cat Cay that were valued by the FBI at $13,433. McCain did not pay Keating for these trips until years after they were taken, and only after he learned that Keating was in trouble over Lincoln.

Because of these connections, Phoenix New Times in 1989 stated McCain was the "most reprehensible" of the five.

Wanna throw mud Sarah? Then I would get ready to be up to your knees in it if I were you.

Paula Brooks lives in the Outer Banks of North Carolina with her partner, their twin daughters and her hearing helper dog, where they own and operate a vacation home rental business. You can visit her Blogger profile here.

Posted by Paula Brooks at 4:57 AM