It's been out for a while, but still cannot be mentioned enough. Project Censored, a media research and analysis group based at California's Sonoma State University has released the 25 Most Important Stories that are completely ignored by the mainstream media. They are:

#1. Over One Million Iraqi Deaths Caused by US Occupation
# 2 Security and Prosperity Partnership: Militarized NAFTA
# 3 InfraGard: The FBI Deputizes Business
# 4 ILEA: Is the US Restarting Dirty Wars in Latin America?
# 5 Seizing War Protesters’ Assets
# 6 The Homegrown Terrorism Prevention Act
# 7 Guest Workers Inc.: Fraud and Human Trafficking
# 8 Executive Orders Can Be Changed Secretly
# 9 Iraq and Afghanistan Vets Testify
# 10 APA Complicit in CIA Torture
# 11 El Salvador’s Water Privatization and the Global War on Terror
# 12 Bush Profiteers Collect Billions From No Child Left Behind
# 13 Tracking Billions of Dollars Lost in Iraq
# 14 Mainstreaming Nuclear Waste
# 15 Worldwide Slavery
# 16 Annual Survey on Trade Union Rights
# 17 UN’s Empty Declaration of Indigenous Rights
# 18 Cruelty and Death in Juvenile Detention Centers
# 19 Indigenous Herders and Small Farmers Fight Livestock Extinction
# 20 Marijuana Arrests Set New Record
# 21 NATO Considers “First Strike” Nuclear Option
# 22 CARE Rejects US Food Aid
# 23 FDA Complicit in Pushing Pharmaceutical Drugs
# 24 Japan Questions 9/11 and the Global War on Terror
# 25 Bush’s Real Problem with Eliot Spitzer

My local Air America station (San Francisco's Green960) is working with Project Censored to cover these stories in a continuing series. You can listen to their coverage of the #25 story on Spitzer now, and check back for updates of other stories.

I

Big news just hit the fan for McCain. I knew this was a bogus Drudge story when it came out that she refused medical treatment for her wounds. I've been through enough these last few years and know the pain would have been incredible and anyone of us would have begged for a doctor immediately. Well, it looks like the McCain campaign has their fingers all over this phony volunteer attack story and that's big trouble for him.

John McCain's Pennsylvania communications director told reporters in the state an incendiary version of the hoax story about the attack on a McCain volunteer well before the facts of the case were known or established -- and even told reporters outright that the "B" carved into the victim's cheek stood for "Barack," according to multiple sources familiar with the discussions.

John Verrilli, the news director for KDKA in Pittsburgh, told TPM Election Central that McCain's Pennsylvania campaign communications director gave one of his reporters a detailed version of the attack that included a claim that the alleged attacker said, "You're with the McCain campaign? I'm going to teach you a lesson." Verrilli also told TPM that the McCain spokesperson had claimed that the "B" stood for Barack. According to Verrilli, the spokesperson also told KDKA that Sarah Palin had called the victim of the alleged attack, who has since admitted the story was a hoax...read on

This should hurt McCain severely. As FOX's Executive VP, John Moody said:

If the incident turns out to be a hoax, Senator McCain’s quest for the presidency is over, forever linked to race-baiting.

For Pittsburgh, a city that has done so much to shape American history over the centuries, another moment of truth is at hand.

Bozell's operation ran with it and attacked the media. "Obama Supporter Maims McCain Volunteer, Will Media Care?"
Now I ask the question. Since McCain's camp was involved in trying to promote this race baiting attack story against Obama, will the media care? Let's hope so.

UPDATE: If this doesn't discredit Drudge also then what will? He was obviously fed this story by Republicans from either the RNC or McCain's campaign.

And who told Sarah Palin to call Ashley Todd?

Jon Stewart goofs on Palin's $150,000 makeover and notes that she has a bunch of other expensive and questionable things that need explaining.

"Sarah Palin was born in a small town, but she doesn't shop in one."

How do you spend $150,000 on clothes in two months? What did you buy? The original "Thriller" jacket off eBay?

The McCain campaign ducks David Schuster's questions about how power lobbyist William Timmons, was involved in a lobbying effort on behalf of Saddam Hussein in the early 1990s “to ease international sanctions against his regime,” by saying there are no lobbyists in McCain's camp. I kid you not.

...we’ve had no associations with any lobbyists on our campaign

Murray Waas has the video posted...

Here's the 13 minute documentary on John McCain's involvement in the Keating 5. Obama is finally forcing this scandal out in the open where journalists have remained virtually mum on the topic. Chris Cillizza of the Washington Post says:

While the "Keating Five" has occasionally come up in McCain's political career, it has never been an issue that has caused him any significant agita. McCain, who was cited for poor judgment but nothing else by the Senate Ethics Committee, has pointed to his experience with the "Keating Five" as his spur to pushing for campaign finance reform and the limitation of money in campaign politics.

The "Keating Five" episode has the potential -- we repeat, potential -- to cast a pall over that McCain as maverick image. The more people see McCain as just another politician, the worse chance he has of making a comeback in the final month of the campaign.

As Billmon notes, McCain developed his phony Maverick image because of the scandal.

In a sense, the scandal marked the birth of the McCain "brand," because unlike the other four of the Five, he stood up in the Senate and more or less admitted he was guilty (not nearly as guilty as the others, he hastened to point out – but still, he felt bad about what he had done.) This went over really big with the media ("Senator admits guilt" outranking even man bites dog on the news-o-meter.

I find it appalling that the media has ignored McCain's involvement in this scandal and then helped brand him a Maverick in the process. You would think that after the economic meltdown we are experiencing the Villagers would make it public finally, right? Wrong. Cillizza is correct to say that this could hurt McCain in the final thirty days. It should, but he's wrong when he brings up the Hannity type attacks on Obama as a sort of even exchange. I wish the journalists would stick to solid facts and not idiot associations put ut by a desperate campaign. C&L and many others have been pushing this out there and finally it's getting the attention it deserves. In response to this documentary, the McCain campaign said that bringing up this scandal is a hit job:

Speaking to reporters on a conference call, John Dowd, a partner at the powerhouse lobbying/consulting firm Akin Gump Strauss Hauer & Feld LLP, painted the Keating investigation as a "political smear job" led by Democrats who needed to make the issue a bipartisan embarrassment rather than own it themselves.

Ben Smith says:

I'd always thought McCain's great strength in defending the Keating affair was that he'd acknolwedged making a huge mistake, and spent his career repenting by recasting himself as a reformer.

So when his campaign puts his lawyer on the line with reporters to contest the details of a congressional inquiry that, largely, let McCain off the hook, doesn't that cloud the sin-confession-atonement dynamic a bit?

I'm sorry, the market is in the tank and we can't take the chance of turning over our economy to John McCain because we know what the result will be. With the Phill Gramm's of the world hanging on his coattails and calling us "a nation of whiners," another catastrophe is headed our way while this one sinks us to new lows.

Ruh roh.

Seven Alaska state employees have reversed course and agreed to testify in an abuse-of-power investigation against Republican vice presidential nominee Sarah Palin.[..]

Lawmakers subpoenaed seven state employees to testify in the inquiry but they challenged those subpoenas. A judge rejected that challenge last week. Because of that ruling, Alaska Attorney General Talis Colberg says the employees have decide to testify.

AP is reporting that Todd Palin, while still not agreeing to testify under oath, has agreed to speak to investigator Timothy Petumenos. Another investigation into Troopergate (launched by the Alaska Legislature) is scheduled to release their findings this Friday, unless successfully stayed by the McCain/Palin campaign.

For pastors to endorse McCain is kind of hilarious because they hate him almost as much as liberals do, but something should be done about this.

Defying a federal law that prohibits U.S. clergy from endorsing political candidates from the pulpit, an evangelical Christian minister told his congregation Sunday that voting for Sen. Barack Obama would be evidence of "severe moral schizophrenia."  Johnson and 32 other pastors across the country set out Sunday to break the rules, hoping to generate a legal battle that will prompt federal courts to throw out a 54-year-old ban on political endorsements by tax-exempt houses of worship.

The ministers contend they have a constitutional right to advise their worshipers how to vote. As Johnson put it during a break between sermons, "The point that the IRS says you can't do it, I'm saying you're wrong."

They want this to be an issue. Just remove their tax free status (preceded by a lengthy, expensive audit) and be done with it for all those that break the law.  

More at Project Fairplay, which specifically targets these abuses by churches and pastors. 

Murray Waas, has a new piece out in the Atlantic that doesn't look real good for the President Bush or his former Bushie AG---Alberto Gonzalez:

The Justice Department is investigating whether former Attorney General Alberto Gonzales created a set of fictitious notes so that President Bush would have a rationale for reauthorizing his warrantless eavesdropping program, according to sources close to the investigation. <>

In reauthorizing the surveillance program over the objections of his own Justice Department, President Bush later claimed to have relied on notes made by Gonzales about a meeting that had taken place the day before (March 10), in which Gonzales and Vice President Cheney had met with eight congressional leaders—also known as the “Gang of Eight”—who receive briefings about covert intelligence programs. According to Gonzales’s notes, the congressional leaders had said in the meeting that they wanted the surveillance program to continue despite the attorney general’s refusal to certify that it was legal.<>

But four of the congressional leaders present at the meeting say that’s not true; they never encouraged the White House to sidestep the objections of the attorney general and continue the program without his approval...read on

Forgeries for FISA....

OK, it's not like we didn't know about it, but it's still horrifying.

  Download | play   Download | play (h/t Heather)

Senior Bush administration officials held a series of meetings in the White House in 2002 and 2003 to discuss allowing the CIA to use harsh interrogation methods on Al Qaeda detainees, according to a written statement Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice recently provided to Senate investigators. Rice's written response to investigators on the Senate Armed Services Committee marks the first time a high-ranking White House official has formally acknowledged the White House discussions, which led to the CIA's use of waterboarding and other coercive methods...read on

Alex Gibney, the Academy Award winning director of  "Taxi to the Dark Side" discusses this revelation with Rachel Maddow.

As FOX News tries to link Obama to all sorts of ridiculous things, Jonathan Alter makes a good point with KO.

ALTER: [Y]ou remember the Keating Five scandal that he was a part of, which, by the way, it's crazy but there's been very little about it in the press in the last few weeks. And McCain thinks he's getting a hard time, he's really getting a free ride on the fact that he was in the middle of the last great financial scandal in our country. But his reaction to that, you would have thought, would have been more regulation of the financial services industry. Instead he moved forward on campaign finance reform after being caught in that scandal, but did nothing - nothing -to try to prevent another savings and loan crisis from happening down the road. He was missing in action when it came to even learning the basic lessons of a scandal that he said taught him all kinds of things that he would never forget. 

Doesn't the media believe this is a relevant story being that we're in a huge economic meltdown? Can you imagine the media scrutiny if a Democratic politician had been linked to this scandal and ran for President? A new movie called Third Term will be released soon which goes into detail about the whole Keating5---John McCain connection. Please read this post (with video) if you missed it and then start demanding that the media cover McCain's past connection to the Keating 5 scandal and and see if the American people want him to lead them out of the economic chaos we're facing today...It was the biggest S&L scandal in American history at that time...

NARRATION: All of this corporate influence should remind you a bit of a previous tale in the McCain saga, his involvement with the Keating 5. Charles Keating was a sort of mentor of John McCain, donating vast sums of money to his senate campaigns. 

Continue reading »

  Scott Pelley of 60 Minutes asked John McCain if he regretted helping the deregulation of Wall Street back in 1999 and McCain said no because it helped grow our economy to where it is today. Yes, that's his story and he's sticking to it. It helped out economy so much that President Paulson is asking for 700 billion dollars with no strings attached to save McCain's economy that is a step away from turning into another great Depression. Is he kidding me? We have another Enron type scandal on our hands in the financial markets only this scandal is on Super steroids. Paul Krugman shares a few thoughts with on us...

Download | play   Download | play (h/t Heather)

Pelley: In 1999 you were one of the senators who helped pass deregulation of Wall Street. Do you regret that now?

McCain: No, I think the deregulation was probably helpful to the growth of our economy.

McCain has been an advocate of deregulation most of his career, but Thursday he endorsed the biggest bailout in history - a plan for the government to take on the bad debts of financial institutions.

 "We're gonna take over these bad loans. We're gonna take over these bad - these bonds and we're gonna keep you alive. And we're gonna have the taxpayer help you out. But when the time comes and the economy recovers then anything that's gained back is gonna go to the taxpayers first. I'm not saying this isn't gonna be messy. And I'm not saying it isn't gonna be expensive. But we have to stop the bleeding," the senator said.

Pelley: But why would you let the Wall Street executives...

 McCain: I'm not.

 Pelley: ...sail away on their yachts and leave this on the American taxpayer?

 McCain: Well, it's not the greedy Wall Street people that I worry about, although I am, like most Americans, frankly, enraged. It's basically a Ponzi scheme, as you know, that sooner or later was gonna collapse. And I'd like to get that money back from them. But we've gotta fix the average citizen who's the innocent bystander that is in danger of losing their pensions, their 401(k)'s, their IRAs. Their very life savings are at risk here. 

He doesn't worry about the greedy Wall Street people. They had nothing to do with it in McCain's mind. They did it because it was raining one day and they got a little bored. My God, please help us. A basic tenet of Conservatism is deregulation. Sorry Sully, yes, you've been conned...Get rid of all the rules that corporations have to follow, which in most cases cuts back on their profits so they can have an unfettered hand to do what they like without consequences. The end result is what we have now. A complete meltdown of our financial institutions.

It's also geared to destroy the New Deal and keep all the acquired wealth of the nation in only a very select group of people and corporations so they can have complete control of our nation. They all say how much they hated England back in the day, but that's what they really want. Kings and Queens and Dukes, oh my! A ruling class of moneychangers while the rest of us bow down to their awesome power.

   Who's the elitist again?

When you have seven homes, that's a lot of garages to fill. After the fuss over the number of residences owned by the two presidential nominees, NEWSWEEK looked into the candidates' cars. And based on public vehicle-registration records, here's the score. John and Cindy McCain: 13. Barack and Michelle Obama: one.

One vehicle in the McCain fleet has caused a small flap. United Auto Workers president Ron Gettelfinger, an Obama backer, accused McCain this month of "flip-flopping" on who bought daughter Meghan's foreign-made Toyota Prius. McCain said last year that he bought it, but then told a Detroit TV station on Sept. 7 that Meghan "bought it, I believe, herself." (The McCain campaign did not respond to multiple requests for comment.)

Obama's lone vehicle also is a green machine, a 2008 Ford Escape hybrid. He bought it last year to replace the family's Chrysler 300C, a Hemi-powered sedan. Obama ditched the 300C, once 50 Cent's preferred ride, after taking heat for driving a guzzler while haranguing Detroit about building more fuel-efficient cars.

If John McCain owns seven houses, well that's a lot of garage space for cars to take so we all could relate, right? After all, he can't just leave the garages empty.   HuffPo has a slideshow of McCain's rides

John McCain, the elitist that you can't believe in...

I want to thank the the people from Progressive Accountability who have produced the new movie, "Third-Term," which revisits John McCain's role in the Keating 5 scandal of the '80s and see a direct connection to his approach and the people that surround him in today's economy as he runs for President.

Download | play   Download | play

NARRATION: It's the same thing that's happening now, as banks fail, and as our housing market collapses. And the people responsible for this new crisis are the ones McCain has surrounded himself with, men like Phil Gramm and his banking lobbyists. He will offer the same kind of deregulatory policies that led to the banking collapse of the early ‘90s.

It will be available on Sept. 25th to the public.

NARRATION: All of this corporate influence should remind you a bit of a previous tale in the McCain saga, his involvement with the Keating 5. Charles Keating was a sort of mentor of John McCain, donating vast sums of money to his senate campaigns. 

DAVID DONNELLY: Charles Keating helped out Senator McCain a lot in the early part of his career. ... Senator McCain was the closest of any of the Keating Five to Charles Keating.

NARRATION: But Keating was in trouble. His company, Lincoln Savings and Loan, was making a lot of risky investments, and the government was investigating.

ANDREA MITCHELL: Keating raised $1.3 million for them. They challenged regulators who were investigating his operations. 

NARRATION: So Keating called some of his old pals in the Senate to put a little pressure on the government regulator and get them off his back. McCain accepted.  

NARRATION: Lincoln collapsed, leading to a bailout of $2.8 billion in taxpayer money. Keating went to prison for four years. McCain was only chastised on the Senate floor.

The recent meltdown in the financial markets has rocked the country and as usual, required our government to pony up billions of tax payer dollars to try and rescue the corporate fat cats in Wall Street in the financial sector.  It was also the reaction to the credit markets that caused the bailout of AIG to occur as swiftly as it did. So John McCain was implicated in the biggest S&L scandal of its time back in '80s --The Keating 5-- and yet HE accuses Barack Obama of not doing enough in today's nightmare. He had the nerve to say this:

Continue reading »

    Former CIA third in command and indicted Cunningham bribery scandal co-conspirator Kyle "Dusty" Foggo is threatening to out agents, secret programs and Bush administration skeletons in an attempt to ward of a possible jail sentence on 30 counts of fraud, conspiracy and money laundering.

Prosecutors say Foggo has threatened "to expose the cover of virtually every CIA employee with whom he interacted and to divulge to the world some of our country's most sensitive programs - even though this information has absolutely nothing to do with the charges he faces."

Prosecutors also allege his lawyers are seeking to introduce classified evidence to "portray Foggo as a hero engaged in actions necessary to protect the public from terrorist acts" to gain sympathy from jurors.

Foggo's efforts to disclose classified information are "a thinly disguised attempt to twist this straightforward case into a referendum on the global war on terror," wrote prosecutors Valerie Chu, Jason Forge and Phillip L.B. Halpern in a court motion filed Friday in U.S. District Court in Alexandria.

The government wants U.S. District Judge James Cacheris to hold a closed hearing on whether the information is admissible at trial and if it is relevant to Foggo's case.

Desperate much? It's amusing to see the Bush administration panic on this one - especially after all their own thinly disguised attempts to make every issue they could think of a "a referendum on the global war on terror". "Dusty" knows where the bodies are buried on everything from Negroponte's South American death squads to Iraq procurement corruption and if he starts singing who knows where it could end.

But what's truly revealing is the way Foggo only believes in national security up until the point where its his own neck on the line. How Republican of him.

Wow

Government officials handling billions of dollars in oil royalties partied, had sex with and accepted golf and ski outings from employees of energy companies they were dealing with, federal investigators said Wednesday.

The alleged transgressions involve 13 former and current Interior Department employees in Denver and Washington. Their alleged improprieties include rigging contracts, working part-time as private oil consultants, and having sexual relationships with - and accepting golf and ski trips and dinners from - oil company employees, according to three reports released Wednesday by the Interior Department's inspector general.

The investigations reveal a "culture of substance abuse and promiscuity" by a small group of individuals "wholly lacking in acceptance of or adherence to government ethical standards," wrote Inspector General Earl E. Devaney, whose office spent more than two years and $5.3 million on the investigation. "Sexual relationships with prohibited sources cannot, by definition, be arms-length," Devaney said.

The reports describe a fraternity house atmosphere inside the Denver Minerals Management Service office responsible for marketing oil and natural gas that energy companies barter to the government in lieu of cash royalty payments for drilling on federal lands. The government received $4.3 billion in such royalty-in-kind payments last year. The oil and gas is then resold to energy companies or put in the nation's emergency stockpile. ...read on

UPDATED: Charlie Savage has much more at the NY Times.

 In three reports delivered to Congress on Wednesday, the department's inspector general, Earl E. Devaney, found wrongdoing by a dozen current and former employees of the Minerals Management Service, which collects about $10 billion in royalties annually and is one of the government's largest sources of revenue other than taxes. "A culture of ethical failure" besets the agency, Mr. Devaney wrote in a cover memo.

The reports portray a dysfunctional organization that has been riddled with conflicts of interest, unprofessional behavior and a free-for-all atmosphere for much of the Bush administration's watch. The reports portray a dysfunctional organization that has been riddled with conflicts of interest, unprofessional behavior and a free-for-all atmosphere for much of the Bush administration's watch...read on
 (h/t Murray W)