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John McCain has always been completely full of shit, but over the past decade, many people jumped on the 揝traight Talk Express. He appeared to be a refreshing change from all the other politicians who constantly lied. The big problem with this scenario is that McCain has always been a slimy politician and has never actually changed his ways, only the marketing of his brand. He was forced to do so because in the late 80s, his influence peddling led to American taxpayers bailing out Lincoln Savings and Loan for $2 billion. Sound familiar

John McCain is exactly what is not needed at this time in our history. As our government attempts to throw $700 billion at more failed private businesses, everyone should understand what McCain did during the Savings and Loan Crisis. To put it simply, Johnny pressured regulators to back off Lincoln Savings, even though it was making risky moves. Eventually, Lincoln was seized, many investors were out their life savings and taxpayers were footing the bill of $2 billion. Lincoln抯 owner, Charles Keating was arrested.

Lincoln was the most expensive failure in the national S&L scandal. Taxpayers picked up the bill for the bailout.

In January 1993, a federal jury convicted Keating of 73 counts of wire and bankruptcy fraud in the collapse of American Continental and Lincoln. Keating was sentenced to 12 years and seven months in prison but served just 50 months before the conviction was overturned on a technicality. In 1999, at age 75, he pleaded guilty to four counts of fraud. He was sentenced to time served.

Johnny and Keating went way back. They met in 1981 at a Navy League dinner. During McCain抯 first run for Congress, Keating pulled in a sweet $11K for Johnny. In 1983, he hosted a $1000 plate dinner for McCain, and in 1986, he brought in a nice $50K for Johnny抯 Senate run. By the time 1987 rolled around, Keating had tossed $112,000 to McCain.

And those were just the political contributions. McCain抯 family also was doing business and traveling on the Keating credit card.

Keating was no ordinary constituent to McCain.

On Oct. 8, 1989, The Arizona Republic revealed that McCain’s wife and her father had invested $359,100 in a Keating shopping center in April 1986, a year before McCain met with the regulators.

The paper also reported that the McCain抯, sometimes accompanied by their daughter and baby-sitter, had made at least nine trips at Keating’s expense, sometimes aboard the American Continental jet. Three of the trips were made during vacations to Keating’s opulent Bahamas retreat at Cat Cay.

McCain also did not pay Keating for some of the trips until years after they were taken, after he learned that Keating was in trouble over Lincoln. Total cost: $13,433.

And it paid off.

While in the House, McCain, along with a majority of representatives, co-sponsored a resolution to delay new regulations designed to curb risky investments by thrifts such as Lincoln.

McCain and four other Senators, who became known as the Keating Five, even went to meet with San Francisco regulators in an attempt to get them to back off American Continental and Lincoln. In the end, to the great frustration of regulators, the savings was not seized for another two years. During that time, much damage was done.

Of course, these are the pre-maverick years we are talking about. Since then, McCain has changed his ways and become a straight shooter. Or, to put it another way, he re-branded himself as a man who learned from his mistakes and would therefore always approach his duties differently. People bought it, even though it was complete bullshit. The bullshit re-branding was the only way for McCain to survive as a politician. He was the sober alcoholic, the clean drug addict, the asshole who found Jesus. And it worked.

But McCain has never stopped being the slimy politician that he is. Here抯 a pick of Johnny meeting with con man Raffaello Follieri, on a yacht in Montenegro two years ago. It was Johnny抯 birthday! What better way to spend it than on a boat with a criminal!

A few months after McCain’s yacht party, Follieri strengthened his ties to McCain’s orbit by retaining Rick Davis’s well-connected Washington lobbying firm, Davis Manafort, and offering Davis both an investment deal and help in securing the Catholic vote for McCain’s presidential bid.

Sweet. That抯 some serious straight shooting and mavericking. Oh, and Follieri pleaded guilty to conspiracy to commit wire fraud, eight counts of wire fraud and five counts of money laundering last week.

Alright, you抮e saying, that抯 just McCain and a foreign con man. Could have happened to anyone, right Yep. Just the same way campaign manager Rick Davis happened to head up a Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac lobbyist group called Homeownership Alliance.

Which the Wall Street Journal reported had a website creed of being dedicated to: “exposing and defeating trends that would harm consumer access to the lowest-cost mortgage option.” The group viewed as threats those who are “seeking to spread unfounded fears about risks to the housing system.”

You can say what you want about free-market distortions, but people like the system because it gets them into houses cheap,” notes [Rick] Davis, who will run an advocacy group called the Homeownership Alliance

So, Johnny抯 campaign manager WAS the problem. But he抎 love you to believe something else.

For years, Congress failed to act and it is deeply troubling that what we are seeing is an exercise in crisis management rather than sound planning, and at great cost to taxpayers.

We promise the American people that our administration will be different. We have long records of standing up to special interests/p>

Right. Standing up to special interests is what McCain is all about. That抯 why he was one of the Keating Five and has Davis as his campaign manager. That抯 why his campaign is overflowing with lobbyists, 83 to be exact. Naturally, some have connections to Fannie and Freddie Mae.

Aquiles Suarez, listed as an economic adviser to the McCain campaign in a July 2007 McCain press release, was formerly the director of government and industry relations for Fannie Mae. The Senate Lobbying Database says Suarez oversaw the lending giant’s $47,510,000 lobbying campaign from 2003 to 2006.

According to the Senate Lobbying Database, the lobbying firm of Charlie Black, one of McCain’s top aides, made at least $820,000 working for Freddie Mac from 1999 to 2004. The McCain campaign’s vice-chair Wayne Berman and its congressional liaison John Green made $1.14 million working on behalf of Fannie Mae for lobbying firm Ogilvy Government Relations. Green made an additional $180,000 from Freddie Mac. Arther B. Culvahouse Jr., the VP vetter who helped John McCain select Sarah Palin, earned $80,000 from Fannie Mae in 2003 and 2004, while working for lobbying and law firm O’Melveny & Myers LLP.

So, as you can see, McCain is getting far away from those same special interests that lead him down that Keating Five road. But that抯 not even the worst of McCain抯 connections. No, the worst is Phill Gramm.

Phil Gramm used to be a Senator. In the year 2000, he used a 揵ackroom maneuver to slip into lawa bill that kept credit default swaps unregulated.

“Nobody in either chamber had any knowledge of what was going on or what was in it,” says a congressional aide familiar with the bill’s history.

Guess how that bill worked out Yes, he抯 one of the main architects of the current financial disaster. Oh, and it also allowed Enron to 搑un rampant. Remember Enron Yeah, that would be Gramm.

He抯 a walking disaster of a human being.

Gramm’s long been a handmaiden to Big Finance. In the 1990s, as chairman of the Senate banking committee, he routinely turned down Securities and Exchange Commission chairman Arthur Levitt’s requests for more money to police Wall Street; during this period, the sec’s workload shot up 80 percent, but its staff grew only 20 percent. Gramm also opposed an sec rule that would have prohibited accounting firms from getting too close to the companies they audited梐t one point, according to Levitt’s memoir, he warned the sec chairman that if the commission adopted the rule, its funding would be cut. And in 1999, Gramm pushed through a historic banking deregulation bill that decimated Depression-era firewalls between commercial banks, investment banks, insurance companies, and securities firms梥etting off a wave of merger mania.

But that doesn抰 stop the Maverick from looking to Gramm for advice.

Sen. John McCain has relied on him for policy advice, especially, according to the campaign, on housing matters.

After Phil Gramm called Americans 搘hinersa couple of months ago during a speech on the economy, he was forced to step down from the McCain campaign. But that does not mean McCain has ruled him out as treasury secretary. Check out McCain spokesman Tucker Bounds on Friday.

Good news. Right now there is one man in America who should not be treasury secretary: Phil Gramm. But McCain can抰 rule him out. If you are a conservative and you vote for McCain, turn in your conservative card. You are living a lie.

If McCain is elected president we are completely fucked.

FearTheReaper is a writer, actor and stand up comedian. Check back each Tuesday, Thursday and Saturday for more from FearTheReaper and read his blog, Stop All Monsters.