MAGA in spite of or because of the RINOs round about!  It’s time for the Ole’ Buzzard to also weigh in with the following:

From a Google search titled “john mccain organized crime Arizona.” Sample results are … John McCain’s Mob Connections —  John Mccain, Mafia ties? — ‘Not a Hero’: John McCain’s family ties to Jewish organized crime syndicates in Arizona  — MCCAIN FORTUNE TRACED TO ORGANIZED CRIME —  Chapter 2 – John McCain and Organized Crime in Arizona —  John McCain, Meyer Lansky, and Organized Crime in Havana  (The foregoing are hyperlinked to their respective articles.)  See also McCain First, Second, And Always — MCCAIN ADVISERS TIED TO FOREIGN LOBBYING  ………………………………

Agents, Investigators, Attorneys, and reporters known to us …  they … having worked in Arizona or on the peripheries … spoke of McCain’s corruption and Organized Crime connections … some almost shouting but many nearly whispering in hesitatingly yet convincingly hushed tones.  s/Wayne L. Wickizer  See bio here https://justice4all.blog/about/

We at the “Ole’ Buzzard’s Blog” call em’ like we’ve seen em’!

Although we doubt we’d align with Dixon’s politics, his article nails it. By Bruce A. Dixon From the Black Agenda Report. Reposted from the Fabius Maximus website

The Manufactured McCain and the Real McCain. There’s a real John Sidney McCain III and there’s a fake one, manufactured for the public relations of US empire. Imperial PR needs to justify, even sanctify the ecocidal and genocidal rule of the rich by portraying its servants not as the venal and bloodthirsty thieves they are, but as the brightest, the best, the most noble and deserving among us. The Manufactured McCain whom the corporate media will spend another week on top of the previous one lifting up to the heavens bears only passing resemblance to the real John McCain. The real McCain was no hero. He was a lying, bribe taking, neo-nazi sympathizing politician and war criminal, who served the US empire and himself for all of his long life. …The real John McCain was born in 1936 in US occupied Panama, which the empire’s law at the time considered an “unincorporated territory of the US.” That’s why McCain never took part in the Republican birther craze, which falsely claims that Barack Obama was born in Kenya, and why the Manufactured McCain never talked much about his birthplace.

The real John McCain spent many childhood summers at Teoc, the 2,000 acre Carroll County Mississippi plantation which belonged to his great great grandfather Dr. William Alexander McCain. The antebellum McCains once owned at least 52 slaves who made their masters quite wealthy raising corn and cotton. There are still black McCains in Carroll County whose ancestors were owned by white McCains with whom they neither claim nor deny any blood kinship. The black McCains hold a family reunion every other year, and though they did invite Senator McCain he never attended.

One of William Alexander McCain’s grandsons made brigadier general in the US Army, and another, Henry Pinkney McCain was a US Army major general. A third of Dr. McCain’s grandsons was Senator McCain’s grandfather, a 4 star US Navy Admiral. His son, Senator McCain’s father was also a 4 star US Navy admiral. Their ancestors include officers in the American Revolutions related to the family of George Washington.

Despite the real McCain’s military-aristocratic lineage and those childhood summers on the plantation, the Manufactured McCain campaigning for president in 2000 ridiculously claimed he didn’t think his family had ever owned any slaves. Reporters had to produce with the names and descriptions of 52 McCain plantation slaves before the Manufactured McCain acknowledged his family had been slaveholders. “It makes sense… I didn’t know that,” he reportedly said.

The manufactured war hero……. vs. the real accident-prone pilot.

The Manufactured McCain sometimes called himself a “fighter pilot.” That’s not what the US Navy called the Real McCain. In navy language, fighter pilots are the elite of the elite, the ones who fight other planes in the air. The Real McCain flew ground attack aircraft, which in Vietnam meant bombing mostly undefended civilian ground targets.  The real McCain was a slipshod and reckless pilot who totaled 3 aircraft in incidents where navy investigators pinned the cause of the crash upon lapses in pilot’s judgment, in each and every case contradicting the Real McCain’s official reports of those accidents. A 2008 Los Angeles Times article titled “McCain’s Mishaps in the Cockpit” by Ralph Vartabedian and Richard A. Serrano examines the Real McCain’s 3 plane crashes in some detail.  Aircraft are not cheap, and it’s hard to believe any military on earth allows pilots with three at-fault plane crashes to keep his wings. That is, unless you’re US Navy royalty, the son and the grandson of admirals.  Decades later, as a politician writing one or another version of his autobiography the Manufactured McCain was more truthful, describing a 1961 incident in which he flew into power lines in southern Spain causing a local blackout, as “daredevil clowning.” He managed to bring the plane back to the carrier that time, trailing ten feet of power line, so that didn’t count among the Real McCain’s at-fault plane crashes.  McCain was assigned to Yankee station off the coast of North Vietnam where he took part in Operation Rolling Thunder, the US code name for 31 months of the bombing of Vietnam, Laos and Cambodia and killed tens of thousands of civilians at the very least. McCain flew 27 ground attack missions before being shot down in October 1967 trying to bomb a Hanoi power plant.  Many have argued that bombing undefended civilian targets is a war crime. That’s certainly the way the Vietnamese viewed the matter, and they subjected the already seriously injured McCain and other downed US pilots to close confinement and torture. His own mistreatment during 5 years as a prisoner of war was the reason why Senator John McCain would later publicly disagree with 21st century US policy that publicly embraced the idea of torture.  When the Vietnamese discovered that McCain was US Navy royalty, they sensibly offered him early release ahead of pilots captured before him. Just as sensibly, he refused the offer, and the manufactured narrative of John McCain as the heroic prisoner of war began to be established, and since has been added to many times by his own writing and speeches and by others connected to actual events and not. Released after five and a half years imprisonment, he was already a kind of celebrity.

McCain remained in the Navy several years after his release. His final Navy assignment was US Navy liaison to the Senate. During this time he divorced his first wife and married Cindy Hensley, daughter of one of the biggest beer distributors in the country. Hobnobbing with politicians and military contractors seemed to suit him, so he left the navy in 1981, as Jeff Gates put, cashing in his war hero chits to start a political career.The Manufactured McCain:….. the straight talking war hero as venal bribe taking politician.

The Manufactured McCain: ….. the straight talking war hero as venal bribe taking politician.

While still in the Navy McCain had campaigned for Ronald Reagan vigorously enough to earn warnings from his superiors, and to be a frequent guest of honor at Reagan dinners. He moved to Arizona to campaign for Congress. According to Jeff Gates’ book Guilt by Association: How Deception and Self-Deceit Took America to War, his wife received a gift of $689,000 from her wealthy family just before or at the beginning of his congressional run, which probably enabled him to lend his own campaign $167,000. McCain’s prenuptial agreement allowed him to omit his wife’s multimillion dollar income and holdings from public financial disclosures.  Fresh from his insider stint as Reagan’s favorite dinner guest Navy liaison to the Senate he campaigned as the straight talking political outsider and war hero, winning election in 1982 and again 1984. As expected, Arizona senator Barry Goldwater, who’d been the 1968 Republican presidential candidate retired in 1986 and McCain won the seat.

Among the early investors in McCain’s political career was a Phoenix millionaire Charles Keating who got in on the ground floor. According to Gates in the aforementioned book: “Keating family members and employees made 40 donations to his first congressional campaign, at least 32 to his second… no less than 45 when ran for the Senate in 1986…“The McCains made 9 vacation trips on a jet owned by Keating’s company including… trips to Keating’s posh resort in the Bahamas. Only after the S&L scandal years later did McCain reimburse Keating…“McCain’s wife and father in law invested $359,000 in a Keating shopping mall deal. Their profit remains unknown.”  In 1984 Keating bought a California savings and loan with 26 branches. Under Presidents Carter and Reagan, restrictions on how and what savings and loan institutions could invest had been repeatedly loosened.  Keating was one who pushed even these limits and purchased legislators by the pocketful to sometimes meet directly with federal regulators to argue his case. The so-called Keating Five were a handful of senators receiving $1.3 million in contributions, of which McCain got $112,000. They met with federal regulators on a number of occasions, and according to one regulator, argued Keating’s case like defense lawyers. Republican John McCain was one of these, along with Democrats John Glenn and Alan Cranston and two others.  A few years later, 1,038 Savings and Loan institutions went belly-up, causing the savings of hundreds of thousand to vanish overnight, and the fund which supposedly insured them unable to cover the losses. The $150 billion savings and loan scandal was the biggest financial crisis in recent history till the crash of 2007-2008 and bribes paid to the real McCain were directly instrumental to making it happen.

McCain was to spend 32 years in the Senate, and became the go-to guy for a galaxy of military contractors, telecoms, Big Ag, Big Real Estate, Big Pharma, Big Energy and more, and the Manufactured McCain ran for president in 2000 and 2008.

From 1992 till weeks before his death John McCain served as chairman of the International Republican Institute, a US government-funded organization that interferes in the political processes of scores of other countries, training rebel groups to overthrow inconvenient elected governments, like that of John Bertrand Aristide in Haiti, Hugo Chavez in Venezuela and many others.  McCain and the IRI were prominent backers of neo-nazi politicians and armed militia groups in Ukraine who are now part of that country’s army and civilian government.  To be fair, the Obama administration and Democrat Hillary Clinton were big backers and enablers of the same forces.  After all this is the US, where we do have two government parties to choose from, not just one as in some backward and benighted places.

Democrats and many in the so-called resistance are throwing flowers at the grave of John McCain. It’s a bipartisan thing.  During his 32 years in the US Senate, the real John McCain was a consistent warmonger, advocating US military intervention in Africa, South America, Korea, and almost everywhere. He sang “bomb bomb bomb, bomb bomb Iran” before a veterans group, and called demonstrators against Henry Kissinger “despicable scum.” The record of his public calls for coups, invasions, blockades, bombings and assassinations to advance US military and economic domination of the planet is far too long to list.  All this explains why corporate media are lifting up their whitewashed and manufactured version of John McCain. He’s one of their own, a genuine war criminal and loyal servant of capital. Lifting him up, creating and embellishing his heroic story lifts up and legitimizes the rule of the rich. Now they’ll be looking for parks, schools and airports to name after him. Just as the elementary school in Aaron McGruder’s “Boondocks” was named after J. Edgar Hoover, we’ll soon see John McCain’s name staring back at us from what little public property is left. Get ready for it.

Another perspective on the late John McCain “Do NOT Let Them Make A Saint Of This Asshole” by Caitlin Johnstone. Excerpt…“One of the most aggressively protected narratives in corporate liberal circles is that John McCain is a hero whose very name should be uttered with the greatest reverence. It gets traction with rank-and-file Democrats because supporting McCain for his opposition to Trump allows them to feel as though they are non-partisan free thinkers, in exactly the same way Trump supporters believe their hatred of McCain makes them non-partisan free thinkers. In reality, McCain is just one of the many bloodthirsty neocons like Bill Kristol and Max Boot who have aligned themselves with the Democratic party in recent years in order to better advance their warmongering agendas.”

About Bruce A. Dixon   “A habitual troublemaker and incorrigible activist, Bruce Dixon has been comforting the afflicted and afflicting the comfortable since 1968. “As a rank and file member of the Black Panther Party in 1969-1970, a 1970s rank-and-file union activist in a string of factories, plants and workplaces, a 1980s community organizer in what were then some of the nation’s poorest neighborhoods, to organizing and consulting through the 1990s Dixon has built an impressive record of service in and to the cause of human liberation.  “In 2002 he began writing articles for Black Commentator, the predecessor of this publication, and broke the first accurate analyses of the phenomena around the election of Denise Majette over Cynthia McKinney in Georgia that year.”

In 2006, Dixon co-founded Black Agenda Report, and now serves as a managing editor. He currently resides in Marietta GA, and is a member of the state committee of the Georgia Green Party. See his Twitter feed. See his articles at the BAR, especially these …The Top 10 Things Black America Will Have To Show For 8 Years of President Obama — None of Them Are Good.  What Would An Authentic 21st Century US Left Look Like? — “Let’s face it, the US left is a long way right now from contending for power.”On Magical Thinking VS Sober Analysis of the Ocasio-Cortez Victory in NY — “Being the only sober guy at a victory party isn’t fun.”Obama and Democrats Share the Blame For Trump’s Supreme Court — “We can’t blame Trump and the Republicans alone for the Supreme Court. Democrats had a big hand in it too.”Black Agenda Report “

“Do NOT Let Them Make A Saint Of This Asshole” AUGUST 24, 2018 AUTHOR: by CAITLIN JOHNSTONE

“Our strategy should be not only to confront empire, but to lay siege to it. To deprive it of oxygen. To shame it. To mock it. With our art, our music, our literature, our stubbornness, our joy, our brilliance, our sheer relentlessness – and our ability to tell our own stories. Stories that are different from the ones we’re being brainwashed to believe.” ~ Arundhati Roy

John McCain’s family has announced that the Arizona Senator has opted to end treatment for brain cancer and live out his final few days in peace, presumably under the best hospice care money can buy. And I sincerely hope that it is peaceful. My statements about my desire for John McCain to shuffle off this mortal coil sooner rather than later have been highly publicized, and I stand by all of them, but I don’t wish him a painful or agitated end.

And, also, I am going to keep hammering on how very important it is that we refuse to bow to the aggressive demands from establishment loyalists that we be respectful of this warmongering psychopath and his blood-soaked legacy.

McCain is at the top of the trends list on Twitter in the US as I write this, and clicking on his name brings up countless blue-checkmarked establishment loyalists from both sides of the imaginary partisan divide sternly admonishing us all to put aside our differences and show reverence for this brave, noble hero in his final days. They are using guilt, sympathy and patriotism to bully their followers into showing reverence for a man who has dedicated his entire political career to facilitating the violent slaughter of human beings at every opportunity, and in so doing they are sanctifying his legacy.

One of the most aggressively protected narratives in corporate liberal circles is that John McCain is a hero whose very name should be uttered with the greatest reverence. It gets traction with rank-and-file Democrats because supporting McCain for his opposition to Trump allows them to feel as though they are non-partisan free thinkers, in exactly the same way Trump supporters believe their hatred of McCain makes them non-partisan free thinkers. In reality, McCain is just one of the many bloodthirsty neocons like Bill Kristol and Max Boot who have aligned themselves with the Democratic party in recent years in order to better advance their warmongering agendas.

It is those agendas that are being promoted with the hero worship of John McCain. By committing the outrageous heresy of mocking, ridiculing and scorning that sacred cow, we are fighting the attempts of the empire loyalists and war propagandists to normalize and sanctify the act of inflicting neoconservative military bloodbaths upon innocent people around the world.

If you want to see a world with more and more John McCains, with more and more US wars of aggression and regime change interventionism, then by all means play right along with his public beatification. If you want to see a world where neoconservative war whores are treated with the revulsion, disdain and rejection they deserve, then now is your chance to help create that world. Refuse to be shamed and guilted into polite silence and move in the exact opposite direction from where the establishment shepherds are herding you.

You don’t have to be as brash about it as I am if that’s not your cup of tea. But now, while they are telling us that we are not permitted to speak about McCain’s unforgivable record of facilitating military bloodshed in Iraq, Syria, Libya and elsewhere, it is precisely the time to speak. By publicly disrupting the narrative of McCain’s sanctification, we make it harder for the war propagandists to manufacture consent for more war. It really is that simple.

So just look at the emotional environment that the empire lackeys are trying to create, and create the exact opposite, loudly and without apology. Fight the seriousness and solemnity with mockery and ridicule. Fight the reverence and hero worship with irreverence. The more people see this being done, the harder it will be to shame and bully everyone into playing along with the normalization and celebration of a career that is drenched in the blood of children. By making it clear in the most irreverent ways possible that you are happy to see McCain go, you are giving others permission to step outside of the lines they’re being herded into, and you are helping to create a world where murderous warmongers are marginalized instead of celebrated.

You will be told that you do not have permission to say such things. You have permission to say such things. You will be told that you are being impolite to John McCain’s family. The families of mass murderers are not entitled to our politeness. You will be told that you are making yourself look bad. Creating a world where neoconservative war whores experience an appropriate amount of rejection is more important than looking good. Kill their propaganda narratives with mockery and irreverence and help usher in a new world where it is no longer considered okay to be a psychopathic neocon.

Let death get its wish. Let death die so that life may live. So long, John McCain, you despicable death cultist. I wish you and everyone like you a peaceful, painless, permanent end.  by CAITLIN JOHNSTONE

Addendum:

Editorial credit: Gino Santa Maria / Shutterstock.com
John McCain was a far more interesting, colorful and controversial man than most Americans and no journalists know. If you saw the Sunday political shows you would think a saint had passed on. John McCain was a man driven by two ghosts: His father and grandfather. Both were four-star Admirals in the US Navy so John’s appointment to the US Naval Academy was his destiny, but John McCain graduated 894th in his class of 899 students. He was known for being wild, chasing young women. He was in a student group calling themselves “The Bad Bunch.”
John married Carol Shepp, a swimsuit model who had been married to one of his classmates with whom she had two children. She and McCain were parents of a daughter in that marriage. At heart a playboy, John was soon bored with domestic life and as advancement was more likely in the military services in combat he requested active duty in Vietnam. While there Carol faithfully stayed at home looking after the children.
His plane was shot down in 1967 when he ignored mission instructions to stay above 15,000 feet he went “down on the deck” and was shot down, survived and became a Prisoner Of War, POW.
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Trending: McCain was a Tale of Two Men
On Christmas Eve 1969, Carol and slid head-on into a telephone pole taking gifts to friends. She was thrown from the car through the front window. Her legs, spine, and right arm were crushed and she was in the hospital for six months. Ross Perot was an advocate of POW’s and paid her extensive medical bills. She requested John not be told feeling he had enough to deal with.
McCain was released in 1973 and returned home to much fanfare. Carol’s several surgeries cost her five inches in height, and she gained weight. McCain told reporters he was overjoyed to see Carol again. But friends said he was appalled by the change in her appearance.
As a war hero, McCain moved in elevated circles. Reverting to his old ways he started “running around with women.” according to Robert Timberg, a retired Marine, journalist, and author of four books, including “John McCain: An American Odessy.”
McCain admitted he started having many girlfriends and affairs during this time. On one trip to Hawaii, at a cocktail party. he met Anheuser Busch distributor heiress, Cindy Hensley. She was 17 years younger than McCain and worth $100 million dollars. He invited her to have drinks with him at the Royal Hawaiian Hotel. He said by the end of the evening he was in love.
They had an affair for nine months, while he was still married to and living with his wife Carol. McCain wanted to marry Cindy but needed to get a divorce. He and Carol separated in January 1980. He requested a divorce in February; the divorce was sped along and granted in April. John and Cindy married five weeks after the divorce was final on May 17, 1980. Carol and their children were devastated. McCain callously left his first wife and children behind. He and Cindy moved to Arizona. Cindy’s father was well-connected and helped McCain move smoothly into Congress representing Arizona in Washington DC. John McCain has been in Congress since 1983.
McCain’s new wife and her family were extravagantly wealthy. Her father was one of the largest distributors of Anheuser Busch in the country and she an only child. The divorce settlement afforded Carol McCain full custody of their three children, alimony, child support, including college tuition, houses in Virginia and Florida, and lifelong financial support for her continuing medical treatment from the car accident.
Carol said the reason for the divorce was John turned 40 and he wanted to be 25 again. Carol was extremely hurt. She went to work as the press assistant for soon-to-be First Lady Nancy Reagan. She was respected in Washington and kept a dignified silence about the way John McCain had treated her.
Some of the McCain friends were less forgiving, however. They portray the politician as a self-centered womanizer who effectively abandoned his crippled wife to “play the field.” They accuse him of finally settling on Cindy, a former rodeo beauty queen with a barn full of money.
Ever the opportunist, John McCain ran as a Republican, but spoke, voted and collaborated as a Democrat. No wonder all the national television shows treated John McCain as a modern saint. He was not, but we can understand the “ants in his pants.” He lived haunted by his father and grandfather. Two bona fide war heroes.
Ross Perot paid her medical bills years ago, says both Carol McCain and the American people have been taken in by a man who is unusually slick and cruel, even by the standards of modern politics. Perot said, “McCain is the classic opportunist. He’s always reaching for attention and glory.”
Cindy has also had to learn the lessons about her husband the hard way. Even though she and McCain put on a perfect front for the public, especially when he is running for office, she is an invisible wife.
Tom Gosinski, who served as the Director of Cindy McCain’s nonprofit American Voluntary Medical Team, AVMT wrote in his journal of the McCain marriage: “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. Her 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-indulgence. She became addicted to Percocet and had a doctor prescribing them for her illegally. When her parents learned she was taking them, they helped her stop.
Washington rumors were saying McCain had an inappropriate relationship with the young and lovely lobbyist, Vicki Iseman. Ms. Iseman began visiting McCain’s offices and campaign events so frequently in 2000 that his aides were “convinced the relationship had become romantic.” One staff member supposedly asked, “Why is she always around?”
His staff members began a campaign to “save McCain from himself” by restricting Iseman’s access to McCain during the year 2000 Presidential Primary. According to the Washington Post, McCain’s political advisor John Weaver met with Iseman at Washington’s Union Station to tell Iseman not to see McCain anymore.
It is not a real marriage between John and Cindy McCain. Real marriages involve living together. McCain and Cindy have not “lived” together for 20 years. To defend this, McCain brags the family takes two vacations together every year and Ms. McCain is the one who has always made that happen.”
Two vacations per year! Little of this man was real. He had no compassion or empathy for anyone except himself. The only real thing emotion he was capable of was anger. He is famous for his anger.
His father and grandfather were both decorated Navy Admirals. He was given special privileges and extreme preferential treatment while he served in the Navy. He was a pilot but according to his colleagues, he was a very bad pilot. He actually crashed three planes. There was a horrendous incident that happened on his aircraft carrier, the U.S.S. Forrestal, that killed 134 men. There has been a rolling debate since the incident and some are convinced John McCain was responsible.
Witnesses reported McCain attempted a “wet start.” When a pilot wants to be a show-off, with a “wet start” his engine start creates a large startling flame and lots of surprise noise from the rear of a jet engine on startup. McCain did the “Wet Start.” The flames torched the launch of a Zuni rocket on the plane behind him. Zuni rockets were notorious for problems. It shot across the carrier’s deck hitting other parked planes that were packing 1,000 high-explosive pound bombs which exploded. Destruction and fire went several decks below and nearly sunk this major 82,000 ton U.S. aircraft carrier.
This stunt caused the death of 134 sailors and blew off arms, legs, and caused blindness and burns to another 161 sailors. McCain jumped from his plane, rolled across the flames, and escaped. He watched the men dying and the burning from a closed circuit television on the ship.
The ship off line for two years in port for $76 million dollars of major repairs, not including the cost of the airplanes or ammunition. Any other Navy pilots causing this type of death and destruction would have been arrested and still be in prison, but not John McCain III. McCain was not even reprimanded. When there is a cover-up, the soldier is usually simply assigned to another ship. McCain was quietly assigned to another ship. There is an ongoing debate about the incident to this day.
John McCain’s lack of character was further demonstrated when he voted not to repeal Obamacare. He ran his 2016 Senatorial race under the banner he would lead the fight to repeal Obamacare! But, he hates Donald Trump so very much he gleefully held his thumb down for his vote rather than give a thumb up. He laughed afterward saying, “Let’s see Donald Trump save America now!”
John McCain there stabbed his constituents and the citizens of America in the back. John McCain, Liberal Socialist Hero!
The opinions expressed in this commentary are solely those of the author and are not not necessarily either shared or endorsed by iPatriot.com.
—
God Bless! Have a good day.
Tony & Edee
tekmo2@gmail.com

“Our strategy should be not only to confront empire, but to lay siege to it. To deprive it of oxygen. To shame it. To mock it. With our art, our music, our literature, our stubbornness, our joy, our brilliance, our sheer relentlessness – and our ability to tell our own stories. Stories that are different from the ones we’re being brainwashed to believe.”
— Arundhati Roy in “Confronting Empire”, 27 January 2003.

MAGA