It's About to Get Ugly.

It's widely understood and in fact totally conceded by his own campaign that McCain loses badly if the narrative remains on the economy. It's also agreed to that John McCain has started off on the only track that remotely gives him a chance to win- go dirty, in a big, big way.

Nothing is off the table, according to the McCain campaign. What's interesting is the media reaction to this so far. Most stories seem to preface anything of "substance" in the article with an admission that McCain has set his pitbull loose and it's all a political ploy.

But if McCain is purposely loosing the hounds, he's going to have a pack of wolves on him before you can say Keating Five. Contrary to the current situation, in the primaries Hillary Clinton never purposefully played up the Rev Wright controversy, and never once mentioned Bill Ayers, which is why we never heard about Whitewater or any of the other dirt on Hillary.

The purpose of today's post is a side by side comparison of the associations you'll be hearing about so much in the next couple weeks.

Obama, from the Washington Times
Barack Obama: William Ayers

Today, Mr. Ayers is a university professor and a member of Chicago's intellectual establishment. Forty years ago he was a member of the Weather Underground, a radical group that claimed responsibility for a series of bombings, including at the Pentagon and U.S. Capitol.

Mr. Ayers was a fugitive for years with his wife, fellow radical Bernadine Dohrn. But after surrendering in 1980, the charges against Mr. Ayers were dropped because of prosecutorial misconduct.

Mr. Obama and Mr. Ayers served together on the board of a Chicago charity and were co-panelists on at least two academic panel discussions and an academic testimonial — two of them at the University of Chicago. In the mid-1990s, when Mr. Obama first ran for office, Mr. Ayers hosted a meet-the-candidate session for Mr. Obama at his home.

John McCain: The Reform Institute

Following his failed presidential bid in 2000, McCain needed a vehicle to keep his brand alive. He founded the Reform Institute, which he set up as a 501(c)(3) nonprofit — a tax status that barred it from explicit political activity. McCain proceeded to staff the institute with his campaign manager, Rick Davis, as well as the fundraising chief, legal counsel and communications chief from his 2000 campaign.

There is no small irony that the Reform Institute — founded to bolster McCain's crusade to rid politics of unregulated soft money — itself took in huge sums of unregulated soft money from companies with interests before McCain's committee. EchoStar got in on the ground floor with a donation of $100,000. A charity funded by the CEO of Univision gave another $100,000. Cablevision gave $200,000 to the Reform Institute in 2003 and 2004 — just as its officials were testifying before the commerce committee. McCain urged approval of the cable company's proposed pricing plan.

Barack Obama: Jerimiah Wright

I think we are all up to speed here, which is why you've not heard anything about him in months: it's not news. Ironically, Sarah Palin's pastor was recently quoted as warning of God "striking out his hand against... the United States of America" and "rais[ing] up" an alliance of nations to ruin America. (Full Text)

John McCain: Charlie Keating (paraphrased from the awesome mini-McCain biography)

Charlie Keating, the banker and anti-pornography crusader, would ultimately be convicted on 73 counts of fraud and racketeering for his role in the savings-and-loan scandal of the 1980s. That crisis, much like today's subprime-mortgage meltdown, resulted from misbegotten banking deregulation, and ultimately left taxpayers to pick up a tab of more than $124 billion. Keating, who raised more than $100,000 for McCain's senate race, lavished the first-term congressman with the kind of political favors that would make Jack Abramoff blush. McCain and his family took at least nine free trips at Keating's expense, and vacationed nearly every year at the mogul's estate in the Bahamas. There they would spend the days yachting and snorkeling and attending extravagant parties in a world McCain referred to as "Charlie Keating's Shangri-La." Keating also invited Cindy McCain and her father to invest in a real estate venture for which he promised a 26 percent return on investment. They plunked down more than $350,000.

McCain did the bidding of his major donor, Charlie Keating, whose financial empire was on the brink of collapse. Federal regulators were closing in on Keating, who had taken federally insured deposits from his Lincoln Savings and Loan and leveraged them to make wildly risky real estate ventures. If regulators restricted his investments, Keating knew, it would all be over.

In the year before his Senate run, McCain had championed legislation that would have delayed new regulations of savings and loans. Grateful, Keating contributed $54,000 to McCain's Senate campaign. Now, when Keating tried to stack the federal regulatory bank board with cronies, McCain made a phone call seeking to push them through. In 1987, in an unprecedented display of political intimidation, McCain also attended two meetings convened by Keating to pressure federal regulators to back off. The senators who participated in the effort would come to be known as the Keating Five.

"Senate historians were unable to find any instance in U.S. history that was comparable, in terms of five U.S. senators meeting with a regulator on behalf of one institution," says Bill Black, then deputy director of the Federal Savings and Loan Insurance Corporation, who attended the second meeting. "And it hasn't happened since."

Following the meetings with McCain and the other senators, the regulators backed off, stalling their investigation of Lincoln. By the time the S&L collapsed two years later, taxpayers were on the hook for $3.4 billion, which stood as a record for the most expensive bank failure — until the current mortgage crisis. In addition, 20,000 investors who had bought junk bonds from Keating, thinking they were federally insured, had their savings wiped out.

McCain was ultimately given a slap on the wrist by the Senate Ethics Committee, which concluded only that he had exercised "poor judgment." The committee never investigated Cindy's investment with Keating.

Barack Obama: Tony Rezko

"Tony" Rezko is a businessman who has helped raise campaign money for Mr. Obama and many other Illinois politicians. He was convicted in June on 16 of 24 counts involving mail fraud, wire fraud, money laundering and aiding and abetting bribery.

The charges have no connection to Mr. Obama, but Rezko is tied to the Illinois senator in other ways.

Rezko and his family donated at least $21,457 to Mr. Obama and helped raise over $200,000 more, though not for his presidential bid. He also advised Mr. Obama on the purchase of a new Chicago home and, in his wife's name, purchased a vacant lot next door to the new Obama home when the seller wanted to dispose of both properties at the same time. Rezko then sold a slice of the property to Mr. Obama.

Mr. Obama has donated Rezko's contributions to charity and says it was a mistake to work with Rezko on buying the house.

John McCain: Phil Gramm

Indeed, if the current financial crisis has a villain, it is Phil Gramm, who remains close to McCain. As chair of the Senate Banking Committee in the late 1990s, Gramm ushered in — with McCain's fervent support — a massive wave of deregulation for insurance companies and brokerage houses and banks, the aftershocks of which are just now being felt in Wall Street's catastrophic collapse. McCain, who has admitted that "the issue of economics is not something I've understood as well as I should," relies on Gramm to guide him.

In a July 9, 2008 interview explaining McCain's plans in reforming the U.S. economy, Gramm explained the nation was not in a recession, stating, "You've heard of mental depression; this is a mental recession," and "We have sort of become a nation of whiners, you just hear this constant whining, complaining about a loss of competitiveness, America in decline."

John McCain: Vicki Iseman

Whatever McCain's romantic entanglements with the lobbyist Vicki Iseman, he was clearly in bed with her clients, who donated nearly $85,000 to his campaigns. One of her clients, Bud Paxson, set up a meeting with McCain in 1999, frustrated by the FCC's delay of his proposed takeover of a television station in Pittsburgh. Paxson had treated McCain well, offering the then-presidential candidate use of his corporate jet to fly to campaign events and ponying up $20,000 in campaign donations.

"You're the head of the commerce committee," Paxson told McCain, according to The Washington Post. "The FCC is not doing its job. I would love for you to write a letter."

Iseman helped draft the text, and McCain sent the letter. Several weeks later — the day after McCain used Paxson's jet to fly to Florida for a fundraiser — McCain wrote another letter. FCC chair William Kennard sent a sharp rebuke to McCain, calling the senator's meddling "highly unusual." Nonetheless, within a week of McCain's second letter, the FCC ruled three-to-two in favor of Paxson's deal.

John McCain: U.S. Council for World Freedom

John McCain sat on the board of the extremist "U.S. Council for World Freedom"...which the Anti-Defamation League said "has increasingly become a gathering place, a forum, a point of contact for extremists, racists and anti-semites".

John McCain: John Hagee

John McCain actively sought the endorsement of by the anti-Catholic, anti-Semitic pastor John Hagee, until he became a political liability in the press.

Consider the following pronouncements on Jews by Hagee, the man who McCain proudly introduced as an ally not too long ago. "It was the disobedience and rebellion of the Jews, God’s chosen people, to their covenantal responsibility to serve only the one true God, Jehovah, that gave rise to the opposition and persecution that they experienced beginning in Canaan and continuing to this very day.
And: How utterly repulsive, insulting, and heartbreaking to God for his chosen people to credit idols with bringing blessings he had showered upon the chosen people. Their own rebellion had birthed the seed of anti-Semitism that would arise and bring destruction to them for centuries to come."

In conclusion, both of these guys have skeletons in their closets, but when you really compare the two, it's obvious that if Obama has a skeleton, McCain has his own terracota army.

More Obama Israel Quotes

Use labs.google.com/inquotes and find anything Anti-Israel that Obama has ever said. Please judge Obama's stance on Israel onwhat he has done for Israel and what he has said instead of email chains and  fake phone calls.

"You don't protect Israel and deter Iran just by talking tough in Washington."

"I strongly condemn President Ahmadinejad's outrageous remarks at the United Nations, and am disappointed that he had a platform to air his hateful and anti-Semitic views. The threat from Iran's nuclear program is grave. Now is the time for Americans to unite on behalf of the strong sanctions that are needed to increase pressure on the Iranian regime." "...join me in supporting a bipartisan bill to increase pressure on the Iranian regime by allowing states and private companies to divest from companies doing business in Iran. The security of our ally Israel is too important to play partisan politics, and it is deeply disappointing that Senator McCain and a few of his allies in Congress feel otherwise."

"I think that a nuclear-armed Iran is not just a threat to us, it's a threat to Israel. It is a game-changer in the region. It's unacceptable. And that is why I've said that I won't take any option off the table, including military, to prevent them (Iranians) from obtaining a nuclear weapon."

"Jerusalem will remain the capital of Israel, and it must remain undivided," 

“throughout my career in the state Legislature, and now in the U.S. Senate, I have been a stalwart friend of Israel. On every single issue related to Israel's security, I have been unwavering, and will continue to be unwavering.”

"I wish Prime Minister Olmert well and have told him how much I admire his pursuit of peace and his staunch defense of Israel's security. I look forward to working closely with Israel's next prime minister to strengthen the U.S.-Israeli partnership, and to advance Israel's security." "...is once again demonstrating that it can handle transition, and we are reminded today that the U.S.-Israeli relationship transcends parties and individual leaders."

The Hack that Wasn't and Why It Matters

First, some brief background on me:

I have two bachelors degrees in Computer Science and Information Systems. I was in IT for about six years before moving into IT management (totally different world!) and for much of my college career was deeply fascinated by hackers, hacking, and all that other immature pointless crap.

Hacking has two motives. First is underground corporate warfare. Until recently, the most damaging computer worms and virii ever to spread through the internet were originally designed specifically to attack another corporation's network, exploit known vulnerabilities, and dash consumer confidence in a bid to wipe out the competition. Second, and this is much more common, is what is commonly known as increasing the size of your "E-Peen". Basically, bragging rights and being funny.

Now that we have that out of the way, I want to definitively tell you that while the motivation to get into Sarah Palin's email account fell into the latter category, it does not fit what we commonly define as a hack. Then I'll tell you what it says about her and the campaign.

Calling what happened to her Yahoo! email account a hack is like calling some guy walking into your open front door breaking and entering. It would be like calling someone who jumped out of a moving car the fastest man on earth. It was not a hack, it was the exploitation of a careless person.

I could have "hacked" Sarah Palin's email account. 

Here's the details. Every free "consumer level" (yahoo, hotmail, aol) email account has a password recovery feature, except gmail, which has a far superior method. Password recovery simply asks you those generic questions you've filled in a hundred times- your favorite pet, the street you grew up on, etc. If you didn't know the details of this before now and are putting two and two together here- yes, your disgust is valid.

Googling is not a hack. All the "hacker" had to do was google basic information about Sarah Palin- her zipcode in Wasila (there are only two zipcodes in Alaska) and where she met Todd Palin. A couple more google searches led him to the answer- Wasila High School. Good times.

We've established that anyone with a little motivation and the idea to do so could have socially engineered this exploit. Now, let's think about what this means.

It was widely known, and controversial, that she even had this email account in the first place. Speculation was brewing that she was using it for official state business to get around any kind of oversight and stay under the radar. That largely turned out to be false- the kid who got into the account admitted he was rifling around for incriminating emails but found none. So, here is the question: You mean to tell me that during the vetting process, during the post-selection hype, during the period of microscopic analysis everyone was heaping on her, even after the email scandal emerged nobody in that campaign thought to make sure that account was secure? Not to mention anyone in the Alaska state government or her cabinet?

It absolutely blows my mind that a campaign of hundreds of expert politicians with secret service oversight, with undoubtedly a small army of IT professionals, web developers, and consultants let that just breeze right over. Or even if someone did point it out, it never got fixed. It is something I would absolutely get fired from my job for.

These people have no idea what they are doing.

I don't expect either Sarah Palin or John McCain to be tech savvy (although you do NOT have to be a pro to know this stuff), but I expect a certain level of professionalism and foresight in a campaign of hundreds. Haven't they seen what happens to celebs and public officials when they aren't careful with their technology? (See: Paris Hilton phone hack) John McCain is going to pick his cabinet largely from the people helping him in his campaign, just like any good old boy.

But, clearly they haven't a clue. 

Heckuva job.