Opiate for the Mrs.-When laws are broken, somebody’s got to be punished

The Anatomy of a Deception: How The McCains Changed Their Baby Adoption Story Just Before 2008 Campaign Began

huffingtonpost.com

Mark Nickolas

August 21, 2008

 

As was pointed out yesterday by the Christian Science Monitor, the McCain campaign was called out for lying about the purported urging of Cindy McCain by Mother Teresa herself to adopt two children at her orphanage back in 1991. Turns out, McCain never met or even spoke with Mother Teresa on that trip.

Once confronted by the Monitor about the deception, the campaign quickly erased such claims from the website, as it did with Cindy’s family recipes, which were proved to be lifted from the Food Network.

But after doing some research, this deception was no careless accident, but rather another shameless and deliberate attempt by the campaign to reinvent and embellish the McCain family history in time for his 2008 presidential bid.

Here’s how the McCain adoption was described by them prior to the 2008 presidential race:

Newsweek (Nov. 15, 1999, Cindy McCain’s Own Story):

On finding a child while running a relief mission to Bangladesh in 1991:

I was working in Dhaka, and a friend of mine from Arizona had said to me, Look, while you’re there, do me a favor. Mother Teresa has an orphanage in Dhaka. Would you mind seeing if they need any help? And I said, Sure. We finally found the orphanage, and we saw 150 newborns on one floor. And a lot of them were sick. And the nuns said, [This little girl with a cleft palate]–can’t you take her and get her medical help? And I thought, well, sure I can, I can do that.

CNBC (Feb 12, 2000, Tim Russert Interview with the McCains):

Mrs. McCAIN: She’s–our daughter Bridget is eight years old. I found her in Mother Teresa’s orphanage when she was 10 weeks old in Bangladesh. She has a cleft palate; she had some other problems. And the nuns persuaded me to bring her home, and I did. I–I could do that. I was able to do that. And literally on board the flight home from Bangkok to Los Angeles, not having spoken to my husband, I decided I couldn’t c–I had to–I couldn’t let her go. I had–she chose me. So she’s ours now. I came home and presented my husband with a new daughter that he didn’t know he had.

Vanity Fair (November 2004, The Trashing of John McCain):

In 1991, when Cindy McCain was on a relief mission to Bangladesh, she was asked by one of Mother Teresa’s nuns to help a young orphan with a cleft palate. Flying her to the U.S. for surgery, Cindy realized she couldn’t give her up. At the Phoenix airport, she broke it to her husband, and they eventually adopted the child. But few people knew that story. In the words of McCain’s national campaign manager, Rick Davis, a smear doesn’t have “to be true to be effective.”

Now see how the story changed at the beginning of 2008:

The Sunday Mail (Feb. 3, 2008, Dark past no barrier for Cindy):

“While working at Mother Teresa’s orphanage in the early 1990s, I stumbled upon the most beautiful little girl I’d ever seen,” she said. “She had a terrible cleft palate. She had problems with her feet. She had problems with her hands. She had all kinds of problems.

“As only Mother Teresa can, she prevailed upon me to take this baby and another baby to the United States for medical care.”

The Sunday Telegraph (Feb. 3, 2008, Cindy McCain: pills, ills, beer and the White House)

It was on a trip to Bangladesh in 1991 that she adopted Bridget. On Friday she recounted to voters in Missouri and Illinois how Mother Teresa persuaded her to return home with the child. “I just could not let her go. The only thing was, I had not told my husband. When I got back, he asked me ‘Where will she go?’ and I said: ‘I thought she could come to our house.’

Digital Journal (Jun 15, 2008, Can We Trust Cindy McCain to Represent American Women?):

Mrs. McCain has been involved in charity work from clearing landmines, to starting a charity to help children who need facial reconstruction. She has been inspired by her daughter she adopted from Bangladesh who needed extreme care after being born with a cleft palate. The adoption was prompted by Mother Teresa herself who implored Cindy to adopt the little girl. She did so without first consulting John McCain because of her compassion for the girl and her respect for Mother Teresa.

But the most damning evidence of a deliberate attempt to concoct this story comes from cached versions of the McCain campaign website.

Here’s how Cindy’s campaign bio reads on the website as late as November 9, 2004:

As an advocate for children’s health care needs, Cindy H. McCain founded the American Voluntary Medical Team (AVMT) in 1988. The AVMT provided emergency medical and surgical care to impoverished children throughout the world. Cindy led 55 medical missions to third world and war-torn countries during AVMT’s seven years of existence. During one of those missions, on a visit to Mother Teresa’s Orphanage Cindy agreed to bring two babies in need of medical attention back to the United States. One of those babies is now a happy and healthy little girl named Bridget McCain.

Now compare that to the change made on the website on February 3, 2008 — the same day the stories above by The Sunday Mail and The Sunday Telegraph were printed:

As an advocate for children’s health care needs, Cindy founded and ran the American Voluntary Medical Team (AVMT) from 1988 to 1995. AVMT provided emergency medical and surgical care to impoverished children throughout the world. Cindy led 55 medical missions to third world and war-torn countries during AVMT’s seven years of existence. On one of those missions, Mother Teresa convinced Cindy to take two babies in need of medical attention to the United States. One of those babies is now their adopted daughter, 15 year old Bridget McCain.

Notice the obvious change in the one sentence that depicts the circumstances of the adoption.

The instances of the dishonest efforts to create a McCain family portrait are growing. The campaign previously had to scrub its website of Cindy’s family recipes when it was discovered in April that they were largely cut and paste from the Food Network.

At the time, they blamed an intern for the problem. I wonder who they will now blame for Cindy McCain’s own words?

Are these indicative of the McCain family values?

UPDATE: Seems that Rick Warren told Larry King on Monday night that the Mother Teresa story was one of three times during Saturday’s forum that McCain teared-up. They’re liars and actors.

Mark Nickolas is the Managing Editor of Political Base, and this story was from his original post, “The Anatomy of a Deception: How The McCains Changed Their Baby Adoption Story Just Before 2008 Bid“

Cindy McCain may reap benefits of Anheuser-Busch takeover bid

Published: 06.13.2008
By Jonathan D. Salant and Kristin Jensen
BLOOMBERG NEWS

Cindy McCain, the wife of presumptive Republican nominee John McCain, may see a fortune of at least $8.5 million rise with a proposed takeover of beermaker Anheuser- Busch Co., financial disclosures show.

Cindy McCain owned more than $1 million of Anheuser-Busch shares at the end of last year, according to a Senate disclosure form filed by her husband and released today. News of the $46.3 billion unsolicited bid from InBev NV has sent the company’s shares soaring, up about 17 percent from Dec. 31.

The exact size of the potential windfall is unknown because the financial forms require lawmakers and their spouses to list only ranges for the values of their assets, and one option is to simply say “over $1 million.” Messages left with McCain’s Senate office and campaign weren’t immediately returned.

InBev made the $65-per-share offer for the maker of Budweiser beer on June 11, and Anheuser-Busch said it would consider the bid. A transaction would unite Budweiser, the lager first brewed 132 years ago in St. Louis, with InBev’s Stella Artois, Bass and more than 200 other brands.

Cindy McCain also owns a beer distributorship, Hensley & Co., worth more than $1 million. She reported liabilities of between $2.8 million and $5.5 million, owing money on King Aviation, the private jet company whose planes were used by her husband during the campaign, as well as construction, credit and promissory notes.

John McCain’s only assets were a checking account and money market account, valued at $16,000 to $65,000, two joint checking accounts worth between $2,000 and $30,000, and his Navy pension of $58,358. He received $176,508 in book royalties, which he donated to charity.

Because Arizona Senator McCain is running for president, the U.S. Office of Government Ethics required his wife to liquidate her blind trust because it was set up under Senate rules, not Executive Branch requirements. Among her stock holdings were CBS Corp. and General Electric Co., which own two of the four major television networks, Exxon Mobil Corp., and Goldman Sachs Group. New York Senator Hillary Clinton faced a similar requirement during her presidential campaign.

Cindy McCain last month released two pages of her 2006 tax returns, showing income of $6.1 million, including $4.6 million from real estate. She hasn’t filed her 2007 returns. The McCains keep their finances separate and file separate returns.

McCain, 71, will be taking on presumptive Democratic nominee Barack Obama, 46. Obama, an Illinois senator, also filed a disclosure form that showed he and his wife Michelle had assets of $2 million to $7 million at the end of last year, mostly in bank accounts and mutual funds. One money market account was worth as much as $5 million.

The Obamas, who have two daughters, also bought into two college savings plans in transactions worth between $100,000 and $250,000 each, according to the disclosure form.

With reporting by Lizzie O’Leary, William McQuillen and Julianna Goldman in Washington.

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Obama ad: McCain would help corporations

By The Associated Press
Wed Aug 20, 3:59 PM ET

TITLE: “Three Times”

LENGTH: 30 seconds.

AIRING: Colorado, Michigan, Missouri, New Hampshire, Ohio, Pennsylvania, Wisconsin and Virginia.

SCRIPT: Announcer: “Can we really afford more of the same? John McCain’s tax plan: For big corporations — $200 billion in new tax breaks. Oil companies — $4 billion. Companies shipping jobs overseas — keep their tax giveaways while 100 million Americans get no tax relief at all. For the change we need, Barack Obama. A plan that cuts taxes for middle-class families three times as much as John McCain would. Barack Obama. President.”

Obama: “I’m Barack Obama and I approve this message.”

KEY IMAGES: A man in his 60s looks gravely at the camera. Clips of McCain at a podium followed by a generic corporate board meeting, image of gas prices rising and an abandoned factory. A man in his 30s looks into the camera. A clip of McCain followed by film of Obama with a factory worker.

ANALYSIS: By airing in eight battleground states, this ad broadens Obama’s anti-McCain message and puts both presidential candidates in an all-out slugfest of critical ads. While Obama is running a positive message about himself during national broadcasts of the Olympics, he’s hammering McCain with economy-centered ads in states that could determine the election in November. The ads suggest that the campaign is seeking to re-establish Obama as a voice for working people after setting domestic issues aside during his widely covered trip to the Middle East and Europe.

McCain does call for a reduction in corporate taxes, from 35 percent now to 25 percent after 2014. But at least one Obama economic adviser has indicated that Obama himself might be open to a lower corporate tax rate — though not as low as McCain has recommended.

In an interview with Forbes.com last month, Jason Furman, Obama’s director of economic policy, said: “He would like to cut the corporate tax rate, and it’s a question that we’re studying.” In June, Obama also told The Wall Street Journal he might support a cut in corporate taxes. Still, Obama’s economic plan aims the largest cuts toward lower-income taxpayers while McCain would give the largest tax cuts to high-income taxpayers.

The $4 billion in tax breaks for the oil companies is simply part of McCain’s overall corporate tax reduction plan and does not represent an additional tax benefit. In other words, the corporate tax reduction applies to all corporations, oil companies included. Both Obama and McCain have proposed eliminating oil and gas tax loopholes.

The Tax Policy Center, a think tank run jointly by the Brookings Institution and the Urban Institute, concluded that under Obama’s plan middle-income taxpayers would see their after-tax income rise by about 5 percent by 2012, or nearly $2,200 annually. “Those in the top 1 percent would face a $19,000, or 1.5 percent, reduction in after-tax income,” the center concluded in an analysis issued this week.

“McCain would lift after-tax incomes an average of about 3 percent, or $1,400 annually, for middle-income taxpayers by 2012,” the center said. “But, in sharp contrast to Obama, he would cut taxes for those in the top 1 percent by more than $125,000, raising their after-tax income an average 9.5 percent.”

Analysis by Associated Press Writer Jim Kuhnhenn

Cindy McCain’s Half Sister ‘Angry’ She’s Hidden

Kathleen Portalski Hensley and her father Jim Hensley

Kathleen Hensley Portalski

National Public Radio

by Ted Robbins

 

Listen Now [4 min 16 sec] add to playlist

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Ted Robbins/NPR
Kathleen Hensley Portalski displays newspaper clippings of her father in World War II, as well as snapshots of herself as a child with her father.

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Courtesy Nicholas Portalski
Portalski is shown with her late father, Jim Hensley, who also was Cindy McCain’s father.

Read the original profile on Cindy McCain.

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Ted Robbins/NPR
Nicholas Portalski, whose mother is McCain’s half sister, says it’s “very, very hurtful” that he and his mother haven’t been recognized.

All Things Considered, August 18, 2008 · Last Tuesday, NPR broadcast a story about Cindy McCain’s business and charity work. In it, Ted Robbins described McCain as the only child of Jim Hensley, a wealthy Arizona businessman. The next morning, NPR received an e-mail from Nicholas Portalski of Phoenix, who heard the story with his mother.

“We were listening to the piece about Cindy McCain on NPR, All Things Considered, and it just struck us very hard,” Portalski said.

His mother, Kathleen Hensley Portalski, is also Hensley’s daughter.

The Portalski family is accustomed to hearing Cindy McCain described as Hensley’s only child.

She’s been described that way by news organizations from The New Yorker and The New York Times to Newsweek and ABC.

McCain herself routinely uses the phrase “only child,” as she did on CNN last month. “I grew up with my dad,” she said then. “I’m an only child. My father was a cowboy, and he really loved me very much, but I think he wanted a son occasionally.”

McCain’s father was also a businessman — and twice a father.

“I’m upset,” Kathleen Portalski says. “I’m angry. It makes me feel like a nonperson, kind of.”

Who Is Kathleen Hensley Portalski?

Documents show Kathleen Anne Hensley was born to Jim and Mary Jeanne Hensley on Feb. 23, 1943. They had been married for six years when Kathleen was born.

Jim Hensley was a bombardier on a B-17, flying over Europe during World War II.

He was injured and sent to a facility in West Virginia to recuperate. During that time, while still married to Mary Jeanne, Hensley met another woman — Marguerite Smith. Jim divorced Mary Jeanne and married Marguerite in 1945.

Cindy Lou Hensley was born nine years later, in 1954.

She may have grown up as an only child, but so did her half sister, Kathleen, who was raised by a single parent.

Portalski says she did see her father and her half sister from time to time.

“I saw him a few times a year,” she says. “I saw him at Christmas and birthdays, and he provided money for school clothes, and he called occasionally.”

Jim Hensley also provided credit cards and college tuition for his grandchildren, as well as $10,000 gifts to Kathleen and her husband, Stanley Portalski. That lasted a decade, they say. By then, Jim Hensley had built Hensley and Co. into one of the largest beer distributorships in the country. He was worth tens, if not hundreds, of millions of dollars.

Sole Inheritor To Hensley’s Estate

When Hensley died in 2000, his will named not only Portalski but also a daughter of his wife Marguerite from her earlier marriage. So, Cindy McCain may be the only product of Jim and Marguerite’s marriage, but she is not the only child of either.

She was, however, the sole inheritor of his considerable estate.

Kathleen Portalski was left $10,000, and her children were left nothing. It’s a fact Nicholas Portalski says his sister discovered the hard way.

“What she found in town — on the day of or the day before or the day after his funeral — was that the credit card didn’t work anymore,” Nick says.

The Portalskis live in a modest home in central Phoenix. Kathleen is retired, as is her husband. Nicholas Portalski is a firefighter and emergency medical technician looking for work.

They say it would have been nice if they were left some of the Hensley fortune.

They also say they are Democrats, but Nicholas Portalski says he had another reason for coming forward.

“The fact that we don’t exist,” he says. “The fact that we’ve never been recognized, and then Cindy has to put such a fine point on it by saying something that’s not true. Recently, again and again. It’s just very, very hurtful.”

Kathleen Portalski says she’d like an acknowledgment and an apology.

NPR asked the McCain campaign — specifically, Cindy McCain — to comment or respond. Neither replied.

How Cindy McCain was outed for Drug Addiction

salon.com > News Oct. 18, 1999
URL: http://www.salon.com/news/feature/1999/10/18/drugs

When an attempt to get tough with a whistleblower backfired in 1994, the McCain spin machine went into overdrive, and the candidate’s wife confessed to problems the media was already poised to reveal.

– – – – – – – – – – – –
By Amy Silverman

GOP presidential candidate John McCain’s wife Cindy took to the airwaves last week, recounting for Jane Pauley (on “Dateline”) and Diane Sawyer (on “Good Morning America”) the tale of her onetime addiction to Percocet and Vicodin, and the fact that she stole the drugs from her own nonprofit medical relief organization.It was a brave and obviously painful thing to do.

It was also vintage McCain media manipulation.

Poster by a California Medical Marijuana Advocacy Group

I had de ja vu watching Cindy McCain on television, perky in a purple suit with tinted pearls to match. It was so reminiscent of the summer day in 1994 when suddenly, years after she’d claimed to have kicked her habit, McCain decided to come clean to the world about her addiction to prescription painkillers.

I believe she wore red that day. She granted semi-exclusive interviews to one TV station and three daily newspaper reporters in Arizona, tearfully recalling her addiction, which came about after painful back and knee problems and was exacerbated by the stress of the Keating Five banking scandal that had ensnared her husband. To make matters worse, McCain admitted, she had stolen the drugs from the American Voluntary Medical Team, her own charity, and had been investigated by the Drug Enforcement Administration.

The local press cooed over her hard-luck story. One of the four journalists spoon-fed the story — Doug McEachern, then a reporter for Tribune Newspapers, now a columnist with the Arizona Republic (and, it must be added, normally much more acerbic) — wrote this rather typical lead:

“She was blonde and beautiful. A rich man’s daughter who became a politically powerful man’s wife. She had it all, including an insidious addiction to drugs that sapped the beauty from her life like a spider on a butterfly.”

What McEachern and the others didn’t know was that, far from being a simple, honest admission designed to clear her conscience and help other addicts, Cindy McCain’s storytelling had been orchestrated by Jay Smith, then John McCain’s Washington campaign media advisor. And it was intended to divert attention from a different story, a story that was getting quite messy.

I know, because I had been working on that story for months at Phoenix New Times. I had finally tracked down the public records that confirmed Cindy McCain’s addiction and much more, and the McCains knew I was about to get them. Cindy’s tale was released on the day the records were made public.

But the story I was pursuing was not so much about Cindy McCain’s unfortunate addiction. It was much more about her efforts to keep that story from coming to light, and the possible manipulation of the criminal justice system by her husband and his cohorts. The irony is that Cindy’s secret would have stayed secret if John McCain’s heavy-hitting lawyer, John Dowd (of D.C.’s Akin, Gump, Strauss, Hauer & Feld; his most recent claim to fame was serving as co-counsel for fellow partner Vernon Jordan during impeachment) hadn’t heavy-handedly pulled out all the stops to protect the McCain family.

Dowd tried to get back at the man on Cindy McCain’s staff, Tom Gosinski, who had blown the whistle on her drug pilfering to the DEA. But in the course of trying to get local law enforcement officials to investigate Gosinski — Dowd and the McCains considered him an extortionist; others might call him a whistleblower — Dowd set in motion a process that would eventually bring the whole sordid story to light. When that maneuver backfired, the McCain media machine went into overdrive to spin the story.

It’s a story of unintended consequences. It’s also a story of power politics and media manipulation that’s very un-McCain-like — if you believe his national media hagiography.

But both of Cindy McCain’s staged, teary drug-addiction confessions have been vintage John McCain. His MO is this: Get the story out — even if it’s a negative story. Get it out first, with the spin you want, with the details you want and without the details you don’t want.

McCain did it with the Keating Five, and with the story of the failure of his first marriage (Cindy is his second wife). So what you recall after the humble, honest interview, is not that McCain did favors for savings and loan failure Charlie Keating, or that he cheated on his wife, but instead what an upfront, righteous guy he is.

Candor is the McCain trademark, but what the journalists who slobber over the senator fail to realize is that the candor is premeditated and polished. John McCain shoots from the hip — but only after carefully rehearsing the battle plan, to be sure he won’t get shot himself.

This is the story of a time that strategy backfired, and yet the McCain machine still managed to contain the damage.

In the early 1990s, Tom Gosinski was the director of government and international affairs for the American Voluntary Medical Team, which did relief and medical volunteer work in third world countries.

Hired by Cindy McCain in 1991, Gosinski enjoyed his job, but he began to notice McCain’s erratic behavior in the summer of 1992. In his journal, he wrote that he and others suspected the boss was addicted to painkillers and might have been stealing them from the organization.

From Gosinski’s journal, July 27, 1992:

 

I have always wondered why John McCain has done nothing to fix the problem. He must either not see that a problem exists or … not choose to do anything about it. It would seem that it would be in everyone’s best interest to come to terms with the situation. And do whatever is necessary to fix it. There is so much at risk: The welfare of the children; John’s political career; the integrity of Hensley & Company [Cindy’s parents’ business]; the welfare of Jim and Smitty Hensley [Cindy’s parents]; and the health and happiness of Cindy McCain. 

The aforementioned matters are of great concern to those directly involved but my main concern is the ability of AVMT to survive a major shake-up. If the DEA were to ever conduct an audit of AVMT’s inventory, I am afraid of what the results might be … It is because of [Cindy McCain’s] willingness to jeopardize the credibility of those who work for her that I truly worry.

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 whose 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-indulgences.

 

In his journal-writing over the next few months, Gosinski would alternately complain about Cindy McCain and express concern for her well-being.

In January 1993, McCain fired Gosinski. She told him that AVMT was having financial problems and couldn’t afford him.

Gosinski had already come to suspect that Cindy McCain had gotten volunteer doctors with AVMT to sign prescriptions for her, and had used employees’ names to fill them. Worried his own name had been used (he would eventually learn that it had), Gosinski approached DEA agents in the spring of 1993 to report McCain’s suspicious behavior. The DEA launched an investigation.

Almost a year later, with the statute of limitations about to run out, Gosinski hired a labor attorney and sued Cindy McCain for wrongful termination. He intended to claim that she fired him because she suspected he knew about her addiction, but the lawsuit never got that far. Instead, Gosinski’s attorney wrote to the McCains, asking for a settlement of $250,000.

Rumors about the untold details of the lawsuit hit the cocktail-party circuit that spring, but the story was locked up tight. As a federal criminal investigation, the DEA probe was completely secret; none of it was public record.

The entire story would likely have gone unreported if attorney John Dowd hadn’t entered the picture. He wrote to Maricopa County attorney Richard Romley, a political ally of McCain, and asked him to investigate Gosinski for extortion.

“We believe that Mr. Gosinski is aware that in the past Cindy had an addiction to prescription painkillers … Given Cindy’s public position, exposure of this sensitive matter would harm her reputation, career, the operation of AVMT, and subject her to contempt and ridicule,” Dowd wrote on April 28, 1994.

Thus began the inadvertent outing of Cindy McCain. Although the federal investigative materials were not public, the county investigative materials were. Romley launched an investigation, and one of the first things his people did, naturally, was ask the feds to turn over their investigative materials.

New Times finally got hold of the county investigative materials and we did our own story. So did the Arizona Republic, which was uncharacteristically aggressive, perhaps because the McCain machine had left the paper out of the loop on the story of Cindy’s addiction.

Among the questions asked: Did Cindy McCain get preferential treatment by the feds? True, Cindy was a first-time offender, which partially explains the fact that she did no prison time; instead, she entered a diversion program. But at the time, defense lawyers told New Times that if Cindy McCain had been a poor minority and not married to a U.S. senator, she likely would have been locked up.

Did Gosinski intend to blackmail Cindy McCain? He told New Times he didn’t. Other AVMT employees told county investigators that he did. But the time line makes extortion hard to believe, since Gosinski had already gone to the DEA before he brought his lawsuit against the McCains.

In any case, Tom Gosinski didn’t out Cindy McCain. John Dowd did, and then Jay Smith was called in for the clean-up.

A few postscripts: Tom Gosinski left town shortly after Cindy McCain’s story broke. By that time, his lawsuit had died, ignored. The county did not pursue the extortion investigation against him.

John Max Johnson, the doctor who had written the prescriptions for Cindy McCain, surrendered his medical license.

Cindy McCain still does relief work and raises the McCains’ four children.

John McCain, of course, is running for president.

And only a handful of people remember the details of Cindy McCain’s 1994 “outing” for drug addiction and drug pilfering, and the work of the McCain machine to protect her.
salon.com | Oct. 18, 1999

The ‘Elitists’ John and Cindy McCain are Filthy Rich

How can John or Cindy McCain really understand what the average taxpayer goes through in these tough economic times given the fact that neither of them have ever been poor.  McCain’s father was an Admiral in the Navy and Cindy’s father was a wealthy businessman (albeit that the business he was in bordered on the illegal at times).

The McCains own at least nine house in Arizona, California, and Virginia Worth an Estimated $13,123,269. John and Cindy McCain own a plethora of houses spread throughout the United States, including: two beachfront condos in Coronado, California, condo in La Jolla, California, a two-unit condominium complex in Phoenix, Arizona, three ranch houses located outside of Sedona, Arizona, a high-rise condo in Arlington, Virginia, and, according to GQ, a loft they bought for their daughter, Meghan. The value of their houses is an estimated $13,123,269. [San Diego County Property Records; Maricopa County Property Records; Yavapai County Property Records; Arlington County Property Records; GQ, 3/18/08]

The McCain’s Primary Residence

1. 1n 2006, McCains Purchased Two Condominiums in Phoenix For $4,666,814. According to property records from Maricopa County, Arizona, the McCains spent $4,666,814 Condominium in Phoenix, AZ in 2006. Officially, the sale was made to The Cindy Hensley McCain Family Trust on October 18, 2006. (2211 E Camelback Rd., Units 1105& 1106, 85016) [Maricopa County Property Records]

• The McCains Converted the Two Condominiums Into A “Single Dwelling.” According to The Arizona Republic, “Property records show that Cindy [McCain’s] trust recently bought a condo at the Residences at 2211 Camelback for $4.66 million.” The paper added, “The deal was actually for two condos that could be combined to one space of 6,000 to 7,000 square feet. That is plenty of elbow room, even for a high-end condo, in a region where the typical single-family home runs about 1,600 square feet.” [Arizona Republic, 10/26/06, emphasis added]
• The McCains Own A $4.7 Million Condo, Vastly Exceeding The Neighborhood’s Average Home Value of $375,011. In a profile of presidential candidates’ homes, the Richmond Times-Dispatch reported that the McCain’s condominium in Phoenix is worth an estimated $4.7 million. The average home value in their neighborhood is reported to be $375,011. They added, “Cindy McCain, heiress to the John Hensley liquor empire, paid $3 million for two units, which the couple combined for 6,000 square feet.” [Richmond Times-Dispatch, 2/10/08] The McCains’ Primary Residence Is Outfitted With The Following Amenities: • Valet parking for residents and guests • Travel and driver services. • Roof top pool terrace with zero edge pool, sun deck, spa, fire pit, gas barbeque, and panoramic mountain and downtown views • Exclusive resident party room featuring separate guest entrance from porte-cochere, fireplace, 50” plasma • Fitness Center with state-of-the-art equipment, men’s and ladies’ locker rooms, steam rooms, and massage room. • Roof top entertainment terrace with lounge seating and breathtaking views of Piestewa Peak [Photo & amenities found at http://www.2211camelback.com, accessed on 4/2/08]

Beachfront Condos in Coronado, California

2. The McCains Own A $2,705,040 Beachfront Condominium on a Small Island Outside of San Diego. According to property records from San Diego County, California the McCains own a $2,705,040 condominium in Coronado, California. Coronado boasts the second best beach in the country, according to the Travel Channel. The condominium is officially the property of Dream Catcher Family. (1710 Avenida Del Mundo, Unit #802, 92118) [San Diego County Property Records; City of Coronado website, accessed 3/31/08, emphasis added]

3. In February 2008, The McCains Bought Another $2.1 Million Condominium In Coronado. According to property records from San Diego County, California the McCains bought another $2.1 million condominium in Coronado, California. Records show that the sale was completed on February 27, 2008. The condominium is officially the property of Dream Catcher Family. (1710 Avenida Del Mundo, Unit #204, 92118) [San Diego County Property Records] [Google Maps]

Hidden Valley Ranch

The McCains Own Three “Hidden Valley Ranches” Worth $1,103,615 in 2007. According to property records from Yavapai County, Arizona, the McCains own three ranch houses worth a combined $1,103,615:

4. $405,757 – 11455 E Hidden Valley Ranch Rd

5. $369,929 – 11445 E Hidden Valley Ranch Rd

6. $327,929 –11415 E Hidden Valley Ranch Rd

The first two ranch properties are held by the Cindy Hensley McCain Family Trust, while the third is held by Sedona Hidden Valley Limited Partnership. According to the Arizona Republic, the three houses include, “A main house, guest house and caretakers’ quarters [and] total more than 4,800 square feet.” [Yavapai County Property Records; 2007 Executive Branch Personnel Public Financial Disclosure; Arizona Republic, 8/12/00]

• McCain Said There Are Six Houses On His Lot. According to CNN, “McCain said the valley was settled by Mormons and that the Hidden Valley Ranch got its name from the horseshoe shape of the creek that runs through the property. He said he built the first house on his property 24 years ago and now there are six houses on his lot.” [CNN, 3/3/08, emphasis added]
• McCain’s Ranch Was Described As “One of the Most Spectacular Creekfront Properties in the State.” According to the Arizona Republic, McCain’s neighbor, Daniel Sims, said “It’s called Hidden Valley, and everyone who sees it says they would never expect to find such a beautiful place in such an arid climate.” He added that McCain’s ranch is “one of the most spectacular creekfront properties in the state. Lush lawns go from their house gently down to the water’s edge. The creek makes a natural pool there. It’s very romantic.” [Arizona Republic, 8/12/00]
• AP: McCain’s 15-Acre Ranch “Includes Four Single-Family Homes And Is Worth Nearly $1.8 Million.” According to the Associated Press, “John McCain held a barbecue recently for reporters at a two-story cabin near Sedona, Ariz., that sits on 15 acres owned by his wife’s family trust and a real estate partnership in her name. The property includes four single-family homes and is worth nearly $1.8 million.” [Associated Press, 4/3/08] [McCainBlogette, accessed 4/2/08]

Beachfront Condo in La Jolla, California

7. McCains Own A $1 Million Beachfront Condominium in La Jolla, California. According to John McCain’s Executive Branch Personnel Public Financial Disclosure, the McCains own a condominium in La Jolla, California valued at over $1 million. The La Jolla property is held in the Hensley Survivors Trust. (8263 Camino Del Oro #379, 92037) [2007 Executive Branch Personnel Public Financial Disclosure ; San Diego County Property Records] [Photo found at http://www.beachagent.com, accessed on 4/2/08]

High-Rise Condo in Arlington, Virginia

8. The McCains Own A $847,800 High-Rise Condominium in Arlington, Virginia. According to property records from Arlington County, Virginia, the McCains own a $847,800 High-Rise Condominium in Arlington, Virginia. The condominium is officially the property of the Cindy Hensley McCain Family Trust. (1300 Crystal Drive #1702S, 22202) [Arlington County Property Records]

Meghan McCain’s Loft

9. McCains Bought Their Daughter A $700,000 Loft When She Graduated From College. According to property records from Maricopa County Arizona, the McCains purchased a $700,000 Phoenix Loft in May of 2007. Wild River LLC bought the loft on May 24, 2007. (4326 N 25th St., Unit 2, Phoenix, AZ 85016) [Maricopa County Property Records]

• John And Cindy McCain Paid For Meghan’s Loft With $700,000 Cash. According to the Property Transfer Record from Maricopa County, Arizona, the McCains paid cash for Meghan McCain’s $700,000 Biltmore Loft. [Maricopa County Property Transfer Records]
• Meghan McCain’s Parents Bought Her A Loft That “Looks Like A Spaceship Furnished By West Elm.” According to a Meghan McCain profile piece written in GQ, “Meghan’s parents, Senator John and Cindy McCain, bought her this loft around the time she graduated from Columbia University last spring, and the interior looks like a spaceship furnished by West Elm. There’s a giant silver chimney that extends out of her fireplace into the ceiling about twenty feet above. Across the living room is a very stylish and very uncomfortable-looking pod chair.” [GQ, 3/18/08]

The McCain Motel: Rental Property

10. The McCains Own A Rental Loft In Phoenix, Arizona. According to property records from Maricopa County Arizona, the McCains purchased a high-class $700,000 Phoenix Loft in June of 2007. The loft is owned by Wild River LLC, and is listed as rental property on McCain’s 2008 Senate Financial Disclosure Report. (4326 N 25th St, Unit 102, Phoenix, AZ, 85016) [Maricopa County Property Records, McCain 2008 Senate Financial Disclosure Report]

The McCains’ Rental Loft Is Now For Sale, Listed at $730,000. According to Realty Times, “4326 N 25th St #102, Phoenix, AZ 85016” is for sale. The loft is listed as a “Bright, open and spacious luxury Contemporary loft” for sale for $730,000. Amenities include:

• Granite countertops
• Italian Cherry cabinetry
• Stainless steel appliances
• Remote control window covering
• Smart home system
• Vessel sinks with upgraded faucets
• Security system
• Balcony plus roof top spa area
• Private rear yard with private pool entrance
• Master shower with dual heads
• Pool side end unit
• Mountain and downtown views from roof [Realty Times, accessed 6/13/08] *virtual tour*

The Candidate We Still Don’t Know

Posted by straighttalkexpresswatch on August 17, 2008

Frank Rich laid it on the line today.  I hope other pundits and editors will follow his lead and begin to investigate the John McCain (not the Hanoi Hilton hero) as he lives and breathes today.  They have spent an inordinate amount of time going through Michelle Obama’s garbage.  Now they need to look into Cindy’s family foundation, the dozen or so properties they own, or the business dealings she engages in.   Is John McCain more than a silent partner in all this?  We really don’t know.  So, the ball is in the court of the pundits.

Who is McCain?

New York Times

August 17, 2008

Op-Ed Columnist

By Frank Rich

 AS I went on vacation at the end of July, Barack Obama was leading John McCain by three to four percentage points in national polls. When I returned last week he still was. But lo and behold, a whole new plot twist had rolled off the bloviation assembly line in those intervening two weeks: Obama had lost the election!

The poor guy should be winning in a landslide against the despised party of Bush-Cheney, and he’s not. He should be passing the 50 percent mark in polls, and he’s not. He’s been done in by that ad with Britney and Paris and by a new international crisis that allows McCain to again flex his Manchurian Candidate military cred. Let the neocons identify a new battleground for igniting World War III, whether Baghdad or Tehran or Moscow, and McCain gets with the program as if Angela Lansbury has just dealt him the Queen of Hearts.

Obama has also been defeated by racism (again). He can’t connect and “close the deal” with ordinary Americans too doltish to comprehend a multicultural biography that includes what Cokie Roberts of ABC News has damned as the “foreign, exotic place” of Hawaii. As The Economistsums up the received wisdom, “lunch-pail Ohio Democrats” find Obama’s ideas of change “airy-fairy” and are all asking, “Who on earth is this guy?”

It seems almost churlish to look at some actual facts. No presidential candidate was breaking the 50 percent mark in mid-August polls in 2004 or 2000. Obama’s average lead of three to four points is marginally larger than both John Kerry’s and Al Gore’s leads then (each was winning by one point in Gallup surveys). Obama is also ahead of Ronald Reagan in mid-August 1980 (40 percent to Jimmy Carter’s 46). At Pollster.com, which aggregates polls and gauges the electoral count, Obama as of Friday stood at 284 electoral votes, McCain at 169. That means McCain could win all 85 electoral votes in current toss-up states and still lose the election.

Yet surely, we keep hearing, Obama should be running away with the thing. Even Michael Dukakis was beating the first George Bush by 17 percentage points in the summer of 1988. Of course, were Obama ahead by 17 points today, the same prognosticators now fussing over his narrow lead would be predicting that the arrogant and presumptuous Obama was destined to squander that landslide on vacation and tank just like his hapless predecessor.

The truth is we have no idea what will happen in November. But for the sake of argument, let’s posit that one thread of the Obama-is-doomed scenario is right: His lead should be huge in a year when the G.O.P. is in such disrepute that at least eight of the party’s own senatorial incumbents are skipping their own convention, the fail-safe way to avoid being caught near the Larry Craig Memorial Men’s Room at the Twin Cities airport.

So why isn’t Obama romping? The obvious answer — and both the excessively genteel Obama campaign and a too-compliant press bear responsibility for it — is that the public doesn’t know who on earth John McCain is. The most revealing poll this month by far is the Pew Research Center survey finding that 48 percent of Americans feel they’re “hearing too much” about Obama. Pew found that only 26 percent feel that way about McCain, and that nearly 4 in 10 Americans feel they hear too little about him. It’s past time for that pressing educational need to be met.

What is widely known is the skin-deep, out-of-date McCain image. As this fairy tale has it, the hero who survived the Hanoi Hilton has stood up as rebelliously in Washington as he did to his Vietnamese captors. He strenuously opposed the execution of the Iraq war; he slammed the president’s response to Katrina; he fought the “agents of intolerance” of the religious right; he crusaded against the G.O.P. House leader Tom DeLay, the criminal lobbyist Jack Abramoff and their coterie of influence-peddlers.

With the exception of McCain’s imprisonment in Vietnam, every aspect of this profile in courage is inaccurate or defunct.

McCain never called for Donald Rumsfeld to be fired and didn’t start criticizing the war plan untillate August 2003, nearly four months after “Mission Accomplished.” By then the growing insurgency was undeniable. On the day Hurricane Katrina hit, McCain laughed it up with the oblivious president at a birthday photo-op in Arizona. McCain didn’t get to New Orleans foranother six months and didn’t sharply express public criticism of the Bush response to the calamity until this April, when he traveled to the Gulf Coast in desperate search of election-year pageantry surrounding him with black extras.

McCain long ago embraced the right’s agents of intolerance, even spending months courting the Rev. John Hagee, whose fringe views about Roman Catholics and the Holocaust were known to anyone who can use the Internet. (Once the McCain campaign discovered YouTube, it ditchedHagee.) On Monday McCain is scheduled to appear at an Atlanta fund-raiser being promoted by Ralph Reed, who is not only the former aide de camp to one of the agents of intolerance McCain once vilified (Pat Robertson) but is also the former Abramoff acolyte showcased in McCain’s own Senate investigation of Indian casino lobbying.

Though the McCain campaign announced a new no-lobbyists policy three months after The Washington Post’s February report that lobbyists were “essentially running” the whole operation, the fact remains that McCain’s top officials and fund-raisers have past financial ties to nearly every domestic and foreign flashpoint, from Fannie Mae to Blackwater to Ahmad Chalabi to thegovernment of Georgia. No sooner does McCain flip-flop on oil drilling than a bevy of Hess Oil family members and executives, not to mention a lowly Hess office manager and his wife, each give a maximum $28,500 to the Republican Party.

While reporters at The Post and The New York Times have been vetting McCain, many others give him a free pass. Their default cliché is to present him as the Old Faithful everyone already knows. They routinely salute his “independence,” his “maverick image” and his “renegade reputation” — as the hackneyed script was reiterated by Karl Rove in a Wall Street Journal op-ed column last week. At Talking Points Memo, the essential blog vigilantly pursuing the McCain revelations often ignored elsewhere, Josh Marshall accurately observes that the Republican candidate is “graded on a curve.”

Most Americans still don’t know, as Marshall writes, that on the campaign trail “McCain frequently forgets key elements of policies, gets countries’ names wrong, forgets things he’s said only hours or days before and is frequently just confused.” Most Americans still don’t know it is precisely for this reason that the McCain campaign has now shut down the press’s previously unfettered access to the candidate on the Straight Talk Express.

To appreciate the discrepancy in what we know about McCain and Obama, merely look at the coverage of the potential first ladies. We have heard too much indeed about Michelle Obama’sPrinceton thesis, her pay raises at the University of Chicago hospital, her statement about being “proud” of her country and the false rumor of a video of her ranting about “whitey.” But we still haven’t been inside Cindy McCain’s tax returns, all her multiple homes or private plane. The Los Angeles Times reported in June that Hensley & Company, the enormous beer distributorship she controls, “lobbies regulatory agencies on alcohol issues that involve public health and safety,” in opposition to groups like Mothers Against Drunk Driving. The McCain campaign told The Times that Mrs. McCain’s future role in her beer empire won’t be revealed before the election.

Some of those who know McCain best — Republicans — are tougher on him than the press is. Rita Hauser, who was a Bush financial chairwoman in New York in 2000 and served on the Foreign Intelligence Advisory Board in the administration’s first term, joined other players in the G.O.P. establishment in forming Republicans for Obama last week. Why? The leadership qualities she admires in Obama — temperament, sustained judgment, the ability to play well with others — are missing in McCain. “He doesn’t listen carefully to people and make reasoned judgments,” Hauser told me. “If John says ‘I’m going with so and so,’ you can’t count on that the next morning,” she complained, adding, “That’s not the man we want for president.”

McCain has even prompted alarms from the right’s own favorite hit man du jour: Jerome Corsi, who Swift-boated John Kerry as co-author of “Unfit to Command” in 2004 and who is trying to do the same to Obama in his newly minted best seller, “The Obama Nation.”

Corsi’s writings have been repeatedly promoted by Sean Hannity on Fox News; Corsi’s publisher, Mary Matalin, has praised her author’s “scholarship.” If Republican warriors like Hannity and Matalin think so highly of Corsi’s research into Obama, then perhaps we should take seriously Corsi’s scholarship about McCain. In recent articles at worldnetdaily.com, Corsi has claimed (among other charges) that the McCain campaign received “strong” financial support from a “group tied to Al Qaeda” and that “McCain’s personal fortune traces back to organized crime in Arizona.”

As everyone says, polls are meaningless in the summers of election years. Especially this year, when there’s one candidate whose real story has yet to be fully told.

Cindy Hensley McCain’s Colorful Background

 

The Hensley Fortune Started Here With Kemper MarleyCindy McCain (nee Hensley) was born to Jim Hensley, a protégée of Kemper Marley. This guy called himself a politician, but he was really a gangster.           A Car BombIn 1976 a crusading Phoenix reporter, Don Bolles, was murdered by a car-bomb after writing a series of stories exposing the organized crime connections of well-known figures in Arizona, including one Jim Hensley.           What Race is She?The Hensleys were probably Jewish.           McCain Marries Into Money The Hensley fortune that financed McCain’s rise to power. The Hensley fortune, in fact, is a regional offshoot of the big time boot-legging and rackets empire of the Bronfman dynasty of Canada, founded by Sam Bronfman, an early partner of Meyer Lansky, longtime “chairman of the board” of the international crime syndicate.             Hensley’s Mob ConnectionsMcCain’s father-in-law got his start as a top henchman of one Kemper Marley, who, for some forty years until his death in 1990 at age 84, was the undisputed behind-the-scenes political boss of Arizona. But Marley was much more: he was also the protege’ of Lansky’s longtime lieutenant, Phoenix gambler Gus Greenbaum.           Mayer LanskyIn 1941, Greenbaum was a book-maker. In 1946, Greenbaum turned over the day-to-day operations to Marley while Greenbaum focused on building up Lansky-run casinos in Las Vegas, commuting there from his home in Phoenix. Greenbaum, in fact, was so integral to the Lansky empire that he was the one who took command of Lansky’s Las Vegas interests in 1947 after Lansky ordered the execution of his own longtime friend, Benjamin “Bugsy” Siegel, for skimming profits from the new Flamingo Casino           Hensley Served Time During this time Marley was building up a liquor distribution monopoly in Arizona. The truth is, that it was the Bronfman family that set Marley up in business. However, in 1948, some 52 of Marley’s employees (including Jim Hensley) went to jail on federal liquor violations—but not Marley.           Hensley Becomes Wealthy The story in Arizona is that Hensley took the fall for Marley. Upon Hensley’s release from prison, Marley paid Hensley back by setting him up in the beer business. That company today, said to be worth $200 million, financed McCain’s career. And without Marley’s political support, McCain could have never even gotten elected dog-catcher.               The Notorious Jacobs Family Hensley had a dog track operation connected to the the Buffalo-based Jacobs family. The Jacobs were the leading distributors for Bronfman liquor into the United States during Prohibition into the hands of local gangs that were part of the Lansky syndicate. Expanding over the years, the family’s enterprises were once described as being “probably the biggest quasi-legitimate cover for organized crime’s money-laundering in the United States.”

Who’s playing the race card?

John McCain is good at “throwing the rock and hiding his hand” but he doesn’t always get away with it.  He accused Barack Obama of playing the race card, which was a lie.  It was McCain and his surrogates who have no trouble whatsoever with using race as a negative against Obama.

August 1, 2008

Salon.com

Obama play the race card when he accused the McCain camp of trying to convince voters “he’s risky” because “he doesn’t look like all those other presidents on the dollar bills?” Or did the McCain camp play the race card, by accusing Obama of playing the race card? Was it McCain who played the race card in the first place, with an ad juxtaposing Obama with white sexpots Britney Spears and Paris Hilton? My neck hurts from watching the two campaigns volley these incendiary race accusations furiously all day Thursday, so I’ll step in and play ref.

To this point I don’t think either campaign has played “the race card,” if you define it to mean unfairly using race for political gain. I think John McCain has run an appalling low-road campaign in the past two weeks, making unfair and untrue accusations about Obama, from his comment that Obama “would rather lose a war than lose a political campaign” to his lies about the Democratic nominee’s canceled visit to wounded American soldiers in Germany. But I don’t think he or his surrogates have brought race into it. His ad comparing Obama to Britney Spears and Paris Hilton was scurrilous, but not for the reasons my friend Josh Marshall suggested yesterday, or Keith Olbermann claimed tonight — that it played a “subliminal” miscegenation game by juxtaposing Obama with white sex symbols (at least to some folks) à la the GOP “Call me, Harold” ad that linked Tennessee Senate candidate Harold Ford to a half-dressed blonde in 2006.

If you want a psychosexual analysis, I think the ad was trying to diminish Obama much the same way Maureen Dowd has when she’s referred to him as “Obambi” or a called him a starlet: He’s a political ditz, a lightweight, electoral arm candy; flashy but not presidential. On “Hardball,” the Chicago Tribune’s Jill Zuckman said McCain campaign sources told her they chose Hilton and Spears, rather than, say, he-man lefty do-gooder celeb George Clooney, because “we wanted to show that Obama is vacuous, the way these celebrities are.” Clooney: serious. Obama: vacuous. I love George Clooney, but that’s ridiculous, and I’m sure Clooney himself is feeling a little sick to his stomach as he reads those words. But while it’s scuzzy and insulting, it’s not racist, in my opinion.

On the other hand, was Obama playing the race card on Wednesday by referring three times in Missouri to the McCain camp’s suggestion that he doesn’t look like the other presidents on our currency? It’s close, but I’m going to give him a pass. His overall point is true: McCain’s whole campaign is built around scaring people out of voting for Obama, although neither McCain nor his surrogates have publicly suggested that what makes Obama scary is his race. Obama’s campaign has insisted he wasn’t referring to race with the reference to looking like the presidents on our currency, and I’ll let you decide whether you believe that. It’s worth noting, though, that Obama said something very similar at a Florida fundraiser in June, and race was clearly part of his pitch: “We know what kind of campaign they’re going to run. They’re going to try to make you afraid of me. He’s young and inexperienced and he’s got a funny name. And did I mention he’s black?”

But when you hear the context of Obama’s entire riff on the McCain campaign’s divisive strategy in Missouri yesterday, it didn’t feel mainly about race. Obama gets the tone right. Race is only one part of why this self-described skinny kid with the funny name and the big ears (and the wicked three-point shot) doesn’t look like the other guys on our currency. Here’s what he said in Union, Mo.:

“So nobody really thinks that Bush or McCain have a real answer for the challenges we face, so what they’re going to try to do is make you scared of me. You know, he’s not patriotic enough. He’s got a funny name. You know, he doesn’t look like all those other presidents on those dollar bills, you know. He’s risky. That’s essentially the argument they’re making.”

I didn’t think “race” when I first heard those remarks, but McCain campaign manager Rick Davis claims he did, and he went faux ballistic, issuing a statement fuming that “Barack Obama has played the race card, and he played it from the bottom of the deck. It’s divisive, negative, shameful and wrong.”

But it’s hard to feel much sympathy for Davis or McCain. This has been a complicated race, when it comes to race, going back to January and the Democratic primary. That’s to be expected, now that we have our first black presidential nominee, who is very likely to become our first black president. The Clintons learned the hard way that there’s a high cost to being careless with racially charged references — or even innocent references that could be misconstrued or distorted to seem racially charged. Clearly the McCain camp has decided to go on the offensive about race early. But having presided over such a sleazy campaign, Rick Davis has absolutely zero moral credibility to make his case. Even longtime McCain advisor John Weaver has criticized his old friend’s bottom-feeding strategy this week, and the normally docile Andrea Mitchell pummeled Davis Thursday afternoon over his race-card charge and his defense of the Spears ad.

So I’ll give both campaigns a pass on the race-card charge, though I think that McCain’s race-card claim is particularly lame and that it will backfire on him. Given this country’s racial history, Obama’s got every right to assume race is at least part of why some voters haven’t warmed up to him, and why the GOP thinks its best strategy is to scare people into voting for McCain rather than inspire them. Obama’s funny, light-touch approach to the many ways he’s different from other presidential contenders is likely to be effective, and I don’t think he should be intimidated out of using it by Rick Davis crying “race card.”

 

— Joan Walsh