John McCain is hardly a maverick or a reformer: he is the old boys' network

You have to giggle every time time John McCain or his running mate refer to themselves as mavericks and reformers. "Mavericks and reformers my ass," as we say on the streets of Chicago. Are they kidding? Is this a bit he's performing on Saturday Night Live (SNL). Or a Jay Leno joke.

Well "Mr. Maverick/Reformer" needs to explain how it is his campaign manager, Rick Davis, is closely involved with Freddie Mac, collecting fees from them through last month, despite John McCain's recent assertion that Davis has not been involved for the past several years.

WASHINGTON — One of the giant mortgage companies at the heart of the credit crisis paid $15,000 a month from the end of 2005 through last month to a firm owned by Senator John McCain’s campaign manager, according to two people with direct knowledge of the arrangement.

The disclosure undercuts a statement by Mr. McCain on Sunday night that the campaign manager, Rick Davis, had had no involvement with the company for the last several years.

Mr. Davis’s firm received the payments from the company, Freddie Mac, until it was taken over by the government this month along with Fannie Mae, the other big mortgage lender whose deteriorating finances helped precipitate the cascading problems on Wall Street, the people said.

Either Rick Davis lied to John McCain or John McCain knew the facts and is lying publicly But one thing is certain that John McCain needs to come clean. And he needs to stop claiming this "Maverick/Reformer" tag and call himself what he really is: part of the old boys network. It gets worse, just check out Hunter's diary here at the Daily Kos.

His membership in this network goes back to his "Keating Five" days when he accepted $112,000 from Charles Keating who was using FDIC-insured funds for commercial real estate deals. Keating then donated over a million dollars to the "old boys network" to protect himself when the government started to investigate these illegal dealings of using FDIC-insured funds as collateral for these shady deals. John McCain was the biggest recipient of these donations.

The question becomes why do these shady characters keep popping up in John McCain's life and why is he defending them. Jack Abramoff, for example, donated over $100,000 to "Mr. Maverick/Reformer."

Old habits die hard. I have no doubt that if elected John McCain will waltz into the Oval Office with these habits and with dozens of members of the "old boys network." Come to think of it, they will probably be sitting there already entrenched in the White House, waiting for their new boss. Business as usual, "Mr. Maverick/Reformer" style. Reading on Walden Bookstore.