[Promoted by DHinMI: The press just loves to talk about how John McCain is so dreamy, partly because they refuse to face the fact that to get the nomination McCain has prostituted himself to the same lobbyists, televangelists and rightwing nutjobs that have captured the GOP over the last few decades. Dean does a great job of showing the deep connections one of McCain's key finance people has to some of the more loathsome features of the Nixon administration. It's a "bonus" that the guy is also a jerk]
Recently, cancer survivor Elizabeth Edwards made a brilliant observation about cancer survivor John McCain: that neither of them would be covered under McMaverick's do-nothing health care plan.
Well, according to McCain's National Finance Co-Chair Fred Malek, cancer patient Elizabeth Edwards shouldn't be talking about cancer in a political context:
(below the fold...)
Finding a cure for cancer is a vitally important mission for this country. Supporting that mission should unite everyone – and should be off-limits from the political and partisan battlefield.
...I just hope that it doesn’t become a common occurrence on the campaign trail. The cancer conversation is best left to the experts, researchers, and doctors.
Thanks for your ad hominem distraction from Edwards' point about pre-existing conditions concern, Mr. Malek. I'll make sure to tell all the cancer survivors in my life to keep their cancer talk to themselves during this election season.
So, who is Fred Malek, anyhow?
On a Friday in August 1959, five men in their twenties were arrested about 2 a.m. and held in the county jail all day after sheriff's deputies found a blood-spattered, unoccupied car about 1:15 a.m. at the entrance to Vicary's Park on Kickapoo Creek Road near Peoria, Ill.
...After checking the blood-spattered pants of one of the men at the state crime laboratory in Springfield, it was determined that the stains were animal and not human blood. Backes said the men then changed their story and said they had "caught a dog and were barbecuing it."
Police then found the skinned animal on a spit in the park. The insides of the dog had been removed, and a bottle of liquor was found on a nearby park table. Backes said the men told him they had been drinking earlier in the evening at a West Bluff tavern.
One of the men arrested in the incident, in which a dog was killed, skinned, gutted and barbecued on a spit, was Frederick V. Malek, 22, of Berwyn, Ill.
It's unclear to me whether or not Malek's earlier fondness for drunken barbarism influenced at all the carrying out of his prominent role within the Nixon Administration. You make the call:
Malek's responsiveness program was extensively investigated by the Senate Watergate committee. The panel found that the program was aimed at influencing decisions concerning government "grants, contracts, loans, subsidies, procurement and construction projects," decisions regarding "legal and regulatory actions," and even personnel decisions that affected protected "career positions" -- all to advance Nixon's reelection.
Wow. I'm thinking Mr. Malek might really feel at home in Bush's concept of the current Department of Justice. But that's not all:
The Post reported that in 1971 Malek had ordered the FBI to conduct an investigation of then-veteran CBS correspondent and Nixon critic Daniel Schorr.
Small potatoes, though - it's just that dirty hippie NPR guy who goes on and on during my Saturday morning trip to the garbage dump. You know what really "should be off-limits from the political and partisan battlefield"? Witch hunts for Jews. Yeah, I'm thinking witch hunting Jews is an even bigger partisan no-no than talking about cancer:
It was also in 1971, The Post reported, that Malek was given a patently anti-Semitic order from a paranoid Richard Nixon to count the Jews in high-ranking posts in the Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS). Instead of refusing, Malek set about compiling a list of 13 of 35 top BLS employees who, he believed, were Jewish. Less than two months later, two senior BLS officials who were Jewish were moved out of their jobs to less visible posts. Malek acknowledges carrying out the disgusting hunt for Jews, but he denies having anything to do with the transfers.
I could go on about how Malek has gone on to rewarding positions and connections with Ronald Reagan and George H.W. Bush and George W. Bush. But that's "political battlefield" stuff. Instead, let's take a look at what Malek's been up to lately (2004):
The SEC instituted administrative and cease-and-desist proceedings against Malek, his company, Thayer Capital Partners, and two Thayer affiliates, TS Equity Partners IV L.L.C, and TC Management Partners IV L.L.C. The SEC charged that in 1998 the Connecticut treasurer, Paul J. Silvester, used state pension investments in Malek's company to reward a friend and political supporter, William DiBella, former majority leader of the Connecticut Senate.
The SEC charged that Malek, who was seeking state money for investment in one of Thayer's funds, hired DiBella and paid him a percentage of the state pension fund's total investment with Malek's company, "even though DiBella had no prior involvement with the transaction and ultimately performed no meaningful work related to the investment." DiBella understood from Silvester that he didn't have to do any work for Malek or his company and that Silvester even increased the amount of the pension fund's investment with Malek "by at least $25 million (to a total of $75 million) solely to secure a larger fee for DiBella," according to the SEC News Digest.
A side note: Why the usually interesting Marc Ambinder would give this creature media oxygen is beyond me.
Update: Look who Malek's "old partner" is, helping him to raise some major coin for the Repubs (AP)
President Bush joined an old partner to raise serious campaign cash for Senate Republicans.
The president headlined a private fundraiser Tuesday night at the home of Fred and Marlene Malek in the wealthy Washington suburb of McLean, Va. The dinner was raising $2 million for the National Republican Senatorial Committee, the campaign arm of the Senate GOP.
And look at how Our Liberal Media has sanitized Malek's past:
Malek, a veteran of the Nixon White House, also advised Presidents Ford and Reagan and was the 1992 campaign manager for the first President Bush.
More: FWIW, Malek "Sets the Record Straight" on the dog BBQ in his own blog post. Make of it what you will. Personally, I don't know how much of an innocent bystander you can be when you're drunk and hiding in the woods and connected to a blood splattered car (according to the news reports from the incident).