How about a bomb by bomb comparison? Anyone remember Don Bolles?

[mojowork_n]

The music stations on my car radio were all playing commercials, so I hit the AM button.

The stand-in for 'The great One' on the Mark Levine show was saying, "can you imagine if McCain had some sort of association, say, with an abortion clinic bomber? Would the media ever let go of that story?"

Actually, the bombing association that actually exists is much worse than that. Cindy McCain's father, Jim Hensley, went to Federal Prison after WWII, the fall guy for a racketeer named Kemper Marley, Arizona's richest man...

It's all summarized here:

http://www.democrats.com/john-mccain-married-to-the-mob

the father of McCain's wife, James Hensley, was convicted by a federal jury in U.S. District Court of Arizona in March 1948 on seven counts of filing false liquor records. Hensley also was charged with conspiracy to hide from federal authorities the names of persons involved in a liquor industry racket with two companies he managed, United Sales Company in Phoenix and United Distributors in Tucson.

The umbrella company, United Liquor, at that time held a monopoly in Arizona, organized and managed by Kemper Marley, who was accused of mob ties by a reporter who was murdered in 1977.

Silverman and Dougherty report that by 1955, Hensley had launched a Budweiser distributorship in Phoenix, "a franchise reportedly bestowed upon him by Marley, who was never indicted in the 1948 liquor-law-violation case – or a subsequent one – despite his controlling role in the liquor distribution businesses."

According to Marley's longtime public relations man, Al Lizanetz, the Marley liquor empire was founded by the Bronfman family dynasty of Canada which operated Allied Finance Company, Northern Export Company and Distillers Corporation – the Seagrams, Ltd. empire.

As chronicled by the "Rumrunners and Prohibition" video shown popularly on the History Channel, during the 1920s, the Bronfman family made millions in bootlegging, accounting for half the illegal liquor crossing the border, working in a profitable distribution deal with the infamous mobster Meyer Lansky, who later moved on to establish the crime syndicates in the casinos of Havana, Cuba, in the 1940s and 50s.

Arizona in the 1970s drew a "who's who" of organized crime figures seeking to retire in the sun, including Rochester, N.Y., mob boss Joe Bonanno, who spent his last days along the Lake Havasu shores and in a quiet home in Tucson.

In 1977, after Arizona Republic reporter Don Bolles was killed when his car was blown up by the mob in a parking lot, a team of 36 journalists from 27 news organizations, known as IRE, published an 80,000 word 23-part series on organized crime in Arizona.

Dan Nowicki and Bill Muller, reporting in the Arizona Republic March 1, 2007, documented that in 1953, Hensley was again charged with falsifying records at Marley's liquor firms.

Hensley was found not guilty after being defended by William Rehnquist, the future chief justice of the Supreme Court, Nowicki and Muller wrote.

...Yes, IF ONLY McCain's association with the man who (very, very possibly) was responsible for the bundle of dynamite planted under Don Bolles' car, ever even makes it to a mainstream media story...

(We can only dream. This is, after all, the United States of America. A Free Press in this country is only a memory...)

[byronius]

1. I remember Don Bolles too well.

and Evan Meacham. And Joe Arpaio.

Damn it.

[mojowork_n]

2. Who were Evan and Joe... New names to me.... n/t

[byronius]

3. Arizona's Worst.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Evan_meacham
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Joe_Arpaio

Evan Meacham was a crooked Mormon used-car dealer with a toupee who became governor of Arizona for a short while. His first act in office was to rescind the MLK holiday. He called little black girls 'pickaninnies' on statewide radio. (I heard that broadcast.) He was recalled after it was revealed that his car dealership was selling used cars to the state at triple-prices.

Joe Arpaio is still Sheriff of Maricopa County. He runs the infamous Tent City Prison, where prisoners dig holes in the Arizona sun, wearing only rotting pink long johns, and are fed only green baloney and bad water. The tents are notorious for gang-rapes of new inmates, especially the teens put there for violating Meacham's draconian drug laws, which are still on the books. Arpaio was accused a few years ago of murdering a local liberal activist who owned a bowling alley, by using a false arrest to imprison him in one of the Tent Cities, where he was mysteriously murdered during the night. Arpaio maintains a thug squad of deputies, known for midnight raids on political enemies, shooting people's dogs for sport and revenge, and strong-arming local businesses for 'political contributions'.

Arpaio claims to be a devout Christian.

I've since fled Arizona, along with most tech industries and any other intelligent life forms. An old girlfriend of mine was in a car with a young man suspected of pot smoking; she was arrested, brutally strip-searched, held naked in a cell for three days, had her car siezed (permanently), her apartment destroyed, and ended up having to pay over five grand in court costs. For being in a car with an alleged pot-smoker.

I'm never going back.

I remember Don Bolles being murdered really, really well. It was shocking. As time went on, it became obvious that the state of Arizona was rife with corruption and 'frontier justice'. A terrible place to be. I still have friends there, sadly.

[rufus dog]

4. And remember the news coverage in AZ?

The national media flocked to AZ to investigate the bombing. The report was published in all major newspapers, except for two. The AZ Republic, the Phx paper, and if I recall correctly, the Indianapolis paper, run by the Quayle family.