McCain's Rezko.

Don't mess with Rich Daley.

Earlier this week, the McCain campaign rolled out its "Chicago Machine" ad and Hizzoner was not amused. There was muttering about the stickiness of mud.

Now, in the midst of the biggest financial crisis since the savings and loan bailout of the 80s and 90s, finally, today, the K Bomb was dropped and McCain suspended his campaign, ostensibly to provide leadership in the Senate to solve the current crisis.

Except this mounting crisis is making people look at how well McCain handled things back then, and is the real reason he has suspended his campaign. He doesn't want to explain Charles Keating again. At least not now, not this week.

The Palin choice was his first Hail Mary. Can he connect a second time?

Even before the K Bomb was dropped, Navy pilot McCain was taking heavy flak to his right wing, yesterday from George Will and last week from the Wall Street Journal.

Palin may have won over the Main Street conservatives, but Wall Street conservatives are more skeptical than ever.

I knew Keating before he was the king maker and bank breaker he was to become. Knew of him, that is. I was a freshman in college at Miami University, near Cincinnati, and he was a fixture in the Cincinnati media as president of the Roman Catholic Legion of Decency, and an anti-pornography crusader.

Growing up a Catholic, in the Diocese of Toledo, I read the Catholic Chronicle, the diocesan weekly newspaper. No, really, I did. One of the paper's features was movie ratings and reviews, based not on the movie's quality but on its decency. The ratings and reviews were provided by a group called the Legion of Decency.

That's all I knew about the Legion of Decency. I had never seen them carry picket signs in front of strip clubs before. That's what Charles Keating was up to before he went to Arizona to become John McCain's first Sugar Daddy (unless you count Jim Hensley, Cindi's dad). Keating was, in short, McCain's Rezko, except magnified by a factor of ten. All Rezko ever got Obama to do was accept a shady real estate deal, a down payment on a future favor that never got asked. McCain got the contributions, got asked to do the favors, did the favors, and Keating bilked the Treasury out of millions. McCain and four other senators were investigated. McCain admitted that he had shown poor judgment.

At about the same time Keating was cleaning up Cincinnati, the Queen City's mayor got busted for patronizing a prostitute across the river in Kentucky. He got caught because he wrote her a check. His name was Jerry Springer. The Reds were playing their final season in Crosley Field. And I was finally getting laid. It was a golden time in southwestern Ohio.