The smell of desperation is in the air:

McCain and his agents are "gambling that he can distract you with smears rather than talk to you about substance," Obama added. "They'd rather try to tear our campaign down than lift this country up. It's what you do when you're out of touch, out of ideas and running out of time." "It's a dangerous road, but we have no choice," a top McCain strategist told the Daily News. "If we keep talking about the economic crisis, we're going to lose."

Barack Obama is pulling out the trump card of the Keating Five Scandal. This is last thing John McCain wants a bright light beamed on in the last weeks of this campaign. The deregulation mentality that played a critical role in the current financial meltdown is the same sort of ethical nightmare that John McCain got caught up in financial scandal that brought down 1,000 US banks. He hasn't learned. His solution this time around was to suggest even more deregulation.

McCain cannot "turn the page" on this. The American people will be able to understand how associations like the Arizona senator's with Charles Keating (unlike the feeble bogus Ayers nonsense being tossed at Obama) can and do affect their pocketbooks. (KeatingEconomics.com):

The current economic crisis demands that we understand John McCain's attitudes about economic oversight and corporate influence in federal regulation. Nothing illustrates the danger of his approach more clearly than his central role in the savings and loan scandal of the late '80s and early '90s.

John McCain was accused of improperly aiding his political patron, Charles Keating, chairman of the Lincoln Savings and Loan Association. The bipartisan Senate Ethics Committee launched investigations and formally reprimanded Senator McCain for his role in the scandal -- the first such Senator to receive a major party nomination for president.

At the heart of the scandal was Keating's Lincoln Savings and Loan Association, which took advantage of deregulation in the 1980s to make risky investments with its depositors' money. McCain intervened on behalf of Charles Keating with federal regulators tasked with preventing banking fraud, and championed legislation to delay regulation of the savings and loan industry -- actions that allowed Keating to continue his fraud at an incredible cost to taxpayers.

When the savings and loan industry collapsed, Keating's failed company put taxpayers on the hook for $3.4 billion and more than 20,000 Americans lost their savings.

There will be a 13-minute video launched at noon today on the site that should be spread around like wildfire. This election represents a clear choice -- and history should be every voter's guide on November 4-- John McCain is a dishonest broker when it comes to stewardship of your tax dollars.

There is a wealth of information at KeatingEconomics, including this source material:

- John McCain's Letter on behalf of Keating to James Baker, White House Chief of Staff

- John McCain's Letter on behalf of Keating to Edwin Gray, banking regulator

- John McCain's Second Letter on behalf of Keating to Edwin Gray, banking regulator

- John McCain's Third Letter on behalf of Keating to Edwin Gray, banking regulator

- John McCain's Letter on behalf of Keating to Donald Regan, Secretary of Treasury

- Photo of John McCain with Charles Keating III (The Phoenix Gazette - September 12, 1993)