what color is your parachute?

Introductory Note: Longtime readers know how hard I work to be dispassionate, fair and objective. However, I am sitting here tonight listening to the preposterous bilge coming out of the Republican National Convention and if I have to listen to one more of these self-satisfied true-believer low-down lying motherfuckers, I am going to vomit. Given that Sarah Palin is up next, I better get the bucket out.

money, it's a hit!
pink floyd

Chances are good that you've seen at least one edition of What Color Is Your Parachute? by Richard Nelson Bolles. The book first appeared in the early '70s and has since become perhaps the best selling career-advice book of all time. But what's it doing here? Bear with me. In the 2008 edition, the fist page of Chapter 1 begins... In the sandboxes of my life, over the years I have spelled out who I am: chemical engineer, physicist, counselor, writer, poet, lover, mystic, and man. But I gradually came to realize that, above all else, I was at heart an investigative reporter, like my brother.1 The footnote reads: "Don Bolles, a famous investigative reporter, who was assassinated in Phoenix, AZ, in June of 1976." Richard Bolles's 1978 book, The Three Boxes of Life and How to Get Out of Them is specifically dedicated to his brother Don. An article on AmericanMafia.com says... ...go back to a sweltering summer day in 1976 when Don Bolles, a reporter for the Arizona Republican [sic] Newspaper, stepped into his Datsun, put his foot on the peddle and was blown to bits. Parts of the reporter's body were found ten feet from the burning car. While the error is understandable, the paper is actually called The Arizona Republic. A story they ran 30 years after the reporter's death, Bolles: Cautious man, dedicated journalist, says... [Bob Early, the Republic’s city editor at the time] said no one wanted to do anything but find out what had happened to Bolles. "It was difficult to keep the staff doing what they were supposed to be doing." However, while that article does mention the Mafia several times, the depth of the organized crime connection seems to have gone largely unreported in the mainstream press. For the larger story, you might start with a post to the Deep Thought blog, titled Married to the Mob. Among other matters, that post clarifies how Cindy Hensley McCain's daddy got this start in business... Jim Hensley and his brother Eugene went to work after World War II for Kemper Marley, a wealthy wholesale liquor distributor. Marley, in fact, had once been a bookie, getting his start working for the Transamerica Wire Service, a betting service established by mafiosi [sic] Gus Greenbaum (who was murdered with his wife when their throats were slashed in bed in 1958). Until 1947, liquor was rationed by the government. Apparently Marley did quite well in spite of the restrictions, and in 1948 the reason why became clear. Eugene and Jim Hensley were convicted of falsifying records on behalf of Marley's distributorship, United Liquor (along with fifty other Marley employees) to conceal the illegal distribution of hundreds of cases of liquor. Jim Hensley got a six month suspended sentence. In 1953, Jim Hensley, then the General Manager for United Liquor, was once more charged for doing the same thing again. Marley paid for top notch legal representation though (future Supreme Court Chief Justice William Rehnquist.) Hensley still went to prison, but took the fall when the rest of the company was cleared. According to an article in American Mafia.com, Marley rewarded Hensley for his loyalty to the organization: When Hensley strolled out of the joint, Marley bought his silence with a lucrative Phoenix-based Budweiser beer distributorship. For deeper background still, don't miss the link in the above post to an article on the Arizona Project, the nickname for the 30+ member Investigative Reporters and Editors group formed after Bolles was murdered. It includes this... By the time he testified before the House Select Committee on Crime on May 16,1972, Bolles had been researching Emprise for three years. Asked by a congressman what he had discovered, Bolles answered:"We found there was a continual association with organized crime figures over a 35 year period." For extra credit... Don Bolles Jim Hensley Hensley & Co. Cindy Hensley McCain Is John McCain a Crook? (Slate) Yo honey, this Bud's for you!

And while we're at it, let's hear it for John McCain and the other four crooked old bastards of The Keating Five!

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