You can view this video right here by getting the latest version of Flash Player!

DOWNLOADS: 10

PLAYS: 10

(Joseph Valachi (center) - Before him, the Mafia was a rumor)

Hard to imagine that before the Valachi Hearings grabbed the headlines and the attention of most Americans in 1962, the Mafia was something of a rumor as far as hard evidence of organized crime was concerned.

But once the investigations started and Joseph Valachi's revelations came to light, it was as if the floodgates of life in the Underworld came pouring out for all to see. The hearings, chaired by Senator John McClellan (D-Arkansas) and guided by Attorney General Robert F. Kennedy went on for weeks and were televised by all the networks. People were fascinated by it and couldn't get enough of the daily goings on.

McClellan: “The existence of such a criminal organization known as Cosa Nostra is frightening. This organization attempts to be a form of government unto itself and outside of the law. This tightly knit association of professional criminals demands and gets complete dedication and unquestioned obedience of its members to orders instructions and commands from the ruling authority or boss . . or bosses thereof. Family, religion and country are all secondary and require to be subservient to the interests of this vicious criminal syndicate.”

It was the stuff of books, TV shows and movies - and its never let up.

You can view this video right here by getting the latest version of Flash Player!

DOWNLOADS: (146)

PLAYS: (512)

Matt Taibbi visits the set of the Ed Schultz show to discuss his article at Rolling Stone, The Great American Bubble Machine - Matt Taibbi on how Goldman Sachs has engineered every major market manipulation since the Great Depression . From the magazine:

In Rolling Stone Issue 1082-83, Matt Taibbi takes on "the Wall Street Bubble Mafia" — investment bank Goldman Sachs. The piece has generated controversy, with Goldman Sachs firing back that Taibbi's piece is "an hysterical compilation of conspiracy theories" and a spokesman adding, "We reject the assertion that we are inflators of bubbles and profiteers in busts, and we are painfully conscious of the importance in being a force for good." Taibbie shot back: "Goldman has its alumni pushing its views from the pulpit of the U.S. Treasury, the NYSE, the World Bank, and numerous other important posts; it also has former players fronting major TV shows.

Remember this interview with Katie Couric?  We were all so focused on McCain's inability to count property that a fairly large whopper of a lie went for the most part unnoticed:

Couric: Are you sorry about the way you answered the question about how many homes you own?

McCain: Well, I'll continue to say I'm blessed, and very proud, that Jim Hensley, a war hero, a man barely able to graduate from high school was able to pass on to his daughter a...what he had struggled for and saved for. That's the ambition all of us have for our children and our grandchildren. And if someone wants to disparage that, they're free to do that.

Yeah, Hensley was the Great American Success Story.  Funny thing about that... while there are some serious lowlifes on the right willing to smear Obama by association with terrorism in ads funded by nebulous shadow groups (although it must hurt Simmons where he lives that his kid donated the max to Obama), I'd say that there is more than enough ammunition in this whitewashing of Jim Hensley's background to fill a few ads. 

So it's natural to ask: how was the Hensley fortune built? According to a 2000 investigation in the Phoenix New Times,

The Hensley saga... swirls with bygone accounts of illicit booze, gambling, horse racing, deceit and crime.

The story by investigative reporters Amy Silverman and John Dougherty is riveting - and remarkably untouched by the Corporate Media, even though it involves the car-bomb murder of a top reporter at the Arizona Republic named Don Bolles.

Jerome Corsi - a rightwinger who co-authored the infamous and election-changing Unfit for Command: Swift Boat Veterans Speak Out Against John Kerry [and the recent Obama hit job Obamanation]- summarizes the Hensley saga and its extensive ties to the Mob...read on..

So Jim Hensley had dirty fingers in enough juicy pies of bootlegging, mafia, racketeering and even murder -- while being defended by future Supreme Court Chief William Rehnquist, mind you -- to even make a right wing hack like Corsi sit up and take notice? That's some good stuff the media is completely ignoring.

And for the record, McCain, that's not at all the kind of ambition I hope for my kids and grandkids.