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Be Sure To Catch These Items

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As we reach the end of 2011, I keep stumbling across loads of important blog postings which deserve more attention.  These pieces aren’t really concerned with the usual, “year in review”- type of subject matter.  They are simply great items which could get overlooked by people who are too busy during this time of year to set aside the time to browse around for interesting reads.  Accordingly, I’d like to bring a few of these to your attention.

The entire European economy is on its way to hell, thanks to an idiotic, widespread belief that economic austerity measures will serve as a panacea for the sovereign debt crisis.  The increasing obviousness of the harm caused by austerity has motivated its proponents to crank-up the “John Maynard Keynes was wrong” propaganda machine.  You don’t have to look very far to find examples of that stuff.  On any given day, the Real Clear Politics (or Real Clear Markets) website is likely to be listing at least one link to such a piece.  Those commentators are simply trying to take advantage of the fact that President Obama botched the 2009 economic stimulus effort.  Many of us realized – a long time ago – that Obama’s stimulus measures would prove to be inadequate.  In July of 2009, I wrote a piece entitled, “The Second Stimulus”, wherein I pointed out that another stimulus program would be necessary because the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act of 2009 was not going to accomplish its intended objective.  Beyond that, it was already becoming apparent that the stimulus program would eventually be used to support the claim that Keynesian economics doesn’t work.  Economist Stephanie Kelton anticipated that tactic in a piece she published at the New Economic Perspectives website:

Some of us saw this coming.  For example, Jamie Galbraith and Robert Reich warned, on a panel I organized in January 2009, that the stimulus package needed to be at least $1.3 trillion in order to create the conditions for a sustainable recovery.  Anything shy of that, they worried, would fail to sufficiently improve the economy, making Keynesian economics the subject of ridicule and scorn.

Despite the current “ridicule and scorn” campaign against Keynesian economics, a fantastic, unbiased analysis of the subject has been provided by Henry Blodget of The Business Insider.  Blodget’s commentary was written in easy-to-read, layman’s terms and I can’t say enough good things about it.  Here’s an example:

The reason austerity doesn’t work to quickly fix the problem is that, when the economy is already struggling, and you cut government spending, you also further damage the economy. And when you further damage the economy, you further reduce tax revenue, which has already been clobbered by the stumbling economy.  And when you further reduce tax revenue, you increase the deficit and create the need for more austerity.  And that even further clobbers the economy and tax revenue.  And so on.

Another “must read” blog posting was provided by Mike Shedlock (a/k/a Mish).  Mish directed our attention to a rather extensive list of “Things to Say Goodbye To”, which was written last year by Clark McClelland and appeared on Jeff Rense’s website.  (Clark McClelland is a retired NASA aerospace engineer who has an interesting background.  I encourage you to explore McClelland’s website.)  Mish pared McClelland’s list down to nine items and included one of his own – loss of free speech:

A bill in Congress with an innocuous title – Stop Online Piracy Act (SOPA) – threatens to do much more.

*  *  *

This bill’s real intent is not to stop piracy, but rather to hand over control of the internet to corporations.

At his Financial Armageddon blog, Michael Panzner took a similar approach toward slimming down a list of bullet points which reveal the disastrous state of our economy:  “50 Economic Numbers From 2011 That Are Almost Too Crazy To Believe,” from the Economic Collapse blog.  Panzner’s list was narrowed down to ten items – plenty enough to undermine those “sunshine and rainbows” prognostications about what we can expect during 2012.

The final item on my list of “must read” essays is a rebuttal to that often-repeated big lie that “no laws were broken” by the banksters who caused the financial crisis.  Bill Black is an Associate Professor of Economics and Law at the University of Missouri-Kansas City in the Department of Economics and the School of Law.  Black directed litigation for the Federal Home Loan Bank Board (FHLBB) from 1984 to 1986 and served as deputy director of the Federal Savings and Loan Insurance Corporation (FSLIC) in 1987.  Black’s refutation of the “no laws were broken by the financial crisis banksters” meme led up to a clever homage to Dante’s Divine Comedy describing the “ten circles of hell” based on “the scale of ethical depravity by the frauds that drove the ongoing crisis”.  Here is Black’s retort to the big lie:

Sixty Minutes’ December 11, 2011 interview of President Obama included a claim by Obama that, unfortunately, did not lead the interviewer to ask the obvious, essential follow-up questions.

I can tell you, just from 40,000 feet, that some of the most damaging behavior on Wall Street, in some cases, some of the least ethical behavior on Wall Street, wasn’t illegal.

*   *   *

I offer the following scale of unethical banker behavior related to fraudulent mortgages and mortgage paper (principally collateralized debt obligations (CDOs)) that is illegal and deserved punishment.  I write to prompt the rigorous analytical discussion that is essential to expose and end Obama and Bush’s “Presidential Amnesty for Contributors” (PAC) doctrine.  The financial industry is the leading campaign contributor to both parties and those contributions come overwhelmingly from the wealthiest officers – the one-tenth of one percent that thrives by being parasites on the 99 percent.

I have explained at length in my blogs and articles why:

• Only fraudulent home lenders made liar’s loans
• Liar’s loans were endemically fraudulent
• Lenders and their agents put the lies in liar’s loans
• Appraisal fraud was endemic and led by lenders and their agents
• Liar’s loans could only be sold through fraudulent reps and warranties
• CDOs “backed” by liar’s loans were inherently fraudulent
• CDOs backed by liar’s loans could only be sold through fraudulent reps and warranties
• Liar’s loans hyper-inflated the bubble
• Liar’s loans became roughly one-third of mortgage originations by 2006

Each of these frauds is a conventional fraud that could be prosecuted under existing laws.

It’s nice to see someone finally take a stand against the “Presidential Amnesty for Contributors” (PAC) doctrine.  Every time Obama attempts to invoke that doctrine – he should be called on it.  The Apologist-In-Chief needs to learn that the voters are not as stupid as he thinks they are.


 

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Justice Denied

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A recent article written by former New York Mayor Ed Koch began with the grim observation that no criminal charges have been brought against any of the malefactors responsible for causing the financial crisis:

Looking back on 2010 and the Great Recession, I continue to be enraged by the lack of accountability for those who wrecked our economy and brought the U.S. to its knees.  The shocking truth is that those who did the damage are still in charge.  Many who ran Wall Street before and during the debacle are either still there making millions, if not billions, of dollars, or are in charge of our country’s economic policies which led to the debacle.

Most of us assumed that the Enron scandal had set a precedent for the prosecution of corporate financial crime.  A few Enron executives received prison sentences and the CEO, Ken Lay, died while serving time.  Enron’s auditor, Arthur Andersen & Company, was forced out of business.  In the wake of the Savings and Loan Crisis of the late 1980s, Charles Keating and a few of his associates were indicted by the State of California.  Keating eventually received a ten-year prison sentence for fraud, racketeering and conspiracy.  Keating’s prosecution resulted from pressure brought by William Black, former litigation director for the Federal Home Loan Bank Board.  At one point during Black’s investigation, Keating issued a written memo to one of his minions, with this directive:  “If you can’t get Wright and Congress to get Black . . .  Kill him dead.”

These days, William Black has been doing quite a bit of speaking and writing about the need to initiate criminal proceedings against the culprits responsible for causing the financial crisis.  On December 28, Black characterized the failure to prosecute those crimes as “de facto decriminalization of elite financial fraud”:

The FBI and the DOJ remain unlikely to prosecute the elite bank officers that ran the enormous “accounting control frauds” that drove the financial crisis.  While over 1000 elites were convicted of felonies arising from the savings and loan (S&L) debacle, there are no convictions of controlling officers of the large nonprime lenders.  The only indictment of controlling officers of a far smaller nonprime lender arose not from an investigation of the nonprime loans but rather from the lender’s alleged efforts to defraud the federal government’s TARP bailout program.

What has gone so catastrophically wrong with DOJ, and why has it continued so long?  The fundamental flaw is that DOJ’s senior leadership cannot conceive of elite bankers as criminals.

*   *   *

Our best bet is to continue to win the scholarly disputes and to continue to push media representatives to take fraud seriously. If the media demands for prosecution of the elite banking frauds expand there is a chance to create a bipartisan coalition in Congress and the administration supporting prosecutions.  In the S&L debacle, Representative Annunzio was one of the leading opponents of reregulation and leading supporters of Charles Keating.  After we brought several hundred successful prosecutions he began wearing a huge button:  “Jail the S&L Crooks!”  Bringing many hundreds of enforcement actions, civil suits, and prosecutions causes huge changes in the way a crisis is perceived.  It makes tens of thousands of documents detailing the frauds public.  It generates thousands of national and local news stories discussing the nature of the frauds and how wealthy the senior officers became through the frauds.  All of this increases the saliency of fraud and increases demands for serious reforms, adequate resources for the regulators and criminal justice bodies, and makes clear that elite fraud poses a severe danger.  Collectively, this creates the political space for real reform, vigorous regulators, and real prosecutors.

Hedge fund manager, David Einhorn (author of  Fooling Some of the People All of the Time) was recently interviewed by Charlie Rose.  At one point during the interview, Charlie Rose asked Einhorn to address the argument that regulators lacked the tools necessary for preventing the financial crisis.  Mr. Einhorn gave this response:

I would actually disagree with that.  I think that the problem was that the laws were not enforced.  After Enron you had Sarbanes Oxley.  And there have been hardly any prosecutions under Sarbanes Oxley.  You put in a tough anti-fraud law.  The CEO has to sign there is no fraud.

The CFO has to sign that the financial statements are correct.  If it’s not, there are going to be criminal consequences to all of this.  And the result was that effectively you passed a law but then they didn’t enforce the law.

And once the bad guys figured out that the law wasn’t being enforced, it effectively provided cover because everybody said, look we have the tough antifraud law.  The fraud must have gone away.

We often hear the expression “crime of the century” to describe some sensational act of blood lust.  Nevertheless, keep in mind that the financial crisis resulted from a massive fraud scheme, involving the packaging and “securitization” of mortgages known to be “liars’ loans”, which were then sold to unsuspecting investors by the creators of those products — who happened to be betting against the value of those items.  In consideration of the fact that the credit crisis resulting from this scam caused fifteen million people to lose their jobs as well as an expected 8 – 12 million foreclosures by 2012, one may easily conclude that this fraud scheme should be considered the crime of both the last century as well as the current century.

While many people have been getting excited about the “insider trading” investigation currently underway, I have been sitting here, wearing my tinfoil hat, viewing the entire episode as a diversionary tactic to direct public attention away from the crimes that caused the financial crisis.  Fortunately, I am not the only cynic with such an outlook.  Jesse Eisenger recently wrote a piece for the DealBook blog at The New York Times entitled, “The Feds Stage a Sideshow While the Big Tent Sits Empty”.  Here is some of what Eisenger had to say about the “insider trading” investigation:

In fact, plenty of people on Wall Street are happy about the investigation.  The ones with clean consciences like the idea that the world of special access to favorable tips is being cleaned up.

But others are pleased for a different reason:  They realize the investigation is a sideshow.

All the hype carries an air of defensiveness.  Everyone is wondering:  Where are the investigations related to the financial crisis?

John Hueston, a former lead Enron prosecutor, wonders, “Have they committed the resources in the right place?  Do these scandals warrant apparent national priority status?”

Nobody from Lehman, Merrill Lynch or Citigroup has been charged criminally with anything.  No top executives at Bear Stearns have been indicted.  All former American International Group executives are running free.  No big mortgage company executive has had to face the law.

There’s an old saying:  “Justice delayed is justice denied.”  The government has demonstrated that it is in no hurry to bring any significant criminal charges against the perpetrators of the crimes that caused the financial crisis.  With the passing of time, it becomes increasingly obvious that those crimes will go unpunished.  The cause of justice is simply no match for the ability of certain individuals to operate “above the law”.  In fact, it never has been.


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Black And Reich

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April 16, 2009

I guess it’s because I was using TurboTax to work on my income tax return for the past few days, that I was constantly reminded of Treasury Secretary “Turbo” Tim Geithner.  Criticism continues to abound concerning the plan by Turbo Tim and Larry Summers for getting the infamous “toxic assets” off the balance sheets of our nation’s banks.  It’s known as the Public-Private Investment Program (a/k/a:  PPIP or “pee-pip”).  I recently read an article by a couple of Economics professors named Laurence J. Kotlikoff (Boston University) and Jeffrey Sachs (Columbia University) wherein they referred to this plan as the GASP (Geithner And Summers Plan).  Their bottom line:

The Geithner-and-Summers Plan should be scrapped.  President Obama should ask his advisors to canvas the economics and legal community to hear the much better ideas that are in wide circulation.

One of the harshest critics of the PPIP is William Black, an Economics professor at the University of Missouri.  Professor Black gained recognition during the 1980s while he was deputy director of the Federal Savings and Loan Insurance Corporation (FSLIC).  During that time, the FSLIC helped block an attempted sale of Charles Keating’s Lincoln Savings and Loan, which was subsequently seized by the Federal Home Loan Bank Board, despite opposition from five United States Senators, who became known as the Keating Five.  A recent interview with Professor Black by Jack Willoughby of Barrons revealed that Black’s aversion to the PPIP starts with the fact that it is being implemented by Geithner and Summers:

We have failed bankers giving advice to failed regulators on how to deal with failed assets.  How can it result in anything but failure?  If they are going to get any truthful investigation, the Democrats picked the wrong financial team.  Tim Geithner, the current Secretary of the Treasury, and Larry Summers, chairman of the National Economic Council, were important architects of the problems.  Geithner especially represents a failed regulator, having presided over the bailouts of major New York banks.

I particularly enjoyed Black’s characterization of the PPIP’s use of government (i.e. taxpayer) money to back private purchases of the toxic assets:

It is worse than a lie.  Geithner has appropriated the language of his critics and of the forthright to support dishonesty.  That is what’s so appalling — numbering himself among those who convey tough medicine when he is really pandering to the interests of a select group of banks who are on a first-name basis with Washington politicians.

The current law mandates prompt corrective action, which means speedy resolution of insolvencies.  He is flouting the law, in naked violation, in order to pursue the kind of favoritism that the law was designed to prevent.  He has introduced the concept of capital insurance, essentially turning the U.S. taxpayer into the sucker who is going to pay for everything.  He chose this path because he knew Congress would never authorize a bailout based on crony capitalism.

For the past month or so, I’ve been hearing many stock market commentators bemoan the fact that there is so much money “on the sidelines”.  In other words, people with trading accounts are letting their money sit in brokerage money market accounts, rather than risking it in the stock markets.  I believe that many of these people are so discouraged by the sleazy environment on Wall Street, they are waiting for things to get cleaned up before they take any more chances in a casino where so many games are rigged.  In the Barrons interview, Black made a point that reinforced my opinion:

His (Geithner’s) use of language like “legacy assets” — and channeling the worst aspects of Milton Friedman — is positively Orwellian.  Extreme conservatives wrongly assume that the government can’t do anything right.  And they wrongly assume that the market will ultimately lead to correct actions.  If cheaters prosper, cheaters will dominate.  It is like Gresham’s law:  Bad money drives out the good.  Well, bad behavior drives out good behavior, without good enforcement.

By asking Professor Black a few simple, straightforward questions (in layperson’s language) Jack Willoughby got some fantastic and refreshing information in return (also in layperson’s language) making this article a “must read”.  As Black and many others have pointed out, these huge financial institutions must be broken down into smaller businesses.  Why isn’t this being undertaken?  Professor Black looks to where the buck stops:

Obama, who is doing so well in so many other arenas, appears to be slipping because he trusts Democrats high in the party structure too much.

These Democrats want to maintain America’s pre-eminence in global financial capitalism at any cost.  They remain wedded to the bad idea of bigness, the so-called financial supermarket — one-stop shopping for all customers — that has allowed the American financial system to paper the world with subprime debt.  Even the managers of these worldwide financial conglomerates testify that they have become so sprawling as to be unmanageable.

Another critic of the Geithner-Summers PPIP is former Secretary of Labor, Robert Reich.  Reich is now a professor at the University of California at Berkeley.  His April 6 blog entry discussed the fact that the top 25 hedge fund managers earned a total of $11.6 billion last year:

But what causes me severe heartburn is that these are exactly the sort of investors Tim Geithner is trying to lure in to buy troubled assets from banks, with an extraordinary offer financed by you and me and other taxpayers:  If it turns out the troubled assets are worth more than these guys pay for them, they could make a fortune.  If it turns out the assets are worth less, these guys won’t lose a thing because we taxpayers will bail them out.  Plus, they get to pick only the highest-rated of the big banks’ bad assets and can review them carefully before buying.

What a deal.  Why can’t you and I get in on this bonanza? Because we’re too small.  The government will designate only about five big investor funds — run or owned by the richest of the rich — as potential buyers.  Hedge funds fit the bill perfectly.

It’s nice to know that more and more prominent individuals in the world of economics and public policy are taking the ethical stand against a program based on the principle of “socialized loss and privatized gain”.  I just hope President Obama doesn’t take too long to realize that these people are right and that the Geithner – Summers team is wrong.

This Should Have Happened Last Year

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September 18, 2008

I’m sorry.  What is happening in the financial markets right now, should have happened at this time, last year.  I put my money where my mouth was, in the belief that a laissez-faire Republican government would have let market conditions run their course.  That strategy caused me to lose money for the past year.  When precious metals should have been going up, they were going down.  Something “stinky” was happening.  At this time, last year, Jon Markman of msn.com was discussing the “duct tape and pixie dust” being used to hold the economy together.  In hindsight, I suspect that there may have been an effort to keep the ca-ca from hitting the fan until after Election Day (November 4).  Time will tell whether there was some skullduggery involved in such an effort.  Do you think that the “oil speculators” realized, at some point, that they could manipulate the prices of the small handful of stocks (30) that comprise the Dow Jones Industrials, by manipulating the price of oil?  Are these same “oil speculators” on “good behavior” right now, out of fear that the “Enron Loophole” could be doomed?

I apologize because I have been making (back) lots of money this week, while many people have seen their retirement plans crash and burn.  I stuck to my belief that the emperor was not really wearing any clothes.  It cost me money to adhere to that opinion, although it is now “payback time”.  To no surprise, the Carly Fiorinas of this nosedive will walk away with their golden parachutes intact.  However, will AIG still be free to make crucial decisions about which lawsuits to litigate?  Do they have a right to make those (and other) decisions as they used to, now that you and I own eighty percent of that company?

Meanwhile, John “Keating Five” McCain claims that he will champion the interests of those suckers who vote for him, by bringing “The Good Old Boys of Wall Street” to Alaskan frontier justice.  Why would anyone believe this?  Based on his record, McCain could not expect the voters to consider him as the advocate of the downtrodden.  For some reason, the Obama campaign has expressed an unwillingness to use the “Keating Five” episode of McCain’s life, as fodder for negative ads.  (They may find themselves thinking more clearly in late October.)

Let’s take a look back at the “glory days” of The Keating Five, from what is available on Wikipedia.org:

The Keating Five scandal was prompted by the activities of one particular savings and loan: Lincoln Savings and Loan Association of Irvine, California. Lincoln’s chairman was Charles Keating, who ultimately served five years in prison for his corrupt mismanagement of Lincoln.  In the four years since Keating’s American Continental Corporation (ACC) had purchased Lincoln in 1984, Lincoln’s assets had increased from $1.1 billion to $5.5 billion.  Such savings and loan associations had been deregulated in the early 1980s, allowing them to make highly risky investments with their depositors’ money, a change of which Keating took advantage.  Lincoln’s investments took the form of buying land, taking equity positions in real estate development projects, and buying high-yield junk bonds.

*   *   *

The core allegation of the Keating Five affair is that Keating had made contributions of about $1.3 million to various U.S. Senators, and he called on those Senators to help him resist regulators. The regulators backed off, to later disastrous consequences.

*   *   *

(f)ive senators, Alan Cranston (D-CA), Dennis DeConcini (D-AZ), John Glenn (D-OH), John McCain (R-AZ), and Donald W. Riegle (D-MI), were accused of improperly aiding Charles H. Keating, Jr., chairman of the failed Lincoln Savings and Loan Association, which was the target of an investigation by the Federal Home Loan Bank Board (FHLBB).

*   *   *

After a lengthy investigation, the Senate Ethics Committee determined in 1991 that Alan Cranston, Dennis DeConcini, and Donald Riegle had substantially and improperly interfered with the FHLBB in its investigation of Lincoln Savings. Senators John Glenn and John McCain were cleared of having acted improperly but were criticized for having exercised “poor judgment”.  All five of the senators involved served out their terms. Only Glenn and McCain ran for re-election, and they were both re-elected.

*   *   *

McCain and Keating had become personal friends following their initial contacts in 1981, and McCain was the closest socially to Keating of the five senators. Like DeConcini, McCain considered Keating a constituent as he lived in Arizona. Between 1982 and 1987, McCain had received $112,000 in political contributions from Keating and his associates. In addition, McCain’s wife Cindy McCain and her father Jim Hensley had invested $359,100 in a Keating shopping center in April 1986, a year before McCain met with the regulators. McCain, his family, and their baby-sitter had made nine trips at Keating’s expense, sometimes aboard Keating’s jet. Three of the trips were made during vacations to Keating’s opulent Bahamas retreat at Cat Cay. McCain did not pay Keating (in the amount of $13,433) for some of the trips until years after they were taken, when he learned that Keating was in trouble over Lincoln. On his Keating Five experience, McCain has said: “The appearance of it was wrong. It’s a wrong appearance when a group of senators appear in a meeting with a group of regulators, because it conveys the impression of undue and improper influence. And it was the wrong thing to do.”

So where is the Obama ad using “Poor Judgment” as its theme?  Wouldn’t it be nice to see that phrase repeated under a picture of Sarah Palin?

The High Road To Nowhere

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August 21, 2008

He’s blowing it.  With each passing day, the opinion polls show increasing momentum by the McCain campaign.  For their part, the Democrats have put together a lineup of really uninspiring orators for next week’s Convention.  The schedule for this event will include such former stars as Jimmy Carter, Bill Clinton and John Kerry.  (At least they had the sense to leave Mike Dukakis and Walter Mondale off the program.)  What is Jimmy Carter going to discuss?  … “How to Facilitate Runaway Inflation”?  Is Bill Clinton going to explain “How to Beat a DNA Test”?  (John Edwards will be listening to that one with abated breath.)  We can count on John Kerry to present a coma – inducing diatribe about “How to Snatch Defeat from the Jaws of Victory”.  Meanwhile, Obama appears to be writing his own handbook on that subject.  After folding on the FISA (wiretap) bill and capitulating to the public’s ignorance on the offshore oil drilling controversy, he now appears ready to undermine his campaign theme of Change, by selecting a running mate, who has spent nearly his entire adult life in the Senate:  Joe Biden.

Obama would be better off running with his best choice: Virginia Governor Tim Kane.  Does Barack really believe that some chucklehead, watching “reality TV”, is going to be concerned about whether Kane has the adequate foreign policy acumen to attend the funerals of foreign dignitaries on behalf of the United States?  The people of Virginia will support the team that includes a fellow Virginian.   Southern voters will not vote for a ticket consisting of two individuals who put sugar on their grits.  Catholics will vote for the candidate with a Catholic running mate, despite McCain’s anti-abortion pander.

At this point in the campaign, the often – repeated mantra of the commentators is that “negative campaigning works”.  Obama has expressed his belief that by taking the “high road”, he will somehow be immune to any negative attacks.  If he wants to win this election, he must face up to the need to launch his own negative character attack against McCain.  For starters, he must restrain himself from saying nice things about his opponent.  He should then draw some attention to the following issues:

1.)  McCain’s divorce from his first wife, Carol, and Ross Perot’s feelings about that.  In the June 8 issue of Britain’s Daily Mail, Sharon Churcher discussed Perot’s reaction to how McCain ditched Carol upon his return from Viet Nam, when he first learned of her crippling injuries:

But Ross Perot, who paid her medical bills all those years ago, now believes that both Carol McCain and the American people have been taken in by a man who is unusually slick and cruel – even by the standards of modern politics.

“McCain is the classic opportunist.  He’s always reaching for attention and glory,” he said.

“After he came home, Carol walked with a limp.  So he threw her over for a poster girl with big money from Arizona. And the rest is history.”

2.)  McCain’s involvement in the “Keating Five” scandal.  In 1991, McCain was criticized by the Senate Ethics Committee as having exercised “poor judgment” in connection with the Federal Home Loan Bank Board’s investigation of Lincoln Savings and Loan.

3.)  Obama’s staffers should contact McCain’s fellow inmates from the Hanoi Hilton, to obtain a little more information than “no comment” as to their feelings concerning McCain’s candidacy.

4.)   Get in touch with McCain’s Vietnamese captors to find out whether he provided them with any worthwhile information, justifying  the reason for their offer of early repatriation, which he declined.

There’s a dirt in them there hills.  Obama’s camp has to go dig for it.  If they find it  . . .  they damned – well better use it.

It’s a dirty world out there, with such dirty players as: Vladimir Putin, Hugo Chavez and the Chinese baseball team.  Unless he really can perform a miracle, the guy with the halo over his head won’t be moving into 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue.  Of course, he could always trade in the halo for a nice set of darts.