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Category Archives: Election 2008

The Financial Industry-Congressional Complex

28 Saturday Mar 2009

Posted by Craig in Election 2008, Obama, Politics, Uncategorized

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congressional, Eisenhower, financial industry, military-industrial complex, Sold Out, Wall Street, Washington D.C.

In his farewell address to the nation on January 17, 1961 President Eisenhower warned the country to be vigilant about the relationship between the government, the armed forces, and the industries and commercial interests they support–what he called the “military-industrial complex.”

Eisenhower spoke of what he called the “grave implications” of allowing the power and influence of that triad to get out of control:

“Our toil, resources and livelihood are all involved; so is the very structure of our society. In the councils of government, we must guard against the acquisition of unwarranted influence, whether sought or unsought, by the military-industrial complex. The potential for the disastrous rise of misplaced power exists and will persist.”

 

I would submit to you that if the words “financial industry” and “congressional” are substituted for “military-industrial” that is exactly what we have seen take place over the last decade and has led to our current economic situation.

We have the financial services industry and all it’s associated tentacles, Wall Street for short, motivated by greed, aided and abetted by policy makers in Washington, D.C. driven by their lust for campaign contributions and power, who have, in either their shortsightedness or outright corruption, sold us all out.

Speaking of sold out, here is an article in Wall Street Watch which summarizes a 231-page report by Essential Information and the Consumer Education Foundation with those words in the title.

 “The report, “Sold Out: How Wall Street and Washington Betrayed America,” shows that, from 1998-2008, Wall Street investment firms, commercial banks, hedge funds, real estate companies and insurance conglomerates made $1.725 billion in political contributions and spent another $3.4 billion on lobbyists, a financial juggernaut aimed at undercutting federal regulation.

 

Nearly 3,000 officially registered federal lobbyists worked for the industry in 2007 alone. The report documents a dozen distinct deregulatory moves that, together, led to the financial meltdown.

These include prohibitions on regulating financial derivatives; the repeal of regulatory barriers between commercial banks and investment banks; a voluntary regulation scheme for big investment banks; and federal refusal to act to stop predatory subprime lending.”

Here are some of the deregulatory steps taken between 1998 and 2008:

* In 1999, Congress repealed the Glass-Steagall Act, which had prohibited the merger of commercial banking and investment banking.

* Regulatory rules permitted off-balance sheet accounting — tricks that enabled banks to hide their liabilities.

* The Clinton administration blocked the Commodity Futures Trading Commission from regulating financial derivatives — which became the basis for massive speculation.

* Congress in 2000 prohibited regulation of financial derivatives when it passed the Commodity Futures Modernization Act.

* The Securities and Exchange Commission in 2004 adopted a voluntary regulation scheme for investment banks that enabled them to incur much higher levels of debt.

* Rules adopted by global regulators at the behest of the financial industry would enable commercial banks to determine their own capital reserve requirements, based on their internal “risk-assessment models.”

* Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac expanded beyond their traditional scope of business and entered the subprime market, ultimately costing taxpayers hundreds of billions of dollars.

* The abandonment of antitrust and related regulatory principles enabled the creation of too-big-to-fail megabanks, which engaged in much riskier practices than smaller banks.

* Beset by conflicts of interest, private credit rating companies incorrectly assessed the quality of mortgage-backed securities; a 2006 law handcuffed the SEC from properly regulating the firms.

Not so coincidentally, during the same period, 1998-2008:

* Commercial banks spent more than $154 million on campaign contributions, while investing $363 million in officially registered lobbying:

* Accounting firms spent $68 million on campaign contributions and $115 million on lobbying;

* Insurance companies donated more than $218 million and spent more than $1.1 billion on lobbying;

* Securities firms invested more than $504 million in campaign contributions, and an additional $576 million in lobbying. Included in this total: private equity firms contributed $56 million to federal candidates and spent $33 million on lobbying; and hedge funds spent $32 million on campaign contributions (about half in the 2008 election cycle).

And before any finger-pointing begins, Wall Street doesn’t care about party, they are willing to purchase whoever is in power at the time. .

“The betrayal was bipartisan: about 55 percent of the political donations went to Republicans and 45 percent to Democrats, primarily reflecting the balance of power over the decade. Democrats took just more than half of the financial sector’s 2008 election cycle contributions.

The financial sector buttressed its political strength by placing Wall Street expatriates in top regulatory positions, including the post of Treasury Secretary held by two former Goldman Sachs chairs, Robert Rubin and Henry Paulson.

These companies drew heavily from government in choosing their lobbyists. Surveying 20 leading financial firms, “Sold Out” finds 142 of the lobbyists they employed from 1998-2008 were previously high-ranking officials or employees in the Executive Branch or Congress.”

 

In a 3 word summation ladies and gentlemen of the jury, we’ve been had.

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The President and the Teleprompter

26 Thursday Mar 2009

Posted by Craig in Election 2008, McCain, Obama, Politics, Uncategorized

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Hinderaker. Power Line, McCain, Obama, Palin, Sean, teleprompter

A recurring theme among the detractors of President Obama has been his reliance on a teleprompter. Anyone who spends time on the internet has seen it on an almost daily basis.

In the minds of some this apparently is an indicator of a lack of intelligence, as ridiculous as that is when speaking about a Harvard graduate, editor of The Law Review, and author of 2 books.

One of the bloggers on the far-right, John Hinderaker, who writes for Power Line, said this about a recent speech by President Obama in which he mis-pronounced the word “Orion.”

“Everyone knows that Barack Obama is lost without his teleprompter, but his latest blunder, courtesy of the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel, via the Corner, suggests that the teleprompter may not be enough unless it includes phonetic spellings.

So evidently we have to add astronomy to history and economics as subjects of which Obama is remarkably ignorant. I’m beginning to fear that our President has below-average knowledge of the world. Not for a President, but for a middle-aged American.”

 

Just as a point of reference, this is the same Mr. Hinderaker who wrote this shortly after last year’s election:

“Obama thinks he is a good talker, but he is often undisciplined when he speaks. He needs to understand that as President, his words will be scrutinized and will have impact whether he intends it or not. In this regard, President Bush is an excellent model; Obama should take a lesson from his example. Bush never gets sloppy when he is speaking publicly. He chooses his words with care and precision, which is why his style sometimes seems halting. In the eight years he has been President, it is remarkable how few gaffes or verbal blunders he has committed. If Obama doesn’t raise his standards, he will exceed Bush’s total before he is inaugurated.”

 

But you know, the more I think about it, the more I tend to agree with Hinderaker and others. Only a complete idiot would have to rely on a teleprompter when speaking to the country. Right, Senator McCain?

 mccaitele

 

Right, Governor Palin?

 palintele

 

Right, Sean?

hannitytele 

 

Oh no, say it ain’t so.

 reaganteleprompter

 

Oh well, I guess it’s back to the birth certificate nonsense.

Brevity Is The Soul of Wit

24 Saturday Jan 2009

Posted by Craig in Election 2008, Obama, Politics, Uncategorized

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economic stimulus package, I won, Obama, Republicans

“Brevity is the soul of wit.”

President Obama yesterday confirmed these words, spoken by Lord Polonius in William Shakespeare’s Hamlet, in this two word retort to would-be Republican obstructionists and heel-draggers who are question the size and scope of his proposed economic stimulus package.

“I won.”

From Politico:

“President Obama listened to Republican gripes about his stimulus package during a meeting with congressional leaders Friday morning – but he also left no doubt about who’s in charge of these negotiations. “I won,” Obama noted matter-of-factly, according to sources familiar with the conversation.

The exchange arose as top House and Senate Republicans expressed concern to the president about the amount of spending in the package.”

More from the New York Post:

“Not that Obama was gloating. He was just explaining that he aims to get his way on stimulus package and all other legislation, sources said, noting his unrivaled one-party control of both congressional chambers.

“We are experiencing an unprecedented economic crisis that has to be dealt with and dealt with rapidly,” Obama said during the meeting.”

But the Republicans, whose symbol of an elephant needs to be replaced by an ostrich, apparently don’t think economic stimulus is necessary. According to the National Republican Congressional Committee web site:

“Thanks to Republican economic policies, the U.S. economy is robust and job creation is strong.”

As someone commented here earlier this week, I wonder what color the sky is in the Republican’s world.

But President Obama wasn’t finished with Republicans, adding this:

“You can’t just listen to Rush Limbaugh and get things done,” he told top GOP leaders, whom he had invited to the White House to discuss his nearly $1 trillion stimulus package.”

I don’t know about you, but I’ve been sleeping better at night since January 20th. My country is once again in good hands.

Paul Krugman: “What Do You Mean We”?

01 Monday Dec 2008

Posted by Craig in Election 2008, Obama, Politics, Uncategorized

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Lawrence Summers, New York Times, op-ed, Paul Krugman, President-elect Obama, Timothy Geithner

With all due respect to Timothy Geithner, Lawrence Summers, and the rest of President-elect Obama’s economic team, there is one name I would like to have seen included on that list–that of Nobel prize winning economist Paul Krugman.

Here’s why. From a Krugman op-ed piece in the New York Times recently:

“A few months ago I found myself at a meeting of economists and finance officials, discussing — what else? — the crisis. There was a lot of soul-searching going on. One senior policy maker asked, “Why didn’t we see this coming?”

There was, of course, only one thing to say in reply, so I said it: “What do you mean ‘we,’ white man?”

Seriously, though, the official had a point. Some people say that the current crisis is unprecedented, but the truth is that there were plenty of precedents, some of them of very recent vintage. Yet these precedents were ignored. And the story of how “we” failed to see this coming has a clear policy implication — namely, that financial market reform should be pressed quickly, that it shouldn’t wait until the crisis is resolved.

About those precedents: Why did so many observers dismiss the obvious signs of a housing bubble, even though the 1990s dot-com bubble was fresh in our memories?

Why did so many people insist that our financial system was “resilient,” as Alan Greenspan put it, when in 1998 the collapse of a single hedge fund, Long-Term Capital Management, temporarily paralyzed credit markets around the world?

Why did almost everyone believe in the omnipotence of the Federal Reserve when its counterpart, the Bank of Japan, spent a decade trying and failing to jump-start a stalled economy?

One answer to these questions is that nobody likes a party pooper. While the housing bubble was still inflating, lenders were making lots of money issuing mortgages to anyone who walked in the door; investment banks were making even more money repackaging those mortgages into shiny new securities; and money managers who booked big paper profits by buying those securities with borrowed funds looked like geniuses, and were paid accordingly. Who wanted to hear from dismal economists warning that the whole thing was, in effect, a giant Ponzi scheme?”

Put more succinctly by Upton Sinclair:

“It is difficult to get a man to understand something, when his salary depends upon his not understanding it!”

Mr. Krugman’s conclusion, and one I hope is heeded by the Obama administration, is that now is the time not only to focus on the short-term crisis, but to make the long-term fixes that will prevent the next one from occurring.

More Knee-Jerk Republican Reaction

16 Sunday Nov 2008

Posted by Craig in Election 2008, Obama, Politics, Uncategorized

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knee-jerk, Michael Reagan, Obama, Republican

Speaking of knee-jerk Republican reaction to the election of Barack Obama, there’s this from the desk of Michael Reagan (bold letters, caps and underlines are Reagan’s, not mine):

“Dear Conservative Friend,

It’s official: America has its first truly Socialist president…

 

As bad as the election results were, I believe there IS “light at the end of the tunnel” — I believe we now have the opportunity to finally turn out these fake “leaders” that have betrayed conservatism and given us Barack Obama. We have the opportunity to bring back the Reagan wing of the Republican Party, to slow down the socialist legislation from Pelosi and Reid, and to restore this great Republic to its original ideals of basic self-evident truths: our right to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness.

This is our chance, friend. It may be our ONLY chance to save our Party — and it may be our LAST chance to save our country.

 

You can be sure that President Obama (oh, how that phrase terrifies me!) will get right to work on Day One, issuing Executive Orders that will make your skin crawl: repealing pro-life presidential directives, ordering agencies to fund far-left groups like ACORN and the ACLU, signing over American sovereignty to the United Nations and the European Union… he’s got a long list! But for every liberal (and usually unconstitutional) Executive Order that Barack Obama issues, we’ll alert our Activists to BARRAGE the White House with even MORE phone calls, faxes, emails and even hand-delivered letters and petitions, DEMANDING that he “reverse course” on those Orders or face a Republican Congress in 2010!

With the Democrats back in power in both Congress and the White House, you KNOW that they’ll be falling right back into their habits of taking lobbyists’ money under the table, trading votes for campaign contributions, spying on and sabotaging Republican legislative plans, covering up their leaders’ sexual “flings,” and spending taxpayer money on personal expenses like never before. But this time, YOU AND I will be there every step of the way, making sure that no stone is left unturned, every dark corner is filled with light, and every illegal act is paid for with censure, impeachment, recalls, investigations, and jail time for every criminal we expose in Washington, D.C.

My father wasn’t afraid to call evil what it was — and neither am I. He defeated the “Evil Empire” called the Soviet Union — but now we face a new “Evil Empire.” It’s called Socialism, and it’s taken over our once-free nation through the victories of Obama, Pelosi and Reid.”

 

Nice job Michael, now that your Party is in that hole, just keep digging.

So Much For Bi-Partisanship

16 Sunday Nov 2008

Posted by Craig in Election 2008, McCain, Obama, Politics, Uncategorized

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John Kyl, presidential election, Republican, strategy, Supreme Court

Something that was kind of overlooked in the aftermath of the presidential election were remarks made by Senator John Kyl, Republican from Arizona and the second highest ranking Republican in the United States Senate. His words say a lot about the GOP strategy going forward, and here’s a clue: It ain’t bi-partisanship.

Kyl said this to the Federalist Society on November 8, four days after the election:

“Jon Kyl, the second-ranking Republican in the U.S. Senate, warned president-elect Barack Obama that he would filibuster U.S. Supreme Court appointments if those nominees were too liberal.

Kyl, Arizona’s junior senator, expects Obama to appoint judges in the mold of U.S Supreme Court Justices Ruth Bader Ginsburg, David Souter and Stephen Breyer. Those justices take a liberal view on cases related to social, law and order and business issues, Kyl said.

“He believes in justices that have empathy,” said Kyl, speaking at a Federalist Society meeting in Phoenix. The attorneys group promotes conservative legal principles.

Kyl said if Obama goes with empathetic judges who do not base their decisions on the rule of law and legal precedents but instead the factors in each case, he would try to block those picks via filibuster.”

First Senator Kyl, a little Constitutional lesson for you. The president does not appoint Supreme Court justices, he nominates them and the Senate confirms or rejects the nomination. Just a minor detail.

Secondly, David Souter? Excuse me Senator Kyl, are you aware of who nominated Justice Souter? It was that radical, left-wing, extremist, George H. W. Bush.

Third, and the thing that struck me, is the last sentence of Kyl’s remarks. Senator Kyl would filibuster any judges who base their decisions on the factors of the case?

What the…??

One more thing for Senator Kyl to consider is this:

According to CNN exit polls, those who claimed that the Supreme Court was a factor in their decision in the presidential election, broke for Obama 53-45% and voters who called future Supreme Court appointments the most important factor went for Obama even more strongly– 57 to 41%.

How Will President Obama Govern?

14 Friday Nov 2008

Posted by Craig in Election 2008, McCain, Obama, Politics, Uncategorized

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Barack Obama, McCain, Palin, presidential campaign, Republican Party, talk radio, the real Obama

There was much written and said during the recent presidential campaign about the supposed “mystery” surrounding now President-elect Barack Obama. Senator McCain and Governor Palin, along with the Republican Party spokespersons and their allies on talk-radio, often raised the question, “Who is the real Barack Obama?”

Their contention was that his thin record as a United States Senator gave us no clue as to what kind of president he might be or how he might govern if elected. The right threw around buzz words like “the most liberal member of the Senate” and pointed to Obama’s “radical associations” in an attempt to portray him as a far-left ideologue who would carry that ideology into the Oval Office.

As is brought out in a post on today’s Moderate Voice, there is a much better guidepost to how President-elect Obama will govern than his time in the Senate, and that is his tenure as president/editor of the Harvard Law Review.

According to the post:
“The environment at Harvard during Obama’s matriculation was rife of protests and peaceful sit-ins of the Dean’s Office and other faculty. Divergent activist groups of blacks, Hispanics and others demanded more diversity among the composition of law professors.

In this divisive setting, Obama was selected to join The Harvard Review, the most prestigious publication of any law school in America. His peers elected him president/editor of the group his third and final year at Harvard.

Juan Zuniga (a law student one year behind Obama) said Obama’s emergence in the selection process was “a neutral, middle-ground, non-threatening, non-ideological candidate.”

His (Zuniga’s) impressions of Obama from friends on the Harvard Law Review and faculty were “that he was not perceived as an ideologue by those who knew him. Rather, he has an incredible facility to listen to other people, consider their positions, respect their positions when making a decision and then use his own intellect to reach his own conclusion. He draws talented and respectful people to himself. He makes responsible decisions based on merit and not ideological principles. It is very much worth noting that in many ways he keeps himself above the fray.

“While a bunch of us were out there trying to take over the Dean’s office, Barack was never a meaningful presence at any rallies. I have no doubt he believed we needed a more diverse faculty, but he also knew that the role he had as Editor in Chief of the Law Review meant he could accomplish so much by approaching his task with professionalism without raising an ideological torch and being a rabble rouser.”

I had my own skepticism about then Senator Obama at first. That was due mostly to listening to the characterizations of him in some of the media. But as I listened to him, I didn’t hear a strident, far-left ideologue, I saw what his fellow students at Harvard saw, a pragmatist, with reasonable solutions to the problems facing our country. And that is how I expect President Obama to govern beginning on January 20, 2009.

In Four Days We Can Send a Message

31 Friday Oct 2008

Posted by Craig in Election 2008, McCain, Obama, Politics, Uncategorized

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cooperation, division, partisanship, presidential election, unity

Four more days, my fellow Americans, four more days. In four days we have a decision to make about the future of our country, and the choices are crystal clear. We can choose to continue the politics and policies of the past, or we can turn the page and begin a new chapter in American history. A chapter that is about unity instead of division, cooperation instead of partisanship, and about appealing to our better nature rather than our baser instincts.

We can put behind us forever the kind of political campaign that would send out mailers like this:

 

 

 

 

 

Or ads that seek to pit one race against the other, like this:

 

 

We have a chance to put this type of campaign on the ash heap of history and send the message to all who would use such tactics in the future that it will no longer be successful. We can let our future candidates for president know that it is no longer acceptable to label their opponent as “anti-American” or “socialist” or “communist” or say that they “pal around with terrorists.”

We can choose a president who sees the politics of divide and conquer as the failed strategy of the past. A president who can reach across all boundaries and begin to heal the divisions that have resulted from decades of that strategy. A president who wants America to be the land of opportunity for all Americans, not just for the rich and powerful few.

This president:

 

To quote a famous line, “If not us, who? If not now, when? We are the who, the when is now. We cannot afford to let this opportunity pass.

Barack Obama: Right Man, Right Place, Right Time

28 Tuesday Oct 2008

Posted by Craig in Election 2008, Obama, Politics, Uncategorized

≈ 1 Comment

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Barack Obama, Clinton machine, President of the United States, presidential campaign

As this long and grueling presidential campaign nears it’s final week, it is time to reflect back on where we have come, what we have seen happen, and why. How did Barack Obama, a first term Senator from Illinois, a virtual unknown when this process began nearly 2 years ago, manage to defeat the powerful Clinton machine and now stand on the brink of being elected President of the United States.

To put it in a few words, he is the right man, with the right message, in the right place, at the right time in our country’s history.

While I agree with Obama’s economic policy of lessening the income disparity and putting purchasing power back in the hands of the middle-class, and I agree with his stance on getting our troops out of Iraq and drawing that war to a close, neither of those are the transcendent issues that are facing our country, in my opinion.

The most important problem we face is spanning this chasm of partisan political division and public discourse that is eating away at our society like an aggressive form of cancer. In this election, our only hope of building a bridge across this divide and restoring some sense of common purpose among all our people is to elect Barack Obama.

I believe Colin Powell had it exactly right, Obama is a “transformational figure” at a time when our political system is in need of transformation perhaps like no other time in our nation’s history.

And in this election our choice is crystal clear. Do we allow the politics of division and personal destruction to win and in so doing insure another 4 years of partisanship and bickering while the problems facing us go from bad to worse? Or do we at least start down the road of putting this country back together with the only candidate capable of doing that.

Here are the closing paragraphs from an article Andrew Sullivan wrote in December of last year that sums it all up for me:

“If you believe that America’s current crisis is not a deep one … if you believe that today’s ideological polarization is not dangerous, and that what appears dark today is an illusion fostered by the lingering trauma of the Bush presidency, then the argument for Obama is not that strong.

But if you sense, as I do, that greater danger lies ahead, and that our divisions and recent history have combined to make the American polity and constitutional order increasingly vulnerable, then the calculus of risk changes. Sometimes, when the world is changing rapidly, the greater risk is caution. Close-up in this election campaign, Obama is unlikely. From a distance, he is necessary. At a time when America’s estrangement from the world risks tipping into dangerous imbalance, when a country at war with lethal enemies is also increasingly at war with itself, when humankind’s spiritual yearnings veer between an excess of certainty and an inability to believe anything at all, and when sectarian and racial divides seem as intractable as ever, a man who is a bridge between these worlds may be indispensable.

We cannot let this moment pass.”

 

 

History Could Have Repeated Itself in Pittsburgh

25 Saturday Oct 2008

Posted by Craig in Election 2008, McCain, Obama, Politics, Uncategorized

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Charles Stuart, Fox News, Matt Drudge, McCain communications director, Pittsburgh, Willie Bennett, yesterday

Does anybody recognize the name Charles Stuart? How about Willie Bennett? Probably not. Here’s the story and how it relates to the events in Pittsburgh yesterday.

Charles Stuart and his wife Carol were driving home from childbirth classes in Boston on the night of October 23, 1989 when, according to a statement Stuart later gave the police, a black gunman forced his way into their car, robbed them, then shot Charles in the stomach and Carol in the head. Carol died that night and their baby died 17 days later.

Boston police searched for a suspect, based on the description given by Stuart, using what is known as the “stop and search” method. That is, they stopped every black man within a ten mile radius in hopes of catching the killer more quickly. This resulted in the arrest of Willie Bennett.

On December 28, Stuart picked Bennett out of a lineup and identified him as the assailant.

Fortunately, from there Stuart’s story began to unravel when his brother confessed that Stuart killed his own wife to collect on an insurance policy, and that Stuart shot himself to make the story more believable. Bennett was released and on January 4, 1990, Stuart committed suicide.

Ten years later, Willie Bennett was interviewed by the Boston Globe.

“Yesterday, in a rare interview, Bennett told the Globe the case still haunts him. He blames it for his mother’s premature death and frayed family ties. And he refuses to hide his frustration.

“I don’t trust anybody. I barely trust myself,” said Bennett, now 50. “The police falsely pinned a crime on me once and they can do it again.

“I have no faith in the law enforcement and I don’t like cops,” said Bennett. (Boston Globe, 4/6/2000.)

I said all that to say this. If the police in Pittsburgh had not quickly discovered the inconsistencies in the allegations made by the woman there yesterday, history could have very well repeated itself. Every 6 foot 4, 200 pound black man in Pittsburgh would have immediately become a suspect. Someone could have been falsely arrested and jailed, and harbored the same resentment toward police that Mr. Bennett still held 10 years later, and rightfully so.

The fact that some members of the media, specifically Matt Drudge and Fox News, were so quick to pick up this story and run with it before anything was confirmed, also should be alarming. Both, in my opinion, have discredited themselves as reputable news sources and both should have issued an apology for their actions.

The McCain communications director who gave the story to the local news media in Pittsburgh, and even went so far as to embellish some of the details, should either resign or be fired today.

This story had the possibility of consequences far beyond a political campaign. Let’s just all be thankful that it fell apart so quickly, before any of those possibilities became a reality.

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