Keating 5 ring a bell?

Rosa Brooks at the Los Angeles Times writes:

Once upon a time, a politician took campaign contributions and favors from a friendly constituent who happened to run a savings and loan association. The contributions were generous: They came to about $200,000 in today's dollars, and on top of that there were several free vacations for the politician and his family, along with private jet trips and other perks. The politician voted repeatedly against congressional efforts to tighten regulation of S&Ls, and in 1987, when he learned that his constituent's S&L was the target of a federal investigation, he met with regulators in an effort to get them to back off.

That politician was John McCain, and his generous friend was Charles Keating, head of Lincoln Savings & Loan. While he was courting McCain and other senators and urging them to oppose tougher regulation of S&Ls, Keating was also investing his depositors' federally insured savings in risky ventures. When those lost money, Keating tried to hide the losses from regulators by inducing his customers to switch from insured accounts to uninsured (and worthless) bonds issued by Lincoln's near-bankrupt parent company. In 1989, it went belly up -- and more than 20,000 Lincoln customers saw their savings vanish.

...

But the savings and loan crisis mushroomed. Eventually, the government spent about $125 billion in taxpayer dollars to bail out hundreds of failed S&Ls that, like Keating's, fell victim to a combination of private-sector greed and the "poor judgment" of politicians like McCain.

Read it all. People need to be aware of this. McCain was "exonerated" of wrongdoing but he certainly played a major part in that fiasco and we are going into re-runs nowadays.

h/t to Meteor Blades
--the BB

Of galluses and other suspenders (or not)

Joe Sudbay at Americablog notes the following:

Until the traditional media types can show some shred of evidence that John McCain suspended his campaign -- besides McCain saying it -- the traditional media types should stop saying McCain suspended his campaign. He didn't.

Evidence abounds that McCain's campaign is operating at full speed. We've been able to document here and here and here. Think Progress found five instances of McCain campaign flacks on t.v. spinning their message. There's active campaign underway in Virginia. And, by doing some actual investigating, Huffington Post confirmed that the McCain campaign is very active today in key battleground states.

But Johnny boy has rushed back to the Senate (for his first visit in months) as though working toward a solution to our economic woes hinged on his presence. Last time I checked, he has been a long-standing champion of deregulation, which is how we got in this mess in the first place. Unless he is willing to stand up and say "I helped fuck over the American economy and I repent in dust and ashes and will now work to restore regulatory oversight and limit the activities of rapacious predators" then prove it with his votes I think he should just STFU. Oh, and get his ass over to Ole Miss for the debate so we can listen to him lie.


Irresponsible shithook twit.
--the BB