Ah, Johnny we hardly know ya... I remember you from NAS Cecil Field when you seemed like such a reasonable guy...just back from being a POW, Skipper of squadron and being a "turn-around" artist in a most Navy way resurrecting a squadron down at its heels. But now, you're tired, you're old (in more ways than one) and you want to keep our great Nation headed into a path of corporate-sponsored self-destruction...

"For all his fine words and all his promise, he has never taken the hard but right course of risking his own interests for yours, of standing against the partisan rancor on his side to stand up for our country," McCain said less than two hours before Obama spoke in the same arena in St. Paul, Minn., where McCain will claim the Republican nomination in September.

In the early evening of Friday, December 15, 2000, with Christmas break only hours away, the U.S. Senate rushed to pass an essential, 11,000-page government reauthorization bill. In what one legal textbook would later call "a stunning departure from normal legislative practice," the Senate tacked on a complex, 262-page amendment at the urging of Texas Sen. Phil Gramm.

There was little debate on the floor. According to the Congressional Record, Gramm promised that the amendment-also known as the Commodity Futures Modernization Act-along with other landmark legislation he had authored, would usher in a new era for the U.S. financial services industry.
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Watershed indeed. With the U.S. economy now battered by a tsunami of mortgage foreclosures, the $30-billion Bear Stearns Companies bailout and spiking food and energy prices, many congressional leaders and Wall Street analysts are questioning the wisdom of the radical deregulation launched by Gramm’s legislative package.