Campaign Suspended?

I just heard about 5 minutes of CNN on a break room TV, and in that time I heard Wolf Blitzer again and again say that the McCain campaign had been suspended. But what does that mean?

Just this morning, in New York, John McCain was pretty straightforward about his perspective on the campaign: "I cannot carry on a campaign as though this dangerous situation had not occurred, or as though a solution were at hand, which it clearly is not. As of this morning I suspended my political campaign."

Yet his suspended campaign looks pretty much like his active campaign.

* McCain campaign offices in battleground states are open and operating, just like yesterday.
* McCain's television ads are on the air, just like yesterday.
* McCain media flacks are all over the news networks, just like yesterday.
* McCain's campaign staffers are working, just like yesterday.
* McCain's campaign website is up, soliciting contributions and promoting McCain's message, just like yesterday.
* For the big White House meeting today, Barack Obama was told not to bring any campaign aides, so he brought a legislative assistant from his Senate staff. John McCain was seen bringing a campaign advisor.

Nothing has actually changed at McCain Campaign HQ. Just one more bit of proof that McCain is no longer the honorable maverick he once claimed to be.

$700 billion?

Ever wonder how they came up with the $700 billion number? Forbes is reporting that there was no secret formula or mathmatical construct that helped the Treasurey Department to reach that figure.

“It’s not based on any particular data point,” a Treasury spokeswoman told Forbes.com Tuesday. “We just wanted to choose a really large number.”

So basically they threw a dart at a wall to get the number. That makes me feel so much better.

Doesn’t this seem like a very strong argument for a much smaller appropriation designed to last for another couple of months? There’s nothing to stop congress from appropriating more money in mid-November if the situation seems to warrant it.

McCain Disses Letterman, Letterman Has Last Laugh

As part of John McCain's "I'm Suspending My Campaign for the Good of the Country" head fake, he canceled his scheduled appearance on CBS's "Late Show with David Letterman". This was one more opportunity where his campaign rather badly mangled the suspension of his campaign.

First Letterman mocked McCain throughout the show's taping, saying that the whole thing did not "smell right." Letterman kept saying, "You don't suspend your campaign. This doesn't smell right. This isn't the way a tested hero behaves." And he joked: "I think someone's putting something in his metamucil." These are the kind of quotes that could stick.

Then in the midst of taping, Letterman got word that McCain was, in fact just down the street being interviewed by Katie Couric. Dave even cut over to the live video of the interview, and said, "Hey Senator, can I give you a ride home?"

"He can't run the campaign because the economy is cratering? Fine, put in your second string quarterback, Sarah Palin. Where is she?"

"What are you going to do if you're elected and things get tough? Suspend being president? We've got a guy like that now!"

Letterman is watched by a lot of people. This could be very bad for McCain.

Oops! McCain team leaks talking points on suspending campaign

The Daily Kos has a post that reveals that the McCain campaign accidently leaked their talking points on the suspension of the campaign. They have linked to the Colorado Independent:

The regional spokesman for John McCain in Colorado accidentally sent the campaign’s internal talking points on the candidate’s plans to suspend his campaign to its entire Colorado media list, instead of a list of key volunteers, Wednesday afternoon, PolitickerCO’s Jeremy Pelzer reports.

The memo, titled “TALKING POINTS: SUSPENDING THE CAMPAIGN,” includes a list of points the campaign wants emphasized, and includes this warning from Kise: “Please do not proactively reach out to the media on this.”

Palin's Third Interview

And it's not pretty. Sarah Palin was interviewed today by Katie Couric. Now Couric is probably a very nice lady, but she has not been known as a tough interviewer. She asks good questions, which should have been expected. It starts out bad when Palin gives pretty much the same answer to Couric's probing about Rick Davis. It gets worse though, Palin is in so far over her head, it isn't even funny. Watch especially at 4 minutes 30 seconds into the interview (video is below)

Watch CBS Videos Online

Could interviews like this be the reason that the McCain Campaign is trying to postpone Friday's debate, and possibly short circuit the VP debate. CNN's Dana Bash revealed the McCain Campaign's suggested strategy of pushing the first Presidential debate back to October 2nd, the date of the VP debate. The VP debate would the be delayed until another time. Could they be attempting to have no VP debate.


LibertyAir Blog

President Bush Invites Obama and McCain to the White House

Breaking: They are reporting on Countdown with Keith Olberman that President Bush has invited both Senators Barak Obama, John McCain, and Congressional Leaders to the White House tomorrow to discuss the financial crisis. Word is that Barak Obama has accepted the invitation.

Flash Poll: 86% of Americans say debate should take place as scheduled

America's 1st Reaction -- Friday's McCain-Obama Debate Should Still Be Held On Friday, But Perhaps with New Focus: Immediately after John McCain's announcement at 3 pm ET today, Wednesday 09/24/08, that he was suspending his campaign and seeking to postpone Friday's scheduled presidential debate, SurveyUSA interviewed 1,000 adults nationwide.

Key findings:

A majority of Americans say the debate should be held on Friday. Just 10% say the debate should be postponed. A sizable percentage of Americans, 36%, think the focus of the debate should be modified to focus more on the economy. 3 of 4 Americans say the presidential campaigns should continue. Just 14% say the presidential campaigns should be suspended. If Friday's debate does not take place, 46% of Americans say that would be bad for America.

Obama: ‘It is going to be part of the president’s job to deal with more than one thing at once.’

Think Progress has Barak Obama's response to John McCain's hail Mary pass.

Sen. Barack Obama (D-IL) just gave a press conference responding to Sen. John McCain’s (R-AZ) suggestion that they both suspend their campaigns, postpone Friday’s debate in Mississippi, and return to Washington to deal with the financial crisis. Obama said that he would like to the debate to go forward as planned because “it is going to be part of the president’s job to deal with more than one thing at once”:

With respect to the debates, it’s my belief that this is exactly the time when the American people need to hear from the person who, in approximately 40 days, will be responsible for dealing with this mess. And I think that it is going to be part of the president’s job to deal with more than one thing at once. I think there’s no reason why we can’t be constructive in helping to solve this problem and also tell the American people what we believe and where we stand and where we want to take the country.

Watch it:

LibertyAir Blog

Cafferty: They should have the debate

Cafferty is again the voice of reason. McCain's decision to cancel the debate doesn't make sense.

LibertyAir Blog

McCain Proposes Suspending Campaign To Focus On Financial Crisis

Okay, I'm torn, on one hand I think this is stupid, boneheaded, and entirely a political stunt, however it might be a great political stunt.

John McCain claims he is going to suspend his campaign because of the financial crisis. McCain's abrupt announcement came in an email that was sent out at 2:56 PM today. The timing of this e-mail appeared designed to pre-empt Barak Obama, who, according to aides, had already initiated efforts to seek a bipartisan solution.

At 3:09 PM, just 14 minutes after the McCain email, Bill Burton of the Obama campaign sent out the following statement:

"At 8:30 this morning, Senator Obama called Senator McCain to ask him if he would join in issuing a joint statement outlining their shared principles and conditions for the Treasury proposal and urging Congress and the White House to act in a bipartisan manner to pass such a proposal. At 2:30 this afternoon, Senator McCain returned Senator Obama's call and agreed to join him in issuing such a statement. The two campaigns are currently working together on the details."

Obama rejected McCain's proposal to postpone the first debate.

"This is exactly the time the American people need to hear from the person who in approximately 40 days will be responsible for dealing with this mess," Obama said. "What I've told the leadership in Congress is that if I can be helpful, then I am prepared to be anywhere, anytime. What I think is important is that we don't suddenly infuse Capitol Hill with presidential politics."

If this was so important, why didn't McCain suspend his campaign NOW and head back to the Capitol ASAP? Instead, he's waiting til tomorrow -- and, not just tomorrow, but tomorrow after he speaks at the Clinton Global Initiative. He canceled an appearence on David Letterman because, he claimed, that he had to focus on the financial crisis, but then it turned out that he was at another CBS studio taping with Katie Couric.

Count the Lies

McCain still lying.

The McCain Lie Counter is here.

Maliki: Bush Pushed For Later Withdrawal Date To Help McCain

And now for News in time of War. Think Progress reports that the Bush administration have been playing politics with Iraq withdrawal plans, pressuring the Maliki government to delay the agreed upon withdrawal date by at least a year because the White House was concerned that Maliki’s endorsement of a 2010 time line would damage Republican John McCain’s presidential bid. The revelation came in an al-Iraqiya interview with Maliki last week:

MALIKI: Actually, the final date was really the end of 2010 and the period between the end of 2010 and the end of 2011 was for withdrawing the remaining troops from all of Iraq, but they [the Bush administration] asked for a change [in date] due to political circumstances related to the domestic situation [in the US] so it will not be said to the end of 2010 followed by one year for withdrawal but the end of 2011 as a final date. Agreement has been reached on this issue. They are willing to respond positively because they, too, are facing a critical situation.

Got that? The White House is willing to keep American's, our soldiers, in harms way for another year, just to help McCain win an election.

Support the troops?

Matt Duss of the Wonk Room has more and asks the question: “What did McCain know about this, and when did he know it?”

Paul Krugman says "I'd blame Alan Greenspan and Phil Gramm"

Paul Krugman has really put himself out there against this bailout. He is really against Paulson's plan. Here he is on Race to the White House explaining why.

LibertyAir Blog

Paul Krugman on the arrogance of Henry Paulson

Paul Krugman on Countdown with Keith Olberman explains why Paulson's package is not something the American people should want.

LibertyAir Blog

Paulson Blames Congress His Non Oversight Suggestion

Henry Paulson Lied Yesterday. He bold faced lied. Paulson claims he didn’t ask for oversight on our 700 billion dollar bail out of Wall Street because it would have presumptuous of him. This is a crock. If this was the case he would have stated in his proposal that oversight would be negotiated with Congress, or would have suggested examples of oversight, or would have left no reference of oversight.

You can view his statement to the Senate here:


Paulson's claim is laugable. His indignation is a lie. He claims that he was actually looking for oversight, but this is not what Henry Paulson did. He instead put the infamous Section 8 into his proposal.

Section 8 reads:
Decisions by the Secretary pursuant to the authority of this Act are non-reviewable and committed to agency discretion, and may not be reviewed by any court of law or any administrative agency.

This is not a statement by someone who has not thought about oversight, or wanted Congress to come up with an oversight plan. This is what is put in by someone who wants complete control. This is a clause that is put in by someone who wants all decision-making power to be consolidated into the Executive Branch, unchallengeable by courts and ungovernable by Congress.

Why $700 billion? Why not $150 billion?

This was a great question by Senator Chuck Schumer. He asked Secretary Paulson at yesterday’s hearing how the 700 billion dollar figure was arrived at. He asked for an explanation as to why Congress shouldn’t give them only a fraction of that. While $150 billion is nothing to sneeze at, but it is a lot better than $700 billion. Would it not be better to give some for immediate needs and keep the rest contingent upon the situation.

Paulson doesn't think so. I made a mistake last Friday when I was complimentary of Henry Paulson.

LibertyAir Blog

Campbell Brown of CNN Goes After McCain Campaign

Yesterday Campbell Brown went after the McCain Campaign for their handling of Sarah Palin. She actually called them sexist. I think the McCain's strategy of hiding Palin is beginning to backfire. We'll see if they change course.


LibertyAir Blog

Good ideas do not need lots of lies told about them in order to gain public acceptance.

Paul Krugman referenced this line from Daniel Davies today. It was a key line from one of the great blog posts of this era, and it laid down a key principle I have often thought about when it comes to today's Republican leadership, and many of the so called voices of conservatism.

Good ideas do not need lots of lies told about them in order to gain public acceptance; lies do.

Davies was talking about the selling of the Iraq war, but it applies pretty much to the entire Bush Administration. It was true about the Patriot Act, the Iraq War, Unauthorized surveillance of the American public, Katrina, the list goes on. It should be the rule that we keep in mind as we listen to the debate going on over the Treasurery Bailout.

Paul Krugman points out that this morning Hank Paulson told a whopper:

We gave you a simple, three-page legislative outline and I thought it would have been presumptuous for us on that outline to come up with an oversight mechanism. That’s the role of Congress, that’s something we’re going to work on together. So if any of you felt that I didn’t believe that we needed oversight: I believe we need oversight. We need oversight.

This was a lie by Henry Paulson. If he was telling the truth, then there would have been no reference to oversight, or that it would be worked out with Congress. This is not what Paulson proposed, what his proposal actually did, of course, was explicitly rule out any oversight, plus grant immunity from future review:

Sec. 8. Review.

Decisions by the Secretary pursuant to the authority of this Act are non-reviewable and committed to agency discretion, and may not be reviewed by any court of law or any administrative agency.

Krugman then states that he is not playing gotcha here, buthis is telling: if Paulson can’t be honest about what he himself sent to Congress — if he not only made an incredible power grab, but is now engaged in black-is-white claims that he didn’t — there is no reason to trust him on anything related to his bailout plan.

McCain’s 5 Stages of Grief over the Economy

Crooks and Liars has a great post by Jon Perr on John McCain’s 5 Stages of Grief over the Economy

The implosion of Wall Street last week resulted in a near-death crisis for John McCain’s presidential campaign. His post-Palin bump eviscerated, McCain was staggered by the re-emergence of the economy as the dominant issue in the 2008 election. His daily-changing positions revealed that McCain, a man who has repeatedly admitted his ignorance of economics, is struggling to cope with his diminished presidential prospects. Armchair psychologists might call the process John McCain’s five stages of grief over the economy.

Denial. McCain’s refusal to confront the realities of the failing Bush economy has long roots and was again on display last Monday. McCain, who has frequently described the economic slowdown as “psychological,” for at least the 18th time proclaimed the “fundamentals of our economy are strong.” As the Dow plummeted over 500 points, McCain reacted to the white-hot crisis on Wall Street by comically announcing his support for a 9/11-style commission to study the causes of and make recommendations to address the meltdown. Willing to kick the can down the road with his since forgotten 9/11 panel idea, McCain also took a head-in-the-sand position in opposing the government rescue of teetering insurance giant AIG:

“We cannot have the taxpayers bail out AIG or anybody else.”

Anger. Sadly, McCain’s denial of the obvious produced an immediate backlash from the press and the public alike. Literally within hours last Monday, McCain reversed course on the underlying strength of the American economy and declared the fundamentals of the economy to be “at great risk.”

Then John McCain did what he does best - he got mad.

(Unsurprisingly, McCain also launched a furious tirade in response to accusations 20 years ago about his Keating Five role during the last U.S. financial catastrophe.) Redefining “economic fundamentals” to refer the U.S. work force, McCain blasted his “opponents” for slandering American workers. By mid-week, McCain found a convenient - if unconstitutional - target for his rage, SEC chairman Chris Cox.

Bargaining. His response mocked as incoherent at best, McCain then proceeded to the third textbook phase of grief over the economy: bargaining. As the Kubler-Ross model describes the bargaining stage, “Now the grieving person may make bargains with God, asking, ‘If I do this, will you take away the loss?’”

So, fast and furious, McCain started to bargain. Acknowledging that as President he couldn’t fire the SEC’s Cox, McCain instead called for his resignation. (This morning, McCain cynically offered up New York Democrat Andrew Cuomo as a replacement.) Within 24 hours, he changed his tune on AIG, now supporting the bail-out package he opposed just the day before:

“The government was forced to commit $85 billion…The focus of any such action
should be to protect the millions of Americans who hold insurance policies,
retirement plans and other accounts with AIG.”

And to be sure, McCain bargained economic surrogate and serial embarrassment Carly Fiorina right out of his campaign. When the details of her massive $42 million severance package from HP became public, the woman who deemed McCain incapable of running a company found herself on the sidelines.

Depression. By last Thursday, a pall of gloom hung over McCain as he entered the fourth stage of grieving, depression. In a move that could only draw attention to his own checkered past in the savings and loan scandal of the 1980’s, McCain meekly proposed the creation of a Mortgage and Financial Institutions (MFI) trust to help the failing firms of Wall Street fend off insolvency. Ironically, McCain had repeatedly opposed the Resolution Trust Corporation in the past, an institution that ultimately poured $400 billion into bailing out the S&L’s, including the $3 billion lost by McCain sugar daddy Charles Keating’s Lincoln Financial.

That same day, McCain tried to fight back, but his heart wasn’t in it. In a foreboding ad fraught with racial overtones, McCain tried to link Obama with former Fannie Mae chairman Franklin Raines. While the Washington Post quickly debunked the spot by noting that Raines is not an adviser to the Obama campaign, Time suggested McCain was playing the race card.

Acceptance. By today, it was clear that John McCain had reached the fifth and final stage of grieving over the economic issue. Just one week after proclaiming the “fundamentals of our economy are strong,” McCain said on the Today Show this morning:

“We are in the most serious crisis since World War II.”

That clarity is letting McCain do what McCain does best - attack. In a cynical attempt at misdirection the Politico’s Jonathan Martin deemed “tossing more chum overboard,” the McCain campaign aired a new ad once again trying to connect Barack Obama to Chicago dealmaker Tony Rezko. And on Sunday, McCain ignored his own week of dizzying incoherence on the economy and thundered at Obama:

“At a time of crisis, when leadership is needed, Senator Obama has simply not provided it.”
Apparently, John McCain’s new-found acceptance of the dismal state of the economy lets him rage against the Obama machine without embarrassment. After all, McCain’s transition manager William Timmons was a lobbyist for Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac. This morning, the New York Times revealed that McCain’s campaign manager Rick Davis pocketed $2 million in lobbying fees from the failed home mortgage giants. And on Sunday, McCain refused to rule out that his adviser and UBS vice chairman Phil Gramm, of “nation of whiners” fame and himself a possible bailout recipient, as Treasury Secretary in a McCain-Palin administration.

To be sure, watching John McCain wrestle with his demons - and ignorance - over the troubled economy has been painful to watch. As crypto-conservative columnist George Will put it:

“John McCain showed his personality this week and made some of us fearful.”

But with his 11 houses and 13 cars, John McCain can afford to work through his cognitive breakdown over the state of the broken economy. Unfortunately, the rest of us can’t. While Americans are mourning the loss of their homes and savings, John McCain is apparently grieving over his potential loss of the White House.

(This piece was crossposted from Perrspectives.)

McCain Campaign Manager Paid Millions To Lobby for Fannie & Freddie

Senator John McCain’s campaign manager Rick Davis was paid more than $30,000 a month for five years as president of an advocacy group set up by the mortgage giants Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac to defend them against stricter regulations. Check out the story in The Washington Post:

Mr. McCain, the Republican candidate for president, has recently begun campaigning as a critic of the two companies and the lobbying army that helped them evade greater regulation as they began buying riskier mortgages with implicit federal backing. He and his Democratic rival, Senator Barack Obama, have donors and advisers who are tied to the companies.

Incensed by the advertisements, several current and former executives of the companies came forward to discuss the role that Rick Davis, Mr. McCain’s campaign manager and longtime adviser, played in helping Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac beat back regulatory challenges when he served as president of
their advocacy group, the Homeownership Alliance, formed in the summer of
2000. Some who came forward were Democrats, but Republicans, speaking on the condition of anonymity, confirmed their descriptions. Read on…

Barack Obama and Joe Biden need to jump on this story and keep hammering away until the corporate media can no longer ignore it. The U.S. stands on the brink of the next Great Depression thanks to Bush/McCain deregulation policies and now we find out that the man who runs the McCain campaign was paid handsomely to lobby for these fatal policies on behalf of Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, even as he repeatedly tries to tie Obama to those companies.

Voters need to know how we got into this mess and who is responsible. It was John McCain, his elite lobbyist cronies and the Republican party. I agree with John:

There should be a campaign to demand that McCain’s campaign manager, Rick Davis, give ever penny back to the American people. There had better be an ad about this out by COB Monday, and calls for Davis’ resignation.

The McCain campaign thinks we’re a nation full of whiners and cowards who should just STFU, take a second or third job and cancel our vacations and be thankful for what we’re fed. The lack of respect is stunning — is this the kind of leader you want?

A Conservative for Obama

By Wick Allison, Editor In Chief

THE MORE I LISTEN TO AND READ ABOUT “the most liberal member of the U.S. Senate,” the more I like him. Barack Obama strikes a chord with me like no political figure since Ronald Reagan. To explain why, I need to explain why I am a conservative and what it means to me.
In 1964, at the age of 16, I organized the Dallas County Youth for Goldwater. My senior thesis at the University of Texas was on the conservative intellectual revival in America. Twenty years later, I was invited by William F. Buckley Jr. to join the board of National Review. I later became its publisher.

Conservatism to me is less a political philosophy than a stance, a recognition of the fallibility of man and of man’s institutions. Conservatives respect the past not for its antiquity but because it represents, as G.K. Chesterton said, the democracy of the dead; it gives the benefit of the doubt to customs and laws tried and tested in the crucible of time. Conservatives are skeptical of abstract theories and utopian schemes, doubtful that government is wiser than its citizens, and always ready to test any political program against actual results.

Liberalism always seemed to me to be a system of “oughts.” We ought to do this or that because it’s the right thing to do, regardless of whether it works or not. It is a doctrine based on intentions, not results, on feeling good rather than doing good.

But today it is so-called conservatives who are cemented to political programs when they clearly don’t work. The Bush tax cuts—a solution for which there was no real problem and which he refused to end even when the nation went to war—led to huge deficit spending and a $3 trillion growth in the federal debt. Facing this, John McCain pumps his “conservative” credentials by proposing even bigger tax cuts. Meanwhile, a movement that once fought for limited government has presided over the greatest growth of government in our history. That is not conservatism; it is profligacy using conservatism as a mask.

Today it is conservatives, not liberals, who talk with alarming bellicosity about making the world “safe for democracy.” It is John McCain who says America’s job is to “defeat evil,” a theological expansion of the nation’s mission that would make George Washington cough out his wooden teeth.

This kind of conservatism, which is not conservative at all, has produced financial mismanagement, the waste of human lives, the loss of moral authority, and the wreckage of our economy that McCain now threatens to make worse.

Barack Obama is not my ideal candidate for president. (In fact, I made the maximum donation to John McCain during the primaries, when there was still hope he might come to his senses.) But I now see that Obama is almost the ideal candidate for this moment in American history. I disagree with him on many issues. But those don’t matter as much as what Obama offers, which is a deeply conservative view of the world. Nobody can read Obama’s books (which, it is worth noting, he wrote himself) or listen to him speak without realizing that this is a thoughtful, pragmatic, and prudent man. It gives me comfort just to think that after eight years of George W. Bush we will have a president who has actually read the Federalist Papers.

Most important, Obama will be a realist. I doubt he will taunt Russia, as McCain has, at the very moment when our national interest requires it as an ally. The crucial distinction in my mind is that, unlike John McCain, I am convinced he will not impulsively take us into another war unless American national interests are directly threatened.

“Every great cause,” Eric Hoffer wrote, “begins as a movement, becomes a business, and eventually degenerates into a racket.” As a cause, conservatism may be dead. But as a stance, as a way of making judgments in a complex and difficult world, I believe it is very much alive in the instincts and predispositions of a liberal named Barack Obama.

Write to wicka@dmagazine.com.

Thinking the bailout through

As we beging to debate how we best get out of this mess, and whether we should go with the Paulson Treasurey plan, Senator Chris Dodd's plan, or some other alternative not seen yet, it is important to be firm on the idea of what this bailout is supposed to do.

What is this bailout supposed to do? And can the bailout actually serve this purpose?

Paul Krugman provides a capsule analysis of the crisis.

1. It all starts with the bursting of the housing bubble. This has led to sharply increased rates of default and foreclosure, which has led to large losses on mortgage-backed securities.
2. The losses in MBS, in turn, have left the financial system undercapitalized — doubly so, because levels of leverage that were previously considered acceptable are no longer OK.
3. The financial system, in its efforts to deleverage, is contracting credit, placing everyone who depends on credit under strain.
4. There’s also, to some extent, a vicious circle of deleveraging: as financial firms try to contract their balance sheets, they drive down the prices of assets, further reducing capital and forcing more deleveraging.

Public intervention is most likely needed, yet we need to make sure that mortgage-backed securities are addressed in this package. If we do not solve any of the issues coming out of the housing collapse, and the devaluing of mortgage-backed securities. If this is not addressed the bailout will fail.

Also the financial system is seriously undercapitalized, causing a credit crunch — and any plan has to address that.

Also public injections of capital needs to lead to greater oversight and intelligent regulation.

THE DODD ALTERNATIVE

Senator Dodd this morning unveiled an alternative to Paulson's Treasurey plan. Paul Krugman has not supported Paulson's plan, says that this is a major challenge to Paulson’s approach, and that this sounds like a big step in the right direction.

Bloomberg has more.

Bush’s Legacy Of Squandering Taxpayer Money»

This weekend Think Progress had a very insightful post as to why we should be worried about giving the Bush Administration a 700 Billion dollar blank check.

Yesterday, President Bush announced his $700 billion plan to buy out troubled financial institutions. Demanding enormous faith in his administration’s stewardship, the plan “would place no restrictions on the administration other than requiring semiannual reports to Congress, granting the Treasury secretary unprecedented power to buy and resell mortgage debt,” and to hire outside firms “to help manage its purchases.” Further, the proposal provides no oversight mechanism:

Sec. 8. Review: Decisions by the Secretary pursuant to the authority of this Act are non-reviewable and committed to agency discretion, and may not be reviewed by any court of law or any administrative agency.

Bush is demanding unprecedented control over billions of dollars — with no oversight. His history of mismanaging taxpayer dollars should make Americans skeptical of his buyout plan:

IRAQ RECONSTRUCTION

-$142 million wasted on reconstruction projects that were either terminated or canceled. [Special Inspector General for Iraq, 7/28/08]

-“Significant” amount of U.S. funds for Iraq funneled to Sunni and Shiite militias. [GAO Comptroller, 3/11/08]

-$180 million payed to construction company Bechtel for projects it never finished. [Federal audit, 7/25/07]

-$5.1 billion in expenses for Iraq reconstruction charged without documentation. [Special Inspector General for Iraq Reconstruction report, 3/19/07]

-$10 billion in spending on Iraq reconstruction was wasteful or poorly tracked. [GAO, 2/15/07]

-Halliburton overcharged the government $100 million for one day’s work in 2004. [Project on Government Oversight, 10/8/04]

KATRINA

-Millions wasted on four no-bid contracts, including paying $20 million for an unusable camp for evacuees. [Homeland Security Department Inspector General, 9/10/08]

-$2.4 billion in contracts doled out by FEMA that guaranteed profits for big
companies. [Center for Public Integrity investigation, 6/25/07]

-An estimated $2 billion in fraud and waste — nearly 11 percent of the $19
billion spent by FEMA on Hurricanes Katrina and Rita as of mid-June. [New York
Times tally, 6/27/06]

-“Widespread” waste and mismanagement on millions for Katrina recovery, including at least $3 million for 4,000 beds that were never used. [GAO, 3/16/06]

DEFENSE CONTRACTS

-A $50 million Air Force contract awarded to a company with close ties to senior Air Force officers, in a process “fraught with improper influence, irregular procedures, glaring conflicts of interest.” [Project on Government Oversight, 4/18/08]

-$1.7 billion in excessive fees and waste paid by the Pentagon to the Interior Department to manage federal lands. [Defense Department and Interior Department Inspectors General audit, 12/25/06]

-$1 trillion unaccounted for by the Pentagon, including 56 airplanes, 32 tanks, and
36 Javelin missile command launch-units. [GAO, 5/18/03]

Given Bush’s history of gross fiscal mismanagement — including an unprecedented number of no-bid contracts and Bush’s resistance to closing fraud loopholes or increasing oversight of contracts — why should Americans trust another $700 billion to his care? Paul Krugman writes, “Let’s not be railroaded into accepting an enormously expensive plan that doesn’t seem to address the real problem.”

What Experts Are Saying About the Bail Out

Some reactions to the Bush administration proposal for granting unfettered authority to the Treasury Department to buy up to $700 billion in distressed mortgage-related assets from private firms: Dean Baker, Paul Krugman (1, 2, 3), CalculatedRisk, Douglas Elmendorf, Ed Paisley, Henry Blodget, Yves Smith, Mish, Willem Buiter, Luigi Zingales, William Greider, Sebastian Mallaby, Robert Reich.

Juan Cole: Are We a Nation of Masochists

Professor Juan Cole of Informed Comment has an interesting view of the American public. I have to agree, what could possibly be going through the conscious of this nation, that we might consider putting another Republican ticket in charge of this nation.

Professor Cole believes we may be a Nation of Masochists. Is he right? Read below and see what you think.

Let's get this straight.

The Republican Party came to Washington, DC, in 2000 with a solid majority in both houses of Congress and on the Supreme Court, allowing them to steal the presidency, as well. If you wanted to know what a pure Republican-Party government unhindered by the Democrats, Libertarians, Greens or Socialists might look like, this was the moment.

So they came to power when there was a budget surplus bequeathed by a Democratic president.They immediately ran up a big deficit every year since, doubling the national debt from $5 trillion to $10 trillion. You don't run big deficits of $300 and $400 billion a year in good times according to Keynes. You save the the deficit spending for a recession, when the economy needs a jolt. If you're already racking up a big deficit every year in a good economy, you have no way of making a difference during a significant downturn except by then going for a truly mega-deficit, which risks destroying the value of your currency abroad. In a service economy like that of the US, a dollar with a declining value might not even help the economy via exports very much, since the manufactured goods are being made down in Mexico now, anyway.

Note that Clinton had been talking about using the surplus to pay down the debt or to fix the looming crisis in social security.

With the government encumbered with $5 trillion in new debt before September, and now with another trillion and a half (probably when it is all said and done with), how exactly will social security be fixed?

(Hint: Republican leaders such as Ronald Reagan and Newt Gingrich hated social security, because the people are grateful to the Democrats for it. Bush tried to privatize it and McCain would have helped him; you wonder if they are trying deliberately to destroy it. Social security is the main reason for which the elderly are not now, as they were in the 1930s, the poorest and most miserable section of society.)

Then many the Republicans came to Washington with a crooked plan to use fraudulent methods to ensure that campaign financing went almost exclusively to them through super-lobbyists like Jack Abramoff. Grover Norquist's K-Street Project aimed at guaranteeing big corporate dollars for the Republicans in exchange for their granting the corporations the right to write the legislation affecting their industry. Thus, laws governing pharmaceuticals were written by the pharmaceutical industry lobbyists and just signed off on by the Republicans.

This scam goes beyond Marx's fear that government in a business society was just a "managing committee" for the business classes. Tom Delay, from 2002 the Republican Party majority leader in the House, was too lazy even to be the managing committee! The K-Street crowd just let the business classes run the legislature directly, themselves, having the regulatory laws written to suit them.

So Abramoff, Delay, the K-Street crowd are busted. Once upon a time such a thing would have been a huge political scandal and would have haunted the party that produced it. But because US Big Media is mostly Republican-owned, it just quietly subsided as a story.

It is not just that the rap sheet against the Class of 2000, 2002, and 2004 among the Republican politicians is longer than a trans-Atlantic cable, it is that so much of the corruption took the form of a conspiracy.

All parties have people in them looking to get rich on the side. But the K Street Project and various other such scams weren't just about individual aggrandizement. They were about fixing the whole American system permanently to kow-tow to the super-rich without so much as a whimper, and to positively punish the middle classes.

After the 2002 mid-terms, even George W. Bush wanted to do a tax cut for the middle classes. But Cheney over-ruled him, insisting on another deep tax cut for the very wealthy. We won the mid-terms, Cheney said. This is our due. Deficits don't matter. "Our" due? Cheney is saying that the Republican Party is the party of the super-rich, of the 3 million at the top of American society who own 45% of the privately held wealth (as though we were Brazil), and they are the ones that will be exclusively benefited by Republican rule.

Of course, there were many other conspiracies by the pirouetting pirates of plunder.

There was the Iraq War, one of the great criminal conspiracies of modern times. Barton Gellman has how related the story of how Dick Cheney lied to Dick Armey before the vote on the war, telling him that Saddam's family was all al-Qaeda and that Saddam's evil scientists had made a suitcase nuclear bomb that he would certainly turn over to Bin Laden, and such rank horse manure as that. Dick Armey weeps, says he deserved better than to be bullshitted by the vice president of the United States.

They took us to war against a country that had not attacked the United States; they killed or maimed 33,000 Americans, and turned a whole Arab Muslim country into a burned-out hulk, displacing millions and continuously bombing the very cities that they had conquered and occupied, killing and disfiguring.

They propagandized us with implausible lies about mobile biological weapons labs and Baathist al-Qaeda, and our journalists and their corporate bosses bought them hook line and sinker, as did the public.

Cable and satellite television "news" tells us nothing of elections in India or constitutional crisis in Thailand, and barely mentions a major workers strike at Boeing. Dozens of car bombs go off in Iraq and we are told it is "calm" now. It is a vast electromagnetic form of bread and circuses, wherein hapless celebrities and philandering politicians are fed to the lions before millions of cheering plebes, by corporate moguls desperately hoping that the marks will not notice the legion of pickpockets in the arena, relieving them of their purses.

This crew in Washington thought nothing of assiduously attempting to induce the press to out a covert CIA operative working against Iranian nuclear proliferation, Valerie Plame. Their culture of lies is such that they attempt to divert attention from all the phone calls to journalists by Irv Lewis Libby and Karl Rove trying to get the press to print her name by saying that those two did not succeed. As if the attempt were not dastardly!

Why is trying to inform the Iranians of the identity of a CIA field officer assigned to spy on Iran not an act of treason? After all, you can't inform the world without also informing the Iranians. Isn't the punishment for treason hanging?

The Republican Party conducted a vast illegal spying operation on Americans and on foreign diplomats. We still don't know why exactly, and that the operation had domestic political motivations cannot be ruled out.

They imposed on us this so-called PATRIOT act that gutted the Constitution. The peaceful protesters in St. Paul at the RNC were actually charged with being terrorists, in this Brave New World.

By their incompetence and cupidity the Republican politicians deeply damaged the relief effort for one of America's great cities, New Orleans, which will never see the $33 billion pledged for its reconstruction. Not to mention that levies and bridges are breaking and falling down all around us because Cheney did not want to tax his billionaire friends to pay for the country's infrastructural upkeep.

And then they so radically deregulated and removed any oversight from the banking system that they came within hours of presiding over a 1929-style absolute meltdown of the entire financial and securities system. To cover the criminal activities of their cronies, they are now proposing to impose a fine of one trillion dollars on the middle class, to ensure that their partners in crime will receive their $25 million Christmas bonuses and be held harmless for their misdeeds.

And in the wake of the greatest and most sustained act of systematic plunder since the Mongol hordes appropriated to themselves the riches of everyplace in Asia from Beijing to Isfahan, the reaction of the supine and slave-like American voting public is to scratch their heads and have a hard time deciding if they would like more of the same.

Despite his aristocratic prerogatives and connections in high society, even the Marquis de Sade himself was brought down by a lowly maid, who complained to the police of his cutting her while having his way with her, leading to his arrest.

In contrast to that plucky domestic servant, the American public appears to enjoy being lacerated while being badly used, moaning with delight at each new act of abuse and abasement, while, blue-lipped, gasping for air.

One worries for our children, threatened with the fate of the homeless street children so common in the sort of third world country into which we are being turned by our managing committee.

But, well, if you are determined to bend over on November 4, at least I hope you enjoy pain. In that case, you are going to be ecstatic.

posted by Juan Cole

Hank Paulson To Dems: Not Allowing CEO’s to Keep Multi-Million Dollar Salaries Is A “Poison Pill”

You knew that the Republicans had to figure out some way to screw this up. Henry Paulson is now saying that to impose compensation limits on Wall Street executives as part of the Bailout is a "poison pill."

Say what?

A poison pill?

The executives who drove their banks into insolvency should get to keep their golden parachutes?

Is Paulson saying that Republicans will stop any bill that reigns in executive compensation in exchange for a bailout?

If Congress is to hand over 700 billion dollars, it should do so with meaningful conditions.

Call or fax your Congressman and tell them not to accept this. The bailout must have impose some realistic compensation limits on the Wall Street executives who are being bailed out. Contact the Obama campaign and tell them that the Senator has to demand compensation limits on the Wall Street executives.

More Real Time: Sarah Palin Way

Naomi Klein and Andrew Sullivan continue their debate, and go after Sarah Palin. Sullivan hates the pick of Palin as the Vice Presidential candidate. Personally I have to agree with him. I really can not understand how Palin has the following that she does. She is not ready to be the President, she does not have a firm grounding in economics, in foreign policy.


LibertyAir Blog

Naomi Klein on Real Time

Naomi Klein and Andrew Sullivan went at it on Real Time. There are things that I really like about Andrew Sullivan, I think he is a real conservative, who has long gone after George W. Bush and the phony conservatives who are the current leadership of the Republican Party. However I do not agree with his take on the current economic crisis.

Naomi Klein on the other hand I believe is one of the best journalists in America, and I believe she has it right when it comes to this economic mess.


LibertyAir Blog

Naomi's appearence reminded me of a great blog post John Cusack had on the Huffingtonpost.com last week. I highly recommend you read his piece, Calling Things What They Are: More From My Conversation with Naomi Klein.

Satellite Images Show Ethnic Cleanout in Iraq

Satellite images taken at night show heavily Sunni Arab neighborhoods of Baghdad began emptying before a U.S. troop surge in 2007. For a while now there have been people saying that ethnic cleansing had taken place in Baghdad, that Sunni Arabs were driven out of many neighborhoods by Shi'ite militants enraged by the bombing of the Samarra mosque in February 2006. Neoconservatives and Fred Kagen in particular called the ethnic cleansing of Sunni Arabs in Baghdad a 'myth.' Fred Kagan has once more been proved wrong.

These satellite images gives strong evidence that the ethnic cleansing of the Sunnis by Shiite militias accounts in large part for the fall in violence in Baghdad, not just the extra troops Bush sent, called the 'surge.' These satellite images were part of a study, published in the journal Environment and Planning A.

This is not the first time stories about the ethnic cleansing of Baghdad. In December 2007, the Washington Post published the maps below, comparing the sectarian make-up of Baghdad’s neighborhoods in April 2006 and November 2007, and revealing the transformation of the city resulting from sectarian cleansing:


The Government Accountability Office, also stated in congressional testimony in October 2007 that sectarian cleansing was “an important consideration in even assessing the overall security situation in Iraq”:

We look at the attack data going down, but it’s not taking into consideration that there might be fewer attacks because you have ethnically cleansed neighborhoods, particularly in the Baghdad area. […]

It’s produced 2.2. million refugees that have left, it’s produced two million internally displaced persons within the country as well.

And in August 2007, the Iraqi Red Crescent Organization indicated that “the total number of internally displaced Iraqis [had] more than doubled, to 1.1 million from 499,000″ since the surge started in February. Center for American Progress Iraq analyst Brian Katulis estimated that Baghdad, which once used to be a 65 percent Sunni majority city, “is now 75 percent Shia.”

Baghdad hs undergone drastic transformation and a great deal of suffering attended that transformation. And the sad fact is that some of the most intense and violent periods of sectarian cleansing took place under the aegis of the military escalation known as the Surge.

Count the Lies

The DNC's New McCain Lie Counter is here.

New Obama ad attacks McCain’s economic advisers

LibertyAir Blog

Barack Obama's Speech Women for Change

LibertyAir Blog

How Sound Is the Economy?

The Center for American Progress and Scott Lilly have posted a very good analysis of the current state of the US economy. I believe Mr. Lilly hits it right on the head when he points out that the world can no longer trust the American government to do the right thing or the needed thing in these trying times. I have long held that Republicans had gone insane when it comes to the free markets, and that they were more interested in ideology than in common sense economic stewardship. I believe this article backs this up.

When Bank of America, the largest commercial bank in the United States, agreed on Monday morning to buy the beleaguered brokerage firm Merrill Lynch & Co. for less than a fifth of the price the firm traded for at the beginning of last year, BofA investors were so disturbed that they launched a sell off of the bank’s stock, eliminating $32 billion or 21 percent of the bank’s market capital in one day. That was on the heels of the demise of the 158-year-old Wall Street investment house Lehman Brothers Holdings Inc. and more than four months after Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson pronounced that the worst of the financial crisis was behind us.

So, what is going on? How did we get into this mess, and how will we get out?

It is clear to any detached observer that the travails on Wall Street are not simply a superficial kink in the circulation of the nation’s money supply. There are deep-seated problems here that will impede growth, and accelerate business failures and job losses if not objectively identified and forcefully addressed. While we have recklessly disregarded the need for prudent supervision of our banking and financial systems, the real problem is even deeper.

For eight years we have papered over the fact that American consumers do not have the purchasing power to sustain economic expansion. As a report I authored a little more than a month ago details, the wage and salary increases that have occurred since 2000 have not been sufficient to even maintain the level of income that most families enjoyed at the beginning of this decade. Employment has not kept pace with population growth. And even though worker productivity has increased by nearly 20 percent over this period, weekly wages are barely higher than they were on the day the current president took office.

Under normal circumstances, we would have seen the effects of slow wage and job growth much sooner in the economic cycle. But the Bush administration and their enablers at the Federal Reserve Board found a way to inoculate the economy
temporarily from the fact that the paychecks which Americans were taking home
were insufficient to buy the goods and services the economy was capable of producing. The prescription was easy credit—car loans, credit cards, and most
importantly, mortgages.

Families from the bottom of the income ladder to the very top were showered with offers of cheap credit driven by the fact that our central bank was willing to loan money at or even below the rate of inflation. Americans were given the opportunity to use their homes as ATM machines; between 2002 and 2007 borrowing against homes exceeded the amount spent on homes and home improvements by $1.7 trillion. While incomes were not rising at a rate to support a growing economy, credit made up the difference.

Today we have an economy that has not only suffered from stagnant wages and
falling incomes for nearly eight years, but one which is far more burdened by debt—debt which in a growing number of instances is beyond the ability of families to repay. Our failure to recognize the fundamental underlying causes of the current malaise not only delay the prospects for recovery but will make recovery more difficult and costly.

Stephanie Pomboy, the founder of the economic consulting firm MacroMavens, has been right repeatedly in forecasting the severity and duration of the housing and credit crises. She was quoted in this week’s Barron’s:

Once again, we can't resist pointing out had Paulson and his bailout crew used their powers for 'good' from the get-go, they could have saved a lot of time, energy and, most importantly, money. Had they simply established a fund to buy up the surplus housing inventory, presently valued at just over $1 trillion, they could have stitched up this wound for less than they've spent layering Band-Aid after Band-Aid on top of it.

The erratic shifts by this administration between radical free market laissez fairism and heavy-handed government intervention in financial markets is making it increasingly apparent that its officials refuse to exercise detachment in examining the underlying problems that face the U.S. economy and are incapable of addressing those problems in a deliberate and effective manner. That perception is adding further to the traumas now plaguing U.S. and global markets.

Scott Lilly is a Senior Fellow at the Center for American Progress

Taxpayers to the Rescue

From the Cartoonist Group and the Center for American Progress

Bail-Outs Will Cost America $1-2 Trillion

Kenneth Rogoff, professor of economics at Harvard University and former chief economist of the International Monetary Fund, thinks the financial crisis will cost American taxpayers between one and two trillion dollars . He writes in the Financial Times:

Were the financial crisis to end today, the costs would be painful but manageable, roughly equivalent to the cost of another year in Iraq. Unfortunately, however, the financial crisis is far from over, and it is hard to imagine how the US government is going to succeed in creating a firewall against further contagion without spending five to 10 times more than it has already, that is, an amount closer to $1,000bn to $2,000bn.

That’s a massive increase, and it’s going to effect everyone somehow.

A large expansion in debt will impose enormous fiscal costs on the US, ultimately hitting growth through a combination of higher taxes and lower spending. It will certainly make it harder for the US to maintain its military dominance, which has been one of the linchpins of the dollar. The shrinking financial system will also undermine another central foundation of the strength of the US economy. And it is hard to see how the central bank will be able to resist a period of allowing elevated levels of inflation, as this offers a convenient way for the US to deflate the mounting cost of its private and public debts.

One and two trillion dollars, and we already have trillions in debt. This nation has serious problems, and we need serious people addressing it. We cannot afford more Republicans running this country.

McCain Defends Retirement Accounts

McCain is clueless, and Barak Obama has to hammer John McCain on this. John McCain still defends his support for privately investing Social Security money in the same markets that had tanked earlier in the week. McCain and his top economic adviser, former Texas Senator Phil Gramm, have pushed the idea of a privatizing the Social Security system as far back as 1988.

This is a horrific idea during normal times. During a Wall Street meltdown it's idiotic and criminal.

Even the Wall Street Journal

Even the Wall Street Journal's Editorial Page is calling out John McCain, and even use the word 'unpresidential'

The Wall Street Journal:

John McCain has made it clear this week he doesn't understand what's happening on Wall Street any better than Barack Obama does. But on Thursday, he took his populist riffing up a notch and found his scapegoat for financial panic -- Christopher Cox, the chairman of the Securities and Exchange Commission....Mr. McCain clearly wants to distance himself from the Bush Administration. But this assault on Mr. Cox is both false and deeply unfair. It's also un-Presidential....In a crisis, voters want steady, calm leadership, not easy, misleading answers that will do nothing to help. Mr. McCain is sounding like a candidate searching for a political foil rather than a genuine solution.

Category 4 Financial Crisis

Steven Pearlstein writes in The Washington Post: "This is what a Category 4 financial crisis looks like." It is a well thought out article that can be read here:

Giant blue-chip financial institutions swept away in a matter of days. Banks refusing to lend to other banks. Russia closing its stock market to stop the panicked selling. Gold soaring $70 in a single trading session. Developing countries' currencies in a free fall. Money-market funds warning they might not be able to return every dollar invested. Daily swings of three, four, five hundred points in the Dow Jones industrial average.

"What we are witnessing may be the greatest destruction of financial wealth that the world has ever seen -- paper losses measured in the trillions of dollars. Corporate wealth. Oil wealth. Real estate wealth. Bank wealth. Private-equity wealth. Hedge fund wealth. Pension wealth...

"What is really going on, at the most fundamental level, is that the United States is in the process of being forced by its foreign creditors to begin living within its means."

George W. Who?

One of the striking things about the economic disaster the nation has been facing is where is George W. Bush. The country is facing an economic disaster yet the President has been no where to be seen. Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson and Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Bernanke are out front confronting an economic disaster, which has included the collapse of Lehman Brothers, the sale of Merrill Lynch, one of the most volital weeks in the stock market, the single biggest drop in the market in seven years, and a government takeover of American International Group, and the president is AWOL.

The president should be someone who takes charge and tell the country not only what is going on, but what he is going to do about it. We of course have the idiot king as a President. Perhaps recognizing the fact that Bush is an idiot, the White House has kept the President out of the public spot-light. Look at the quote by White House spokesman Tony Fratto, "'We decided it would be best to limit public comment about markets..." Even the White House knows that the worst thing Bush could do to the economy is have him talk about it at length.

Instead they let Bush out for a couple of minutes yesterday morning, where he offered brief, unsubstantive and unpersuasive assurances to the nation.

Should we not be worried though that decisions are being made without the President? Or, should we be calmed that decisions are being made without the President? It just shows the disaster Bush has been.

Iraq Agreement Stalled

An agreement to extend the American military mandate in Iraq beyond this year has stalled over objections by Iraqi leaders and is in real danger of falling apart. Though it was thought to be near completion a little over a month ago, major points of of contention have stalled it nearly to the point of being scuttled. While there is a chance it still could go through before December 31st, there are major points of disagreement that stand int the way. The most prominent obstacle is whether American troops and military contractors will be “subject to the country’s criminal justice system for any crime committed outside of a military operation.

In addition is Prime Minister Maliki's insistence that the U.S. will be leaving -- and soon. Setting a specific timeline has been resisted by the Bush administration. Although they have hedged their own statements at times, Maliki and others in his government have made it clear they consider 2010 a realistic endpoint for the current U.S. role and presence in Iraq. Bush administration officials prefer a much later timeline.

Afghanistan Update

News from the forgotten war is not good. Laura King reports things aren't going too well in Afghanistan these days.

A summer of heavy fighting during which Western military leaders had hoped to seize the initiative from Islamic militants has instead revealed an insurgency capable of employing complex new tactics and fighting across a broad swath of Afghanistan.

...."In all, we feel that things are going very, very well for us," said a Taliban field commander in Kandahar province whose men fought hit-and-run battles with Canadian and British forces during the summer, the season when fighting is most intense. "And what is more, time is on our side."

....In large swaths of the countryside, insurgents have been able to intimidate local officials into cooperating, in part because President Hamid Karzai's government is perceived to be corrupt and inefficient. "Once, people would look to the government for justice," said Abdul Qadoos, a businessman and tribal leader in Kandahar province. "Now they go to the Taliban."

Read the whole thing for more. The Taliban originally took over Afghanistan in the mid-90s because the central government was widely perceived to be corrupt and inefficient. As long as that continues, the Taliban (or something Taliban-like enough for the difference not to matter) will remain a huge force there. As in Iraq, the key to stability is political reconciliation more than pure military victory.

Wall Street Closes Up More Than 400

The roller coaster ride that is the stock market this week took a turn for the better today. It was a stunning late-session turnaround Thursday, with the Dow Jones industrials up more than 400 points after a report that the federal government might create an entity that will take over banks' bad debt. The rumor, first reported on CNBC, said Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson was considering an old idea to battle the economic problems this nation is facing. Paulson's idea is to form an entity very similar to the Resolution Trust Corp. This entity was set up after the failure of savings and loan banks in the 1980s, and was fairly succesful in dealng with that economic crisis.

If an RTC was to be created it would be set-up to acquire the bad or risky real estate debt that has hobbled financial institutions and led to the intense volatility in the markets this week. Personally I think this is a good idea, and I have to wonder what would this nation be like if Bush had hired competent people from the beginning.

Seriously, look at Bush's second term hires compared to his first. Gates, Paulson, Bernanke, they actually are competent, and may help this nation sail through the mess that the Republicans gave us.

Cafferty Mocks McCain on Social Security

Jack Cafferty is the lovable curmudgen who along time ago decided he had had enough and was just going to call out Bush, McCain and anyone else who trip his B.S. Meter.

Here Cafferty mocks John McCain on his stance on privatizing Social Security. This is an issues that Barak Obama should start pounding McCain on. If John McCain had had his way and this nation had privatized Social Security, millions of seniors would now be totally screwed and the economic mess of this nation would be even worse.

Check out Cafferty here:

LibertyAir Blog

Barak Obama Attacks McCain's Social Security Privatization Plan

Another punch from Barak Obama, it's great to see Barak keeping up the attack.


LibertyAir Blog

Stephanie Miller on CNN's Larry King Live - Part 1

Stephanie Miller is just a fun and funny woman. The only problem with her guest appearance's on CNN is that Stephanie doesn't get enough time to really shine. The Conservative Talking Heads do just that, talk talk talk.

In this episode Stephanie and Paul Begala talk about the total non-answer answer to the foreign policy question Sarah Palin got last night at the town hall.


LibertyAir Blog

Stephanie Miller on CNN's Larry King Live - Part 2

Stephanie Miller has been on CNN and Larry King Live a lot lately, and she has been just scoring home run after home run. While mainly a comedian and entertainer whose show revolves around politics. She and Paul Begala were just having fun smacking down the conservative talking heads.


LibertyAir Blog

Stump the Candidate

Palin is not ready for Prime Time


Liberty Air Blog

More On McCain's Spainish Confusion

Steve Benen of the Washington Monthly's Political Animal has more on MCCAIN'S PAIN IN SPAIN.... and he brings up a good point, and puts this mistake by McCain in confusion.

McCain's embarrassing confusion is already pretty major news in Spain today, but at this point, the only major U.S. outlets who've picked up on this are the online sections of Time and the Washington Post.

Forgetting Zapetero's name is almost forgivable, though hard to explain for a candidate who claims to be an expert in foreign policy. But the interviewer kept using the word "Spain." She even gave him a big hint with the word "Europe."

Let's also not lose sight of the broader pattern. McCain thinks the recent conflict between Russia and Georgia was "the first probably serious crisis internationally since the end of the Cold War." He thinks Iraq and Pakistan share aborder. He believes Czechoslovakia is still a country. He's been confused about the difference between Sudan and Somalia. He's been confused about whether he wants more U.S.
troops in Afghanistan, more NATO troops in Afghanistan, or both. He's been confused
about howmany U.S. troops are in Iraq. He's been confused about whether the U.S.
can maintain a long-term presence in Iraq. He's been confused about Iran's
relationship with al Qaeda. He's been confused about the differencebetween Sunni and Shi'ia. McCain, following a recent trip to Germany, even referred to "President Putin of Germany." All of this incoherence on his signature issue.

John McCain may not have the cognitive faculties to be President.


Liberty Air

Palin and McCain Administration?

Today, during a speech, Sarah Palin unveiled the Palin/McCain ticket. Should McCain be worried?

John McCain and the Lying Game

Joe Klein has in my opinion been a total tool of the conservatives. I have often thought he should be the poster child for all that is wrong in the mainstream media. To easily manipulated by conservatives, and way too quick to attack democrats. Something happened though recently, and Klein has started to really go after John McCain for all of his sleaze and lies. You can read his most recent article John McCain and the Lying Game here, but for the money quote check out the end.

John McCain has raised serious questions about whether he has the character to
lead the nation. He has defaced his beloved military code of honor. He has run a
dirty campaign.

McCain Forgets Where Spain Is and That Its an Ally

In another really bizarre interview John McCain again proves he is no longer the candidate that ran in 2000, and that he just might not be up for the job of President of the United States. Conventional Wisdom is that John McCain is a foriegn policy wizard, that it is his strength, however I have begun to worry that McCain may not be "all there" any more. The media has often forgiven McCain his misstatements, his wrong answers, and his confusion.

It has now come out that John McCain recently did an interview with El Pais, a large newspaper from Spain, where he seemed confused and beyond his depths. He did not seem to know that Spain is a European. The interviewer kept asking specifically about "Spain," and McCain kept responding about Mexico and Latin America and "the hemisphere." McCain seems really confused during the whole interview, apparently thinking Zapatero is someone from Latin America who is an enemy of the United States

John McCain then refused to say if he would be willing to meet with the Prime Minister of Spain (in the Spanish press, Zapatero is in fact referred to as "the president") if he won the election. In his answer he set a precondition for the Prime Minister of Spain to first embrace democracy and human rights before they could meet. This was very odd as the president of Spain already does embrace both democracy and human rights. Spain is already a democracy, a member of NATO and the EU, and would be very helpful in our relations with Central and South America. It would be very strange for the United States to have anything other than a close relationship with Spain.

Here's the front page cut out from the Spanish news channel that did the interview.

Here is the original English-language version of the interview, that McCain did with El Pais.

Here is a 2 minute clip of the segment of the interview dealing with Spain. Reporters really need to listen to this interview.

Here is the exact transcript:

QUESTION: Senator, finally, let's talk about Spain. If you're elected president, would you be willing to invite President Jose Luiz Rodriguez Zapatero to the White House to meet with you?

MCCAIN: I would be willing meet, uh, with those leaders who our friends [sic] and want to work with us in a cooperative fashion, and by the way, President Calderon of Mexico is fighting a very very tough fight against the drug cartels. I'm glad we are now working in cooperation with the Mexican government on the Merida plan. I intend to move forward with relations, and invite as many of them as I can, those leaders, to the White House.

QUESTION: Would that invitation be extended to the Zapatero government, to the president itself?

MCCAIN: I don't, you know, honestly I have to look at relations and the situations and the priorities, but I can assure you I will establish closer relations with our friends and I will stand up to those who want to do harm to the United States of America.

QUESTION: So you have to wait and see if he's willing to meet with you, or you'll be able to do it in the White House?

MCCAIN: Well again I don't, all I can tell you is that I have a clear record of working with leaders in the hemisphere that are friends with us, and standing up to those who are not, and that's judged on the basis of the importance of our relationship with Latin America, and the entire region.

QUESTION: Okay... what about you, I'm talking about the President of Spain?

MCCAIN: What about me what?

QUESTION: Okay... are you willing to meet with him if you are elected president?

MCCAIN: I am willing to meet with any leader who is dedicated to the same principles and philosophy that we are for human rights, democracy and freedom, and I will stand up to those that do not.

McCain is the candidate with the foreign policy experience ready to lead on day one?

Update: The McCain campaign is now saying that John McCain will not meet with the Spanish Prime Minister should John McCain win the election. John McCain’s foreign policy adviser Randy Scheunemann is defending his boss’s inexplicable and illogical answer in response to a question about whether he would agree to meet with the Spanish Prime Minister José Luis Rodríguez Zapatero, and claims McCain knew who Zapatero was and was simply articulating his policy of refusing to commit to a White House meeting.

Really? This is the excuse the McCain campaign is now giving? Really? Will reporters by this explaination as to why McCain recently told an interviewer with the Spanish paper El Pais that he was not sure he would be interested in meeting the Spanish president.

It's clear from the interview, posted above, that John McCain was having some kind of mental lapse during the interview, one that he didn't even understand that Spain was in Europe. But the McCain campaign can't admit that John McCain appeared to be having a senile moment, and that his dementia was caught on tape. Instead, the McCain campaign is now embracing the only argument they have left - they're actually now claiming that McCain meant every word he said.

Really?

The interviewer specifically tries to draw John McCain's attention back to Spain and Europe, and McCain insists on giving irrelevant answers about Mexico. The campaign is spinning hard.

Contradictions:

I was sent this e-mail today. I have heard it before, and think it should be pushed out even more.
It says something about the state of our country and the media.

Contradictions:

If you grow up in Hawaii, raised by your grandparents, you're "exotic,different. "Grow up in Alaska eating mooseburgers, a quintessential American story.

If your name is Barack you're a radical, unpatriotic Muslim. Name your kids Willow, Trig and Track, you're a maverick.

Graduate from Harvard law School and you are unstable. Attend 5 different small colleges before graduating, you're well grounded.

If you spend 3 years as a brilliant community organizer, become thefirst black President of the Harvard Law Review, create a voter registration drive that registers 150,000 new voters, spend 12 years as a Constitutional Law professor, spend 8 years as a State Senator representing a district with over 750,000 people, become chairman of the state Senate's Health and Human Services committee, spend 4 years in the United States Senate representing a state of 13 million people while sponsoring 131 bills and serving on the Foreign Affairs, Environment and Public Works and Veteran's Affairs committees, you don't have any real leadership experience.

If your total resume is: local sports caster, 4 years on the city counciland 6 years as the mayor of a town with less than 7,000 people, 19 months as the governor of a state with only 650,000 people, then you're qualified to become the country's second highest ranking executive.

If you have been married to the same woman for 19 years while raising 2 beautiful daughters, all within Protestant churches, you're not a real Christian or good family man.

If you cheated on your first wife with a rich heiress, and then left your disfigured wife and married the heiress the next month, you're a Christian.

If you teach responsible, age appropriate sex education, including the proper use of birth control, you are eroding the fiber of society.

If, while governor, you staunchly advocate abstinence only, with no other option in sex education in your state's school system while your unwed teen daughter ends up pregnant, you're very responsible.

If your wife is a Harvard graduate lawyer who gave up a position in a prestigious law firm to work for the betterment of her inner city community, then gave that up to raise a family, your family's values don't represent America's.

If you're husband is nicknamed "First Dude," with at least one DWI conviction and no college education, who didn't register to vote untilage 25 and once was a member of a group that advocated the secession of Alaska from the USA, your family is extremely admirable.

OK, much clearer now.

There is so much that can be added to this list.

Epic Fail: Palin can’t answer softball question about national security experience at first town hall meeting

I woke up this morning and was listening to NPR when I heard Sarah Palin just blow a really easy question posed to her at a town hall. Now remember the town hall was pre-ticketed, so she was not facing tough questioning. Her answer was rediculous. I really don't care that Palin has confidence that she can be handle foreign policy, I want to hear specifics. She doesn’t have any answer for the question.

Crooks and Liars has video of it. Check it out here.

Now we know why John McCain has tried his damnedest to keep Palin as far away from any questions