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- hallelujah0
"CNN: Obama Tried to Rescue Meeting, McCain Was Silent
Fourty years of republican misrule has brought us to this. Financial ruin at every level. But CNN reported on what happened inside the meeting at the White House today. Its failure seems to have caused the failure of this deal, and this meeting would not have occured if McCain hadn't demanded it. He took another huge gamble, and lost. After the cameras left, Boehner started ranting about the right wing "plan" (deregulation, capital gains tax cuts, and an insurance plan that Paulson said won't work). Bush was silent, and McCain said nothing. It seems as though Obama was the only one who tried to lead the meeting to some productive conclusion. CNN said that Obama first tried to reason with Boehner, and ask him to detail what his plan was. After he did this, Obama calmly asked Paulson if it would work, and Paulson said that it definately would not work (which was why house republicans didn't ask him about this at the meeting yesterday). Obama continued with his attempts to salvage the mess that McCain created and refused to correct, but was unable. Again we see how much we need Obama and his leadership, and how disastrous McCain would be.
EmperorHadrian's diary :: ::
Barney Frank just said that Lindsey Graham is now saying that part of the plan, which would allocate 20% of profits made by the treasury to a program to help low income home owners keep their homes, is not acceptable. This is despite the fact that Senators Corker and Bennett said it was acceptable this morning. This goes further to the point that McCain is actively trying to kill this deal. You can't reason with a house full of ideologues any more than you can teach a dog calculus.It is plainly obvious that McCain was principally responisble for the failure of this bailout deal. And, for everyone here, this is a bailout of main street, not wall street. Without credit, main street cannot function. Plus taxpayers will probably make a profit, or at least lose very little money. Without it, we are possibily looking at Great Depression II, and the sequel is always worse than the original.
Update: The New York Times does mention this incident in a new article.
Instead he [McCain] found himself in the midst of a remarkable partisan showdown, lacking a clear public message for how to bring it to an end.
At the bipartisan White House meeting that Mr. McCain had called for a day earlier, he sat silently for more than 40 minutes, more observer than leader, and then offered only a vague sense of where he stood, said people in the meeting.
...
Still, by nightfall, the day provided the younger and less experienced Mr. Obama an opportunity to, in effect, shift roles with Mr. McCain. For a moment, at least, it was Mr. Obama presenting himself as the old hand at consensus building, and as the real face of bipartisan politics."
- mg330
There is an article on drudge right now where McCain is saying "it wouldn't be such a big deal for us to cancel the debate if senator Obama had agreed to meet me at ten townhall meetings..."
*vomits
Bullshit, that is beside the point. The country deserves the regular debates when they should occur. Bottom line. McCain is such a baby
- it's all a scam to get Palin debate cancelledhallelujah
- so is it official? that he cancelled?********
- no.....he left the capital, people @ ole miss say they are expecting him to show up.powertoni
- Drudge is a rightwing tool...TheBlueOne
- mikotondria30
http://www.collegehumor.com/vide…
There is always hope.
- ukit0
Huckabee Says McCain Making A Mistake: McCain's primary challenger says his former rival made a "huge mistake" by even considering skipping the debate.
Huckabee said he still backs McCain's candidacy, but said the Arizona senator should not have put his campaign on hold to deal with the financial crisis on Wall Street. He said a president must be prepared to "deal with the unexpected."
"You can't just say, 'World stop for a moment. I'm going to cancel everything,'"
- Right, and It's only two hours.Mimio
- They could discuss the bailout DURING the debate...or...or...o... stand there silent for another 40 minutesmikotondria3
- minutesmikotondria3
- lolMimio
- ukit0
Rasmussen:
Obam 50%
McCain 45%This is Obama’s biggest lead since his convention bounce peaked with a six-point advantage. In fact, on only two days since clinching the Democratic nomination in early June has Obama enjoyed a lead bigger than he has today (see trends).
It’s stunning to note how rapidly the dynamics of the campaign have changed. Two weeks ago, just before the Wall Street financial crunch became visible, McCain was up by three points in the aftermath of his convention. One week ago today, the candidates were even. Now, Obama’s lead is approaching new highs entering the final few weeks of the campaign.
- sunshine kills falsehood********
- on average however, HALF of all people questioned would vote McCancer to be in charge of the western world.mikotondria3
- sunshine kills falsehood
- BattleAxe0
so what is the big crisis that they speak of, how will the world wither and die if this legislation does not get passed, I keep searching for a clear cut explanation and kind find one, anyone in favor have a good reason for this to pass! I hear plenty of why it should not , so what is the rush! more Wa Mu's ,??? is someone going to loose thumbs and knee caps
- hallelujah0
"The $700 billion figure isn't an explainable one, given the purported problem at hand of "bad mortgages".
And that's where we get that math problem. 1% of all mortgages -- the amount now in default -- comes out to $111 billion. Triple that, and you've got $333 billion. Let's round that up to $350 billion. So even if we reach the point where three percent of all mortgages are in foreclosure, the total dollars to flat out buy all those mortgages would be half of what the Bush-Paulson-McCain plan calls for.
Then we need to factor in that a purchased mortgage isn't worth zero. After all, these documents come with property attached. Even with home prices falling and some of the homes lying around unsold, it's safe to assume that some portion of these values could be recovered. In the S&L crisis, about 70% of asset value was recovered, but let's say we don't do that well. Let's say we hit 50%. Then the real outlay for taxpayers would be around $175 billion.
Which, frankly, is a number that Wall Street should be able to handle without our help. After all, the top firms on Wall Steet payed out $120 billion in bonuses alone between 2000 and 2006. If they've got that kind of mad money, why do they need us to step in now? And why do they need twice as much as all the mortgages that are even likely to implode?
Indeed. And despite what we've been told, then, we can only presume that the problem is in fact not all the bad, scary subprime mortgages. And it's not. Yes, a lot of people are finding themselves upside-down on their houses right now, but Paulson isn't proposing we do squat to solve that -- and even the "controversial" Democratic counterproposal, that we actually do at least a little something to help those people, after they've already gone bankrupt, is pathetically weak.
Instead, we're getting a Wall Street bailout not of the mortgages, but of the absurd, speculative, economy-wrecking derivatives based on those mortgages, derivatives that investors and banks ravenously sold each other at unsupportable and quite-probably-crooked prices. Those derivatives, generally speaking, are "bets" on the state of the underlying mortgages. And they didn't just bet wrong -- they bet irrationally, based on presumptions of near-zero risks to those underlying mortgages. And worse, the big banks even -- bafflingly -- got special permission to overleverage themselves 40 to 1, all but assuring collapse if those derivatives went south. Which they did.
Fine, then, but how is that self-induced bubble an unweatherable economic crisis for the rest of us? Yes, those banks may fail -- as they should. It'd be a crime if they didn't, given their mismanagement of their accounts. But the real problem is that those banks are, literally, too big to be allowed to fail. Their failure would present a liquidity problem for the rest of the market. They can do anything -- they could even burn money on the street -- and the strong preference of government would be to bail them out for it, because the alternative is financial chaos.
The subprime mortgages aren't the problem. And the overleveraged firms shouldn't be a problem. The problem is keeping the rest of the economy afloat no matter what happens to the firms in trouble.
The problem is that there's a lot of different ways to do that, and it's not at all clear that Paulson's way is the best. Paulson proposes to bailout the firms in question, by giving them the Mother Of All Do-Overs. We taxpayers will buy, from banks both in trouble and not in trouble, up to $700 billion dollars worth of the overpriced, now-worth-much-much-less derivatives in question. That will provide a real (inflated) price for the derivatives, and lo and behold -- the firms will be saved, because we've now created a market for their unmarketable, worthless products. They stay afloat, because the taxpayers pay them to do it. And, importantly, since all the banks now know that if any of the other banks are hemorrhaging money through these bad derivatives, the taxpayers will bail them out at some decent price, all the banks trust each other again, and feel free to loan each other money again, and the liquidity problems are solved. In theory. If the Fed can keep up with all the bad paper being tossed at them.
But while that's unquestionably the best possible plan Wall Street could themselves possibly come up with -- it doesn't just save their bacon, it makes large parts of their debts simply vanish -- it's an obscenely expensive thing, and is rife with problems. The temptation for profiteering on the part of the corporations is going to be huge, and quite doable. The underlying mortgages are still defaulting, and more importantly the bursting of the housing bubble has put millions of people into an insupportable amount of debt, and those are not going to be happy consumers, so the economy is still going to go very south, very quickly.
And it smacks, strongly, of the very same dynamic that has governed the last few decades of American history. We're transferring yet another giant chunk of money from the general public to the most wealthy. In this case, a trillion dollars or so worth.
All the while, we're being told that we can't be punitive about this, and punish the firms in question. We can't set new regulations. We can't take equity in the firms we're giving so much money too. We can't do squat except buy their bad paper, and hope to hell that they survive, while the rest of us wallow in the steep recession almost certain to come as a result of the housing bubble collapse.
Is that the best approach? I'm not convinced, and I'm more than a little angry at the Democrats for, once again, accepting what they are given and trying to tweak it rather than coming up with true counterproposals. Propping the housing market up from the bottom may be much cheaper than trying to prop up the entire derivatives market from the top, and would seemingly have the same stabilizing market effects. Taking equity in firms in exchange for taking their crappy, non-marketable products would, yes, seem the absolute least we could do -- there must be an upside for the taxpayer in providing this trillion-dollar investment at the expense of ballooning our national debt and crippling public sector works for a decade or more. But that's still weak tea, all things considered.
Not being talked about as much, though, is that we must allow overextended companies to fail. It is an essential part of our economy that economy-threatening recklessness on the part of speculators not be rewarded, and especially not be rewarded by the government. Any actions to stabilize the economy should indeed inject liquidity -- but it's not clear that injecting liquidity through the very companies most in trouble is sustainable or even rational.
More than that, I think Americans can and should be quite furious at the way this extraordinarily business-friendly proposal has been steamrolled through under premise of imminent crisis, with no serious debate of any more balanced alternatives. It is another black mark in the legacy of the Bush years -- for both parties. If the Congress really passes the Paulson plan with, as it looks now, absolutely no substantive debate of alternative plans, it has once again shirked its most basic duties, and is an embarrassment to the nation it supposedly represents.
One thing is for certain, though. No matter how bad a deal looks, doctrinaire Republicans can always be counted on to come up with an "alternative" that would be ten times worse. Their "alternative" plan, the one they're holding out for? Cut corporate taxes -- again -- and remove even more regulations on those companies -- again. Because that'll release the magic money fairies and the problem will be solved. And no, I'm not kidding. Except about the fairies. Maybe.
There's been nothing about the Washington reaction to this that has inspired confidence. And now that the fight has turned explicitly political -- with no regard whatsoever for the underlying economics -- I can only imagine it getting less substantive from here."
- hallelujah0
"Well, we've all had a day to digest the latest "razzle dazzle" - as Chris Matthews likes to say - from the McCain campaign. So how is it spinning? Does it look like McCain made the right decision or did his latest attempt to shake up the campaign backfire big time?
Reading through today's editorials and analysis, I can't help but think that this is going to be a worse week for McCain than we realize. Pretty much across the board, the reaction is that this was a desperate move that is not going to end well for McCain.
E.J. Dionne Jr., Washington Post:
McCain could yet play a constructive role by rounding up votes from restive Republicans. Oddly, the biggest obstacle to a bill may not be Democrats but Republicans who refuse to go along with their own president. And -- yes, there is an election coming -- Democrats will be wary of going forward unless a substantial number of Republicans join them.
But McCain's boisterous intervention -- and particularly his grandstanding on the debate -- was less a presidential act than the tactical ploy of a man worried that his chances of becoming president might be slipping away.
Delco Times (PA) Editorial, There's no dispute, McCain should debate:
Apparently, Thursday's White House summit failed to reach any breakthrough in the negotiations. Members of Congress are expected to be working into this morning to hammer out a deal.
That being said, there's no reason why John McCain and Barack Obama can't go to the University of Mississippi tonight for their debate. Americans go to the polls in 38 days to decide who has to inherit this mess. They deserve to take the measure of the men who would take that mantle.
Evansville Courier & Press (IN) Editorial:
McCain's action was a diversionary tactic and a rather crass one at that. He was not one of the key Senate negotiators needed to hammer out a congressional deal on the bailout. He could vote up-or-down on the bill and still debate.
No, McCain's duty and obligation is to be at the debate site, with Obama, so Americans can assess each candidate's ability, grasp of the issues and reasoning skills.
David Brooks at the NY Times waxes nostalgic about the old McCain, recites his many past accomplishments, and then accuses him of relying on "tactical gimmicks":
No, what disappoints me about the McCain campaign is it has no central argument. I had hoped that he would create a grand narrative explaining how the United States is fundamentally unprepared for the 21st century and how McCain’s worldview is different.
McCain has not made that sort of all-encompassing argument, so his proposals don’t add up to more than the sum of their parts. Without a groundbreaking argument about why he is different, he’s had to rely on tactical gimmicks to stay afloat. He has no frame to organize his response when financial and other crises pop up.
Matt Welch, Los Angeles Times, has a great opinion piece detailing the history of McCain's ol' razzle-dazzle. It's worth reading the entire piece:
But as many Great Men come to learn, there is a colossal downside built into running a campaign on outsized personal virtue. The line between stoic, honorable service and showy moral vanity is oftentimes difficult to maintain. And when a candidate confuses his own political ambitions with the fortunes of his country, that's when Great Men turn into self-parodies.
"I have craved distinction in my life," McCain wrote in his 2002 political memoir, "Worth the Fighting For." "I have wanted renown and influence for their own sake. That is, of course, the great temptation of public life. ... I have never been able to conquer it permanently, but I have tried."
Don't say he didn't warn us.
I truly have been looking for some Friday print reaction to John McCain that is favorable, and I thought I came across one when I found an editorial entitled "The Maverick" from The Barre Montpelier Times Argus (VT), but alas this one was negative too:
And that leads to perhaps the biggest reason McCain, the self-styled maverick, called a temporary halt to his campaign: Polls are now showing that Barack Obama has pulled ahead in the race for the White House and that the numbers are clearly moving his way. Perhaps the American people are fed up with candidates who rely too heavily on negative depictions of their opponents while unapologetically telling outright lies to dress up their own campaigns.
Even Chris Coffey, Republican strategist who writes on the Faux News blog, Fox Forum, didn't sound very positive:
Ultimatums are delivered to defenseless foes, not to vital opponents. They are a form of intimidation intended to trigger subservience. That is why McCain now risks looking like a duplicitous bully with little interest in bipartisan cooperation, even though he has spent a lifetime cultivating the opposite image.
Whatever the case, the McCain campaign has put itself in the unique position of being unable to campaign before an election. Suspension means suspension. If one staffer shows up for work, this whole gamble turns into a media stunt. I hope I am wrong and that this wager pays.
But never fear, the analysts and pundits aren't forgetting about Sarah Palin altogether in the midst of this financial crisis. James Rainey at the Los Angeles Times thinks the McCain campaign should be glad attention is focused elsewhere:
A global financial crisis and a not-quite-suspended presidential campaign dominated newspaper front pages and television reports over the last couple of days. Bad news for America. But good news for Sarah Palin.
The economic crisis and John McCain's surprising response have drawn attention away from the Republican vice presidential nominee just as she has started to answer more pointed questions from the media. Her third nationally televised interview, with CBS anchor Katie Couric, found Palin rambling, marginally responsive and even more adrift than during her network debut with ABC’s Charles Gibson.
Palin's unblinking certitude gave way at other times in the interview to a striking imprecision, as when she struggled to respond to Couric's suggestion that the $700-billion bailout might be better funneled through middle-class families instead of Wall Street firms. "That's why I say I, like every American I'm speaking with, we're ill about this position that we have been put in . . ." Palin began, before meandering off in fruitless pursuit of coherence.
Even Peggy Noonan at the Wall Street Journal couldn't put a positive spin on Palin's week:
As for Sarah Palin, the McCain campaign continues to make mistakes. They don't seem to understand her strengths and weaknesses. The U.N. photo-ops were a staged embarrassment. Keeping the press away made her look infantilized. When she finally began to sit for television interviews, the atmosphere was heightened, every misstep magnified. With Katie Couric she seemed rattled. In the Charlie Gibson interview it was not good when she sounded chirpy discussing possible war with Russia. One should not chirp about such things. Or one wouldn't if one knew the implications. And knowing the implications is part of what we hire leaders for.
Mrs. Palin is a two-term mayor and has two years as a governor of an American state. She is well-liked and highly regarded back home. She rose for a reason. She has to show America what she showed Alaska.
And for your morning sleaze fix: Charles Krauthammer lays the blame for the economic crisis - not on the Republican's policies of deregulation or greedy corporations - but on those pesky minorities and poor people who had the gall to believe they should be able to own a home!
For decades, starting with Jimmy Carter's Community Reinvestment Act of 1977, there has been bipartisan agreement to use government power to expand homeownership to people who had been shut out for economic reasons or, sometimes, because of racial and ethnic discrimination. What could be a more worthy cause? But it led to tremendous pressure on Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac -- which in turn pressured banks and other lenders -- to extend mortgages to people who were borrowing over their heads. That's called subprime lending. It lies at the root of our current calamity.
I can't leave you on that note, so here's something to make you smile. What was the most-watched political video of the week on YouTube? Letterman's skewering of John McCain, who will regret the day he cancelled that appearance!
CNN reports that both campaigns have their advance teams in Mississippi, but I wouldn't take that to mean that the debate will definitely go forward as planned. Although, given the reaction, I don't think there is any way that McCain can not show up... it would be the end of his campaign, in my opinion. So my prediction is that the debate goes on as planned. But, just in case he doesn't, Sam Stein is reporting that Obama will hold a 90-minute townhall as an alternative. That would be awesome.
What do you think? Will the debate happen? How will McCain crawl out of the ditch he has dug for himself with this whole bailout mess? Will Palin do another interview ever again?
UPDATE: I had to add this AP story (thanks ivote2004!) by Charles Babington, just off the wires a few minutes ago, A bad day for the GOP on politics, bailout plan:
Even for a party whose president suffers dismal approval ratings, whose legislative wing lost control of Congress and whose presidential nominee trails in the polls, it was a remarkably bad day for Republicans."
- ukit0
I've decided to vote for Obama
- lowimpakt0
stop posting stupidly long copy and paste posts. nobody reads them.
just link to the fuckers.
- thank you.joeth
- please also summarize it in 3 sentences or less - so i actually decide if i should click or nottasty
- concurTheBlueOne
- I like the long pastas, dude, I like seashells and not spaghetti.********
- oh you are so alternative and oh so intellectualjanne76
- well i like pornography, nascar, shooting, hamburgers and beer, GODDAMNIT!janne76
- mg330
It appears that the debate will happen according to CNN and Drudge, who even supplied the police light for this one!
- you would think that he has made enough money to update the free siren.dbloc
- Yeah! Steal that fuckers bandwidth! Fight the power!TheBlueOne
- mg330
Here's something I realized last night while watching Letterman:
People need to STOP prefacing any criticism of McCain with talk of "respecting this man a great deal for his service and what he endured."
Everyone on TV acts like they have to throw that in there. It's really dumb. What McCain went through has no connection to his ability to be president.
- I liked that Letterman did that. He made the point that we're not seeing the same McCain today that he once was...joeth
- It also made it sound less one-sided.joeth
- people forget that Vietnam was a VERY unpopular war too...robotron3k
- mg330
McCain will go to debate
Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.) ended three days of suspense on Friday morning and announced that he will leave bailout negotiations in Washington and fly to Oxford, Miss., for the opening presidential debate.
McCain had previously said that he would suspend his campaign until an agreement was reached on the administration's $700 billion mortgage proposal.
No such agreement has been reached, but Republicans said the standoff was hurting McCain's campaign and that he would look terrible if he didn't attend the nationally televised, eagerly anticipated debate while Sen. Barack Obama (D-Ill.) was ready to go on stage.
The text of a statement from McCain's campaign at about 11:20 a.m. Eastern:
John McCain’s decision to suspend his campaign was made in the hopes that politics could be set aside to address our economic crisis.
In response, Americans saw a familiar spectacle in Washington. At a moment of crisis that threatened the economic security of American families, Washington played the blame game rather than work together to find a solution that would avert a collapse of financial markets without squandering hundreds of billions of taxpayers’ money to bailout bankers and brokers who bet their fortunes on unsafe lending practices.
Both parties in both houses of Congress and the administration needed to come together to find a solution that would deserve the trust of the American people. And while there were attempts to do that, much of yesterday was spent fighting over who would get the credit for a deal and who would get the blame for failure. There was no deal or offer yesterday that had a majority of support in Congress. There was no deal yesterday that included adequate protections for the taxpayers. It is not enough to cut deals behind closed doors and then try to force it on the rest of Congress — especially when it amounts to thousands of dollars for every American family.
The difference between Barack Obama and John McCain was apparent during the White House meeting yesterday, where Barack Obama’s priority was political posturing in his opening monologue defending the package as it stands. John McCain listened to all sides so he could help focus the debate on finding a bipartisan resolution that is in the interest of taxpayers and homeowners. The Democratic interests stood together in opposition to an agreement that would accommodate additional taxpayer protections.
Senator McCain has spent the morning talking to members of the administration, members of the Senate, and members of the House. He is optimistic that there has been significant progress toward a bipartisan agreement now that there is a framework for all parties to be represented in negotiations, including Representative Blunt as a designated negotiator for House Republicans. The McCain campaign is resuming all activities and the senator will travel to the debate this afternoon. Following the debate, he will return to Washington to ensure that all voices and interests are represented in the final agreement, especially those of taxpayers and homeowners.
- mg330
I hope you read the article above. Look closely at this section:
"The difference between Barack Obama and John McCain was apparent during the White House meeting yesterday, where Barack Obama’s priority was political posturing in his opening monologue defending the package as it stands. John McCain listened to all sides so he could help focus the debate on finding a bipartisan resolution that is in the interest of taxpayers and homeowners."
--------------------------------...
Just when I thought it couldn't get any more outrageous! They are now saying that what McCain did - sit silently and listen and take in all sides - is leadership.HELLO!?!?!?!??!?!?!?! Do you know how many times the Republicans have spoken negatively about Obama doing the same exact thing? Listening? Not shooting his mouth off? Making an informed decision? Thinking before he speaks? They call this a weakness of Obama's, but when McCain does the same thing because he has absolutely nothing to offer, it's a strength and a sign of leadership.
*VOMITS *VOMITS *VOMITS *VOMITS *VOMITS *VOMITS *VOMITS *VOMITS *VOMITS *VOMITS *VOMITS *VOMITS *VOMITS *VOMITS *VOMITS *VOMITS *VOMITS *VOMITS *VOMITS *VOMITS *VOMITS
- robotron3k0
DAMN! looks like McCain traveled through the future and won tonights debate already....
- found by the wall street journal on McCains site.robotron3k
- Can anyone really declare "winning" a debate? Isn't that up to voters to decide?joeth
- Nice yellow teeth btw.joeth
- sons of bitches is this true????Mirpour
- TheBlueOne0
So what are the odds of McCain stroking out during the debate?
- what he just whips it out and starts jerking off? i'd say like 54% chanceKwesiJ
- ukit0
^HAHAHAHA x 10000000000
- Fariska0
and
- uncle_helv0
1000