Wall Street Bailout: The McCain Conundrum

Cameron,

It is about demagogery and taking the cyncial position of using the crisis for personal advantage by distancing yourself from your own administration (the children) and the people who what to stem the damage (the adults) by suddenly being a 'populist' and claiming the ills of the compromise after everyone else has supported it.

That way everyone who is upset about losing $7,000,000,000 of your money can say "What Leadership!!"

Get it??

Is Jake on drugs?

McCain has no real power to promote or stop this bill.

McCain spokesman Tucker Bounds says McCain has not made a decision one way or another.
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So what DOES Paulson know about McCains intentions???

They really, really do think we are stupid.

I'm just wondering how Henry Paulson happens to know what John McCain is going to do.

"Ignore the man behind the curtain!"

The Rick Davis scandal proves that McCain hasn't changed that much after all: he's still the good ole John 'Keating Five' McCain. The guy who left his handicapped wife to marry the daughter of a millionaire. The guy who chooses to own seven houses and thirteen cars. The one who is totally out of touch with the everyday concerns of everyday Americans.

Ryan C,

"Over the last 12 years Obama has gtotten $120K total from Fannie Mae & Freddie Mac. And he is not the largest recipient of funding from either."

Good point. That is about $10K a year. Minimum wage would pay better than $10K a year, so I'm sure no favors could be expected for such a trivial donation.

"Raines, former Fannie Mae chairman, is an Obama advisor."

The person who "shared" that tale us probably doesn't know that he's spewing lies on behalf of McCain. The only reason McCain's ad tried to tie Obama to Raines was to ignite fear and mistrust of Obama simply because both Obama and Raines are black. McCain is a bigot! It was confirmed with the Raines ad.

Hope for change, hope for change!!!

Obama/Biden 08!

Rex,

"A senior law enforcement official says the inquiries, still in preliminary stages, will focus on the financial institutions and the individuals that ran them."

I see this as just another Republican-manufactured distraction. The real crooks are Paulson, Cox and Bush and the rest of their Goldman Sachs friends. Haven't you heard, with all this bad stuff going on, Goldman has decided to be a bank (now they get to use your deposits however they see fit).

Funny that the FBI is going after everybody the Bush regime despised instead of the real criminals. This administration is nothing more than a band of thugs and John McCain and Sarah Palin are just like them.

Obama/Biden 08!

Over the last few days, John McCain has talked a decent game when it comes to enacting new regulations to protect American families from another financial crisis. But as this new video demonstrates, McCain's talk is just hot air - he's got no record to back it up.

Last March, he famously said that he was "fundamentally a deregulator." In July, he said that his "fundamental difference" with Barack Obama was that Obama favored "more regulation" while he favored less. And earlier this month, McCain's strong support for deregulation was on display in speech after speech at the GOP convention.

Now, John McCain is scrambling to follow Barack Obama's lead as a reform-minded proponent of regulation. But that can't change the fact that when it comes to his record, all the way up until Thursday of last week, John McCain is "The Fundamental Deregulator".

Palin won't cooperate with the original Troopergate investigation — the one approved unanimously by a majority Republican committee in the state legislature this summer, which Palin welcomed in a spirit of transparency and accountability before she became the Republican Party's vice-presidential nominee.

The Alaska Senate Judiciary Committee had started the inquiry when former public safety commissioner Walt Monegan alleged that he might have been dismissed for not firing the allegedly loutish state trooper Mike Wooten, who was in a bitter custody battle with Palin's sister Molly McCann and was accused of threatening members of the governor's family. The investigation has since been painted by John McCain and Palin backers as a purely partisan exercise, particularly because the committee chair, state senator Hollis French, is an Anchorage Democrat who made several seemingly prejudicial statements to the media early on, including that the probe could yield an "October surprise" right before the election. Palin spokeswoman Meg Stapleton says French has already made up his mind about the governor's guilt and at this point is "just leading people into an ambush."

Instead, Palin plans to cooperate with an investigator from the state personnel board. That investigator is a Democrat, but the board's three members are political appointees who ultimately answer to the governor herself.

So, Obama receives 126K and McCain's received 22K?

Who's more compromised? Both? Neither?

Who sponsored legislation to reign in Freddie & Fannie? McCain.

Who's proposed lobbying and ethics reform? McCain

Who violated their campaign financing oath? Obama

I'd say both candidates have dirty hands here, but McCain's shown an impulse towards reform and Obama's showed ZIP!

The Rick Davis - Freddie Mac scandal features as BREAKING NEWS on Roll Call, the Capitol Hill newspaper.

So no, McCain and Schmidt, bashing the NYT will not do this time.

This scandal will sink the McCain campaign, and rightly so.

What a liars they are!

Oh, yeah, and McCain is just so compromised by Davis that he sponsored legislation that would have reigned in Freddie Mac and Freddie Mae. And Obama did what . . . ? Oh, yeah, nothing. And Obama's legislative accomplishments are what? Well, not so much, but he's run a campaign, the one where he appointed Johnson to head his search for his Vice President, and whined that you couldn't expect him to vet the vetters . . .

"Ah, yes, that NYT--you got to love 'em when they take on the campaign manager when OBAMA THE CANDIDATE got MORE FANNIE MAE AND FREDDIE MAC CONTRIBUTIONS THAN ANY OTHER SENATOR aside from Senator Dodd (a more salient fact they studiously ignored). WHO IS MORE COMPROMISED?"

Let's see over his 12 year career in public office Obama recieved about $120K in political donations from employees of Fannie Mae & Freddie Mac with about $4K of that from the Fannie Mae PAC ($2K in 2004 & 2006).

Rick Davis has received $30K a month for 5 years (and counting apparently even though the McCain campaign denied it). That is paid directly, into his coffers, not a campaigns.

That means for 2008 alone (while the crisis was at its height) Rick Davis has been given at least $240K.

I know No Child Left Behind has devastated our educational system but I think even a right winger knows that $240K is more than $120K.

Ah, yes, that NYT--you got to love 'em when they take on the campaign manager when OBAMA THE CANDIDATE got MORE FANNIE MAE AND FREDDIE MAC CONTRIBUTIONS THAN ANY OTHER SENATOR aside from Senator Dodd (a more salient fact they studiously ignored). WHO IS MORE COMPROMISED???

McCAIN-PALIN '08!

For leaders who have the courage to call corruption what it is whether it's Republican or Democratic corruption (and there's plenty to go around as we all know and see), and the sense to work across the aisle with politicians from both sides.

In contrast to the little man of small heart who couldn't bridge the tiny gap in his own party. He wasn't big enough and didn't care enough about his party or country to go the small distance to put Senator Clinton on the ticket. A doctrinaire left-winger who never found a liberal, left-wing mantra he didn't support.

I think we can all agree that Senator Clinton was the superior candidate in this election cycle of whatever party, and she had my vote and 18M others. In her absence, the clear second choice is Senator McCain!

The NYT is up with a sequel to the story that prompted furious allegations of bias, which linked John McCain's campaign manager to the troubled mortgage giants.

This one flatly contradicts Rick Davis's denials:

"One of the giant mortgage companies at the heart of the credit crisis paid $15,000 a month to a firm owned by Senator John McCain’s campaign manager from the end of 2005 through last month, according to two people with direct knowledge of the arrangement. The disclosure contradicts a statement Sunday night by Mr. McCain that the campaign manager, Rick Davis, had no involvement with the company for the last several years. Mr. Davis’s firm received the payments from the company, Freddie Mac, until it was taken over by the government this month along with Fannie Mae, the other big mortgage lender whose deteriorating finances helped precipitate the cascading problems on Wall Street, the people said."

It's harder to attack the messenger when day two is this strong.

"Senator McCain tried to reign in Freddie Mac and Fannie Mae in 2005, and proposed legislation to do so, "

McCain did not propose the legislation. He became a cosponsor and gave a speech on it...in May of 2006.

The bill was originally intro'd in 2005.

I know that bill is the extent of McCain's regulation and oversight career so its important to mention but you really should get the detail right.

It went nowhere in a Republican controlled committee in a Republican controlled Senate.

Americans for OBAMA. ! Republicans and Bush are finished!
McCain isn’t Hope just Dope!
John McCain is desperate to be a President his campaign the most sleazy and shamefully ever!
I don’t have any problem in characterizing McCain .He is a Republican! According to his own campaign, Republicans are corrupt and incompetent.
Obviously he has inside information

All high priests of
deregulation are
Republicans.

What's the difference between Ahmadinejad and Palin?

Lipstick?

Yes and no.

Ahmadinejad speaks to reporters.