McCain admits Country has no current President
McCain says he will suspend his political campaign on Thursday morning and is calling for a cancellation of the debate.
Joe Barton (R-Texas) just came on CNN and said there are not 50 votes in the House for the Paulson plan. In otherwords,the financial markets are flying on one engine for a while, with no guarantee of swift government intervention.
Isn't McCain's desperate move an admission that there is currently no president? I mean, why does everything hang on a senator from Arizona? Shouldn't it be Bush who is handling this? We've long known that the emperor has no clothes, but McCain is making a "Republicans Gone Wild" video with this grandstanding.
Very suspicious that as soon as Obama is up 9% in the polls, all of a sudden the mess the Republicans made is so important that McCain can't go on competing with his rival.
posted by Juan Cole @ 9/24/2008 03:33:00 PM
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Why didn't McCain ask for a time-out in the midst of the financial carnage last week? Or as soon as Paulson placed his corporate welfare proposals on the table?
Could it be that today McCain:
(a) found himself and his campaign manager neck deep in a massive lying-corruption scandal;
(b) got called out quite brilliantly by Campbell Brown on sexism and Palin (Campbell Brown knows exactly what she's doing here, making McCain choose between either being a sexist or allowing Palin to be exposed for what she is); and
(c) found himself 9 points behind Obama in the polls?
Things have turned decisively against McCain over the last week, but today has been his darkest yet. His response is desperate and cynical even by his standards - base political calculation masquerading as pious moral statesmenship, as per normal. The man is in the gutter.
I would suggest that Obama respond:
"I'm asking my Vice Presidential candidate Senator Joe Biden to remain in Washington so he can monitor the hearings, participate if called upon to do so and keep me informed of developments. If neccessary I will return to Capitol Hill for any vote regarding this issue. I have recommended to Senator McCain that he ask his Vice Presidential candidate Sarah Palin to travel to Washington and perform in a similar capacity on his behalf. That being said, I intend on meeting Senator McCain for our scheduled debate at the University of Mississippi this coming Friday unless and until I recieve official notification that the senator will not be appearing."
A host of catastrophies are befalling McCain now:
1. Sarah Palin is imploding - and the scandals around her are exploding.
2. McCain has been erratic in the extreme on the economy and claims he has no handle on it. In addition, several of his handlers and managers have engineered and/or profited from the crisis.
3. His foreign policy kudos are blown due to his overreach on Georgia, which was also lobbyist-driven.
4. And his health is failing. It's clearly visible. There are rumors that articles are being prepared dealing with claims that he is taking anti-Alzheimer drugs; and something is clearly wrong with his eyes. The other day he had a strong limp coming down airplane steps and his gait is stiffer than usual.
5. Davies has been caught in an outright lie when it comes to involvement on Wall Street.
6. And the Palin/UN stunt blew up in their face, enraging the press. They'd be 20% down if they don't do something completely unexpected, and this was it.
It's all coming apart.
The really funny thing? The guy who admittedly doesn't know much about economics is suspending his campaign to work on the financial bailout.
Can't wait to hear his advice.
Drudge Report notes only 4 Republicans support Paulson's plan.
An intrepid investigator digs up the fact that McCain hasn't voted in the Senate since April 8, and missed 109 of the last 110 votes, and suddenly he needs to rejoin the Senate to vote?
As for the root cause of the crisis, this is excellent testimony:
"When Goldman Sachs conjured up something called the ABX index by bundling up mortgages into billion dollar batches and selling them into the market, the industry responded as it should have. The market rocked. Novastar kept to their conservative underwriting and contributed like the rest of the industry by funding those indexes. But then something strange began happening. Massive short interest and even more massive naked short interest built in the Novastar market. Millberg Weiss sued (and lost). Novastar dropped from a high of near $70 to around the mid $30s. Novastar was still making $$. Their portfolio was performing within the model. The dividend was huge. But that was just because those pesky shorts had overdone it with the share price. They would pay. It was certain........
Then Goldman Sachs started massively shorting the very same ABX indexes they had just invented and sold to their investors. The shorting was merciless. The ABX index was small. It was a piece of cake to dominate the market with short sales. The prices on the indexes dropped clear out of sight.
Perfectly fine indexes fully filled with Novastar, 70% average LTV and PMI down to 52%, mortgages, which were fully performing according to the model, were selling for 22 cents on the dollar. That effectively stopped any new money supply. Every subprime was under the naked shorting gun. That eliminated any chance of selling stock to fund new loans. The industry crashed."
Perhaps this full page WaPost ad should have gained more media traction and attention by politicos in 2005.
Paulson was the CEO of the firm that created the crisis. If the ABX index had been left alone, there would have been NO mortgage crisis. The company I was invested in, NFI, was bombed, but it was the absolute best of the sub-prime lenders, which is why it's still in business and more solvent than Goldman Sachs--the company that tried to kill it, and killed many others to gain their assets.
Bob O'brien's blog is a good place for any historian of this event to start research. There's a very good reason Paulson's extortion has no support; anyone voting for it would likely be voted out of office.
As a teacher, McCain reminds me of a student who didn't study calling in sick. Panic is not a character trait I'd want in a president.
Shoe from Michigan
The funny thing about all of this is that the republican platform says:
We do not support government bailouts of private institutions.
Government interference in the markets exacerbates problems in the
marketplace and causes the free market to take longer to correct
itself. We believe in the free market as the best tool to sustained
prosperity and opportunity for all. We encourage potential buyers to
work in concert with the lending community to educate themselves about
the responsibilities of purchasing a home, condo, or land.
Republican Party 2008 Platform
http://www.gop.com/2008Platform/Economy.htm
May be the only thing McCain can do to get back his image is to come out and say he is against bailout all together. Of course reverse himself later, but for now it would be a good popular thing for him to do.
In addition to all of the above I want to ask McCain why he blocked all efforts to free the other hundreds or thousands of Vietnam MIA vets who were still in prisons in Vietnam and Laos, etc. when he came home.
They really were there. He knew they were there. He did block all efforts to get them home. He did insult, terrorize, humiliate, intimidate and batter everyone who tried to get him to help those United States Military personnel get home.
Why? I want to know, why?
McCain is an un-American asshole.
Here is the only question any Republican needs to ask themselves:
Are you better off today than you were 4 (8) years ago?
- President Regan 1982
And how can a sitting party run on a platform of change?
Strange days indeed!
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