McCain's cynicism

NYT

Still, the new tone has been jarring to some veterans of Mr. McCain’s presidential run in 2000 who worry that the campaign exudes a cynicism that undercuts the senator’s old reputation for “straight talk” and a more elevated style of politicking. On a number of occasions, Mr. McCain’s campaign advertisements have been described by campaign watchdog organizations as false or misleading, particularly those attacking Mr. Obama on tax votes.

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The Republicans are coming, so please make the effort

Some great ads from the unconvention, held in St. Paul at the same as the GOP convention.

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Why wasn't McCain wearing a flag pin on Thursday night?

Just curious, while we're on the discussion of candidates who seem to have some problem with American flags. Read the rest of this post...

Sarah Palin in her own words

Someone needs to get a bunch of 7 year olds reading these quotes. Read the rest of this post...

McCain caught lying in effort to smear Obama

Not quite the maverick any more, is he. From Huff Post we find that McCain is peddling another smear against Obama - and big surprise, this one's a lie too (interestingly, this comes just one day after McCain criticized Obama for suggesting that he and the Republicans like to peddle anti-Obama smears - did you get that, they criticized Obama for criticizing THEIR smears, classic). McCain is an old hand at smears. He used to be against them, now he's for them. Like when he keeps suggesting that Obama is unpatriotic and care about the troops - McCain seems to think an awful lot of himself when it comes to patriotism and love of country. It's almost as if John McCain thinks he's the only one who loves America, or he thinks he loves her way more than any one else does. I'm not sure Americans are looking to hire someone who thinks so highly of themselves that they run around judging everyone else's patriotism all the time. It's one thing to be a hero, and quite another to think yourself the hero. Read the rest of this post...

Ted "series of tubes" Stevens may have been right all along

Sure everyone makes fun of the scandal-tainted Senator from Alaska for his comments about the internet and tubes but this back view of the Big Tent raises some serious questions. This blogger hang out at the Democratic Convention in Denver proves that he may have been on to something. You can see 'em with your own eyes. Tubes, in broad daylight. Maybe he's not the buffoon that everyone thought. Read the rest of this post...

Palin won't say whether she'll endorse or vote for Stevens

It's isn't a tough question. Why won't she answer?

“Gov. Palin can’t have it both ways,” said Bethany Lesser, spokeswoman for the Alaska Democratic Party. “Palin claims to spearhead reform in Alaska, rooting out corruption. But so far she has stood steadfast by indicted Sen. Stevens’s side. Alaskans and the nation deserve to know once and for all – where does Palin stand on Stevens for Senate?”

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Americans expect their president to be better than them

Republicans have begun the argument that Palin's and McCain's flaws are actually pluses. McCain was a horrible student, that's a good thing - because Americans are bad students. Palin's daughter conceived out of wedlock? Super duper! 1/3 of Americans have kids before the age of 20. So I guess we can apply this to McCain being 72 years old and having had cancer 4 times? Lots of Americans have cancer and even more are elderly! Where is this going? As Jon Stewart said a few months back, he expects, we expect, our president to be smarter than us, better than us. You may want a president you can share a beer with, but when the North Koreans or the Iranians come calling, no one wants Bubba in the Oval Office. This is part of the reason sex scandals rock the political world in America, I think. Yes, we have all have our flaws, but we'd like to think that our politicians are better than us, can lead us to a better life. And when we find out they're human, it lets us down. Read the rest of this post...

AP: Palin church promotes conversion of gays

Nice of AP to catch up on a story we reported three days ago :-) Read the rest of this post...

McCain's son was on audit committy of latest failed bank

So the Keating Five is now the McCain Two? Is it safe to call John McCain's son Andrew a "whiner" as Phil Gramm says? This may be the eleventh bank failure of 2008 but what stands out here is that Andrew McCain sat on the board of Silver State Bank and was on their audit committee. Did he notice something during his time on the audit committee of a failing bank, causing him to leave? Would a quick departure even be appropriate in the middle of such a difficult time? Either way, there is something strange about the McCain's and failing financial institutions. The Keating Five was bad enough but for a family to get caught up in two failed banks is a stunning coincidence.

For the second time in eleven days, another bank has gone bust due to the real estate bubble bursting. At the end of August, Christian bank Integrity Bancshares went under and yesterday Silver State Bank failed and insured deposits were acquired by Nevada State Bank. For a breakdown of the eleven failed banks year to date, this page provides a good overview of the financials including the cost to the FDIC deposit insurance fund. IndyMac continues to lead the pack with almost $9 billion though the year is still young.

The Bush administration's interventionist policies have come much too late to the credit crisis. Years of neglect and failure to provide basic oversight has left the US on the verge of recession yet if you listened to the GOP convention, nothing has been said about the economy. Nothing at all. McCain is hoping that Americans will accept his personal history (excluding the Keating Five scandal, deep ties to Phil Gramm and rumored McCain choice for Treasury Secretary and his first marriage issues) instead of paying attention to the everyday world around them.

More bank failures will be coming, putting more pressure on the FDIC to support failed institutions. This will force the FDIC to require even more from banks who will then pass along the higher costs to potential borrowers. Higher costs and stricter standards for loans may be required at the moment but it's not going to help the US dig itself out of the housing/credit crisis hole. For this reason, talking about the economy is a dangerous topic for McCain. Maybe he ought to run and hide in Alaska too. Read the rest of this post...

McCain even lies about the stupid stuff

This is precious. McCain is now lying about the mistake they made Thursday night, when they showed the Walter Reed Middle School behind McCain during his speech, instead of the Walter Reed Army Medical Center. At first McCain's camp admitted it was a mistake (duh), now they're saying they intended to show us a picture of a middle school, totally unrelated to what McCain was talking about, because they wanted to highlight importance of education. I suppose, then, that they also wanted to highlight the importance of grass. They really are amazing. They lie about everything. This is something else McCain - who voted with Bush 90% of the time - has in common with George Bush and Dick Cheney. McCain might have been a maverick as a young politician (well, he wasn't really - he was involved in the Keating Five back then), but now, no one knows who he is any more. More from TPM. Read the rest of this post...

McCain campaign steps in to stonewall Troopergate investigation. Palin is already a creature of DC's culture of corruption.

NOTE FROM JOHN: People voted for the "former POW" McCain, but instead got the "Keating Five" McCain.

The GOP knows a thing or two about impeding scandal investigations. John McCain probably has a trick or two he learned during the Keating Five scandal. So, while Sarah Palin claims she hates all things Washington, she is engaging in the classic D.C. game of impeding a scandal. Palin has already become part of that system she decries. That didn't take long, but she is learning from the GOP masters at McCain HQ and the RNC. From Newsweek:

Key Alaska allies of John McCain are trying to derail a politically charged investigation into Gov. Sarah Palin's firing of her public safety commissioner in order to prevent a so-called "October surprise" that would produce embarrassing information about the vice presidential candidate on the eve of the election.

In a move endorsed by the McCain campaign Friday, John Coghill, the GOP chairman of the state House Rules Committee, wrote a letter seeking a meeting of Alaska's bipartisan Legislative Council in order to remove the Democratic state senator in charge of the so-called "troopergate" investigation.

Didn't take long for Sarah Palin to become a creature of Washington. And, it's a classic D.C. move: Take something that starts as a relatively small scandal and try to cover it up, which just makes it worse. Then, aggressively engage in an effort to thwart the investigation insuring the story stays in the news. Brilliant.

What D.C. based investigative reporters like Micheal Isikoff know is that where there is smoke, there is fire. By working so hard to stonewall the troopergate investigation, the McCain/Palin crew is actually broadcasting that there is something to be found. Their hope is that nothing is found til after election day. Instead, what they are doing is putting this story front and center every day. Read the rest of this post...

The Republican Senators want Lieberman

Via Political Wire:

When Sen. Joe Lieberman (I-CT) returns to work this week, "he can expect some arm-twisting from his Republican friends and the cold shoulder from some Democrats" for giving a speech at the Republican convention, CQ Politics reports.

They can have him. The Republican base doesn't like Lieberman because he's pro-choice and supports gay rights. The Republican base wouldn't let McCain pick Lieberman as his v.p. But, the GOP Senators want Lieberman for tactical reasons -- and Joe is pathetic enough to be used by them.

There is a silver lining (besides getting rid of Lieberman). If Lieberman becomes a Republican now, before he's kicked out of the Democratic caucus after the election, the Senate becomes 50-50. Dick Cheney would becomes the 51st Republican to give them control. Cheney would be the deciding vote in the Senate.

Do the Republicans really want to put Cheney front and center between now and the election? Every time there's a vote in the Senate, Cheney will have to sit in the Senate President's chair and cast the tie-breaking vote. The Republicans have been trying to hide Cheney. They succeeded during the GOP convention. Joe Lieberman could thrust Cheney back into the spotlight during the height of the election.

McCain isn't just offering four more years of Bush. He's offering four more years of Cheney, too. Read the rest of this post...

Saturday Morning Open Thread

Good morning. So glad it's Saturday and that heinous gathering of Republicans is off my television.

Great news: Our good friend and fellow blogger, Bob Geiger, is back in action. Bob took a couple months off from blogging, but he's started writing again. That means the Saturday cartoons are back, too. Every week, with permission of the cartoonists, Bob compiles some of the week's best editorial cartoons. It's a great way to recap the week that was. And, as you can imagine, the RNC convention and Sarah Palin provided plenty of fodder. Check them out here. You'll have some much needed laughs.

Then, the poem of the week provides another much needed respite. This week's selection is "Loving in Truth" by Sir Phillip Sidney. It's an English renaissance poem about love -- "courtly love." The poet who writes the poem blog provides an eclectic selection of poems, but we're very much waiting to read some of his original poetry on that blog (hint, hint).

We're apparently in the middle of a tropical storm here in D.C. So far, lots of rain, some wind.

Start threading... Read the rest of this post...

Bush "nationalized" Freddie and Fannie

Who would have guessed that Bush was such a fan of euro-socialism? Technically they are saying the two are in "conservatorship" and not "receivership" though as usual, this is mostly parsing to help prevent Bush being associated with the word "nationalize." What an amazing coincidence of timing we saw last night as Bush stepped in after the GOP convention was finished and the weekend was starting for most Americans. It should come as no surprise that McCain and Palin avoided any talk of the economy, because that might be of interest to Americans (and the world, I might add) as we work through the second half of the trillion dollar plus credit crisis.

For starters, let's look at the financials involved. The US government (that's us) is now the proud owners of roughly $1.6 TRILLION in debt. The two own or guarantee about half of all mortgages in the US. Freddie and Fannie will continue to operate though under new leadership and surely under stricter conditions, similar to the rest of the finance market. In the middle of a housing crisis, making it more challenging to get a loan will not help us move through the months of houses sitting on the market. Caution makes sense, but it will take even longer to move through this period.

Shareholders will either lose everything or almost everything is what they're saying now. If you have been following the movement of Freddie and Fannie in recent weeks since the mid July intervention you've surely noticed wild swings, so plenty of people have been making money trading these stocks. The stocks are still down 80% for the year but there is no reason why the shareholders should receive anything. They gambled and lost, end of story. The shareholders probably didn't complain much when the stocks went through the roof during the bubble so just as I saw no reason to give Bear Stearns shareholders anything, I see no reason why they deserve it now.

What I also find interesting - interesting as in, when will these people ever learn to tell the truth - is that the big names on Wall Street all played their roll in propping up Freddie and Fannie. Many of these companies have repeatedly spun tall tales about supposedly great companies and honestly, how can anyone ever believe a word they say? One day we may even see someone hold them accountable for their cheerleading but we're far from that day. I supposed Merrill Lynch and others have more important worries now that they're about to write-down even more business which ought to put them in an even more delicate situation. Let's hope we don't bail those bums out as we did with Bear.

How long this "conservatorship" period lasts is anyone's guess. Will it even work or will it have to be completely nationalized is another big question and questions during troubled times do not bring confidence. The market is built on confidence so are they helping? Long term, Americans are stuck with the debt until Freddie and Fannie can generate enough revenue to move on. Freddie and Fannie will have to be more cautious with loans until their debt is settled and that is indeed a problem. Moving forward, how interested will the rest of the world be in buying America's credit debt after they lose everything? As a country we have pushed our credit problem to everyone and after this loss, the world is going to be much less interested in buying our problems, rightly so.

Since the credit crisis first started many have been wondering if this is the end of the American addiction to credit. While the UK has an even worse ratio of debt to GDP, the US is not far behind. Beyond Freddie and Fannie we need to think about real solutions to our credit problems. Americans have been on a thirty-plus year decline in real purchasing power and sooner or later, that has to be addressed. It is not sustainable to live on credit as individuals or as a country. Credit has helped dodge this complicated issue for decades but the bill has arrived. There are only so many bailouts that the US government can provide. I only wish this was the last but more will come soon enough. Where the money will come from is anyone's guess. Read the rest of this post...

Massive ice sheet breaks loose in Canada

That's OK though because Palin tells us climate change is a non issue. Until the ice hockey rinks in Alaska melt, she's not buying into this half baked theory that is accepted by scientists and the world.

A chunk of ice shelf nearly the size of Manhattan has broken away from Ellesmere Island in Canada's northern Arctic, another dramatic indication of how warmer temperatures are changing the polar frontier, scientists said Wednesday.

Derek Mueller, an Arctic ice shelf specialist at Trent University in Ontario, told The Associated Press that the 4,500-year-old Markham Ice Shelf separated in early August and the 19-square-mile shelf is now adrift in the Arctic Ocean.

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