John McCain

[noirua]

Well, sure, if you like the idea of Iran becoming the new Iraq, and a resumption of the cold war with Russia.

Just a practicality to consider, does the mighty US of A have the reserves of troops available to invade Iran and/or Russia, whilst still persisting in Iraq and Afghanistan? And what would that do to their economy?

Hi Julia, Isn't Afghanistan a no other option situation now? Iran is probably pleased America is fighting these wars as it makes their options easier. Russia are over the moon about it, as a weaker America is just the ticket for them.

Not enough troops to invade Iran for certain. Only one strike, if necessary, and it would have to be well thought out and decisive.

 

[2020hindsight]

http://krugman.blogs.nytimes.com/2008/09/19/mccain-on-banking-and-health/

McCain on banking and health
OK, a correspondent directs me to John McCain’s article, Better Health Care at Lower Cost for Every American, in the Sept./Oct. issue of Contingencies, the magazine of the American Academy of Actuaries. You might want to be seated before reading this.

Here’s what McCain has to say about the wonders of market-based health reform:
Opening up the health insurance market to more vigorous nationwide competition, as we have done over the last decade in banking, would provide more choices of innovative products less burdened by the worst excesses of state-based regulation.

So McCain, who now poses as the scourge of Wall Street, was praising financial deregulation like 10 seconds ago ”” and promising that if we marketize health care, it will perform as well as the financial industry!

 

[ZzzzDad]

http://krugman.blogs.nytimes.com/2008/09/19/mccain-on-banking-and-health/

Ha Ha, former Enron advisor Paul Krugman? A valid unbiased source? Thanks for the laugh 2020.

http://www.useless-knowledge.com/1234/new/article222.html

______________________________
Paul Krugman Helped Bankrupt Enron

By Brooks A. Mick
Nov. 21, 2004

Paul Krugman, the far-left, anti-Bush columnist for the New York Times--well, one out of many!-- is off on sabbatical to write an economics textbook. He is, on the surface, an economist (He was a former Princeton econ professor) and was once a chief adviser to Enron, the company which went belly up and whose officers (other than Krugman) were accused of improprieties.
_____________________________________________________--

 

[2020hindsight]

Ha Ha, former Enron advisor Paul Krugman? A valid unbiased source? Thanks for the laugh 2020.

http://www.useless-knowledge.com/1234/new/article222.html

______________________________
Paul Krugman Helped Bankrupt Enron

By Brooks A. Mick
Nov. 21, 2004

Paul Krugman, the far-left, anti-Bush columnist for the New York Times--well, one out of many!-- is off on sabbatical to write an economics textbook. He is, on the surface, an economist (He was a former Princeton econ professor) and was once a chief adviser to Enron, the company which went belly up and whose officers (other than Krugman) were accused of improprieties.
_____________________________________________________--

we can get round to Enron if you wish ... but for the time being - rather than your resorting to ad hominem ... perhaps you could answer

a) do you agree that more regulation is required in the financial markets, and/or was the main factor in the present mess (assuming you agree we are in a mess) or do you agree with websman that you have enough already

b) do you agree that more regulation and/or a new system is required in the US health system ? Or do you think that there's no "change" required?

Remember now, Palin is all for "change" , yes?

 

[2020hindsight]

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2008/09/20/AR2008092001746.html?hpid=topnews

McCain Health-Care Article Fuels New Clash Over Economy

By Dan Balz
Washington Post Staff Writer
Sunday, September 21, 2008; Page A07

JACKSONVILLE, Fla., Sept. 20 -- An article about health care published in an obscure journal led to a new skirmish Saturday between the campaigns of Democrat Barack Obama and Republican John McCain over who should be trusted with the ailing economy.

The article included a favorable reference to banking deregulation that, in light of this week's near-meltdown in the financial industry, provided an irresistible target for Sen. Obama's campaign and once again put Sen. McCain on the defensive. McCain's campaign accused Obama of manufacturing an attack by deliberately misreading the Republican's words.

The article, which appeared under McCain's name, was published in Contingencies magazine, which is produced under the auspices of the American Association of Actuaries. In it, McCain touted his plans for increasing competition in health care as one way to expand coverage and reduce costs.

McCain wrote, "Opening up the health insurance market to more vigorous nationwide competition, as we have done over the last decade in banking, would provide more choices of innovative products less burdened by the worst excesses of state-based regulation."

Obama, appearing at Bethune-Cookman University in Daytona Beach, mocked his rival for sounding out of touch at a time when Washington is moving rapidly to re-regulate the financial industry to curb the excesses that put the system into near-paralysis this week.

"So let me get this straight -- he wants to run health care like they've been running Wall Street," Obama told the audience. "Well, Senator, I know some folks on Main Street who aren't going to think that's such a good idea."

Sounds like Krugman writes, and others follow...

The Obama campaign first learned of the McCain article when New York Times columnist Paul Krugman referenced it on Friday. Since then, officials in the campaign have spread its contents as quickly as possible.

 

[2020hindsight]

This always leaves me a little bemused... a lot bemused in fact.

Why on earth would a non-American support any American political party? WTF?

The banter and debate is all a bit of fun, but I've seen "Vote for (insert candidate)" all over the internet from non-Americans.

What's this all about?

Now we have economics as a reason, as well as world peace.

This is an old post wayne, (#154)
But do you agree that the current mess on the stock markets of the world is due mainly to the slashing of regulations by the Bush administration (and to some extent those before him) ... and the subsequent sub-primal fears being realised.

I mean, are we all happy to have a "self-correction" of these proportions come along every few years

Hell next time / cycle, the US might be broke, and not able to bail out the banks, insurance companies etc.

Why shouldn't we (in Aus etc) be interested?

The main thing that drives the ASX opening prices is surely "what happened to the Dow etc last night."

And that's not even to mention (again) the fact that one is an avid hawke - ("why not occupy Iraq for 100 years?" etc), - happy to ramp up international tensions (and as an unavoidable consequence, extremism) ...

and the other wants to get the world back on a more even keel (with a damned site better chance of success against extremism)

 

[ZzzzDad]

McCain on Obama:

Senator Obama talks a tough game on the financial markets but the facts tell a different story. He took more money from Fannie and Freddie than any Senator but the Democratic chairman of the committee that regulates them. He put Fannie Mae's CEO who helped create this disaster in charge of finding his Vice President. Fannie's former General Counsel is a senior advisor to his campaign. Whose side do you think he is on? When I pushed legislation to reform Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, Senator Obama was silent. He didn't lift a hand to avert this crisis. While the leaders of Fannie and Freddie were lining the pockets of his campaign, they were sowing the seeds of the financial crisis we see today and enriching themselves with millions of dollars in payments. That's not change, that's what's broken in Washington.

...

Senator Obama has never made the kind tough reform we need today. His idea of reform is what his party leaders in Congress order him to do. We tried for bipartisan ethics reform and he walked away from it because his bosses didn't want real change.

...

When AIG was bailed out, I didn't like it, but I understood it needed to be done to protect hard working Americans with insurance policies and annuities. Senator Obama didn't take a position. On the biggest issue of the day, he didn't know what to think. He may not realize it, but you don't get to vote present as President of the United States. While Senator Obama and Congressional leaders don't know what to think about the current crisis, we know what their plans are for the economy. Today Senator Obama's running mate said that raising taxes is patriotic. Raising taxes in a tough economy isn't patriotic. It's not a badge of honor. It's just dumb policy. The billions in tax increases that Senator Obama is proposing would kill even more jobs during tough economic times. I'm not going to let that happen.

The roots of the current crisis date from the Clinton administration's insistence that EVERYONE should own a home. The matter that many didn't qualify and would never pay back didn't matter. Special emphasis was on certain minority groups. Unfortunately, the Bush administration continued this policy, and here we are.

 

[Calliope]

An eminent visitor to Australia many years ago ( I can't remenber his name or where he was from) when questioned about the politics in his own country said;

In my country there are two political parties, one party stands for everything that is good and the other party stands for everything that is bad. The trouble is we don't know which is which

That may not be the exact qoute, but no doubt somebody will put me wise.

 

[jeflin]

McCain on Obama:



The roots of the current crisis date from the Clinton administration's insistence that EVERYONE should own a home. The matter that many didn't qualify and would never pay back didn't matter. Special emphasis was on certain minority groups. Unfortunately, the Bush administration continued this policy, and here we are.

We can actually go back all the way to Alan Greenspan or even Paul Volcker. Since the 80s, deregulation and lax supervision became the order of the day and it becomes fashionable to print money to get out of every crisis.

 

[2020hindsight]

Former POW says McCain is "not cut out to be President"
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_KjsEs46C70&feature=related

John McCain's temperament makes it clear he's not cut out to be President of the United States

 

[Doris]

Former POW says McCain is "not cut out to be President"
John McCain's temperament makes it clear he's not cut out to be President of the United States

Too true! A deep breathe, not flaring tonsils, is needed under CinC pressure.
Let's hope Barack's cool demeanor baits McCain by the end of the 90 minute debates - to display this temper!

 

[2020hindsight]

Ha Ha, former Enron advisor Paul Krugman? A valid unbiased source? Thanks for the laugh 2020.

......
Rachel Maddow Interviews Paul Krugman

 

[wayneL]

...is asking the right questions about the oversight-less bank bailout.

But is he willing to vote against it in its current form.

 

[Doris]

McCain ad: Obama's Fannie Mae 'Connection'




"Obama has no background in economics. Who advises him? The Post says it's Franklin Raines, for "advice on mortgage and housing policy." Shocking. Under Raines, Fannie Mae committed "extensive financial fraud." Raines made millions. Fannie Mae collapsed. Taxpayers? Stuck with the bill."
--McCain video release, September 18, 2008.


McCain's Ad fails the The Pinocchio Test on The Washington Post's Fact Checker:

An already nasty presidential election campaign is getting nastier. The meltdown on Wall Street has touched off frantic attempts by both the McCain and Obama camps to secure political advantage and indulge in guilt by association. The latest McCain attack is particularly dubious.

The McCain campaign is clearly exaggerating wildly in attempting to depict Franklin Raines as a close adviser to Obama on "housing and mortgage policy." If we are to believe Raines, he did have a couple of telephone conversations with someone in the Obama campaign. But that hardly makes him an adviser to the candidate himself -- and certainly not in the way depicted in the McCain video release.

http://voices.washingtonpost.com/fact-checker/2008/09/obamas_fannie_mae_connection.html


Talk about the pot calling the kettle black!

McCain's campaign manager linked to Freddie Mac

The lobbying firm of John McCain's campaign manager was paid $15,000 a month for several years until last month by one of two housing companies taken over by the federal government.

That money from Freddie Mac to Rick Davis' firm was on top of more than $30,000 a month that went directly to Davis for five years starting in 2000.

The $30,000 a month came from both Freddie Mac and Fannie Mae, the other housing entity now under government control because of the crisis in the financial markets.

In response to the disclosure, McCain's presidential campaign issued a statement saying Davis left the firm and stopped taking a salary in 2006.

http://www.latimes.com/news/politics/la-na-advisor24-2008sep24,0,4139198.story

 

[Doris]

The Unbelievable McCain Campaign (Continued)

This should be good public backing for Obama's drive to rid Washington of lobbyists and PACs!

No wonder the McCain campaign went ballistic after the New York Times reported on some $2 million paid to McCain campaign manager Rick Davis for serving as “president of an advocacy group set up by the mortgage giants Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac to defend them against stricter regulations.”

Now it turns out that Davis’s lobbying firm received even more money from Freddie, and more recently, than Davis said.

The disclosure undercuts a remark by Mr. McCain on Sunday night that the campaign manager, Rick Davis, had had no involvement with the company for the last several years.

Indeed. The lesson, once again, is that the McCain campaign is beating up on the media not because they are biased, but because they are doing their job, which is to tell the truth.

http://voices.washingtonpost.com/postpartisan/

From 2000 to the end of 2005, Mr. Davis received nearly $2 million as president of the coalition, the Homeownership Alliance, which the companies created to help them oppose new regulations and protect their status as federally chartered companies with implicit government backing. That status let them borrow cheaply, helping to fuel rapid growth but also their increased purchases of the risky mortgage securities that proved to be their downfall.

They said Mr. Davis’s firm, Davis Manafort, had been kept on the payroll because of his close ties to Mr. McCain, the Republican presidential nominee, who by 2006 was widely expected to run again for the White House.

The disclosure comes at a time when Mr. McCain and his Democratic rival, Senator Barack Obama, are sparring over ties to lobbyists and special interests, seeking political advantage in a campaign being reshaped by the financial crisis and the plan to bail out investment firms.

McCain responded to a question about that tie between Mr. Davis and the two mortgage companies by saying that he “has had nothing to do with it since, and I’ll be glad to have his record examined by anybody who wants to look at it.”

Such assertions, along with McCain campaign television advertisements tying Mr. Obama to former Fannie Mae chiefs, have riled current and former officials of the two companies and provoked them to volunteer rebuttals.

Several top McCain campaign officials have ties to either Freddie Mac or Fannie Mae.
So do at least two McCain advisers outside the campaign.

Mr. McCain and his advisers have argued that whatever connections Mr. Davis and other campaign officials have had to the mortgage giants, the senator has been an advocate of reforming them.

http://www.nytimes.com/2008/09/24/u...gin&adxnnlx=1222280996-pKuMnRNjyaC+Bk1OMKO9aA

 

[Doris]

McCain Wants Debate Delayed Amid Crisis

Who does he think he is? The president? Shades of a cyclone... err hurricane! Super Mac to the rescue!

"It has become clear that no consensus has developed to support the administration's proposal. I do not believe that the plan on the table will pass as it currently stands, and we are running out of time," the Arizona senator said in statement issued by the campaign. "Tomorrow morning, I will suspend my campaign and return to Washington."

He also called on the Commission on Presidential Debates to delay Friday's debate, the first of three scheduled, and he asked President Bush to convene a meeting with congressional leadership, including both himself and Sen. Obama.

Sen. McCain also called on his Democratic rival Barack Obama to join him back in the capital.

"It is time for both parties to come together to solve this problem," he said. "We must meet as Americans, not as Democrats or Republicans, and we must meet until this crisis is resolved."

McCain takes control of the bailout crisis and lets the media know!

He has adopted Obama's philosophy of bipartisan 'conversation'!
"We are not a red American and a blue America -- we are the United States of America."


Oh. But... there's Obama's side!

Shortly after Sen. McCain issued his statement, the Obama campaign issued its own, saying that the pair is working on a joint statement on the crisis, a process they said was initiated by Sen. Obama when he called Sen. McCain at 8:30 a.m., according to Obama spokesman Bill Burton.

"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," Mr. Burton said in an email to reporters. "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."

Why did McCain only give half the picture?

http://online.wsj.com/article/SB122228304121472135.html

 

[Doris]

The Drama Queen's Big Gamble
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2008/09/24/the-drama-queens-big-gamb_n_128987.html

Seems I'm not the only one with this evaluation!

What we are witnessing right now is what a McCain presidency would be like -- herky jerky, bouncing from crisis to crisis, overreacting at every step.

It's taken him exactly ten days to go from the economy is strong to we're heading into the Great Depression and must stop the campaign.

But nothing has changed other than the polls, and that's why it's impossible to take this gamble seriously.

McCain can see that he cannot win the presidency unless the campaign narrative changes dramatically, so he's decided to roll the dice.

After all his talk of bipartisanship, John McCain has decided to make an intensely political move. He does not have a plan, but he's willing to drag the country through his personal drama, no matter the cost, just so that he might win the presidency.

McCain wants to demonstrate his leadership skills, but instead he's demonstrating beyond any doubt that he is temperamentally unfit to be president.

Some blogs on this. Lovem!

# Right on the mark. This is nothing but a political gambit. It's never been, and never will be, country first. It's now and always been McCain first. We're not buying it.

# McCain is suddenly behind in the polls and he stops the debate -- the ONE chance of THREE debates he had to address a national audience unedited. His campaign managers are stupid, or they expect to thrash Obama in the last two debates so close to the election that Obama cannot recover.

# He is the poster child for insanity. He can not lead our country. He can only lead a cult of people filled with hate who have no reason left.

# McCain has little to no defenses left.
The lies and innuendo aren't working, and the Miracle Sarah is turning into a liability QUICKLY...
What better way to try to distract us once again...

Did you know that if the Govt. declares this enough of a National Emergency, HE CAN SUSPEND THE ELECTION IN NOVEMBER???

I didn't either.
I do now, and I'm a bit worried...

# Can he walk and chew gum? Crisis management IS part of the president's task, as is multi-tasking. And he's asking BHO to stop running ads (see Ben Smith)?! Friday night should be possible to continue - it IS the business of the people to know where their future leader stands. Another gimmick, another gamble. No more drama, vote Obama.

 

[noirua]

John McCain and Barack Obama have both suspended their campaigns and returned to Washington.

 

[noirua]

John McCain and Barack Obama have both suspended their campaigns and returned to Washington.

Barack Obama has now said that comments by his campaign manager, as to suspending his campaign, is not correct. He will be continuing with his campaign.

 

[blablabla]

McCain never had a chance. Democrat ex-president Clinton was on TV the other night saying that the election would be decided by how well the candidates perform in the televised debates.

It is obvious that McCain is using the financial crisis as a convenient reason not to have to debate Obama. This means that the republicans will delay the bailout package by bickering in congress for another couple of weeks, as the republicans are just buying time, which of course will eventually cause the markets to tank. Then Bush will shut down the stockmarket and declare a state of emergency. The election will be suspended and Bush and Cheney will get a third term. Too easy. McCain will be out cold before he realises what hit him.

And some people say the republicans are morons?