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?
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!
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
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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.
_____________________________________________________--
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."
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.
Now we have economics as a reason, as well as world peace.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?
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.
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
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.
John McCain's temperament makes it clear he's not cut out to be President of the United States
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
......Ha Ha, former Enron advisor Paul Krugman? A valid unbiased source? Thanks for the laugh 2020.
http://voices.washingtonpost.com/fact-checker/2008/09/obamas_fannie_mae_connection.htmlAn 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://www.latimes.com/news/politics/la-na-advisor24-2008sep24,0,4139198.storyThe 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://voices.washingtonpost.com/postpartisan/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://www.nytimes.com/2008/09/24/u...gin&adxnnlx=1222280996-pKuMnRNjyaC+Bk1OMKO9aAFrom 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.
"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."
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."
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.
John McCain and Barack Obama have both suspended their campaigns and returned to Washington.
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