After the debate last night John McCain flew back to DC, purportedly to work on the bailout package. But according to the New York Times he never made it past his Arlington condo.
Asked why Mr. McCain did not go to Capitol Hill after coming back to Washington to help with negotiations, Mr. Salter replied that “he can effectively do what he needs to do by phone.’’
From the Tribune:
"They are the most ludicrous, useless element of the entire political campaign," CBS News' Jeff Greenfield said Thursday. "I cannot fathom what anyone gets out of these things."I wish news organizations would collectively agree to stay away from the spin room following the debates. Nothing of substance ever emerges. They could also leave their own analysts behind as well (or at least scale back from 11 to two or three). It's awfully silly to hear media folks talking about undecided voters, average Americans, etc. This is true in general but especially true after debates. Why not just put average folks on television? I honestly don't think Paul Begala has a better grasp on the thoughts of an undecided voter than an actual undecided voter.
"As this thing has developed or mutated, it's become a parody of itself," Greenfield said. "Some of these people will pour into the spin room before the debate even ends, which is particularly amusing because you kind of wonder what would happen if, in the last seconds, one of the candidates said, 'All praise to Satan.' These poor schlubs would still say, 'I thought he did a pretty good job.' They've become utterly useless."
And this is not coming from the "liberal media," but from conservative columnist Kathleen Parker in the National Review Online:
It was fun while it lasted.
Palin’s recent interviews with Charles Gibson, Sean Hannity, and now Katie Couric have all revealed an attractive, earnest, confident candidate. Who Is Clearly Out Of Her League.
No one hates saying that more than I do. Like so many women, I’ve been pulling for Palin, wishing her the best, hoping she will perform brilliantly. I’ve also noticed that I watch her interviews with the held breath of an anxious parent, my finger poised over the mute button in case it gets too painful. Unfortunately, it often does. My cringe reflex is exhausted. ....
If Palin were a man, we’d all be guffawing, just as we do every time Joe Biden tickles the back of his throat with his toes. But because she’s a woman — and the first ever on a Republican presidential ticket — we are reluctant to say what is painfully true.
What to do?
McCain can’t repudiate his choice for running mate. He not only risks the wrath of the GOP’s unforgiving base, but he invites others to second-guess his executive decision-making ability. Barack Obama faces the same problem with Biden.
Only Palin can save McCain, her party, and the country she loves. She can bow out for personal reasons, perhaps because she wants to spend more time with her newborn. No one would criticize a mother who puts her family first.
Do it for your country.
Back on May 31, 2008, the WSJ talked with David Foster Wallace about his 2000 profile on John McCain in Rolling Stone. Here is a snippet:
WSJ: Have you changed your mind about any of the points that you made in the book?
Mr. Wallace: "In the best political tradition, I reject the premise of your question. The essay quite specifically concerns a couple weeks in February, 2000, and the situation of both McCain [and] national politics in those couple weeks. It is heavily context-dependent. And that context now seems a long, long, long time ago. McCain himself has obviously changed; his flipperoos and weaselings on Roe v. Wade, campaign finance, the toxicity of lobbyists, Iraq timetables, etc. are just some of what make him a less interesting, more depressing political figure now for me, at least. It's all understandable, of course he's the GOP nominee now, not an insurgent maverick. Understandable, but depressing. As part of the essay talks about, there's an enormous difference between running an insurgent Hail-Mary-type longshot campaign and being a viable candidate (it was right around New Hampshire in 2000 that McCain began to change from the former to the latter), and there are some deep, really rather troubling questions about whether serious honor and candor and principle remain possible for someone who wants to really maybe win. I wouldn't take back anything that got said in that essay, but I'd want a reader to keep the time and context very much in mind on every page."
"Sarah Palin is utterly unqualified to be vice president." So say Fareed Zakaria in the new Newsweek. This might be the kindest thing he has to say about her in his column, which you can read here.
From CBS:
Sarah Palin told a customer at a Philadelphia restaurant on Saturday that the United States should “absolutely” launch cross-border attacks from Afghanistan into Pakistan in the event that it becomes necessary to “stop the terrorists from coming any further in,” a comment similar to the one John McCain condemned Barack Obama for making during last night’s presidential debate.
During Friday’s debate, Obama criticized the Bush administration for sending billions of dollars in aid to Pakistan without ridding the border region of terrorists.
“If the United States has al Qaeda, bin Laden, top-level lieutenants in our sights, and Pakistan is unable or unwilling to act, then we should take them out,” Obama added.
McCain fired back hard, arguing that newly elected Pakistani president Asif Ali Zardari has had his “hands full” and suggesting that Obama’s tough talk was naïve.
“You don’t say that out loud,” McCain said. “If you have to do things, you have to do things, and you work with the Pakistani government.”
Palin’s apparent disagreement with McCain’s position on Pakistan came as the Alaska governor was picking up a couple of cheesesteaks at Tony Luke’s in South Philadelphia. She was approached by a man wearing a Temple University t-shirt, who later identified himself as Michael Rovito.
“How about the Pakistan situation?” Rovito asked. “What’s your thoughts about that.”
“In Pakistan?” Palin responded.
“What’s going on over there, like Waziristian?”
“It’s working with Zardari to make sure that we’re all working together to stop the guys from coming in over the border,” Palin said. “And we’ll go from there.”
“Waziristan is blowing up,” Rovito replied.
“Yeah, it is,” Palin said. “And the economy there is blowing up, too.”
“So we do cross-border, like from Afghanistan to Pakistan, you think?” Rovito asked.
“If that’s what we have to do stop the terrorists from coming any further in, absolutely, we should,” Palin said.
I honestly wouldn't put this past the McCain/Palin campaign. Anything to avoid the issues. But no one talks about the issues that poor girl is going to have from being forced to marry her freaking high-school boy toy. From the Times Online.
In an election campaign notable for its surprises, Sarah Palin, the Republican vice- presidential candidate, may be about to spring a new one — the wedding of her pregnant teenage daughter to her ice-hockey-playing fiancé before the November 4 election.
Inside John McCain’s campaign the expectation is growing that there will be a popularity boosting pre-election wedding in Alaska between Bristol Palin, 17, and Levi Johnston, 18, her schoolmate and father of her baby. “It would be fantastic,” said a McCain insider. “You would have every TV camera there. The entire country would be watching. It would shut down the race for a week.”
This front page story in Sunday's NYT offers a fascinating account of how small division of AIG essentially torpedoed its parent company. Read the whole story, but here's a quick summary of what happened:
AIG Financial Products, a small firm in London, began selling insurance to financial institutions on packages of debt known as “collateralized debt obligations.” Customers paid a premium for the insurance, AIG-FP never had to post collateral on the insurance, and they never assumed that they would have to pay any claims. So they took in a lot of money without every preparing for the possibility that they insurance they were selling was going to be necessary.
Enter the credit crisis. The value of the underlying securities AIG-FP had insured declined. (Whoops!) AIG-FP had to put up collateral on the losses. Any obligations they could not meet were passed along to its corporate parent, AIG. In other words, AIG had to foot the bill for the reckless practices of AIG-FP. That's why AIG failed.
377 dudes in London killed a company with a trillion-dollar balance sheet and 116,000 employees.
Some snippets from The New York Times:
As a two-time chairman of the Indian Affairs Committee, Mr. McCain has done more than any other member of Congress to shape the laws governing America’s casinos, helping to transform the once-sleepy Indian gambling business into a $26-billion-a-year behemoth with 423 casinos across the country. He has won praise as a champion of economic development and self-governance on reservations.
“One of the founding fathers of Indian gaming” is what Steven Light, a University of North Dakota professor and a leading Indian gambling expert, called Mr. McCain. ...
As factions of the ferociously competitive gambling industry have vied for an edge, they have found it advantageous to cultivate a relationship with Mr. McCain or hire someone who has one, according to an examination based on more than 70 interviews and thousands of pages of documents.
Mr. McCain portrays himself as a Washington maverick unswayed by special interests, referring recently to lobbyists as “birds of prey.” Yet in his current campaign, more than 40 fund-raisers and top advisers have lobbied or worked for an array of gambling interests — including tribal and Las Vegas casinos, lottery companies and online poker purveyors. .....
In May 2007, as Mr. McCain’s presidential bid was floundering, he spent a weekend at the MGM Grand on the Las Vegas strip. A fund-raiser hosted by J. Terrence Lanni, the casino’s top executive and a longtime friend of the senator, raised $400,000 for his campaign. Afterward, Mr. McCain attended a boxing match and hit the craps tables.
For much of his adult life, Mr. McCain has gambled as often as once a month, friends and associates said, traveling to Las Vegas for weekend betting marathons. Former senior campaign officials said they worried about Mr. McCain’s patronage of casinos, given the power he wields over the industry. The officials, like others interviewed for this article, spoke on condition of anonymity.
“We were always concerned about appearances,” one former official said. “If you go around saying that appearances matter, then they matter.”
The former official said he would tell Mr. McCain: “Do we really have to go to a casino? I don’t think it’s a good idea. The base doesn’t like it. It doesn’t look good. And good things don’t happen in casinos at midnight.”
“You worry too much,” Mr. McCain would respond, the official said.
Koppelman looks around and comes up empty. Was Palin lying about this too?
I spent some time on the Governor's Web site seeking more details about her trade negotiations with Russia. There's a press release about Gov. Palin's meeting with a trade mission from the Yukon, but nothing about Russia anywhere in the archives. Tony Knowles, a Democrat who was governor from 1994-2002, led a trade mission -- back in 1997, while Palin was running Wasilla -- to the remote island of Sakhalin, off the coast of Siberia. That seems to be about it for Russia-Alaska trade missions lately.
When asked for examples of trade missions with Russia that have taken place under Palin's watch, gubernatorial spokeswoman Kate Morgan refused to answer the question. Morgan said she could not legally discuss any trade missions with me because she's a state employee and I had first heard this claim through the Couric interview, which was part of Palin's campaign for the vice-presidency. When I pointed out that any trade missions that occurred would have been official state business, Morgan again noted that I had learned about them in the context of the campaign. "The law is very stringent," she said, and recommended that I contact the McCain-Palin campaign. Two spokespeople did not respond to requests for comment.
Halperin falsely claims Obama said Kissinger supports presidential talks with Iran
Mark Halperin: "Obama said during the debate that Kissinger, a McCain adviser, supports presidential talks with the Iranian president."
This is false.
During the debate, Obama said Kissinger "said that we should meet with Iran -- guess what -- without precondition" -- not that the meetings should happen at the presidential level.
McCain repeatedly purported to correct this statement by saying Kissinger doesn't support presidential-level talks with Iran -- and each time, Obama made clear that was not his contention.
The transcript is here. See for yourself. Halperin isn't telling the truth. He's just parroting the McCain spin.
UPDATE: The Washington Post's Chris Cillizza writes: "McCain was able to turn a single question about meeting with rogue leaders into an extended colloquy that ended with him hitting Obama for misunderstanding Henry Kissinger. A very good moment for McCain."
This, too is false. Obama didn't misunderstand Kissinger. McCain misstated Obama's accurate statement about Kissinger. Again, read the transcript for yourself. Obama doesn't say Kissinger favors presidential-level talks; he says Kissinger favors talks. And the AP notes: "Obama was right that Kissinger called for meetings without preconditions."
So it's only a "very good moment for McCain" if you think that misstating your opponent's comments for the purposes of rebutting them is a "good moment."
From Bob Shrum's column on the HuffPo:
My friend Tim Russert, who didn't pull his words, famously said on the night of the North Carolina and Indiana primaries: "I think we now know who the Democratic nominee will be." Tonight I think we know who the next President will be.
This is a great segment from Rachel Maddow in response to Condi's "big reveal" on Sept. 24 (I meant to post this awhile ago and forgot) that the Bush administration discussed torture techniques.
From Newsweek:
What do Wall Street titans have in common with Ada Noda, an 80 year-old grandmother? They have all found themselves deeply in debt and desperate for a way out.
And this lengthy one from Virginia Veteran's for Obama:
Both courtesy of Gawker. And on a side note, my dad is desperately looking for a Vietnam Vet for Obama t-shirt (not just a Veterans for Obama t-shirt). If anyone sees one, let me know!
Women voters, according to a CNN post-debate poll, gave Obama higher marks than McCain: 59 to 31, respectively.
Men were nearly evenly split between the two candidates, with 46 percent giving the win to McCain and 43 percent to Obama.
Breaking news from MSNBC:
Senators have passed a spending bill that aids Gulf Coast disaster victims and subsidizes federal loans for automakers. President Bush is expected to sign the measure despite some reservations.
The 78-12 vote Saturday also lifts a quarter-century ban on oil drilling off the Atlantic and Pacific coasts. That's a big victory for Republicans.
The $634 billion bill provides money to keep the government running until the next president takes office.
I think Ta-Nehisi Coates is spot on here:
You guys probably know this, but I strongly believe that disrespect exacts arguably a higher price on the disrespecter than on the disrespectee. Rest assured that Obama isn't taking McCain lightly. He would not go into a debate and be dismissive of him at all. I keep hearing people complain that Obama can't be angry because he's black. What they're are missing is that the cage is actually the key to set Obama free. He shouldn't be angry. He shouldn't take offense at McCain. Hillary was plenty angry. How'd that work out? Liberals have a bully complex. Having gotten chumped repeatedly, we're confusing strength with arrrogance, toughness with strut. Take it from someone who learned it the hard way. they ain't the same, son. To paraphrase Carolyn Forche, Obama needs to do exactly would he did last night--slice McCain to lace. But he needs to do it so quietly, calmly and efficiently, that even those who are paid to opine on such things, don't even notice the blood all over the floor.
I'm not the one to be judging how this might play, but when you watch McCain repeatedly saying Obama doesn't understand it has a rote, hollow ring, much less an assertion of opinion than a demonic, mindless attack line. When you royally screwed up on the Iraq war there's something odd about saying your opponent doesn't understand.
Speaking of which, when Lehrer asked Obama what he learned from the Iraq war I was hoping for a Biden Moment. He should have responded simply, "Don't fight the wrong war at the wrong time against the wrong enemy" and then conceded the remainder of his two minutes to McCain.
Ed Schultz via Sullivan:
Capitol Hill sources are telling me that senior McCain people are more than concerned about Palin.This is, without a doubt, the least surprising news of the Palin Era thus far.
The campaign has held a mock debate and a mock press conference; both are being described as “disastrous.” One senior McCain aide was quoted as saying, “What are we going to do?” The McCain people want to move this first debate to some later, undetermined date, possibly never. People on the inside are saying the Alaska Governor is “clueless.”
From Ben Smith:
Call it the ultimate in grassroots activity, a viral email urging people to donate to Planned Parenthood “in honor of Sarah Palin” generated more than 31,313 donations totaling more than three-quarters of a million dollars ($802,678) as of today. With contributions from all 50 states, more than two-thirds of the individuals making a contribution “in honor of Sarah Palin” are first-time Planned Parenthood donors.Though she won't admit it, I think Rene started this campaign. After all, she wrote about it on the Underground. Ergo, it was her idea.
Doing his Instant Bob Woodward impression, ABC’s Jonathan Karl banged out a remarkable narrative about the chaotic White House bailout meeting with the congressional leadership: “Sen. Richard Shelby, the top Republican on the Senate Banking Committee, presents a five-page list of 192 economists and business school professors who oppose the plan. Bush isn't impressed. ‘I don't care what somebody on some college campus says,’ Bush says.
Mike Allen's Playbook is a must read each morning. That's where I found this little nugget. Check back in the archives for the list of economists who oppose the plan.
Via Andrew Romano at Newsweek: According to the nonpartisan researchers at Factcheck.org (a NEWSWEEK partner), "McCain and Obama contradicted each other repeatedly during their first debate, and each volunteered some factual misstatements as well." Here's how the cookie crumbled:
Obama claimed Iraq "has" a $79 billion surplus. It once was projected to be as high as that. It's now down to less than $60 billion.
Thirty-nine percent of these uncommitted debate watchers said Obama won the debate. Twenty-four percent said McCain won, and another 37 percent thought it was a tie.
I thought McCain's opening line about Ted Kennedy being hospitalized was out of line.
Everyone knows Kennedy is ill, but to open the debate—in a somewhat solemn tone—made some of us wonder if Kennedy's situation had turned from bad to worse, possibly even grave.
Turns out, Kennedy was back home, after briefly being hospitalized for feeling ill, by the time McCain made that statement.
A statement issued by the 76-year-old senator's office attributed the episode to a change in medications. Sen. John Kerry said his fellow Massachusetts Democrat was well and planned to watch the evening's presidential debate between John McCain and Barack Obama.
A 911 call from the Kennedy compound in Hyannis Port came around 5 p.m., said Barnstable police Sgt. Ben Baxter. Kennedy was taken to Cape Cod Hospital and was "alert and responsive" during the trip, Baxter said.
Kennedy's office confirmed he returned home about 8 p.m. Click here for more.From Wolf Blitzer on CNN:
"We've been getting some emails from views out there wondering why we spent some time interviewing Joe Biden, the Democratic vice presidential nominee and not Sarah Palin, the Republican vice presidential nominee. We would have loved to interview--we'd still love to interview Sarah Palin. Unfortunately we asked, we didn't get that interview...We're hoping that Sarah Palin will join us at some point down the road."
An update on the Nate Silver post from Joel:
The CBS poll of undecideds has more confirmatory detail. Obama went from a +18 on "understanding your needs and problems" before the debate to a +56 (!) afterward. And he went from a -9 on "prepared to be president" to a +21.
I found all the agreeing a bit frustrating myself.
From Tom Shales at The Washington Post:
John McCain wore the more presidential tie -- that much can be said for him -- but Barack Obama displayed the more presidential temperament, or the kind of demeanor people presumably would want in a president, when the two candidates met at the University of Mississippi last night for their first debate of the campaign.
Both men seemed well equipped in terms of facts and figures -- especially, as one would expect, dollar figures -- and neither made an outrageous blunder, although McCain did misidentify the new president of Pakistan. More critically, he came across as condescending and even rude to his opponent, a bit of bad behavior especially evident because Obama may have overdone the fair-minded bit in many of his remarks and answers.Imperiously enough, McCain -- who had threatened not to show up for the debate because of America's financial crisis -- seemed determined to avoid even looking at Obama as the debate went on, although they did shake hands at the beginning and end. Many of McCain's answers were preceded with belittling references to Obama as if he were talking to a college freshman way out of his depth: "I'm afraid Senator Obama doesn't understand the difference between a tactic and a strategy," was one typical remark.
Obama supporters must have been displeased, then, to hear their candidate keep agreeing with McCain, a case perhaps of sportsmanlike conduct run amok. Doesn't Obama want to win?
Nate Silver has a great writeup on why voters thought Obama won the debate. A choice quote:
Voters thought that Obama “seemed to be the stronger leader” by a 49-43 margin, reversing a traditional area of McCain strength. And voters thought that the candidates were equally likely to be able to handle the job of president if elected.
These internals are worse for McCain than the topline results, because they suggest not only that McCain missed one of his few remaining opportunities to close the gap with Barack Obama, but also that he has few places to go. The only category in which McCain rated significantly higher than Obama was on “spent more time attacking his opponent”. McCain won that one by 37 points
When the details of this encounter fade, as they soon will, I think the debate as a whole will be seen as of a piece with Kennedy-Nixon in 1960, Reagan-Carter in 1980, and Clinton-Bush in 1992.The debates are about courting the undecided voters. Watching the CNN audience tracking graph, Obama consistently scored higher with undecided voters than McCain, which is why it's not at all surprising that essentially each instant poll of undecided voters has them breaking for Obama. That's really the only meaningful measure of 'winning' the debates.
In each of those cases, a fresh, new candidate (although chronologically older in Reagan's case) had been gathering momentum at a time of general dissatisfaction with the "four more years" option of sticking with the incumbent party. The question was whether the challenger could stand as an equal with the more experienced, tested, and familiar figure. In each of those cases, the challenger passed the test -- not necessarily by "winning" the debate, either on logical points or in immediate audience or polling reactions, but by subtly reassuring doubters on the basic issue of whether he was a plausible occupant of the White House and commander in chief.
I think that's how this debate will be seen. Neither Obama nor McCain made any serious mistakes (except, perhaps, for McCain's churlish on-stage personal bearing); neither had any moments of surprising brilliance or rhetorical flash. McCain performed closer to the top of his debating range than Obama did.
But something similar could be said of the three previous encounters I mentioned. The challengers didn't necessarily "win," but they achieved something significant simply by debating as equals -- especially on national security issues. I think in the long run people will say that this is what happened tonight.
McCain says horse shit in response to Obama saying that McCain wouldn't meet with Spain.
(h/t: Daily Kos)
Couric: I'm just going to ask you one more time - not to belabor the point. Specific examples in his 26 years of pushing for more regulation.To which Stephen Colbert says, "Too bad she thought it was a take-home interview."
Palin: I'll try to find you some and I'll bring them to you.
There is video and it's finally made it's way through Ted Stevens's intertubes to your computer. Skipp the first 50 seconds...
Nate Silver now has Obama winning the election 74.7% of the time. He's made big gains across the board over the last week and McCain is slipping, to say the least.
McCain has very serious problems in Virginia, and extremely serious problems in Michigan, which is starting to drift off the swing state list. And forget about the Pacific Northwest. But at this stage, the electoral math is starting to diminish in importance; McCain needs to make gains everywhere, which means he needs a clutch performance in tonight's debate.
I cannot claim I know what's going on with the bailout, but that's OK. As far as I can tell, no one knows the full story either. So why not hear from all sides. Up now, free market economists:
Bryan Caplan (George Mason)
3. What's the one thing we should be doing that we're not?
Waiting a couple of years. Unemployment is only 6.1 percent; by standard measures, we're still not in a recession. Even if you have no libertarian sympathies, shouldn't you at least give familiar, low-impact responses (especially standard monetary policy) before you throw caution to the wind?
Robert Wright (NYU)
2. How bad are the current proposed bailout plans?
The current bailout plans are so bad it's impossible to tell just how bad they are with any precision. The devil, as they say, is hiding in details that are either undisclosed or will be concocted on the fly. For example, it is clear that some sort of tax will have to be placed on financial institutions that grow TBTF (too big to fail). If the tax is too high, financial services firms will stay small and the United States may lose, or be unable to regain, its competitive advantage in some important financial areas. If the tax is too low, financial services firms will merge and conglomerate at a rapid pace just to avoid "Lehmanasia" (euthanasia if they are not big enough to represent a systemic risk) during the next crisis. If the tax is just right, only those companies that need to be huge to compete internationally should be willing to pay it. The probability that regulators will get this and similar issues right appears small indeed given their track record.
Jeffrey Marin (Harvard)
1. How bad is the current market situation?The current situation is serious, but not so much because the economic conditions are especially bad. The situation is serious because policymakers seem poised to undertake an enormous intervention that will have huge adverse effects and may well exacerbate the very kind of problem the intervention is meant to fix.
Frederic Sauteta (George Mason)
2. How bad are the current proposed bailout plans?
See #1. The bailout is a terrible idea. It transfers a huge amount of wealth to people who do not deserve it. It will generate enormous incentives for creative bookkeeping as the investment houses and banks try to rid themselves of any assets they do not want. The bailout fails to eliminate the crucial policies that contributed to and caused the current situation, such as the Community Reinvestment Act, the creation of Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, and so on. Last but hardly least, the bailout sets a terrible precedent: If you take huge risks and become too big to fail, the government will bail you out.3. What's the one thing we should be doing that we're not?
Getting out of the mess is not going to be easy. Once the perverse incentives are in the system, it's hard to go back. Bailing out is very bad and in the long run is worse than bankruptcy. It is not a coincidence that Paulson is the former CEO of Goldman Sachs and is now bailing out his friends. The problem is that bankers should be punished for their careless, stupid investments (JP Morgan, for instance, has $8.1 trillion in credit derivatives on its books), but since it was largely driven by the government's loose monetary policy and regulation, bankers are not the only ones responsible. Clearly letting the banks fail in the short run would have bad consequences for many households in the U.S. (and elsewhere). The problem is that the government does not have the incentives to intervene just for a short time. Once the banks are nationalized, it may take a while before the government leaves the place. Ultimately, this situation calls for radical policy solutions: The return to the gold standard and the abolition of central banks.Mike Munger (Duke)
3. What's the one thing we should be doing that we're not?
Let the price mechanism work. High gas prices, for example. We are trying to bring down gas prices. But high gas prices limit demand, elicit new supply, and make alternative energy more profitable. Same with low prices on mortgages and other financial instruments. Buying up worthless assets is like trying to drink the ocean to stop a flood. You can't do it.
The White Sox have their last home series this weekend. They're in a dead heat for the AL Central and they're playing division rivals The Indians.
But despite all this, they HAVEN'T SOLD OUT their stadium this weekend. You can still get tickets, for quite cheap, actually. That's pretty sad.
There was a bailout proposal ready to send to the President yesterday afternoon. Then McCain showed up, GOP infighting commenced, and the bailout proposal died. The Democrats -- historically bitches in the face of this administration -- should use this opportunity to railroad the Republicans into accepting their ideal proposal, says Matt Yglesias:
If conservatives won’t play ball, I think the smart move for progressives on the Hill is to come back to Bush and Paulson with a much less palatable plan — huge stimulus, big tax hikes on super-high earners, mortgage cramdowns, etc. Let Bush either cave 100 percent to a Nancy Pelosi dream deal or else let Bush bring McCain and John Boehner to the table. There’s no reason for progressives to be making concessions to the Bush administration and the financial industry if they can’t even get their lackeys to back their own plan.
John McCain is already running advertisements proclaiming himself the winner of tonight's debate, as you can see on this screen capture. Would have been nice for McCain to use that foresight to address the origins of the financial crisis eight years ago, but maybe that's too much to ask.
Two days ago Palin met with Henry Kissinger to talk about foreign policy stuff and, you know, beef up Palin's national policy expertise. (I mean, think of how much she knows about Russia living just 1,000 miles away, so imagine how much she could learn sitting right next to Kissinger!) Then yesterday she called him naive, albeit by accident borne from ignorance.
Let's go to the script:
Couric: You met yesterday with former Secretary of State Henry Kissinger, who is for direct diplomacy with both Iran and Syria. Do you believe the U.S. should negotiate with leaders like President Assad and Ahmadinejad?It is NOT AT ALL SURPRISING that Palin has never heard something Kissinger said. Not at all surprising. But ignorance is not an excuse when you're running for the vice presidency. Kissinger agrees with Obama. Maybe she should have just met with Obama instead.
Palin: I think, with Ahmadinejad, personally, he is not one to negotiate with. You can't just sit down with him with no preconditions being met. Barack Obama is so off base in his proclamation that he would meet with some of these leaders around our world who would seek to destroy America and that, and without preconditions being met. That's beyond naïve. And it's beyond bad judgment.
Couric: Are you saying Henry Kissinger ...
Palin: It's dangerous.
Couric: ... is naïve for supporting that?
Palin: I've never heard Henry Kissinger say, "Yeah, I'll meet with these leaders without preconditions being met." Diplomacy is about doing a lot of background work first and shoring up allies and positions and figuring out what sanctions perhaps could be implemented if things weren't gonna go right. That's part of diplomacy.
Carl Bernstein writes:
Three weeks after the 2008 Republican convention, on the cusp (maybe) of the first presidential debate, it is time to confront an awkward but profound question: whether in picking Sarah Palin as his running mate, John McCain has committed -- by his own professed standards of duty and honor -- a singularly unpatriotic act.He goes on, teasing out what he can from a fairly black and white issue, before ending with this:
Ultimately it is the choice of Palin, made in the moment when action speaks loudest, that may undermine a quarter-century of assertions by John McCain about the preeminence of duty, honor and country in his political schema.Ultimately Bernstein never directly answers the question he raises, which is unfortunate. Selecting to be vice president a woman who two years ago was mayor of a tiny hamlet in rural Alaska is prima facie unpatriotic. Bernstein is 1000 words too long and a month too late. But it's still worth noting that he might be the only entrenched journalist to call McCain out.
Moscow is closer to New York than Anchorage.
So Palin, how does your proximity to Russia enhance your foreign policy experience?
"Well, it certainly does because our ... our next-door neighbors are foreign countries."Moscow is closer to New York than Anchorage.
Jeffrey Toobin on The Situation Room yesterday afternoon, calling a spade a spade:
PS: If you want to read a really fantastic book about the Supreme Court, read his.
Good read on the why this crisis is not the result of capitalism and why it's naive to think that government is the solution.
Simply put, if you think AIG, Lehman Brothers, Fannie/Freddie, and Washington Mutual look bad, you should see your government. Once you see your government, you'll understand why "more government oversight" might not look like a solution.
1) Since McCain suspended his campaign a lot of attention has been focused on whether he would show up for the debate tonight. That attention will certainly lead to a massive increase in viewers, and with Obama insisting that it's more important than ever that the people get to hear from their potential next president, this debate has gone from something of a throwaway Friday night distraction to the central event of the campaign season.
2) The topic of the debate is foreign policy. This is McCain's strength. It is Obama's weakness.
3) With McCain slipping in the polls it was necessary to do something drastic to win people back over. McCain decided that the best way for him to do that was not just to embarrass Obama in a debate, but to make sure his domination became the news story until the next debate.
4) With the financial crisis and the Friday night schedule it was not likely that the debate was going to be much of a news story beyond the weekend (when people don't pay attention to the news anyway), so McCain needed to do something to ensure that the debate would have legs. He needed to make it an event.
5) So McCain suspended his campaign, putting doubt on whether he'd show up for the debate. He made the debate -- the debate in the only area where he has a clear advantage with the electorate -- an event.
6) McCain shows up at the last minute for the debate, effectively playing possum, blows out Obama (as he was always planning) and ensures that on Monday morning folks are still talking about it.
(This is a version of an argument Nate Silver spells out here)
Third party candidate Bob Barr has offered to fill in for McCain for tonight's debate. Should he debate?
I'm of two mind about this. On one hand, the purpose of the presidential debates is to give the American public a chance to evaluate their next president. Bob Barr will not be the next president of the United States.
On the other hand Barr debating could very well help Obama. Barr is the only candidate running who embodies the principles of traditional conservatism. In the wake of McCain's total acquiescence to the extreme right wing of his party, Barr might siphon votes from those who would normally be McCain's base. That would certainly help Obama.
After her latest abomination Christopher Beam has some advice for Palin on how to ace her next interview (there will be another interview, right?)
From the WaPo:
Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin, who has made a crackdown on gift-giving to state officials a centerpiece of her ethics reform agenda, has accepted gifts valued at $25,367 from industry executives, municipalities and a cultural center whose board includes officials from some of the largest mining interests in the state, a review of state records shows.
The New York Times leads with a story about what the hell has happened over the last 50 hours. In short: A presidential candidates makes a supposedly apolitical move and then comes off as a poor presidential candidate. The first two paragraphs:
Senator John McCain had intended to ride back into Washington on Thursday as a leader who had put aside presidential politics to help broker a solution to the financial crisis. Instead he found himself in the midst of a remarkable partisan showdown, lacking a clear public message for how to bring it to an end.
At the bipartisan White House meeting that Mr. McCain had called for a day earlier, he sat silently for more than 40 minutes, more observer than leader, and then offered only a vague sense of where he stood, according to people in the meeting.
From Ben Smith at Politico:
I'd missed this line from that striking sermon preceding the blessing of Sarah Palin (against witches, and other things), which Andrew Sullivan, a noted Sarah Palin fan, catches:
The second area whereby God wants us, wants to penetrate in our society is in the economic area. The Bible says that the wealth of the wicked is stored up for the righteous. It's high time that we have top Christian businessmen, businesswomen, bankers, you know, who are men and women of integrity running the economics of our nations. That's what we are waiting for. That's part and parcel of transformation. If you look at the -- you know -- if you look at the Israelites, that's how they work. And that's how they are, even today.
Ah, those Israelites. They're gonna love that in South Florida.
ALSO: A new poll of Jewish voters released today finds that 54% disapprove of the choice of Sarah Palin. The poll finds most are Obama supporters, but that's still a pretty high number.
Doesn't this all sound vaguely familiar? As in, post 9/11 familiar? As in, bombing Afghanistan familiar? As in, attacking Iraq familiar?
So basically, 22 hours AFTER McCain said he was flying back to Washington, he actually flew back to Washington. But by then, the deal was nearly done. He shows up, the deal is a no-go. Hum...
From the HuffPo:
Inside an intense White House meeting over the financial crisis on Thursday, where nearly every key player came to an agreement on the outlines of the bailout package, Sen. John McCain stuck out. The Republican candidate, according to sources with direct knowledge, sat quiet through most of the meeting, never offered specifics, and spoke only at the end to raise doubts about the rough compromise that the White House and congressional leaders were nearing.
McCain's reluctance to jump on board the bailout agreement could throw the entire week-long negotiation into a tailspin. Sen. Chris Dodd, after leaving the White House, suggested on CNN that the tenuous process could be derailed by what he viewed as McCain's political motives.
"What happened here, basically, if you want an honest appraisal of the thing, we have been spending a lot of time and I am tired. I have spent almost seven straight days at this in trying to come out with a workout plan for our economy a rescue plan," said Dodd. "What this looked like to me was a rescue plan for John McCain for two hours and took us away from the work we are trying to do today. Serious people trying to do serious work to come up with an answer."
From the HuffPo:
Sarah Palin felt so strongly about the public corruption indictment of a Republican state senator this summer that she urged him to resign — but not strongly enough to return the $1,000 he gave to help elect her governor.
The donation from John Cowdery was one of two from Alaska legislators who contributed to Palin's 2006 campaign weeks after the FBI raided their offices. The sprawling public corruption scandal that followed became a rallying point for candidate Palin, who was swept into office after promising voters she would rid Alaska's capital of dirty politics.
One of the donors is awaiting trial and Cowdery was indicted in July on two federal bribery counts. Palin, now GOP presidential nominee John McCain's running mate, has not returned their donations, according to campaign finance disclosures reviewed Thursday.
From the HuffPo:
John McCain declared on Wednesday that he would suspend his run for the White House and return to Washington to help resolve the country's economic crisis. But while the candidate himself left the trail, the campaign itself is decidedly still open for business.
Across the country, McCain campaign offices are up and running, accepting volunteers, conducting phone banking, literature dropping and other GOTV activities. This held true on a local, state, and even regional level. The Huffington Post called up 15 McCain-Palin and McCain Victory Committee headquarters in various battleground states. Not one said that it was temporarily halting operations because of the supposed "suspension" in the campaign. Several, in fact, enthusiastically declared the continuation of their work. Others hadn't even heard that the candidate for whom they were devoting their time had officially stopped campaigning.
From The Washington Post:
Sen. John McCain returned to Washington on Thursday after declaring that he has suspended his campaign, but he appeared largely detached from the flurry of negotiations on a $700 billion economic rescue package that appeared to be headed to a successful conclusion.
McCain's "Straight Talk Air" landed at National Airport just after noon, and McCain's motorcade sped toward the Senate. But by then, senior Democrats and Republicans were already announcing that a deal in principle had been reached.
John McCain suspends his campaign to return to Washington to work on the bailout. The bailout is agreed to by Congress. The McCain campaign credits McCain suspending his campaign for the bailout agreement.
PALIN: "It’s very important when you consider even national security issues with Russia as Putin rears his head and comes into the air space of the United States of America, where– where do they go? It’s Alaska."
Little known fact: Moscow is closer to New York City than it is to Anchorage, Alaska. Actually, this is not a little known fact. Anyone with a map could know this. Does Palin need a map?
Odds Palin drops a "for our children" into one of her answers?
Ladies and Gentleman, this is your Republican Vice President nominee.
Watch CBS Videos Online
The second area whereby God wants us, wants to penetrate in our society
is in the economic area. The Bible says that the wealth of the wicked
is stored up for the righteous. It's high time that we have top
Christian businessmen, businesswomen, bankers, you know, who are men
and women of integrity running the economics of our nations. That's
what we are waiting for. That's part and parcel of transformation. If
you look at the -- you know -- if you look at the Israelites, that's
how they work. And that's how they are, even today.
Obsidian Wings via my Dad:
What Obama and Biden should do is to announce, unilaterally, that he (Obama) will be in DC on Friday attending to the issue of the Wall St. bailout legislation.This would be, in a word, awesome.
Nevertheless, the debate will go on as scheduled. Joe Biden will take Obama's place, showing the American people that he (Joe Biden) is ready to step in at a moments notice if something were to happen to the President. That is what the VP must be ready to do.
Obama and Biden will both state that they expect that Sarah Palin will also show up in place of John McCain, assuming she is ready for the task.
The subject of the debate will be foreign policy, as previously scheduled. When a VP has to step in for a President, they don't get to pick and choose the time or the subject at hand. They have to play the cards already dealt.
Via Sullivan, Max Blumenthal's account of attending Palin's church on September 20 and 21:
On the first night of services, Muthee implored his audience to wage “spiritual warfare” against “the enemy.” As I filmed, a nervous church staffer approached from behind and told me to put my camera away. I acceded to his demand, but as Muthee urged the church to crush “the python spirit” of the unbeliever enemies by stomping on their necks, I pulled out a smaller camera and filmed from a more discreet position. Now, church members were in deep prayer, speaking in tongues and raising their hands. Muthee exclaimed, “We come against the spirit of witchcraft! We come against the python spirits!” Then, a local pastor took the mic from Muthee and added, “We stomp on the heads of the enemy!”
When it was pointed out to Mr. Steinbrenner that the Yankees had already been eliminated from pennant consideration, he replied, "Yeah, so?" Asked for a comment, team captain Derek Jeter said, "Huh?" Surprisingly, this is not from the Onion but from YES, the network the Yankees own.The Yankees announced yesterday that they were suspending their campaign for the American League pennant due to the dire state of the economy. "This is not the time for partisan attempts to win baseball games," said Hank Steinbrenner. "I have called Commissioner Selig and suggested that the World Series be postponed or cancelled altogether until we have come up with a solution that unequivocally fixes everything."
The Northeast Mississippi Daily Journal is reporting that Ole Miss is moving forward with the debate as planned:
Immediately after McCain's announcement, Ole Miss Chancellor Robert Khayat told a crowd at a symposium on race and politics that the university "is ready" for the debate.
A couple of hours later, his office issued a statement, saying the university "is going forward with preparation for the debate."
"We expect the debate to go on as planned."
Khayat also said the debate sponsor, the Commission on Presidential Debates, has notified him "that we are proceeding as scheduled."
“It’s not based on any particular data point,” a Treasury spokeswoman told Forbes.com Tuesday. “We just wanted to choose a really large number.”
Cut from the joint Obama/McCain statement on the bailout because the McCain campaign didn't want to include them:
First, there must be oversight. We should not hand over a blank check to the discretion of one man. We support an independent, bipartisan board to ensure accountability and complete transparency.
Second, we need to protect taxpayers. There should be a path for taxpayers to recover their money, and to turn a profit if Wall Street prospers.
Third, no Wall Street executive should profit from taxpayer dollars. This plan cannot be a welfare program for CEOs whose greed and irresponsibility has contributed to this crisis.
Fourth, we must help families who are struggling to stay in their homes. We cannot bail out Wall Street without helping millions of families facing foreclosure on Main Street.
Fifth, we both agree that this financial rescue package should move on its own without any earmarks or other measures. We have different views about the need for other action, but this must be a clean bill.
This is a time to rise above politics for the good of the country. We cannot risk an economic catastrophe. This is not a Democratic problem or a Republican problem - this is an American problem. Now, we must find an American solutions.
If only Rene had waited to post about her favorite magazine. Good Magazine has followed in the footsteps of Radiohead and removed their $20 subscription fee in favor of people paying whatever they want. Now you have no excuse for not subscribing. (I did right after she posted for the full $20.)
This is the first Maddow profile I've seen thus far, although I'm sure we'll see more as she continues to make her case as one of the best on cable news. And although the lede drives me crazy, the article is worth a read.
Highlights from the American Prospect:
Maddow is not a Tim Russert or a Chris Matthews--an ostensibly nonpartisan interviewer who badgers politicians and policy-makers about contradictions in their records. Nor is she a Rush Limbaugh or a Glenn Beck--an attack dog who deals in calculated anger, bluster, and outrage. She's no mild-mannered liberal like Alan Colmes or a veteran observer like Wolf Blitzer or David Gregory. Maddow has broken the broadcasting mold. She has succeeded as an avowed liberal on television precisely because she is not a liberal version of conservatives like Sean Hannity and Glenn Beck. Unlike so many progressive media figures who sought to replicate the on-air habits of the aggressive shock jocks of the right, she stumbled upon a workable style for the left. She is liberal without apology or embarrassment, bases her authority on a deep comprehension of policy rather than the culture warrior's claim to authenticity, and does it all with a light, even slightly mocking, touch. She proves that liberals can attract viewers on television when they actually act like, well, liberals.On days when she isn't pondering the meaning of punditry, she says she worries "about being a conventional-wisdom machine." To that end, Maddow tries to avoid opinion-based commentary--she doesn't even have a TV in her New York City apartment. "Much more than I wish was true, I tend to at least subconsciously agree with the last thing I heard that made sense," she says, "and so I try to consume as much fact and reporting as I can and as little of other people's analysis as I can."
Bill Wolff, vice president of prime-time programming at MSNBC, says that, of all the hosts and guest hosts he's worked with, Maddow is the hardest-working. When she guest-hosted for Countdown, she'd pre-record her radio show and arrive at MSNBC studios at 9 A.M. for a show that started at 6 P.M. She spent the time researching--even delving into topics that weren't on the agenda. "I've been in the TV game a long time, and I've never seen anyone--anyone!--prepare like she prepares," Wolff says.
Luke Russert apologizes for insinuating that "smart" kids at UVA lean towards Obama.
Read his statement here.
Given my own infatuation with RFJ Jr., I had to post this piece from the Los Angeles Times.
The excerpts don't really do it justice, but here are a few:
Now John McCain has chosen as his running mate Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin, a diligent student of Big Oil's crib sheets. She's something of a flat-earther who shares the current administration's contempt for science. Palin has expressed skepticism about evolution (which is like not believing in gravity), putting it on par with "creationism," which posits that the Earth was created 6,000 years ago.
She used to insist that human activities have nothing to do with climate change. "I'm not one ... who would attribute it to being man-made," she said in August. After she joined the GOP ticket, she magically reversed herself, to a point. "Man's activities certainly can be contributing to the issue of global warming," she told Charles Gibson two weeks ago.
Palin's enthusiastic embrace of Big Oil's agenda (if not always Big Oil itself) has been the platform of her hasty rise in Alaskan politics. In that sense she is as much a product of the oil industry as the current president and his vice president. Palin, whose husband is a production operator for BP on Alaska's North Slope, has sued the federal government over its listing of the polar bear as an endangered species threatened by global warming, and she has fought to open the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge and Alaska's coast to oil drilling.
When oil profits are at stake, her fantasy world appears to have no boundaries. About American's deadly oil dependence, she mused recently, "I beg to disagree with any candidate who would say we can't drill our way out of our problem."
I guess the only difference between Sarah Palin and Dick Cheney is ... lipstick.
When John McCain moved to suspend his campaign and cancel the debates due to the financial crisis, Kelley and I wondered how this might financially screw not just Ole Miss, but the lovely little town of Oxford. We also wondered how easy it would be to reschedule a massive production like a debate. Apparently, we weren't the only ones.
From ABC News:
Andrew Mullins, special assistant to University Chancellor Robert Khayat, told ABC News that the Ole Miss campus has been transformed to accommodate the candidates and the press. Road blocks are in place on campus and in the community and the debate television set for the candidates has already been constructed. He said the university has spent roughly five and half million dollars getting ready for the debate.
Mullins also noted that if the Commission on Presidential Debates asks the campus to hold the debate at a later date, he is not sure the university would be able to accommodate them."It's huge. You cannot just say that you're not going to do this thing," Mullins said. "I don't have any idea whether we do the debate" at a later date. "[We] probably wouldn't do it."
Even Laura Bush thinks Sarah Palin lacks foreign policy experience. But says she's a "quick study." Awesome.
Dave doesn't usually get pissed but he seemed more than a bit perturbed about McCain canceling his appearance—and lying about jumping on a plane back to Washington! Good stuff starts at minute 5:00.
From Politico:
State by state, Sen. Barack Obama (D-Ill). is showing signs of breaking open a presidential race that looked deadlocked through much of September.
A new wave of polls released Wednesday showed decisive leads for Obama in the critical states of Colorado, Michigan and Pennsylvania.
That follows noticeable progress in polls in Virginia, which had looked safe for Sen. John McCain, and Florida, which had looked promising for McCain.
This is the first time that one of the candidates has dominated state polls in the most closely contested battlegrounds.
First this from Sarah Palin's interview with Katie Couric (who I thought was surprisingly tough, considering how the rest of the MSM has thrown nothing but softballs Palin's way):
Sarah Palin: My understanding is that Rick Davis recused himself from the dealings of the firm. I don't know how long ago, a year or two ago that he's not benefiting from that. And you know, I was - I would hope that's not the case.
Katie Couric: But he still has a stake in the company so isn't that a conflict of interest?
Palin: Again, my understanding is that he recused himself from the dealings with Freddie and Fannie, any lobbying efforts on his part there. And I would hope that's the case because, as John McCain has been saying, and as I've on a much more local level been also rallying against is the undue influence of lobbyists in public policy decisions being made.
Rick Davis, John McCain's campaign manager, has remained the treasurer and a corporate director of his lobbying firm this year, despite repeated statements by campaign officials that he had ended his relationship with the firm in 2006, according to corporate records.
The McCain campaign this week criticized news stories disclosing that, since 2006, Davis's firm has been paid a $15,000-a-month consulting fee from Freddie Mac, the troubled mortgage giant recently put under federal conservatorship. The stories, published Tuesday by NEWSWEEK, The New York Times and Roll Call, reported that the consulting fees continued until last month even though, according to two sources familiar with the arrangement, neither Davis nor anybody else at his firm did any substantial work for the payments.
This interview will be worse for Palin unless it gets swallowed by the other news of the day.
COURIC: But he's been in Congress for 26 years. He's been chairman of the powerful Commerce Committee. And he has almost always sided with less regulation, not more.
PALIN: He's also known as the maverick though. Taking shots from his own party, and certainly taking shots from the other party. Trying to get people to understand what he's been talking about--the need to reform government.
COURIC: I'm just going to ask you one more time, not to belabor the point. Specific examples in his 26 years of pushing for more regulation?
PALIN: I'll try to find you some and I'll bring them to you.
Former Republican Congressman and current Princeton lecturer Mickey Edwards:
It ranks somewhere on the stupidity scale between plain silly and numbingly desperate. McCain and Obama are both members of the senate and they're both able to help craft a solution if they wish to do so without putting the presidential campaign on hold; after all, I’m sure congressional leaders would be willing to accept their calls if they have some important insights to impart. And while one of them will eventually become president, neither one is president yet, nor is either one a member of the congressional leadership; I’m confident that somehow the administration and the other 533 members of congress will be able to muddle through without tapping into the superior wisdom and intellect of their nominees.
Sorry, John; it really sounds like you're afraid to debate. This sounds like the sort of ploy we used to use in junior high school elections.
From a Sullivan reader:
A few years ago, my house got broken into in the middle of my term in grad school. I was still expected to turn in my homework on time. McCain should debate.I'd actually like to see Obama push for the debate to be moved to DC. He should do everything in his power to make this debate happen, even if it means having it in the back of John McCain's tour bus. He should say things happen and that one of the qualities you need in a leader is an ability to
If McCain were a rational candidate wanting to demonstrate leadership in a time of crisis, he would simply suggesting refocusing Friday's debate on economic issues, and holding it in Washington, D.C., so that he and Senator Obama could be present on the hill for a vote if one were to be called. Alas, he's yet again demonstrated a callow, vainglorious attitude in his campaign for the Presidency. He's demonstrably unfit for the job.
Sarah Palin: The interesting thing in the last couple of days that I have seen is that Americans are waiting to see what John McCain will do on this proposal. They’re not waiting to see what Barack Obama is going to do. Is he going to do this and see what way the political wind’s blowing. They’re waiting to see if John McCain will be able to see these amendments implemented in Paulson’s proposal.
Barack Obama indicated this afternoon he intended to go forward with Friday's debate as planned, saying "it's more important than ever" that the presidential candidates lay out their principles to voters.
"This is exactly the time when the American people need to hear from the person who in approximately 40 days will be responsible for dealing with this mess," Obama told reporters at a news conference in Florida.
"In my mind, actually, it's more important than ever that we present ourselves to the American people and try to describe where we want to take the country and where we wnt to take the economy as well as dealing with some of the issues of foreign policy that were initially the subject of the debate," he said.
Obama also said he, McCain and other officials could address the crisis in a bipartisan fashion and still go on with the campaign, noting that multi-tasking comes with the office.
"It is going to be part of the president's job to deal with more than one thing at once," he noted.
As of right now, 65.9% of people polled believe the debates should continue.
Vote here:
http://james-eng.newsvine.com/_question/2008/09/24/1906168-agree-or-disagree-fridays-presidential-debate-should-be-postponed-so-the-candidates-can-focus-on-the-economy-instead-of-campaigning
From Politico:
Why does John McCain suddenly want to suspend his presidential campaign and postpone Friday's debate? His campaign surrogates are saying it's a typical "maverick" move, that McCain is simply "putting country first." Let's look at the evidence:
1) As Ben Smith notes, McCain's move "is a mark, most of all, that he doesn't like the way this campaign is going. ... The only thing that's changed in the last 48 hours is the public polling."
2) The idea of uniting the campaigns to find a bipartisan solution to the Wall Street crisis wasn't even McCain's idea. A few minutes ago, Obama spokesman Bill Burton emailed to reporters:
"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. 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."3) John McCain has skipped more votes during this session than any member of the Senate except for Tim Johnson, who had major brain surgery. All of a sudden, McCain demands that the presidential race shut down so he can return to Washington.
4) For all of his sudden urgency, McCain acknowledged just yesterday that he had not even read the administration's three-page bailout proposal.
From the pool report account of what happened after McCain and Palin's meeting with Georgian President Mikheil Saakashvilli and Ukrainian President Viktor Yushchenko:
McCain then looked around the room and gestured as if to welcome questions. The AP reporter shouted a question at Gov. Palin (“Governor, what have you learned from your meetings?”) but McCain aide Brooke Buchanan intervened and shepherded everybody out of the room.
Palin looked surprised, leaned over to McCain and asked him a question, to which your pooler thinks he shook his head as if to say “No.”
I wish more people would read articles like this one from the WSJ so they could truly understand how their taxes will be affected by McCain and Obama.
From the latest WSJ/NBC Poll: Voters Doubt Palin's Qualifications to be President
The latest Wall Street Journal/NBC News poll shows nearly half of voters harbor doubts that Republican vice presidential hopeful Sarah Palin is qualified to be president.
Asked, “Do you feel that Sarah Palin is qualified to be president if the need arises, or is she not qualified to be president?” 49% of all respondents said the Alaska governor is not qualified while 40% said she is.
If elected, John McCain, at 72 years old, will be the oldest president ever sworn in to a first-term. Questions about McCain’s age have persisted in the campaign, and the Arizona senator himself has said that voters need to have confidence that his running mate will be ready for the Oval Office.
Voters have significantly more confidence in Democratic vice presidential hopeful Joe Biden’s ability to serve as commander-in-chief if need be. Almost two-thirds of respondents, 64%, said Biden, Barack Obama’s running mate, is qualified; just 21% said he is not. Biden has the most confidence among voters 65 years and older, with nearly three-quarters, 74%, of seniors saying Biden is qualified to be president. Only 37% of seniors said the same about Palin.
From The Washington Post:
On the heels of a new Washington Post-ABC News poll that showed Barack Obama leading John McCain 52 percent to 43 percent nationally, the Arizona senator's campaign convened a conference call today insisting that the survey was an "outlier".
Bill McInturff, the lead pollster for McCain, insisted that the campaign's internal data showed none of the "volatility" present in recent public polling, arguing that the race has been within the margin of error for the last several weeks.
At the crux of McInturff's argument was the fact that the Democratic party identification in the Post poll was 16 points higher than the Republican identification -- a far larger margin than the Democratic ID edge in other recent public polling.
Couric: If this doesn't pass, do you think there's a risk of another Great Depression?
Palin: Unfortunately, that is the road that America
may find itself on. Not necessarily this, as it's been proposed, has to
pass or we're gonna find ourselves in another Great Depression. But
there has to be action taken, bipartisan effort – Congress not pointing
fingers at this point at … one another, but finding the solution to
this, taking action and being serious about the reforms on Wall Street
that are needed.
From the AP: The FBI is investigating four major U.S. financial institutions whose collapse helped trigger a $700 billion bailout plan by the Bush administration, The Associated Press has learned. Two law enforcement officials said Tuesday the FBI is looking at potential fraud by mortgage finance giants Fannie Mae (FNM) and Freddie Mac (FRE), and insurer American International Group Inc. (AIG) Additionally, a senior law enforcement official said Lehman Brothers Holdings Inc. (LEH) also is under investigation. The inquiries will focus on the financial institutions and the individuals that ran them, the senior law enforcement official said. The law enforcement officials spoke on condition of anonymity because the investigations are ongoing and are in the very early stages. Officials said the new inquiries bring to 26 the number of corporate lenders under investigation over the past year.
From CNN:
The "Bridge to Nowhere" may have been shelved. But the "Road to Nowhere" is alive and well.The proposed $400 million span that would have connected the coastal city of Ketchikan to its airport on Gravina Island died after it became a symbol of congressional excess.
But the three-mile access road that was built on the island is ready for residents to take a drive to nowhere. It was paid for by some of the $223 million in federal funding that sparked ridicule among opponents of congressional "pork-barrel" spending.
In stump speeches, Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin has touted her eventual decision to abandon the Gravina Island bridge, which she initially supported. But Palin, now the Republican vice presidential candidate, let the access road go ahead because the contract to build it had been signed, a campaign aide said.
