Posted by WLS:

I don’t like the way this has started.

McCain is too passive on these issues.  Obama has no reluctance to point the finger at Bush Admin. policies as being the cause of the current financial problem when that’s simply untrue.

McCain then reaches back in history to Eisenhower, and then in speaking on the idea of accountability he pulls out the ……. populism card?!?!?!?!?!?

C’mon John.  The record is clear that Dems in the Senate stymied the regulatory reform of Fannie/Freddie that you proposed.  And you let it go completely unmentioned.

This is a brazen lie, even by the standards of the Obama campaign.

Jake Tapper reports:

The Obama campaign is circulating a YouTube clip of Rep. Roy Blunt, R-Mo. — the No. 2 House Republican — talking about the role of Sen. John McCain, R-Ariz., at the disastrous White House meeting, on MSNBC today.

In the Obama campaign clip, Blunt says of McCain: “Clearly, yesterday, his position on that discussion yesterday was one that stopped a deal from finalizing.”

Here’s the clip Obama’s crew is circulating:

And here’s what Obama spokesliar Bill Burton said about that clip:

Congressman Blunt just confirmed what’s been clear since John McCain rode into Washington at the eleventh hour -– Sen. McCain’s political theatrics succeeded only in stopping a bipartisan deal. During the most serious economic crisis of our time, we don’t need erratic posturing, we need steady leadership to protect American taxpayers and put our economy back on track.

This is a Big Lie, and I want to see Obama called on it tonight in this debate.

Here is the full quote, via Tapper:

I do think that John McCain was very helpful in what he did. I saw him this morning, we’ve been talking with his staff. Clearly, yesterday, his position on that discussion yesterday was one that stopped a deal from finalizing that no House Republican in my view would have been for, which means it wouldn’t have probably passed the House. Now, Democrats are in the majority. They can pass anything they want to without a single Republican vote, but they don’t seem to be willing to do that. I’m pleased we can have negotiations now that get us back towards things that we think can protect the taxpayers better, create more options, and frankly be better understood in the country than the plan—the path we were on a couple of days ago.

And the video:

In summary, Obama’s spokeshole says Congressman Blunt confirmed that “Sen. McCain’s political theatrics succeeded only in stopping a bipartisan deal” — when, in fact, Congressman Blunt confirmed that McCain’s involvement kept alive the possibility of a bipartisan deal.

Unbelievable.

Above: Barack Obama explains his lie to an angry voter.

Good work by Tapper, and strong evidence of the stunning dishonesty of the Obama campaign. This may be the single biggest lie I have seen this campaign season — and that’s saying something.

Posted by WLS:

Politico amplifies a whispering campaign now underway concerning the recent performances of Sarah Palin in her few exposures to a skeptical press corps.

Here’s my take — the McCain campaign is so concerned about staying on message and sticking with the narrative, they have tried to drill her with pre-programmed answers on a variety of subjects, rather than simply allow her to answer questions as she would if she weren’t part of a campaign team, and then deal after-the-fact with her remarks as needed.   

Since she’s been part of the McCain campaign for only 3 weeks of the past 8 years, its hardly surprising that she’s having trouble spitting up the campaign’s talking points in a coherent fashion.  Asking her do do so is only making her look like an idiot.

The much better course of action would be to simply allow her to answer questions in the same manner as if she were responding to contituents back in Alaska.  If she doesn’t know the answer to the question, don’t try to stuff some pre-programmed response that is tangentially related to the topic into an answer. 

When she’s answering questions you can see the gears spinning in her head trying to analyze both how she should answer and how her answer might be interpreted, rather than simply answering the question in an honest and straightforward way.

The campaign’s handling of her has made her appear to be both calculating AND uninformed at the same time. 

JUST LET HER ANSWER THE QUESTIONS THE WAY SHE WANTS TO, and deal with the consequences of the answers she gives after-the-fact.

[Guest post by DRJ]

Post the questions you would ask Senators Obama and McCain in tonight’s debate at the University of Mississippi.

The topics for tonight’s debate are foreign policy and national security. So when you ask questions about the economy, frame them as foreign policy or national security questions. You know, the way the media will.

H/T Ropelight.

— DRJ

[Guest post by DRJ]

Although I often disagree with his conclusions, Marc Ambinder has an interesting perspective and I like to read his blog. However, one of today’s entries left me perplexed:

“The fact is that Boehner doesn’t have 100 votes from his conference — 100 votes that Nancy Pelosi really wants. And that’s not McCain’s fault.

But Boehner and the White House — and McCain — if they want to get something passed — do have the responsibility to persuade these Republicans to support the bailout.

After all, if not to get these recalcitrant Republicans on board, why did McCain go to Washington in the first place?”

This is a perfect illustration of the profound misunderstanding Democrats and their surrogates have about what Congress is supposed to do. I support the bailout but that doesn’t mean I want it to be approved by Congress without input, analysis, discussion and, yes, even disagreement.

Liberals love to talk about diversity and that ought to include diversity of opinion. Perhaps if Democrats were more open to dissension in their ranks, or at least had more experience with it, they wouldn’t feel so powerless in situations where debate and dissension are appropriate.

Compare Obama’s and the Democrats’ desire for immediate bipartisan agreement on the bailout to Ambinder’s description of John McCain’s efforts to identify differences of opinion and try to bring them together:

Though Sen. Chris Dodd implied that Sen. McCain sandbagged the rest of the negotiators by bringing up alternative proposals, McCain himself did not bring up those proposals, according to four independent sources briefed by four different principals inside the meeting, including two Republicans and two Democrats.

“McCain has not attacked the Paulson deal,” said a third Republican who was briefed by McCain direclty [sic]. “Unlike the [Democrats] in the [White House] meeting, he didn’t raise his voice or cause a ruckus. He is urging all sides to come together.”

Who would you rather have negotiating with foreign leaders?

— DRJ

Posted by WLS:

I’m not going to clutter this up with a bunch of examples — they’re piling up too fast to catalogue.

But, it is quickly becoming an irrefuteable fact that Bill Clinton is in the tank for McCain.   When Obama lost his lead in the polls in the aftermath of the GOP convention, the best Clinton could offer was a short meeting with Obama at Clinton’s offices in Harlem, followed by a perfunctory statement in support of Obama’s candidacy.  He didn’t really lift a finger on Obama’s behalf as they struggled to cope with the “Palin Effect” then underway.

(more…)

[Posted by Karl]

Big Media like MSNBC, CBS News and the Associated Press to name a few, are duly lining up behind the Democratic Narrative that John McCain and House Republicans were responsible for the failure to reach an agreement on Wall Street bailout legislation yesterday. As MSNBC reports:

Earlier Friday, House Financial Services Chairman Barney Frank declared that an agreement depends on House Republicans “dropping this revolt” against the Bush-requested plan.

The Massachusetts Democrat said leading Democrats on Capitol Hill were shocked by the level of divisiveness that surfaced at Thursday’s extraordinary White House meeting, leaving six days of intensive efforts to agree on a bailout plan in tatters only hours after key congressional players of both parties had declared they were in accord on the outlines of a $700 billion bill.

***

“We need to get the president to get the Republican House in order,” Sen. Charles Schumer, D-N.Y., said on the Senate floor. “Without Republican cooperation, we cannot pass this bill.”

***

The White House summit meeting had been called for the purpose of sealing the deal that Bush has argued is indispensable to stabilizing frenzied markets and reassuring the nervous American public. But it quickly revealed that Bush’s proposal had been suddenly sidetracked by fellow Republicans in the House, who refused to embrace a plan that appeared close to acceptance by the Senate and most House Democrats.

In reality, Barney Frank was no more shocked than Capt. Renault was to discover that there was gambling going on in Rick’s Café Américain — because there was nothing sudden about the GOP opposition to the current bailout proposal.

(more…)

Xrlq dissects the dead fish that Barack Obama’s consigliere left on television stations’ windshield.

[Posted by WLS]

Update — I was purposely provacative in the language I used in this post for the purpose of stimulating some responses on both sides of the issue (all sides??) that would defend the various positions of the parties at the table.  I find the discourse in the comments very enlightening to me personally, and I hope others do as well.

 

Just a very quick take on the events of today.

(more…)

No offense to our commenter by the name of Eric Blair . . . but this is truly one of the most Orwellian pieces I have ever seen. Brooks takes a crisis caused by Democrats like Barack Obama, who took money from Fannie and Freddie and did nothing, and blames it Republicans like John McCain, who championed regulation of the relevant entities.

Black is white. Up is down.

Brooks reminds us of McCain’s involvement in the Keating Five scandal, and then suggests that McCain has sat on his hands throughout the past several years on the mortgage crisis — while good work on the issue was being done by, Brooks claims (and I’m not kidding), Barack Obama:

Could all this have been prevented? Sure. It’s not rocket science: A sensible package of regulatory reforms — like those Barack Obama has been pushing since well before the current meltdown began — could have kept this most recent crisis from escalating, just as maintaining reasonable regulatory regimes for S&Ls in the ’80s could have prevented that crisis (McCain learned this the hard way).

Not to belabor the point, Rosa — but name one thing Barack Obama has actually done about the mortgage crisis.

But, despite his political near-death experience as a member of the Keating Five, McCain continued to champion deregulation, voting in 2000, for instance, against federal regulation of the kind of financial derivatives at the heart of today’s crisis.

Shades of the Keating Five scandal don’t end there. This week, for instance, news broke that until August, the lobbying firm owned by McCain campaign manager Rick Davis was paid $15,000 a month by Freddie Mac, one of the mortgage giants implicated in the current crisis (now taken over by the government and under investigation by the FBI). Apparently, Freddie Mac’s plan was to gain influence with McCain’s campaign in hopes that he would help shield it from pesky government regulations. And until very recently, Freddie Mac executives probably figured money paid to Davis’ firm was money well spent. “I’m always in favor of less regulation,” McCain told the Wall Street Journal in March.

These days, McCain is singing a different tune.

Gee, it’s a good thing Barack Obama didn’t take any money from Fannie and Freddie!

Time for some facts. Enjoy this Fox News report:

Watch Barney Frank talk about how there’s no crisis, and see the John McCain quote about how we need regulation:

Now, watch Bill Clinton say the Republicans tried to get something done, but got blocked by Democrats, who were “resisting any efforts by Republicans in the Congress or by me when I was President to put some standards and tighten up a little on Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac.”

Amazing.