Political Jackass

With all the talk of Barack Obama serving on a community board with Bill Ayers (a board headed by a Republican nonetheless), we seem to forget that John McCain once met a terrorist, and even took money from him, and according to what he said on last night’s episode of The Late Show with David Letterman, he’s happy to know him and is not embarrassed at all.

So who is this terrorist? None other than Gordan Liddy. Liddy is a convicted felon who has “acknowledged preparing to kill someone during the Ellsberg break-in ‘if necessary’; plotting to murder journalist Jack Anderson; plotting with a ‘gangland figure’ to murder Howard Hunt to stop him from cooperating with investigators; plotting to firebomb the Brookings Institution; and plotting to kidnap ‘leftist guerillas’ at the 1972 Republican National Convention — a plan he outlined to the Nixon administration using terminology borrowed from the Nazis.” And McCain is happy to know him.

Liddy has also given advice to his supporters on how to kill federal officers and given thousands of dollars to McCain. He isn’t even sorry for what he did. When asked if he was sorry for his crimes, he replied, “No.”

This is a great video showing McCain’s reaction to a statement Barack Obama has made several times, including at the debate last week. Maybe if McCain would stop with his Chester the Molester grinning and making faces and actually listen to what other people say he might have heard it. Or maybe his age and dementia is really starting to show and he just forgot. All I know is it makes for entertaining TV watching him react. And what’s with the blinking?

AT&T and Verizon offered John McCain free cell towers at one of his 12 homes. Why? Because McCain was running for president. They admit this. Corporations aren’t allowed under the law to give free donations to presidential candidates. It’s illegal. Highly illegal. Oh, and McCain just happens to oversee Telcom companies in the Senate. Read more here.

The first words from the Troopergate report are surfacing. It seems that the bi-partisan investigation revealed that Gov. Sarah Palin “abused her power” in violation of Alaska law. That’s the key finding. It also finds that while the refusal to fire Palin’s former brother in law was not the sole reason Palin terminated her public safety commissioner, Walt Monegan, it was a “contributing factor.” Download the report here.

“Gov. Palin knowingly permitted a situation to continue where impermissible pressure was placed on several subordinates in order to advance a personal agenda,” the report states. CNN

Is this really the type of person you want to be your VP and possible President? Didn’t we see enough abuses of power under Bush/Cheney? When are people going to wake up and see what a bad person she is for this country and what a dishonorable man John McCain has become?

Not only does McCain want to give huge tax breaks to the richest people and companies and tax your health insurance, now he wants the American people to pick up the tab on his new mortgage plan. As details emerge, we see just how bad his plan is for the American tax payer. McCain has the nerve to say Obama is going to raise taxes when it’s his own policies that are doing all the taxing. Obama wants to cut taxes for 95% of the people in this country, for the middle class, the people who need it most. From CNN:

McCain’s original plan called for lenders to write down the value of these mortgages and take those losses. But the Republican presidential candidate unveiled a new $300 billion plan in response to the first question of the debate.

He said, “I would order the Secretary of Treasury to immediately buy up the bad home loan mortgages in America and renegotiate at the new value of those homes, at the diminished values of those homes, and let people make those – be able to make those payments and stay in their homes.”

The government would convert failing mortgages into low-interest, FHA-insured loans.

“Millions of borrowers” would be eligible for the program, dubbed the American Homeownership Resurgence Plan, according to McCain economic advisor Doug Holtz-Eakin.

To qualify, homeowners would have to be delinquent in their payments already, or be likely to fall behind in the near future. They would have to live in the home in question – no investment properties would be eligible – and have had demonstrated their credit-worthiness when they purchased the property by making a substantial down payment and by providing documentation of their income and assets – no liar loans.

Holtz-Eakin said on a conference call Wednesday that the McCain plan could be put into place quickly because the groundwork and the authority for it has already been provided by last week’s $700 billion bailout bill, the Hope for Homeowners program authorized by the housing rescue bill passed in July and the government takeover of mortgage giants Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac.
A change of heart

This proposal is strikingly different from both McCain’s original idea, and from the housing rescue bill adopted by Congress in July.

Congress struggled for months to pass the Hope for Homeowners rescue plan for mortgage borrowers – a bill that neither McCain nor Democratic candidate Senator Barack Obama voted on. To make it palatable to both conservative Republicans and ordinary taxpayers, Hope for Homeowners requires that lenders write down mortgage balances to 90% of a home’s current market value to qualify for a FHA-insured refinancing. The lenders would then take the loss on the difference between the current value and the mortgage balance.

“[McCain's] original plan relied on lenders taking the hit,” said Holtz-Eakin. “This bypasses that step.”

Instead, taxpayers pay for it, with the funding already provided by the $700 billion bailout bill.

Some Washington analysts were perplexed by the McCain proposal.

“The proposal is hard to understand,” said Dean Baker, co-director of the Center for Economic and Policy Research in Washington. For one thing, Baker pointed out, it provides even less help for targeted borrowers than the Hope for Homeowners program does. In that plan, lenders must lower mortgage balances down to 90% of the home’s current value, while McCain’s plan will reduce loans to 100% of a home’s current value.

And, of course, under McCain, the cost of the write-down is picked up by taxpayers rather than by the lenders. That is a radical departure from McCain’s earlier responses to the housing crisis.

Is this really change we can believe in? How many times is he going to change his policies to suit whoever he is talking to at the time. He is a joke.

McCain really has lost his mind. At a campaign stop today he called Americans his fellow prisoners. Is he having POW camp flashbacks? Is he really fit to be president?

“Across this country this is the agenda I have set before my fellow prisoners…”

Last night during the debate McCain revealed his new plan for the mortgage crisis. The problem is, it seems like he pulled it out of thin air and it went completely against something earlier he said. Here is what he said during the debate:

“As president of the United States, Alan, I would order the secretary of the treasury to immediately buy up the bad home loan mortgages in America and renegotiate at the new value of those homes — at the diminished value of those homes and let people be able to make those — be able to make those payments and stay in their homes.

“Is it expensive? Yes. But we all know, my friends, until we stabilize home values in America, we’re never going to start turning around and creating jobs and fixing our economy.”

The problem is, McCain keeps saying how there is going to be an across the board freeze on spending in a McCain administration, “except for defense, Veterans Affairs, and some other vital programs.” That is going to be a huge increase of spending if he follows through.

McCain also stated that this is a plan that Obama (nor Bush) would support. Again, another lie by McCain. The Washington Post reported, “The Obama campaign called the mortgage idea ‘old news,’ saying that a similar Treasury Department program is already underway as part of the economic rescue package and that Obama backed it.”

Not only that, but in a statement two weeks ago from Obama, in his own words:

“[W]e should consider giving the government the authority to purchase mortgages directly instead of simply purchasing mortgage- backed securities. In the past, such an approach has allowed taxpayers to profit as the housing market recovered. This is not simply a question of looking out for homeowners; it’s doubtful that the economy as a whole can recover without the restoration of our housing sector, including a rebound in the home values that have suffered dramatically in recent months.”

So, McCain’s new plan is only new to him. Obama suggested something similar two weeks ago and the Treasury Department is working on a plan. McCain is also going against his pledge of a spending freeze and lied about Obama’s position (as if that’s new). Can you really trust John McCain? I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again. John McCain is a liar and a disgrace.

The guy that wants to change Washington supports the same deregulation that caused him to be a target of an investigation for fraud. Yes, that’s John McCain, the hero to the corrupt. From Keating Economics.

The current economic crisis demands that we understand John McCain’s attitudes about economic oversight and corporate influence in federal regulation. Nothing illustrates the danger of his approach more clearly than his central role in the savings and loan scandal of the late ’80s and early ’90s.

John McCain was accused of improperly aiding his political patron, Charles Keating, chairman of the Lincoln Savings and Loan Association. The bipartisan Senate Ethics Committee launched investigations and formally reprimanded Senator McCain for his role in the scandal — the first such Senator to receive a major party nomination for president.

At the heart of the scandal was Keating’s Lincoln Savings and Loan Association, which took advantage of deregulation in the 1980s to make risky investments with its depositors’ money. McCain intervened on behalf of Charles Keating with federal regulators tasked with preventing banking fraud, and championed legislation to delay regulation of the savings and loan industry — actions that allowed Keating to continue his fraud at an incredible cost to taxpayers.

When the savings and loan industry collapsed, Keating’s failed company put taxpayers on the hook for $3.4 billion and more than 20,000 Americans lost their savings. John McCain was reprimanded by the bipartisan Senate Ethics Committee, but the ultimate cost of the crisis to American taxpayers reached more than $120 billion.

The Keating scandal is eerily similar to today’s credit crisis, where a lack of regulation and cozy relationships between the financial industry and Congress has allowed banks to make risky loans and profit by bending the rules. And in both cases, John McCain’s judgment and values have placed him on the wrong side of history.