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POPS The "Great Wall Street Heist" of 2008 Reagan added: “I hope John McCain will not shrink from pointing the finger of blame where it belongs – at Barack Obama, who fed greedily at the trough of Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac while their top people, including two of his own campaign associates, were flim-flamming the American people. It’s a Democratic scandal from beginning to end, and the American people deserve to know it.”
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POPSOver 70 Percent Of CEOs Fear An Obama Presidency Will Be A Disaster “Overall, many CEOs are concerned about the future of the U.S. economy and its ability to compete in the global market, but they look to John McCain and hope that this self-described political maverick may yet shake up established thinking and not give into to the tired policies of the past,” concluded Kopko
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POPS Follow The Money! If Congress does not act, American taxpayers will continue to be exposed to the enormous risk that Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac pose to the housing market, the overall financial system, and the economy as a whole. John McCain, May 26, 2005
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POPSFollow The Money & Why Fannie Mae's Reform Was Thwarted Is it any wonder that the 2005 reforms Senator McCain championed never passed? If Congress does not act, American taxpayers will continue to be exposed to the enormous risk that Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac pose to the housing market, the overall financial system, and the economy as a whole. John McCain, May 26, 2005
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POPSCNN (Yes, CNN) Confirms Obama Is Lying To You About Bill Ayers It is the lie that furthers the story. Talk about THE LIE. CNN investigative reporter: “But the relationship between Obama and Ayers went much deeper, ran much longer, and was much more political than Obama said.” On Anderson’s Cooper 360 they did a major investigative look at the Ayers/Obama connection. They even interviewed Stanley Kurtz. Bottom line: Just a guy in my neighborhood? Served on one board together? CNN Says bulls**t! http://dirtyharrysplace.com/?p=4873 CNN: Obama’s lying about William Ayers Obama’s admission in a debate that he briefly served on “a board” with Ayers with little contact gets shot down. CNN followed up on Kurtz’ work with the Chicago Annenberg Challenge and debunks that notion. They also — amazingly — report on the nature of the grants made by the CAC while Obama ran it to Ayers’ favored schools with radical agendas. http://hotair.com/archives/2008/10/07/cnn-obamas-lying-about-william-ayers/
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POPS Keep Your Sunny Side Up by Mark Steyn
The Iraq surge (McCain's unique selling point) is a victim of its own success and has dwindled away to an irrelevant footnote, and the front pages are full of a supposed economic catastrophe which the crude rules of politics suggest any fool should be able to hang on the incumbent. Yet Obama still can't open up a solid lead. After all, why would record numbers of viewers watch the vice-presidential debate if the election's already over? Meanwhile, the supposedly damaged Republican brand is proving suprisingly resilient. I see one of the two New Hampshire seats that flipped blue in '06 may return to the red fold next month. Where's the blowout? A lot of the dynamite is well past its sell-by date: Two references last night to Ronald Reagan negotiating with Tip O'Neill. No one remembers who Tip O'Neill is. McCain might as well have been evoking misty watercolor mem'ries of Talleyrand . . . Obama, by contrast, is all future - which is understandable, given his past.
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POPSThe Debate: I Learn Something New Every Day Apparently 95% of us will need to sacrifice by enjoying Barack's tax cut and new health care plan but some will sacrifice by paying more in taxes. Raising taxes to battle a recession - well, you can't say Obama lacks for original ideas. THE OBAMA DOCTRINE: Obama asserts that America has a moral obligation to intervene with force in certain foreign circumstances and cites the Holocaust. His gist - if we could have intervened effectively to prevent the Holocaust we should have. Hmm - many have argued that the rail lines to Auschwitz were within range of US bombers yet Roosevelt did nothing. Both George Bush and George McGovern think Roosevelt erred - $79 BILLION: Obama was wrong about the Iraqi budget surplus at the last debate and he is still wrong.
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POPSObama Campaign Offended By McCain's Pejorative Pronouns But Obama's not offended by William Ayers and Bernadine Dohrn! "The Weathermen" as Dohrn's faction was now called, began a series of direct actions against the American government. As a result of an accidental explosion during the preparation of a bomb destined for a US military dance hall, which killed several members of the group, Dohrn and other Weathermen went underground. For half a decade, Dohrn and the Underground carried out clandestine actions, largely bombings, against the U.S. government. She is well-known as the signatory on the Weather Underground's "Declaration of a State of War," which formally declared war on the U.S. Government. Dohrn and others also co-wrote and published the subversive manifesto Prairie Fire, and participated in a covertly filmed propaganda documentary, Underground. Dohrn later married former Weather Underground leader Bill Ayers. http://www.answers.com/main/ntquery?s=Bernardine+Dohrn&go_button.x=33&go_button.y=7
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POPSL.A. Times Cuts Out McCain’s Remarks About Economy Then Quotes Barack Obama Saying McCain is Scared to Talk About the Economy "Our current economic crisis is a good case in point. What was his actual record in the years before the great economic crisis of our lifetimes?" At which point McCain launched into the amazing speech quoted by Ed Morrissey at Hot Air, during which he laid out the case, at great length, for the Democrats’ responsibility for the mortgage crisis. Does the L.A. Times report one word of that? No. Instead, they cut the quote of McCain’s speech short there, right before he talks about the economy, and proceed to quote Obama as claiming that McCain is scared to talk about the economy: Speaking with reporters in Asheville, N.C., where he is studying for Tuesday’s debate, which is to focus on the economy and domestic issues, Obama pointed to recent reports that the McCain camp wanted to get away from economic issues, a topic that polls show benefits the Democrats.
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POPSNew Details On RNC's FEC Complaint Over Obama's Misbegotten Millions I'm delighted to see that McCain's new "gloves off" strategy involves informing people about Congressional Democrats' (including Barack Obama's) responsibility for the bad decision making at Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac that helped lead us into the current financial crisis (despite years of warnings by McCain and other Congressional Republicans about the government-sponsored firms' irresponsible lending practices). Now what I'd like to see is John McCain challenging Barack Obama from tomorrow night's debate podium to finally release the contributor details of his more than $200 million in small-dollar donations, given the gross irregularities involving fictitious donors that have already been substantiated among these transactions.
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POPSAyers And Keating That, too, makes this a legitimate question about a man who would be president. Mega-dittoes. But I guess by playing the Keating card Obama is showing his followers that he is tough and ready to fight back. One might argue that he is also legitimizing McCain's attacks (and I guess I will.)
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POPS With a Wink and a Smile by Mark Steyn But, on Debate Night, the official Obama website was still boasting that he would meet Ahmadinejad “without preconditions”. “My friend John McCain voted 422 times against tax cuts for the middle classes. Let me repeat that so the American people are clear on this. My friend John McCain voted 673 times against tax cuts for the middle classes.” The problem was that it all sounded drearily senatorial. When Regular Joe Six-Pack Bluecollar Biden tried to match her on the Main Street cred, it rang slightly wacky. “Look,” he said, “All you have to do is go down Union Street with me in Wilmington or go to Katie’s Restaurant or walk into Home Depot with me, where I spend a lot of time.” As for Katie’s Restaurant, ah, I’m sure it was grand but apparently it closed in 1990. In the Diner of the Mind, the refills are endless and Senator Joe is sitting shootin’ the breeze over a cuppa joe with a couple other regular joes on adjoining stools while Betty-Jo...
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POPSSocial Welfare Spending with regulation and tax bills close behind. According to Burnside and Whitehurst, other than social welfare and a bit of government regulation, "Obama devoted very little time to most policy areas." Conventional wisdom has it that John McCain holds a political advantage over Obama on war and foreign policy issues, while Obama is favored to handle the economy. Yet Obama's economic experience is largely limited to social welfare spending. Indeed, precisely because of his penchant for spending, Obama's fingerprints are all over Illinois's burgeoning fiscal crisis. . . . Illinois's fate may foreshadow the nation's. Obama's small and carefully targeted spending bills were expressly designed to win passage by a Republican-controlled state senate. But if Obama takes the presidency with a Democratic Congress at his back, we'll likely see a grand-scale version of the fiscal mayhem Obama and his colleagues brought to Illinois.
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POPS Thomas Sowell Opines --- Do Facts Matter? So did Bush's Secretary of the Treasury, five years ago. Yet, today, what are we hearing? That it was the Bush administration "right-wing ideology" of "de-regulation" that set the stage for the financial crisis. Do facts matter? We also hear that it is the free market that is to blame. But the facts show that it was the government that pressured financial institutions in general to lend to subprime borrowers, with such things as the Community Reinvestment Act and, later, threats of legal action by then Attorney General Janet Reno if the feds did not like the statistics on who was getting loans and who wasn't. Is that the free market? Or do facts not matter? Then there is the question of being against the "greed" of CEOs and for "the people." Franklin Raines made $90 million while he was head of Fannie Mae and mismanaging that institution into crisis. Who in Congress defended Franklin Raines?
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POPS Obama and Ayers: A Radical Pentagon Bomber NYTimes Since earning a doctorate in education at Columbia in 1987, Mr. Ayers has been a professor of education at the University of Illinois at Chicago, the author or editor of 15 books, and an advocate of school reform. Steve Chapman, a columnist for The Chicago Tribune, defended Mr. Obama’s relationship with the Rev. Jeremiah A. Wright Jr., his longtime pastor, whose black liberation theology and “God damn America” sermon became notorious last spring. But he denounced Mr. Obama for associating with Mr. Ayers, whom he said the University of Illinois should never have hired. “I don’t think there’s a statute of limitations on terrorist bombings,” Mr. Chapman said in an interview. The Schools Project The Ayers-Obama connection first came to public attention last spring, when both Senator Hilary Rodham Clinton, Mr. Obama’s Democratic primary rival, and Mr. McCain brought it up. the archives of the Chicago Annenberg Challenge at the University of Illinois were opened to rese
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POPS Cataloguing Biden's Whoppers ..... president, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad; he falsely claimed Gov. Sarah Palin supported a windfall profits tax on oil companies; he said he's always been for clean coal in spite of his record of voting against it in the Senate. Biden said we have to drill for more of our own oil, easily leading viewers to conclude he and Obama are in favor of more domestic drilling, but as the American Thinker blog's Rick Moran noted in a list of "Biden's Big Lies," "Biden has opposed offshore drilling and even compared offshore drilling to 'raping' the Outer Continental Shelf." Gov. Palin called Biden on his claim that Gen. David McKiernan in Afghanistan said that the surge could not be applied in Afghanistan; in fact, McKiernan has said that some aspects of Gen. David Petraeus' Iraq strategy could be part of our war efforts in Afghanistan.
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POPSObama Campaign Ignoring NBC Cease-and-Desist UPDATE NBC blasts clip as 'outrageous' and demands Obama camp cease running it altogether "We have engaged the Obama campaign on the legal front and demanded that they stop using the ad," Gollust says. "To date they have not complied. Their response was to put a tagline at the end of the ad. However, that is not good enough, and we continue to demand they cease and desist using this outrageous ad." The tagline reads "NBC and MSNBC did not cooperate in the making of this video" and flashes for three seconds at the end of the ad. The spot has been seen more than 566,000 times, and features the image of Tom Brokaw and voice of Keith Olbermann announcing a mock victory for Sen. John McCain. http://www.mediabistro.com/tvnewser/nbc/obama_campaign_ignoring_nbc_ceaseanddesist_96105.asp?c=rss
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POPS Pegging Biden Update: I loved it when Sarah Palin said "I watched all those debates" basically telling Biden in not so many words that she knows what he said in those primary debates and what he is saying now is not true. I smiled when she said that because I know she probably watched "those debates" this week in preparation for this debate and almost certainly remembered more of what Joe Biden said in them than he did.
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POPSBiden: "I Have Been Field Dressed!" Update: 10:20 - Quite literally in the same breath, Joe laments, "I'm not gonna change..." and then goes on to boast about his record of change. Update: 10:24 - After an unsteady beginning, Palin seemed to get consistenly more comfortable (and more effective throughout the debate). In the home stretch, she's managing to stay on positive notes, enunciating her and McCain's strong points, and thus keeping possession of the ball, leaving Biden to spend much of his times grouchily refuting her. Update: 10:28 - On the final question regarding "changing the tone" in Washington, Joe claims he has never - not since his freshman year anyway - questioned the motives (or opposed to the judgment) of a fellow Senator. Fact check away. Update: 10:38 - Was anyone else bracing for an awkward "hot mic" moment after the debate ended and they left both candidates' mics open?
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POPSSecret, Foreign Money Flowing Into Obama Campaign Until recently, the Obama Web site allowed a contributor to select the country where he resided from the entire membership of the United Nations, including such friendly places as North Korea and the Islamic Republic of Iran. Though Gadhafi asserted that fundraising from Arab and African nations were “legitimate,” the fact is that U.S. federal law bans any foreigner from donating to a U.S. election campaign. “All the people in the Arab and Islamic world and in Africa applauded this man, they welcomed him and prayed for him and for his success, and they may have even been involved in legitimate contribution campaigns to enable him to win the American presidency…” A pair of Palestinian brothers named Hosam and Monir Edwan contributed more than $31,300 to the Obama campaign in October and November 2007, FEC records show.
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POPSObama Campaign Text Msg: Watch The Debate On CNN First, can you imagine the heartbreak at MSNBC? I mean, the Olbermann network has been trying so hard to be the Obama Network, and then to get this punch in the gut! :( Second, can you imagine what would have been the reaction if John McCain had texted his supporters, saying, "Watch Fox"? Well, the roof would have caved in, media-criticism-wise. :eek: Looks like the campaign figured out how to speak SMS short-hand and thus free up enough characters to type out "any of the major networks or cable" vs. "CNN." :)
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POPSYou Won't Believe Where That $700-Billion Bailout Figure Came From "We just wanted to choose a really large number." Carl Lavin over at Forbes.com, points out a fascinating paragraph buried in a story on his website late last week by Brian Wingfield and Josh Zumbrun. Brian Wingfield and Josh Zumbrun 09.23.08, 6:39 PM ET The more Congress examines the Bush administration's bailout plan, the hazier its outcome gets. At a Senate Banking Committee hearing Tuesday, lawmakers on both sides of the aisle complained of being rushed to pass legislation or else risk financial meltdown. In fact, some of the most basic details, including the $700 billion figure Treasury would use to buy up bad debt, are fuzzy. "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." http://www.forbes.com/businessinthebeltway/2008/09/23/bailout-paulson-congress-biz-beltway-cx_jz_bw_0923bailout.html
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POPS The Bailout: Will The Center Hold? The bill takes a hybrid approach, and in the case of assets bought at auction, the most severe penalties kick in only when Treasury has bought more than $300 million in assets. At that juncture, a 20 percent surtax would be imposed on rich severance packages, and in the case of highly paid executives, the company would lose its deduction for salaries above $500,000. The second compromise dealt with a Republican proposal that the government intervene in the markets, not by buying up bad assets but by providing a federally backed insurance program that might make the same mortgage-related securities more salable. House GOP leaders had warned Saturday evening that they would need to take any deal to their rank-and-file members before committing to back it. In a sign that negotiations were growing serious earlier in the evening, a Pelosi aide collected BlackBerrys from the staffers meeting in her office so that no details would leak out.
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POPSBrokaw's Interview With President Clinton Clinton followed by stating that he "certainly admire " Obama, but that while the Illinois Democrat has "unlimited potential," he could only achieve greatness in time. At one point in the interview, Clinton acknowledged that it was his wife, Hillary, who "told me to go help ." And while Bill Clinton criticized John McCain for representing a brand of politics that he disagreed with, he offered a far more adulatory take on the Arizona Republican's personality traits. "Most people would have been broken by what he been through, or we would have been happy just to give him an atta boy and medal and let him wander through life," said Clinton. "I think his greatness is that he keeps trying to come back to service without ever asking people to cut him any slack or feel sorry for him or any of that stuff because he was a P.O.W."
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POPSObama Needs To Lead, Not Join Bi-Partisan Bailout Musketeers There are rumblings that McCain may attempt to torpedo the nascent bailout agreement in an attempt to play the populist rebel. As Marc Ambinder puts it: "nothing says 'maverick,' like voting against Bush and standing with the American public, who remain very wary of the proposal." Rank and file House Republicans are also shaking their heads and muttering "no deal." So will it be Obama, as the standard bearer of the Democratic Party, making a deal that, in the end, adopts the overriding trickle down essence of the original Paulson plan: give Wall Street what it wants, cross our fingers, and hope that the crisis is averted? Instead of siding with Bush and Paulson on far too many deal points, Obama should draw a line in the sand and refuse to cross it. Voters are not looking for smiling post-partisan photo ops. They are looking for a leader willing to fight for a bailout plan that more directly protects the interests of the American people.
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POPSPaulson Pleaded for McCain to Save Bailout: Schieffer ..... he Treasury Secretary was briefing Republicans in the House yesterday, the Republican conference, asked how many were ready to support the bailout plan. Only four of them held up their hands. Paulson then called, according to my sources, Senator Lindsey Graham, who is very close to John McCain, and told him: you've got to get the people in the McCain campaign, you've got to convince John McCain to give these Republicans some political cover. If you don't do that, this whole bailout plan is going to fail. So that's how, McCain, apparently, became involved. Continued . . . SCHIEFFER:I'm told that the leaders of both parties are getting close to having some kind of a bill. The question, though, is whether rank-and-file Republicans, especially, are going to vote for this . And that's where McCain comes in. It had became clear that the Dems bill had only FOUR Republican votes. View Bob Schieffer video on White House Summit:1:00 minute
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POPSKissinger Says Obama Is Wrong on Position in Debate Tonight Kissinger Unhappy About Obama He says: "Senator McCain is right. I would not recommend the next President of the United States engage in talks with Iran at the Presidential level. My views on this issue are entirely compatible with the views of my friend Senator John McCain. We do not agree on everything, but we do agree that any negotiations with Iran must be geared to reality." This reply by Kissinger should find greater exposure to show that Obama really is out of his depth on foreign policy issues. Let's hope the Old Media corrects the record.
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POPSJohn McCain Is Right Blogging The First Presidential Debate Vodkapundit Stephen Green is watching tonight's face-off with cocktail(s) in hand. http://pajamasmedia.com/blog/drunkblogging-the-first-presidential-debate/ Boy They Are Fast Jennifer Rubin - 09.26.2008 - 10:28 PM The McCain camp gets out the “You’re Right” John video ad already. Commentary Magazine
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POPSSenator McCain Shoves Bush-Paulson "Bailout" Under The Bus All they needed was John McCain to put the deal through. This deal, by the way, had 20% of the 700 billion going to ACORN. ACORN is a "community organization that Barack Obama used to work with and continues to support. They are under investigation concerning voter fraud. Why would any bill for bailing out Wall Street have a provision for funding this far-left organization? I don't know why President Bush is putting his name on this horrible policy, but I am thankful that Senator McCain had the guts to stand against this bailout and give Boehnor and the house a chance to fix the mess on Wall Street (although I personally think that we should let the markets fall or rise where they may).
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POPSNewt Gingrich Blasts Proposed $700 Billion Bailout Plan This idea that we're going to buy the paper and some bureaucrat in Washington is going to be responsible for $700 billion in bad paper, I think, is socialism at its worst. I can't imagine why this administration is doing it. I think it is profoundly wrong, and I hope it is defeated if it comes to the floor in this form. GINGRICH: Well, if this is going to be rewritten, they ought to be prepared to meet all weekend. They ought to postpone the debate. I think it would be a tremendous sign for America and the world if Senator Obama were to work side by side with Senator McCain, jointly try to develop a joint bill. It think it would be a great act of the patriotism and good for the whole country, and I think it would put them beyond partisan maneuvering. So I would hope that Senator Obama would reconsider. I think the idea that Senator McCain is prepared to work while Senator Obama wants to go talk doesn't speak well for Senator Obama's judgment.
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POPSReid to McCain: Don't Come Back to Capitol 6PDT President Bush updated: requests Obama attend conference in DC tomorrow. 9/25/08 When given an opportunity to serve his nation in a time of severe crisis, Barrack Obama decided that his own personal gain was more important. Stunning! Reid to McCain: Don't Come Back to Capitol September 24, 2008 5:14 PMUPDATE: McCain senior adviser Mark Salter emails: "Yesterday, Harry Reid said that consensus couldn't be achieved without John McCain's leadership. John stepped up and is providing that leadership. Now Senator Reid seems to have changed his mind for reasons we'll let him explain. But what he should understand is that this isn't about Harry Reid or John McCain or Barack Obama. It's about the American people and, in the words of Warren Buffet, the financial Pearl Harbor they're facing. John's committed to doing his part to help avert that calamity. We hope Senator Reid is too." http://blogs.abcnews.com/politicalpunch/2008/09/reid-to-mccain.html
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POPSMcCain Supporter Takes Aim At Old Liberal Media Ayers, known for his work in the 1960s and ’70s with the violent radical left Weatherman Underground Organization, is now a university professor. Obama and Ayers were members of Woods Fund of Chicago and Ayers contributed $200 to Obama’s state legislative campaign. Wright, Obama’s former pastor, is openly critical of America and once said the United States brought on the terrorist attacks of Sept. 11, 2001 with its own “terrorism.” “The coverage hasn’t been fair,” Cummings said.
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POPSThe New York Times is a “Pro-Obama Advocacy Organization” by an standard a journalistic organization. It is a pro-Obama advocacy organization that every day attacks the McCain campaign, attacks Sen. McCain, attacks Gov. Palin, and excuses Sen. Obama. There is no level of public vetting with regard to Sen. Obama’s record, his background, his past statements. There is no level of outrage directed at his deceitful ads. This is an organization that is completely, totally, 150 percent in the tank for the Democratic candidate, which is their prerogative to be, but let’s not be dishonest and call it something other than what it is. Everything that is read in the New York Times that attacks this campaign should be evaluated by the American people from that perspective, that it is an organization that has made a decision to cast aside its journalistic integrity and tradition to advocate for the defeat of one candidate, in this case John McCain, and advocate for the election of the other candidate, Barack Obama.
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POPS Up To 60,000 Attend Palin Florida Rally "Sa-Rah! Sa-Rah!" they chanted at every mention of her name, applauding loudly and waiving tiny American flags that were distributed -- along with free water bottles -- by local volunteers. The fire chief estimated the crowd at 60,000. Admiring throngs mobbed the Palin family's arrival and departure, snapping souvenir pictures. Autograph seekers thrust campaign signs, caps with the McCain-Palin logo and copies of magazines with her face on their covers, and the Palins responded warmly.
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