Month: September 2008

Quote For The Day II

"[T]here is the factor that we all know exists and that few people will talk about: the race factor…. Somebody’s going to vote for somebody not on the basis of the content of his character but on the color of his skin and that’s just called sin with a capital S because racism is a sin. And we all knew that racism has been in a lot of the white church," – National Association of Evangelicals chief lobbyist Richard Cizik.

The Smell Of Napalm In The Morning

Felix Salmon sizes up the current state of affairs:

No one is a winner here. Yes, JP Morgan looks as though it’s got itself a good deal for WaMu — basically buying the bank for $1.9 billion unencumbered by any corporate debt or preferred stock. JP Morgan also now owns the bank which was largely responsible for reinventing retail banking over the past decade, and WaMu’s abilities on that front will be very valuable at for the Chase brand. But unless House Republicans start getting constructive on bailout negotiations today, no financial institution is going to look very healthy. (And top management at Goldman Sachs will look like geniuses for raising $15 billion just before everything fell apart.)

The vague sketch of the House Republican proposal in the NYT shows something miles removed from the bailout as it has been understood until now. Bush, Paulson, Bernanke, Obama, House Democrats, and the Senate all seem to be on board with Plan A; only House Republicans are supporting Plan B. And where McCain stands on all this is anybody’s guess. If House Republicans thought they were doing him a favor by waiting for him to turn up before blowing up the negotations, they miscalculated badly.

Plausible Deniability Goes Out The Window

Murray Waas gets a scoop:

Sources say Alberto Gonzales now claims that President Bush personally directed him to John Ashcroft’s hospital room in the infamous wiretap renewal incident—and that in another instance the President asked him to fabricate fictitious notes.

We will discover, I think, that Bush was intimately involved in everything Cheney did. Including the war crimes.

McCain’s Comedy Continues: Blink, Blink, Blink

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You don’t know whether to laugh or cry:

Senator McCain has spent the morning talking to members of the Administration, members of the Senate, and members of the House. He is optimistic that there has been significant progress toward a bipartisan agreement now that there is a framework for all parties to be represented in negotiations, including Representative Blunt as a designated negotiator for House Republicans.  The McCain campaign is resuming all activities and the Senator will travel to the debate this afternoon.

So McCain blinked. He said he would suspend his campaign until there was a deal. He did not suspend his campaign. He asked for the debate to be postponed till after the deal. There has been no deal and he has caved on the debate.

This is an unstable, vicious, partisan man unfit to be a senator at this point, let alone a president.

Tom Toles’ cartoon is here. His archive is here.

“Another Politcal Stunt”

The Obama campaign whacks McCain:

"…make no mistake: John McCain did not ‘suspend’ his campaign. He just turned a national crisis into an occasion to promote his campaign. It’s become just another political stunt, aimed more at shoring up the Senator’s aimed more at shoring up the Senator’s political fortunes than the nation’s economy. And it does nothing to help advance this critical legislation to protect the American people during this time of economic crisis."

Pace Bill Clinton, I can’t see any other explanation. Was it to distract from the Couric interview and the Rick Davis scandal?