McCain Throws Reagan Under the Bus

C

Cypress

Well-known member
McCain throws Reagan Under the Bush; Pulls Out the FDR Card

L-O-f*cking-L.

Grandpa gave a speech in Michigan, in which he was talking like a populist, quoting FDR, and evidently trying to paint himself as a populist reformer in the tradition of FDR. Meanwhile, noted Pentacostal young earth creationists, Sarah Palin and the First Dude, are talking up their blue collar chops and their union memberships in Teamsters. I don't know about you, but when I saw Cindy McCain sitting there at the convention in her 350k outfit and blood diamonds, unions and populists weren't the first thing that crossed my mind. When I saw Sara-cuda mocking community organizers and telling us to get government out of the way, I didn't really get the sense that republicans viewed collective action and government oversight of interstate commerce to be on the top of their priority list.

Honestly, I got the sense from that convention that we should all pull ourselves up by our own bootstraps. Oh, and that abortion, global warming and evolution were just wrong. Dead wrong.


In other news, Obama tries to play the FDR card (a little more credibly than a Republican Grandpa), in which he comes out against Bush's no-strings-attached trillion dollar handout to Wall Street


Obama: No Paulson Deal


Obama has stepped up and stated what he needs a bailout plan to include in order to support it, and the Paulson plan simply can't meet his requirements. Obama has just announced his opposition to the basic principles of the Paulson Plan.

-No Blank Check: Paulson doesn't get money without oversight or legal responsibility.

1-Must Be Regulatory Changes: The practices that caused the crisis have to be ended at the same time.

2-Taxpayers Need More than Consideration: If a huge bailout is to occur, it has to be done in the way that costs taxpayers the least possible.

3-No Bailout For Foreign Banks From US Money: Instead, all countries should work together to help everyone.

4-Ordinary People Get Help Too: It can't just be a bailout for Hank's friends, it has to help ordinary Americans too.
Click to expand...

As Obama said:

"The bottom line is that we must change the economic policies that led us down this dangerous path in the first place. For the last eight years, we’ve had an “on your own-anything goes” philosophy in Washington and on Wall Street that lavished tax cuts on the wealthy and big corporations; that viewed even common-sense regulation and oversight as unwise and unnecessary; and that shredded consumer protections and loosened the rules of the road. Ordinary Americans are now paying the price. The events of this week have rendered a final verdict on that failed philosophy, and it is a philosophy I will end as President of the United States,” said Senator Barack Obama.
*************************************************************


Sounds good. But, I'll withhold judgment until I see what Obama really does. I'm totally hip to the modern Democratic politician's ways of paying homage to FDR in public, only to cave behind closed doors to our corporate Masters.
 
:clink:

I'm very happy Obama came out and said no oversight, no deal. I also agree with his other stipulations.

Excellent.
 
Darla said:
Cypress, where did you get this story about obama?
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My bad.

Firedoglake, cross posted from Obama's website.

http://firedoglake.com/



This is pretty good. You were totally right about the need for accountability on this bail out.

You know what's funny? This totally shows the leadership styles of Obama and the Old Man. Grandpa was flip flopping around last week, first against the bail out, and then for it. NeoCon message board posters were mocking Obama for not taking a position.

LOL- Obama did what a leader does. He doesn't just immediately make a pronouncement and then spend a week flip flopping around. It sounds like Obama took his time, deliberated, looked at the facts, before making a policy recommendation.

Good times.
 
Cypress said:
My bad.

Firedoglake, cross posted from Obama's website.

http://firedoglake.com/



This is pretty good. You were totally right about the need for accountability on this bail out.

You know what's funny? This totally shows the leadership styles of Obama and the Old Man. Grandpa was flip flopping around last week, first against the bail out, and then for it. NeoCon message board posters were mocking Obama for not taking a position.

LOL- Obama did what a leader does. He doesn't just immediately make a pronouncement and then spend a week flip flopping around. It sounds like Obama took his time, deliberated, looked at the facts, before making a policy recommendation.

Good times.
Click to expand...

I wasn't totally right - I fell for the "Too big to fail" mantra. I'm not sure that's true, or that it's not true, but I want to slow this thing down. I saw that provision in the bill, demanding no judicial or congressional oversight, and my mouth fell open. It's a power grab, it's the Patriot act, it's an attempt to keep economic control no matter who wins the Presidency. I think it goes even further than that.

Maybe we need the bailout, but it can't be the bush bailout, the graham bailout, the norquist bailout. And you never, ever, say that oversight of anyone using taxpayer dollars is illegal. That's a dealbreaker. I just can't get over these people. They stun me. They're so freaking evil.
 
Yeah, I'm the first to say I don't know sh*t about macroeconomics at this scale. I don't think there's more than a handful of people who really do. The point about having accountability in a bail out of this magnitude seems to be pretty common sense.

I read a good article on how those evil, socialist europeans largely dodged this mess. And who could have predicted, it was because they didn't get caught up in the deregulatory frenzy that republicans and their enablers engineered?





How Europe Avoided Our Mess

The credit crisis, which is sapping America's economic strength, was the result of an almost religious belief in deregulation. It is instructive to consider the economic situation in nations that resisted deregulation.

http://www.prospect.org/cs/articles?article=how_europe_avoided_our_mess
 
The Prospect always has some interesting stuff in it.

A senior French banking official told me, "If a banker promoted these sub-prime mortgages here, he would go to jail."

Spain, like the U.S., currently has an overhang of too much real estate development and falling housing prices. But unlike in the U.S., Spain's banks did not engage in subprime lending or create exotic mortgage-backed bonds. So Spain's housing problems did not spill over into a general credit crisis. And since Spain's government—led incidentally by fiscally prudent social-democrats—has a nice budget surplus, Spain has the money to stimulate its economy with public investments.

Europe also has high domestic savings rates and balanced trade accounts with the rest of the world. Europe, unlike the U.S., is not increasingly in hock to China. The high Euro, the flipside of the cheap dollar, protects the European economy from inflation. And despite using an expensive Euro that has appreciated 60 percent against the dollar in six years, Germany is running record trade surpluses.

How can that be? As German Chancellor Angela Merkel once twitted Britain's then Prime Minister Tony Blair, "Mr. Blair, we still make things." By contrast, the Brits and their American cousins think financial engineering is economic salvation. They don't seem to mind that if manufacturing keeps moving offshore, which is devastating for the trade balance.

In a recent interview, Germany's Gunter Verheugen, the vice-president of the EU, told me, "We need a strong and competitive industrial base in order to have a strong service economy. Don't try to be cheaper. Try to be better. Don't try to compete on low social standards."

So as the U.S keeps trying to contain a needless crisis caused by an extreme faith in financial engineering, the Europeans have kept their heads and a more balanced form of capitalism. While Europe has its own debate about the right balance between market innovations and social protections, there is little enthusiasm for taking more lessons from market-besotted Americans who have managed to sink what was once the world's strongest economy. The main worry is how much contagion from America will spill over onto Europe. "
 
Darla said:
Spain, like the U.S., currently has an overhang of too much real estate development and falling housing prices. But unlike in the U.S., Spain's banks did not engage in subprime lending or create exotic mortgage-backed bonds.
Click to expand...

You mean Spain's government did not create government backed enterprises to create MBS's? Crazy free marketeers.
 
Darla said:
The Prospect always has some interesting stuff in it.

A senior French banking official told me, "If a banker promoted these sub-prime mortgages here, he would go to jail."

Spain, like the U.S., currently has an overhang of too much real estate development and falling housing prices. But unlike in the U.S., Spain's banks did not engage in subprime lending or create exotic mortgage-backed bonds. So Spain's housing problems did not spill over into a general credit crisis. And since Spain's government—led incidentally by fiscally prudent social-democrats—has a nice budget surplus, Spain has the money to stimulate its economy with public investments.

Europe also has high domestic savings rates and balanced trade accounts with the rest of the world. Europe, unlike the U.S., is not increasingly in hock to China. The high Euro, the flipside of the cheap dollar, protects the European economy from inflation. And despite using an expensive Euro that has appreciated 60 percent against the dollar in six years, Germany is running record trade surpluses.

How can that be? As German Chancellor Angela Merkel once twitted Britain's then Prime Minister Tony Blair, "Mr. Blair, we still make things." By contrast, the Brits and their American cousins think financial engineering is economic salvation. They don't seem to mind that if manufacturing keeps moving offshore, which is devastating for the trade balance.

In a recent interview, Germany's Gunter Verheugen, the vice-president of the EU, told me, "We need a strong and competitive industrial base in order to have a strong service economy. Don't try to be cheaper. Try to be better. Don't try to compete on low social standards."

So as the U.S keeps trying to contain a needless crisis caused by an extreme faith in financial engineering, the Europeans have kept their heads and a more balanced form of capitalism. While Europe has its own debate about the right balance between market innovations and social protections, there is little enthusiasm for taking more lessons from market-besotted Americans who have managed to sink what was once the world's strongest economy. The main worry is how much contagion from America will spill over onto Europe. "
Click to expand...

Good post darla.
 
In a recent interview, Germany's Gunter Verheugen, the vice-president of the EU, told me, "We need a strong and competitive industrial base in order to have a strong service economy. Don't try to be cheaper. Try to be better. Don't try to compete on low social standards."
Click to expand...

As I wisely stated it elsewhere, "human slavery is not a legitimate comparative advantage". Go europeans.

Maybe we, the people, can get the destructive neocon shitcankers to abandon their loathsome values.
 
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