President Obama's Weekly Address - May 28, 2011

Brought to you by Vice President Joe Biden.

Biden on the American Auto Comeback

SOCIALISM!

The U.S. government bailout of General Motors, Chrysler and other automotive firms saved more than 1.4 million jobs, according to the Center for Automotive Research in Ann Arbor.

Most of the jobs — 1.14 million — were saved in 2009 during the worst of the industry's severe downturn. Another 314,400 jobs were saved this year...

Can you imagine the outcry from the wingnut, fringe, "where-are-the-jobs?", right wing had we been another 1.4 million jobs in the hole?  As it is, the stimulus, which some economists claim wasn't large enough to make a major dent in the recession and the unemployment rate, still saved or created up to three million jobs. So what would the nutballs say to a smaller, more limited government that would have ignored the need of American citizens? What would they have said if unemployment benefits had not been extended? If we had allowed the automotive industry to collapse? If we had let the "too big to fail" banks to actually fail and begin an avalanche of global economic disaster?

Citigroup To Pay Off TARP Loan

“We are pleased to be able to repay the U.S. government’s trust preferred securities and to terminate the loss-sharing agreement,” the chief executive, Vikram S. Pandit, said in a statement. “We owe the American taxpayers a debt of gratitude.”

How about thanking us by lowering your credit card rates to something a little less akin to a loan shark?

Harold Ford Jr. Kicks Armey's Ass

I'm not a big fan of Harold Ford, Jr. usually because he rebuts Republican talking point statements with, "I agree with everything you said, but...", but I'll give credit where credit is due. On Meet The Press today, Ford took Dick Armey to task right before a commercial break with the following:

REP. ARMEY: Let me make a couple points. As Milton Friedman said, "The real rate of taxation is the rate of spending." It's going to be pay me now or pay me later, but eventually every dime's worth of government spending is going to be taxation. But I think there's a fundamental question here that Hubert Humphrey would appreciate. The fact is, even by Hubert Humphey's standards, Humphrey-Hawkins, this government is too big. It's too much of a burden on the economy. And people sense that this president wants to take an already existing burden on the American economy and make it even bigger with a questionable ability...

REP. FORD: All right.

REP. ARMEY: ...to do any good. Has the government actually made health care better in America? I would argue probably not.

MR. GREGORY: All right. Comment, Harold?

REP. FORD: Two things. We use the term "bailout" when we talk about the help on the financial side. It's important to note that the TARP is designed to actually be paid back. If the banks perform at the rate that some have suggested they performed this quarter and across the year, you're looking at a dividend payment from the banks back to the taxpayer, rightly so, between $12 to $15 billion this year, number one. Number two...

MR. GREGORY: Right.

REP. FORD: ...I would agree with you, Leader, in this regard. Spending is large, but what is the alternative? Government's playing the role of the, the, the, the, the financial investor of last resort, the spender of last resort. We, we fought this, we fought this battle for many years in this country. Think if we'd decided not to pass the Servicemen Readjustment Act back in 1944 called the GI Bill. It was an enormous expenditure. You sent eight million veterans to college, you provided one year of unemployment compensation and you ensured they could buy a home. The impact that had on the nation's economy going forward, educating that greatest generation, has been enormous. Think if Eisenhower's national interstate, the highway system would not have passed. It cost $425 billion in real day terms. The impact it's had on commerce, prosperity and growth has been immeasurable. We face one of those moments. This is one of those 100-year flood moments. And as much as I'd like to see government not engage and involve itself in so many enterprises, I don't know the alternative. And as much as I like and respect you, I've not heard from Republicans or conservatives or the TEA party attenders, what is the alternative? If the alternative, alternative is to sit back and do nothing, the majority of Americans, evidenced by poll after poll, say, "Do something. Be active and get us out of this mess."

Although Gregory interrupted to go to break, if you watch the video, Armey had no answer or else he would have responded.

Disillusionment

by Armadillo Joe

Atrios is a master of the infectious catch-phrase which, in just a few choice words, can circumscribe a whole larger issue and create a useful shorthand for people who are tuned-in to the discussion over the long haul, basically an internal slang or jargon. My latest favorite is, as many of you know, SUPERTRAINS!, but he has others that also become more humorous by repetition. "Document the Atrocities" as a heading for his weekly run-down of the lineups of each Sunday morning's bobblehead shoutfests is funny by (slight) overstatement and "Deep Thought" -- while obviously lifted from the old 90's era SNL skit -- is still funny in that what he posts under it is almost never very deep at first glance, but is always revealing of a darker reality in that snarky way that makes one reconsider their own underlying assumptions and also sneer at the foolish who made the mistake of adopting such assumptions in the first place. Which is what good political (and polemical) humor should do.

The most recent phrase of his that is catching on with all the wannabe Kewl Kidz -- or with me, at least, and soon with others I have no doubt -- is "Hopey, Changey", a riff on Colbert's "Truthiness" and a direct attack on the image of Obama that we all voted for versus the grim reality becoming clearer with every centrist, capitulating, accomodationist move he makes. Whether the banks, the Pentagon or the recent Justice Department decision, just to name a few, he has not yet taken any of the really bold steps we progressives hoped he would when we came to support him, but he has certainly made some very clear moves to make us question who's side he's really on. Some of his defenders will chalk up his concessions to The Reich-Wing as yet another stealthy move in an orante clash of political gamesmanship, a chess-match, his Kung-Fu being unorthodox, but effective. They will argue that he is a victim of Bismark's old saw about politics being the art of the possible, and that he is doing the best he can under extremely difficult circumstances with mighty forces of epic greed and entrenched power ranged against him and that at the end of the day he is just one man and one man can only do so much.

I cannot abide such excuses, though. So far, this is not what I voted for.

However, I cannot align myself with the Washington chattering classes who seem so quick to condemn his presidency as already having failed because he hasn't cured cancer, solved the riddle of the sphinx and brought about world peace forever and ever within his first 100 Days, amen. Those clucking tongues on the Sunday morning talk shows are little more than historical blips, mere gossips hardly consequential to present day much less humankind or The Ages, and history will soon forget them as completely as it forgets the poison tongues of the scolds in the king's court at Versailles, who -- when they are remembered at all -- are recalled only as the height of daft frivolity.

No, despite their carping, I think Obama still has promise simply because, well, I have to. The crystal ball is cloudy, though, and I do think Obama guilty of willfully allowing a mis-perception of his commitment to our lefty vision of America to aid his rise to prominence. I have had a gnawing fear from the time he became the anti-war candidate of choice that he was playing us, "us" being the dyed-in-the-wool lefties and assorted DFH's who hated George W. Bush with the searing passion of a thousand suns because Dubya symbolized everything we hated about our country: the gleeful and willful ignorance, the faux-cowboy "common-man" swagger disguising a true East Coast blue-blood's contempt for "The People", the frat-boy bravado marketed as "charm", the mean-spirited jingoistic stupidity passed off as the One True God of Patriotism, the haughty assumption of American exceptionalism used to sell to the rubes the idea of a protected status for a Ruling Class accustomed to inherited wealth and privilege and the abuses of power that flourish in that rancid culture, the inbred and self-absorbed obtuseness of that privileged class, the brittle Christopathic sanctimony parading as moral superiority...

I could go on, but you get the idea.

Barack Hussein Obama was supposed to be the opposite of all that, the antidote to all that ugliness in the American soul, a one-man redemption tale for a vast and powerful nation both sacred and profane from her humble, violent origins to her highest, most sublime ambitions. He was walking, talking proof to the world -- non-white, urbane, educated and eloquent proof -- that we are not all those people (and you know what I mean) that we are not all those gun-toting, Bible-thumping, inbred, hairy-knuckled, toothless, Dixie flag-waving NASCAR goobers stupid enough to vote for an alcoholic chimpanzee who thinks he talks to god and his Evil Uncle Dick(head)...

...on purpose.

TWICE.

...and yet...

...and yet...

And yet, it is hard not to have that gnawing fear bubble up to the surface of having been suckered by a charming chameleon, the sense that all that Hope and Change stuff was really more Hopey and Changey because he looked so different and sounded so different (straight out of Liberal Central Casting), that maybe, just maybe (I can't believe I'm even typing this) over here on the left side of the dial, our popular image of Barack Obama is as much a projection of our own bleeding heart dreams, our own collective moon-bat aspirations for the country we live in, as unrooted in the reality of the man as were the drooling jebus-freaks' collective washing of the sins of George W. Bush.

If Barack Obama were white and named Barney Oswalt from Illinois and running for office twenty years ago, espousing the exact same positions he does now, he would have been a nameless, vaguely right-of-center Republican with a smattering of liberal positions to assuage his urban constituency and otherwise mired in the anonymous middle of the Reagan coalition.

His casting as a Left Wing Matinee Idol reveals both just how far to the right our nation has devolved since the dark days of Saint Ronnie's Reign of Terror and just how obsessed we have been and remain to this very day with pigmentation vis a vis ancestry. He's black with a funny name, therefore -- in our popularly defined bounds of public discourse -- any pronounced position by Mr. Obama to the left of Attila the Hun makes him a DFH, or sympathetic to the DFH's, which is worse because it means he's willing to turn Jesus' America over to the queers and the uppity wimmin-folk and the nigras and the mooz-luhms and all those scary hippies. Which is why anybody in the GOP with skin slightly darker than week-old milk has to take social and political positions that make Marie Antoinette look like a bleeding-heart.

This DFH can't truck with all of that, though. I like Barack Obama, sometimes I truly love him in a teary-eyed, almost worshipful way -- for instance this past week as he and Michelle represented my country, MY country on the global stage -- because he is the image I want to project to the world; he is a living, breathing symbol of that miscengenating, multi-culti, caramel-colored America I believe in, that American ideal I believe we should and could achieve, or I wouldn't be a liberal. Except that I also see that Obama is frail and human and as much as I hope we are witnessing Obama Kung-Fu with his bank bailout end-runs on behalf of the banksters, his expansion of the Pentagon budget (not the reduction that got sold to the press) and -- worst of all -- his reluctance (and, frankly, I predict his eventual failure) to not only not pursue the Bush Administration for its crimes, but his Justice Department's continuation of the crimes themselves makes me realize that we have in him not only an eloquent, handsome and charming symbol of the promise of America, but of her essential corruption, too.

I'll get over it, I'm sure. Today, however, I am sad.

Double Standard

by Armadillo Joe

That uneasy feeling of a double standard I referenced in my previous couple of posts about the sanctity of the budget-busting contracts in the AIG bailout situation as opposed to the flippant expendability of the UAW contracts in the GM/Chrysler bailout situation was given voice last night by none other than David Sirota on The Rachel Maddow Show:

Because the guy Obama decided to put in charge of the auto bailout is a real-life Gordon Gekko:

President Obama appointed [Steve Rattner] to head the White House team now overseeing the auto industry (and don't say you weren't warned).

As the Wall Street Journal reports, Rattner's strategy is to use the government's leverage to try to specifically crush auto workers and force them to accept even more contract concessions than they've already agreed to:

DETROIT -- President Barack Obama's recovery plan for General Motors Corp. and Chrysler LLC appears to take aim at union retirees, a usually reliable Democratic constituency. After studying the plight of the companies, the president's auto task force concluded GM and Chrysler's survival is dependent on greater concessions from the United Auto Workers union.

[...]

when you put Gordon Gekko in control of government policy overseeing an industry, you are inevitably going to get a policy that assumes workers are the big problem. If you had a different kind of team, you may have a policy that says, for instance, we have to create a robust universal health care system before throwing retirees off their existing health care.

As I said, the way in which all of this is being handled speaks volumes about the priorities of the Obama Administration. Even if the intent is somehow fundamentally honorable (and I'm not convinced it is), the net result out here in the world outside the Beltway is that this government is simply viewed as more of the same, especially when so many people are being pushed out of their houses by law enforcement personnel while the Wall Street Masters of the Universe who created this mess get to not only keep their jobs, but get bonuses amounting to orders of magnitude more money than most American will ever make in their lifetimes.

Definitely not a government By, Of and For The People.

It's disgusting and the Ruling Class should be more afraid of us.

Geithner Requested AIG Bonus Loophole

According to CNN's Ali Velshi, Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner was responsible for adding the AIG bonus loophole.

...Geithner told CNN Thursday his department asked Sen. Chris Dodd to include a loophole in the stimulus bill that allowed bailed-out insurance giant American International Group to keep its bonuses.

If this is true, then Geithner should resign. Yes, we'll hear about it for the next week how yet another one of Obama's appointments was a screw up, but this one was over the top, especially in light of the fact that everyone was trying to throw Senator Chris Dodd under the bus for approving something administration officials at the Treasury Department requested. That's the Bush way of doing things (ie. George "Slam Dunk Medal of Freedom" Tenet) and it shouldn't be tolerated if we're to have any faith in what President Obama has to say in the future.

Grassley Get His Harakiri On!

Holy shit.

Reuters: Senator Charles Grassley, the top Republican on the Senate Finance Committee, made the comments [regarding AIG executive bonuses] Monday in an interview with a radio station in his home state of Iowa.

"The first thing that would make me feel a little bit better toward them (is) if they'd follow the Japanese example and come before the American people and take that deep bow and say, I'm sorry, and then either do one of two things: resign or go commit suicide," Grassley said.

"And in the case of the Japanese," he added, "they usually commit suicide before they make any apology."

John "Twitter" McCain

Is it just me, or does John McCain's doublespeak give you whiplash too?

Here's the septuagenarian using that new fangled Twitter thingy.




Here's what he said during his campaign in favor of the bailout.

September 17, 2008: "I didn’t want to do that. And I don’t think anybody I know wanted to do that. But there are literally millions of people whose retirement, whose investment, whose insurance were at risk here. They were going to have their lives destroyed because of the greed and excess and corruption."

That's what we call in old 2004 parlance, a "flip-flop."

But wait! There's more! It looks like McCain was against it before he was for it before he was against it.

September 16, 2008: "No, I do not believe that the American taxpayer should be on the hook for AIG and I’m glad that the Secretary Paulson has apparently taken the same line."

I guess that's a "flip-flop-flip!" ...My neck hurts. I'm going to have to "follow" Twittter McCain and watch the hijinks ensue.

(H/T Think Progress)

Well That Was Fast!

Obama Asks Bush For Bailout Funds

By 10am this morning, George W. Bush was ending his final news conference as President. One particular quote drew my attention.

The reporters got matter-of-factly down to business, asking during the 45 minute session whether he would make any move in his last week in office to request the second half of the $700 billion bailout from Congress, but he demurred, suggesting that it is most likely that the new Congress will deal with the new president on that matter.
“I don’t intend to make the request unless he specifically asks me to make it,” he said, speaking of President-elect Barack Obama.

By 11:28am, Dana Perino made this statement:

This morning, President-elect Obama asked President Bush to formally notify Congress, on his behalf, of his intent to exercise the authority under the Emergency Economic Stabilization Act to access the last tranche of $350 billion in funding for Treasury programs addressing the financial crisis. President Bush agreed to the President-elect’s request. We will continue our consultations with the President-elect’s transition team, and with Congress, on how best to proceed in accordance with the requirements of the statute.

Bang! And just like that, what to me (and I may be over analyzing it) sounded like a challenge to Barack Obama to take over the reins became a resounding answer from the incoming President to just do exactly that, and thank you for opening the door - Obama gets the ball rolling on the remaining $350 billion in TARP funds eight days early.

I haven't seen any press reaction to this yet. I'll turn on my TV now for see which pundits are calling this move "presumptuous."

T Minus 27 Days

"I've abandoned free market principles to save the free market system."

- Washington, DC, December 16, 2008

Evil Incarnate

Well, not too much blogging for me today. Spent the day with the little Mrs. , running errands, trimming the tree (that's sounds nasty) and attending a friend's Christmas party. Got home and caught up on some TV. Needless to say, I was cable news free for the day - good thing too, I needed to clear my head.

But the one thing I did hear is that the King of the Douchebags, DICK Cheney said something to the effect of "even if we knew there were no WMD, we would have gone into Iraq anyways, because that's how I roll, motherfuckers!"

I haven't even looked up the direct quote, so I'll search for it now. Be right back... in the meantime, you can hum The Girl From Ipanema to yourself while waiting.

...

Okay, I'm back. So basically, it looks like Cheney was disagreeing with a Karl Rove quote while he was playing Salvage the Bush Legacy.

Former White House Adviser Karl Rove said last week that if pre-war intelligence on the Iraqi WMD programs had been accurate, the United States likely would not have entered the war. But asked about Rove’s comment during an interview with ABC News Monday, Cheney said “I disagree with that.”

Then he goes on with the same old story; some such shit about Saddam Hussein still having "the capability to produce weapons of mass destruction. He had the technology, he had the people, he had the basic feed stocks."

Uh, why is this news? We all know that it was bullshit then, it's bullshit now, but somehow it's being fed to us as if this is some revelation. There is no new news about Cheney saying we still would have invaded Iraq even if we knew they didn't have WMD, because... well, we did know that there were no WMD. And we went in anyway. And it's because Cheney is an evil, evil demon. I'm starting to believe that he's not really human. He's evil incarnate.

It was all a money grab. That's all it ever was - privatize the military and get your corporate friends the overinflated government contracts, have them do a shitty job, leave the place worse off than when you went in, say it wasn't your fault, rinse and repeat. And don't forget to bleed the Treasury dry in the process. The $700 billion TARP bailout was the final slice across the throat to bleed out the country before riding off into the sunset with boatloads of cash.


UPDATE (12/17/08 12:35am): Anyone in public office who says "So what?" in a conversation as a rebuttal ought to be tarred and feathered. I thought he was just an imbecile, but I've come to realize that even Bush was smart enough to know the Devil when he saw it, and went along for the ride anyway.

The GOP Obstructionism Continues

You can talk about Rod Blagojevich all you want. You can bring up Tony Rezko and the corrupt Chicago political system until Mrs. O'Leary's cow comes home. But after last night, the Republicans in the US Senate have proved once again that they are the armpit, or should I say the asshole, of American politics.

After the House voted to compromise their bill in an attempt to help out the auto industry with a $14 billion bridge loan with White House backing, the bill failed to come to a vote in the Senate 52-35, eight votes short.

Mitch McConnell, the Republican minority leader and Incredible Mr. Limpet of the Republican party said, “The administration negotiated in good faith with the Democratic majority a proposal that was simply unacceptable to the vast majority of our side because we thought it frankly wouldn’t work.” You got that? The Democrats and the White House were on board, but most Senate Republicans didn't think it would work. Now all of a sudden, they're economic experts.

And it's all because they think that the workers who actually make the product are making too much money.

The group came close to agreement, but it stalled over the UAW's refusal to agree to wage cuts before their current contract expires in 2011. Republicans, in turn, balked at giving the automakers federal aid.

The double standard is astonishing. A $700 BILLION bailout for financial institutions that caused the mess we're in was a no brainer, but a $14 billion bridge loan (2% of the TARP bailout that the Treasury Department has been frittering away with no discernable plan) for the continued survival of 3 million blue collar jobs? Well that is just too much.

How many of those douchebags in the Senate complained about the salaries of the bankers and the stock brokers and the CEO's when they forked over 700 billion taxpayer dollars? No one batted an eye. But those factory workers? Fuck them, they're the reason the auto industry is in this debacle, right? They make the decisions on which cars to manufacture, what the designs should be. They are the ones who said, "Fuck fuel economy, I want a Dodge Ram HEMI!"

The white collar/blue collar discrimination in this country just amazes me. There's a special place in hell for the obstructionist fuckwads in the Senate. And I hope they get there sooner than later.

UPDATE (8:05pm):

NY TIMES: President Bush and the Treasury Department signaled on Friday that they would consider dipping into the $700 billion bailout program for financial institutions to aid the Big Three car companies, after Republican senators refused to support a compromise proposal to rescue the automakers.
“Under normal economic conditions we would prefer that markets determine the ultimate fate of private firms,” Dana Perino, Mr. Bush’s spokeswoman, said in a carefully nuanced statement released minutes before the financial markets opened in New York. “However, given the current weakened state of the U.S. economy, we will consider other options if necessary — including use of the TARP program — to prevent a collapse of troubled automakers.”

Also, MSNBC's Countdown just reported that talking points for Republicans in the Senate were issued to use the auto bailout as a union busting opportunity. The internal GOP memo, called "Action Alert," states: "...Senators Ensign, Shelby, Coburn and DeMint... The message they want us to deliver is: This is the Demnocrats first opportunity to payoff organized labor after the election... Republicans should stand firm and take their first shot against organized labor... If we can hold the Republicans, we can beat this."

So basically, as I said before, fuck the American economy, fuck 3 million jobs and double digit unemployment. We have the opportunity to bust the United Auto Workers Union, so why not?

Debate On!

The first of three McCain thrashings will take place after all as the McCain campaign zigged when it should have zagged and decided to avoid political suicide by actually showing up for the Mississippi debate. Someone should hide the hotline number next time.

In yet another ploy from Camp McCain the non-suspension suspension of John McCain's run for the White House backfired as he left Washington in worse shape then when he arrived... as if that's anything new.

Had Obama had fallen for the blatantly transparent move, it would've seemed McCain was playing leader and Obama follower. It would've also had the bonus of rescheduling the debates and cancelling the only VP debate and the destruction of Sarah Palin in order to use that date for the first POTUS debate.

When McCain's hapless managers saw Obama wasn't biting, they realized that it would be political suicide for them to blow off the debate. I'm also sure they weren't counting on the reports that McCain's presence was what put a wrench in the works in the first place, asking for fewer regulations and tax breaks for corporations. Real reformer that McCain. So now the debate that Maverick said he wouldn't attend so long as a bailout deal was not finalized and is even further away from getting done than when he arrived in D.C. is back on.

Not to be outdone by the "suspended campaign" embarrassment, the latest McCain camp debacle didn't stop the them from declaring victory in the debate before it's even occurred.

An advertisement prematurely declaring victory in something you didn't want to participate in before its happened... hmmm... I remember something seeing like that. Where have I seen that before?

McCain Campaign Loses Its Collective Mind

Does anyone in the McCain campaign realize that there are less than six weeks remaining until Election Day? Does anyone in the McCain campaign care? Has the McCain campaign figured out that they are in serious trouble and decided to just throw in the towel and say, "Fuck it"?

Just two days before the first of three presidential debates, John McCain has decided that a delay is in order to deal with the current financial crisis. Mr. Ten Town Hall Meetings is now trying to back out of the first scheduled debate on Friday, September 26th. I say, "What are you fuckin' kidding me?!" This from the man who just yesterday said that his vote on the largest proposed bailout in the history of the world would be "irrelevant" in the grand scheme of things. And yet, he thinks that delaying the debates and suspending his campaign is the path to take to his irrelevant vote.

Thankfully, Barack Obama isn't having any of it.

“This is exactly the time when people need to hear from the candidates... Part of the president’s job is to deal with more than one thing at once. In my mind it’s more important than ever.”

"It's my belief that this is exactly the time when the American people need to hear from the person who, in approximately 40 days, will be responsible for dealing with this mess," Obama said at a news conference in Clearwater, Fla. "It's going to be part of the president's job to deal with more than one thing at once."

Exactly, Senator Obama. The clock doesn't stop ticking when there's a problem or crisis looming over you. A president needs to multitask, and if John McCain isn't able or ready to do so, then step off and let a real leader handle things.

For the McCain campaign to keep treating the American people like rubes and not think that we'd figure out a stunt like this is exactly that, a stunt designed to look as if he's putting "country first," when in fact it's an obvious political ploy, is outrageous.

When was the last time McCain suspended his campaign? Oh yeah, during the Hurricane Gustav crisis - because the Maverick had to be there in person, to stop the mighty hurricane himself and blow off the first day of the Republican National Convention. And how exactly did his presence help the citizens of Texas and the victims of Gustav? Keep searching for an answer, I'll wait...

I seriously believe that the McCain camp realizes that the only way they can even come close to pulling off a win in November (besides voter disenfranchisement and suppression and electronic voting machines) is to put out a daily distraction for the next six weeks and avoid any talk of issues, hopefully waiting out the clock until November 4th. The Palin nomination, Gustav, lipstick on a pig, sexism, the economy, you name it they'll use it to avert, avoid, distract and deceive.

And on a side note, the wingnut hacks who are calling for Republicans to vote against the bailout for all the wrong reasons have no right to use McCain's "Country First" as a slogan.


UPDATE I (10:35pm):

Camp McCain is trying to postpone the VP debate as well. We all know that they'd rather not have Palin say anything anyway, but here is the ruse.

CNN's Dana Bash reports that McCain officials are "trying to negotiate with the Obama campaign and the presidential debate commission" to change next Thursday's planned vice presidential debate into a McCain-Obama affair. The VP debate would be postponed to another date.

"That is what they are proposing," Bash reported. "[McCain officials] understand very well that both the Obama campaign and the debate commission have no intention of delaying Friday's debate, but...if there is no bailout deal by Friday, McCain has no plan to go to debate."

That's fine with me. McThuselah can stay home and pout. Obama will have 90 minutes to himself.


UPDATE II (9/25/08 12:55am):

A senior campaign official says that McCain will NOT debate -- no matter what -- if Congress hasn't reached an agreement on a bailout package.

Well of course he won't debate if there's no bailout package. Think about it. What are the chances that something would be agreed to in the next 36 hours? It's practically impossible for something this complex to be figured out by Friday afternoon. So now they can claim "Country First" and skip out on the first debate, thereby throwing the rest of the schedule in turmoil.

And seriously, did we really think McCain's false town hall debates proposal was honest? There was no way that Obama was going to acquiesce to that offer and the McCain camp knew it; and they also knew they could use it as a talking point against Obama, just as they know that a bailout plan won't be in place by debate time Friday and can use the "economic crisis" as an excuse as well.

Another pathetic attempt at distraction on the same day that we learn Rick Davis was on the lobbyist payroll for Freddie Mac until last month at $15,000 - $30,000 per month.

Pay no attention to that man behind the curtain.

(H/T Bob Cesca)