He Was Against Them Before He Was For Them

I watched some of John McCain's town hall meeting this morning at the gym. God, but the man is dull as dirt! And, it took him forever to get around to making anything resembling a point. And when he did...

...He blamed the current financial crisis on the New Deal banking and financial regulations of the 1930s and on the failure of federal regulators to do their jobs. Problem is, conservatives have been chipping away at those regulations practically since their inception. The pinnacle of their efforts came in 2000, when then Senator Phil Gramm, a long-time McCain friend and advisor, succeeded in passing legislation that not only greatly deregulated the banking and financial businesses, but underfunded the Securities and Exchange Commission to the point that they couldn't enforce what regulations remained. This legislation created the base for the finance business to get involved in the mortgage business and encouraged the predatory loans that have spelled grief for home buyers and that are crippling Wall Street. That's the source of the problem. David Corn explains it here...

How McCain will repair this when he has by his own admission paid little attention to the economy and when his chief economic advisor is the author of the current catastrophe, he doesn't say. Nonetheless, in the same town meeting, he assured us that he "knows how" to fix the economy. Well, if that's the case, why hasn't he done more as a senator?...

McCain also bragged about how he has "bucked" his party, then ironically moved on to the topic of immigration reform. I say "ironically" because here is an example of an issue where he started off in opposition to his party, then changed his views when the blowback from the right became too strong. For that matter, he wanted Joe Lieberman as his running mate, only to bow to pressure from the right that he choose someone else...

Sarah Palin didn't go to Ireland on the same trip that she didn't go to Iraq. It's becoming plainer and plainer that she has as tenuous as link to reality as George Bush. The great E. J. Dionne wonders whether the media will be as tough on her about this as they were when Hillary Clinton claimed she had come under sniper fire...