Bush Gets To Pick Car Czar

That's not right. He's history.
Fox's Fred Barnes says Bush should choose Phil Gramm, John McCain's economic adviser, better known as Mr. Mental Recession.

McCain Palling Around With Phil Gramm

McCain will be sorry he played the guilt by association game since it seems he is in over his head in guilt and not just by association. Take Phil Gramm:

WaPo: But if the McCain people want to rummage through presidential candidates' associations, real or imagined, to turn up figures who threaten to pull down this proud republic, they should begin in-house. Chief among those to whom responsibility attaches for the financial crisis that is plunging the nation into recession is former Texas senator Phil Gramm, McCain's own economic guru.

Gramm was always Wall Street's man in the Senate. As chairman of the Senate Banking Committee during the Clinton administration, he consistently underfunded the Securities and Exchange Commission and kept it from stopping accounting firms from auditing corporations with which they had conflicts of interest. Gramm's piece de resistance came on Dec. 15, 2000, when he slipped into an omnibus spending bill a provision called the Commodity Futures Modernization Act (CFMA), which prohibited any governmental regulation of credit default swaps, those insurance policies covering losses on securities in the event they went belly up. As the housing bubble ballooned, the face value of those swaps rose to a tidy $62 trillion. And as the housing bubble burst, those swaps became a massive pile of worthless paper, because no government agency had required the banks to set aside money to back them up.

The CFMA also prohibited government regulation of the energy-trading market, which enabled Enron to nearly bankrupt the state of California before bankrupting itself.

The problem with this exercise, of course, is that Gramm's relationship to McCain is not comparable to the relationships that Ayers or Wright have with Obama. The idea that either Ayers or Wright would have any impact on the workings of an Obama administration is nonsensical. But Gramm and McCain do have an enduring political and economic alliance. McCain chaired Gramm's short-lived presidential campaign in 1996; Gramm is co-chair of McCain's current effort. McCain has called Gramm one of his leading economic counselors and has not repudiated reports that Gramm is on the shortlist to become McCain's Treasury secretary if he's elected. Read it all

McCain's Real Stand on Regulation

This is where McCain really stands, you know, when he's not lying to win an election.

Rasmussen: With the markets in frightening turmoil and the public outraged by financial irresponsibility and excessive greed, John McCain has suddenly rediscovered the importance of strong, watchful government. Only six months ago, he assured the Wall Street Journal that he is generally opposed to regulation, but today he is ready to control executive compensation, defend 401k accounts from corporate predators and impose renewed federal oversight of errant markets.
This populist rhetoric sounds strange, especially when emitted by a politician whose circle of advisers include former Sen. Phil Gramm, vice president of the scandal-tainted Union Bank of Switzerland, and John Thain, chief executive of the firm formerly known as Merrill Lynch. But when facing the angry voters who have watched their savings evaporate, the conservative Republican more hopes to sound more like a liberal Democrat again.
He wants to blur the differences between himself and Barack Obama on fundamental economic philosophy. But there is one critical issue where the Arizonan has established a record that cannot be escaped so easily.
Sen. McCain wants to privatize Social Security. It is a stance he has repeatedly taken over the past 10 years in recorded votes, interviews, speeches and documents. It is also a position that he will deny in this campaign. In fact he tried to deny it at a June town hall meeting in New Hampshire, when he declared, "I'm not for, quote, privatizing Social Security. I never have been. I never will be." But the contrary evidence is overwhelming.
As long ago as 1998, several years before the Bush administration sought to promote privatization, he voted to partially replace Social Security with private accounts. He included privatization in the economic platform of his 2000 presidential campaign. He spoke out in support of the White House's ill-fated push for privatization during the spring of 2005. And when that plan started to sink into oblivion, despite an advertising and public relations budget that exceeded $50 million, he tried to save it.
Sen. McCain was still pushing the Bush plan earlier this year, when he needed to persuade his own party's ultra-rightists to accept him as their nominee. During the same interview when he told the Journal editors that he generally opposes regulation, he explained his plan to "reform" Social Security. "I believe that private savings accounts are a part of it," he said, "along the lines that President Bush proposed."
Obviously such remarks no longer serve Sen. McCain's political purposes, and certainly won't attract voters, who never liked the Bush plan -- and probably like those ideas even less as they watch the market ravage their pension funds and equity accounts. Listening to the Republican nominee promise this week to "protect "their retirement accounts, they might wonder how he will do that when so much of the value of those accounts has disappeared already. They might also wonder what would happen to the elderly and other beneficiaries of Social Security if the privatizers like him had succeeded in consigning their future to the same Wall Street sharks he now denounces for their greed and irresponsibility.

McCain's Ties With Deregulation

This is a short and sweet explainer.

electoral-vote: This nationalization poses an especially large challenge for John McCain, who is now railing against corporate greed and lack of government regulation of the financial industry. What he doesn't talk much about is how deregulation happened. It was the 1999 Gramm-Leach-Bliley Act that repealed the 1933 Glass-Steagall Act and thus eliminated the depression-era walls between between banking, investment, and insurance that made this crisis possible. Glass-Stegall erected walls between banking, investment management, and insurance, so problems in one sector could not spill over into the others, which is precisely what is happening now. The primary author of the Gramm-Leach-Bliley Act was none other than McCain's economic advisor, former senator Phil Gramm (who thinks the country is in a "mental recession"). McCain fully supported the bill and has a decades-long track record of opposing government regulation of the financial industry. His new-found conversion to being a fan of regulation is going to be a tough sell as Obama is already pointing out that McCain got what he wanted (deregulation) and this is the consequence.

Mr. Mental Recession Slams Obama in WSJ

He's baaack. 

John McCain pretended to cast Phil Gramm aside when Gramm said we're all just going through a mental recession. But Gramm's economic policies are Bush's and McCain's. McCain is pretending to care.

Today, Gramm slams Obama in the WSJ, comparing Obama's economics to the state of the economy in Michigan. Gramm blames unions and completely ignores and discounts the fact that Michigan's woes are largely due to the disappearance of auto manufacturing jobs. Why did that happen? Why didn't U.S. automakers start long ago on alternative fuel engines? Because the U.S. has been in the mighty pursuit of oil at costs, even blood. 

McCain and his camp are deceitful in addition to being sleazy. For the past 7 years, the government has catered to big business. They don't want to see people unionized. Then they'd have to pay folks more money and offer more benefits. I'd argue, when that happens more people can become entrepreneurs. Republicans argue it keeps business from growing. 

Gramm throws out stuff like this without backing it up:

Mr. Obama would spend all the savings from walking out of Iraq to expand the government. Mr. McCain would reserve all the savings from our success in Iraq to shrink the deficit, as part of a credible and internally consistent program to balance the budget by the end of his first term. Mr. Obama's program offers no hope, or even a promise, of ever achieving a balanced budget.

Obama just wants the tax structure to be fair and 95% of Americans would get a tax cut. It's as simple as that.

McCain on economics

Housegate is Rich

It occurs to me that housegate needs to be more than THE narrative. The fact that McCain has 7 or 9 houses will get boring quick.

The democrats have to show that this is just one of the ways McCain is hoodwinking the American public into thinking that Obama's the elitist and McCain's the working person's hero. 

It's the other way around.

McCain's tax policy says it all. His willingness to war around any chance he gets also says he doesn't have economy on his mind. The crafter of his economic policy, Phil Gramm, called American's woes a "mental recession." McCain even admitted that economics isn't his strong suit. He's a war president.

The fact that McCain hasn't had to be concerned about gas prices or any prices, and that he gets along swell with the likes of the richest folks in the nation (Saddleback Church), says he's in the pocket of the wealthy. But he's managed to shine the light on Obama and convince people that Obama is the elitist. 

One needs only to read Dreams From My Father to know Obama is not an elitist. Sure, he has a big house too and nice clothes and his wife and children are well taken care of, but elitism isn't part of Obama's DNA. Unfortunately, McCain has been successful in using patriotism and race to distract from the real Clueless Wonder. At the same time he has exploited his hero-ness, his POW status for political gain (that works with older folks).

It also occurs to me that the election is no longer just about Obama and McCain. It's about the parties. Obama's vice presidential pick -- Joe Biden -- reinforces Obama's good judgement and is sure to boost America's confidence in Obama's foreign policy.

Housegate kicks off the ideological battle between the republicans and the democrats. Put simply, it's a question of what Americans want: A government that works for the people or one that props up the rich.

How the McCain's housing situation is playing out.

Dr. Phil Attends McCain's Event

You remember Mr. Mental Recession, the guy who lent his economics to McCain.

CNN: Gramm and his wife had front row seats for a conversation today between McCain and Walter Isaacson, the president of the Aspen Institute. The event was put on by the Aspen Institute and not the McCain campaign.

Along with Gramm, other McCain allies in attendance included top campaign adviser Charlie Black, South Dakota Sen. John Thune, South Carolina Sen. Lindsey Graham, Utah Gov. Jon Huntsman, and Lewis Eisenberg, national finance chairman for the Republican National Committee’s Victory '08 campaign.

Obama Not Tough Enough?

I gotta laugh. Obama's too black, not black enough. Too skinny. Too arrogant. Too uppity. He's not patriotic. He's too smart. He's not smart enough. He's too inexperienced. He's racist. He's sexist. Now, he's just not tough enough. I can't wait until the media shines a spotlight on McCain. I'm GETTING BORED.

WaPo: Such attacks have raised worries among Democratic strategists -- haunted by John F. Kerry's 2004 run and Al Gore's razor-thin loss in 2000 -- that Obama has not responded in kind with a parallel assault on McCain's character. Interviews with nearly a dozen Democratic strategists found those concerns to be widespread, although few wished to be quoted by name while Obama's campaign is demanding unity.

"Democrats are worried," said Tad Devine, a top strategist for Kerry who thinks Obama must stay on the high road. "We've been through two very tough elections at the national level, and it's very easy to lose confidence."

Obama's latest ad may be his toughest yet, using words and images to link McCain to President Bush and concluding: "The original maverick? Or just more of the same?"

But Democratic strategists said that it is nothing like the character attacks by McCain, and that the response could be far nastier, perhaps raising McCain's ethical scrape in the Keating Five savings and loan scandal, mocking his family wealth and designer shoes, or highlighting his age. After McCain economic adviser Phil Gramm suggested that the United States has become "a nation of whiners," Democratic strategists said Obama should have immediately started an ad blitz.

Have a little faith, people. Obama is not Kerry and he's not Gore. Nothing against either of those guys, but Obama is a different candidate.

Phil Gramm is McCain's Best Bud

Phil Gramm, Mr. mental recession, is McCain's best bud - a story in Fortune from Feb. As you recall, McCain banished Gramm. But did he really?: 

But economic conservatives should take heart. McCain's chief economic adviser - and perhaps his closest political friend - is the ultimate pure play in free market faith, former Texas Senator Phil Gramm. If McCain follows Gramm's counsel, and most of his current positions are vintage Gramm indeed, his policies as president would represent not just a sharp departure from the Bush years, but an assault on government growth that Republicans have boasted about, but failed to achieve, for decades.

Since retiring from the Senate in 2002, Gramm - a former economics professor at Texas A&M - has been circling the globe as an investment banker at UBS (UBS). In July, McCain called on his old friend to salvage his floundering campaign.

"The campaign was structured on the belief that McCain would be the prohibitive front-runner, so he'd have no problem raising money," Gramm told Fortune. But McCain's support among voters and contributors collapsed when the "surge" in Iraq, which McCain championed, got off to a shaky start.

Why McCain Can't Rally His Base

McCain can't even rally his base. Fiscal conservatives are going batty with McCain's inability to draw comparisons between himself and Obama and to speak competently on fiscal issues. 

That's because McCain, as he himself has said, is not up on economics. Now that Phil Gramm --Mr. Mental Recession --is gone, he's got Carly Fiorina, who's doing her best to help him along.

Oh, and there's this. 
The WSJ story starts off: 

One of the miracles of this Presidential election campaign is that John McCain still has a chance to win, notwithstanding his best attempts to kick it away. In his latest random policy improvisation, the Arizona Senator tried to give up the tax issue.

Ain't that the truth.

On ABC's "This Week" Sunday, Mr. McCain was asked to draw distinctions between his and the current Administration's economic policy. Given an easy opening, the Senator came back with his usual hodgepodge of new child-tax credits, promises to "veto every single pork barrel bill" and close wasteful government agencies, cut dependence on foreign oil and introduce a gas-tax holiday.

Then host George Stephanopoulos raised Social Security. "You're a longtime supporter of the private accounts, as President Bush called for them." Wishing to further distance himself from President Bush, when he could have drawn an equally useful contrast with Barack Obama, Mr. McCain didn't even own up to his support for private retirement accounts, simply saying, "I am a supporter of sitting down together and putting everything on the table and coming up with an answer."

Mr. Stephanopoulos pressed, "So that means payroll tax increases are on the table, as well?" Here came the words that have caused the McCain campaign well deserved grief: "There is nothing that's off the table. I have my positions, and I'll articulate them. But nothing's off the table."

So given a chance to reiterate his opposition to tax increases -- and underscore a main contrast with his opponent -- Mr. McCain punted. Democrats were quick to pounce, with the Democratic National Committee issuing a press release headlined, "McCain Tax Pledge? Not so much." It provided citations of the presumptive GOP nominee asserting that "Senator Obama will raise your taxes. I won't." Expect the "nothing's off the table" line to show up in Democratic TV spots this fall. read more

Dr. Phil Gramm Video

Gramm Like McCain Not Up on Economy

Phil Gramm got hammered by Obama today (go Obama) for his stupid remarks, which he's trying to backtrack on. But the most clueless thing he said is the part about the media making the economy look bad. The economy is THAT BAD. I'm convinced that McCain hasn't an inkling either. 

If he did, he wouldn't keep the Bush tax cuts for the rich. If you ask me, John McCain is looking tired lately. I'm worried about his health. 

CNN: "We have sort of become a nation of whiners. You just hear this constant whining, complaining about a loss of competitiveness, America in decline," said the former Texas senator. "You've heard of mental depression; this is a mental recession."

Gramm also said the media was responsible for fostering unnecessary anxiety over the state of the economy. "Misery sells newspapers," he said. "Thank God the economy is not as bad as you read in the newspaper every day."

A McCain campaign source said that not only did Gramm not speak to the Washington Times on McCain's behalf, but the campaign also did not know he was doing it -- unlike Gramm's meeting Thursday with the Wall Street Journal, in which McCain staff were present.

McCain rejected Gramm's remarks and didn't even know he gave an interview.
In other dumb dumb news, Jesse Jackson's remarks are clearly jealousy. He apologized and Obama accepted.