Yeah, but they're good christian babies.

We'll see about that. I'm expecting we'll be able to find some of them heavily tatooed and working in meth factories in a few.

Yeah, but they're good christian meth lab cookers. Hate the sin, love the sinner, right?

The way the McCain campaign is sheltering Palin from reporters asking her questions is downright hilarious.

They chose Charles Gibson for her first interview. According to the New York Times, "He was chosen by the McCain campaign for the first interview partly because he is seen as courteous, mild-mannered and unlikely to play “gotcha” with such an important 'get.'"

Interesting. McCain's campaign is trotting out this incredibly inexperienced, novice politician and they are scared to death of what she might say. So they have isolated her from the dreadful media and she only talks to reporters and answers questions under the campaign's terms.

I think this pretty much says everything you need to know about her. The McCain Campaign itself thinks she is too inexperienced by the way they are protecting and sheltering her.

If she is too inexperienced to face the US media without protection and hand picked interviewers, how in the world will she be able to deal with international powers like China and Russia? How will she deal with Al Qaeda and Iraq? Heartbeat away and McCain is 72.

That is just downright scary.

How many times did the Duchess of Pork fuck up today?

She said that war with Russia may be necessary.

She completely fucked up and had no clue about the Bush Doctrine.

She gave a speech in which she linked 911 with the war in Iraq, as if the Iraqis somehow how attacked us on 911. Not even Bush says that happened.

This is actually fairly painful to watch. And it's not like Gibson was throwing out hard questions.

Do you agree with the Bush Doctrine is pretty straightforward.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Z75QSExE0jU

Where she really messed up was saying all options must be open for Pakistan. Obama has said that the U.S. should be willing to strike against Al Qaeda targets in Pakistan if the country's president refuses.

McCain has assailed him for that position saying, "The best idea is not to broadcast what you're going to do, that's naive," said McCain, who also questioned the very notion of "bombing Pakistan without their permission." ...

Palin seems to agree with the Obama position...

Where are the pictures of Palin from 20+ years ago when she did beauty pageants? Or up in those parts is the winner determined by who catches the biggest salmon? Or who most resembles a salmon?

She's a Pentacostal, fer chrissake, there must be some video of her rolling on the floor speaking in tongues etc. Wouldn't that make for a great campaign ad!

As for the economy: "Deficits don't matter, Reagen proved that." Spoken by Dick Cheney during the first GW term. Anyone else remember those rebate checks that went out pre-9/11 when Cheney and the stooge had only been running the show for a few months? They couldn't build the deficit fast enough. The current deficit is not a consequence of a fuck-up, it was done intentionally.

Does anyone else also think that Palin, with those glasses and her hair "up", looks like the naughty secretary in a porno video, or am I more twisted than I have realized?

SF Hombre: Yes, and yes.

Palin giving a speech in church.
Be afraid:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QG1vPYbRB7k
Be very afraid:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=k84m2orSOaM&feature=related

RG.

And last night she trotted out the "Iraq was involved in 9/11" crap that even the White House has dropped.

She's a nut case. The Repubs have a genuine nut case on their ticket!

An interesting editorial on the lies being told by the McCain/Palin campaign. It begins:

"Did you hear about how Barack Obama wants to have sex education in kindergarten, and called Sarah Palin a pig? Did you hear about how Ms. Palin told Congress, “Thanks, but no thanks” when it wanted to buy Alaska a Bridge to Nowhere?

"These stories have two things in common: they’re all claims recently made by the McCain campaign — and they’re all out-and-out lies."

The complete editorial can be found at http://www.nytimes.com/2008/09/12/opinion/12krugman.html?_r=1&ref=opinion&pagewanted=print&oref=slogin. You may have to log into www.nytimes.com, I'm not sure. If you do, registration on the site is free.

Interesting how Obama's wife gets a$200,000 raise just after Barack was elected to the United States Senate, Michelle Obama received a large pay increase—from $121,910 in 2004 to $316,962 in 2005 at the University of Chicago Hospitals.

Then in 2006 Barack Obama requested $1 million for a new pavilion at the University of Chicago Hospitals, where his wife, Michelle Obama, was a vice president at the time.

So, Barack Obama becomes Senator in 2004, his wife gets nearly a 300% pay raise or almost $200,000 raise in 2005 and then in 2006 Obama puts in an earmark for $1 million for the Hospitals where Michelle Obama works at. And this is legal, how? I thought this is the very thing Obama is going to fight against if we elect him president.

Remember, that $1 million was federal money and YOUR tax money. It was responsible for funding Michelle Obama's pay raise and almost went to building a new wing for her bosses.

Obama is for change alright.....change for he and is wife to make big money for doing nothing. Obama after he lost his race for the House....a political supporter started paying him $8,000 a month in Illinois and then Obama got grants for his supporter's company. Don't any of you find this strange. Do you really thing he is really an agent of change. He just packages the Cool Aid differently! With McCain will have a known character....he has his faults....but really Obama has hidden behind his race and the media doesn't question many his shady arrangements and deal because they are afraid they will be branded racists!

So every member of the Senate and House of Representatives is guilty of this illegal act, since they voted on and approved the budget? Plus the White House, since Bush signed the budget into law? And the Supreme Court, for not using judicial review to overturn it? Damn, everyone's going to prison on this one.

Good pick, Beachman, should we assume that business is slow enough down there in Orlando to allow you time to scour for political nuggets? Perhaps you could use some of that time and your vast riches to go on a mongering trip, maybe get laid?

The entire Federal government sent to prison? Now there is change I could believe in.

Senator Craig is praying nightly he gets sent to prison. No more need to troll airport bathrooms for his pleasure. He will have plenty of playmates soon I hope.

Keith O's review of Pail's interview.

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/3036677/#26681127

Personally, I think Palin is doing a great job. What voters do not realise, is that her primary function, is to distract the public from real issues. I truly believe that the reason why McCain picked her, is to throw people off from what is really important.

Truth is, Obama should have a huge lead over McCain right now, aboslutely no reaon why he should lose the election to McCain. Even Obama himself has had to address why the race is so close. With the addition of Palin, it creates a smoke and mirrors effect that over shadows the elections. McCain is a genius, that was a brilliant move on his part.

As long as the media is concentrating about on Palin not knowing what the Bush Doctrine is or her lies about the bridge to no where. Thats less newcasts about what the real issues that the the candidates should be concerned about.

I highly boubt Palin was McCain's idea but he did have to sign off on it obviously. I do not think He bright enough to come up with a stratagem like that.

His campaign has the heavy footprints of Karl Rove all over it !! I think he is pulling the strings from a distance as he gives his " fair and balanced" analyses on the Vermin News Network.

OTOH, all McCain had to do to stumble into his strategy was think "Hillary's a broad, let me find a broad who won't piss off the base by being pro-choice (this eliminated Kay Bailey Hutchison, for example) and I'll get some of them women Hillary votes."

The rest was sheer luck, or the opposite, the answer to be revealed Nov. 4.

How is it Obama's wife gets a $200,000 raise just a year after Obama gets elected to the Senate. Then a year later the Hospital she works for gets a $1,000,000+ earmark that Obama pushed for. That is the very thing Obama is saying he is fighting against...... doesn't seem like change to me!

Catocony-
I don't think every member of the House and Senate is getting their wife a $200,000 raise. Neither Obama has a valid law license anymore.....they found out they could scam the taxpayers and make more money than even being practicing lawyers!


Thr Obamas are typical liberals....they want everyone else to make the sacrifices while they live the high life and pretend that they are looking out for the average person while they rob them blind.

Just look at the jet setting, wasteful Hollywood elite who tell the rest of us to go green while they make no sacrifices themselves! They have flavored and packaged their Cool Aid so the celebrity ass kissing, mindless under 30 generation is getting drunk on the Cool Aid. That along with the 9 in 10 black vote is what is even keeping Obama close in this race.

BINGO! He said the E-word. Give that man a see-gar! I love this word!

'Elite' is the Fox News word for anyone smarter than an assembly line worker (no slight meant to factory workers, by me anyway). What an idiot Obama is for using a word like audacity in the title of one of his books -- oughta wha?
McCain stuck his neck out using extraordinary in the title of something he co-wrote (extra-wha?) and should apologize to the people of the country for using hi-falutin' half-dollar elitist terms if he wants to get the popular vote. A note to the candidates: never use a word you haven't heard in a country song.

So you have a guy who's been US Senator 20+ years and is so far out of it he thinks a net value of $4 million doesn't mean you are rich. Too funny.
As I heard someone say "in this race the black guy raised by a single mother is cast as the elitist."

But don't forget, Obama went to two elite institutions, Columbia and Harvard Law School. If you look at the undergraduate grades, LSAT scores, quality of undergraduate institutions, and range of real-world accomplishments of each entering class at Harvard you would appreciate what an elite group of people go there. And Obama graduated magna cum laude, or some such thing and was President of the Law Review. Smarty pants elitist prick. Who would want such a person as President?

No, Obama is too smart to be President. We like them dumb, or better yet, stupid. Harvard, Smarvard, don't even consider voting for someone from there. Do you really want to have to rack your brain and concentrate when the President explains his nuanced policies to you after he and his staff have analyzed the country's needs and problems using that elite concept, intelligence? Of course not. Who needs the resulting headache?

McCain is perfect: graduated near the bottom of his class at the Naval Academy and his main qualification for being President is that he sat in a cell for 5 1/2 years, as he constantly reminds us while trying to control his dementia. Of course we all have an obligation to say in the same breath how we respect his service, but does that sort of service really represent a qualification for making the types of decisions a President must make?

We don't know how it is that Palin (that reminds me, did I already talk about McCain's dementia?) eventually graduated, apparently without any honors, from the University of Idaho after attending something like five or six colleges and universities. But whatever the story, I'll bet you one pig with lipstick on it it has nothing to do with elitism or an overabundance of academic achievement.

No, give me the dumb candidates. I don't want an elitist President who is smarter than me or knows more than me. I want someone who I would feel comfortable shooting a moose with (mooseburgers, I love them), or going to one of the AARP meetings, senior division.

Signed,
John Q. Public

Beachman

How many times are you going to make that exact same post ?? Give it a rest ! Seems you have run out of BS to shovel and just re warm the same tired old shit. Just like your republican bros.

Khun mor-

You guys are just like the media....anything Obama has done you just ignore. Anything Obama has done that is wrong or questionable gets a free pass.

You hate Bush so much that it has clouded your judgment so much that you will be part of the cult following.

You've got to see this:

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2008/09/13/tina-fey-as-sarah-palin-o_n_126249.html

Yep, that same damned left-wing bias in the media that nearly brought down Clinton! Beachman is definitely a Fox News hound. Wake up, guy. Or do you consider it un-American for a person to think for themselves? Don't be ashamed to admit it, you'd be with the majority of your countryman.

It's easy to ignore McCain because he's done nothing, just another pac-man, like Biden. The GOP has nothing to offer, all they can do is bash the other guy. Great way to decide who should be president. Vince McMahon should host the debates. Man. I'd love to see someone smash a chair across McCain's back.

Here's a really interesting and extensive look at all of Palin's accomplishments as mayor of Wasilla:

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2008/09/13/AR2008091302596.html?hpid=topnews

Bottom line: she didn't do squat, and pissed off lots of people, but endeared herself to the fringe religious right.

So, imagine having a true believer fundamentalist with zero foreign policy experience a heartbeat away from the presidency, where she could be making the call on whether to send Americans into Iran.

What kind of a leader would choose such a person as his #2? Back to the topic this started with--McCain is really nuts. This move may or may not have been a shrewd political move, but when looked at with respect to what's in the country's best interests, it's an absolute indictment of McCain's judgment.

"I have had a strong and a long relationship on national security, I've been involved in every national crisis that this nation has faced since Beirut, I understand the issues, I understand and appreciate the enormity of the challenge we face from radical Islamic extremism," the Senator declared. "I am prepared. I am prepared. I need no on-the-job training. I wasn't a mayor for a short period of time. I wasn't a governor for a short period of time."

-John McCain, October 2007.

"I'm so proud that she has displayed the kind of judgment and she has the experience and judgment as an executive... She's been commander in chief of the Alaska National Guard ... she's had judgment on these issues. She's had 12 years of elected office experience, including traveling to Kuwait, including being involved in these issues. I'm so proud she has the experience and judgment as an executive."

McCain on Sarah Palin

Talk about a flip-flopper!

Condoms and Cabbages?

Just to clarify (and to stop any rumors that I may have developed Tourette syndrome), Condoms and Cabbages is a restaurant in Bangkok where I saw either the same, or a similar, display.

Here is some more of Obama's "change"

http://www.spectator.org/dsp_article.asp?art_id=13841

What, that guys who ran Freddie and Fannie are supporters? That's your big rumor of the day? Here's a hint - in the DC area, every ex-politico runs something like that. Be it Fannie Mae or Freddie Mac or Sallie Mae, or an investment bunch like Carlyle Group, or a big law firm like Akin Gump or Hogan and Hartson, that's where all the guys end up.

Question - how many top guys at AIG, Lehman or Merrill Lynch are Republicans and big donors? Bear Stearns? Countrywide?

Yes, Condoms and Cabbages.

Bridge to Somewhere!

Obama is third on list of political contributions from Freddie Mac and Fannie Mae

In fact, the top four on this list are all Democratic Party Presidential wannabes. Christopher Dodd is number one on the list, followed by John Kerry, then Barack Obama, and then Hillary Clinton at number four.

Now do a mental tally of how many stories in the press tried to tie Enron's Ken Lay to George W. Bush. And don't forget the full-blown congressional hearings on Enron.

Enron's market cap just before its collapse was about $65 billion dollars.

Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac together back about one-half of the country's $12 trillion mortgage market. That's trillion. With a "T".

So start a new tally in your head. How many articles will you see tying even Christopher Dodd (who is Chairman of the Senate Banking Committee) to the collapse of Freddie Mac and Fannie Mae.....much less Barack Obama or Hillary Clinton?

And start a countdown on when the hearings will begin while you are at it.

The news was full of reports of Sarah Palin's alleged "gaffe" that showed that she "obviously doesn't know how Fannie Mae or Freddie Mac works".

The upshot here is that Barack Obama knows exactly how they operate.

But in his whole 143 work days in the Senate Mr. Obama didn't happen to notice that, however it may operate, it damned sure doesn't work.

Is it any more fair to "tie" Obama to FM and FM like George Bush was "tied" to Enron. Probably not. Nor is it less fair.

The point here is that it won't even be tried by the mainstream national press.

I believe, dear Beachman, that it was Bush and the Republicans, when they controlled the Senate, that pushed through "reforms" in the financial and insurance sectors that basically deregulated the industry and set the stage for the greed-fest that led to our current situation (I know, it's really Bill Clinton's fault...).

And I believe it was the same gang of criminals who lead us into a $3 trillion fiasco in Iraq. And McCain voted for the dereg bills and for every bill to spend more in Iraq.

So keep floating the Fox/Republican Pravda silliness about who got contributions from whom, and continue to ignore who actually cast the votes for the real policies that have actually put the country in serious, serious danger of a protracted recession, job losses galore, etc. McCain's knowledge of economic policy borders on being criminally ignorant. And Palin?

W and Ken Lay were on familiar terms, saw some video from 2001 or so, before things turned to shit for Enron, of W talking up Lay a good ol' boy, or something like that.
Enron did the GOP a big service by screwing up California's electrical supply in 2001 with "emergency blackouts" and thus discrediting the then-governor (a Dem) such that emergency elections were called to have him removed, and the GOP installed their guy (Arnold).

Wow, not only a Fox News dupe, but the Spectator as well! Beachman, you're worse than I thought!

After Palin admits, during the Charles Gibson interview, that she did support funding for the "bridge to nowhere," claiming that it was just a "infrastructure project," days later she gives a speech in Nevada in which she says "I told Congress thanks but no thanks to that Bridge to Nowhere -- that if our state wanted to build that bridge, we would build it ourselves."

So...she lied, then she admitted she lied, and then she repeated the same damn lie!!! She seems to have a problem. Not only is she a liar, she's a repeat offender, and contradicts herself!

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2008/09/15/AR2008091502406.html?nav=hcmodule

This is an interesting piece by Richard Cohen, who was until recently a huge McCain fan. This quote will give you the tone of the piece:

"McCain has turned ugly. His dishonesty would be unacceptable in any politician, but McCain has always set his own bar higher than most. He has contempt for most of his colleagues for that very reason: They lie. He tells the truth. He internalizes the code of the McCains -- his grandfather, his father: both admirals of the shining sea. He serves his country differently, that's all -- but just as honorably. No more, though."

The Republican ticket: Two liars for the price of one. Hell, even Karl Rove says that McCain has probably gone too far with the distortions, misrepresentations, and flat-out lies.

A great Palin send-up by Richard Cohen:

Okay, so I didn’t exactly go into Eye-rack in a technical sense, but I got close and I saw it and that ought to count for something. This is how I know about Russia, and it prepares me for the presidency, because I have actually seen Russia up pretty close, because it is right next to us in Alaska. We know the Russians from eyeballing them.

The truth is, I didn’t actually want to go into Eye-rack, and I don’t know why my campaign said I had been there, visiting the troops in harm’s way. I actually always wanted to stay in Kuwait, because if had gone into Eye-rack that would have made me like all the other politicians who have gone into Eye-rack -- a Washington insider. As a mom, I don’t have to have any experience at these things. You would not ask a man to have any experience, and so I don’t understand why I am being asked about this. Do I think I need this experience?

No, I do not.

It is the same with the bridge to nowhere. I was opposed to it all along, even though I wasn’t and then it could not happen anyway. And so I said, thanks but no thanks. We will build our own bridge if we want to. Which we do not.

Are we going to build that bridge?

No, we are not.

Sometimes, because of the media and the pundits and pollsters, I get attacked for saying things that I did say, but I didn’t want to say, if you know what I mean. I did ask about how to get books out of the library, but not because I wanted to or because I objected to a certain book, but just because I felt like asking the question. Three times.

It’s the same with Eye-rack. To me, being close and being there is the same thing, but better. Because the more you experience, the less you know, which is why experience only counts if you see it, not if you experience it. By peering into Eye-rack, I could tell the surge was working and we were winning and also that it was God’s plan. I knew all this because I am a mom, and I am the only one on either ticket who is. You can look that up.

Could someone please let me know what Bush has really accomplished in the last 8 years to offset some of the bad things?




(Message edited by bluestraveller on September 16, 2008)

This one had me rolling. Enjoy.

Black Comic Introduces McCain
by Jonathan Bines | September 9, 2008
This article was published in the September 15, 2008, edition of The New York Observer.

What up, RNC!
(cheers)
You white motherfuckers!
(laughter)
This conference so white, Helen Mirren tried to snort it!
(laughter)
Y’all the whitest white people in the history of white people. Even Barbara Bush sitting here right now going: ‘These are some white motherfuckers.’
(laughter)
You’re so white, your vice presidential nominee got the word ‘pale’ in her name!
(laughter, applause)
Look at this place. I can’t believe this shit! Y’all couldn’t find one single brother?
(shouting)
There is? Where?
(shouting)
Yo, what up, brother! Looks like you the only chocolate chip in the cookie.
(laughter)
You look like a fly in a glass of milk, yo. Swim! Swim for your life!
(laughter)
Alaska in the house!
(Cheers)
Where the baby daddy at? Where he at?
(crowd noise)
You knocked her up, man? That’s cool. That’s cool.
(silence)
You know that word ‘abstinence’—you know that mean ‘no fucking,’ right?
(laughter)
I guess they didn’t make that clear at the seminar.
(laughter)
‘So I just use this abstinence, that mean we can fuck all we want, right?’ No!
(laughter)
But you know I feel you, man. I do. Because the fact is, you live in motherfucking Alaska! What else is there to do but fuck?
(laughter)
Just fuck! That’s all there is to do! Just fuck!
(laughter)
That’s all Alaska is. Just a bunch of crazy white people fucking!
(sustained laughter and applause)
And you know he got to marry that girl, too. Because … her momma done shot a moose.
(laughter)
She shot a motherfucking moose! Put its head up on the wall and everything. That’s cold, man. That’s like Al Qaeda shit. Post that shit on the Internet as a warning to other moose.
(laughter)
’Cause when a girl’s momma shoot a moose, that’s, like, a red flag for me. I take that shit into consideration. I do! It’s like, ‘Yeah, you fine. No doubt. You real fine. And you got a great personality. And you drunk. But … ain’t your momma the one done shot a moose? I’ll be seeing you later on.’ I practice abstinence with moose-shooting-momma-having bitches.
(laughter)
But it’s time to bring out the white man you’ve all been waiting for. This man is so white, he makes y’all look Mexican.
(laughter)
He spent five long years locked up in a POW camp, and returned a national hero.
(applause)
And fucked every white woman in America.
(sustained applause)
’Cause five years—that makes you horny. And women, they looove to fuck war heroes. Basically, if you were white and female in 1973, you were fucked by John McCain.
(“USA! USA! USA!”)
And then he married a fine rich white girl whose daddy owned a beer company.
(laughter, applause)
And he wants to be president? Sheeet, you already got money, beer and pussy! What the fuck you want with the presidency? Quit while you’re ahead! You’re 72 years old—just drink, fuck, and play golf, you dumb white motherfucker!
(raucous laughter, applause)
Ladies and gentlemen, the next President of the United States of America, John McCain!

www.bercasio.com/movies/dems-wmd-before-iraq.wmv

I think this LB and AIG fiasco is a big omen for what will happen, if McCain gets into office. He (just like Bush) is an advocate for privatizing Social Security!

I can only imagine the horrors that will take place. People will invest their SS the same exact way they do their 401K. If a large financial instiution goes belly up, you will have thousands of senior citizens who will be destitute.

This is a perfect sign to the American public why they should not elect McCain. Because if SS becomes privatized, expect to see senior citizens completely broke, whenever the market takes a hit!!

Beachman

Right on !!

Exactly why we should elect Obama. He had it right from the start. You could add McLame to that distorted series of edited video clips as an even bigger yahoo railing against Sadaam and calling for war.


Don't you think it's odd that Obama was nowhere to be seen or even mentioned in that hatchet job ?

BTW most of the later clips were based on the Democratic senators' belief that the Bush Admin would not outright lie to the American public . They actually were so stupid as to believe that even Bush was above lying about intelligence in order to prop up support for a war we did not need to fight. Read Richard Army's recent comments about Bush/Cheney and the lies they told him to get him to change his mind and vote for the war .


I suppose everything posted at GOP.com must be the god's honest truth cause they ar all good christians and would never lie or try to distort the truth right ??

You could make a series of video clips an hour long containing all the flip flop statements from McLame and that lipsticked pig he is running with. Your arguments are getting weaker by the minute .

http://latimesblogs.latimes.com/presidentbush/2008/09/cheney-lied.html

Dick Armey, a guy who couldn't have found a way to get further to the right than he was. The arch-conservative's arch-conservative! And, amazingly, the friggin' Bush Administration lied to him.

What an amazing world we live in.

And now McCain wants to wear the mantle of Liar-in-Chief. He's working hard to prove he deserves the position.

Let's see. Social Security takes 6.2% of income and employers are forced to match 6.2%. So that is 12.4% of my gross income from the day I started working, in my case 25 years so far. Actually somewhat less of a percent today because it maxed out against the wage base but that is still a substantial sum each year. For that, I have a somewhat wobbly guarantee that absent any other kind of retirement investment I may or may not be able to retire to a quite meager existence at age 65.

Now..... what if instead, 12.4% of my gross income had gone into my 401k for the last 25 years. Let's acknowledge that money would have taken huge hits when the tech bubble burst and when with the banking crisis and let's furthermore acknowledge I have been known to zig when I should have zagged from time to time. With all that......... run the numbers for your own income..... I have for mine..... I would be retiring very comfortably at age 55 free to travel the world and never work again. Add on top of that what I have actually contributed to my real 401k and I would be retiring quite comfortably at about 45. But....... instead that 12.4% of my gross income went into Social Security which may or may not even be solvent by the time I retire.

Now explain to me again why Social Security was better for me than I would have been investing the 12.4% of my gross income myself.

And again, before you spout off a bunch of rhetoric, I invite you to run the numbers on your own income and figure out for yourself how much 12.4% of your lifetime income invested in a 401k from the day you started working would be today, even in a down market in a bad year.

What's that sound? Flip...flop...flip...flop. Ah! It must be McCain on the economy:

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2008/09/16/AR2008091603732.html?hpid=topnews


A decade ago, Sen. John McCain embraced legislation to broadly deregulate the banking and insurance industries, helping to sweep aside a thicket of rules established over decades in favor of a less restricted financial marketplace that proponents said would result in greater economic growth.

Now, as the Bush administration scrambles to prevent the collapse of the American International Group (AIG), the nation's largest insurance company, and stabilize a tumultuous Wall Street, the Republican presidential nominee is scrambling to recast himself as a champion of regulation to end "reckless conduct, corruption and unbridled greed" on Wall Street.

"Government has a clear responsibility to act in defense of the public interest, and that's exactly what I intend to do," a fiery McCain said at a rally in Tampa yesterday. "In my administration, we're going to hold people on Wall Street responsible. And we're going to enact and enforce reforms to make sure that these outrages never happen in the first place."

McCain hopes to tap into anger among voters who are looking for someone to blame for the economic meltdown that threatens their home values, bank accounts and 401(k) plans. But his past support of congressional deregulation efforts and his arguments against "government interference" in the free market by federal, state and local officials have given Sen. Barack Obama an opening to press the advantage Democrats traditionally have in times of economic trouble.

In 2002, McCain introduced a bill to deregulate the broadband Internet market, warning that "the potential for government interference with market forces is not limited to federal regulation." Three years earlier, McCain had joined with other Republicans to push through landmark legislation sponsored by then-Sen. Phil Gramm (Tex.), who is now an economic adviser to his campaign. The Gramm-Leach-Bliley Act aimed to make the country's financial institutions competitive by removing the Depression-era walls between banking, investment and insurance companies.

That bill allowed AIG to participate in the gold rush of a rapidly expanding global banking and investment market. But the legislation also helped pave the way for companies such as AIG and Lehman Brothers to become behemoths laden with bad loans and investments.

McCain this week:

"Two years ago, I warned that the oversight of Fannie and Freddie was terrible, that we were facing a crisis because of it, or certainly serious problems," Sen. John McCain, R-Ariz., told CBS this morning. "The influence that Fannie and Freddie had in the inside the Beltway, old boy network, which led to this kind of corruption is unacceptable and I warned about it a couple of years ago."

And Straight Talkin' John McCain just 10 months ago:

"But so, in this whole new derivative stuff, and SIBs and all of this kind of new ways of packaging mortgages together and all that is something that frankly I don’t know a lot about. [...]"
"But I don’t know of hardly anybody, with the exception of a handful, that said ‘wait a minute, this thing is getting completely out of hand and is overheating."
"So, I’d like to tell you that I did anticipate it, but I have to give you straight talk, I did not."

Here we have an example not of McCain the flip-flopper, but of McCain the liar. That "straight talk" stuff was great during the primaries, but apparently he now feels the need to impress us with his foresight on our economic problems. Sadly, it's a lie. And the former straight talker is now just a liar.