Barack Obama Elected President!

[GoldenDogs]

Wrong again, Wales...

From the CNN:

CNN confirms: McCain, Obama to meet with Bush about bailout

WASHINGTON (CNN) — President Bush has asked both Sen. John McCain and Sen. Barack Obama to join him for a meeting at the White House Thursday afternoon to discuss the economic bailout plan, a White House officials said.

From the Washington Times:

Bush invites McCain, Obama to White House meeting

WASHINGTON (AP) - With extraordinary stakes on the line, President Bush invited both men vying to succeed him and key congressional leaders to a White House meeting to hammer out a massive financial rescue plan.

[George008]

April is right.. Your comment above (in bold) is not...

Apology accepted. Thanks for that Roman.

Sorry about flipping out. I was beginning to have my fill of being called a liar..and having my comments twisted or made up entirely..

[GoldenDogs]

And friends...

I'm afraid I must suspend my campaign for a time here in this forum.

I will be away for a while... today, believe it or not, is my wedding day! In a little more than 3 hours, I'll be married. Yikes!!!

Don't bloody each other too much here in the forum! Go easy on Casey as he'll pretty much be the lone right-leaning voice... I'll be taking the laptop with me on the honeymoon, but not sure if I'll have much time to post. And I'll probably be missing a lot of the news, so I can't post knowledgeably (some would argue I don't do that now! LOL!!!) So if I DO drop by, it will probably be to drop a smartass comment or two.

Take care everyone... If I don't drop a post between now and then... see ya'll sometime next week...

[Jess]

You know the answer to this is not going to be politically popular. Sometimes elected officials have to do what is not popular. The consequences of inaction are worse. I'm embarrassed to say that I actually give GWB for stepping up and pushing what he had to know was an unpopular but necessary action. Hopefully bi-partisan cooperation will make his proposal a little more tasteful. It is not ever going to be politically popular though.

I guess if government is to be blamed, it is because it didn't adequately regulate business. But, even my liberal soul retains enough libertarian principle to hold my nose at regulation. Sadly Wall Street has demonstrated it is more than capable of boogering the system enough to disrupt the market.

You know, I kind of like the idea of establishing the bill in such a way that money is appropriated $200 billion at a time. Perhaps that will keep costs down. I also like saying that when the market rebounds -- and that will be a way down the road -- it is returned to the taxpayer. Overtime, this should make some type of profit.

McCain may have been well-intentioned, but his trip was not well-advised. Even if he had a good compromise, flying in the way he did doomed it. I don't think he ever had a good compromise. Had he been doing it truly out of a sense of duty -- and if he had been smart -- he just would have gone to Washington and joined the negotiations as a senator -- no news conference, no statements about suspending his campaign -- just doing (or appearing to do) the right thing. Had he done that, he would have come out smelling like a rose.

[George008]

Thanks for the links...Bush is very much correct in his belief..

Anyone that doesn't agree, please let me know what you consider the "fundamentals" of our economy to be, and how they are not sound..

[George008]

Did I miss Sarah Palin saying she is going to eat same sex partners for breakfast?

She may have a different outlook than OBama, but their stance on government involvment with gay marraige is the same! They both feel it should be left to the states..

So you would not be in favor of aligning with Israel against the Iranians?..Akmadinajad..has referenced the holy war several times and admittedly hates Israel and all jews. He calls them Zionists..That was their name during the recapture of Jerusalem...

[George008]

Thank God!. I have had enough conversation about this on this thread!

Sorry for my pissy mood as of late, but McCain being accused of debate dodging had really gotten under my skin. I think he was trying to do the right thing, and he was getting slammed by Obama supporters for doing so.

[Roman]

Well, I appologized for trying to pin something on you that you did not say.

The rest of it?

Hmmm.........

[Jess]

Hey congratulations and best wishes. Enjoy your wedding and your honeymoon.

[Roman]

1. He never stopped campaigning.

2. Many do feel he was debate dodging. Because you don't feel that doesn't make those people wrong.

3. To me, it was a photo op. Period. When you sit in a meeting, don't say anything and then when it comes out of your mouth that you have NOT read the bill......I'm sorry, but I'll call a spade a spade.

[Jess]

It was not even a good photo op. It goes back to John McCain making rash decisions. I think it says a lot about how he would govern. There is a reason he has been in the Senate for 26 years and is not in a leadership position.

[Wales2004]

If you need to be right....knock yourself out. I heard a news report in which the reporter stated that John McCain, prior to Bush's address to the nation on Wednesday, asked President Bush to hold a meeting which included him and Obama, . I don't see how that means that Bush didn't invite them because he did invite them....at McCain's request.

I have no intention of disputing this again because I know what I heard and the fact that you don't believe me isn't going to change that for me.

I'll just liken to this to how I heard a report this morning that was worded in such a manner as to turn California taxpayers against their elected officials. They said taxpayers have paid over $220,000 for gas for their officials and named two with the highest gas bills. What they didn't include in their report was whether or not the vehicles were state owned and whether or not the officials filled their gas tanks for official state business. Leaving out some minor details changes the whole face of a story.

[Wales2004]

It is considering that he initiated the invitation and made such a big deal about being there in the first place. When someone makes a big deal about going to do....what you've pointed out is his job....whether or not he was invited is irrelevant. He said he was going there to accomplish something and it was so very urgent and I haven't heard that he's saved the day yet which would have justified the urgency he claimed.

And all you're doing is talking around the issue by saying it doesn't matter since an invitation negates the whole thing. He set the whole urgency wheel in motion before that invite, if I recall correctly, and he told Brian Williams on NBC Nightly News that he hadn't read the three page Paulson proposal at the time of the interview.

I'm sure you'll go on swearing nothing else matters because he was invited. Have fun with that.

[Wales2004]

Don't you need to first be sure what GGL meant before you presume to know how he feels?

I was totally baffled by the reference to the Holocaust to the point where it didn't matter what she said or might have meant after that.

[Roman]

By Dan Balz

It may not be too late for John McCain to salvage his rescue mission for the stalled negotiations over how to stabilize the financial and credit markets. Events are moving that rapidly and unpredictably. But McCain and running mate Sarah Palin can ill afford another day like they had Thursday.

On the basis of little new public information, McCain decided enough progress had been made overnight Thursday to allow him to leave Washington Friday afternoon and participate in the first presidential debate with Barack Obama in Mississippi. But that decision came after a day of turmoil and partisan wrangling.

If McCain believed he could be a constructive force by busting his way into the center of the delicate negotiations between congressional Democrats and Republicans and the White House, he was not able to show it Thursday. The objective evidence is that things got worse, not better, in Washington after McCain arrived. There was a tentative deal, announced by congressional leaders, when McCain landed in Washington. Hours later, there was chaos and recriminations.

Democrats blamed the Republican nominee for injecting presidential politics into the talks. Reality is likely a good bit more complicated and that's why it's impossible to draw any final conclusions about McCain's role. By the end of Friday, there may be a fresh agreement -- in principle at least -- on a modified plan and McCain, standing on the stage with Obama in Oxford, Miss., may be able to claim some credit for a brokering a "breakthrough."

But there are real questions about whether McCain handled all this wisely. When McCain announced his decision to suspend his campaigning to return to Washington, he couched it in the context of a need for bipartisanship in a time of national crisis. But bipartisanship appeared to be alive and well, at least in the Senate.

In reality, what McCain and other negotiators were facing was an intraparty revolt of the kind that has plagued President Bush's second term. House Republicans were in a brewing rebellion over the Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson's bailout plan.

McCain is quite familiar with such rebellions. The same thing happened over Bush's immigration plan, of which McCain was a champion. House Republicans scuttled that deal. Conservative opposition to the Bush-McCain immigration deal also nearly scuttled McCain's presidential candidacy.

What actually happened Thursday still is not clear. One source who was briefed on the lunch meeting of Senate Republicans said that an overwhelming majority of them were ready to support the tentative deal that had been announced that morning until McCain intervened to say he was opposed.

McCain advisers dispute that account. One said McCain neither endorsed nor explicitly opposed the tentative plan. Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-S.C.) said Friday morning that he raised objections to the tentative agreement during the lunch, particularly one element of it having to do with assistance for homeowners. He also said the plan needed buy-in from House Republicans.

"I said the House needs to be consulted here," Graham told me. "We can't ignore the House. We're trying to find a way to get everybody on board."

What was McCain's input at the lunch? According to Graham, "John was getting ready to leave, literally going out the door with me. He said, thank you for all you have done for me. I don't know the terms of the deal. We need a deal. I am appreciative of the need for a deal."

According to Graham, McCain also said he was troubled by the same concerns Graham had voiced. He went on to say, according to Graham, "My desire is to get a deal that protects the taxpayer and I'm not going to sign on to something that doesn't protect the taxpayer."

The irony is that McCain is now working, perhaps as he never has before, to assuage House Republicans, with whom he has battled not only over immigration but also campaign finance reform and other issues. His hope is to get at least enough of them on board to produce a deal that has wider support than the agreement of Thursday.

One mystery in all of this is why it wasn't clear until after senators had announced a deal that House Republicans had another plan in mind. How could Minority Leader John Boehner have issued a joint statement with Speaker Nancy Pelosi on Wednesday night declaring bipartisan progress if his troops were drafting an alternative that would result in turmoil when it surfaced?

No matter how this turns out, one question will be whether McCain needed to go through the theatrics of dramatically suspending his campaign and putting the first presidential debate in jeopardy to make his points that there needed to be more accommodation to the views of House Republicans? Will this still look like political grandstanding, even if there is a deal with broader agreement?

Democrats are working hard to make that view the prevailing interpretation and at this point they are winning the first battle. But McCain has managed some narrow escapes in the past and perhaps he will again. Still, on the basis of what happened Thursday, he has a problem on his hands.

The turmoil in Washington overshadowed Palin on Thursday, and for that Republicans maybe grateful. Her interview with CBS News anchor Katie Couric was perhaps her shakiest performance to date and likely to fuel more discussion of whether she was a wise pick, even if she has energized the Republican base.

She struggled to explain a previous comment about why Alaska's proximity to Russia helps enhance her foreign policy credentials. She muffed a question about talking directly with Iran by misstating the position of former Secretary of State Henry Kissinger, who favors such talks. She accused Obama of being naïve for supporting a position that is the same as Kissinger's. Should she not have asked Kissinger in their meeting why he favored talking to the Iranians when she and McCain do not?

Shortly before noon, McCain's office announced that he was satisfied that there is progress on the negotiations and that he will participate in the debate in Mississippi, then return to Washington to resume talks on the rescue package. He now awaits the judgment of voters on his performance of the past two days.