The "Wall Street Journal" Calls McCain Actions "Mystifying"

"Mystifying" ... reckless ... irresponsible ... undependable ... so many adjectives ... so little time! In our book, any of these words will do to describe John's McCain's diversionary tactic. The Wall Street Journal's 9/25/08 coverage said this:

"Last we checked, the President of the United States was still George W. Bush, the Secretary of the Treasury was still Henry Paulson, the Chairman of the Federal Reserve was still Ben Bernanke, and Congress still had 533 members not running for President who are at least nominally competent to debate and pass legislation.

"So count us as mystified by Senator John McCain's decision yesterday to suspend his campaign and call for a postponement in Friday's first Presidential debate so that he and Barack Obama can work out a consensus bill to stabilize the financial system. This is supposed to be evidence of leadership?"

Just like The Wall Street Journal, we checked too ... and surprise ... surprise (evidently to Mr. McCain), George W. Bush is still President, Nancy Pelosi is still speaker ... all the leadership remains the same. Committee's haven't changed and although not happy about having to fix the problem, our Congressional leadership, i.e., our governing system, was working just like it is supposed to, with leaders both diligently and responsibly working together to fix the Wall Street "melt-down" that bears the risk of drying up credit for everyone.

In short and very simple because space and time is limited here, Secretary of the Treasury Paulson's original plan was three pages ... very simple. It basically said Treasury needs cash to shore up big bank/big investment companies who are failing. $700 Billion, more than the Iraq War & occupation together has cost to date has cost, was the ask.

• Paulson was clear and straightforward about the need and Congress realized it had to act.
• What was missing from the Paulson proposal was protections for the taxpayers.
• Barack Obama called for protections as did Democrats ... pay back to the taxpayers once the companies get stabilized; offer specific assistance to help home owners get their mortgages under control; eliminate the huge golden parachutes Wall Street "big boys" were going to get as their companies went down, and; lock in oversight to make sure all this money is used carefully and legally.
  
• The Congress -- it's leadership and key committee members -- acted. Democrats lead the way to make sure that the money wouldn't be used lightly to line the wrong people's pockets and Republicans were carefully agreeing.

At this point, according to McCain's own statements, he didn't know as as much about the economy as he should, but he thought the economy was strong, later explaining what he meant by strong, i.e., "fundamentals" but not jobs (????) which made no sense at all. Two days ago he admitted that he had not even read the Paulson proposal, and yesterday, there he was mucking things up in Washington.

Readers will remember the farm credit crisis of the 1980's, a crisis that no one in Washington acted responsibly on and for those of us who come from, or remain in, production agriculture, many of us still bear the scars from plunging land values, creditors working to call loans on all too often people that still had equity but were struggling to pay ... and people losing their land.

I think we can agree that our leadership -- Bush is still president and the leaders in Congress really are working diligently to make sure can't let that our country doesn't fail -- either in farm country or worse yet, all across this land -- again.

So what's really going on? The Wall Street Journal also said this,

"... We also understand Mr. McCain's desire to further dress his campaign in "Country First" gilding, as if patriotism and consensus are one and the same, or that getting something done is more important than getting it right."

All this "dancing around" of McCain's is more proof that McCain's judgement is less than solid ... scary, actually.

1. McCain picks Sarah Palin as VP when he barely knows her and even Laura Bush has called her without experience in foreign policy ... no foreign policy experience, can barely pronounce the names of international allies and enemies .. when we are in two wars, and the odds say that McCain himself with his four cancers and his aging issues will likely die in office.
2. McCain admits he doesn't understand the economy ... plays a whole series of political tricks at this very risky time for our whole country.
3. ?????? too many to name here, but skipping the debate surely makes the list.
   

?? This week's nomination for "mystifying" for #3 ... he's afraid to debate Obama and doing all this play-acting about being in charge to avoid having to debate international policy and how these policies are affecting our national economy.

Hello??? McCain is NOT "in charge" ... and NOT "elected" ... and may never be. We the American people deserve to hear what both Barack Obama and John McCain have to say in detail about this mess.