Local media coverage the day before the big McCain rally in Columbus

Here are some media reports related to McCain’s rally set to be held in Columbus on Monday the 29th. Both articles are from the Columbus Dispatch – which normally endorses GOP candidates.

Along with Sen. Barack Obama, Sen. John McCain has embraced a $700 billion bailout of the nation’s troubled financial industry.

In a telephone interview with The Dispatch from Washington yesterday, McCain said that Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson and Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Bernanke convinced him that the rescue plan is necessary.

“I’m sure everybody understands that this was something that just had to be done,” McCain said. “I’m kind of sorry in a way, but the tone of voice that Bernanke and Paulson used about this crisis, I’ve never heard anything like it in the years that I’ve been in public office, or alive.”

McCain and his running mate, Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin, will appear at a rally this morning at Capital University. In advance of the visit, McCain talked with The Dispatch about the financial crisis and other topics:

Dispatch: Some commentators criticized you for what they called erratic statements and actions last week heading into negotiations on rescuing the economy. Describe how you played a productive role in all this.

McCain: I’ll leave that up to others to make that judgment. This was an issue that was transcendent. I suspended my campaign and came back to Washington because I thought that it was vital to do so. Sen. Obama said he was available to discuss the issue by phone. I didn’t want to phone it in. I’m proud that we were able to get this done, and I’ll give the credit to everybody else.

McCain tells ‘Dispatch’ that bailout is emergency measure ‘to stop bleeding’

Didn’t want to phone it in? It seems McCain going to Washington to butt in the talks actually caused them to break down.

Palin is ideal for southwestern Ohio, with her tough talk and conservative stances on issues such as guns and abortion, said Ryan Barilleaux, chairman of Miami University’s Political Science Department. However, he is surprised by the level of enthusiasm.

“Earlier in his career, John McCain seemed to go out of his way to poke people in the eye, conservatives in particular, and they resented that,” he said. “But now he’s kind of redeemed himself.”

In the town of Monroe, where voter turnout in 2004 was about 80 percent, Ernie Wilson has been cutting hair at Ernie’s Hair Place for 50 years. As the election draws closer, political talk heats up, and Wilson said he hears quite a bit about Palin.

“The one thing I hear all the time is that when she got elected (governor), she said she was going to change things, and she sold that state jet right away,” he said.

Sitting in Wilson’s waiting room, William Murphy, 66, is among the Democrats who scratch their heads at the obsession with Palin, whom he calls “probably the most-inept vice-presidential candidate we’ve had.”

“She’s a fresh face, but they didn’t know nothing about her,” said Murphy, an occupational safety consultant from Monroe.

Palin’s shine has dulled a bit since the Republican National Convention, as some of her assertions, such as her opposition to the “bridge to nowhere,” are rebutted and her experience is questioned.

But folks seem more concerned about Obama’s background. Some are very bothered by his affiliation with the Rev. Jeremiah Wright, his controversial former minister. A few mentioned Obama’s race as a factor.

Jayne Keys, 51, a restaurant controller from Wilmington, questioned Obama’s experience but called Palin a “refreshing face who will bring a lot to the table.”

Asked about Palin’s lack of experience, Keys’ husband, Don, responded: “She’s not running for president. My anticipation is that (McCain) would last for eight years, and she would gain eight years of experience.”

Palin energizes Republicans in their Cincinnati-area stronghold

Cindy McCain did a satellite interview with one of our local TV stations (WBNS Channel 10) ahead of the McCain rally in Columbus on Monday. Notice in the video how the anchor focuses on the tax increase for those making more than $250,000 and giving short emphasis on the tax cuts for the middle class under Obama’s plan. He frames it that way twice in the video. He mentions Palin’s bad interview with Katie Couric last week but spins so Cindy can be a cheerleader.

A few months ago I had to write a letter to the station and complain about their biased reporting favoring McCain and there was only a short mention of the Obama event just after the convention when he stopped in Dublin.

The video does have some comments from Gov. Ted Strickland in Obama’s favor.

Obama makes good showing in first debate

Well John McCain decided to show for the first Presidential debate in Oxford Mississippi on Friday.

After more than an hour and half of non-stop debating I feel that Obama held his own and even scored some good points. What is funny is that McCain has been a Senator for 26 years while Obama has been in the Senate for only about 3 years yet both seemed like seasoned veterans of debate.

Some of the snap polls gave the debate to Obama but the BBC website curiously said McCain won on points.

If McCain threatening not to show up was meant to throw Obama off, it didn’t work.

Favorite line?

Obama: So John, you like to pretend like the war started in 2007. You talk about the “surge,” the war started in 2003. At the time, when the war started, you said it was going to be quick and easy. You said you knew where the weapons of mass destruction were — and you were wrong. You said we were going to be greeted as liberators — you were wrong. You said that there was no history of violence between Shi’a and Sunni, and you were wrong. …if the question is, who is best equipped as the next president to make good decisions about how we use our military, how we make sure we are prepared and ready for the next conflict, then I think we can take a look at our judgment 

I also wanted to share one of my favorite pictures of this election season. It comes from the site Punditkitchen, which lets visitors add captions to photos.

Whenever the concern trolls show up on one of the blogs I read, someone will post this picture in the comments and it cracks me up every time.

Obama Pictures and McCain Pictures
see Sarah Palin pictures

Whew, I am SO glad I was wrong about Sarah Palin

I was one of those who questioned her foreign policy experience but after her field trip to the UN on Tuesday, she’s put my mind at ease.

I got a good chuckle out of the Moose cooking tips she shared with President Hamid Karzai of Afghanistan.

A few years ago I had the pleasure to meet race car driver Bobby Rahal, so catch me driving in the Indy 500 next year. Since I live near a bank, the government will let me deal with the massive Wall Street bail out.

Free Market My Ass!

The high spending crooks on Wall Street ran a few financial institutions into the ground in the quest for millions of dollars in pay and many houses. Now they’ve come home with their hands out asking the government to bail them out.

The same government these same crooks paid off in the 1980s to remove the safe guards that would have helped prevent the meltdown we saw last week.

Senator John “I’m a deregulator” McCain and his economic advisor, former Senator, and bank lobbyist, Phil Gramm, were at the switch and leading the effort to remove government oversight at the time.

What about the free market these Reagan-era politicians got boners over? You get screwed over than you pay the price – right?

Not in the case of course. When it comes to the Wall Street elites it is all about not being responsible for their criminal actions. Kind of like Daddy bailing you out after a Frat boy bar brawl.

One TRILLION dollars is the bill all of us will have to pay for the unethical and criminal behavior.

In the text of the bill to go before Congress there is not ONE word about holding the crooks or their companies responsible for the failure and need for the buy out. Daddy arrives to bail them out.

As Glenn Greenwald writes:

Second, whatever else is true, the events of the last week are the most momentous events of the Bush era in terms of defining what kind of country we are and how we function — and before this week, the last eight years have been quite momentous, so that is saying a lot. Again, regardless of whether this nationalization/bailout scheme is “necessary” or makes utilitarian sense, it is a crime of the highest order — not a “crime” in the legal sense but in a more meaningful sense.

What is more intrinsically corrupt than allowing people to engage in high-reward/no-risk capitalism — where they reap tens of millions of dollars and more every year while their reckless gambles are paying off only to then have the Government shift their losses to the citizenry at large once their schemes collapse? We’ve retroactively created a win-only system where the wealthiest corporations and their shareholders are free to gamble for as long as they win and then force others who have no upside to pay for their losses. Watching Wall St. erupt with an orgy of celebration on Friday after it became clear the Government (i.e., you) would pay for their disaster was literally nauseating, as the very people who wreaked this havoc are now being rewarded. 

Update: Put another way, this authorizes Hank Paulson to transfer $700 billion of taxpayer money to private industry in his sole discretion, and nobody has the right or ability to review or challenge any decision he makes.

The complete (though ever-changing) elite consensus over the financial collapse

Then the same week of the financial meltdown, Mr. Deregulator McCain has an article in a healthcare magazine wanting to do the same thing to health insurance that he and his frat buddies did to the banking industry. McCain has also supported privatizing Social Security – which would have Grandma’s retirement money in the stock market last week if it had happened.

In this video Senator Obama sums everything up: