Who Won The Debate?
WHY?
HP-Obama-McCain Video, Highlights
11:15 – Nico Pitney: Several positive reviews for Obama. A CBS News instant poll finds:
40% of uncommitted voters who watched the debate tonight thought Barack Obama was the winner. 22% thought John McCain won. 38% saw it as a draw.
68% of these voters think Obama would make the right decision
about the economy. 41% think McCain would.49% of these voters think Obama would make the right decisions about Iraq. 55% think McCain would.
Two focus groups, one by GOP pollster Frank Luntz and another by Democratic pollster Stan Greenberg, both declare Obama the winner. Independents in the MediaCurves focus group “gave the debate to Obama 61-39. They also think he won every individual segment. Republicans gave the debate to McCain 90-10, Democrats to Obama 93-7.”
And even Time’s Mark Halperin weighs in with his grades: Obama A-, McCain B-.
Update: Even Dick Morris (!) says Obama won.
11:10 – Nico Pitney: ThinkProgress notes: “ABC’s Charlie Gibson and PBS’s David Brooks and Marks Shields note that McCain never looked at Obama during the debate.”
10:55 – Sam Stein: The main phrases to come out of the debate may have been Obama saying John McCain is “right” on several things, or McCain calling Obama naive and unprepared, but sometimes what matters more is what is not said. And the Obama campaign hits at this with a statement from Bill Burton:
AP’s Debate Factcheck: Kissinger, Ahmadinejad, And More
AP-Some facts got lost when Democrat Barack Obama and Republican John McCain confronted each other over the financial crisis, Iraq, the oil industry and more in the first presidential debate of the 2008 general election.
Here are examples:
OBAMA: “Senator McCain mentioned Henry Kissinger, who is one of his advisers, who along with five recent secretaries of state just said we should meet with Iran _ guess what? _ without preconditions.”
MCCAIN: “Dr. Kissinger did not say that he would approve face-to-face meetings between the president of the United States and (Iranian President Mahmoud) Ahmadinejad. He did not say that. He said there could be secretary-level and lower-level meetings. I’ve always encouraged that.”
THE FACTS: Obama was right that Kissinger called for meetings without preconditions. McCain was right that Kissinger did not call for such meetings to be between the two presidents.
In a foreign policy forum Saturday, Kissinger said: “I am in favor of negotiating with Iran.” He went on to say “I actually have preferred doing it at the secretary of state level” and the U.S. should go into the talks with “a clear understanding of what is it we’re trying to prevent. What is it going to do if we can’t achieve what we’re talking about? But I do not believe that we can make conditions for the opening of negotiations. We ought, however, to be very clear about the content of negotiations and work it out with other countries and with our own government.”
OBAMA: “John, you want to give oil companies another $4 billion” in tax breaks.
THE FACTS: The $4 billion in tax breaks for the oil companies is simply part of McCain’s overall corporate tax reduction plan and does not represent an additional tax benefit. In other words, the corporate tax reduction applies to all corporations, oil companies included. Both Obama and McCain have proposed eliminating oil and gas tax loopholes.
MCCAIN: “I’ve been criticized because I called for the resignation of the chairman of the Securities and Exchange commission.”
THE FACT: McCain did eventually call for the resignation of SEC Chairman Christopher Cox. But he first said that if he were president he would fire him, a step a president cannot take with the head of an independent regulatory agency. This is what McCain said on Sept. 18 during a rally in Iowa: “The chairman of the SEC serves at the appointment of the president and, in my view, has betrayed the public’s trust. If I were president today, I would fire him.”
OBAMA: Said he would make sure that the health care system “allows everyone to have basic coverage.”
THE FACTS: If that sounds like universal health coverage, it’s not. Obama picked his words carefully _ stopping short of claiming outright that his plan provides health care for all. He promises to make health insurance affordable but would only require that children have coverage, not adults. Estimates of how many would remain without insurance vary. Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton said during the primaries that Obama’s plan would leave 15 million people uninsured.
MCCAIN: “We had an energy bill before the United States Senate. It was festooned with Christmas tree ornaments. It had all kinds of breaks for the oil companies, I mean, billions of dollars worth. I voted against it; Senator Obama voted for it.”
THE FACTS: Obama did vote for a 2005 energy bill supported by President Bush that included billions in subsidies for oil and natural gas production. McCain opposed the bill on grounds it included unnecessary tax breaks for the oil industry. Obama voted to strip the legislation of the oil and gas industry tax breaks. When that failed, he voted for the overall measure. Obama has said he supported the legislation because it provided money for renewable energy.
OBAMA: “We’re also going to have to look at, how is it that we shredded so many regulations? We did not set up a 21st-century regulatory framework to deal with these problems. And that in part has to do with an economic philosophy that says that regulation is always bad.”
THE FACTS: Some of the abuses that occurred stemmed from the 1999 repeal of a Depression-era law that separated banks from brokerages. In legislation supported by former President Clinton and Robert Rubin, now a top Obama adviser and Treasury secretary in the Clinton administration, this separation was ended _ allowing banks and insurance companies to sell securities.
But while regular banks were strictly regulated by the government, Wall Street banks and other non-bank institutions _ many of the same institutions whose abuses led to the current crisis _ were allowed to operate with less regulation.
MCCAIN: McCain said Obama voted to cut off money for the troops in Iraq.
THE FACTS: Despite opposing the war, Obama has, with one exception, voted for Iraq troop financing. In 2007, he voted against a troop funding bill because it did not contain language calling for a troop withdrawal. The Illinois senator backed another bill that had such language _ and money for the troops.
MCCAIN: In a discussion of how the government could shrink spending, he said: “Look, we are sending $700 billion a year overseas to countries that don’t like us very much.”
The comment echoes one he made in his acceptance speech at the Republican National Convention earlier this month, when he was talking about money the U.S. spends on foreign oil. FactCheck.org says the U.S. this year is on track to spend $536 billion on imported oil _ not $700 billion _ and nearly one-third of that comes from friendly nations: Canada, Mexico and Britain.
MCCAIN: “Senator Obama twice said in debates he would sit down with Ahmadinejad, (Venezuelan President Hugo) Chavez and (Cuban President) Raul Castro without precondition.”
OBAMA: “Now, understand what this means, ‘without preconditions.’ It doesn’t mean that you invite them over for tea one day. … There’s a difference between preconditions and preparation. Of course we’ve got to do preparations, starting with low-level diplomatic talks, and it may not work, because Iran is a rogue regime.”
THE FACTS: Obama was asked in a July 2007 debate whether he would be willing to meet “without precondition” with the leaders of Iran, Syria, Cuba and other rogue nations. Obama replied, “I would,” adding that it was ridiculous to think that America is punishing such nations by refusing to speak with them. Time and again since then he has been forced to defend the statement, both by Democrats during the primaries and by Republicans.
Obama has tried to draw a distinction between a precondition and preparation. He has argued that he wouldn’t demand that a foreign leader give in on some fundamental issue before the two sides met to discuss the dispute. But he has said “preparations” would require diplomatic contacts to gauge whether a formal meeting would be useful and to lay the groundwork for those talks
MCCAIN: Defending his call for Cox’s resignation, McCain said the country has lost the sense of accountability exemplified by Allied commander Dwight Eisenhower on the eve of D-Day. He said Eisenhower wrote one letter to be released in the event of victory, which praised the troops, “and he wrote out another letter, and that was a letter of resignation from the United States Army for the failure of the landings at Normandy.”
THE FACTS: Eisenhower prepared to take responsibility in the note to be delivered in the event of D-Day disaster but did not offer to resign.
The full text:
“Our landings in the Cherbourg-Le Havre area have failed to gain a satisfactory foothold and I have withdrawn the troops. My decision to attack at this time and place was based on the best information available. The troops, the air and the Navy did all that bravery and devotion to duty could do. If any blame or fault attaches to the attempt, it is mine alone.”
___
Associated Press Writers Tom Raum, Lolita Baldor and Anne Gearan contributed to this report.
Seven debate points
POLITICO-. Obama’s frequent agreements with McCain (”You’re right, John”) — ridiculed by Bill Bennett and Pat Buchanan — might be a plus for him. It made a guy who has been accused of being aloof and arrogant look gracious and bipartisan — and McCain’s no-eye-contact combativeness might undercut his message of being a uniter in a time of crisis.
2. Obama’s opposition to the surge, which was a sine qua non in the primary, is emerging as a big, big problem in the general. And he should have done a half-dozen more overseas trips. To Waziristan.
3. Interesting that Obama chose not to criticize McCain for his role in the disastrous White House meeting — which suggests his people think the back-to-DC gambit was a net-positive for McCain.
4. Interesting too that Obama chose not to explicitly criticize McCain’s use of the word “maverick” to describe himself.
5. That McCain “Ahmadinejad” moment will have a YouTube life of its own.
6. McCain, whose hero is the raconteur Reagan, inhabited many of his answers with flesh-and-blood people and visual anecdotes (soldiers, mothers, Kissinger, the Putin poster). Obama spoke passionately about people’s needs (health care costs, gas prices, the human toll of the Iraq war) but doesn’t seem as enamored of inserting people, by name, into a narrative. And that makes a brilliant memoirist seem less comfortable as a teller of other people’s stories.
7. A few months ago, it seemed that Obama’s plea to restore America’s prestige was turning off people who already questioned his patriotism — but times have changed. Americans are hungry for a return to prosperity, peace — and superpower self-confidence.
FROM TOWNHALL FYI
TH-Furious spinning on TV after presidential debate
By DAVID BAUDER
It was hard to tell if there were more disagreements voiced during the presidential debate between John McCain and Barack Obama or after it on television.
The networks’ pundits moved quickly Friday to put into perspective a debate seen by tens of millions of Americans, although a clear winner didn’t emerge. It was a reflection of cautiousness, the closeness of the race and the influence of furious spinning by both campaigns.
“There was no knockout, and maybe no knockdown, but McCain was on the offensive throughout,” commentator William Kristol said on Fox News Channel.
His fellow panelist, Juan Williams, quickly retorted, “I thought Barack Obama put John McCain on the defensive all night.”
David Gergen, CNN analyst, said, “McCain needed a clear victory tonight and I think that eluded him.”
Said Fox’s Chris Wallace, “I think the McCain campaign is very happy tonight.”
And they weren’t even the professional spinners, who try to buttonhole reporters backstage with opinions about as predictable as the sun rising every morning. It has become a cliche of debate nights, a room television networks know they should avoid but can’t seem to help themselves.
Another useless TV trick: those meters that can be twisted up or down to show how a voter is responding to a particular passage. Mostly, they looked indecipherable.
Obama’s campaign put forward vice presidential candidate Joe Biden for post-debate interviews, and he appeared on all the news networks. His Republican counterpart, Sarah Palin, was nowhere in sight.
Several commentators noted how Obama said at a number of points that McCain was right about something, which could either be construed as a sign of weakness or one in which he was willing to lead in a bipartisan manner. McCain pounded home the point that there were several things his opponent didn’t understand about the world.
“McCain very often seemed like he was condescending, seeming like he was lecturing Barack Obama,” CNN’s Gloria Borger said.
The first debate, which was supposed to be centered on foreign policy, concerned the economy for about 40 minutes. Moderator Jim Lehrer of PBC kept his questions simple to get the men talking. He even tried to push the candidates to address each other instead of the camera, a request that had some success as more heated foreign policy exchanges came.
Snapshot polls by both CNN and CBS News showed Obama with a clear advantage among voters in how people perceived the debate performance. CBS monitored a roomful of uncommitted voters and when asked who won the debate shortly after it was done, the number of people who raised their hands for Obama was more than double than those for McCain
It was hard to tell if there were more disagreements voiced during the presidential debate between John McCain and Barack Obama or after it on television.
The networks’ pundits moved quickly Friday to put into perspective a debate seen by tens of millions of Americans, although a clear winner didn’t emerge. It was a reflection of cautiousness, the closeness of the race and the influence of furious spinning by both campaigns.
“There was no knockout, and maybe no knockdown, but McCain was on the offensive throughout,” commentator William Kristol said on Fox News Channel.
His fellow panelist, Juan Williams, quickly retorted, “I thought Barack Obama put John McCain on the defensive all night.”
David Gergen, CNN analyst, said, “McCain needed a clear victory tonight and I think that eluded him.”
Said Fox’s Chris Wallace, “I think the McCain campaign is very happy tonight.”
And they weren’t even the professional spinners, who try to buttonhole reporters backstage with opinions about as predictable as the sun rising every morning. It has become a cliche of debate nights, a room television networks know they should avoid but can’t seem to help themselves.
Another useless TV trick: those meters that can be twisted up or down to show how a voter is responding to a particular passage. Mostly, they looked indecipherable.
Obama’s campaign put forward vice presidential candidate Joe Biden for post-debate interviews, and he appeared on all the news networks. His Republican counterpart, Sarah Palin, was nowhere in sight.
Several commentators noted how Obama said at a number of points that McCain was right about something, which could either be construed as a sign of weakness or one in which he was willing to lead in a bipartisan manner. McCain pounded home the point that there were several things his opponent didn’t understand about the world.
“McCain very often seemed like he was condescending, seeming like he was lecturing Barack Obama,” CNN’s Gloria Borger said.
The first debate, which was supposed to be centered on foreign policy, concerned the economy for about 40 minutes. Moderator Jim Lehrer of PBC kept his questions simple to get the men talking. He even tried to push the candidates to address each other instead of the camera, a request that had some success as more heated foreign policy exchanges came.
Snapshot polls by both CNN and CBS News showed Obama with a clear advantage among voters in how people perceived the debate performance. CBS monitored a roomful of uncommitted voters and when asked who won the debate shortly after it was done, the number of people who raised their hands for Obama was more than double than those for McCain.
Consensus for either side will undoubtedly harden as the debate quickly gets reduced to sound bites and Youtube clips.
“Is the race now different than it was at 9 p.m. eastern time?” asked ABC commentator George Will. “The answer I think is no. This wasn’t a game changer. Both had their familiar personas. Barack Obama was the rather tweedy professor conducting a national seminar. John McCain was a rather hotter personality, the national scold.”
Pundits didn’t need a calendar to start anticipating the next debate, between Biden and Palin. It’s scheduled for Oct. 2.
Television networks will find out in a few days whether the McCain-Obama debate could claim the ultimate record of most-watched presidential debate ever.
The standard was set in 1980, when 80.6 million people watched that campaign’s only debate between President Jimmy Carter and Republican challenger Ronald Reagan. TV audiences that big typically gather only once a year, for the Super Bowl.
The most-watched debate since 1980 was the second of three between the first President Bush, Bill Clinton and Ross Perot in 1992, seen by just under 70 million people. The first debate in 2004 between President Bush and John Kerry was seen by 62.5 million, Nielsen Media Research said.
This was an awful debate, just awful. Lehrer seemed as if he wanted the candidates to have some sort of tift ala reality television. The format was probably to blame for the overall boring presentation.
Obama probably won, though, all in all. McCain seemed too nervous for the first half of the whole thing and refused to even looked Obama in the eye even one time. AND Obama handled McCain easily on the economic portions. All McCain had to do was portray Obama and the Democrat’s plan as being a burden on ‘main street’ (I’m sick of hearing that stupid term) while the Republicans were fighting for the best interest of ‘main street.’ Instead, he ranted on and on about earmarks!
I think Dick Morris said it best, That’s what we (republicans) get for nominating the wrong guy. Romney would have walked all over Obama on the bailout business and on the foreign policy part.
Aubrey
I am not sure about foreign policy but I do agree on the economy Romney would of done a much better job than Obama.
Why do you think Romney would handle the economy better?
His hands were as deep into the financial misdealings on Wall St. as anyone.
At what point has Romney sounded an alarm about the coming financial storm? Did he know and wasn’t saying? Or did he not know. Either way, he failed to alert anyone.
I still don’t understand why folks want to hire a fox to guard the hen house.
There are a lot of brilliant financial/economic minds out there who haven’t been lured by the color green.
Ron Paul is THE only “primetime” politician who has been honest about where we are headed.
How is Romney a “fox?” He has been a successful business man – is he guilty for being successful?
I don’t criticize him for being successful.
But look, he was successful in the capital markets. The same markets that are now having major upheavals.
Did he NOT know that there were major systemic problems?
Or
Did he know that there were major systemic problems?
Answer that question, and then we’ll proceed from there.
Ezra Klein sums up the debate for me:
Give McCain this: He did an extremely good stylistic job in an extremely hard situation. I doubt he could have offered a better performance. But the polls suggest that undecideds broke hard for Obama anyway. Which suggests that McCain’s problem is what he’s saying, not how he’s saying it. McCain has every right to be angry: He would have been an excellent, maybe unbeatable, candidate in 2000 or 2004. Instead, he’s facing down the excesses of his own ideology in 2008. And that’s what McCain doesn’t understand. He’s not behind because he doesn’t deserve this, or because he’s not served his country honorably. He’s behind because events have disproven his agenda. Because the success of the surge does not outweigh the blunder of Iraq. Because the appeal of tax cuts does not outweigh the costs of deregulation and wage stagnation. And even the best debate performance can’t obscure that.
FYI
Why Voters Thought Obama Won
TPM has the internals of the CNN poll of debate-watchers, which had Obama winning overall by a margin of 51-38. The poll suggests that Obama is opening up a gap on connectedness, while closing a gap on readiness.
Specifically, by a 62-32 margin, voters thought that Obama was “more in touch with the needs and problems of people like you”. This is a gap that has no doubt grown because of the financial crisis of recent days. But it also grew because Obama was actually speaking to middle class voters. Per the transcript, McCain never once mentioned the phrase “middle class” (Obama did so three times). And Obama’s eye contact was directly with the camera, i.e. the voters at home. McCain seemed to be speaking literally to the people in the room in Mississippi, but figuratively to the punditry. It is no surprise that a small majority of pundits seemed to have thought that McCain won, even when the polls indicated otherwise; the pundits were his target audience.
Something as simple as Obama mentioning that he’ll cut taxes for “95 percent of working families” is worth, I would guess, a point or so in the national polls. Obama had not been speaking enough about his middle class tax cut; there was some untapped potential there, and Obama may have gotten the message to sink in tonight
By contrast, I don’t think McCain’s pressing Obama on earmarks was time well spent for him. One, it simply is not something that voters care all that much about, given the other pressures the economy faces. But also, it is not something that voters particularly associate with Obama, as the McCain campaign had not really pressed this line of attack. If you’re going to introduce a new line of attack late in a campaign, it has better be a more effective one that earmarks. And then there was McCain’s technocratic line about the virtues of lowering corporate taxes, one which might represent perfectly valid economic policy, but which was exactly the sort of patrician argument that lost George H.W. Bush the election in 1992.
Meanwhile, voters thought that Obama “seemed to be the stronger leader” by a 49-43 margin, reversing a traditional area of McCain strength. And voters thought that the candidates were equally likely to be able to handle the job of president if elected.
These internals are worse for McCain than the topline results, because they suggest not only that McCain missed one of his few remaining opportunities to close the gap with Barack Obama, but also that he has few places to go. The only category in which McCain rated significantly higher than Obama was on “spent more time attacking his opponent”. McCain won that one by 37 points.
My other annoyance with the punditry is that they seem to weight all segments of the debate equally. There were eight segments in this debate: bailout, economy, spending, Iraq, Afghanistan, Iran, Russia, terrorism. The pundit consensus seems to be that Obama won the segments on the bailout, the economy, and Iraq, drew the segment on Afghanistan, and lost the other four. So, McCain wins 4-3, right? Except that, voters don’t weight these issues anywhere near evenly. In Peter Hart’s recent poll for NBC, 43 percent of voters listed the economy or the financial crisis as their top priority, 12 percent Iraq, and 13 percent terrorism or other foreign policy issues. What happens if we give Obama two out of three economic voters (corresponding to the fact that he won two out of the three segments on the economy), and the Iraq voters, but give McCain all the “other foreign policy” voters?
http://www.fivethirtyeight.com/
FYI
57 Million Watched Presidential Debate: Nielsen Estimate
MC-Preliminary Nielsen data from 55 cities where it operates so-called “people meters,” set-top boxes that monitor television viewing, shows that a third of all TV sets were tuned into Friday night’s debate between Barack Obama and John McCain. Nielsen won’t release final data until Monday, but if the trend from the 55 metered markets holds steady, it would mean about 57 million people watched the debate.
The city with the highest percentage of viewers was St. Louis, where 52 percent of the TVs were tuned to the debate, reflecting either an inordinate civic-mindedness or a complete lack of actual lives, take your pick. The lowest was Phoenix, with only about 24 percent, which might mean that they’re confident their guy McCain has already won, or that they’re sick of him, take your pick again. South Florida was somewhere in the middle, with about 37 percent of the TVs on the debate.
Here’s the complete list of Nielsen’s metered markets. “Rating” means the percentage of all TV sets that were tuned to the debate; “share” is the percentage of TV sets that were actually in use that were tuned in.
FYI
USA-Fact check: Context of key debate claims
Economy
The claim: Obama said the financial meltdown on Wall Street was caused by “eight years of failed economic policies promoted by George Bush, supported by Sen. McCain.”
The facts: McCain voted against two of the most important parts of President Bush’s policy — the 2001 and 2003 tax cuts. He supports them now and says that he will keep the tax cuts in place if elected president.
Earmarks
The claim: McCain said Obama “asked for $932 million in earmarked and pork-barrel spending” since becoming a senator in 2005. Obama said earmarks account for $18 billion in federal spending, a small fraction of the federal budget.
The facts: Earmarks are the special-interest spending provisions inserted into spending bills by members of Congress. Obama requested $860.6 million in earmarks for fiscal years 2006 through 2008, according to the non-partisan watchdog group Taxpayers for Common Sense. Like most lawmakers, he successfully obtained a fraction of them: $98.6 million of the $321.8 million he requested in 2008, for example, the group said.
Obama correctly noted he did not make any requests for earmarks for the 2009 fiscal year that begins Oct. 1. Taxpayers for Common Sense says earmarks in the current fiscal year totaled $18.3 billion. The White House’s Office of Management and Budget, which uses a slightly different definition of earmarks, put the total at $16.9 billion. The total amount of federal discretionary spending (not including mandatory spending on entitlements such as Social Security and Medicare) is about $1.2 trillion a year.
Obama’s voting record
The claim: McCain said Obama has the most liberal voting record in the Senate.
The facts: Obama was ranked the most liberal senator by the National Journal for 2007. He was ranked 16th out of 100 senators in 2005, his first year in the Senate, and tied for 10th with one other senator in 2006, the magazine’s annual analysis shows.
Iraq and Afghanistan wars
The claim: McCain said Obama voted against funding for troops in Iraq and Afghanistan. Obama said McCain predicted U.S. forces would be greeted as liberators by Iraqis.
The facts: Obama was one of 14 senators who voted against a $120 billion bill to fund war operations in Iraq and Afghanistan in May 2007. Obama said at the time and repeated during the debate that he voted against that funding bill because it did not include a timetable for withdrawing U.S. troops from Iraq. Obama did vote in favor of other Iraq spending bills. McCain did say that U.S. troops would be greeted as liberators — a common view, particularly among Republicans at the time — including in a March 2003 appearance on MSNBC.
Iran Revolutionary Guard
The claim: McCain criticized Obama for opposing a Senate measure calling on the Bush administration to declare Iran’s Revolutionary Guard Corps a terrorist organization.
The facts: Obama has said, as he did in response to McCain, that he opposed an amendment to a Pentagon authorization bill that called for designating Iran’s Revolutionary Guard Corps as a terrorist organization because the measure may have implied an endorsement of military action against Iran. Both Obama and McCain missed votes last year on that amendment and on the bill containing it, however. Both Obama and McCain were co-sponsors of a separate bill that would have called on the Bush administration to designate Iran’s Revolutionary Guard Corps as a terrorist organization. The measure also would have tightened U.S. sanctions on Iran and penalties on U.S. firms doing business in Iran through subsidiaries. The bill did not pass, although the House passed a similar measure on Friday.
Diplomatic talks with Iran
The claim: Obama was put on the defensive by McCain for saying the United States should be willing to talk to Iran without preconditions. In response, Obama said former secretary of State Henry Kissinger endorsed his position. McCain said Kissinger did not mean president-to-president talks.
The facts: Kissinger said in a CNN interview that aired Sept. 20: “I am in favor of negotiating with Iran.” He said he would do it at a very high level almost immediately. “I actually have preferred doing it at the secretary of State level,” he said. As for conditions, he said: “But I do not believe that we can make conditions for the opening of negotiations. We ought, however, to be very clear about the content of negotiations and work it out with other countries and with our own government.”
ON THE WEB: Read transcript of Kissinger’s remarks
Russia-Georgia conflict
The claim: McCain criticized Obama’s response to the conflict last month between Russia and Georgia, saying Obama called for restraint on both sides. McCain said that was “a little bit of naïveté.”
The facts: Shortly after the conflict erupted, Obama released a statement condemning the violence. “Now is the time for Georgia and Russia to show restraint, and to avoid an escalation to full scale war,” the statement said. It went on to say that “Georgia’s territorial integrity must be respected.” Bush had a similar statement that day; White House spokeswoman Dana Perino called on “all parties, Georgians, South Ossetians and Russians to de-escalate the tension and avoid conflict,” and “restart their dialogue.”
Taxes
The claim: McCain said Obama “has voted in the United States Senate to increase taxes on people who make as low as $42,000 a year.”
The facts: The 2009 budget resolution, a non-binding document that Obama supported, assumes that all of President Bush’s tax cuts expire at the end of 2010. That would cause taxes to rise on middle-income taxpayers. However, Obama has said he would continue Bush’s tax breaks for those making under $250,000 a year.
Health care
The claim: Obama said he would “make sure that we have a health care system that allows for everyone to have basic coverage.”
The facts: Obama says his health care plan would make health insurance available to everyone, not actually cover everyone. His plan would require coverage for all children — but adults could still choose not to have health insurance. FactCheck.org, a non-partisan project of the Annenberg Public Policy Center of the University of Pennsylvania, reported that experts it consulted estimated between 15 million and 26 million people would not buy health coverage under Obama’s plan because it does not require them to do so. Total costs of Obama’s plan — or McCain’s, for that matter — are difficult to determine because many specific details are left out.
Afghanistan
The claim: McCain repeated his charge that Obama has not held any hearings on Afghanistan as chairman of a key Senate subcommittee with jurisdiction over Europe and NATO.
The facts: While McCain’s charge is true, it’s also true that Obama’s running mate, Sen. Joe Biden, tends to hold the major hearings at the committee level as chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, rather than leave that to subcommittees. When the full panel held a hearing on Afghanistan and NATO’s role there in January of this year, Obama was at a Democratic debate in California.
CM
I’m still trying to learn what I can about all of this mess, but it seems that the crux of all of this stems from institutions giving mortgages to unqualified people AND even more to blame are the idiots who accepted home loans they couldn’t afford. Also, from what I’ve been able to glean (though I haven’t been able to find the specific law yet) is that this was mandated by Congress in an effort to create home-owning equality for low income people (minorities).
As far as I know, none of this happened to be the business of Mitt Romney. DOR, on the other hand, IS an economist. Where were all his warnings? Maybe he did warn the readers of Control Congress, I just don’t remember it.
As for LH’s comment, no, that stupid debate wasn’t McCain’s best. It wasn’t even Obama’s best. It was awful all the way around: McCain looked bad but some points; and, Obama said very little but looked okay while he said it . . . or didn’t say it.
Start reading some financial blogs Aubrey. They are generally non-partisan, although these days you’ll find a few of them really pissed at the Bush administration, but most agree that our current broken finance model has been going on for some time.
The big turn seemed to be around the time they repealed (1999) the Glass-Steagall Act that had been passed immediately after the great depression.
Nouriel Roubini’s blog is always good if you want the to hear the truly cataclysmic economic forecasts.
Calculated Risk is also very good, and has been really focusing on the mortgage markets for a very long time.
FinancialSense.com has some pretty good editorials on economics and the markets.
And my personal favorite… for all the doom and gloom news you can handle… The Breaking News page at LifeAfterTheOilCrash.net. They may be a little over the top (but then again they have a point), but their news page has all the worst stuff you can imagine… crop shortages, oil shortages, bank failures, etc. All the stuff that will keep you up scared at night. This site scared the sh*t out of me a little over two years ago. I’ve had my eye on the peak oil situation ever since.
Enjoy.
My other post is in moderation.
As for all the schleps who got in over their head on a mortgage, or were wildly speculating, think about this.
Who is lending the money? The consumer or the bank?
Who is the more sophisticated financial expert/professional? The consumer or the bank?
If you lend someone $100 and he doesn’t give it back to you, whose fault is it? What’s your personal responsibility to make sure that the borrower can pay you back?
The consumer is so far outmatched when it comes to financial issues that it’s not even funny. Banks know exactly who to target; they have 100% of your lending and buying behaviors all mapped out. They know what you spend your money on and where you spend it better than you do. Scary.
The mortgages are just the tinder that got this fire going.
The real damage being done is due to the Collateralized Debt Obligations (CDOs) that were sold by large investment banks. Read about them, it’s a good starting place.
According to Wikipedia the top underwriters of CDOs were: Bear Stearns, Merrill Lynch, Wachovia, Citigroup, Deutsche Bank, and Bank of America Securities.
See a pattern?
I had a similar conversation with my conservative sister-in-law. She works for a federal housing program in Michigan that is basically a lender of last resort. All of the people she deals with are people who have basically abused their credit so badly that they have no where else to go. She felt like our current crisis was because of all these little fools that she was dealing with. But the reality is that these little fools really are just a very, very small drop in a very, very large bucket.
The bottom line is that this house of cards was going to fold sooner or later. It just so happens that it was the residential mortgage market that pulled the first card.
Thanks for the links, I’ll give ‘em a look.
Here’s a good discussion of mark-to-market vs. mark-to-model. It may help you to understand some of the finance side of this mess.
On record for me on the bailout…if they let go of half of it in a short amount of time, the scheme they hope to pull off, to manipulate prices within the market for the purpose of increasing participation and instilling confidence…
The dollar’s value will drop, and the trajectory of economic (fundamental) statistics will not be effected, and the financial cycle will conclude in its own way on its own timetable.
The credit-worthiness side of this bailout will remain unaddressed, and for that reason, lenders won’t suddenly go back to ignoring risk (either in purchasing loans generated by a 3rd party, or providing credit to risky borrowers).
Foreign repatriation of US dollars earned from exports can provide confidence if the inflow picks up, but this is a double-edged sword, because that indicator not trending up as result of the bailout will be interpreted to mean that the rest of the world doesn’t trust that the plan will work.
At that point, middle-class tax cuts and investments in infrastructure, research and technology…that’s how we’ll have to work our way out of it. Trade barriers to protect our markets have to become the norm, and the financial services industry must be regulated.
The videos are great from Kahn!
Thanks!!
You got master mind on le + ‘ – ‘ + basename(imgurl) + ‘(’ + w + ‘x’ + h +’), that\’s why you could able to write a article like this, hats off mate – keep up the good work….Home Equity Loans Interest Rates In The United Ki