Viral Video Shows McCain's Lobbyist Connections, Glues McCain to Bush

Loan Titans Paid McCain Adviser Nearly 2 Millions Dollars

John McCain says he's going to take on the lobbyists and the mortgage giants, but the AfroSpear's African American Political Pundit points out:

McCain's campaign manager was paid more than $30,000 a month for five years as president of an advocacy group set up by the mortgage giants Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac to defend them against stricter regulations, current and former officials say. International Herald Tribune, via African American Political Pundit

McCain Brain Locks on African-American Question

When John McCain is asked a two-part question, the second part relating to what he has specifically done for African-Americans, note how his brain locks up.



This is what happens when a compound, complex question is asked and a person has no answer for the second part. Just thinking about the second part of the question dislodges memory of the first part.

McCain Adviser Says Mortgage Problem Exaggerated, Isolated to "Urban Areas"

John McCain has effectively announced that he would ignore Black urban areas if he were president, no matter how much they were suffering. Donald L. Luskin is a chief economic adviser to John McCain. In a Washington Post op-ed of September 14, before the AIG crash and the 700 Billion dollar mortgage bail out, Luskin said:

McCain campaign adviser and former U.S. senator Phil Gramm was right in July when he said that our current state "is a mental recession." Maybe he was out of line when he added that the United States has become "a nation of whiners." But when it comes to the economy, we have surely become a nation of exaggerators. Washington Post

To bolster his contention that the economy is not as bad as everyone says it is, and not as bad as the credit crisis would suggest, he says:

A housing "slump," a housing "crisis"? A "severe" price decline? According to the latest report from the National Association of Realtors, the median price of an existing home is up 8.5 percent from the low of last February. And according to the U.S. Census Bureau, the median price of a new home is up 1.3 percent from the low of last December. Home prices may not be at all-time highs -- and there are pockets of continuing decline in some urban areas -- but overall they've clearly stopped going down and have started to recover. So why keep proclaiming a "crisis" after it's over? Washington Post

Two years ago, articles in USA Today and other national newspapers were pointing to increasing foreclosures and predicting a crisis. But Luskin argues, incredibly, that the mortgage crisis is not that bad because it is mostly limited to America's poorest people, "urban" neighborhoods, [and color groups]:

According to the MBA (Mortgage Bankers Association), 6.4 percent of mortgages are delinquent to some extent, and 2.75 percent are in foreclosure. During the Great Depression, according to Wheelock's research, more than 50 percent of home loans were in default. Moreover, MBA data show that today's foreclosures are concentrated in that small fraction of U.S. homes financed by subprime mortgages. Such homes make up only 12 percent of all mortgages, yet account for 52 percent of foreclosures. This suggests that today's mortgage difficulties are probably a side effect of the otherwise happy fact that, over the past several years, millions of Americans of modest means have come to own their own homes for the first time.

So, Luskin was still lauding and defending the predatory sub-prime mortgages that led to the current crisis, and could not be expected to oppose them even after all that has happened. Moreover, he thinks it is not cause for concern that 6.4 percent of mortgages are delinquent (and perhaps 6.4 percent of American homeowners are at some risk of losing their homes.) And he still hasn't understood that a cancer spread in America's poorest neighboorhoods has metastasized to a full-blown catastrophe for the nation as a whole.

Luskin's insistence that the housing mortgage crisis is limited to "some urban" (where Blacks live), and therefore is not really a crisis at all, is (a) not reassuring for Blacks who wonder whether a McCain Administration would show concern for us, and (b) still shows no understanding for the potential for bad loans in one sector to cause a generalized decapitalization and "run on the bank" in other sectors.

Anyway, how much cherry picking of statistics did Luskin have to do to compare the media price of homes now to the low of last December and declare that all is well? And Luskin cites, of all people, the Mortgage Bankers Association for the comforting belief that "today's foreclosures are concentrated in that small fraction of U.S. homes financed by subprime mortgages." After all that has happened, should the lobbyists for the Mortgage Bankers Association still be relied upon to determine when Bankers' abuses are grevious enough to require regulation, and whether the economy is threatened by their behavior or not?

The fact that John McCain's advisers were still talking like this on September 14 says that McCain is more concerned with reassuring his lobbyists and their mortgage lender clients than he was with preventing a meltdown in the American economy as a whole.

Good Thing We Didn't Privatize Social Security, Like the Republicans Wanted!

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE

Original Graphic Collage

Contact: Francis L. Holland, Esq.
The Francis L. Holland Blog
http://francislholland.blogspot.com
The Truth About McCain Blog
http://truth-about-mccain.blogspot.com
(202) 657-4347
55 (73) 3288-1716
Skype: fazinformatica2005
MSN: francislholland@hotmail.com

How many Americans are wishing they had all of their retirement in mutual funds or the stock market today, after WallStreetizing their entire US Government Social Security retirement expectations? Not many, I'll bet!

Today,

Putnam Investments has closed a $12.3 billion money-market fund to limit losses to its investors, the large mutual fund company said today. The highly unusual announcement is the latest sign that tremendous financial pressures are now threatening even some of the safest kinds of investments. WaPost

The Washington Post says that there was effectively a 'run on the bank' at this fund, with its exclusively institutional investors all demanding their money at once. So, instead of giving the money out on a "first-come, first-served basis", with every successive withdrawal getting less of its money back than the last, until some got nothing at all, Putnam decided to just divide up what was left equally among the investors and liquidate this fund.

I know John McCain thinks the economy is basically sound, but the "bankruptcy" and liquidation of large money-market funds doesn't seem like a good omen to me. In fact, a lot of people have their retirement funds invested in mutual fund accounts, and such people have got to be increasingly nervous today, fearing that their hopes for retirement could be entirely wiped out.

One of the forces that could lead to a lot failures at these funds is that Moody's is downgrading the debt of a lot of banks, funds and other institutions, effectively making it harder and more expensive for them to raise money to cover their obligations. The more Moody's downgrades debt, the more companies will become cash-strapped and go under, in a downward spiral, unless the same brilliant president who got us into this mess somehow finds an unusually brilliant way to get us out.

Now, with money market funds in trouble, we can't help but ask ourselves what a mess we would be in now had we taken the Republican Party's advice and invested all of our Social Security retirement funds in the stock market? Wouldn't there be a lot of middle-aged and elderly people jumping out of windows right now, just like in the Great Depression?

It's a damned good thing we never let George W. Bush and John Syndney McCain, III privatize Social Security to invest the money in the institutions that are now going under!

Francis L. Holland, Esq.
The Francis L. Holland Blog
http://francislholland.blogspot.com
The Truth About McCain Blog
http://truth-about-mccain.blogspot.com
(202) 657-4347
55 (73) 3288-1716
Skype: fazinformatica2005
MSN: francislholland@hotmail.com

I just sent out the above press release, essentially saying that it's a damn good thing we didn't do as Bush/McCain suggested and invest everyone's retirement in the stock market and mutual funds instead of Government Social Security.

Imagine how much more complicated the bailouts would be now if they included ALL of the nation's retirement income!

Is John McCain's Cancer Back

One only has to look closely at photographs of John McCain to see the evidence of cancer ravaging his face. If he were elected, he might be the first American president who was inaugurated with potentially terminal pre-cancerous growths on his face. He might be forced to give press conferences with oozing white gauze strips covering his cheeks.

Of course there is always the possibility that 72 year-old John McCain could survive for eight uneventful years, after having had cancer three times. But, in all likelihood, the cancer would come back at some point, and doctors would be forced to cut his balls-like growths off.

In the above video, a high school student asks McCain if he is simply too old, and McCain calls the student a "little jerk", indicating that McCain may be too angry.

Then, Sarah Palin would become president and American would enter the End Times, when Armegeddon makes us pay all of our debts at once - even the ones we owe to China and all our outstanding credit cards and student loans.

Video Shows McCain Lying about Iraq, Economy, Taxes and Katrina

I think that because John Sydney Mcain, III (or 4th?) lies in the above video about Iraq, the American economy,his position on taxes and Katrina, it's safe to say that John McCain would say anything to get elected.