Don't Pander The Fear

Yeah, Lehman Brothers went tits up this morning, and Merrill Lynch sold itself for fifty cents on the dollar to Bank of America, and AIG is next in line at Henry Paulsen's door with its hand out and its leg up.  Yeah, it's not not a big deal.  Yeah, the Dow plunged three hundred points at the opening bell, was down as much as five hundred points - but did recover some by the end of the day's trading.

Why do I add that last bit of perspective?  Because while this is the easy-money lending chickens coming home to roost, it does not - yet - constitute the entire American economy being in a "crisis".  Black Monday was a crisis; the Great Depression was a crisis; both were triggered by the economic policies that in this campaign fall under the umbrella of Obamanomics.  Which strongly suggests that electing Barack Obama president is the only thing that can bring about a true economic crisis in America.  But we're not in one yet.

I trust you can sympathize, and hopefully empathize as well, with the teeth-grating opening line in this latest "timely" McCain ad:

I know, I know, "straight talk" on the economy from Darth Queeg went out the window when Phil Gramm was pink-slipped out the door for dispensing the genuine article.  That we're NOT in an "economic crisis" is the truth; pandering to the other side's fearmongering just to try and defuse the "out of touch" cliche is a lie that overshadows ever center-right idea he promulgates before and after its utterance.

Case in point:

Bad, bad, bad.  Five uses of the world "crisis" in a single paragraph.  Lots of warmed over populism without any policy specifics or naming of accountable names.  Oh, heavens to Betsy, NO, because that might run the risk of getting [GASP] partisan, and that just wouldn't do in the midst of a do-or-die presidential campaign.

The other side would NEVER do something like THAT - would they?:

Speaking here in Macomb County, referred to as the heart of Reagan Democratic terrain, Biden focused primarily on the economy, pouncing especially on McCain saying again today that he fundamentals of the economy remain strong.

“That’s what John said,” Biden assured a booing crowd. “He says that, ‘We’ve made great progress economically’ in the Bush years. Ladies and gentlemen, ladies and gentlemen, I could walk from here to Lansing, and I wouldn’t run into a single person who thought our economy was doing well — unless I ran into John McCain.”

Actually, we HAVE made great progress economically in the Bush years.  After inheriting Bill Clinton's dot.com bust and recession, absorbing the 9/11 attacks, and later the 2005 hurricane season, and this year's energy price spiral, the Bush tax-cut-fueled economy has nonetheless boomed for the past five years, adding millions of new jobs and shutting up the Doomocrats for a good long time.

Well, that's just Slow Joe being Slow Joe, right?  A stopped clock is right twice a day?  But surely the rest of Team Hussein isn't that dishonest, yes?:

"Today of all days, John McCain's stubborn insistence that the 'fundamentals of the economy are strong' shows that he is disturbingly out of touch with what's going in the lives of ordinary Americans," Obama spokesman Bill Burton said. "Even as his own ads try to convince him that the economy is in crisis, apparently his twenty-six years in Washington have left him incapable of understanding that the policies he supports have created an [sic] historic economic crisis."

Their quote of McCain was cherry-picked from another portion of that same town hall appearance in which Maverick again tried to sound panderingly "in touch":

"The fundamentals of our economy are still strong but these are very, very difficult times. I promise you we will never put America in this position again."

Guess which part of that sentence the Dems cherry-picked. 

So what did it profit Sailor to commiserate in what Senator Gramm spot-on described as "mental recession"?  He's still lampooned by his foes as "out of touch," still grafted at the hip with their cartoon caricature of Dubya.  So why not tout the economic boom of the past five years and the policies that made it possible?  Why not contrast that with the economic disaster of tax increases and explosions of government and galloping socialism and permanent energy crisis that False Messiah promises?  And why not get at the heart of what brought about this so-called "financial meltdown"?:

Banks....should have known better, making massive loans to people who had insufficient verified income, assets, or collateral, to purchase houses and later being surprised to learn these people would not repay them. The repackaging and recombining all grew out of the original decision to approve loans that had little or no chance of being repaid.

There are a lot of reasons why banks started offering these loans, but among them was a bipartisan sense that increasing the number of Americans with a mortgage instead of renting was a national priority....

Once major financial institutions like Frannie and Freddie started reaching out to the sub-prime market, others didn't want to get left behind. This generated a boom in housing prices that was swell for homeowners, for sellers, for the real estate industry, for homebuilders - for everybody except first-time home buyers.

In the end, this financial crisis began because not enough people in authority said "no" when members of the general public said they wanted a loan. They went to the banks and effectively asked for something for nothing. And the banks said "sure."

And why did they do that?  Because they knew the federal government - the taxpayers - We, The People - would be the backstop for their wild lending pitches.  Or, in other words, the S&L "crisis" all over again.

It bears noting that Barack Hussein Obama has been part of the problem, and John Sith McCain wasn't afraid to [AHEM] dish out some trademark "straight talk" - six months ago.  But now?  Punching-bag city.

Ensign Ed is correct that, "The candidate who comes up with an easily understood solution will win the confidence of voters unsettled by the instability."  If Sailor continues to futiley pander to mental recessionists, thus playing right into Doomocrat hands, Rogaine Messiah's Bush-bashing - never far from the conventional wisdom these days - will slow his recent poll surge to a screeching halt.

All I can say is, praise the LORD for Sarah Palin: 

And to think I've been fretting that the Republican ticket's joint campaigning ran the risk of making Darth Queeg look like a fifth-wheel to his own campaign.  Judging by the maunderings he burbles when Barracuda isn't at his side keeping him focused, maybe Maverick should stay on the proverbial "front porch" and let Sarah do the heavy lifting for him.