Why are you McCain people so desperate? You are just like McCain. No plan. Just criticism of the

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He keeps saying he knows how to find BinLaden and will do that after he is elected. Why isn't he sharing his secret fool-proof plan to capture him with the current administration? He is dangling that promise over our heads. If he actually does have a fantastic plan, he is allowing the whole country to be vulnerable UNTIL he gets what he wants - the presidency. Thumbs down on you, grandpa.

Initially, when McCain announced his "new" mortgage buyout plan, it was simply a restatement of the existing provisions already authorizing the Treasury Department and Federal Housing Administration to purchase, restructure and guarantee mortgages. In fact, these provisions had been promoted and supported by Obama during the legislative process when they were included in the original legislation.

At first, the buyout would have purchased mortgages at their current devalued amount, meaning that the lenders would have to "recognize the loss" they had already suffered. Lenders were required to back only 90% of the original value and homeowners would have been required to share any increase in value with the government, reflecting shared responsibility.

Under McCain's "revised" plan, the treasury would pay FULL face value of mortgages, even though they are no longer worth that amount. He deleted the shared responsibility phrase, thus creating what amounts to a windfall for the banking industry, rewarding the most irresponsible lenders. Under this revision, banks receive full payment, even on artificially inflated values for the homes and assume no loss while tax payers take all the loss of the mortgage value and perhaps even end up losing more in the event that the housing values do not recover. Taxpayers would also not get any benefit should the houses increase in value.

Some lenders, voluntarily or as part of settlements, are working on solutions to the mortgage meltdown that modifying mortgages to help homeowners stay in their homes �WITHOUT costing taxpayers a dime. But if the McCain plan were in place, this process would stop because lenders would know they could always sell their mortgages at full face value to taxpayers.

So, contrary to sam's claims, O is simply promoting protection for the homeowners AND the taxpayer. This is not "punishment" of the lenders. This is an effort to hold the guilty parties responsible for their longstanding shady lending practices and ensure that THEY too shoulder the burden of the costs.

I am left wondering what the bum's rush is on this McCain plan. A mortgage bail-out should not be conceived, defined, proposed, debated or passed as part of another halting, frenetic political stunt designed to make McCain look like he knows what he is doing when it comes to addressing the economic woes of the nation. It requires careful, thourhgtful, informed consideration...the kind that can only take place AFTER the election and in the absence of underlying agendas aimed at rescuing a failing presidential campaign.

McCain doesn't have any solutions except trying to get Palin to tear down Obama with her big mouth.

like he hurts. It makes me uncomfortable to watch. Obama has a significantly larger amt of data in his mind (constitutional law professor, etc) to sort through, gather, and assemble before he responds to a question. It is to his favor that he does not immediately yelp out an answer like a trained seal.

Following his loss to George W. Bush in the 2000 South Carolina primary, John McCain did something extraordinary: He confessed to lying about how he felt about the Confederate battle flag, which he actually abhorred. "I broke my promise to always tell the truth," McCain said. Now he has broken that promise so completely that the John McCain of old is unrecognizable. He has become the sort of politician he once despised.

The precise moment of McCain's abasement came, would you believe, not at some news conference or on one of the Sunday shows but on "The View," the daytime TV show created by Barbara Walters. Last week, one of the co-hosts, Joy Behar, took McCain to task for some of the ads his campaign has been running. One deliberately mischaracterized what Barack Obama had said about putting lipstick on a pig -- an Americanism that McCain himself has used. The other asserted that Obama supported teaching sex education to kindergarteners.

"We know that those two ads are untrue," Behar said. "They are lies."

Freeze. Close in on McCain. This was the moment. He has largely been avoiding the press. The Straight Talk Express is now just a brand, an ad slogan like "Home Cooking" or "We Will Not Be Undersold." Until then, it was possible for McCain to say that he had not really known about the ads, that the formulation "I approve this message" was just boilerplate. But he didn't.

"Actually, they are not lies," he said.

Actually, they are.

McCain has turned ugly. His dishonesty would be unacceptable in any politician, but McCain has always set his own bar higher than most. He has contempt for most of his colleagues for that very reason: They lie. He tells the truth. He internalizes the code of the McCains -- his grandfather, his father: both admirals of the shining sea. He serves his country differently, that's all -- but just as honorably. No more, though.

I am one of the journalists accused over the years of being in the tank for McCain. Guilty. Those doing the accusing usually attributed my feelings to McCain being accessible. This is the journalist-as-puppy school of thought: Give us a treat, and we will leap into a politician's lap.

Not so. What impressed me most about McCain was the effect he had on his audiences, particularly young people. When he talked about service to a cause greater than oneself, he struck a chord. He expressed his message in words, but he packaged it in the McCain story -- that man, beaten to a pulp, who chose honor over freedom. This had nothing to do with access. It had to do with integrity.

McCain has soiled all that. His opportunistic and irresponsible choice of Sarah Palin as his political heir -- the person in whose hands he would leave the country -- is a form of personal treason, a betrayal of all he once stood for. Palin, no matter what her other attributes, is shockingly unprepared to become president. McCain knows that. He means to win, which is all right; he means to win at all costs, which is not.

At a forum last week at Columbia University, McCain said, "But right now we have to restore trust and confidence in government." This was always the promise of John McCain, the single best reason to vote for him. America has been cheated on too many times -- the lies of Vietnam and Watergate and Iraq. So many lies. Who believes that in Afghanistan last month, only five civilians were killed by the American military in an airstrike, instead of the approximately 90 claimed by the Afghan government? Not me. I first gave up on the military during Vietnam and then again when it covered up the death of Pat Tillman, the Army Ranger and former NFL player who was killed in 2004 by friendly fire.

McCain was going to fix all that. He was going to look the American people in the eyes and say, not me. I will not lie to you. I am John McCain, son and grandson of admirals. I tell the truth.

But Joy Behar knew better. And so McCain lied about his lying and maybe thinks that if he wins the election, he can -- as he did in South Carolina -- renounce who he was and what he did and resume his old persona. It won't work. Karl Marx got one thing right -- what he said about history repeating itself. Once is tragedy, a second time is farce. John McCain is both.

cohenr@washpost.com

Bush systematically deregulating (savings and loans - Keating 5) and wall street so that the souless corporations can do whatever they want without any limits. they have removed the safety factors built into the system after the great depression. Well, now we have the situation that deregulation brings. As Romney said at this years' repub convention - McCain is going to go at all the regulations on industry with a weed wacker.

Oh and saw on the news that this bailout will affect even the people who do live within their means because it means that the Jones' house that gets foreclosed on will reduce the amount my house is worth and therefore I lose too! Something needs to be done and quick!

It is not fair to simply point out Obama's plans when you do not mention McCain's either. What are McCain's plans? All he seems to do is "knock" Obama. Oh better consider what Palin has to say too, you know McCain is getting no younger or any healthier for that matter.

Why are you McCain people so desperate? You are just like McCain. No plan. Just criticism of the

The Ugly New McCain