Republicans are all worked up today because on Barack Obama’s website, some lowly campaign worker quoted Obama as calling AIG the “American Insurance Group.” My second favorite Hotair blogger crows:
As we have seen, McCain has been talking reform for three years, with no assist from Barack Obama. And McCain at least knows the correct name of the company that got its bailout last night from the federal government. Is Team Obama so incompetent that they couldn’t check the name before issuing the statement?
Point conceded (as to the gaffe, not the reform nonsense). Although Obama himself never actually misidentified AIG, next time, I hope Obama’s bloggers are more careful. To be fair, Republican Pravda, Fox News, today said John McCain
underscored his concern for the working public with a declaration bound to cause him angst today. He said flatly he would not support a bailout for the American Insurance Group, the country’s largest insurer.
Yesterday, meanwhile, John McCain himself and not some desk-bound campaign blogger
referred twice to the Securities Investor Protection Corporation, a government-mandated non-profit entity that restores funds to investors with assets in bankrupt or failing brokerage firms, according to its Web site. The acronym is SIPC, but Mr. McCain reversed the letters and both times read the initials aloud as “S-P-I-C.”
Viva McCain!
UPDATE:
Echoing a claim being made by Republicans all around, a pro-McCain reader says that
In 2005, McCain sponsored a bill to put Fannie Mae, Freddie Mac and the Federal Home Loan Banks under a super-regulatory agency. Maybe that is why he received so little in donations from both GSEs.
That would suggest that he foresaw the current crisis and tried to do something to stop it. Wow — busted, Democrats! But what does John McCain have to say about that proposition?
“Two years ago, I warned that the oversight of Fannie and Freddie was terrible, that we were facing a crisis because of it, or certainly a serious problem.”
– Sen. John McCain, in an interview [yesterday], via ABC News.
“So, I’d like to tell you that I did anticipate it, but I have to give you straight talk, I did not.”
– McCain, in an interview with Keene Sentinel on the mortgage crisis in December 2007.
In the linked video, McCain also said he wishes he could offer a solution to the sub prime mortgage crisis, but he’s just not “smart enough.”
There is plenty of blame to go around–greedy lenders, Wall Street brokers and Hedgefund managers; bribed politicians–Democrats and Republicans; incompetent federal bureaucrats; and “give’em cheap money” Greenspan. The Democrats began the ball rolling with their demands that housing be put in the hands of minorities at all costs. The mortgage companies, like Countrywide gave them what they wanted—the subprime mortgage market. Minorities are paying dearly for all this—usurious interest rates during the boom and skyrocketing default rates after the bust. Obama did nothing to blow the whistle on bad lending practices and gouging the weak. Instead he grabbed all the money he could from Fannie and Freddie. Just in time too, they were running short of money. In 2005, McCain sponsored a bill to put Fannie Mae, Freddie Mac and the Federal Home Loan Banks under a super-regulatory agency. Maybe that is why he received so little in donations from both GSEs.