Senator John McCain, the man who unleashed the plague that is Sarah Palin upon us all, is getting a primary challenge from former Representative J.D. Hayworth. As we all know, primary challenges can make politicians say some crazy things. But who knew they could actually drive a politician to become insane?
Check out the whopper McCain told the editorial board of the Arizona Republic:
[T]he four-term senator says he was misled by then-Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson and Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Bernanke. McCain said the pair assured him that the $700 billion Troubled Asset Relief Program would focus on what was seen as the cause of the financial crisis, the housing meltdown.
"Obviously, that didn't happen," McCain said ... "They decided to stabilize the Wall Street institutions, bail out (insurance giant) AIG, bail out Chrysler, bail out General Motors ... What they figured was that if they stabilized Wall Street -- I guess it was trickle-down economics -- that therefore Main Street would be fine."
Wall Street bailout? No one told me it was a Wall Street bailout? Now, while it is true that some of the TARP money went to AIG, Chrysler, and G.M. And that was not part of the original TARP legislation. But is it possible that John McCain didn't know where the TARP money was going? In a word, no. As TPM reports:
In a speech the following day about improvements he was seeking to what became the TARP legislation, McCain made clear that he knew the measure was targeted at Wall Street, declaring: "No Wall Street executives should profit from taxpayer dollars ... The senior leaders of any firm that is bailed out should not be making more than the highest paid government official."
And in a speech the following week, McCain added: "We cannot dedicate more than a trillion dollars to rescue failing institutions, and then go right back to business as usual in Washington." Which failing institutions was he referring to, if not the banks?
It would be bad enough if this were the end of John McCain's bald-faced lies, but he went further. Again, from the Arizona Republic:
McCain said Bush called him in off the campaign trail, saying a worldwide economic catastrophe was imminent and that he needed his help. "I don't know of any American, when the president of the United States calls you and tells you something like that, who wouldn't respond," McCain said. "And I came back and tried to sit down and work with Republicans and say, 'What can we do?' "
So that whole disaster of suspending his campaign was actually Bush's fault, not McCain's. Of course, everything reported from that time says the exact opposite. Next we'll hear that it was Bush who chose Sarah Palin as McCain's running mate, it was Bush who gave McCain that catchy little number about bombing Iran and that hilarious joke about Chelsea Clinton. After all, as John McCain has proven time and time again, "My own ass first". That was his campaign motto right?