RUSH: We’re talking about McCain’s speech today. Mr. Snerdley got a call, we couldn’t put the call on the air because the woman was hard to understand, but she was livid at McCain’s speech today. He made a speech, a foreign policy address out in Los Angeles, and the timing for Senator McCain could not have been worse. He gave his speech at noon Eastern time. So Cookie is at this very moment working on excerpting the speech. What did the caller say, sounded just like John Kerry in parts in this speech in terms of making good citizens of the world and expanding trade and borders and this sort of thing. Look, expanding trade’s fine, I’m all for expanding free trade. I’d have to wait to hear the speech. I saw it, but I didn’t hear any of it and I didn’t have time to read what he was saying via closed-captioning. However, I do have an Associated Press story here today out of Santa Ana, California, by Liz Sidoti about McCain’s discussion yesterday of the housing crisis and the options.
There are a couple of huge hits in this piece. Let me give you an example. ‘Republican John McCain on Tuesday derided government intervention to save and reward banks or small borrowers who behave irresponsibly, though he offered few immediate alternatives to fixing the country’s growing housing crisis.’ Well-l-l-l-l, well-l-l-l-l. Now he’s a typical Republican and his media base already lashing out at him, oh, yeah, had a lot of criticism, didn’t offer any alternatives. They quote McCain as saying, ‘I will consider any and all proposals based on their cost and benefits.’ By the way, here’s how they write this. (doing McCain impression) ”I will consider any and all proposals based on their cost and benefits,’ the certain GOP presidential nominee, who has acknowledged the economy is not his strong suit, told local business leaders south of Los Angeles.’ (laughing) So the first two paragraphs, wham, bam. ‘Democrats accused McCain of lacking the skills needed to lead a country on the brink of recession. ‘Instead of offering a concrete plan to address the crisis at all levels, McCain promised to take the same hands-off approach that President Bush used to lead us into this crisis,’ Democratic Party Chairman Howard Dean said in a statement. … McCain, in the midst of a weeklong Western fundraising swing, focused on the home-financing crisis at an event in Orange County as he tried to rebut Democratic criticism of his economic credentials,’ which he himself acknowledged are weak.
‘His pitch, though, offered little in the way of specific proposals to immediately address the crisis, as he stuck with his longtime preference of limited government intervention and letting market forces play out. Later, McCain took issue with the notion that his solutions were thin, telling reporters, ‘I think I’ve laid out some pretty clear principles, some pretty clear proposals today.’ … ‘I will not play election-year politics with the housing crisis,’ he said, adding he would evaluate all proposals. ‘I will not allow dogma to override common sense.’ But the small-government advocate and four-term Arizona senator also put restrictions on how far he was willing to go. … McCain also said that people shouldn’t be able to buy homes with little or no money down such as the interest-only loans that banks have given in the last few years. Lenders, McCain said, should never insure loans when the homeowner clearly does not have skin in the game.
‘As a freshman senator, however, Mr. McCain took a different approach. In early 1991, the Senate’s ethics committee concluded that he ‘exercised poor judgment in intervening with the regulators’ on behalf of banker Charles Keating, Jr. Mr. Keating was a wealthy Arizona real-estate developer and owner of a California thrift that failed during a nationwide savings and loan crisis — when Mr. Keating and other bankers made risky investments with depositors’ money. Mr. McCain was known for accepting contributions from Mr. Keating, flying to the banker’s home in the Bahamas on his company planes and taking up Keating’s cause with US financial regulators as they investigated him. Mr. Keating served more than four years in prison for fraud.’ So McCain goes out, gives what he thinks is a great speech yesterday on the housing crisis and how to fix it, and the AP dumps on him as they dump on all Republicans.
BREAK TRANSCRIPT
RUSH: Last hour, I went through a little dissertation on the notion here that so many Drive-Bys and Democrats are pushing the notion that I, El Rushbo, have aided and abetted voter fraud in Ohio, and that there are serious people who are urging election officials and law enforcement people in Ohio to investigate me for the possibility of indicting me for aiding and abetting voter fraud. The dissertation last hour was: Well, who’s really had a monopoly on the manipulation of voters in elections for decades in this country? It’s the Drive-By Media with their phony polls. They disguise these polls as news. They’re really trying to shape public opinion, not report it. Who was it that tried to influence an election in 2004 with forged documents? Was it not CBS and George Bush’s supposed National Guard service? And those are just two examples. I want to give you another one. I just shared with you a story about John McCain, reported by AP. He was out in California. He’s on a fundraising swing out in the Left Coast. He did a speech on the housing crisis yesterday. AP reports on it today, and they report how he has no credibility on it. He ‘admits’ that he has very little understanding of economics.
They rehash the Keating Five, which had to do with savings and loans going bust because of the credit crisis and so forth and so on, and McCain was involved in it. My question to you, as a means of illustration: How come when Hillary Clinton speaks about the mortgage crisis and comes up with stupid liberal ideas which are bound to fail (which makes them lies) — ‘Well, we’re gonna suspend forecloses. We’re gonna freeze ’em and we’re gonna freeze the interest rates and we’re gonna make sure that…’ just totally, totally bollixing up the entire free market. How come when Mrs. Clinton makes a statement like that, there is no mention whatsoever in the media of Whitewater or Castle Grande, when she brings up her mortgage proposals? She’s had some screwy real estate deals. How come there’s no mention of Mrs. Clinton’s $1,000 bucks into $100,000 in the cattle futures market? Why is there no mention of that when Mrs. Clinton talks about what to do about the overall state of the stock market? How come when Obama mentions his mortgage proposal, there’s no mention of Tony Rezko and the sweetheart deal Obama got to buy his mansion? How come none of those associations of Mrs. Clinton and Obama find their way into news reports when those people are talking about the mortgage crisis?