Rachel Maddown simple explanation of the bailout

She started her show last night with a very simple explanation of what happened to cause the financial meltdown and what the bailout really is! It is so simple that the uneducated or illiterate person can easily understand!

She said and I quote:

"What is this Wall street bailout and how is it being managed? Still taking shape, still hard to understand, lets try a metaphor. Money is Halloween candy and those Wall street bankers are metaphorically speaking are our six year old that went out and got more candy that we'd ever seen or imagined. And with all of that candy sitting there, we parents, the taxpayers, hired a baby sitter to supervise our child only instead of hiring a grown up that fears what happens when six yeas do what six year old's do best eat all of the candy all at once, we instead hired a a seven year old baby sitter, the Federal Government.

So what happened? The six year old ate more candy than it should have on the seven year old watch and got sick all over the carpet. And instead of paying and sending home the babysitter we get her take on this disgusting huge mess of a crisis we are now in the seven year old baby sitter now turns to us and says, well the problem is you are now out of candy. You're gonna need more candy."

She is exactly right and she went on to say the baby sitter we hired to watch over our six year old child, we should have known better than to hire her! She told us a a few years back what she thought of supervision! Now they want so much more candy that it is highly unlikely that much money exists. Seven hundred billion dollars worth with no questions asked!

Jonathon Alter brings up Keating five.

"[Y]ou remember the Keating Five scandal that he was a part of, which, by the way, it's crazy but there's been very little about it in the press in the last few weeks. And McCain thinks he's getting a hard time, he's really getting a free ride on the fact that he was in the middle of the last great financial scandal in our country. But his reaction to that, you would have thought, would have been more regulation of the financial services industry. Instead he moved forward on campaign finance reform after being caught in that scandal, but did nothing – nothing – to try to prevent another savings and loan crisis from happening down the road. He was missing in action when it came to even learning the basic lessons of a scandal that he said taught him all kinds of things that he would never forget."

Finally someone has the balls to bring that up!

Austan Goolsbee Defeats McCain's Economic

GOP takes brunt of blame for economy

CNNPolitics.com:

A new CNN/Opinion Research Corporation Poll suggests that by a 2-to-1 margin, Americans blame Republicans over Democrats for the financial crisis that has swept across the country the past few weeks — one factor that may have contributed to an apparent increase in Barack Obama’s edge over John McCain in the race for the White House.

In the new survey, released Monday afternoon, 47 percent of registered voters questioned say Republicans are more responsible for the problems currently facing financial institutions and the stock market, with 24 percent saying Democrats are more responsible. One in five of those polled blame both parties equally, and 8 percent say neither party is to blame.

Rick Davis paid to lobby for five years on behalf of Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac

Washington Post:

Senator John McCain’s campaign manager was paid more than $30,000 a month for five years as president of an advocacy group set up by the mortgage giants Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac to defend them against stricter regulations, current and former officials say.

Mr. McCain, the Republican candidate for president, has recently begun campaigning as a critic of the two companies and the lobbying army that helped them evade greater regulation as they began buying riskier mortgages with implicit federal backing. He and his Democratic rival, Senator Barack Obama, have donors and advisers who are tied to the companies.

Incensed by the advertisements, several current and former executives of the companies came forward to discuss the role that Rick Davis, Mr. McCain’s campaign manager and longtime adviser, played in helping Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac beat back regulatory challenges when he served as president of their advocacy group, the Homeownership Alliance, formed in the summer of 2000. Some who came forward were Democrats, but Republicans, speaking on the condition of anonymity, confirmed their descriptions.

Colin Powell Disses McCain on Georgia Russia Conflict

POWELL: And I think it was foolhardy on the part of President Saakashvili and the Georgian government to kick over this can, to light a match in a roomful of gas fumes.

SESNO: So you’re saying the Georgians provoked this?

POWELL: They did. I mean, there was a lot of reasons to have provocations in the area, but the match that started the conflagration was from the Georgian side.

AMANPOUR: And yet…

POWELL: And that’s a given.

AMANPOUR: And some debate in the presidential elections has basically been, “We are all Georgians now.” What does that mean? It’s the same as was said after 9/11.

POWELL: One candidate said that, and I’ll let the candidate explain it for himself. […] You have to be very careful in a situation like this not just to leap to one side or the other until you’ve taken a good analysis of the whole situation.

McCain Spokesman Refuses To Say Gramm Won’t Be Treasury Secretary