More duh from McCain

In the midst of the bond collapse which means cities and CCAGs and Caltrain has problems raising money and may even have lost some in the collapsed financial institutions McCain proposing to have the government replace/reset bad mortgages with new ones at lower value with lower payments to keep people in their homes.

McCain's always been the more pragmatic politician on the latest issue, a sort of Johnny-come- lately. There is campaign finance reform, global warming, oversight of Pentagon spending, we don't torture, etc.. The problem has been the results. Take the last one for example. If someone had proposed torture ten years ago they would have been yelled out of the room, considered a crazy person, out of touch, a Klan nut. Then Charles Manson takes over the White House and everyone is marching under the holy cross of Abu Grahib. So McCain after saying he had the experience and was a supporter of Geneva Conventions then proceeds to embrace reform (torture reform sounds nuts) in name only, i.e. excepting the special circumstances of the presidency (which was claimed) and putting a few ridiculous restrictions in elsewhere ( which wasn't claimed and was now watered down.) Instead of saying, it's unacceptable to live in a world in which torture can be discussed rationally, we got the present dispicable situation.

You can see the same thing with Campaign Finance. After reform, media, friends, and issue groups were legal to bring in much more money than was previously possible, completely tilting the elections in favor of sound bites and entertainment and the stupendously crazy claims from the competing like Obama raised $60M in September. Can you imagine how much that would feed instead of feeding Fox and ABC?

So I'm wary of johnny come lately touching another important issue and adding his special blend of incompetence; which comes from a past understanding of a problem, instead of the social morality of the global community. For one thing what is he trying to solve? Is it the decline in home prices which is dragging down everything or an attempt to arrest the bleeding from bad mortgages? The latter may already be solved by the bank defaults and the federal buyout. Its a small function of the problem: which is that entities like Fannie Mac and Mae who did not have toxic loans also collapsed when valuations dropped for their legal loans. These issues in taxes, revenue, and spending also need to arrested by negatively capitalizing the loses in the entire market with similar formulations used in the real estate market segments of the Federal Reserve.