If recent polls are to be believed, John McCain is struggling in Virginia. A Washington Post/ABC News poll has Obama leading 49-46. Survey USA has it 51-46 Obama. On the other hand, Rasmussen has McCain up 50-48. All three polls cover essentially the same period.

I can’t speak for the Commonwealth as a whole, but in the Northern Virginia market McCain is taking a pounding from effective Obama attack ads. Meanwhile, if advertising during Redskins games and selected other sporting events is a guide, McCain is not hitting back. The economy, naturally enough, is the biggest issue for Virginians these days, the Post/ABC News survey found. So McCain needs to get a coherent economic message out (not that I want to sound like a broken record).

McCain no doubt would trade Virginia’s 13 electoral votes for Pennsylvania’s 21. And McCain isn’t doing badly in the Keystone state. The RCP average has him trailing Obama by only 2.5 percentage points. This will increase only marginally when a brand new ARG poll, which has Obama up by 4 points, is factored in.

Jim Geraghty points out that 53 percent of those in the ARG sample are Democrats while Republicans made up only 39 percent of the sample. 2006 exit polls, Geraghty notes, showed the voter pool in Pennsylvania was 43 percent Democrat and 38 percent Republican.

What I want to know is, where does Paulson and Bernanke have THEIR money?

NO, unfortunately Chris Dodd and Barney Frank are exempt from prosecution, as they are sitting Democrat congressmen.

Vashta.Nerada on September 23, 2008 at 9:24 PM

Fixed.

57% of a bewildered and lied-to populace is 57% of nothing.

Puritan1648 on September 23, 2008 at 6:38 PM

Well said, Puritan.

…’cause if I’d've had $500Bil to bail out Goldman, I’d've spent it all already on a weekend in Cancun with a platoon of perky Russian lady tennis players and a swimming pool full of Wesson oil…

…say…anybody got $500Bil ’til payday?

Puritan1648 on September 23, 2008 at 6:26 PM

Dude, if you had that kind of money, it’d be olive oil.

genso on September 23, 2008 at 6:29 PM

Really?? Wow. I just never understood what Popeye saw in her; the perky tennis players sound a lot better to me, but to each his own….

This is a fundamental choice. Do not do this.
CC

Decisions by the Secretary pursuant to the authority of this Act are non-reviewable and committed to agency discretion, and may not be reviewed by any court of law or any administrative agency.

Kill the Act.

Bail-Out Hussein Obama

22% STRONGLY SUPPORT
24% STRONGLY OPPOSE

30% SOMEWHAT SUPPORT
14% SOMEWHAT OPPOSE

**

22 bail-out vs. 24 face up and get real
AT LEAST there are a bit more facing reality than ruining the system. What is the percent of Americans doing the bankrupt route and foreclosure; how much of that 22 strongly for the bail-out are the LEACHES themselves?

Fence sitting with the “good intention” breeze wafting, the SOMEWHAT chickens roost. Wake up and smell the coffee. Being election time, the 30% SOMEWHAT SUPPORT BAIL-OUT seem to be a mixed lot comprising those leaches working the system against propriety but debating whether to commit themselves with the foreclosure clique figuring at this point there’s no shame in corrupting the system since ‘everyone is doing it’. There are bound to be a population of SOMEWHAT SUPPORT BAIL-OUTS who don’t realize what they are about to swallow, but feel comfortable following their politician’s lead, and feel uncomfortable actually taking a stand against the Feds.

The lesson to never forget: when a salesman insists on closing the deal immediately with no time to contemplate logistics, JUST SAY NO!

I wonder if Buffett has information we don’t have?

genso

Count on it

The US Government is talking about bailing out financial companies who are in the business of making money by purchasing the risk of loaning money. They normally make a considerable profit in doing this and have become huge companies. The bailout would…

Conrail eventually was sold off at a profit to CSX, while the RTC was stuck with thousands of properties (seemingly all located near Lake Ray Hubbard east of Dallas) that couldn’t make their cost back in the late 80s, but finally did become viable about 8-10 years later. Not a good situation, but the problem with Gingrich’s plan is it sounds as though he’s offering up the same answers he used in previous economic battles — which might in the long run be the best course, but from a PR standpoint, sounds like he has nothing new to offer in a situation where everyone’s saying we’ve never been here before.

You do realize that if the GOP goes against this then it’s Hello President Obama and the Democratic House and Senate. But I’m sure some will go with that to “teach them a lesson” again…even though we know full well it wasn’t the GOP using Freddie & Fannie as a piggy bank.

Haunchie on September 23, 2008 at 8:48 PM

So, in order for McCain/Palin to have a fighting chance in the election, we need to kick 700 billion into the big black hole in Washington where dollar bills just seem to stick to the side of the funnel? Is that what you’re sayin’? It just feels a little strange, y’know, to be doing it for that reason. Is there a word for it?

So, what if New Gingrich is right, the sky is not falling and the bailout is moving too fast and furious? Warren Buffet rides to the rescue to push back, if not actually save, the imminent demise of the US……

No Bail Out

What we are about to do, in firefighting terms, is to take the water from 10 engine companies and turn it loose on a blaze which may range in size from a flambeaux up to a office building. Nobody has any way to measure the size of the blaze, so the chiefs want to just turn all that water loose in order to make sure the blaze is put out.

The problem (again sticking to firefighting terms) is water damage. We have to assure somehow that all that water actually puts out the fire without causing excessive water damage.

Back to housing, stocks, etc.

Now, do I have any sympathy for a guy who bought a house at 6x his monthly income using his savings so he could flip it in three-six months? Nope. Do I have sympathy for a woman who tried to buy a house for her family and her loan officer fudged his numbers so she’d qualify (after all, in a month or two, that loan would be bundled and the loan officer’s institution wouldn’t need to deal with any fallout, and the officer would have his commission in hand…). I have quite a bit of sympathy — for the woman, not for the loan officer or the institution.

What has happened is that freddie and fannie invented the marketplace where flipping homes became profitable, drove up housing prices to the point where our children could not afford to buy our homes, and the prices are now adjusting themselves so our children can afford to buy our homes. The losers are those who bet that the rise was real and would keep on going — the housing equivalent of engaging in unprotected sex. Who’s going to cover the lost equity, and the loans that have inverted suddenly due to houses in the neighborhood going for peanuts? I sure don’t want to cover the losers, since I didn’t flip homes and make all the money that those guys did early on. Why should I pay to allow them to keep the results of their risky behavior?

How do we make sure the water goes where it should, and doesn’t get sucked up by those who can afford lobbyists?

I think the answer is sort of obvious. Don’t give them a dime — loan it. It’s what they would do in a natural disaster, so lets treat this economic disaster the same. Loan it at a rate tagged to the prime, and eventually we’ll get most of it back.

DfDeportation on September 23, 2008 at 10:18 PM

Exactly we are bailing out morons that Got NINJA loans!(who goes out and gets a loan without a job? come on, do we NOT hold people responsible anymore?)

And we are bailing out Morons that were pushing the NINJA LOANS.. (these are like bars knowingly selling excessive alcohol to alcoholics, or knowingly forcing poor people with gambling addiction into a casino and giving them free drinks)

And were are bailing out the Banks, that Ate the loans up like candy, knowing that the government would buy with tax payer money out IF they defaulted.. (This is the scam).

People can talk about this thing like it is a gift to the fatcats and a rip off of the taxpayer all they want, but if the market collapses and the economy contracts and we go into a depression or a steep recession with job losses and more forclosures, people will blame the Republicans in particular and the government in general for not doing anything to stop it. Their anger over the word bailout will long be forgotten when replaced by the new words unemployed and homeless.

Terrye on September 23, 2008 at 7:50 PM

Perhaps, but why is the only plan to infuse liquidity by buying up other folks’ mistakes? Why not infuse capital directly into the market at negative interest rates? If we’re going to lose up to $700 billion, why not do so by lending out $2 trillion and getting back $1.8 trillion instead of buying $5 trillion of bad debt over time and selling it for $4.3 trillion?

Paulson thinks that rescuing the banks will stabilize the housing market by bringing “fence sitters” into the market. I think he thinks recovery in the housing market means prices going up and bank losses from foreclosure going down. I don’t think anything but stable prices can come of this because prices are returning to normal multiples of income. Thus, the losses in MBS paper will be staggering.

I also think that there is no guarantee that money exchanged for this bad debt goes into new mortgages or even stays in this country. Why lend money to buy a depreciating asset? Why not just take that newfound liquidity and buy MBS paper from entities not part of the bailout plan at half what Paulson will give you for them?

Capitalism doesn’t work when no capital is available.
phronesis on September 23, 2008 at 6:49 PM

Is “central planning” the answer then?