The Respectfully Republican Conversation

Bush calls McCain, Obama, leaders to White House

4 hours ago

WASHINGTON (AFP) - US President George W. Bush is set to host White House rivals John McCain and Barack Obama, as well as top lawmakers, for unprecedented economic crisis talks on Thursday, a spokesman has said.

The news came as the US president, at pains to convince wary lawmakers to adopt his administration's 700-billion-dollar Wall Street rescue plan, took his case to the US public in a prime-time televised speech.

Bush, who telephoned Obama around 7:30 pm (1130 GMT), hopes "to work on driving toward a bipartisan and timely solution on the financial rescue package," said White House spokesman Tony Fratto.

Fratto said leaders from both major US parties and both the Senate and House of Representatives were also to attend the highly unusual sit-down amid fears that US inaction could trigger a global financial meltdown.

Democratic presidential hopeful Barack Obama has said he would attend a White House meeting on the financial crisis, and stressed his view that the first 2008 US presidential debate should go ahead as scheduled Friday.

"A few moments ago, President (George W.) Bush called Senator Obama and asked him to attend a meeting in Washington tomorrow, which he agreed to do," Obama spokesman Bill Burton said Wednesday.

"Senator Obama has been working all week with leaders in Congress, (Treasury) Secretary (Henry) Paulson, and (Federal Reserve) chairman (Ben) Bernanke to improve this proposal, and he has said that he will continue to work in a bipartisan spirit and do whatever is necessary to come up with a final solution.

News of Obama's decision to join Bush and McCain for discussions on the US economy comes as White House spokeswoman Dana Perino said Bush would announce in his 9:01 pm (0101 GMT Thursday) speech that the proposal he champions "is the right decision" in order to stave off a "once in a century crisis in our financial markets."

With six weeks before US elections, opinion polls show the US public is deeply divided on what to do, with many ready to blame the vastly unpopular president and his Republican party -- itself split over Bush's remedy.

I have to wonder who actually has the power in the U.S., is it the President or Congress...someone from the U.S. can you set me straight on this?

Summer-  Here is a little more info

http://www.usconstitution.net/consttop_sepp.html

Finally, I am back with electricity!  2 weeks almost in 90 degree days can be very trying.  The mosquitios grew to riding size.  I found a product to get rid of the mosquitos, and got power all on the same day!  We were very lucky, not a twig on my property.  My town did look like a disaster zone because of all the trees down, but it's almost all cleaned up now. 

I've been listening to the radio and to my surprise, I can't find one liberal commentator here on the airwaves.  They are all behind McCain and Palin 100%.  One guy almost had a stroke over Obama not wanting to go back to congress and deal with this credit mess today.  He kept replaying Obama's sorry excuses from yesterday.  "If you need me just call".  They'd call Hillary first.  I know the dems are choking over who can denounce McCain first over trying to use this as a ploy, but I think he's doing the right thing, and so does every commentor on the radio think the same, and their callers.  So, I've had two weeks of pure McCain love.

I do have a question.  The last I heard was something about Obama talking with the President of Iraq over not advertising the troop withdrawal until he becomes President.  What happened to that?  Was it a bogus report?  Can anyone fill me in? 

Rosemary - glad you survived Ike! Two weeks without power is too much. I bet you can't find a liberal commentator on the radio - you're in TEXAS! Ha!

Someone called into a radio station here and said "It is 3 a.m. and President Obama gets the "call". His answer "you guys work on it and let me know if you need me"." I think this just shows how he will handle a crisis if he is president. Remember all the criticism Pres Bush got for being in Crawford when Hurricane Katrina hit. I would expect both of them to be in Washington to make sure the measure that passes is something that they can live with if either of them is elected. Of course Obama's thinking is if I don't have any say then if it doesn't work I can blame someone else and of course if it does work he will take all the credit for it anyway.

Rosemary -  here is the article from the New York Post on the Iraq troop withdrawal.

Last updated: 2:34 pm
September 16, 2008
Posted: 4:02 am
September 15, 2008

WHILE campaigning in public for a speedy withdrawal of US troops from Iraq, Sen. Barack Obama has tried in private to persuade Iraqi leaders to delay an agreement on a draw-down of the American military presence.

According to Iraqi Foreign Minister Hoshyar Zebari, Obama made his demand for delay a key theme of his discussions with Iraqi leaders in Baghdad in July.

"He asked why we were not prepared to delay an agreement until after the US elections and the formation of a new administration in Washington," Zebari said in an interview.

Obama insisted that Congress should be involved in negotiations on the status of US troops - and that it was in the interests of both sides not to have an agreement negotiated by the Bush administration in its "state of weakness and political confusion."

"However, as an Iraqi, I prefer to have a security agreement that regulates the activities of foreign troops, rather than keeping the matter open." Zebari says.

Though Obama claims the US presence is "illegal," he suddenly remembered that Americans troops were in Iraq within the legal framework of a UN mandate. His advice was that, rather than reach an accord with the "weakened Bush administration," Iraq should seek an extension of the UN mandate.

While in Iraq, Obama also tried to persuade the US commanders, including Gen. David Petraeus, to suggest a "realistic withdrawal date." They declined.

Obama has made many contradictory statements with regard to Iraq. His latest position is that US combat troops should be out by 2010. Yet his effort to delay an agreement would make that withdrawal deadline impossible to meet.

Supposing he wins, Obama's administration wouldn't be fully operational before February - and naming a new ambassador to Baghdad and forming a new negotiation team might take longer still.

By then, Iraq will be in the throes of its own campaign season. Judging by the past two elections, forming a new coalition government may then take three months. So the Iraqi negotiating team might not be in place until next June.

Then, judging by how long the current talks have taken, restarting the process from scratch would leave the two sides needing at least six months to come up with a draft accord. That puts us at May 2010 for when the draft might be submitted to the Iraqi parliament - which might well need another six months to pass it into law.

Thus, the 2010 deadline fixed by Obama is a meaningless concept, thrown in as a sop to his anti-war base.

Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki and the Bush administration have a more flexible timetable in mind.

According to Zebari, the envisaged time span is two or three years - departure in 2011 or 2012. That would let Iraq hold its next general election, the third since liberation, and resolve a number of domestic political issues.

Even then, the dates mentioned are only "notional," making the timing and the cadence of withdrawal conditional on realities on the ground as appreciated by both sides.

Iraqi leaders are divided over the US election. Iraqi President Jalal Talabani (whose party is a member of the Socialist International) sees Obama as "a man of the Left" - who, once elected, might change his opposition to Iraq's liberation. Indeed, say Talabani's advisers, a President Obama might be tempted to appropriate the victory that America has already won in Iraq by claiming that his intervention transformed failure into success.

Maliki's advisers have persuaded him that Obama will win - but the prime minister worries about the senator's "political debt to the anti-war lobby" - which is determined to transform Iraq into a disaster to prove that toppling Saddam Hussein was "the biggest strategic blunder in US history."

Other prominent Iraqi leaders, such as Vice President Adel Abdul-Mahdi and Kurdish regional President Massoud Barzani, believe that Sen. John McCain would show "a more realistic approach to Iraqi issues."

Obama has given Iraqis the impression that he doesn't want Iraq to appear anything like a success, let alone a victory, for America. The reason? He fears that the perception of US victory there might revive the Bush Doctrine of "pre-emptive" war - that is, removing a threat before it strikes at America.

Despite some usual equivocations on the subject, Obama rejects pre-emption as a legitimate form of self -defense. To be credible, his foreign-policy philosophy requires Iraq to be seen as a failure, a disaster, a quagmire, a pig with lipstick or any of the other apocalyptic adjectives used by the American defeat industry in the past five years.

Yet Iraq is doing much better than its friends hoped and its enemies feared. The UN mandate will be extended in December, and we may yet get an agreement on the status of forces before President Bush leaves the White House in January.

Of course the Obama campaign denied it and of course the press bought it (surprise).

Hi Rosemary---So glad to see you are safe!  We missed you and were worried.

As to your question abot the NYP article- It seems that there may have been some genuine misunderstanding here............  

Zebari may indeed have misunderstood........

http://hotair.com/archives/2008/09/19/abc-bush-officials-support-obamas-account-that-he-didnt-try-to-undermine-negotiations-with-iraq/

Thanks Suz and Susie.  It is so nice to be in A/C again.  I can't stop enjoying it.  I picked a good place to be in for IKE.  I hardly heard the storm but for our windows rattling a bit.  Of course I had to go down to the lobby to be part of it.  And found half the people outside under the car garage to watch it.  So I had to do the same.  We couldn't see anything, it hit at 3AM.  Then I realized I'd have to walk up 4 flights of stairs back to my room with no lights on the stairs.  Live and learn.

Thanks for the reports.  It was dropped so fast, one minute Bill Bennett was talking treason, then the next day, not a word about it.  Even Hannity didn't say anything about it which isn't like him at all. 

I got my McCain/Palin yard sign up, my neighbors want one too.  I'm going to bring it in every night because I'd like to keep it till election day. 

Suzie, I agree, Bill Clinton is definately a McCain supporter after watching that video, so is Biden.  I've been hearing all his gaffes lately.  Now I have to go find the Katie Couric interview with Palin.  I think I'll have to see if there is any wagering going on about Biden being asked to get mysteriously sick before the election, so they can ask Hillary to fill in.

Interesting from a very controversial woman. LOL  Haven't check out it for truth. 

http://www.humanevents.com/article.php?print=yes&id=28714   They Gave Your

Mortgage to a Less Qualified Minority by Ann Coulter (more by this author) Posted 09/24/2008 ET
Updated 09/24/2008 ET
On MSNBC this week, Newsweek's Jonathan Alter tried to connect John McCain to the current financial disaster, saying: "If you remember the Keating Five scandal that (McCain) was a part of. ... 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."

McCain was "in the middle of" the Keating Five case in the sense that he was "exonerated." The lawyer for the Senate Ethics Committee wanted McCain removed from the investigation altogether, but, as The New York Times reported: "Sen. McCain was the only Republican embroiled in the affair, and Democrats on the panel would not release him."

So John McCain has been held hostage by both the Viet Cong and the Democrats.

Alter couldn't be expected to know that: As usual, he was lifting material directly from Kausfiles. What is unusual was that he was stealing a random thought sent in by Kausfiles' mother, who, the day before, had e-mailed: "It's time to bring up the Keating Five. Let McCain explain that scandal away."

The Senate Ethics Committee lawyer who investigated McCain already had explained that scandal away -- repeatedly. It was celebrated lawyer Robert Bennett, most famous for defending a certain horny hick president a few years ago.

In February this year, on Fox News' "Hannity and Colmes," Bennett said, for the eight billionth time:

"First, I should tell your listeners I'm a registered Democrat, so I'm not on (McCain's) side of a lot of issues. But I investigated John McCain for a year and a half, at least, when I was special counsel to the Senate Ethics Committee in the Keating Five. ... And if there is one thing I am absolutely confident of, it is John McCain is an honest man. I recommended to the Senate Ethics Committee that he be cut out of the case, that there was no evidence against him."

It's bad enough for Alter to be constantly ripping off Kausfiles. Now he's so devoid of his own ideas, he's ripping off the idle musings of Kausfiles' mother.

Even if McCain had been implicated in the Keating Five scandal -- and he wasn't -- that would still have absolutely nothing to do with the subprime mortgage crisis currently roiling the financial markets. This crisis was caused by political correctness being forced on the mortgage lending industry in the Clinton era.

Before the Democrats' affirmative action lending policies became an embarrassment, the Los Angeles Times reported that, starting in 1992, a majority-Democratic Congress "mandated that Fannie and Freddie increase their purchases of mortgages for low-income and medium-income borrowers. Operating under that requirement, Fannie Mae, in particular, has been aggressive and creative in stimulating minority gains."

Under Clinton, the entire federal government put massive pressure on banks to grant more mortgages to the poor and minorities. Clinton's secretary of Housing and Urban Development, Andrew Cuomo, investigated Fannie Mae for racial discrimination and proposed that 50 percent of Fannie Mae's and Freddie Mac's portfolio be made up of loans to low- to moderate-income borrowers by the year 2001.

Instead of looking at "outdated criteria," such as the mortgage applicant's credit history and ability to make a down payment, banks were encouraged to consider nontraditional measures of credit-worthiness, such as having a good jump shot or having a missing child named "Caylee."

Threatening lawsuits, Clinton's Federal Reserve demanded that banks treat welfare payments and unemployment benefits as valid income sources to qualify for a mortgage. That isn't a joke -- it's a fact.

When Democrats controlled both the executive and legislative branches, political correctness was given a veto over sound business practices.

In 1999, liberals were bragging about extending affirmative action to the financial sector. Los Angeles Times reporter Ron Brownstein hailed the Clinton administration's affirmative action lending policies as one of the "hidden success stories" of the Clinton administration, saying that "black and Latino homeownership has surged to the highest level ever recorded."

Meanwhile, economists were screaming from the rooftops that the Democrats were forcing mortgage lenders to issue loans that would fail the moment the housing market slowed and deadbeat borrowers couldn't get out of their loans by selling their houses.

A decade later, the housing bubble burst and, as predicted, food-stamp-backed mortgages collapsed. Democrats set an affirmative action time-bomb and now it's gone off.

In Bush's first year in office, the White House chief economist, N. Gregory Mankiw, warned that the government's "implicit subsidy" of Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, combined with loans to unqualified borrowers, was creating a huge risk for the entire financial system.

Rep. Barney Frank denounced Mankiw, saying he had no "concern about housing." How dare you oppose suicidal loans to people who can't repay them! The New York Times reported that Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac were "under heavy assault by the Republicans," but these entities still had "important political allies" in the Democrats.

Now, at a cost of hundreds of billions of dollars, middle-class taxpayers are going to be forced to bail out the Democrats' two most important constituent groups: rich Wall Street bankers and welfare recipients.

Political correctness had already ruined education, sports, science and entertainment. But it took a Democratic president with a Democratic congress for political correctness to wreck the financial industry.

Shirley (my lovely mother's name!), love the links; but more importantly, what have you been cooking? Is there a party?? Can we come??

Rosemary, what a trouper you are! The most outage I've endured was 6 days in the summer (we took a freezer full of beef to a meat locker out in the country), and 3 days in the winter ( I had a gas stove by then, and cooked meals by candlelight, whatever had thawed in the freezer~~~some very, um, inspired menus!)

A couple more.  LOVE the Bee Gees!

Too Much Heaven

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mQZ8g0S_PxE&feature=related

Immortality -- Celine Dion and the Bee Gees  (LOVE CELINE DION!)

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fDQlp7hWimI&feature=related

Summer, you can really tell when the liberal media interviews a conservative....they look like they've sucked on a lemon! 

Yes, this is important business.  Hey, but Obama said he had been in touch with this person and that person and that they could call them if they NEEDED him.  Like Hannity (or someone) said tonight...vote present.  Remember, Obama said they had those big airplanes with their symbols on them and they could fly to DC anytime their needed.  What an idiot!  This IS a major crises and Reid and Barney Frankiedoodle didn't want McCain to come into town.  LOL  Too darn funny. I would have loved to have been a fly on the wall when SOME of them were getting a bit loud.  They want to bail out the people who cannot afford those expensive houses that they should have NEVER bought.  Pelosi wants another stimulus package.  Dems want all kinds of PORK added on to this bill. 

I need to go back to YouTube!

Shirley