Pants On Fire-Gate

I mean, it's getting to be ri-god-damn-diculous.

How do you not remember, or remember when it didn't happen, that you met Mother Teresa? Even worse? How do you remember, incorrectly, that that is how you adopted your daughter? Here is what McCain's campaign Web site used to claim about his wife, Cindy:

Cindy led 55 medical missions to third world and war-torn countries during AVMT's seven years of existence. On one of those missions, Mother Teresa convinced Cindy to take two babies in need of medical attention to the United States. One of those babies is now their adopted daughter, 15 year old Bridget McCain.

It isn't true:

The McCain campaign had also put out the story that Mother Teresa “convinced” Cindy to bring home two orphans from Bangladesh in 1991.

Mrs. McCain, it turns out, never met Mother Teresa on that trip. (Once contacted by the Monitor, the campaign revised the story on its website.)

The worst part of this: McCain started crying when he brought up the story to Rick Warren.

Nothing this guy says is true. I'm surprised his answer to "how many houses do you have" wasn't "Houses? I live in box by Capitol Hill!"

UPDATE: Like I said, liar. TV pundits like McCain lie about things all the time. Just ask Lou Dobbs.

Politicians need a host of skills, but there was one that the old John McCain was proud not to possess: the ability to talk out of both sides of his mouth.

On Tuesday, while perched on an oil rig in the Gulf of Mexico, McCain proved that he's mastered that trick.

"It is time for America to get serious about energy independence, and that means we need to start drilling offshore at advanced oil rigs like this,'' McCain said, from the giant, 10,000-barrel-per-day structure owned by Chevron and Exxon Mobil. Barack Obama has said that offshore drilling "won't solve our problem. . . . He's wrong, and the American people know it," McCain said.

Unfortunately, although many Americans believe that offshore drilling will provide real relief from high energy prices, it's the new McCain who's wrong. Before he switched positions, McCain opposed lifting the ban on offshore drilling and had this to say: "Those resources, which would take years to develop, would only postpone or temporarily relieve our dependency on fossil fuels." That's still true [...]

Last year McCain received a zero rating from the League of Conservation Voters - an organization whose members aren't given to chaining themselves to trees. His lifetime score from the group is just 24 percent. That's less than one-third the ratings given to Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama.

Earlier this summer, McCain backed a gas tax holiday. That's another bad idea. It would have helped to keep demand high and deprived the nation of money needed to repair collapsing roads and bridges. He has opposed moves to eliminate subsidies for oil companies and, until recently, opposed tax incentives to stimulate production of alternative energy sources.

In an issue that will hit home hard in New Hampshire this winter, McCain has also opposed additional funding for the national low-income fuel assistance program because he didn't like how its cost would be borne. Now, however, he says he will support "whatever is necessary to help people meet literally incredible challenges this winter." But what about next year?

Helping the Little Investor

So the long-awaited housing bill passed Congress, and I'm supposed to be cheered by the fact that 400,000 homeowners in danger of foreclosure are going to get some measure of help, the extent of which is unknown. But I can't help but wonder why it's any business of the federal government to throw a lifeline to investors in publicly traded companies. The idea that shareholders get scooped up in the bailout because of perhaps legitimate needs for a large institution to be saved doesn't make any sense. There are plenty of ways to separate the two.

I've heard members of Congress say that the stockholders have already lost 80 percent of their investment. So what? Losing 80 percent is better than losing 100 percent. Furthermore, not all stockholders bought their shares last year. Some bought their shares last month, just before the Fed, Treasury, and Congress came to the rescue.

So, what's the deal? I don't want to think bad things about our political leaders, so what legitimate reason could they have for putting Fannie and Freddie stockholders ahead of children needing child care and health care or seniors who can't afford to pay for heating oil this winter?

Now, we know why Republicans do this - shareholders are their base, and poor people needing help with their heating bill certainly aren't.

(Just a moment to marvel at that - Republicans are stamping their little feet that they haven't been allowed to shovel billions of dollars in leases to their oil company buddies, so they're holding hostage poor people who need energy assistance.)

Democrats, of course, are the recipients of a lot of banking industry largesse now that they're in the majority. And we know that this housing bill had a substantial portion of it written by Bank of America lobbyists. So they look the other way when their bailout of Fannie and Freddie gives a push to the shareholders and not just the homeowners.

It's the dirty business of politics, and if a bunch of far worse indignities haven't been tossed on us then I'd be more willing to accept them.

UPDATE: Paul Krugman has more today. Short version - there had better be fundamental reforms coming down the road, or we're screwed.