Paradoxium
Making Your Head Explode
- Joined
- Dec 30, 2002
- Messages
- 22,485
- Reaction score
- 0
- Points
- 31
Batman would beat McCain and he wouldnt even need prep time.
PRESIDENTIAL DEBATE
LEHRER: How do you all stand on the recovery plan? And talk to each other about it. We've got five minutes. We can negotiate a deal right here. But, I mean, are you -- do you favor this plan, Senator Obama, and you, Senator McCain, and you Batman? Do you -- are you in favor of this plan?
OBAMA: We haven't seen the language yet. And I do think that there's constructive work being done out there. So, for the viewers who are watching, I am optimistic about the capacity of us to come together with a plan.
The question, I think, that we have to ask ourselves is, how did we get into this situation in the first place?
Two years ago, I warned that, because of the subprime lending mess, because of the lax regulation, that we were potentially going to have a problem and tried to stop some of the abuses in mortgages that were taking place at the time.
Last year, I wrote to the secretary of the Treasury to make sure that he understood the magnitude of this problem and to call on him to bring all the stakeholders together to try to deal with it.
So -- so the question, I think, that we've got to ask ourselves is, yes, we've got to solve this problem short term. And we are going to have to intervene; there's no doubt about that.
But we're also going to have to look at, how is it that we shredded so many regulations? We did not set up a 21st-century regulatory framework to deal with these problems. And that in part has to do with an economic philosophy that says that regulation is always bad.
MCCAIN: Sure. But -- but let me -- let me point out, I also warned about Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac and warned about corporate greed and excess, and CEO pay, and all that. A lot of us saw this train wreck coming.
But there's also the issue of responsibility. You've mentioned President Dwight David Eisenhower. President Eisenhower, on the night before the Normandy invasion, went into his room, and he wrote out two letters.
One of them was a letter congratulating the great members of the military and allies that had conducted and succeeded in the greatest invasion in history, still to this day, and forever.
And he wrote out another letter, and that was a letter of resignation from the United States Army for the failure of the landings at Normandy.
Somehow we've lost that accountability. I've been heavily criticized because I called for the resignation of the chairman of the Securities and Exchange Commission. We've got to start also holding people accountable, and we've got to reward people who succeed.
But somehow in Washington today -- and I'm afraid on Wall Street -- greed is rewarded, excess is rewarded, and corruption -- or certainly failure to carry out our responsibility is rewarded.
As president of the United States, people are going to be held accountable in my administration. And I promise you that that will happen.
Batman: I'm Batman
POST DEBATE POLL: WHO WON?
Batman: 97%
McCain: 1%
Obama: 2%
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