Wedge Issue: the Fannie and Freddie bailout (UPDATED!)

John McCain has a golden opportunity to distinguish himself from Obama with respect to the pending bailout of Fannie and Freddie by the Feds. As far as we’re concerned, this is a perfect opportunity to stick a fork in these quasi-governmental institutions that are poorly run, make bad business decisions and wind-up being ripe for abuse precisely because of the notion that their collective ineptness will be forgiven with taxpayer money.

Click on over to our brother site at TILoBO for reaction from the candidates and to participate in a poll.

(UPDATE #1): Click here to watch video of Suit talking about the federal take-over of Fannie and Freddie and tell us if we need to go back on our meds because it appears that he has no idea what it is he is saying. Here’s Suit, early in the video:

“We have to protect the taxpayers, not bailout the shareholders of Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac.”

Whaaa…? And how exactly is $200 billion dollars of taxpayer money going to prop-up Fannie and Freddie “protecting” the taxpayer? And isn’t the “takeover”, a “bailout” of shareholders or are we just getting divisive with our semantics?

And later: “We must not allow government intervention to protect investors and speculators who relied on the government to reap massive profits.”

Did we miss something? Does this guy not support government intervention which will by extension protect the very investors and speculators he’s railing against? We give up. If Suit just stuck to favoring intervention because of “market volatility” or even “protecting low-income homeowners”, we’d certainly cut him some slack, but this? Seriously. If we misconstrued something, let us know, because we cannot believe what this guy said.