No Comment Department:

“What are cherished principles for but to be violated in emergencies?” [A Fine Mess,By William Kristol,  New York Times, September 21, 2008]

As part of what Mickey Kaus has called  McCain’s “ desperate lunge to the demagogic left, ” McCain wants to fire the SEC chairman and replace him with Andrew Cuomo!

Kaus writes

Andrew Cuomo, under whose leadership the federal

Department of Housing and Urban Development damaged several New York neighborhoods when it permitted scam artists to bilk the government out of federally secured mortgage and construction loans in the late 1990’s.

Seems like just the right man to solve the toxic mortgage crisis. … P.S.: This wasn’t a tiny fraud. It was a quarter-billion dollar scandal that severely disrupted the redevelopment of Harlem, among other places, by gumming up the market. But hey, it was non-profit fraud! … Apparently, McCain’s not just going populist left. He’s going irresponsible, opportunist populist left. … More Cuomo embarrassments here and here (”Mr. Cuomo’s complaints that [a primary opponent] was not aggressive in investing state pension money in concerns that would further social causes, like affordable housing.”) … See also Wayne Barrett (alleging that as HUD secretary Cuomo pushed Fannie Mae into the subprime market) … Note to my conservative friends: Hope Palin’s worth it! …

Yes, that’s who McCain wants to fix the problem–a Democrat whose fingerprints are all over the “Diversity Recession.” The Wayne Barrett reference is to Andrew Cuomo and Fannie and Freddie | How the youngest Housing and Urban Development secretary in history gave birth to the mortgage crisis, Village Voice, August 5, 2008, discussed by Steve Sailer here.

The Chicago Sun-Times’s blog reports that McCain has done an ad saying Obama is a product of the “Corrupt Chicago Machine” This is really, really, true, but it would sound better coming from someone who wasn’t a member of  the Keating Five, and who didn’t have one advisor who’d taken large amounts of money from the Republic  Georgia, and another who had received over $2 million from Fannie Mae And Freddie Mac.

From the proposed $700 billion mortgage bailout:

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.

From the NYT:

The two men [Treasury Secretary Paulson and Fed Chairman Bernanke] have been working early and working late, tracking Asian markets and fielding calls from their European counterparts, then reconnecting with each other by phone eight or nine times a day, talking so often that they speak in shorthand. Mr. Paulson has powered through the long days with a steady infusion of Diet Coke. Asked twice to testify by the Senate last week, he begged off.

“He told me he had like four hours of sleep,” said Senator Christopher J. Dodd, Democrat of Connecticut and chairman of the Banking Committee. But there were limits to Mr. Dodd’s sympathy. “The public wants to know what’s going on,” he said he replied.

Mr. Bernanke (his drink: Diet Dr Pepper) has made a point of leaving the office by midnight to get at least some rest, but friends say the toll on him is clear as well.

I remarked yesterday that Sydney Schanberg’s account of John McCain losing his temper at MIA activist Dolores Alfond at a 1992 Senate hearing could be confirmed by the video record. Now our friend Jerri Ward has found it on YouTube:

McCain comes across as a pompous jerk and does indeed lose his temper. Of course, the Senate is full of pompous jerks. But this one is running for President. Whether there’s more going on - whether McCain is really motivated by a desire to supress the MIA issue - certainly remains an open question.