McCain To Be Offered Secretary Of Defense Spot?

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Now this is quite interesting if true. No Quarter has the scoop:

Barack Obama has already stated an intention to appoint Republicans to his cabinet. Citing Abraham Lincoln as a precedent, Obama will even consider political enemies for powerful positions in his administration.

A source in Chicago informed me earlier today that John McCain will be meeting with Obama and his handlers tomorrow in Chicago in order to discuss the possibility of a Secretary of Defense appointment. That McCain will be in Chicago tomorrow is corroborated by an article London Times published one hour ago. The Times, however, claims McCain will most probably not be appointed to a Cabinet position. But he will be consulted on topics on which he and Obama have “common ground.” This certainly does not preclude the possibility of an appointment of McCain to Secretary of Defense.

Our source maintains that McCain will visit Chicago tomorrow in order to discuss the Secretary of Defense appointment.

Chicagoan at No Quarter raised some questions on this development, all of which leads me to believe McCain will not be appointed to the position. Obama’s campaign called McCain a warmonger and an extension of the Bush foreign policy. Just those two reasons alone makes me think a Obama appointment of McCain to SecDef would not go over to well with the MoveOn crowd….a crowd Obama relies on heavily for support. Plus, if he leaves his Senate spot to take this position, who will get his seat? The Governor of Arizona is a Democrat so a Dem would be appointed….can you say supermajority?

While this news is interesting it will not happen.

I’m sure it does signal the fact that Gates is out tho…no surprise there.

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Obambi trying to steal McCain’s Senate seat. A few months down the road, all screw ups are the fault of McCain, you’re fired.

Reject Obamunism.

I think you and bill-tb nailed it, Curt. While I at first thought this would be great and I would have now an ounce of respect for The One messiah, knowing that Obama always has a hidden agenda, he would probably do exactly as bill-tb stated: in a brilliant move of post-partisanship, he would appoint McCain as SECDEF, then get McCain’s Senate seat for his Super-majority. Then, a few months down the road, he will have to fire SECDEF McCain over a difference of opinion on foreign policy.

A win-win all around for him as he gets to look like he is reaching across the aisle to the GOP, he gets his supermajority in the Senate and then gets back in the good graces of his Angry Left base by firing McCain, getting him out of government altogether and has his own stooge inserted as SECDEF.

Works out perfectly for him.

Then again, I think having McCain in the Senate to vote with the Democrats on most everything except war effort matters is better for Obama. He’ll have McCain with the Democrats on the Fairness Doctrine, on Amnesty, on Healthcare and probably on pretty much everything. The only thing McCain would actually fight him on would be the war effort stuff, but then Obama knows that will be meaningless, because he knows that there are enough squishy Republicans who will vote with Democrats, so he doesn’t have to worry about McCain there anyway.

Really, I don’t see any reason why McCain shouldn’t just join the Democrat Party already. He’s basically a pro-life-voting Joe Lieberman who resides in the GOP. Unless he just wants to go back to being the BMOC by being the Maverick Republican who bashes the Republican Party at every turn, while praises Obama on everything he does (save for war effort stuff).

I believe your understanding of Arizona law is incorrect. I believe Napolitano would have to appoint 1 of 2 Republicans offered by the GOP.

But then again, Obama has been anything but consistent, and his supporters certainly did not support him for matters of policy or of ideology.

This is precisely what I’ve been saying since the election. You guys gave Obama way too much credit for having bedrock principles. You talked as though he were committed to socialism or at least was committed to the liberal principles of his South Side Chicago base.

I previously cited the PBS election eve special on Obama and McCain. If you watched it, you understand the true Obama.

He moved to South Side Chicago to further his ambitions.

I think he married Michelle in part to further these ambitions.

He consorted with Mayor Daly and Daly’s friends (including Ayers) to further his ambitions.

He joined Rev Wright’s church to further his ambitions.

He went to Harvard law to further his ambitions.

He got elected President of the Harvard law review to further his ambitions.

He went back to South Side Chicago instead of taking a Supreme Court clerkship to further his ambitions.

And everything he’s done since then has been to further his ambitions.

He is smooth, but he is also cunning and tough and he’s tossed both friends and family under a bus in the furtherance of his ambitions.

His ambition is to be the greatest President in the history of the USA. He doesn’t give a s— about moveon.org or the extreme liberal base which was his greatest non-African American support segment. He doesn’t even give a s— about African Americans, per se; Jesse Jackson recognized this and that’s why Jackson said he’d like to castrate Obama.

He only cares about what works best for him. Except that, right now, there is a fortunate congruence in that what is best for America is also best for him. He can only succeed by solving America’s problems and leaving the country much better off than when he found it.

Judge everything he does through the lens that he’s not a champion of any cause or any principles. He’s a champion of himself.

Then what he does will make perfect sense.

– Larry Weisenthal/Hungtington Beach

Okay, I posted a long comment and it hasn’t showed up. I tried to post it again, only to have it say that I am trying to post a duplicate comment. Usually when a comment is stuck in moderation, it posts and then it says it is awaiting moderation. Not sure what happened here…

I was right. Napolitano would have to appoint her own 2010 opponent for the Senate. hmmmm

@Larry Weisenthal:

He may not care about them, but he knows they are his base. So, in order to get re-elected, he must govern somewhat as to their wishes.

Unless of course he knows that he will have the mass media fully in the tank for him again, be able to shrug off all criticisms as “racist” or “irrelevant” or “distractions” and know the ignorant, apathetic public will go along with those excuses as they did this election cycle and vote for him anyway. Which, based on the last 2 elections (2006, 2008), I wouldn’t blame him for figuring that strategy will work again. He raised $700 billion all the while saying that the country was headed for worse financial times than the Great Depression. He rose from a poor childhood to the Democratic nomination for President of the United States of America all the while trashing America as racist and horrible and the reason that Blacks could never achieve anything because of white-greed. He worked with the organization ACORN which had its hand in causing the mortgage crisis, which John McCain and the GOP warned us about for years and the Democrats said was bogus, all the while pinning the blame for the crisis on John McCain, President Bush and the GOP.

The guy is either a master of getting people to believe bullshiite and illogic or he knows that the majority of Americans are illogical ignoramuses and just need a slick talking messiah to tap into that.

Personally, I think it is a bit of both.

And I don’t see the ignorance or apathy of the American public changing very much over the course of the next 4 years, so I guess you’re right. Obama can do what he wants as President, no matter if he governs as his Angry Left base want him to or not, and he is assured of re-election.

He worked with the organization ACORN which had its hand in causing the mortgage crisis

Now, that’s a truly original criticism. Congratulations; I thought I’d heard them all. This one is brand new.

– Larry Weisenthal/Huntington Beach CA

@Larry Weisenthal:

Got the sarcasm. Not sure why you are being sarcastic though.

He has been working with ACORN for many years, trained their employees in “community organizaing” and gave them $800,000 in campaign donations. Then, when it was obvious that they were (1) involved with the mortgage crisis, hounding lenders to lend to those who were not qualified otherwise they would be considered racist and (2) found to be committing massive voter registration fraud all across the country… Obama simply got away scott-free with saying he was not associated to them nor to any of the people involved with the Freddie Mac/Fannie Mae scandal.

Had this been a Republican, his political career would have been over, as the mass media would have (rightly) pilloried him with this scandal for weeks until he dropped out of the race and political life forever. But, Obama just speaks in flowery tongues to the masses and just sweeps this under the rug along with every other corruption involving him and all is well in the land of Obama.

Now, one can say that ACORN was not solely responsible for the mortgage crisis and that is correct. However, they had a huge hand in it, as did Obama. The fact that he faced no penalties or repurcussions for his corrupt actions with a corrupt group is ridiculous.

Hi Michael. Where in Michigan? I graduated from Berkley High and went to U-M (@#$%^& Rodriguez).

I’m sort of a numbers guy. Of all the subprime loans, only 1/4 – 1/3 were Fannie/Freddie. 2/3 to 3/4 were entirely non-Federal. Of all the subprime loans, only 9% by value were for owner occupied first mortgages. Of all the subprime loans, less than 1% by value were for the Community Reinvestment act loans of the type which were supported by “liberal” housing advocates, like Clinton and Bush. Of that 1%, I’m guessing ACORN might have had a pivotal hand in 1% by value of the 1%, or one ten thousandth of the total.

Sigh, many a beautiful theory has been ruined by an ugly fact. As attractive as it is to blame the financial meltdown irresponsible poor people, in fact it was caused by a capital glut (in the interests of bipartisan harmony, I’ll forgo an explanation of what caused the capital glut) chasing too few investments. This led to the creation of the exotic mortgage backed securities industry, with too many mortgages being under-collateralized, non-primary owner occupied real estate. Fannie and Freddie may be blamed only for making the same bad investments which all the totally private institutions were making. And AGI didn’t even fail because of the “toxic” mortgages; they failed by gambling in unregulated, opaque credit default swaps, which were the house of cards which eventually sunk Washington Mutual, Wachovia, Lehman Brothers, Merrill Lynch, Bear Stearns, etc., which were never “pressured” by ACORN or anyone else to make bad loans to unqualified buyers.

Go Blue! @#$%^&* Rodriguez.

– Larry Weisenthal/Huntington Beach, CA

Arizona law calls for the same party to be named by governor. The republicans would summit three names from which Nappy must pick one. she would go for the least conservative possible, probably Grant Woods if his name was summited. He’s a very liberal phony balogna Rino who says he wants to become a democrap.

Does John McCain have any spine left?

Going to Chicago to INTERVIEW for a job?

You’re being played Johnny, just like you were during the campaign.

Larry Weisenthal,

The way you have described Obama in your comment #4, seems more to me like a “narcissistic personality disorder” than anything else. This guy ego is so huge I don’t know how he will make it thru the doors of the White House. Everything is about himself, everything. He cares for nothing else than himself. He doesn’t care about the country or the citizen of USA… only himself.

@Larry Weisenthal:

Hey Larry

From Chicago actually. Graduated from Brother Rice HS on the South Side, went to Purdue (BSME May ’99) and then moved to the Detroit area after graduation and have been here working in Mechanical Engineering CAD design ever since. I was at Ford until this past June in the V-Engine CAD Department designing engines. I’m now working at a smaller engineering consulting company in Southfield.

I’m a numbers guy as well (have always liked and been good at Math and always liked Physics, which led to me going into Mechanical Engineering). So I don’t discount there were other factors in the economic meltdown. I just know also that the dealings of groups like ACORN putting pressure on lenders to give loans to the unqualified was a part of the economic crisis, and it should not be dismissed out of hand by the Left, the Democrats and their propagandists in the mass media simply because it was a Democrat scandal. We all know that were the Republicans involved with it in such a manner, it would have been headline news (and rightfully so) across the nation. But since it was harmful to Democrats, it was swept under the rug.

I may sound like I am blaming the entire crisis on ACORN, the Democrats and Obama, but that is not my intention. I am simply pissed off that that aspect of the crisis was not addressed as it should have been. All of our elected leaders failed us in one way or another, but the full blame was wrongly put on President Bush and the GOP, when the Democrats had an equal hand in that failure.

I’m off to work (3rd shift), so I can’t address your numbers as they deserve at the moment, but I’ll try to get back here and respond.

I’d say GO PURDUE!, but they kinda suck this year, so oh well. heh (Granted, so is UM, so double heh)

Hi Michael. Working the third shift is tough. My Dad was an automotive/truck engineer, associated with the Detroit auto industry. He designed tanks for Chrysler during WWII, then worked as an independent contractor in the various “job shops” — actually quite near 8 mile road and Southfield. We lived in Huntington Woods; went to football games and competed in track and cross country meets at Southfield HS. Shopped at Northland, also in Southfield. My Dad moved to Louisville in 1962, when Ford opened up an auto assembly plant and heavy truck division. He designed trucks in what was called Domestic Special Order until his retirement in 1978. He’s been drawing a Ford pension since then; I worked one summer in college on the auto assembly line; paid UAW dues. Hope his pension lasts as long as he does; he just turned 95 and set an official new masters world swimming record in the 200 meter (long course) backstroke. (sorry for wasting valuable FA bandwidth on this personal stuff).

– Larry W/HB

Union whore. That explains you Larry. The only reason to appoint McCain is because he’ll need scapegoats. He thinks McCain might be dumb enough to fall for it and he may be right.

I am all for the the automakers declaring bankruptcy. While they are partly at fault for agreeing to their insane demands, it would allow them to shed the UAWs parasitic contracts. At that point it would allow them to spend more money on quality and reliability. I would LOVE to be able to buy a GM car that was as reliable as a Toyota. As long as they are held hostage by the bloated UAW ticks, it will never happen.

Point of clarification: I’m definitely a supporter of private sector unions. But I’m also a supporter of right to work and secret ballots for unionization. I’m opposed to public sector unions, because public sector employees have ample protections without them. I’m in favor of the Detroit “bail out,” with lots of strings attached. I think that the financial institutions were just as badly mismanaged as the auto companies and that Paulson basically flushed the first $300 billion of the financial bailout down the toilet, and an additional $25 billion load to protect the jobs of more than 10% of the nation’s workers is peanuts to pay for what is to be gotten. Under “normal” conditions, the auto industry would be capable of solving its own problems under the existing private sector financial system, possibly taking advantage of bankruptcy laws. But these are not normal times. It wasn’t the fault of the auto industry that the financial system self destructed and private sector financing is not available.

There’s no need to go calling anyone names like “whore.” It doesn’t help move the discussion forward.

– Larry Weisenthal/Huntington Beach, CA

No it wasn’t the auto industry’s fault, but they need to find a way to make money. They will do so by building better cars. They cannot do that with the union albatross around their neck due to expenses. I say we should not bail them out. It will actually help them.
The need for unions is past and they are little more than an anchor around the necks of business.

P.S., regarding this statement:

I would LOVE to be able to buy a GM car that was as reliable as a Toyota. As long as they are held hostage by the bloated UAW ticks, it will never happen.

My mechanic tells me that the old Mercedes cars, assembled in Wolfsburg, are much more reliable than the newer ones, assembled in non-unionized Tuscaloosa. I haven’t looked up what the various auto reliability websites have to say about this.

– LW/HB

Tell me Larry, are the Toyota plants here in the U.S. unionized? The fact is the amount of money GM pays in salary, benefits, and pensions is choking the life out of them. Again, they are partly to blame for caving in to absurd union demands, but freedom from those contracts is the only answer. This especially so since the union has recently stated they will make no concessions. In that case, they deserve to be unemployed.

When anyone starts talking about the subprime mortgage thing and attributing it to Republican greed, I ask them to consider a simple series of rhetorical questions:

a) How many times in the past 5-10 years do you recall a bank or other lending institution being pilloried in the media, or taken to court, by “community groups” for discriminating against minority and or low income borrowers?

b) In how many of those instances was the institution forced either though loss of goodwill or by court order to change its lending policies?

c) In how many of those cases were the changes in policies toward more responsible lending?

My answers: a) dozens, b) often, c) never. Is my point clear? “Community Organizers” like Obama and ACORN have used the principles developed by Marxist agitators to instill a sense of grievance and victimization in any groups they could get in front of. And then they used those emotions they fanned to blackmail lending institutions to reducing either the cost or the qualifications for mortgages and other types of loans, and they have done this all across the country for years.

At the times the unions made their absurd demands, the auto companies were absurdly flush with cash.

Greed is what makes capitalism work, actually. Without unions, there wouldn’t have been 40 hours work weeks, health benefits, safe working conditions, and many other workplace conditions which benefit workers, most of whom have never belonged to unions.

I think that unions have been central to the success of American capitalism. Are you aware of any modern capitalist economy which has flourished without labor unions?

Obviously, there has to be renegotiation of existing labor contracts as market conditions change, in any industry.

What I object to is the huge double standard. People are adamant that the auto companies should be allowed to fail, in part as “punishment” for having capitulated in the past to union demands. Well, as stated, in normal circumstances, the relationships between organized labor and management have always been self-correcting. This is part of the built in genius of capitalism. But the reason that the auto companies are going under is because of the collapse of the non-unionized financial sector, which was just as egregiously mismanaged as the auto industry was mismanaged.

What I personally would have favored is allowing all the financial institutions to fail, and to use the $700 billion to capitalize new financial institutions, who would be starting out with no debt. In addition to voting for Obama, I voted for my local, extremely conservative GOP congressman, Dana Rohrabacher, in part because he voted — both times — against the financial institution bail out.

– Larry Weisenthal/Huntington Beach CA

When anyone starts talking about the subprime mortgage thing and attributing it to Republican greed, I ask them to consider a simple series of rhetorical questions:

a) How many times in the past 5-10 years do you recall a bank or other lending institution being pilloried in the media, or taken to court, by “community groups” for discriminating against minority and or low income borrowers?

b) In how many of those instances was the institution forced either though loss of goodwill or by court order to change its lending policies?

c) In how many of those cases were the changes in policies toward more responsible lending?

First, no one ever attributed the financial crisis to “Republican greed.” Greed is greed; Democrats are every bit as greedy as Republicans and there was as much Democratic money invested in mortgage backed securities as Republican money.

Second, Community Reinvestment Act loans had nothing at all to do with the financial crisis.

Thirdly, here’s a list of banks which failed in the past 8 years:

http://www.fdic.gov/bank/individual/failed/banklist.html

Not a single officer in a single failed bank has ever blamed their failure on being “forced” to change the bank’s lending policies to promote home loans to low income borrowers.

– Larry Weisenthal/Huntington Beach CA

Larry, the big 3 have been losing money for as long as I can remember. It still is no excuse for the ridiculous demands the company gave in to. I do not want unions “punished”, just brought into line with true capitalism. Nice attempt at a straw man, but it won’t fly here. The UAW fntasy world they live in may be close to an end. Considering your backround I’m not surprised you’d defend them .

As for the FM/FM dabacle, that was primarily dem owned. No, the answer is not more government regulation–simply enforce what was in place. The dems saw to it that did not happen. They short circuited the safeties that were in place and profited by doing so—at eveyone elses expense.

Oh and Larry, the media made it a point to blame the Reps for the problem. They claimed it was lack of regulation (deregulation in fact) initiated by the GOP that caused it. Also, just because the banks didn’t blame their collapse on anti-capitalist regulations doesn’t mean it isn’t so.

Tell me Larry, are the Toyota plants here in the U.S. unionized?

I think that the reliability of non-unionized, American-made Toyotas and the non-reliability of non-unionized, American-made Mercedes cars, and the non-reliability of unionized, American-made cars all are owing to differences in management, as opposed to differences in unionization vs. non-unionization. To my knowledge, the German assembly plants for Mercedes and BMW in Germany do employ trade union-represented workers. Don’t have time to research this, right now; nor to research status of Japanese auto trade unions, in Japan.

Foreign auto makers do enjoy a tremendous advantage over US manufacturers, in that foreign country governments generally pay for health care and also provide generous unemployment and retirement benefits. American auto makers pay more for health care than they pay for steel. Foreign auto makers don’t have to pay for health care.

– Larry Weisenthal/Huntington Beach, CA

Larry, if GM didn’t have to pay those they laid off a full salary for 3 years, do you think that would help them?
Toyota has a committment to quality. Quality costs money. Management techniques alone won’t cut it. GM is at an even bigger handicap thanks to the costs they incur because of the union. The Japanese knew to avoid them and did. Wonder how good their cars would be if they had to deal with the union?

The points, once again, are that there are automotive trade unions in all the capitalist countries, but that US manufacturers are severely disadvantaged because they have to provide health care and pension and unemployment benefits which, in other countries, are supplied by the governments. Both Toyota and Mercedes operate non-unionized American assembly plants; Toyota produces quality cars; Mercedes doesn’t. Non-unionized Toyota workers benefit tremendously from the existence of the UAW, which has set the bar, which Toyota must come close to matching, to avoid unionization. American workers in general have benefited greatly from such union bar setting over the decades.

I just did a quick Google on “automobile quality ratings” and checked “compact/sporty” — here’s a representative page:

http://www.jdpower.com/autos/ratings/dependability-ratings-by-category/compact-premium-sporty-car

Compare Honda with Mercedes. Both US made. Both non-unionized. Quality has more to do with management than with unionization.

– Larry Weisenthal/Huntington Beach, CA

Well No Quarter doesn’t have a great track record for big scoops. If it’s true McCain should take it if he wants to stay in politics, Napolitano beats him like a rented mule in polling for 2010 Senate.

Hopefully he’s being asked to head up a new immigration reform deal.

Larry… guy! What am I going to do with you? :0) The CRA had nothing at all to do with the financial crisis??

I will meet you part way and say that the CRA was not the *entire* cause of the real estate market. But it most certainly was the starting point for the real estate market crisis… which is the cause of the financial crisis in total.

Your argument is that because there were only a few CRA banks, whose high risk “anti-redlining” loans most certainly did (and do) end up in Fannie/Freddie, that it wasn’t the problem. What you continually ignore is fair housing and equal opportunity laws.

1995-Robert Rubin, Clinton’s Treasury Secy, rewrites the compliance regs for CRA on the sly to avoid the incoming GOP Congress. For these CRA banks to now prove they are not “redlining”, they must have an x amount these loans on the books in order to grow, merge, expand.

These risky buyers do not qualify under the standard loan criteria, so low doc, no doc, stated income, wide variety of ARM loans, interest only, and other exotic loans become all the rage.

Here’s where your flawed thinking comes into play…. you think that they can create mortgages for those who don’t meet standard criteria, and limit that to minorities?? That’s not only against the law, but really offensive. Why should a streamline loan package be created to allow risky buyers to borrow with minimal standards just because they are a designated minority, and not offer the same benefits to stable buyers?

When you create these conditions, you cannot simply say you will give them only to risky borrowers that are minority.

That started the ball rolling… these risky loans.

Now, I say I will meet you part way on your statement because these loans, on their own, wouldn’t have caused the fail. But because of the fast, easy money, the “demand” increased. This drove the prices up too fast to be sustainable. Had the prices not gone up, we would just replace a foreclosure buyer with a good buyer. But with the housing prices (supply v demand because of the easy money….) you could no longer replace the bad loan with a good one because the housing prices were inflated. The $300K loan needed to be replaced witih a $210K loan…. which meant the bank was out the cash.

But sorry, guy… can’t stand idly by while you perpetuate the myth that these loans had “nothing” to do with the real estate mortgage/credit crisis. They are the very foundation, piled on by other mitigating factors.

Larry, you deliberately ignore how the UAW expenses have killed GM. You also know getting out from under the UAW contracts would save GM. You’d rather see them eventually go under than give up what those like you think the UAW is entitled to.

At first I thought Lindsey Graham was just playing his perpetual wingman role during McCain’s visit with Obama. Then I realized we’re looking at Senators 59 and 60 on several key issues when Obama wants to get legislation passed.

I actually voted for Lindsey Graham this year, maybe he’ll end up make me proud of that fact.

It didn’t happen, and it won’t. The left-wing illuminati just wanted to gloat about their victory. They shouldn’t gloat just yet, because the real victory is too far off, and they won’t obtain it.