Keith Olbermann last night unleashed an MSNBC “exclusive” on Phil Gramm’s lobbyist ties to John McCain. Yawn. But this section of the tirade deserves mention (emphasis mine):
OLBERMANN: And the McCain campaign responding tonight in a statement, spokesman Brian Rogers saying, quote, “It is sort of nonsense when you consider that the reality is that places like UBS and Wall Street want a bailout from the federal government, and unlike Senators Obama and Clinton McCain, McCain is the only one who doesn‘t want to give a bailout but wants to focus on homeowners who are truly in need.”
“The reality,” the statement goes on, “is John McCain has proposed a common sense plan to help truly needy homeowners enact reforms to make sure this crisis never happens again. Phil Gramm works for a big Wall Street bank. He‘s not benefiting from John McCain‘s plan. So, I don‘t see nexus.”
Nothing in our report, of course, referred to the bailout aspect and even if it had, the fed just changed its policies to start the unprecedented step of extending its bank rate overnight loans to investment firms, UBS included.
As for Roger‘s statement that McCain has a plan to help homeowners enact reforms, homeowners do not enact reforms, lawmakers enact reforms. And as far as McCain‘s planned reforms go, he has said, as we mentioned, that he wants to remove regulatory impediment and not add them.
Thanks for the civics lesson. Later on Keith had this to say:
OLBERMANN: Before we get to our number one story, we owe an apology to John McCain‘s campaign spokesman Brian Rogers. In a response to our report tonight about Mr. McCain‘s lead economic adviser Phil Gramm doing double duty as a lobbyist on mortgage reforms for a foreign bank, Mr. Rogers read one of our producers a statement over the phone, which was evidently misheard as, quote, that reality is John McCain has prepared a common sense plan to help truly needy homeowners enact reforms to make sure this crisis never happens again. He says, and we have no reason to doubt him, that he spoke, in fact, of McCain‘s plan to help truly needy homeowners and enact reforms to make sure this crisis never happens again.
Our apologies to Mr. Rogers and the McCain campaign.
Oops.