What should be next for the bailout plan?

FROM CNN’s Jack Cafferty:

Wall Street was looking for something yesterday. As the vote on the bailout package approached, the stock market was hinting that it wanted the package passed. In fact, as the votes were being tallied, the Dow Jones Industrials recovered a large part of a 600 point loss on the hope that the deal was actually going to happen. But when it became clear the bill was going to fail, the Dow registered its biggest drop ever– 777 points.

I don’t pretend to know whether or not a $700 billion bailout package is the answer to what ails our economy. But yesterday for a little while, the markets were hopeful.

And that was good for middle-class Americans. They have stood by and watched their 401(k)s hemorrhage for months. They were also told all weekend by their elected leaders that a rescue plan was on the way. Their elected leaders lied.   Again.   In the end, politics trumped everything else. Nancy Pelosi gave a speech and that angered some house republicans, and bingo, the whole project went right down the toilet.

Now it’s the Jewish holidays and nothing will happen for a couple more days. And once again, the middle class will take it in the shorts because some Washington moron wanted to make a point. They make me tired.

Here’s my question to you: What should be next for the bailout plan?

Interested to know which ones made it on air?

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Click the play button to see what Jack and our viewers had to say.(PHOTO CREDIT: GETTY IMAGES)

FROM CNN’s Jack Cafferty:

We’ve never had a situation like this before, where a national crisis has intervened six weeks before a presidential election. So far, despite all the grandstanding, Senators Obama and McCain have had little impact on the debate surrounding the Wall Street rescue plan.

Today, McCain said of the failed bailout package: “We didn’t do a good enough job. We’ll go at it. I’m glad to stay at it. That’s what my job is as an American, not as a candidate for president.”

He’s said he’ll return to Washington to help with negotiations. You remember how well that worked last week when he parachuted into Washington to save the day. He was going to cancel last Friday’s debate if there wasn’t a deal. But there was no deal and he went anyway. His campaign said he was confident enough there would be a deal. But there was no deal. At the end of the day McCain looked a little silly.

Watch: Cafferty: Bailout Role?

But this was a failure on both parties’ part. Two-thirds of Republicans and about one-third of Democrats in the House voted against the bailout plan. Barack Obama supported it. In the wake of yesterday’s failure, he has urged calm. He doesn’t want Congress to start over on the bill. “Given the progress we have made,” Obama said, ” I believe we are unlikely to succeed if we start from scratch or reopen negotiations about the core elements of the agreement.”

Here’s my question to you: When it comes to the bailout package, what’s the proper role for the presidential candidates?

Interested to know which ones made it on air?

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Part III of the Couric-Palin interview will air tonight.

FROM CNN’s Jack Cafferty:

Last Friday, we ran a piece of tape from an interview Governor Sarah Palin did with “CBS Evening News” anchor Katie Couric. She was asked about the bailout package. Palin rambled on incoherently for nearly a minute about trade, jobs, health care… Everything but the bailout package.

That segment of the Cafferty File was posted on YouTube and as of today has received more than one million, one hundred thousand hits.

Watch: Jack Cafferty’s YouTube Clip

Well guess what? She’s ba-ack. Palin did another interview with Couric in which she was asked about the first interview.

Palin responded, “Well, not only am I ready, but willing and able to serve as vice president with Senator McCain if Americans so bless us and privilege us with the opportunity of serving them, ready with my executive experience as a city mayor and manager, as a governor, as a commissioner, a regulator of oil and gas.”

Here’s my question to you: Is Sarah Palin helping her chances by continuing to do interviews with Katie Couric?

Interested to know which ones made it on air?

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Palin is being criticized by conservatives and liberals alike on her lack of knowledge on economic and foreign policy.

FROM CNN’s Jack Cafferty:

The chorus of calls for Governor Sarah Palin to step aside as John McCain’s vice presidential candidate is getting louder in the wake of that disastrous interview Palin did with Katie Couric.

Kathleen Parker, a well-respected conservative columnist writes on The National Review website that, after watching Palin’s recent media appearances, her “cringe reflex” is exhausted.

She says that Palin’s interviews with ABC’s Charles Gibson, Fox News’ Sean Hannity and CBS’s Katie Couric have, quote, “all revealed an attractive, earnest, confident candidate. Who is clearly out of her league.”

Parker admits she’d been pulling for Palin as a woman and as a conservative, but her lack of understanding of economic and foreign policy issues is troubling. Parker now says ” If B.S. were currency, Palin could bail out Wall Street herself.”

Here’s my question to you: Should John McCain ask Sarah Palin to step aside?

Interested to know which ones made it on air?

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Click the play button to see what Jack and our viewers had to say.

FROM CNN’s Jack Cafferty:

All weekend we heard the phrase, “We’re making progress.” Today, we were assured that House leaders had the votes to pass this humongous bailout bill to save the economy from a meltdown. We should know better.

When the roll was called, the necessary votes were missing. Wall Street was like a yo-yo on a string. At one point, the Dow was down more than 700 points. And it all happened despite the efforts of John McCain to anoint himself the savior of the bailout package. It turns out members of McCain’s own party balked at voting for the bailout in the house.

Watch: Cafferty: Incumbents out?

At the end of the day, President Bush couldn’t get it done, House Speaker Nancy Pelosi couldn’t get it done, John Boehner couldn’t get it done, and McCain is left with egg all over his face after calling for the cancellation of last Friday’s debate and announcing he was suspending his campaign.

Once again our government has failed us. The future of the bailout is very much an open question. With just five weeks before the election, look for everybody in Washington to bend over backwards.

Here’s my question to you: Is the failure of the bailout reason enough to vote all incumbents out of office?

Interested to know which ones made it on air?

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Click the play button to see what Jack and our viewers had to say. (PHOTO CREDIT: GETTY IMAGES)

FROM CNN’s Jack Cafferty:

There is a reason the McCain campaign keeps Governor Sarah Palin away from the press.

This is a direct excerpt from Katie Couric’s One-On-One interview with Sarah Palin, which aired Wednesday on CBS.

COURIC: Why isn’t it better, Governor Palin, to spend $700 billion helping middle-class families struggling with health care, housing, gas and groceries? … Instead of helping these big financial institutions that played a role in creating this mess?

PALIN: Ultimately, what the bailout does is help those who are concerned about the health care reform that is needed to help shore up the economy– Oh, it’s got to be about job creation too. So health care reform and reducing taxes and reining in spending has got to accompany tax reductions.

Watch: Cafferty: Palin fit to be president?

If McCain wins, this woman will be a 72-year- old heartbeat away from being president of the United States.

Here’s my question to you: Is Governor Sarah Palin qualified to be president?

Interested to know which ones made it on air?

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FROM CNN’s Jack Cafferty:

Senator Joe Biden is never at a loss for words. That is both the good news and the bad news.

See not everything Biden says is helpful to the Democrats’ cause.

Example: He told the CBS Evening News this week that in 1929 “when the stock market crashed, Franklin D. Roosevelt got on the television and didn’t just talk about the, you know, princes of greed. He said, ‘Look, here’s what happened,’”

Only FDR wasn’t in office in 1929 and there wasn’t any television then either.

In the same interview, he called an Obama ad attacking McCain as computer illiterate “terrible.” Last week, he criticized the government bailout of AIG without checking with the campaign first. Barack Obama later said, quote, “I think Joe should have waited.”

There’s more. Biden said that paying higher taxes was the patriotic duty of the rich. And earlier this month he told a crowd that Hillary Clinton may have been a better vice presidential pick than he was. Like we said…never at a loss for words.

Here’s my question to you: Is Joe Biden an asset or a liability for Barack Obama?

Interested to know which ones made it on air?

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Are Federal Bailouts the answer to a country made great by a free market society?

FROM CNN’s Jack Cafferty:

The financial crisis is uncharted territory.

Nobody knows if a $700 billion government bailout will do the trick or not. If we do nothing, the pessimists suggest we’re headed off a cliff. Granted, in time and left to their own devices, the markets would likely self-correct. The question is whether the country could stand the pain that would undoubtedly involve.

On the other hand, if we allow the federal government to, in effect, take over and/or manage some of our biggest financial institutions, we have compromised our capitalism. And no one knows what the long term effects of that might be either.

The engines that drove our economy to be the most powerful the world has ever seen are free markets and an entrepreneurial spirit that allows those willing to take big risks to reap big rewards.

According to an Associated Press-Knowledge Networks poll, 57 percent said they think the bailout is needed to keep the U.S. economy out of a serious recession. But only 35 percent said they think the plan would resolve the financial crisis.

Here’s my question to you: Should the government bail out the economy or should the markets be allowed to correct themselves?

Interested to know which ones made it on air?

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Bush is encouraging the Nation to support his financial bailout plan.

FROM CNN’s Jack Cafferty:

If the bailout package works, it won’t come a moment too soon.

President Bush told the nation last night without quick congressional action more banks could fail, the stock market could drop even further, slashing the value of retirement accounts.

Home values could go into free-fall in this environment which could lead to a dramatic rise in foreclosures.

The President also said more businesses could fail as a result of this crisis and millions of Americans could lose their jobs. As it is, first time unemployment claims hit a seven-year high this morning.

Ultimately the President said our country could experience a “long and painful recession.”

It’s comforting Washington finally decided to get in the game. This is a crisis that’s been developing in plain sight ever since the housing bubble burst. People who should never have gotten mortgages are seeing their homes foreclosed on because they can’t make the payments.

Let’s just hope our government decided to act in time.

Here’s my question to you: How is the nation’s deepening financial crisis affecting you?

Interested to know which ones made it on air?

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Click the play button to see what Jack and our viewers had to say. (PHOTO CREDIT: GETTY IMAGES)

FROM CNN’s Jack Cafferty:

There is a chorus of voices suggesting we should be very afraid:

President Bush, “Our entire economy is in danger.”

Treasury Secretary Paulson, the average American “should be scared.”

Warren Buffett called the turmoil in the markets an “economic Pearl Harbor.”

Former GE chair Jack Welch says America’s in for “one hell of a deep downturn.”

Not exactly the easiest climate for the next president to start his new job in…

And yet two men– Senator John McCain and Senator Barack Obama– still want the job.

Watch: Cafferty: Economy and voting

John McCain announced late yesterday he was suspending his campaign and rushing back to Washington. He called for tomorrow’s debate to be postponed. Obama and McCain put out a joint statement calling for a bipartisan effort to deal with the crisis. But lawmakers beat them to the punch without the benefit of campaign politics.

Now it’s back to the campaign trail for Obama and McCain-with both of them trying to convince us he knows more about fixing this mess than the other guy.

Here’s my question to you: Has the deepening financial crisis changed your mind on who to vote for for president?

Interested to know which ones made it on air?

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