The Greg Knapp Experience

“Artist Jim Lennox, his wife Hillary Ross, and 13 other artists really, really like Barack Obama. They painted a 100-foot poster in a field near Shickshinny, Pa.”

Note the Obama logo pin on the suit coat instead of an American flag pin. This is the kind of stuff they used to do for Lenin and Stalin. This scares me.

People who look to a politician to save them don’t understand what America is about. Government is NOT supposed to be the answer to your problems. Government is simply a necessary evil that we need to keep as limited as possible. If it is allowed to grow it will take your work, your money, your property and your freedom.

It’s about time.

“Whatever the question, whatever the issues, there’s always a back story with Senator Obama . . . Our current economic crisis is a good case in point. The crisis started in our housing market in the form of subprime loans that were pushed on people who could not afford them.

“Bad mortgages were being backed by Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, and it was only a matter of time before a contagion of unsustainable debt began to spread,” McCain said during an event in Albuquerque, NM.

“This corruption was encouraged by Democrats in Congress, and abetted by Senator Obama.”

McCain said he raised the alarm and called for tighter borrowing rules on Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac two years ago, which could have helped stem the crisis.

By comparison, he said, Obama was “silent” while congressional Democrats fought efforts to rein in the mortgage giants.

“As recently as September of last year, [Obama] said that subprime loans had been, quote, ‘a good idea.’ Well, Senator Obama, that ‘good idea’ has now plunged this country into the worst financial crisis since the Great Depression,” McCain said.

McCain needs to hit this hard at the debate tonight. This is more important to the American people than Obama’s connections to a domestic terrorist or a racist, anti-American preacher. All of those things are important, but the economy dominates everything right now. In addition to those attacks, McCain must give a bold agenda tonight. By bold, I don’t mean spending a lot of money. I mean big changes that can get people excited. Things like totally reforming the tax code, giving a payroll tax cut to the middle class, suspending capital gains taxes for two years to bring new capital into America. Be bold, John.

Gee, I sure am glad we pass that bailout bill Friday. Otherwise, the market would be going down sharply. Whoops. Well, you can’t blame the bailout bill. It’s going to take a while for the money to start flowing. We are already hearing that this $700 billion may not be enough.

Despite widespread unease over the use of taxpayer money to salve Wall Street’s wounds, it also seems virtually certain that lawmakers will in coming months confront anew demands for even greater government activism. Critics say the new federal legislation just won’t do enough to resolve the banks’ chief problem: a crippling shortage of capital.

I was never a big fan of this plan, and today’s reaction is worrisome. I’m afraid that we are sliding down the slippery slope to more government intervention and more socialism. Time will tell.

The rescue plan that was voted down yesterday was a lot better than it could have been, but not as good as it can be. Here are a couple good stories with new ideas for a plan.

Paulson 2.0 cut the Bolshevik stuff out of the legislation. ACORN subsidies? Gone. Voting shares in U.S. companies? Gone. CEO compensation caps? Mostly gone. In consultation mainly with House Republicans and a few “opinion molders” such as yours truly. The size of the expenditure was also cut. Some deregulatory measures were added, such as giving the SEC the authority to suspend the tremendously destructive mark to market accounting mandate. Score one for Kudlow, Forbes, Wesbury and a few lesser “molders” like Bowyer. We harped on it; Paulson listened.

The rescue plan became a lot more conservative after the Republicans got mad. That’s good. Why not make it even better?

Perhaps the mark to market regulations could be suspended before the taxpayers are forced to move in. Maybe if some of these rules are eliminated, little or no taxpayer dollars will be needed. If Congress doesn’t want to put public dollars into this, it should let private equity put private dollars in.

I had a great call on the show yesterday. She said, why doesn’t the government allow individual citizens to buy into this plan. Many people would love to buy these assets at pennies on the dollar. Great idea. Make it even better by making any investment into this plan 100% tax-free. Let’s make this plan better and get it done.

Is this a joke? Are they really going to seize your bike because you don’t wear a helmet?

“If you’re young and ride a bicycle through town without a helmet, you may end up walking back home. Police here are looking for scofflaws and will snatch the pedals from your feet if you’ve been warned numerous times but still forgo headgear.”

I understand the saftey reasons here. My two daughters wear a helmet when they ride their bikes. But, that’s my job as a father, not the government’s. I’m so tired of the government telling us what to do. How did our children survive before Nanny government came along?