Keep That Faith has lots of pro-McCain / anti-Obama graphic for bloggers and others to enjoy and use.

Well, I’m off for a mini-vacation from today to Sunday night. Me and my better half are taking a short trip to Undisclosed Location, USA.

It’s been a while since I’ve had a vacation. The closet thing I can remember is my two trips out to Las Vegas in 2006, and those were really working vacations with Mark to write our book.

I’ll be back at blogging on Monday. Nice and refreshed.

A very telling video from FOX that shows that while Republicans have been warning about Fannie and Freddie … and Democrats had been blocking their efforts.

The more I think about McCain’s decision to call on Obama to join him in Washington to play a role in the process of coming up with a bipartisan solution, the more I see it as a good move.

McCain and Obama are U.S. Senators. This is a financial crisis. They each have huge influence on their parties. If there are any two people who can make this process move as fast as possible, it is John McCain and Barack Obama.

According to Barack Obama’s talking points, presidential politics shouldn’t be “injected” into this situation. The problem with that claim is that regardless of the outcome of this debate in Washington, D.C. in simple terms, either John McCain or Barack Obama will have to deal with the situation in a different capacity come January. Should they be a part of the debate? Absolutely.

The fact that Obama plans to stay in D.C. tonight puts him in the tough spot tomorrow. Will he leave with this situation unresolved, or will he stay and be a part of the process?

Barack Obama didn’t want to go on the record on this issue. If he leaves before this situation is resolved, it will be a huge political blunder for him.

UPDATE: Political strategist Margaret Hoover:

This round goes to McCain.

If we are really facing a “once in a century crisis”; if financial institutions will begin to fail at the beginning of next week should Congress not act; if this is the worst economic crisis since the Great Depression, a legitimate economic calamity; then McCain’s decision to suspend his Presidential campaign, halt fundraising activities, freeze political advertising, is spot on.

At a moment when Paulson and Washington are asking for carte blanche to spend $700+ billion of our money bailing out Wall Street’s fat cats and bad habits, McCain throws himself in front of the bus.

It’s the economy stupid. At this moment, nothing else is more important.

Unless you’re Obama.

UPDATE: McCain’s gamble pays off.

UPDATE: Dick Morris:

FACING a postconvention fall in the polls, John McCain once again reshaped the dimensions of the race by suspending his campaign and calling for postponement of tomorrow’s debate.

This bold move could have an impact on the race akin to McCain’s choice of Sarah Palin as his running mate. Defensively, McCain had to act to stop the fall in his poll numbers.

Offensively, he has placed himself at the epicenter of the only issue on the national agenda – proactive action to stop a total international financial collapse.

Obama’s response to McCain’s initiative is lame. As with his initial reaction to Sarah Palin, Obama has miscalculated. While he tries to spin McCain’s move as a mere response to his initiative, it was the Republican who first issued the call for a suspension of the campaigns.

Both McCain and Obama will now go to Washington. McCain on his own initiative. Obama as a result of the president’s call for an economic summit.

But it is McCain who will play the proactive role. Obama will come to Washington, but will keep one foot outside the Beltway.

Even though the president has called both candidates to Washington to save the country, Obama continues to campaign. Politics as usual.

Talk about audacity!

Former Fannie Mae chairman Jim Johnson was dumped from Obama’s vice presidential search team, but he’s still playing a behind-the-scenes role on the campaign.

Former Senator Tom Daschle, a top Obama backer, emailed a select list this afternoon that he and Johnson would be leading a briefing intended largely for Clinton’s campaign brain trust next month.

“Jim Johnson and I have scheduled another informal breakfast discussion and update on the campaign early next month,” he wrote to a list including Senator John Kerry, James Carville, and Richard Holbrooke, as well as Clinton’s former top campaign aides, including Howard Wolfson, Geoff Garin, and Harold Ickes.

Johnson’s involvement comes at a moment when political association with the failed mortgage giants is particularly toxic. He was already the subject of a McCain ad attacking Obama.

The October third breakfast is also a mark of the continuing effort to bring the ex-Clintonites into the Obama fold.

Wow.

Gotta give Bubba credit here.

Former President Bill Clinton defended Sen. John McCain’s request to delay the first presidential debate, saying McCain did it in “good faith” and pushed organizers to reserve time for economy talk during the debate if the Friday plans move forward.

Appearing on Good Morning America Thursday, Clinton told ABC News’ Chris Cuomo that McCain’s push to postpone the debate would only be a good political move if both candidates agreed. McCain announced on Wednesday that he would “suspend” his presidential campaign to come to Washington to help negotiate a financial bailout bill

“We know he didn’t do it because he’s afraid because Sen. McCain wanted more debates,” Clinton said, adding that he was “encouraged” by the joint statement from McCain and Sen. Barack Obama.

All very true. In the end, McCain will come out of this one looking really good.

Because it’s important:

Interesting:

A $100,000 state grant for a botanic garden in Englewood that then-state Sen. Barack Obama awarded in 2001 to a group headed by a onetime campaign volunteer is now under investigation by the Illinois attorney general amid new questions, prompted by Chicago Sun-Times reports, about whether the money might have been misspent.

The garden was never built. And now state records obtained by the Sun-Times show $65,000 of the grant money went to the wife of Kenny B. Smith, the Obama 2000 congressional campaign volunteer who heads the Chicago Better Housing Association, which was in charge of the project for the blighted South Side neighborhood.

Obama’s actions in awarding the grant are allegedly not “a focus of the investigation.”

But, I wouldn’t be surprised if they eventually are.

Here are a few selections from around the blogosphere…

California Yankee catches the Obama campaign in another lie…
Media Lizzy was on a McCain-Palin conference call (which I was unable to participate in) and tells us all about it.
Change? What’s it cost? Who pays?
Barack Obama and William Ayers… It isn’t guilt by association; it’s guilt by participation.
Another liberal lie about Sarah Palin debunked.
Interesting stuff to be found at pro-Hillary websites…
Abortions are at record lows.
Obammunists are looking to steal Ohio via voter fraud…
Is Biden trying to lose Western Pennsylvania?

I’ll add more if anything else catches my eye.

This really hasn’t been a good week for Joe Biden.

Vice presidential candidate Joe Biden says today’s leaders should take a lesson from the history books and follow fellow Democrat Franklin D. Roosevelt’s response to a financial crisis.

“When the stock market crashed, Franklin D. Roosevelt got on the television and didn’t just talk about the, you know, the princes of greed. He said, ‘Look, here’s what happened,”‘ Barack Obama’s running mate recently told the “CBS Evening News.”

Except, Republican Herbert Hoover was in office when the stock market crashed in October 1929. There also was no television at the time; TV wasn’t introduced to the public until a decade later, at the 1939 World’s Fair.

Also in Biden’s version of American History you will find Thomas Jefferson reading the Gettysburg Address in front of a teleprompter.