I was wondering about McCain's statement that we should be buying up mortgages and making homes affordable to those who live in them. Isn't that part of what stimulus one did? I got a "making home affordable" refinance myself once Obama took office, and I just bought my house in 2008. The Tea Party anti-stimulus, anti-bailout cry of 2009 was "honk if I'm paying your mortgage."

Is he actually saying let's go for bank bailout number two, or are we talking pennies on the dollar to banks for underwater houses, thereby actually benefiting the homeowner with a lowered principle payment? Perhaps asking this about McCain is kind of a joke, but....What is he talking about?

...We need to, obviously, have a, in my view, have a moratorium on new federal regulations. There's been thousands of pages of new regulations. By the way, one has been repealed. I'm sure you know, spilled milk. Thank God there's no longer an oil spill. We obviously need to do a lot of things.

But remember, it was the housing market that triggered this crisis. We put liquidity into the financial institutions and obviously they're doing fine. They're sitting on a trillion and a half of cash that they're not spending. But the reality is that the housing market is what triggered this crisis, and it's going to be the housing market that recovers. And that means to me, go out and buy up people's mortgages as we did during the Great Depression, and give them a mortgage that they can afford the payments to make, and then we will begin to come out of this problem. And by the way, on the S&P thing, don't shoot the messenger. Is there anybody that believes that S&P is wrong in their assessment of this situation--the fiscal situation of this country?

PS. I'm not surprised at all that David Gregory did not bring up McCain's longstanding expertise in bank deregulation, housing crises, and resulting federal bailouts as one of the Keating Five. Not surprised in the least.