What Does McCain Have in Common with a Dying Salmon?

He flips and flops and flails around in utter desperation. The latest example: it took him less than 24 hours to flip-flop on his homeowner bailout "plan."

Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.) made an overnight change in the homeowner bailout he proposed at Tuesday’s presidential debate, making it more generous to financial institutions and more costly for taxpayers.

McCain's staff says it was always meant that way.

When McCain sprung his surprise idea at the start of the debate in Nashville, his campaign posted details online of his American Homeownership Resurgence Plan, which would direct the government to buy up bad home mortgages, allowing strapped people to keep their property.

The document posted and e-mailed by the McCain campaign on Tuesday night says at the end of its first full paragraph: “Lenders in these cases must recognize the loss that they’ve already suffered.”

So the government would buy the mortgages at a discounted rate, reflecting the declining value of the mortgage paper.

But when McCain reissued the document on Wednesday, that sentence was missing, to the dismay of many conservatives.

That would mean the U.S. would pay face value for the troubled documents, which was the main reason Sen. Barack Obama (D-Ill.) gave for opposing the plan.

A McCain campaign official explained the change: “That language was mistakenly included in the initial draft and it’s been corrected. It doesn’t reflect the intentions of the initiative, which necessitated the correction and the removal of the sentence. A simple mistake.”

What am I sitting on right now? That's right: my ass. Admit you flip-flopped when your greedy banker friends came a-whining. Admit you plan to shaft American taxpayers. Might as well say it outright, because by saying that you mistakenly included language in a draft that would've forced shady lenders to pay for the poison they've pushed, you've basically just told us you plan to let them get off scott-free while the American taxpayers foot the bill.

That's John McCain for you. Populist rhetoric spewing out one side of his mouth while he sucks Wall Street's dick with the other.