Obama won????!!!

[nowhereman 1]

Hey I lived in a socialist country for 7 years. We were very poor there. Socialism is a complete failure where it is tried.

It is much much better to be poor in the US, I know from personal experience.

The problem with the left is that they know so much that is not. Government elites will dictate and run your life. America is special because of opportunity not trying to be socailist like the rest of the world. For the Obama lovers there are other socialist countries to move to and see the failure.

There is nothing new with Obama. In four years we will all be crying, just remember Jimmy Carter.

A retarded hamster could do a better job than Bush... the right will give someone like Bush a pass yet throw all sorts of mud against the wall when a Democrat is involved. You want to know why you lost? Look in the mirror.

[aidan80 9]

4 more years and hopefully this will be our New President

Obama makes me Vomit.........

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/David_Petraeus

That man is more decorated than a Christmas tree!

[Ban Hammer 13,567]

A retarded hamster could do a better job than Bush... the right will give someone like Bush a pass yet throw all sorts of mud against the wall when a Democrat is involved. You want to know why you lost? Look in the mirror.

i don't see that being a fair comparison.

4 more years and hopefully this will be our New President

Obama makes me Vomit.........

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/David_Petraeus

That man is more decorated than a Christmas tree!

he's been around the block a few times, and has earned the respect of many along the way.

[sunandmoon 450]

Hey I lived in a socialist country for 7 years. We were very poor there. Socialism is a complete failure where it is tried.

It is much much better to be poor in the US, I know from personal experience.

The problem with the left is that they know so much that is not. Government elites will dictate and run your life. America is special because of opportunity not trying to be socailist like the rest of the world. For the Obama lovers there are other socialist countries to move to and see the failure.

There is nothing new with Obama. In four years we will all be crying, just remember Jimmy Carter.

A retarded hamster could do a better job than Bush... the right will give someone like Bush a pass yet throw all sorts of mud against the wall when a Democrat is involved. You want to know why you lost? Look in the mirror.

you seem to be hung up on the use of retard... be a good Democrat, be P.C. should be " a hampster with special needs"

[sunandmoon 450]

Who Caused the Economic Crisis?

October 1, 2008

MoveOn.org blames McCain advisers. He blames Obama and Democrats in Congress. Both are wrong.

Summary

A MoveOn.org Political Action ad plays the partisan blame game with the economic crisis, charging that John McCain’s friend and former economic adviser Phil Gramm “stripped safeguards that would have protected us.” The claim is bogus. Gramm’s legislation had broad bipartisan support and was signed into law by President Clinton. Moreover, the bill had nothing to do with causing the crisis, and economists – not to mention President Clinton – praise it for having softened the crisis.

A McCain-Palin ad, in turn, blames Democrats for the mess. The ad says that the crisis “didn’t have to happen,” because legislation McCain cosponsored would have tightened regulations on Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac. But, the ad says, Obama "was notably silent" while Democrats killed the bill. That’s oversimplified. Republicans, who controlled the Senate at the time, did not bring the bill forward for a vote. And it’s unclear how much the legislation would have helped, as McCain signed on just two months before the housing bubble popped.

In fact, there’s ample blame to go around. Experts have cited everyone from home buyers to Wall Street, mortgage brokers to Alan Greenspan.

Analysis

As Congress wrestled with a $700 billion rescue for Wall Street's financial crisis, partisans on both sides got busy – pointing fingers. MoveOn.org Political Action on Sept. 25 released a 60-second TV ad called "My Friends’ Mess," blaming Sen. John McCain and Republican allies who supported banking deregulation. The McCain-Palin campaign released its own 30-second TV spot Sept. 30, saying "Obama was notably silent" while Democrats blocked reforms leaving taxpayers "on the hook for billions." Both ads were to run nationally.

Blame the Republicans!

The MoveOn.org Political Action ad blames a banking deregulation bill sponsored by former Sen. Phil Gramm, a friend and one-time adviser to McCain's campaign. It claims the bill "stripped safeguards that would have protected us."

That claim is bunk. When we contacted MoveOn.org spokesman Trevor Fitzgibbons to ask just what "safeguards" the ad was talking about, he came up with not one single example. The only support offered for the ad's claim is one line in one newspaper article that reported the bill "is now being blamed" for the crisis, without saying who is doing the blaming or on what grounds.

The bill in question is the Gramm-Leach-Bliley Act, which was passed in 1999 and repealed portions of the Glass-Steagall Act, a piece of legislation from the era of the Great Depression that imposed a number of regulations on financial institutions. It's true that Gramm authored the act, but what became law was a widely accepted bipartisan compromise. The measure passed the House 362 - 57, with 155 Democrats voting for the bill. The Senate passed the bill by a vote of 90 - 8. Among the Democrats voting for the bill: Obama's running mate, Joe Biden. The bill was signed into law by President Clinton, a Democrat. If this bill really had "stripped the safeguards that would have protected us," then both parties share the blame, not just "John McCain's friend."

The truth is, however, the Gramm-Leach-Bliley Act had little if anything to do with the current crisis. In fact, economists on both sides of the political spectrum have suggested that the act has probably made the crisis less severe than it might otherwise have been.

Last year the liberal writer Robert Kuttner, in a piece in The American Prospect, argued that "this old-fashioned panic is a child of deregulation." But even he didn't lay the blame primarily on Gramm-Leach-Bliley. Instead, he described "serial bouts of financial deregulation" going back to the 1970s. And he laid blame on policies of the Federal Reserve Board under Alan Greenspan, saying "the Fed has become the chief enabler of a dangerously speculative economy."

What Gramm-Leach-Bliley did was to allow commercial banks to get into investment banking. Commercial banks are the type that accept deposits and make loans such as mortgages; investment banks accept money for investment into stocks and commodities. In 1998, regulators had allowed Citicorp, a commercial bank, to acquire Traveler's Group, an insurance company that was partly involved in investment banking, to form Citigroup. That was seen as a signal that Glass-Steagall was a dead letter as a practical matter, and Gramm-Leach-Bliley made its repeal formal. But it had little to do with mortgages.

Actually, deregulated banks were not the major culprits in the current debacle. Bank of America, Citigroup, Wells Fargo and J.P. Morgan Chase have weathered the financial crisis in reasonably good shape, while Bear Stearns collapsed and Lehman Brothers has entered bankruptcy, to name but two of the investment banks which had remained independent despite the repeal of Glass-Steagall.

Observers as diverse as former Clinton Treasury official and current Berkeley economist Brad DeLong and George Mason University's Tyler Cowen, a libertarian, have praised Gramm-Leach-Bliley has having softened the crisis. The deregulation allowed Bank of America and J.P. Morgan Chase to acquire Merrill Lynch and Bear Stearns. And Goldman Sachs and Morgan Stanley have now converted themselves into unified banks to better ride out the storm. That idea is also endorsed by former President Clinton himself, who, in an interview with Maria Bartiromo published in the Sept. 24 issue of Business Week, said he had no regrets about signing the repeal of Glass-Steagall:

Bill Clinton (Sept. 24): Indeed, one of the things that has helped stabilize the current situation as much as it has is the purchase of Merrill Lynch by Bank of America, which was much smoother than it would have been if I hadn't signed that bill. ...You know, Phil Gramm and I disagreed on a lot of things, but he can't possibly be wrong about everything. On the Glass-Steagall thing, like I said, if you could demonstrate to me that it was a mistake, I'd be glad to look at the evidence. But I can't blame [the Republicans]. This wasn't something they forced me into.

No, Blame the Democrats!

It's true that key Democrats opposed the Federal Housing Enterprise Regulatory Reform Act of 2005, which would have established a single, independent regulatory body with jurisdiction over Fannie and Freddie – a move that the Government Accountability Office had recommended in a 2004 report. Current House Banking Committee chairman Rep. Barney Frank of Massachusetts opposed legislation to reorganize oversight in 2000 (when Clinton was still president), 2003 and 2004, saying of the 2000 legislation that concern about Fannie and Freddie was "overblown." Just last summer, Senate Banking Committee chairman Chris Dodd called a Bush proposal for an independent agency to regulate the two entities "ill-advised."

But saying that Democrats killed the 2005 bill "while Mr. Obama was notably silent" oversimplifies things considerably. The bill made it out of committee in the Senate but was never brought up for consideration. At that time, Republicans had a majority in the Senate and controlled the agenda. Democrats never got the chance to vote against it or to mount a filibuster to block it.

By the time McCain signed on to the legislation, it was too late to prevent the crisis anyway. McCain added his name on May 25, 2006, when the housing bubble had already nearly peaked. Standard & Poor's Case-Schiller Home Price Index, which measures residential housing prices in 20 metropolitan regions and then constructs a composite index for the entire United States, shows that housing prices began falling in July 2006, barely two months later.

The Real Deal

So who is to blame? There's plenty of blame to go around, and it doesn't fasten only on one party or even mainly on what Washington did or didn't do. As The Economist magazine noted recently, the problem is one of "layered irresponsibility ... with hard-working homeowners and billionaire villains each playing a role." Here's a partial list of those alleged to be at fault:

The Federal Reserve, which slashed interest rates after the dot-com bubble burst, making credit cheap.

Home buyers, who took advantage of easy credit to bid up the prices of homes excessively.

Congress, which continues to support a mortgage tax deduction that gives consumers a tax incentive to buy more expensive houses.

Real estate agents, most of whom work for the sellers rather than the buyers and who earned higher commissions from selling more expensive homes.

The Clinton administration, which pushed for less stringent credit and downpayment requirements for working- and middle-class families.

Mortgage brokers, who offered less-credit-worthy home buyers subprime, adjustable rate loans with low initial payments, but exploding interest rates.

Former Federal Reserve chairman Alan Greenspan, who in 2004, near the peak of the housing bubble, encouraged Americans to take out adjustable rate mortgages.

Wall Street firms, who paid too little attention to the quality of the risky loans that they bundled into Mortgage Backed Securities (MBS), and issued bonds using those securities as collateral.

The Bush administration, which failed to provide needed government oversight of the increasingly dicey mortgage-backed securities market.

An obscure accounting rule called mark-to-market, which can have the paradoxical result of making assets be worth less on paper than they are in reality during times of panic.

Collective delusion, or a belief on the part of all parties that home prices would keep rising forever, no matter how high or how fast they had already gone up.

The U.S. economy is enormously complicated. Screwing it up takes a great deal of cooperation. Claiming that a single piece of legislation was responsible for (or could have averted) the crisis is just political grandstanding. We have no advice to offer on how best to solve the financial crisis. But these sorts of partisan caricatures can only make the task more difficult.

–by Joe Miller and Brooks Jackson

http://www.factcheck.org/elections-2008/wh...mic_crisis.html

[Alan and Noemi 0]

Who Caused the Economic Crisis?

October 1, 2008

The Real Deal

So who is to blame? There's plenty of blame to go around, and it doesn't fasten only on one party or even mainly on what Washington did or didn't do. As The Economist magazine noted recently, the problem is one of "layered irresponsibility ... with hard-working homeowners and billionaire villains each playing a role." Here's a partial list of those alleged to be at fault:

The Federal Reserve, which slashed interest rates after the dot-com bubble burst, making credit cheap.

Home buyers, who took advantage of easy credit to bid up the prices of homes excessively.

Congress, which continues to support a mortgage tax deduction that gives consumers a tax incentive to buy more expensive houses.

Real estate agents, most of whom work for the sellers rather than the buyers and who earned higher commissions from selling more expensive homes.

The Clinton administration, which pushed for less stringent credit and downpayment requirements for working- and middle-class families.

Mortgage brokers, who offered less-credit-worthy home buyers subprime, adjustable rate loans with low initial payments, but exploding interest rates.

Former Federal Reserve chairman Alan Greenspan, who in 2004, near the peak of the housing bubble, encouraged Americans to take out adjustable rate mortgages.

Wall Street firms, who paid too little attention to the quality of the risky loans that they bundled into Mortgage Backed Securities (MBS), and issued bonds using those securities as collateral.

The Bush administration, which failed to provide needed government oversight of the increasingly dicey mortgage-backed securities market.

An obscure accounting rule called mark-to-market, which can have the paradoxical result of making assets be worth less on paper than they are in reality during times of panic.

Collective delusion, or a belief on the part of all parties that home prices would keep rising forever, no matter how high or how fast they had already gone up.

http://www.factcheck.org/elections-2008/wh...mic_crisis.html

There is much truth in these words. Though, I believe that even this is a an oversimplification. Truth be told, the blame lies on nearly every member of congress and every president since the 1950's. As a society, we have a problem in that our priorities are messed up, AND most of us are collectively unable to see the world in the "big picture"... being stuck on things being the way we have been taught, and shying away from ways we do not know. The idea that Capitalism=good and Socialism=bad are uneducated and ignorant views. The truth is either can be good or bad and none can be solely implemented. There must be a combination for us to survive long term.

Ask members of congress or the president, and they will claim they are against war.

Then why do we have wars? (disregarding WWII, in which we had no choice)

Ask members of congress or the president, and they will tell you they are against poverty.

Then why do we have poverty?

Ask members of congress or the president if we want jobs to be sent overseas, and they will say no.

Then why are our companies sending jobs overseas?

You get the idea. Congress and the president are responsible for nearly all the bad things in society that we have. Period. This includes the Democrats and the Republicans, though not equally. The buck stops there as they are the ones with the power to change things. Ironically, they are to blame, but they should not be. Congress is elected to REPRESENT the wishes of their constituents... to be their voice in Washington. Unfortunately, this is not the case. They all feel they were elected to make decisions FOR us, and this is exactly what they do.

If the US and the world are to survive long term.... lets think about this for a minute. Most assume this is a given. It is not. Thinking so is very arrogant. Every society in history thus far has had one unlucky generation that had to witness the downfall and end of their civilization. This can and will happen again if we let it. Things can go horribly wrong from here. It is up to us. In fact, it is a prophecy in the bible that things WILL go terribly wrong and the end of the world will come. People have different beliefs on the subject, even though evidence of validity of the bible is either terrible, or non-existent.

The trouble is that people believe what they are told when they are children, whether its religion, or politics and they cling to it like a life preserver as it is part of their personal identity. They never realize that there just might be a better way to live.

There are three things that are responsible for the mess: Greed, Money, and Religious Fundamentalism.

Greed and Money tie together into this horrible mess called..... "Capitalism"

Capitalism in itself is not terrible, but our implementation of it is. The trouble is that people are not willing to live within their means.

Most households in the US have a lot of debt. They buy houses they cannot afford, they buy cars they cannot afford, they buy toys they cannot afford.

This cannot be done indefinitely, or bankruptcy occurs.

Also, as a society we are also unwilling to live within our means. Everyone wants things from the government... even those people claiming that capitalism and the free market are the best way to live do this. We want good roads. We want good schools. We want parks. We want social security (actually, we need it). We want a military to protect us. We want police protection. We want firefighters. We want, We want, We want. We just don't want to pay for any of it. Worst of all, we elect people into office that will spend beyond OUR COLLECTIVE means. This puts our very way of life at risk, and eventual collapse. Just how long can this go on?

On top of this, the federal government overspends. It borrow money every year just to survive. This cannot go on forever. The world thinks the US is the richest country on earth. It is not. Its essentially bankrupt. There is no extra money. Each time we send foreign aid, it is BORROWED money. We have no extra... and nobody wants to pay taxes.

"Free Market Capitalism" is the harbinger of death for our way of life. You do not have to be a scholar to realize that. Just look at how things work around you. Life has become all about the pursuit of money, things, and status. People need to realize that life should be about ... well.... life... family... communication and cooperation. How about loving our fellow human beings? How about feeling bad that others suffer even when they are hard working? (capitalism fueled by greed is DIRECTLY to blame for this). The US is a military and financial superpower. How about becoming a Humanitarian superpower?

Congress continually spends more than they have. They approve some insane version of a presidents budget. They are ALL to blame. Only President Clinton made a difference and balanced the budget, showing it can be done. Love him or hate him, he did an overall good job. Yeah, Yeah, ..... 8 years of peace, a balanced budget, and a booming economy... he must be punished.

Our current form of government, a "Democratic Republic ruled by free market capitalism" is not sustainable. This was meant to be a government BY THE PEOPLE AND FOR THE PEOPLE. But this concept has been lost. We are now a government by the people and for business. The truth is that business and business interests should have absolutely no say and no representation at all in our government. They should be banished from even speaking with our elected representatives. They represent the people, not the businesses. Business should simply be at mercy of the regulations put upon them by congress as a representatives of the people. If they do not like it, they can do business elsewhere. With all the consumers in the US, this is highly unlikely.

The lobby system has to go.

Line item veto's have to go.

The committee system has to go.

Lobbyists need to go.

Tacking one bill onto another to force members of congress to sign.... has to go.

Separation of church and state needs to be restored.

Civil rights need to be restored

Morality based laws have to go.

Two examples:

Roe vs Wade: Its the law of the land and has precedence. Almost all those wanting to overturn it do so on religious grounds. But.. we have separation of church and state. This is a civil rights issue. The issue is that nobody has the right to tell others that they cant. Period. All sorts of things happen that I don't like, but I don't have the right to tell others that they cannot.

Gay marriage: I don't personally like it. I don't personally want my children exposed to it at a young age. I also don't have the right to tell others that they cannot. Separation of church and state! This is between the two parties and God, or whatever deity they believe in. Open your mind... and think. In a government that has separation of church and state... why is the government in the marriage business at all? Why does the government tell you who you can marry? The sex you can marry? How many you can marry? It is not something that should even be part of government in a free society. As long as they are not hurting or interfering with others, people should be allowed to do what they want without government interfering.

This cannot go one. Our government does not need to be "fixed", it needs to be re-created into a form that is sustainable long term. Our current form has failed time and time again. How many times does it have to fail before we realize that it does not work. Patching it with duct tape and glue (bailouts and regulations) is simply postponing the problem that the plumbing is rotten. The rich in society keep patching it so they can keep draining it.

A sustainable form of government is, IMHO, a "Democratic Republic with a socialist core and free market for everything else". But there are probably other forms that are sustainable ... as I am not claiming to have all the answers or the best system. Just one idea. I do know that people need to be our focus, not money.

The idea is that the basics of human life and happiness are government supplied or government regulated. This is not the "government" we have now. It is a government "by the people and for the people", whose main interest is bettering the lives of the people in the United States. ALL of the people... and not at all for the benefit of the rich or business, which are almost synonymous.

The basics in life are either regulated severely or provided or become non-profit.

Energy

Housing (cost regulated)

Health Care (non-profit business)

Food

Education

Police

Fire

Military

Roads/infrastructure

Banking (which produces nothing for society... just drains money for pushing money around) - time for a national bank. Banking should not even BE an industry.

Possibly a few others. Keep in mind that we already have Military, police, fire, education, etc. Hence we ALREADY HAVE A SOCIALIST CORE. People just wont admit it. We simply need to add Energy, Health Care, etc to the list and concentrate on those. Just expand it a bit. Government exists to SERVE the people and the peoples interests. All the people. Not business and industry. Look at the oil industry. Oil is in the ground on US soil. That oil belongs to the people of the USA. 50% or more of the profits from that oil should be going back into government coffers. Oil companies should simply be paid a fee to extract and refine it. It they don't want to for that amount of money.. someone else will. Energy should also be a non-profit industry. Its a basic need.

People can still have businesses. Start a restaurant.... manufacture something... everything in society that is not a necessity is up for grabs. By all means, make your fortunes. Be rich! Just do not do it in the areas of basic needs, which drives inflation, drives poverty and crime, and causes suffering.

The essence of capitalism is that you pay people the least possible amount of money for the most work, so that you can maximize the profits of investors who really did not work at all. Their money worked for them. Money is not a worker... made no effort... and needs to be removed from the equation. If this continues, there will be just one very rich person or family at the top, and all others will be destitute. THAT is the goal of capitalism. The only thing that has prevented that so far are unions and those "socialist" anti-trust laws. If the free market actually worked, we would have no need for regulatory laws. Oh wait a minute.... people are greedy.

In essence we need to completely re-think our form of government... and reconstruct it to one that has the people at heart, first and foremost.

The health, well being, and happiness of ALL of the people of the United States is job 1. Nothing else matters, especially money.

I leave with a little light hearted, but thoughtful, comment from my father, who is one of the most intelligent men I know, who is now 84 and fought and lived through WWII in Europe. Having been in a real war, and not a police action for monetary gain..... he reasons this:

"Those with the most, have the most to lose, and the most to protect. From this point on, we expand the draft to include those 16-60, and.... WE DRAFT BY GROSS INCOME .... there will never be another war".

Genius... and very telling about our current mess.

Mahatma Gandhi was once asked: "What do you think about western civilization?

His response: "I think it would be a good idea"

Enough said.

[sunandmoon 450]

Gay marriage: I don't personally like it. I don't personally want my children exposed to it at a young age. I also don't have the right to tell others that they cannot. Separation of church and state! This is between the two parties and God, or whatever deity they believe in. Open your mind... and think. In a government that has separation of church and state... why is the government in the marriage business at all? Why does the government tell you who you can marry? The sex you can marry? How many you can marry? It is not something that should even be part of government in a free society. As long as they are not hurting or interfering with others, people should be allowed to do what they want without government interfering.

maybe if the term marriage is taken out of the mix, this could become a less emotional issue. maybe the focus should be calling it a civil union, domestic partnership, where a gay couple would have the same rights as a husband and wife.