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Post by bchevy on Feb 15, 2009 8:32:11 GMT -4
...I think it's too late, Bchevy.....it's only a matter of time now. I think you're right. I'm still waiting to hear how almost doubling our deficit in one spending bill help us............
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Post by bluecrabber on Feb 15, 2009 10:30:12 GMT -4
The whole thing is sickening, we are what,,, a trillion dollars in deficit? and they think throwing and additional trillion dollars that we don't have at the problem will fix it? A trillion here, a trillion there, they throw those numbers around so easily these days we have all become insensitive to how big those numbers really are: If the Govt collects $1 a second from we the people to pay for this 10 trillion dollar deficit, it will take 320,000 years. A million dollars in about eleven and a half days. A billion dollars in 32 years. A trillion dollars in 32,000 years. 10 Trillion dollars in 320,000 years. Of course, this assumes we don't have to pay interest to China.. fat chance.. Best regards, BC
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Post by al on Feb 21, 2009 16:29:56 GMT -4
Stimulus Plan
Three contractors are bidding to fix a broken fence at the White House. One is from Chicago, another is from Tennessee, and the third is from Minnesota.
All three go with a White House official to examine the fence. The Minnesota contractor takes out a tape measure and does some measuring, then works some figures with a pencil. "Well," he says, "I figure the job will run about $900: $400 for materials, $400 for my crew and $100 profit for me."
The Tennessee contractor also does some measuring and figuring, then says, "I can do this job for $700: $300 for materials, $300 for my crew and $100 profit for me."
The Chicago contractor doesn't measure or figure, but leans over to the White House official and whispers, "$2,700."
The official, incredulous, says, "You didn't even measure like the other guys! How did you come up with such a high figure?" The Chicago contractor whispers back, "$1000 for me, $1000 for you, and we hire the guy from Tennessee to fix the fence." "Done!" replies the government official.
And that, my friends, is how the new stimulus plan will work.
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Post by lynn on Feb 21, 2009 17:28:29 GMT -4
I was surprised when Kratovil originally voted against the stimulus. I wasn't at all surprised when he next turned completely around and voted for it! He was showing his true colors. Next time there is an election, I say throw out 98% of these crooks who line their own pockets while emptying out ours! Ok, Pete if you want an example of why I say that.... I will start with saying look up a few posts about Pelosi. Congress seems to forget about the American Revolution and how there is only so much that they can push people into things. A lot of our Representatives seem to feel elite to those whom they are supposed to be representing. They seem to forget one thing... they may be representing us, but they are working for us! We are their bosses and we will determine if they still have a job next time. We can never pay for this stimulus package and we will become broke trying to do so. I think we should all send our Representatives a note and a bag of tea, and get them to remember the roots of American History... remember the Boston Tea Party and remember how the American's as a whole feel about excessive taxation.
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Post by linda712 on Feb 21, 2009 19:10:14 GMT -4
If you click on the Morphing 44 Presidents thread, then scroll down to the bottom of the page where you can click on other clips, there's one called U.S. Form of Government. It's 10 minutes long. The message is powerful, and ties in nicely with this. I would have posted it also, but, alas.......
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Post by cheapshotartist on Mar 6, 2009 15:38:10 GMT -4
Interesting quote from the New York Times believe it or not from a few years ago talking about how everyone wants to blame Republicans for the mortage mess, heres en excerpt from that article:
Fannie Mae, the nation's biggest underwriter of home mortgages, has been under increasing pressure from the Clinton Administration to expand mortgage loans among low and moderate income people and felt pressure from stock holders to maintain its phenomenal growth in profits.
It is what is it folks and when President Bush tried to put regulations on Fannie and Freddie, good 'ole Barny Frank and Chris Dodd went crazy and said it was not needed. What a bunch of hypocrites.
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Post by kl on Mar 6, 2009 16:14:02 GMT -4
Interesting quote from the New York Times believe it or not from a few years ago talking about how everyone wants to blame Republicans for the mortage mess, heres en excerpt from that article: Fannie Mae, the nation's biggest underwriter of home mortgages, has been under increasing pressure from the Clinton Administration to expand mortgage loans among low and moderate income people and felt pressure from stock holders to maintain its phenomenal growth in profits.It is what is it folks and when President Bush tried to put regulations on Fannie and Freddie, good 'ole Barny Frank and Chris Dodd went crazy and said it was not needed. What a bunch of hypocrites. And your point is? The repubs had the last 8 years to fix it if they wanted to. But they didn't. So everyone is now blaming Obama for this? Enjoy the kool aid.
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Post by cheapshotartist on Mar 6, 2009 17:36:16 GMT -4
There is plenty of blame to go around but I am tired of "the last 8 years caused all this" when actually for Bush's first 6 years there was growth and job creation.
I'm just saying I'm tired of one party blaming the other that's all. Let's quit the stupid finger pointing and get something done. Geeeez
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Post by RobMoore on Mar 6, 2009 20:54:27 GMT -4
Here is an exercise for the patient and persistent: Try to find a congressman or senator NOT to blame for our sad state of affairs, regardless of party affiliation.
The real negligent folks are those who turned out to vote unaware of where their vote was going, but simply showed up because "it was the responsible thing to do". The ballot even makes it easy for them to just show up, click down their party line, and leave happy.
No, the responsible thing to do is to stay home unless you know exactly what your candidate of choice intends to do with his/her office. That way, we get a government chosen by people who have actually done some research and made an informed decision, not because the winner had the best commercials and catch-phrase.
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Post by cheapshotartist on Mar 6, 2009 22:18:42 GMT -4
So true Rob well said!
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Post by dej on Mar 7, 2009 4:30:30 GMT -4
It is what is it folks and when President Bush tried to put regulations on Fannie and Freddie, good 'ole Barny Frank and Chris Dodd went crazy and said it was not needed. What a bunch of hypocrites. And your point is? The repubs had the last 8 years to fix it if they wanted to. But they didn't. So everyone is now blaming Obama for this? Enjoy the kool aid. If you read the quote without the partisan blinders, you might have noticed a couple things. One was that the repub (Bush) did try to fix it and was blocked by dems (Dodd & Frank). The other thing you might have noticed was that Obama wasn't blamed. Have another glass.
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Post by Deleted on Mar 8, 2009 12:33:26 GMT -4
Interesting quote from the New York Times believe it or not from a few years ago talking about how everyone wants to blame Republicans for the mortage mess, heres en excerpt from that article: Fannie Mae, the nation's biggest underwriter of home mortgages, has been under increasing pressure from the Clinton Administration to expand mortgage loans among low and moderate income people and felt pressure from stock holders to maintain its phenomenal growth in profits.It is what is it folks and when President Bush tried to put regulations on Fannie and Freddie, good 'ole Barny Frank and Chris Dodd went crazy and said it was not needed. What a bunch of hypocrites. The premise behind the Clinton's initiative was good. In short, more homeowners and land owners means more tax revenue. Homeownership helps promote good neighborhoods and so forth. You know, gets people out of Potterville..... The mortgage companies and banks did not have to lend the money or make risky loans. The high commissions and company profits fueled the greed. Investors bought up the bundled loans that they were assured were safe which created a feeding frenzy of more, more, more. This argument against the Clinton's is the same as those who say his signing of NAFTA (North American Fair Trade Agreement) is why all the jobs are being lost in the US. NAFTA has nothing to do with all the manufacturing jobs lost to China, the dominance of the Japanese auto industry, and the outsourcing of jobs to India to name a few..... Let's get past the Clinton and Bush years and move forward.
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Post by falgar25 on Mar 8, 2009 15:00:51 GMT -4
An article today in the online version of the Washington Post talks about FHA-backed loans that are defaulting at the first payment. If the borrower cannot even make the first payment, why in the world was the loan made in the first place? These aren't loans that were made several years ago, these are loans that are being made today. We can't blame Clinton, or Bush, or even Obama for the seemingly unscrupulous actions of the mortgage brokers and lenders.
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Post by bchevy on Mar 8, 2009 20:13:37 GMT -4
Let's get past the Clinton and Bush years and move forward. Yes, by all means lets do that. Can someone let obama in on the plan?
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Post by cheapshotartist on Mar 8, 2009 20:33:44 GMT -4
Actually the banks were under severe pressure from groups like ACORN to make these risky loans. The banks were picketed, and in some cases employees were harrassed by groups who represented risky borrowers. In a nutshell, they were pressured to be "politically correct".
Just how much revenue were we suppose to see from homeowners who did not qualify for the house in the first place and that same home went into foreclosure?
They day banks stopped requiring 20% down was the day everyone should have taken notice of the impending problems.
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Post by Deleted on Mar 8, 2009 20:51:06 GMT -4
I really don't think ACORN was even a plip on the radar screen during the Clinton years. I still stand behind the fact that banks did not have to make risky loans. If people qualified, and they were denied for other reasons (color, etc) that's a different thing.
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Post by cheapshotartist on Mar 8, 2009 23:48:34 GMT -4
Just a bit from the ACORN site Who is ACORN? ACORN is the nation’s largest grassroots community organization of low- and moderate-income people with over 400,000 member families organized into more than 1,200 neighborhood chapters in 110 cities across the country. Since 1970, ACORN has been building community organizations that are committed to social and economic justice, and won victories on thousands of issues of concern to our members, through direct action, negotiation, legislative advocacy and voter participation. And some interesting reading: atlasshrugs2000.typepad.com/atlas_shrugs/2008/10/obama-sued-citi.html
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Post by bchevy on Mar 9, 2009 8:07:55 GMT -4
Funny how they forgot to mention their fraudulent voter registration drives, Underage or dead people being registered once or even numerous time.....
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Post by kl on Mar 9, 2009 9:17:35 GMT -4
From Bob Herbert N.Y. Times:
In the midst of the craziness, conservatives are busy trying to blame this epic economic catastrophe — a conflagration of their own making — on the new president. Forget Ronald Reagan and George Herbert Walker Bush and George Herbert Hoover Bush and the Heritage Foundation and the Club for Growth and Phil Gramm and Newt Gingrich and all the rest. The right-wingers would have you believe this is Obama’s downturn.
The bear market would no doubt have magically turned around by now, and those failing geniuses at the helm of our flat-lined megacorporations would no doubt be busy manufacturing new profits and putting people back to work — if only Mr. Obama had solved the banking crisis, had lowered taxes on the rich, had refused to consider running up those giant deficits (a difficult thing to do at the same time that you are saving banks and lowering taxes), and had abandoned any inclination that he might have had to reform health care and make it a little easier for ordinary American kids to get a better education.
As the columnist Charles Krauthammer was kind enough to inform us: “The markets’ recent precipitous decline is a reaction not just to the absence of any plausible bank rescue plan, but also to the suspicion that Obama sees the continuing financial crisis as usefully creating the psychological conditions — the sense of crisis bordering on fear-itself panic — for enacting his ‘big-bang’ agenda to federalize and/or socialize health care, education and energy, the commanding heights of post-industrial society.”
That’s a more genteel version of the sentiment expressed a couple of weeks ago by the perpetually hysterical Alan Keyes, a Republican who was beaten by Mr. Obama in the Illinois Senate race in 2004. “Obama is a radical communist,” said Mr. Keyes, “and I think it is becoming clear. That is what I told people in Illinois, and now everybody realizes it’s true.”
I don’t know whether President Obama’s ultimate rescue plan for the financial industry will work. He is a thoughtful man running a thoughtful administration and the plan, a staggeringly complex and difficult work in progress, hasn’t been revealed yet.
What I know is that the renegade clowns who ruined this economy, the Republican right in alliance with big business and a fair number of feckless Democrats — all working in opposition to the interests of working families — have no credible basis for waging war against serious efforts to get us out of their mess.
Maybe the markets are down because demand has dried up, because many of the nation’s biggest firms have imploded and because Americans are losing their jobs and their homes by the millions. Maybe a dose of reality is in order, as opposed to the childish desire for yet another stock market bubble.
Maybe the nuns in grammar school were right when they counseled that patience is a virtue. The man has been president for six weeks.
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Post by Deleted on Mar 9, 2009 9:54:17 GMT -4
Funny how they forgot to mention their fraudulent voter registration drives, Underage or dead people being registered once or even numerous time..... To me, the whole acorn thing boils down to where the rubber meets the road. Bugs Bunny might have registered, but he didn't get to vote. If he had been able to vote, that's fraud. The safety net worked. I don't condone what they (some) did, but getting people registered and voting should be a good thing. We don't need to throw out the baby with the dirty bath water, just change the water. I haven't heard of any cases of voter fraud since the Nov. national election. Has there been a case(s) of it?
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Post by RobMoore on Mar 9, 2009 13:50:51 GMT -4
I disagree. With the exception of mobility-challenged individuals, if you can't be bothered to go register on your own and go vote without assistance, pushing, or hand-holding, then voting obviously wasn't that important to you or you are lazy. Either way, we don't need your opinion muddying the waters.
(I say "your" as I speak to this hypothetical person, I don't actually mean you......unless the shoe fits)
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Post by Deleted on Mar 9, 2009 14:21:52 GMT -4
Wow ....unless the shoe fits, was that necessary. I did mention that I didn't condone their actions. So I'll take my turn now....your guy lost, get over it, that is of course if the shoe does fit. I came back to add this. I've never attacked or even innuendoed something negative about anyone. It used to be against the guests and some were rightly deserved. The politico forum really gets people emotions going. I don't always agree with with others say, but it is their opinion. I take in the information the same way as when I watch both Fox and CNN news. Maybe we need to divide the politico forum into a left and right sections so like minded thinkers can stay together to share.....sounds boring though.
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Post by dej on Mar 9, 2009 20:18:14 GMT -4
To me, the whole acorn thing boils down to where the rubber meets the road. Bugs Bunny might have registered, but he didn't get to vote. If he had been able to vote, that's fraud. The safety net worked. I don't condone what they (some) did, but getting people registered and voting should be a good thing. We don't need to throw out the baby with the dirty bath water, just change the water. I haven't heard of any cases of voter fraud since the Nov. national election. Has there been a case(s) of it? I wish I could share your confidence that no vote fraud occurred as a result of ACORN's illegal voter registrations. The fact that we haven't heard of any cases, doesn't mean it didn't occur. After all their side won, so what's the incentive for them look for fraud?
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Post by RobMoore on Mar 9, 2009 20:31:18 GMT -4
...and we have another addition to the short list of "touchy people who take everything personally".
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Post by bchevy on Mar 9, 2009 20:47:07 GMT -4
I haven't heard of any cases of voter fraud since the Nov. national election. Has there been a case(s) of it? Could be, maybe, I'm just guessing here, but Lack of an election that matters? I'll give that one to ACORN, Hat's off to them for no voter fraud since November. Good job!
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