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POPS Follow The Money! If Congress does not act, American taxpayers will continue to be exposed to the enormous risk that Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac pose to the housing market, the overall financial system, and the economy as a whole. John McCain, May 26, 2005
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POPSFollow The Money & Why Fannie Mae's Reform Was Thwarted Is it any wonder that the 2005 reforms Senator McCain championed never passed? If Congress does not act, American taxpayers will continue to be exposed to the enormous risk that Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac pose to the housing market, the overall financial system, and the economy as a whole. John McCain, May 26, 2005
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POPSPelosi says $150B economic stimulus plan needed Holy Cow!!! Is there no end to this giving away our tax dollars? They haven't even won the White House yet and they're giving more of our $$ away. Can someone just calm down a few days and think things through? These people are only making things worse. Talk about scare tactics!!!
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POPSEdited SNL subprime video - no longer available I seldom ever watch SNL but came across this article on a skit - the video was pulled - edited and reposted - however it nows seems it was pulled again and is not available - guess people with power got their way.
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POPSShine "Light Of Scrutiny & Accountability” On The Nation’s Financial System Pelosi said,“We want to take our country in a new direction for the middle class.” Something else that should be looked into: Barney Frank’s relationship with a former Fannie executive named Herb Moses. Frank told reporters Friday that starting in January, Congress will “have a major role.” “We have to rewrite housing in America. … It would be highly irresponsible if we were to stop here,” he said. “Now we have to perform more serious reform.” Yet, she mentions nothing about the accountability of people like Sen. Chris Dodd, or Franklin Raines or Jamie Gorelick, the latter two having made millions off of Fannie while the organization itself was sliding into government conservatorship.
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POPSDemocrats Get Ripped for Bailout Bill from Their Own The author is just getting warmed up in this clip. The entire article is worth a look at. (Actually, comparing Obama to Brutus is not a good analogy, for Brutus slew a tyrant Caesar, where Obama aided and abetted the financial czars and the Fed instead of defending the republic). The politics of Obama and the fearful Dems (Pelosi) cannot be overlooked in passing the bailout (even with republicans resisting): He lobbied hard for the bill. He did so, according to some who met with him on Capitol Hill, because he feared that if he opposed the bailout and it triggered a market collapse it could cost him the election. Better to placate the thieves on Wall Street than stand up for the masses of enraged and swindled citizens.
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POPSThe Obama Sell Off I know that the reason I moved everything I had out of the markets is that if Obama gets in he's going to destroy a minimum of 1/7th of the economy with his medical idiocy. He's also going to destroy investment with his tax increases and who can tell where the next huge failure will come from with that kind of uncertainty. Better to sit on the sidelines and see what happens than try to guess exactly what the Democrats might destroy next.
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POPSCongress approval rating just 10% "A political establishment held in higher regard may have been able to hold together some kind of coalition of the willing," wrote Joel Achenbach in the Washington Post. "But distrust of the nation's leaders, from the leaders of Congress to the president, foreclosed that possibility." This was not mere rhetoric. Congress's public approval rating was down to 18% before the crisis hit. By some estimates, it is now 10% and falling. Washington has seen a "throw the bums out" mood before, notably Newt Gingrich's 1994 anti-government "Republican revolution". But this is something else. Like some others, Gingrich is calling for the resignation of Hank Paulson, the treasury secretary, for presiding over a train wreck and then failing to persuade people why $700bn was needed to get back on the rails.
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POPSMartial Law Would Be Declared If Bailout Not Passed In House
As former California congressman Dan Hamburg said earlier this year, the 2007 National Defense Authorization Act gives the executive the power to invoke martial law in case of “major public emergencies,” not limited to “a natural disaster, a disease outbreak, a terrorist attack,” but also “any other condition in which the President determines that domestic violence has occurred to the extent that state officials cannot maintain public order.” Obviously, a financial crash and ensuing social chaos of the sort now being implemented by the ruling elite would be characterized as a dire emergency and a near perfect excuse to impose martial law, a long standing goal of the elite. As the Army Times reported last month, a battle-hardened “homeland” brigade is now “going domestic” after spending time in Iraq. It appears this illegal deployment (under Posse Comitatus) is designed to respond to “public disorder” as the economy is deliberately and cynically dismantled at the behest of our rulers.
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POPSOh, my! How peppery! The Republicans, the master of the aggresive, fiery, offensive speech in congress has claimed that some of them didn't vote for the bailout, because a speech by Pelosi "hurt their feelings". What kind of morons do they think we are. You didn't think it might have had to do with the speeches by other Republicans that basically called people Unamerican if they voted for it? Republicans have nothing but excuses left anymore.
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POPSThe Next Financial Bailout Bill Will Not Work
The truth is often so politically-incorrect. You will note that this was published in the UK, not in a US newspaper, and certainly not from the MSM. In other words get ready for a second hard sell since the first bailout bill was rejected (due to pressure from average citizens). Bush will bully-pulpit, Pelosi and Ried will scream again, and even republicans will line up, both Obama and McCain will push the same pitch and try to get wary Americans to sign on the bottom line. But the plan would not work. He says this is why bank stocks, not just investment firms are falling too: traditional banking – collecting retail deposits and making loans to ordinary customers – is barely profitable. Compared with the potential gains from a day at the currency-swap races, or a night in the derivatives casino, current accounts are cold potatoes. That is why bonus-hungry executives, at what we used to think of as boring banks, were so keen to spin the red-hot wheel of fortune. [/quo
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POPS Beltway "Earmark" Business is Booming .............Pelosi Uses Panic to Pass Pork........ Year-end spending bill doubles cost of earmarks, violates President’s earmark principles; Obey says pet projects added "the old fashioned way" Today, U.S. Senator Jim DeMint (R-South Carolina) expressed disappointment that House Speaker Nancy Pelosi used the focus on the financial crisis to pass billions of dollars on thousands of new earmarks included in the continuing resolution (CR), which funds the government through March of next year. The $16.1 billion for 2,627 earmarks in the CR is nearly double the cost of pet projects in the same bills from last year, and almost four times the level the President said he would except. In January, the President promised to "veto any appropriations bill Congress sends him that does not cut the number and cost of earmarks in half."
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POPS95 democrats voted against the bill Yet all we here is how it is the republican's fault. How the minority party in the house is responsible for the failure of a bill pushed by the majority even though quite a few of the minority voted for the bill. Pelosi couldn't (or more likely, wouldn't) reign in her own troops in support of the bill, so how is it the republicans are to blame?
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POPSPelosi's Game "May I vote NO?" Speaker's Answer "Yes, You May" the Speaker's answer to Dems was "Yes, you may!" Ignoring all of the immense power to persuade that inheres in the position of Speaker of the House, Speaker Pelosi wouldn't even offer (or threaten to withhold) so much as a choice Capitol parking spot to make up the 12-vote margin between victory and defeat of H.R. 3997, the Emergency Economic Stabilization Act of 2008. Speaking on John Gibson's radio show later in the day, however, Karl Rove ran through, by name and often by committee or subcommittee chairmanship, the many, many Democratic members of the House whom Speaker Pelosi and the House Democratic leadership expressly authorized to vote against the economic stabilization bill.
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POPS Thoughts on the Bailout Defeat "A number of Republican House members and staff, along with others who are plugged in, are telling me that Nancy Pelosi and the Democrats will come back with a new bill that includes all the left-wing stuff that was scrubbed from the bill that was defeated today in the House. As this scenario goes, the House Democrats need 218 votes, and they have to pick up a number of black and Hispanic House members who jumped ship because the Wall Street provisions, in their view, were too benign. So things like the bankruptcy judges setting mortgage terms and rates, the ACORN slush-fund spending, the union proxy for corporate boards, stricter limits on executive compensation, and much larger equity ownership of selling banks through warrants will all find itself back in the new bill. Of course, this scenario will lose more Republican votes. But insiders tell me President Bush will take Secretary Paulson’s advice and sign that kind of legislation."