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POPSChange you can believe in - change for the worse Do you like paying taxes, then watch government become bigger and more incompetent? Do you like discovering your family doesn't have enough income and start looking for a second job, only to find there are none? Do you really want a health care system like Canada's (ask any Canadian what they think of their health care - they wait over a year for an MRI, for example..) Did you like Carter's sky high inflation with a downward spiraling productivity? Then you will LOVE the change Obama brings you.
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POPSWe don't know this man or.... birds of a feather fly together. If we elect this empty suit trojan horse.... we are in for a world of s**t. Will make Jimmy (the Commie) Carter's time in office look like a picnic.
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POPSLiberate Sarah (lol) Step Two involves Jeremiah Wright. he fact is the only Democrats to win the presidency in the past 40 years -- Jimmy Carter and Bill Clinton -- distanced themselves from liberal orthodoxy. Obama is, by contrast, a garden-variety liberal. He also has radical associates in his past. The most famous of these is the Rev. Jeremiah Wright.... Brilliant. In the midst of a Wall Street crisis, and with McCain getting hammered for ignoring the middle class, Kristol wants McCain to talk about the former pastorat Obama's former church. Yeah, that will win voters over. If Democrats are very lucky, McCain will take Kristol's advice.
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POPSElderly gays forging new alliances There are over 2.5 million gay seniors in the U.S. All of them have lived through the days when being gay meant facing discrimination, job loss, familial animosity, alienation of friends etc. But times have changed, and gay seniors have new recognition as important members of society. Sage, is a new organization, supported by AARP that helps gay seniors live the kind of lives to which they are entitled. Finally, elders who happen to be gay, can join us younger gays in taking our place in the new freedoms, being granted us in the ever expanding acceptance and tolerance of society. Things are far from perfect, but we are definitely getting there.
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POPSNobel Peace Prize Misused And if they give it to a gasbag like Algore and the "Never Met A Palestinian Terrorist I Didn't Love" Carter - then we know they are not following Nobel's wishes.
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POPS Cataloguing Biden's Whoppers ..... president, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad; he falsely claimed Gov. Sarah Palin supported a windfall profits tax on oil companies; he said he's always been for clean coal in spite of his record of voting against it in the Senate. Biden said we have to drill for more of our own oil, easily leading viewers to conclude he and Obama are in favor of more domestic drilling, but as the American Thinker blog's Rick Moran noted in a list of "Biden's Big Lies," "Biden has opposed offshore drilling and even compared offshore drilling to 'raping' the Outer Continental Shelf." Gov. Palin called Biden on his claim that Gen. David McKiernan in Afghanistan said that the surge could not be applied in Afghanistan; in fact, McKiernan has said that some aspects of Gen. David Petraeus' Iraq strategy could be part of our war efforts in Afghanistan.
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POPSSenator DeMint Has Outlined A Plan For Economic Growth EXPAND ENERGY EXPLORATION • Permanently Repeal Bans on Energy Exploration and Expedite Production: Expedite offshore and oil shale exploration, ensure states share in energy revenues, and prevent endless litigation from frivolous environmental lawsuits. REFORM FAILED GOVERNMENT INSTITUTIONS • Schedule the GSEs for Privatization: Transition Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac over a reasonable time period to truly private companies without special government privileges and expose them to real market competition. • Stabilize the Dollar: Repeal the Humphrey-Hawkins Full Employment Act, which diverts the Federal Reserve’s attention from long-term price stability to short-term economic growth. In an effort to fuel the economy, this additional mandate has encouraged the Fed to keep rates artificially low, leading to economic booms and busts, a rise in inflation and the decline of the dollar.
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POPSUS Financial System -- What comes next? *sigh* Naturally, I'm one of those guys described in that last paragraph.... _However_, I do not go along with the statements that this is as bad as 1929. I think we're looking at the mid-late 70s again -- and a bunch of lovely new government regulations intended to clean up the mess left from the last round of government regulations....
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POPS"Happy Days" Home Buyers Get Mortgages --- Politicians Get Reelected Democrats — and their community organizer “constituencies” — argued that it was “discriminatory” for banks to deny mortgages and business loans to people with poor collateral, poor credit, and dubious ability to repay their loans. Legislators replaced common sense with gouts of political oration about “redlining inner city communities,” “racist banking practices,” and other electioneering formulations that protected incumbency, but shoved bank solvency to the end of a bending limb. The CRA allowed legislators to bully banks into loaning money to people who simply weren’t credit-worthy. The only “collateral” they possessed was electoral: They could repay Democratic lawmakers on Election Day. Now, let’s fast-forward to 1993, when the Clinton administration further liberalized (a.k.a. “reformed”) the already anemic lending restraints of the CRA and created the President’s Community Development Bank, which “…
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POPSThe Real Culprits - Part One And in so doing, he helped create the market for the risky subprime loans that he and Democrats now decry as not only greedy but "predatory." Yes, the market was fueled by greed and overleveraging in the secondary market for subprimes, vis-a-vis mortgaged-backed securities traded on Wall Street. But the seed was planted in the '90s by Clinton and his social engineers. They were the political catalyst behind this slow-motion financial train wreck. And it was the Clinton administration that mismanaged the quasi-governmental agencies that over the decades have come to manage the real estate market in America.
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POPSBigPicture=Acorn+Fannie+SubPrimeGoneMad 1993,Congress gave Fannie and Freddie the go-ahead to finance it all by buying loans from banks, then repackaging and securitizing them for resale on the open market. "We have to use every means at our disposal to end discrimination and to end it as quickly as possible," Clinton's comptroller of the currency, Eugene Ludwig, told the Senate Banking Committee in 1993. Wall Street eagerly sold the new mortgage-backed securities. Not only were they pooled investments, mixing good and bad, but they were backed with the implicit guarantee of government.
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POPSRedlining, Schmedlining !! Age-old standards of banking prudence got thrown out the window. In their place came harsh new regulations requiring banks not only to lend to uncreditworthy borrowers, but to do so on the basis of race. Despite warnings from GOP members of Congress in 1992, Clinton pushed extensive changes to the rules requiring lenders to make questionable loans. Lenders who refused would find themselves castigated publicly as racists.
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POPSThe Real Culprits In The Meltdown The untold story in this whole national crisis is that President Clinton put on steroids the Community Redevelopment Act, a well-intended Carter-era law designed to encourage minority homeownership. Yes, the market was fueled by greed and overleveraging in the secondary market for subprimes, vis-a-vis mortgaged-backed securities traded on Wall Street. But the seed was planted in the ’90s by Clinton and his social engineers. They were the political catalyst behind this slow-motion financial train wreck. As soon as Clinton crony Franklin Delano Raines took the helm in 1999 at Fannie Mae looting it for a total of almost $100 million in compensation by the time he left in early 2005 under an ethical cloud. Other Clinton cronies, including Janet Reno aide Jamie Gorelick "The Wall", padded their pockets to the tune of another $75 million. Raines was accused of overstating earnings and shifting losses so he and other senior executives could earn big bonuses.
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POPSThe Presidential Candidates and The "Experience Issue"
The line McCain’s been using “He’s Not Ready to Lead” is still viable – and should emphasize a discussion of Obama’s policies, not his job history—his radicalism, not his resume. Meanwhile, we should invite comparisons of Governor Palin’s experience with Obama’s: won’t the PTA connect more with middle class voters than “community organizer,” and property tax-cutting small town mayor count more than slippery State Senator who voted “present” a disquieting proportion of the time. In any event, both tickets now balance experience with youthful energy – but McCain is balancing it the right way, with the experience at the top. If Obama supporters now see an opening for attack in regard to Sarah Palin’s “lack” of experience, they will only succeed in bringing back to scrutiny Obama’s own leadership (in)experience. Let’s see that “Tale of the Tape” chart that Curt linked to by Jeff Emanuel, http://www.floppingaces.net/2008/08/30/palin-not-the-most-inexperienced/
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POPSAngry Clinton Supporters Toast McCain, Roast Obama "I'm a registered Republican ... for the first time in my voting life," Archuleta said. "No Obama for me. I'm voting for John McCain." "He reminds me of what the Jimmy Carter era was like. ... If they think Jimmy Carter had it bad, just wait if Obama gets into the White House. That will be bad news in so many ways," she added. McCain campaign regional communications director Tom Kise said, "Four years ago, if you said we'd be at a Hillary happy hour at the DNC, I would have called you crazy. But today is a great opportunity for people who ... agree that Sen. Barack Obama doesn't have the experience to be president of the United States." "The DNC really pushed on us. Now they've left us with two choices: somebody who has no substance or a Republican." Clinton supporters-turned-McCain converts at the event were not just angry at Obama's campaign; they're furious with the Democratic Party's nomination process this year.