Cynical Nation

Well, I'm not at that point yet, but she irks me greatly. And it's nearly getting to the point where her voice will be enough cause my head to pound. Not from hatred, because I don't hate many people, but sheer disbelief that she might become PotUS. It frightens me. :p

why are people going apes--t over Palin? Because she just might encourage Reps to vote, which shows the lack of faith liberals have in their candidate. I'm liberal and the ugliness I have seen (as well as the Dem Congress washing their hands over fixing Wall Street) are making me considering to vote for McCain/Palin.

I have a solution to this business of Palin: if you don't like her, then don''t vote for her.

The thing is that no matter how much confidence you do or do not have in a candidate, your vote counts once (or it should anyway :p) and there are millions of people out there who may or may not vote with you. So while I won't vote for the McCain/Palin ticket, I'm still stuck with her right? So, yes, slightly hysterical over the idea of a Palin PotUSency. Would any of us have been comfortable with the idea of Dan Quayle taking over?

"Would any of us have been comfortable with the idea of Dan Quayle taking over?"

Perhaps so; Barack Obama (inexperienced, shallow, gaffe ridden, etc) is number one on the Dem ticket and a likely occupant of the Oval Office. Though he does look nice and talks posh. That's enough for some people.

If your wife wrote that, then I like your wife. And sympathize with her, having to live with you.

If your wife wrote that, then I like your wife. And sympathize with her, having to live with you.

Well said Jill :-) lol

The left always reserves a special hatred for the most effective spokesmen (Doh! spokespersons)of the right. Remember how they reacted to Reagen, Rove, and Ginrich? I read an underground comix in the sixties that targeted Milton Freidman.
They don't seem to have any problems with Spector or Snowe.

Jezebel.com says; “What I feel for [Sarah Palin] privately could be described as violent, nay, murderous, rage...”

Jill says; “If your wife wrote that, then I like your wife. And sympathize with her, having to live with you.

Always nice to see Liberals lauding pure, unadulterated hatred.

And BW dutifully adds; “Well said Jill :-) lol

Ditto...and par for the course for ol’BW.

I’m getting the feeling that Ace is far more than just a little right in saying;

“Ha-ha...ha-ha-ha...muwahahahahahaahhaaahaaa!

“OMFG! Seriously, if you get nothing else out of this election, this is pure enjoyment. This is wa-a-a-y better than BDS. It is instantaneous mass hysteria and...

“I. AM. LOVING. IT!

“I would pay money to see that.

“At least now they know how it feels when I have to see Nancy Pelosi's face and hear her "drilling is a hoax" BS. I swear, she is like the Wicked Witch of the West. I keep waiting for someone to run up and throw water on her just to test out the theory...”

Hey, how's that Free Market economy doing now? Yeah, that was a GREAT idea!

Free market economy? Are you perhaps referring to the Fanny/Freddy cash cow that the folks in Washington (mainly Democrats) set up to help the mortgage racket milk the taxpayers?
Check it out, the more government "oversight" a business has, the more likely it is to fail.

Actually, I think it's sweet that Mr. Cynical Nation and his wife, more often than not, cancel each other out on election day.

That said, I wouldn't be surprised if one of these days Barry wakes up on election day morning only to discover he's been handcuffed to the bed. ;)

Hey, how's that Free Market economy doing now? Yeah, that was a GREAT idea!

Free Market Economy under Bush/McCain policies has become corrupt corporatism for which the taxpayers have become responsible. Last night I was somewhere and someone told me that the Fanny/Freddy bailout was "socialism" because the government pays. But it is not. It is corrupt corporatism. We had unregulated companies abusing public trust and collapsing financially, and taxpayers paying afterwards. That system is far from socialism but if it continues that way in the future it could evolve to total corporate fascism.

Holy crap!!!

BW ALMOST had it right!

America's been a Corporatist (a highly regulated economy in which government protects the established businesses and industries in the name of stability).

American Corporatism was introduced by two great men - J P Morgan and Bernard Baruch in the very early 20th Century.

Before that, those who gained great wealth soon advocated for a stronger central government that would serve to protect these "established wealth and jobs creatoers" FROM newer, more innovative and hungrier competitors.

In a free society (that's ECONOMICALLY FREE) the vast majority of the population sees no benefit to protecting the established enterprises from the likes of themselves, so it was rejected until around 1910, when Morgan and Baruch came up with the plan to sell it as "jobs security/protection" NOT "wealth protection."

The Bernard Baruch and J P Morgan plan was brilliant and I SUPPORT IT to this day....with only mild trepidation.

One of the reasons I have absolutely no respect for Barely Hanging is that his stances demonstrate, not only a profound lack of information (ignorance), but the inability to properly process information (stupidity). The latter is sadly incurable.

That's why when it's shown that Barely's own posted chart showed that there were only 50,000 H-1B Visas prior to 1993 and slightly over 1 MILLION by 2000, thus making his "I blame G W Bush for the explosion of H-1B Visas" statement moronic, he wasn't able to properly process that.

Now, ironically enough, with Corporatism apparently in some distress and socialism proven to be unworkable, even deadly under the best of conditions (Germany 1932 - 1944) and the USSR (1917 - 1989), that would ONLY leave a return to what Ron Paul advocates - complete government hands-off Free market Capitalism with its concommitant booms and busts.

Ron Paul derided the (socialistic) money-supply policies that are currently sustaining Corporatism - INFlation, which he simply, but correctly defined as "Producing money/currency and CREDIT out of thin air," which is, of course, only something a government can do.

It SHOULD NEVER DO IT, as it is theft, or robbery, but governments CAN and sad to say, often DO.

Holy crap!!!

BW ALMOST had it right!

America's been a Corporatist (a highly regulated economy in which government protects the established businesses and industries in the name of stability).

American Corporatism was introduced by two great men - J P Morgan and Bernard Baruch in the very early 20th Century.

Before that, those who gained great wealth soon advocated for a stronger central government that would serve to protect these "established wealth and jobs creatoers" FROM newer, more innovative and hungrier competitors.

In a free society (that's ECONOMICALLY FREE) the vast majority of the population sees no benefit to protecting the established enterprises from the likes of themselves, so it was rejected until around 1910, when Morgan and Baruch came up with the plan to sell it as "jobs security/protection" NOT "wealth protection."

The Bernard Baruch and J P Morgan plan was brilliant and I SUPPORT IT to this day....with only mild trepidation.

One of the reasons I have absolutely no respect for Barely Hanging is that his stances demonstrate, not only a profound lack of information (ignorance), but the inability to properly process information (stupidity). The latter is sadly incurable.

That's why when it's shown that Barely's own posted chart showed that there were only 50,000 H-1B Visas prior to 1993 and slightly over 1 MILLION by 2000, thus making his "I blame G W Bush for the explosion of H-1B Visas" statement moronic, he wasn't able to properly process that.

Now, ironically enough, with Corporatism apparently in some distress and socialism proven to be unworkable, even deadly under the best of conditions (Germany 1932 - 1944) and the USSR (1917 - 1989), that would ONLY leave a return to what Ron Paul advocates - complete government hands-off Free market Capitalism with its concommitant booms and busts.

Ron Paul derided the (socialistic) money-supply policies that are currently sustaining Corporatism - INFlation, which he simply, but correctly defined as "Producing money/currency and CREDIT out of thin air," which is, of course, only something a government can do.

It SHOULD NEVER DO IT, as it is theft, or robbery, but governments CAN and sad to say, often DO.

As to the current mortgage crisis, the facts are damning to both Liberals and anti-Corporatists, well, at least anti-Capitalists.

As John Fund recently wrote, “The two institutions (Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac) have long been run not by bankers but by retired political figures, predominantly Democrats. From 1991 to 1998, Fannie Mae was headed by James Johnson, a longtime aide to former Democratic vice president Walter Mondale. Johnson’s successor, Franklin D. Raines, had served as budget director to Bill Clinton. Jamie Gorelick, vice chair of Fannie Mae from 1998 to 2003, served as deputy attorney general in the Clinton administration.

“These figures have paid themselves impressive private-sector salaries. Johnson earned US$21-million in just his last year at Fannie Mae. Raines earned US$90-million for five years’ work at Fannie Mae. Gorelick got US$26-million.

“Yet the companies never had to meet the discipline of the private marketplace. They paid no taxes, and they had access to a line of credit at the Treasury department. More ominously for today’s crisis: They were not required to provide anything like the level of information about their internal operations expected of a privately owned company.

”This non-transparency allowed Fannie Mae to engage in serious accounting fraud, overstating its earnings by more than US$6-billion over the Raines years — overstatements that incidentally justified the company’s lavish compensation packages. (Both Johnson and Raines incidentally also received below-market mortgages from the large mortgage company — and major Fannie Mae beneficiary — Countrywide Mortgage.)

”The loss of confidence that struck the markets this week has been gathering for years. It is the natural byproduct of the bad practice of merging private business with government power.

”As so often happens with large scandals, the cost will fall on everyone except the responsible parties. In 2006, federal regulators sued Franklin Raines and two other Fannie Mae executives to recover US$115-million of compensation. The case was settled for US$3-million, plus the surrender of some (now probably valueless) stock options and other contingent benefits. The US$3-million was paid from Fannie Mae’s
own insurance.

This was coupled with calls through the 1980s and 1990s by LIBERAL Democrats to outlaw red-lining (charging higher interest rates in high-foreclosure areas) AND basing loan rates and approvals solely on credit scores – AGAIN, THAT’S “Credit Socialism.” In 1999 Phil Gramm proposed a Bill that sought to undermine the “reforms” that the anti-red-liners and those opposed to Credit Scores based on their so-called “disparate impact” on various minority groups. Gramm’s Bill sought to return lending to its pre-1950s basis, where it was much harder for poorer people to get loans than it was up until recently.

This is NOT a Democratic scandal in my view, it is overwhelmingly a LIBERAL-Democratic scandal, as McCain and G W Bush sought to overhaul and reform (cut-back) Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac in 2003 and 2005, while LIBERALS like Chris Dodd, Charles Rangel and Barney Franks sought to preserve the failing policies of “Credit Socialism.”

ALL of the current financial crises and there are TWO (the mortgage/CREDIT crisis and the short-selling spurred demise of good performing companies).

The first (the credit crisis) created the opportunities for the 2nd among some investors.

Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac have always been derided by many Americans (including myself) (those who have no problem getting a conventional mortgage) as “lenders of last resort,” or “lenders to losers.” Now, it appears that they were far, FAR worse – doling out MILLION DOLLAR mortgages to well-connected (mostly connected to Liberal Democrats) people who were poor credit risks for those amounts! They also doled out hundreds of billions of dollars in high risk “bad loans/mortgages” which was, in effect, “credit socialism.”

What BOTH those mismanaged entities did was to (1) by their ability to get special, lower rates from the Fed, they were able to unfairly compete against private lenders, thereby forcing those institutions to find “creative financing” ways to sell their loans and (2) they “packaged paper” (bad loans) and sold these as “government backed” mortgage securities to our own brokerage houses, to our banks and to financial institutions abroad! Those two things CREATED the current “mortgage/credit crisis.”

In other words, the failures at Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac were entirely responsible for the “mortgage meltdown.”

The widespread infection of those failing “government-backed mortgage instruments” created the opportunity for some investors (smart ones) to “SHORT” or short-sell financial stocks (banks, brokerages, etc.). There is NOTHING either illegal or unethical about short-selling.

In this case, the short-selling did actual harm to some very well-run and still profitable companies like Lehman Brothers, Wachovia Bank, Bank of America, etc. because with HUGE investors (like say Hedge Funds as a for instance) all SHORTING those stocks, the stock price drops, just as a betting line would drop when a huge amount of money is dropped on or in favor of the underdog. With their stock prices falling, these institutions could no longer borrow money and ALL institutions need to borrow money – so they were forced with either finding merger partners OR closing their doors...OR getting a government bailout!

The short-sellers have certainly reaped a lot of financial harm, BUT it’s not their fault. There was nothing malicious about the short-selling. They saw an opportunity and took advantage of it. It’s as simple as that.

The real underlying cause of this entire train wreck was the utter ineptitude and massive corruption at Fannie and Freddie (BOTH, as John Fund correctly notes, “the domain of Liberal Democrats”). It was the “credit socialism” – creating credit out of thin air for people (poorer people) who didn’t warrant or deserve it, that created the current crisis.

To their credit, G W Bush and John McCain tried mightily to reform (scale back) Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac in 2003 and again in 2005 – I believe that Obama joined with Barney Franks and Chris Dodd in opposition to those reforms. To this day, the Obama campaign is surrounded by some of the Fannie Mae villains (Franklin Raines and Jim Johnson, to name two).

Since January of 2007 (the last two years) we’ve had, for better or worse, “the Pelosi-Reid economy.” They’ve supported the so-called and misnamed “stimulus package,” the bailouts, etc.

With Pelosi-Reid, TWO very LIBERAL Democrats, running Congress, it’s no wonder we’ve seen a return to disastrous Keynesian policies.

The results of the last two years are ALL on them!

Without question, the American economy has NOT “improved” since 2005-2006, it has gotten markedly WORSE due to the Pelosi-Reid return to Keynesian policies and the undermining of the economy by mismanagement and malfeasance at Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac and the “credit socialism” they sought to use to engage in some social engineering with.

I should've clarified; "BW ALMOST had it right!

Except that America's been a Corporatist (a highly regulated economy in which government protects the established businesses and industries in the name of stability). America's had the same Corporatist policies from 2001 through 2006 as had every administration since Reagan took office in '81.

The last nearly TWO years have been an aberration, a return via Congress to some Keynesian policies. American Corporatism was introduced by two great men - J P Morgan and Bernard Baruch in the very early 20th Century....

>Actually, I think it's sweet that Mr. Cynical Nation and his wife, more often than not, cancel each other out on election day.

She actually votes in New York while I vote in Jersey, so that's not *quite* true... not that it matters much. Neither is hardly a swing state. :-)