Morning Must Reads: Self-Inflicted

Jerry Brown taking the California Gubernatorial campaign down into the mud. He is calling his opponent a WHORE.
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Yes Ladies and Gentlemen, those who represent the left have now officially gone postal. What is next Jerry? Who do you want to sling crap at next?
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“In a private conversation inadvertently captured by voicemail, Democratic gubernatorial nominee Jerry Brown or one of his associates can be heard referring to his Republican opponent Meg Whitman as a “whore,” saying she cut a deal protecting law enforcement pensions while the two candidates competed for police endorsements.”

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The SEIU WHORE Brown is actually calling his opponent out for playing the same game HE plays? Give me a break.
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http://www.latimes.com/news/local/la-me-jerry-brown-20101007,0,6800747.story?track=rss&utm_source=feedburner&utm_medium=feed&utm_campaign=Feed:+latimes/mostviewed+(L.A.+Times+-+Most+Viewed+Stories)
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Just more of, I can do it, but you can’t strategy plan of our Democrat Party members.

“The ship has pretty much sailed”

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The ship never even left port, you nitwit. Since Joe Klein has no problem calling the rest of us out here a nitwit, I didn’t think it would be a problem calling you that Adam. Or does that make you angry too when someone just baselessly calls someone names without any justification what-so-ever?

Not saying use of the word is nice, but at least it was used in context…versus you getting facetiously getting worked up over the W word.

“John Raese and West Virginia Republicans have been very successful in making their Senate race all about Obama. Manchin was a lock not long ago”
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Hiring actors helped, obviously.

Dead People and Stimulu.
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WASHINGTON – A government investigator says 89,000 stimulus payments of $250 each went to people who were either dead or in prison.
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The Social Security Administration’s inspector general said in a report Thursday that $18 million went to 72,000 people who were dead. The report estimates that a little more than half the payments were returned.
The report said $4.3 million went to a little more than 17,000 prison inmates.
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The payments were part of the government’s massive economic recovery package enacted in February 2009. Under the law, the $250 payments were sent to about 52 million Social Security recipients and federal retirees.

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Not only do we have a mis-managed Postal Department, which is losing Billions of tax payer dollars each and every year now. We have a dysfunctional Social Security Administration as well.
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Now which one of your LIBTARDS wants to step up and defend why Government should take everything over for the “good of the people”?
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Oh that’s right, you can’t. You already know that big government is the most inefficient way to run anything in this country. It is merely a hole in the ground to dump our hard earned tax dollars into. But, you all keep coming back demanding more and more Government entities to take over our daily lives.

Oh how surprising. A liberal libtard who basically says, if we use it, it is ok. If you use it, not so much
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Brilliant!!

There’s a W-word too? What happens when Rusty runs the alphabet?

You’re right, RustFreep. We can’t possibly poke any holes in your logic. We swoon to the machinations of you all-powerful brain.

There goes the L-word…

I’m — I’m -I’m just thoroughly tonguethumped by his radiance…

Despicable and downright nasty politics. Is this what Democrats have now as their only way to win?
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“Ayscue and Mackler had a plan to ensure Adler’s victory. They just needed volunteers.
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Internal numbers-crunching showed the difference between Adler and his Republican opponent — then undetermined — would hover around 5 percent. To give Adler an edge, Ayscue had recruited a then-unidentified man to run as a third-party candidate.
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That candidate would act as a conservative spoiler to confuse voters and pull votes from Adler’s eventual Republican challenger. But first he had to get on the ballot. With the filing deadline just weeks away, CCDC needed volunteers to hit the streets and collect signatures — fast.

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Hamid Karsai and all of his buffoons in Afghanistan do not hold anything over the Democrat Party these days. With the lame stream media all wrapped up for them, not reporting on all of their corrupt tactics, they can go freely without fearing exposure, unless Fox News does it alone.
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http://www.courierpostonline.com/article/20101008/NEWS01/10080330/Dems-picked-spoiler-candidate

Waitaminit – let’s see, $61M divided by the $13 billion [with a B] to SS recipients…that’s about 0.47% (< one-half of one percent) of the total amount of stimulus checks distributed to deceased or incarcerated people. Factoring the couple of months from law passage to distribution, that's wasteful, I guess.
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Does calling people who disagree with you "libtards" now qualify me for mental health coverage? Or for me to sue for discrimination?

My wife received one. It was a major help in defraying the costs of medicine while we continue to reside in the Donut Hole.
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And last time I checked, she was neither dead nor incarcerated…

“It was a major help in defraying the costs of medicine”
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And we all are painfully aware that you are in dire need of more medication.

“Private sector payrolls continued to experience a small bit of growth, but not enough to offset government layoffs.”
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The U-6 report that calculates unemployed, underemployed and those who quit looking went from 16.7% to 17.1%.
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Government lost 159,000 jobs but the drill down shows it was the state and local governments as the big losers. And the worst is yet to come!
Federal lost 76,000 jobs and that include losing 77,000 temp jobs – so yes you guessed the federal government is still adding to the taxpayer stress.
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Goolsbee began his interview on the report with the token we lost 4 million jobs before Obama came in and now we added 64,000 private jobs (he mostly ignored the 95,000 lost). That great! It will only take another 52 years at that rate to get back to where we were!

This new pearl clutching shtick is pretty funny.
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More please.

No wonder the Dems are trying to make an issue of foreign money making an impact on the elections. It will make it difficult for them to fix elections.

Internal numbers-crunching showed the difference between Adler and his Republican opponent — then undetermined — would hover around 5 percent. To give Adler an edge, Ayscue had recruited a then-unidentified man to run as a third-party candidate.

http://www.courierpostonline.com/article/20101008/NEWS01/10080330/Dems-picked-spoiler-candidate

My morning is complete. Coffee, a whiff of racism from Rusty, and a gratuitous insult from freeinpa.
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Now, if that danged yellow star would just do me a favor and burn off the fog, I will forever be in God’s debt.

“a whiff of racism from Rusty”

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Yes I made so many racists statements didn’t I IQ53.
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You are the biggest joke on this site, even Joe “the NITWIT” Klein cannot top you.
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LOL!!
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You should really check on that self-hate you have going on there IQ53. Once you do some counseling, I am sure you can resolve it once and for all.

Nevermind, God. Even a cloudy day can’t dispell my contentment.
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A Rusty self-denial tops it all…

“a gratuitous insult from freeinpa.”
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Hardly, it was a paraphrase of your own words.!

With over 17.1% unemployed this is what the government worries and the nanny state worries about:

When Major League Baseball’s Cincinnati Reds clinched their first division crown since 1995 last week, the players celebrated with champagne and cigars, which were distributed by Reds owner Bob Castellini. “That’s when the troubles began,” writes the Heritage Foundation’s James Gattuso. “Ohio state law, as it turns out, bans indoor smoking in such facilities. And at least five concerned citizens called in to Cincinnati’s health department to report the dangerous breach of law. The Reds are now under investigation.”

Mercifully, the state’s health department can’t take action without an inspector having witnessed the smoking violation, but the department must make an unannounced follow-up visit within 30 days. Says Gattuso, “That probably means sending an inspector to a Reds playoff game in the name of protecting the public health and welfare, of course.” Naturally.

Stomp your feet harder, princess.

Obama is now talking about what a great job he is doing and that 2000 small businesses have received loans since new legislation was passed.
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He also talked about not extending tax cuts to the wealthy 2%. I guess he seems to believe its better to give them small business loans than to use their own money.
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He is for extending tax cuts for the middle class. You know those 17.1% of the people without jobs now!

That great! It will only take another 52 years at that rate to get back to where we were!
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Right, because Republicans absolutely destroyed our economy. We have a massive hole to climb out of, and yes, the going is going to be slow.
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But what’s your alternative? Go back to the Republican policies that got us into this mess in the first place? Cut more government spending that all economists agree has avoided making things worse (even Zandi, even AEI)? Go back to the Bush era policies that led to the first decade in the past century in which the middle class lost ground and a tepid 1 million jobs were created over an eight year span?
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Things are bad. Obama’s solutions are working, if slowly. The Republican proposal to put things in reverse gear is ridiculous.

Ask and ye shall receive, from the looks of things…

He also talked about not extending tax cuts to the wealthy 2%. I guess he seems to believe its better to give them small business loans than to use their own money.
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Actually, the president — unlike you — knows that no one in the top 2% counts as a “small business,” and furthermore, he knows that they are getting a tax cut under his proposal, on the first $250,000 of their income.
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Since you seem to think that a tax cut for the very rich is essential to our economic recovery, let me ask you — why was there negative job growth in Bush’s first term when those policies were enacted? If they’re the magical cure to job growth, why didn’t they work then?
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Why did we only see an anemic 1 million jobs added over Bush’s second four years — a third as many jobs as Obama has gained in two years, by the way? And why aren’t businesses hiring right now, when they have those tax cuts in place?
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Tax cuts for the very rich do nothing for the economy — well, nothing good. they helped give us the Great Depression when Coolidge tried it, they helped give us the Reagan Recession when he tried it, and they gave us our current economic nightmare when Bush went full speed ahead on it.
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http://www.democracynow.org/2009/2/2/david_cay_johnston_more_corporate_tax

Rusty,

First of all, most Social Security payments go to people over the age of 65. Meaning those who are most likely to die in the near future. Of course it takes time for the federal government to find out when people are dead, so it is very common for Social Security checks to keep going out, at least in the short run.

As far as faith in the government. Studies have shown that Liberals and Conservatives have about the same level of trust in the federal government. What is interesting about the study is that when a Conservative is elected to the presidency, the level of trust in government goes up among Conservatives. However, when a Liberal is elected to the presidency the trust Liberals put in government does not go up.

It would seem that Conservatives are the ones drinking kool-aid of the government when one of their own in elected. We Liberals are known cynics knowing never to trust politicians, even those, or especially those from the Democratic party.

“I don’t belong to an organized party, I am a Democrat.” —–Will Rogers

“Right, because Republicans absolutely destroyed our economy.”
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Sorry, first that is patently false and second its just a pathetic excuse as to why progressive policies fail.

And it’s not even my birthday.

Sorry, first that is patently false and second its just a pathetic excuse as to why progressive policies fail.
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First, no, that’s not patently false. Republican policies destroyed our economy. Period. I’m sure you’ve been convinced by Rush or Beck that the real culprit is illegal Mexicans or black homeowners or ACORN workers or the New Black Panther Party, but it’s not.
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Republican policies destroyed our economy. They do it every time they get in power, too.
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Second, what’s a pathetic excuse for why progressive policies fail? The stimulus — which was one-thirds tax cuts, and thus not entirely “progressive” — has been proven to have contributed more to job growth in two years than conservative tax cuts did in eight years.
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Facts.

Kevin you need to stop reading left wing web sites

http://lonelyconservative.com/2010/07/chart-of-the-week-obama-v-bush-on-jobs/
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And for good measure subtract government jobs from Obam’s list and it gets more pathetic. Government jobs are tax drains and deficit enhancers.
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The Reagan recession? That is when the fed had to correct the stagflation from Jimmah and his liberal policies. And when the left mentions poor job growth why don’t they ever remember the recession Clinton handed him and 9/11 (when Clinton could not come up with a “law enforcement” reason to accept Bin Laden that when he was delivered on a platter).
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And Obama “knows: small business? That must be your attempt at humor. There is no one in that entire administration who has done as much as run a lemonade stand. Taxes, regulation, government industry takeovers that will keep unemployment an dthe economy where it is– not tax cuts

Six months from now, if (God forbid) the Republicans gain a modicum of power:
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Unemployment’s down, jobs are up, economy’s getting back in gear….
“THE REPUBLICANS DELIVERED ON OUR PROMISES!”
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We say in unison, “huh???”

Even David Stockman — Reagan’s budget director — says that the cause of the economic collapse was Republican policies.
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http://www.nytimes.com/2010/08/01/opinion/01stockman.html?_r=1

Kevin you need to stop reading left wing web sites
http://lonelyconservative.com/2010/07/chart-of-the-week-obama-v-bush-on-jobs/
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Did you seriously tell me to stop reading partisan websites and then offer a link to a blog called “the lonely conservative”? Seriously?
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I’m not listening to left-wing websites. I’m listening to a hardcore Reaganomics believer like David Stockman.

[Your first assumption when reading a FreeDumbLog comment should be that it's nowhere near being accurate.]
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“The government sent benefit checks to 20,000 departed Americans over three years, totaling more than $180 million — a remarkable number that provoked the Obama administration to create a government-wide “do not pay” list as part of its brainstorming for ways to save taxpayer money.
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Once the database is up and running, agencies will have to search it before sending out payments. A pre-check check, so to speak.
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‘We’re making sure that payments no longer go to the deceased — it sounds ridiculous even to say it,’ acknowledged Vice President Joe Biden in describing the database.
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Also planned for inclusion: contractors who’ve fallen behind in their payments or, even worse, landed in jail, and companies that have been suspended or otherwise deemed ineligible for government work.”
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And:
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“Funny how the Journal’s blog neglected to mention that the admininistration has since tried to address the problem. And funny how the Journal’s blog also failed to mention that the Obama administration found dead people receiving benefit checks over the past three years — i.e., since before Obama became president.
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So the problem didn’t start in the current administration and the current administration is trying to stop it. Unsurprisingly, that isn’t preventing A-list righty bloggers Erick Erickson and Jim Hoft from writing nearly identical posts hinting at political skulduggery (Erickson: ‘It has come to this: Democrats are not only getting the dead to vote, but paying them for their votes too’; Hoft: ‘Figures. Democrats Reward Another Voting Bloc — Send Stimulus Checks to Dead People’). So Jim and Erick: in 2007 and 2008, when the Bushies were doing this, was that political skulduggery, too?”
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http://nomoremister.blogspot.com/2010/10/obama-addressed-problem-but-wingnuts.html
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Shut your piehole, Rusty.

The smoking ban was approved by 60% of voters in a 2006 referendum.
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http://www.odh.ohio.gov/alerts/ohiosmokingban.aspx
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You call it a nanny state. They call it democracy.

It’s such a nasty, pollutive habit. Serves the Reds right to get no-hit the other day.

What did I miss?

Book Report: The Polluters.

“Yet polluters have continued to use the same basic techniques to undermine regulation. Ross and Amter label the most effective strategy ‘spill, study, and stall’: If you don’t want to stop polluting, just insist that the science is uncertain and there’s no basis for action. Cook up a few questionable studies that reanalyze the data, divert attention to other possible culprits, or call for new research. The tobacco industry didn’t invent these gambits; as Ross and Amter show, the chemical industry used the same techniques to fight the regulation of tetraethyl lead in the early 20th century and the regulation of air pollution in the 1940s. The agenda is the same in the current climate debate.”

In the story that Ross and Amter tell, polluters didn’t just seek to undermine scientific results that could cause them trouble; they also sought to discredit the researchers who became a nuisance.”

The Other Klein on the ‘anti-stimulus’.

“The government is now impeding an economic recovery. But it’s not for the reasons you often hear. It’s not because of debt or because of taxes. Nor has it scared the private sector into timidity. It’s because, at the state and local level, it’s firing people. There are more than 14 million Americans looking for work right now — to say nothing of the 9.5 million who have been forced into part-time jobs when they want, and need, full-time work — and the government just added 159,000 more to the pool. Consider this: If we only counted private-sector jobs, we’d have had positive jobs reports for the last nine months. As it is, public-sector losses have wiped out private-sector gains for the past four months. [...]
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[...] Senate Republicans, alongside some conservative Democrats, have decided to make the government pro-cyclical: Rather than fighting the downturn in the business cycle, the government is now accelerating it.
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And don’t ignore the effect this has on private businesses. They’re not going to hire new workers or invest in more capacity if jobs aren’t coming back, because without jobs, there’s no demand. But because the federal government has decided against backing up state and local governments, the bleeding continues, and that scares businesses away from investing in recovery.”

Little kevie is back in the litter box digging furiously to cover up the stench of the astonishingly inept Obama administration. Good luck with that, kevie, you no sooner cover one hole and his band of bandits leave another pile of dung for you to deal with. You are going to be one busy cat for the next two years. It should be a great relief to you once the “great fabricator” gets run out of office in 2012.

Can’t link to the NYT/AIG story….

I can’t begin to list all the things wrong in this piece from the NYTimes.

“Many Republicans with a deep animus for President Obama find their hearts aflutter with the memory of a former leader. He was a compassionate conservative, a guy who cared about free trade, a man who reached across the aisle.

He is the husband of the secretary of state. [...]

In many ways, Republican nostalgia for Mr. Clinton is a brew of selective memory, convenient disregard for the bitter partisan battles that marked his tenure and longing for a time when major bipartisan legislation, like the North American Free Trade Agreement, was possible.

The wistfulness, however revisionist, for Mr. Clinton’s presidency raises interesting questions about how Mr. Obama would manage his legislative and political agenda should the Republicans take back the House next month.[...]

Would he take a page from Mr. Clinton’s triangulation of his base to accomplish major legislation like welfare reform, trade agreements and tax policy? Or are the circumstances of each man’s original victory, true political proclivities and respective relationship to his supporters too disparate to find parallel outcomes?

‘Barack Obama was nominated after a difficult primary process and won by rallying the left end of the base,’ said Vin Weber, a former Republican congressman from Minnesota. ‘Clinton was quite consistent to who he was going to be. If Obama moves to the center it may be practical, but his base won’t like it. The $64,000 question is what is in his heart.’”

Expect this month’s home sales number to plummet. Now guess why.

“Three major mortgage lenders — Bank of America, GMAC Mortgage and JPMorgan Chase — have said they are suspending foreclosures in the 23 states where they first need a judge’s approval. They are also waving off Fannie Mae from selling any of the foreclosed homes whose loans they sold to Fannie.

The companies say they are reviewing their operations after disclosures that employees signed documents without determining the accuracy of the material, as is required by law.

Those reviews are throwing into limbo hundreds of thousands of foreclosures and pending home sales, analysts estimate, though the lenders and Fannie Mae have been mostly silent about precise numbers and other specifics.

More broadly, the revelations about the sloppy paperwork are emboldening homeowners and law enforcement officials in many states to question whether lenders rightfully hold the notes underlying foreclosed properties — further chilling the housing market.

Distressed properties, many of which are in foreclosure, make up about a third of all home sales. ‘Foreclosures are going to slow to a crawl,’ said Guy D. Cecala, publisher of the trade magazine Inside Mortgage Finance. “

“First, no, that’s not patently false. Republican policies destroyed our economy. Period. I’m sure you’ve been convinced by Rush or Beck that the real culprit is illegal Mexicans or black homeowners or ACORN workers or the New Black Panther Party, but it’s no”
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I see you have taken the same tact as other liberals here declare a fact, keep repeating it, then believe it to be true. Don’t listen to Rush or Beck but it seems you are suffering from Talk radio derangement.
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Fact:
Housing crisis started back with Clinton and laws that “encouraged” banks to make subprime loans. By encouraged if they didn’t the DOJ threatened them.
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Fact
When Bush tried to reform Fannie and Freddie the senior gas bag from Massachusetts, Barney Frank said they are sound.
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Fact
Johnson and Raines (two ex-Clintonites) were paid millions while they cooked the books (fraud) and yet both walk the streets. Gorelick, the DOJ’er under Clinton was a board member when all this occurred.

“I’m not listening to left-wing websites. I’m listening to a hardcore Reaganomics believer like David Stockman.”
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Well I like how you selectively listen to Republicans but no one considers Stockman a hard core Reaganomics believer. Nobody but delusional liberals anyway.

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And I don’t recall him opining on the soundness of either Fannie or Freddie

“You call it a nanny state. They call it democracy”
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That’s what the people of AZ thought too.

Why do the Teabaggers hate puppies?

“…a group of Missouri tea partiers have found a new target: regulations that would mandate more humane conditions in the state’s puppy mills. This November, Missouri voters will go to the polls and decide the fate of Missouri’s Proposition B, which would place new regulations on puppy mills, including mandating that they provide ‘sufficient food and clean water, necessary veterinary care, sufficient housing, including protection from the elements, sufficient space to turn and stretch freely, lie down, and fully extend his or her limbs, regular exercise, and adequate rest between breeding cycles.’

As TPM Muckraker’s Jillian Rayfield reports, the Missouri Tea Party and the Tea Party Patriots have begun organizing meetings against the proposition. One tea party activist described the measure as being about the ‘government or the big company trying to tell people what to do’:

The Tea Party has also gotten on board the anti-Prop B bandwagon. A meeting called ‘Vote NO on Proposition B’ on October 12 is advertised on websites for the Missouri Tea Party and the Tea Party Patriots. The event, held at Coach’s Pizza World, is being organized by the Mexico Tea Party, which activist Ron Beedle told TPM is a relatively new chapter of the Tea Party. This is their first meeting, he said, and Prop B is about the “government or the big company trying to tell people what to do.”

Also campaigning against the proposition is the local chapter of conservative Phyllis Schlafly’s Eagle Forum and Samuel Wurzelbacher (‘Joe The Plumber’). “

The Other Klein on firefighting and individual mandates.

“When liberals explain why health care needs an individual mandate, the traditional metaphor is firefighting: Everyone needs to buy insurance for the same reason that everyone needs to buy fire protection. But if you leave the market unregulated, some people won’t buy — or won’t be able to afford — fire protection. And we’re not comfortable letting their houses burn down. Similarly, if you leave health coverage to the market, some people won’t buy it, and others won’t be able to afford it, and then, when they get sick and need it, insurers won’t sell it to them. But we’re not comfortable letting them die in the streets. Hence, the health-care law.

When Republicans talk about repealing the legislation, they keep the argument abstract. It’s about freedom. About American values. About Nancy Pelosi not reading the bill. When they actually try to repeal the legislation, things are going to get concrete in a hurry. It’s going to be about this child with that condition being rejected by insurers. And she’s going to be adorable, and her parents are going to tearful, and voters will be able to relate.

Already, Republicans are running from that argument, trying to pretend that they’ll somehow preserve the protections for preexisting conditions while repealing everything that makes those protections possible. But the bill’s unpopular parts are inextricably intertwined with its popular parts. Remove the unpopular ones and you’re asking firefighters to sell insurance for homes that are already engulfed in flames.”

Nothing about David Stockman? You can’t dismiss him as a left-winger, so you’re just going to ignore him?
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But thanks for explaining just which right-wing crank theory you embrace about the economic collapse. It’d be nice if there were a single credible economist who supported those ideas, but it’s just BS.
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I could refer you to a thousand economists on this issue, but here’s another Republican appointee — Bush’s FDIC Chairman — putting to rest the myth that DOJ-forced subprime mortgages were to blame for the crisis.
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http://www.housingwire.com/2008/12/05/fdics-bair-sets-to-shatter-cra-myth
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You also might enjoy this piece:
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http://www.clevelandfed.org/research/commentary/2009/0509.cfm
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As for Rush and Beck, if you say you don’t listen to them, fine. But you clearly listen to someone pumped into the same mainline of bullsh!t that they’re spewing, because you always drop by and deliver the latest party line from the conservative propaganda machine.

no one considers Stockman a hard core Reaganomics believer.
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Perhaps not anymore — because anyone who disagrees with Glorious Party Line is traitor to The Sacred Cause — but back in the 1980s, Stockman was routinely called the “poster boy for Reaganomics.” He was Reagan’s hand-picked OMB director, for God’s sake.

Oh, and Earljr., I really appreciate your dropping by to contribute to the debate with your usual “DURR-HURR!” wisdom.

‘Heck with these ‘jump thru hoops’ web sites!

“Everyone needs to buy insurance for the same reason that everyone needs to buy fire protection. But if you leave the market unregulated, some people won’t buy — or won’t be able to afford — fire protection”
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Every premise is wrong. Nee to buy heath care insurance is not the same as required to buy. In order to get a mortgage you are required to buy insurance to protect the lenders interest. You have a choice to rent instead of buying. Also once you have paid off the mortgage you can continue to buy insurance, reduce the coverage or eliminate it.
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Unregulated is not the same as mandated. Regulated means there are common terms and legal rights of both the insured and the insurer. In housing insurance the policy is written with certain risk characteristics of the pool in which the insured is covered (stone vs wood, smoke detectors etc.) Too many claims and the policy is canceled And what we have seen so far in HC the mandate has increased premiums. And there are no risk pools it has become an entitlement which means costs skyrocket!

False premise and false conclusion all part of the liberal rationalization

For a right-winger, Gingrich is supposed to be one of the more intelligent ones?

“Similarly, the right is hostile to food stamps, for all the same reasons. Pelosi said yesterday that food stamps offer ‘the biggest bang for the buck’ in terms of economic stimulus, leading disgraced former House Speaker turned media darling Newt Gingrich to concede on Fox News that he’s confused.

“Well, you know, I carry around a bumper sticker that says 2 plus 2 equals 4. So I’d be very curious how a dollar given to somebody becomes a $1.79. And I think if we could get that to work with the U.S. Treasuries, so if people gave the Treasury $1,000, it became $1,790, we could pay off the federal debt and never worry about spending or anything. I mean, I — you know, somehow, I don’t understand how liberal math turns $1 into $1.79.”

Indeed, food stamps aren’t just stimulative, they’re the single most effective form of stimulus in the governmental arsenal.

Taken together, Gingrich’s problem isn’t with ‘liberal math,’ it’s with reality.”

“Pelosi said yesterday that food stamps offer ‘the biggest bang for the buck’ in terms of economic stimulus,”
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No jobs do not government “stimulus”. A concept the left can’t understand. The have just as hard of a time understanding that it’s spending causes deficits.

Hardly a poster boy but it shows even a conservative can go bad when they jump into the cesspool of Washington and politics.

Reid gaining support with Nevada GOPers.

“In a statement, [state Senate Minority Leader Bill] Raggio said he can’t overlook Angle’s ‘record of being totally ineffective as a four-term assemblywomen, her inability or unwillingness to work with others, even within her own party, and her extreme positions on issues such as Medicare, social security, education, veterans affairs and many others.’

But what’s striking to me is how common this has become. Rusty Tybo, the Republican mayor of Wells, Nevada, endorsed Reid a month ago, as did former RNC Chairman Frank Fahrenkopf and former Reagan media advisor Sig Rogich.

Around the same time, former [GOP] U.S. Rep. Jim Santini, who ran against Reid in 1986, also endorsed the Senate Majority Leader, as did the Republican mayor of Reno, Bob Cashell.

It appears that Democrats aren’t the only ones frightened by the prospect of extremist candidate Sharron Angle actually winning.”

In truth, foghorn, I almost wish they would win.
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The bottom line will be how many average Americans get hurt.
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By the time 2012 rolls around, after having bought into a second round of idiocy, maybe we will finally learn that Obama isn’t such an evil madman after all…

New evidence in the bee murder mystery.

“It has been one of the great murder mysteries of the garden: what is killing off the honeybees?

Since 2006, 20 to 40 percent of the bee colonies in the United States alone have suffered “colony collapse.” Suspected culprits ranged from pesticides to genetically modified food.

Now, a unique partnership — of military scientists and entomologists — appears to have achieved a major breakthrough: identifying a new suspect, or two.

A fungus tag-teaming with a virus have apparently interacted to cause the problem, according to a paper by Army scientists in Maryland and bee experts in Montana…[...]

…researchers on both sides say that colony collapse may be the first time that the defense machinery of the post-Sept. 11 Homeland Security Department and academia have teamed up to address a problem that both sides say they might never have solved on their own.

‘Together we could look at things nobody else was looking at,’ said Colin Henderson, an associate professor at the University of Montana’s College of Technology and a member of Dr. Bromenshenk’s ‘Bee Alert’ team.”

Dessert:

“He said nine-year-old Beatrice had written to Captain Jack, asking him to lead a mutiny against her teachers.”

“The current financial crisis did not happen because investment companies were dealing in derivative products that no one understood (the simplistic general Democratic explanation), nor was it a result of an abnormal growth in homeownership rates in the United States (the simplistic general Republican explanation). The real reason for our current crisis is that our economic leaders allowed Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac to mismanage mortgage rates and thus mismanage a substantial portion of our “debt economy” for more than twenty-five years.

Read more: http://www.businessinsider.com/how-25-years-of-mismanagement-at-fannie-and-freddie-caused-the-financial-crisis-2010-6#ixzz11nGtjPrG
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Andrew Cuomo, the youngest Housing and Urban Development secretary in history, made a series of decisions between 1997 and 2001 that gave birth to the country’s current crisis. He took actions that—in combination with many other factors—helped plunge Fannie and Freddie into the subprime markets without putting in place the means to monitor their increasingly risky investments. He turned the Federal Housing
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In 2000, Cuomo required a quantum leap in the number of affordable, low-to-moderate-income loans that the two mortgage banks—known collectively as Government Sponsored Enterprises—would have to buy. The GSEs don’t actually sell mortgages to borrowers. They buy them from banks and mortgage companies, allowing lenders to replenish their capital and make more loans. They also purchase mortgage-backed securities, which are pools of mortgages regularly acquired by the GSEs from investment firms. The government chartered these banks to pump money into the mortgage market and, while they did it, to make a strong enough profit to attract shareholders. That created a tug-of-war between their efforts to maximize shareholder value, which drove them toward high-end mortgages, and their congressionally mandated obligation to finance loans for those who needed help. The 1992 law required HUD’s secretary to make sure housing goals were being met and, every four years, set new goals for Fannie and Freddie.
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The government created Freddie Mac and Fannie Mae and they were required to meet certain obligations in the housing market. In 1995, the U.S. Department of Urban Development started to give “credit” to Freddie and Fannie for purchasing mortgage backed securities to low income borrowers. In 1996 the government required Freddie and Fannie to provide at least 42% of their mortgage financing to borrowers below the median income and the only way to do this was erode loan standards
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The ex-controller of Fannie Mae has written a book outlining the decline of these GSEs and who and how the crisis grew. Coincidentally he wasn’t one of the folks invited to the Committee to review Fannie & Freddie. I wouldn’t put much stock in the Fed or the FDIC (two financial regulatory agencies) in finding out the cause since they sat with their thumbs up their butt while the mortgage market melted and Demo political hacks defrauded and raided the GSEs.

Krugman has an excellent column — the whole thing is worth the read.

And the ideology that has led Mr. Christie to undermine his state’s future is, of course, the same ideology that has led almost all Republicans and some Democrats to stand in the way of any meaningful action to revive the nation’s economy. Worse yet, next month’s election seems likely to reward Republicans for their obstructionism.

So here’s how you should think about the decision to kill the tunnel: It’s a terrible thing in itself, but, beyond that, it’s a perfect symbol of how America has lost its way. By refusing to pay for essential investment, politicians are both perpetuating unemployment and sacrificing long-run growth. And why not? After all, this seems to be a winning electoral strategy. All vision of a better future seems to have been lost, replaced with a refusal to look beyond the narrowest, most shortsighted notion of self-interest.

http://www.nytimes.com/2010/10/08/opinion/08krugman.html?_r=2

You know grape_crush, whenever Phyllis Shlafly’s name pops up I wonder how she can possibly still be alive. She has been wandering the reactionary wasteland for decades. When I first became politically active in the early 60s, her helmet haired presence was leading the anti-feminist brigades.
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Do you think there is a picture aging in her closet or is she, unlike Christine O’Donnell, a witch?

grape_crush: I found the article on bees fascinating. My ex and I used to own a cranberry bog. Each spring we had bees brought into pollinate. I don’t think people realize how important bees are to agriculture. Our livelihood depended on them.
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I have told this before. But, what the heck. When you are old you get to repeat yourself.
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The beekeepers will deliver the hives and leave them for a period of weeks. When they pickup or deliver the hives, it is done in the evening when the bees have returned to their homes. One year the beekeeper picked up the hives at our bog during mid- afternoon. You have never seen a frenzy of bees like those left behind. For at least a week, we had to cover our heads and run for our car when we left the house.

I loves me some Johnny Depp.