Politics
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- hallelujah0
"In one week, you can turn the page on policies that have put the greed and irresponsibility of Wall Street before the hard work and sacrifice of folks on Main Street.
In one week, you can choose policies that invest in our middle-class, create new jobs, and grow this economy from the bottom-up so that everyone has a chance to succeed; from the CEO to the secretary and the janitor; from the factory owner to the men and women who work on its floor.
In one week, you can put an end to the politics that would divide a nation just to win an election; that tries to pit region against region, city against town, Republican against Democrat; that asks us to fear at a time when we need hope.
In one week, at this defining moment in history, you can give this country the change we need.
....
At a moment like this, the last thing we can afford is four more years of the tired, old theory that says we should give more to billionaires and big corporations and hope that prosperity trickles down to everyone else. The last thing we can afford is four more years where no one in Washington is watching anyone on Wall Street because politicians and lobbyists killed common-sense regulations. Those are the theories that got us into this mess. They haven't worked, and it's time for change. That's why I'm running for President of the United States.
Now, Senator McCain has served this country honorably. And he can point to a few moments over the past eight years where he has broken from George Bush – on torture, for example. He deserves credit for that. But when it comes to the economy – when it comes to the central issue of this election – the plain truth is that John McCain has stood with this President every step of the way. Voting for the Bush tax cuts for the wealthy that he once opposed. Voting for the Bush budgets that spent us into debt. Calling for less regulation twenty-one times just this year. Those are the facts.
And now, after twenty-one months and three debates, Senator McCain still has not been able to tell the American people a single major thing he'd do differently from George Bush when it comes to the economy. Senator McCain says that we can't spend the next four years waiting for our luck to change, but you understand that the biggest gamble we can take is embracing the same old Bush-McCain policies that have failed us for the last eight years.
It's not change when John McCain wants to give a $700,000 tax cut to the average Fortune 500 CEO. It's not change when he wants to give $200 billion to the biggest corporations or $4 billion to the oil companies or $300 billion to the same Wall Street banks that got us into this mess. It's not change when he comes up with a tax plan that doesn't give a penny of relief to more than 100 million middle-class Americans. That's not change.
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The question in this election is not “Are you better off than you were four years ago?” We know the answer to that. The real question is, “Will this country be better off four years from now?”
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Understand, if we want get through this crisis, we need to get beyond the old ideological debates and divides between left and right. We don't need bigger government or smaller government. We need a better government – a more competent government – a government that upholds the values we hold in common as Americans.
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So the choice in this election isn't between tax cuts and no tax cuts. It's about whether you believe we should only reward wealth, or whether we should also reward the work and workers who create it. I will give a tax break to 95% of Americans who work every day and get taxes taken out of their paychecks every week. I'll eliminate income taxes for seniors making under $50,000 and give homeowners and working parents more of a break. And I'll help pay for this by asking the folks who are making more than $250,000 a year to go back to the tax rate they were paying in the 1990s. No matter what Senator McCain may claim, here are the facts – if you make under $250,000, you will not see your taxes increase by a single dime – not your income taxes, not your payroll taxes, not your capital gains taxes. Nothing. Because the last thing we should do in this economy is raise taxes on the middle-class.
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But as I've said from the day we began this journey all those months ago, the change we need isn't just about new programs and policies. It's about a new politics – a politics that calls on our better angels instead of encouraging our worst instincts; one that reminds us of the obligations we have to ourselves and one another.
Part of the reason this economic crisis occurred is because we have been living through an era of profound irresponsibility. On Wall Street, easy money and an ethic of “what's good for me is good enough” blinded greedy executives to the danger in the decisions they were making. On Main Street, lenders tricked people into buying homes they couldn't afford. Some folks knew they couldn't afford those houses and bought them anyway. In Washington, politicians spent money they didn't have and allowed lobbyists to set the agenda. They scored political points instead of solving our problems, and even after the greatest attack on American soil since Pearl Harbor, all we were asked to do by our President was to go out and shop.
That is why what we have lost in these last eight years cannot be measured by lost wages or bigger trade deficits alone. What has also been lost is the idea that in this American story, each of us has a role to play. Each of us has a responsibility to work hard and look after ourselves and our families, and each of us has a responsibility to our fellow citizens. That's what's been lost these last eight years – our sense of common purpose; of higher purpose. And that's what we need to restore right now."
- ukit0
McCain could still win and here's how...if you look at the Undecided number in all of these polls, and give it to McCain...he pulls even or ahead in most polls. So watch out, the polls could be deceptive.
- you said a mouthful********
- http://www.americant…********
- “Things are trending back for McCain,” said pollster John Zogby. “His numbers are rising********
- and Obama’s are dropping on a daily basis.”
********
- yes and chimps could write For Whom the Bell Tolls given enough time********
- you said a mouthful
- scrap_paper0
I already had almost no hope for the state of the world but if McCain actually wins, with all his idiotic mistakes and obvious incompetence, I'm pretty sure any shred of hope I had will be squashed.
It's not a Dem vs Rep thing at all. I don't believe in party politics. I'm just scared as hell.
- If McCain wins, the world will instantly catch on fire and global warming will be global combustion********
- Well, think of it this way. If McCain burns it all down, we'll just have to build it back up, but betterlocustsloth
- HA i didn't even see JazX's comment before i posted mine.locustsloth
- Spooky karma! *lights self on fire...********
- If McCain wins, the world will instantly catch on fire and global warming will be global combustion
- ********0
give me the addresses of all people who vote Mccain.
And I will kill them- trick is taking care of it before they votemegE
- the boy's got spunkhallelujah
- spunk in the eye********
- To be a mccain-supporter is worse than being gay.
stop being it JazX******** - Drgss= homophobia and violence. No one in either party should want to kill the other for their political affiliation.BRNK
- ********0
They’re Shocked, Shocked, About the Mess
It started acting up on Wednesday, spinning wildly as executives from the nation’s leading credit-rating agencies testified before Congress about their nonroles in the credit crisis. Leaders from Moody’s, Standard & Poor’s and Fitch all said that their firms’ inability to see problems in toxic mortgages was an honest mistake. The woefully inaccurate ratings that have cost investors billions were not, mind you, a result of issuers paying ratings agencies handsomely for their rosy opinions.
Still, there were those pesky e-mail messages cited by the House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform that showed two analysts at S.& P. speaking frankly about a deal they were being asked to examine.
“Btw — that deal is ridiculous,” one wrote. “We should not be rating it.”
“We rate every deal,” came the response. “It could be structured by cows and we would rate it.”
Asked to explain the cow reference, Deven Sharma, S.& P.’s president, told the committee: “The unfortunate and inappropriate language used in these e-mails does not reflect the core culture of the organization I am committed to leading.”
Maybe so, but that was a lot for my malarkey meter to absorb.
Then, on Thursday, my meter sputtered as Alan Greenspan, former “Maestro” of the Federal Reserve, testified before the same Congressional questioners. He defended years of regulatory inaction in the face of predatory lending and said he was “in a state of shocked disbelief” that financial institutions did not rein themselves in when there were billions to be made by relaxing their lending practices and trafficking in exotic derivatives.
Mr. Greenspan was shocked, shocked to find that there was gambling going on in the casino.
MY poor, overtaxed, smoke-and-mirrors meter gave out altogether when Christopher Cox, chairman of the Securities and Exchange Commission, took his turn on the committee’s hot seat. His agency had allowed Wall Street firms to load up on leverage without increasing its oversight of them. But he said on Thursday that the credit crisis highlights “the need for a strong S.E.C., which is unique in its arm’s-length independence from the institutions and persons it regulates.”
He said that with a straight face, too.
There was more. Mr. Cox went on to suggest that his hapless agency should begin regulating credit-default swaps.
This, recall, is that $55 trillion market at the heart of almost every big corporate failure and near-collapse of recent months. Trading in these swaps, which offer insurance against debt defaults, exploded in recent years. As the market for the swaps grew, so did the risks — and the interconnectedness — among the firms that traded them.
During the years when these risks were ramping up unregulated, Mr. Cox and his crew were silent on the swaps beat.
How exasperating. After all the time and taxpayer money spent trying to resolve the financial crisis, we’re still in the middle of the maelstrom. The S.& P. 500-stock index was down 40.3 percent for the year at Friday’s close.
Yes, the problems are global, and made more complex by Wall Street’s financial engineers. And a titanic deleveraging process like the one we are in, where both consumers and companies must cut their debt loads, is never fun or over fast.
Still, as the stock market continues to grind lower, something more may be at work. And that something centers on trust and credibility, which have been lacking in corporate and government leadership in recent years.
Like the boy who cried wolf, corporate and regulatory officials have issued a lot of hogwash over the years. Until recently, investors were willing to believe it. Now they may not be so easily gulled.
Companies, even those in cyclical businesses, routinely told investors that the reason they so regularly beat their earnings forecasts was honest hard work — and not cookie-jar accounting. They were believed.
Politicians proclaiming that the economy was strong and that the crisis would not spread kept our trust.
Brokerage firms insisting that auction-rate securities were as good as cash won over investors — and, as we all know now, that market froze up.
Wall Street dealmakers were fawned over like all-knowing superstars, their comings and goings celebrated. No one doubted them.
Banks engaging in anything-goes lending practices assured shareholders that safety and soundness was their mantra. They, too, got a pass.
Directors who didn’t begin to understand the operational complexities of the companies they were charged with overseeing told stockholders that they were vigilant fiduciaries. Investors suspended their disbelief.
And regulators, asserting that they were policing the markets, convinced investors that there was a level playing field.
Is it any surprise that virulent mistrust seems to own the markets now?
Janet Tavakoli, a finance industry consultant who is president of Tavakoli Structured Finance, said the stock market’s gyrations are a result of a severe lack of confidence in the very officials who are charged with cleaning up the nation’s mess.
“It is not enough to throw money at a problem; you also have to use honesty and common sense,” Ms. Tavakoli said. “In fact, if you leave out the last two, you are wasting taxpayers’ money.”
What Ms. Tavakoli means by common sense is a plan that will force institutions to get a fix on what their holdings are actually worth.
“If you are going to hand out capital, you have to first revalue the assets or take over so that you can force a mark to market,” she said. “Force restructurings, mark down the assets to defensible levels and let the market clear.”
She also suggests that financial regulators impose a form of martial law, allowing them to rewrite derivatives contracts that bind counterparties to terms they may not even comprehend.
“If I were queen of the world, I would wade in there with a small army of people and just start straightening out these books,” she said. “Start stripping them down and simplifying contracts so people can start to understand what they own. It would be unprecedented, but so is everything else we are doing.”
THAT move, which would begin the much-needed healing process for investors, would be unprecedented in another way. It might get the people who run our companies and our regulatory agencies into the business of telling the truth.
Naïve, I know. But something to wish for — I’d like to give my hypocrisy meter a breather.
- ukit0
At this point, if you put 10k on McCain and he won, you could make approx 90k.
- Since you had 90K in yr 401 9k) you would have about 10k to throw away on McBush********
- http://www.slate.com… Kerry was up in all of these********
- Since you had 90K in yr 401 9k) you would have about 10k to throw away on McBush
- Ramanisky20
- just another side of the same media coinlocustsloth
- I agree this is cheap, but the fact of the matter is the media is widely liberal with the exeption of Fox and a few others.designbot
- that actually made my blood boilkona
- I like Biden, no question he would be a better VP.designbot
- Meeklo0
oh man.. scary times ahead..
what if mccain actually wins again?
- ********0
As a result, Democrats now control the middle. Self-declared moderates now favor Obama by 59 to 30, according to the New York Times/CBS News poll. Suburban voters favor Obama 50 to 39. Voters over all give him a 21 point lead when it comes to better handling the economy and a 14 point lead on tax policy, according to the Wall Street Journal/NBC News poll.
- robotron3k0
The election still have 8 days to go and already I hear infighting between mavericks, JazX, nicnichols, and tommyo... looks like they are about to implode!
- eh? man the Dems should be "annihilating" right now and aren't.********
- eh? man the Dems should be "annihilating" right now and aren't.
- Ramanisky20
hey how come Bush still has an approval rating?? that one is baffling to me ...
who is this minority that still believes the current administration deserves any approval?? after everything that has happened in the last 8 years- criminals need pardons********
- he's been hiding...robotron3k
- I know a few people like this. This is why I hate the 2-party system...people get so wound up in being democrat or republican that they go blind.designbot
- that they go blind.designbot
- lol, designbot********
- lol jazX********
- Ohhh yes, there will be some bogus pardons on their way. It's all the rage these days.********
- criminals need pardons
- tommyo0
How do you guys feel about this? I know it's making it's round on the internet right now but, about Obama possibly not being a nationalized US citizen? Seems like media has squashed this story.
- Even if it were true, Obama already has a lot of resources at his disposal. It would be covered up for sure imho.designbot
- Ah, that one will be brought up a bunch of times.********
- You mean he's Panamanian?********
- you fucking idiot. even on that link you posted it says all charges dismissed, case closed. And asshole can file a complaint.Soler
- Soler. Watch it with the name calling. Jesus christ some of you are really unbalanced - I'm just asking for your opinion.tommyo
- You act like I asked if your mother fucked a goat or something. Get a hold of yourself.tommyo
- unbalanced you say? I feel like all of you name callers really hate themselves or their lives.********
- you think he would have gotten this far?DrBombay
- Not with the Clintons at the attack. Hillary and Bill are scumbags.********
- whatever.Soler
- Why would let it get THIS far if he's not a citizen?? Could he be a Senator if he's not a citizen?DCDesigns
- ********0
again, it's like watching someone drown and they are at the point of just grabbing onto anything to keep them afloat.
- kona0
tommyo
A similar court challenge was previously made to the citizenship of Obama's presidential rival, Senator John McCain (R-AZ), arguing [NYT report] that McCain did not qualify as a "natural born" US citizen because he was born at Coco Solo Naval Air Station in the Panama Canal Zone, a military installation outside of US territory. US District Judge William Alsup dismissed that lawsuit [order, PDF] in September for lack of standing.
- And unlike Obama (supposedly) he brought all his documentation out into the open.tommyo
- supposedly elvis is still alivekona
- yeah, 2 years of vetting Obama and this was overlooked. omg I cannot believe people believe this shitSoler
- Soler, has Obama provided proof? Even his own grandmother seems to believe he was born in Kenya. I'mtommyo
- simply asking what you guys think. ffs.tommyo
- he posted his birth certificate on his "fightthesmears" website.
http://fightthesmear…
kona - From what I gather...there are questions about it's authenticity. See my post below. Who fricken knows!tommyo
- tommy, u are smarter than this...DrBombay
- Just askin man! Just askin. His own fricken granny thinks he was born in Kenya. I really don't think much of this matters anyway.tommyo
- I was simply wondering what the other side to this story is.tommyo
- the other side is that Obama has released his birth certificate and you clearly think he's lyingSoler
- i was just wondering, does McCain still beat his wife...what..just askingTheBlueOne
- Looks legit to me.DCDesigns
- Where's the proof his Granny thinks he wqas born in Kenya...because of that stoopid fucken video?BusterBoy
- robotron3k0
ethnicity breakdown of US 2000
- scotch -irish? they must be the drunk ones********
- The 2001 ARIS report found that while 29.5 million U.S. Americans (14.1%) describe themselves as "without religion"Soler
- http://factfinder.ce…
German = 50,764,352 (2006)********
- scotch -irish? they must be the drunk ones
- ********0
http://www.chicagotribune.com/ne…
12/15 = 80%. Not bad
- dbloc0
- Foolish people being foolishlocustsloth
- turnabout certainly is fair play.BRNK
- no, it's actually not. It's just a perpetuation of unfair playlocustsloth
- tommyo0
An interesting look at the Obama Birth Certificate:
http://www.dailykos.com/story/20…
I know I know, bring on the frothing at the mouth shots at me but whatever, take it for what it is. I'm only interested in truth and thought I'd share something that I found while looking for it.
- btw, if you have anything that debunks this whole thing, I'd love to see it too. :)tommyo
- Er...how about the actual birth certificate in the article you linked to?ukit
- Did you read the page? Or are you going to burst into flames if you have to read something that isn't pro-Obama?tommyo
- haha...I am not...but the Daily Kos story pretty much just presents the BC to debunk the rumors.ukit
- haha :P Yeah there are some really weird inconsistencies I guess. Wrong border patterns etc. I looked through the dailytommyo
- kos site and they seem pretty un-biased. I don't like reading shit from obviously bias sources. But who knows.tommyo
- Sorry I'm a blabbering idiot. I just realized that wasn't the right link. Hold please.tommyo
- http://www.politifac… looks like this is official, not sure.********
- unless of course you need some sort of official stamp and seal. Hawaii's business.********
- Ahh interesting link JazX...for some reason I can't even find the damn page I meant to link to in the beginning. NM me.tommyo
- tommy, do you really think he would have gotten this far if it were true?DrBombay
- How many times are you going to ask that question? haha. I just replied in the previous comment box you asked in. ;)tommyo
- I would think that the Clintons would have attacked him long ago. Dunno.********
- http://www.factcheck…Josev
- ukit0
3500!
- ukit0
Cmon guys...don't you think the federal government does background checks on people who become US senators, presidential candidates etc? You don't think they check where they were born and if they are really a US citizen?
- You'd certainly think so! haha. Yeah I just heard a couple things about this and was wondering. So who fuckin knows,tommyo
- The article JazX posted seems sober and honest though. I'm going with that one. http://www.politifac…tommyo
- do you know where McCain was born?zaq
- Yes I do.tommyo
