Comment Re:Electronic Voting (Score 1) 304
Posting a link relevant to your post:
Thx for posting... I stand corrected... turns out it wasn't exactly a First Amendment issue. Interesting.
Posting a link relevant to your post:
Thx for posting... I stand corrected... turns out it wasn't exactly a First Amendment issue. Interesting.
I'm a broad strokes kind of guy and even I am perplexed why I know anything about that recession. I'm not really a party guy, more into recognizing exceptional individuals. I think Presidents Barrack Obama, Bill Clinton, George H.W. Bush, Jimmy Carter were my kind of hero-worshipable individuals, and (duh) Presidents in general tend to end up being these kinds of highly exceptional individuals, and even though the logic intimated here is fallicious, we do at least know more than a few Presidents were really quite brilliant, regardless of Presidential effectiveness or popularity.
Every election its the same kind of partisan-driven history re-write. Except that more and more we see attempts to destabilize even our belief in the reality of the two party system, that these parties are now corrupted or cross-pollinated to the point that, while still different, they become homogenous when you start removing the minutia criterium. So I like a perspective that is inscrutable... like a martian's perspective. Put an R and a D in front of a martian and they'll likely be unable to distinquish the two from each other, and perhaps just as unlikely to be able to distinquish humans from apes. Point here being that labels and qualities that we attribute to ideals, and the ideals themselves, usually end up meaning nothing at all in practice because the world is pretty complex... and so are people.
I want the information. I'm tired of the bullshit and I want the damn information. I'm not quite ready to start beating news anchors with umbrellas... but somedays... you know?
Alright, Rockcoon, challenge accepted. I am going to show with the facts in this post that you are both stubornly stupid, and unabashedly dishonest.
The Republicans tried to do something about it the whole way while the Democrats prevented anything from being done about it the whole way.
Yeah... that's complete bullshit. Sure... there was the Home Ownership and Equity Protection Act (94), which directed the Federal Reserve to issue regulations of mortgages, but Greenspan refused to use it. Greenspan has ever been against regulation in any form (again... my mind boggles why you mentioned him in a previous post as though it supported your falicious arguments).
Why are you trying to claim that the Republicans are to blame for deregulation when the Democrats were nearly unanimously in favor of the deregulation that you are blaming on the Republicans?
Complete lie wrapped in a question... nice work. But wow... you have it exactly backwards, retard.
My guess is that you really didnt know that the Democrats were gung-ho in favor if it because while they were nearly unanimously voting for the deregulation
Ah. Another flat lie. You really have a pliable relationship with the truth, don't you. Maybe if you keep repeating lies... it will actually change the past! Dipshit... that's not how it works... hundreds of millions of people already know the truth. You can attempt to rewrite history, but any fact checking will reveal your statements to be complete dogshit.
The fact remains that the Republicans repeatedly tried to regulate fannie and freddie from 2001
Again... regulating these firms by then would have done nothing to stop the recession, which was being brought on by banks and their insistence that derivatives not be regulated. ÂThe roots of the recession began in the 1980's under the Reagan Administration. Not sure if you are aware, but Reagan was Republican, and while Congress at the time was split about equally, he had a VERY strong conservative administration. The only thing that kept Reagan's debt increases in check was the Democratic House.
Here's the basic line of how we ended up with our dicks handed to us in 2008. In 1981, President Reagan appointed Donald Reagan (Meryl Lynch) to be his Treasury Secretary. The Reagan administration, supported by Wall Steet economists and financial lobbyists, started Âa 30 year period of financial deregulation. By 82, the Reagan administration had deregulated savings and loan companies, allowing them to make risky investments with their customers' money. By 1990, hundreds of savings and loan companies had failed. This cost taxpayers $124 BILLION.
Alan Greenspan is on record all over the 1980's in support of the deregulation and allowing these S&L's to make the risky investments. Reagan subsequently appointed Greenspan to head the Federal Reserve, and this move was repeated by Bush1 and Clinton. Under Clinton, Greenspan continued the deregulation. Clinton's adminstration, naively trusting Greenspan's expertise (typical Democrat shit), allowed the finanical sector grow into just a few massive companies, where if any one failed, we'd all be in trouble.
You remember all the scandals in the late 90's early 00's with the cooking of books, defrauding of customers... $100BILLION of drug money funneled out of Mexico by Citibank... Fannie Mae overstated their earnings between 98 and 03 by $10BILLION.... you think there's ANY support for Democrats from those guys? No... they were propping up Republicans that shared their interest.
Democrats share blame as well, but its always the same thing with Democrats... always being bamboozled by Republicans, and can't get their shit together, even when they control both houses of Congress. To say Democrats helped cause the recession because they did nothing to stop it is like saying a witness is as morally responsible as a murderer because the witness didn't stop the murder. Stop looking at the white space... the salient details are not what wasn't done to stop the recession, but what and who actually DID NUMEROUS THINGS TO CAUSE IT, and these things are ALL numbered among the idealism of Republican politics (namely, small government, unregulated economy is their GOOD).
I mentioned derivatives. In the early 90's, deregulation gave rise to a new financial "product:" derivatives. Using derivatives, bankers could bet on anything at all from a company going backrupt to the weather. Derivatives destablized the economy and by 2000 was a $50TRILLION unregulated market.Â
Democrats did attempt some sanity. The Clinton adminstration appointed Brooksly Born to chair the Commodity Futures Trading Commission which oversaw the derivatives market. In May of 98 the CFTC proposed a regulation of the derivatives market, which the (Summers) Treasury Department immediately responded, directing Born to cease seaking the deregulation. Greenspan (along with the SEC Chairman Arthur Levitt and Treasury Secretary Robert Rubin, both characterized as very unusual Democrats... as in wolves in sheeps clothing... these are Wall Street suits) actually released a statement condeming Born and recommending derivatives remain unregulated. Here's a quite for ya: Greenspan says before Congress: "Regulation of derivatives transactions that are privately negotiated by professionals is unnecessary."Â
The only major related deregulation that the Republicans had any control over was the Commodity Futures Modernization Act of 2000, but this bill passed the House with a vote of 377 in favor and only 4 again. In other words, the Democrats influenced by a presidential working groups public support (thats Clinton, Democrat) were gleefully in favor of this bill and almost unanimously voted in favor of it.
omfg you are truely a fucking liar
In 2000, Sen. Phil Gramm (REPUBLICAN, wife on Enron's BOD since 93, later becomes chairman of UBS), took a major role in getting this bill passed (Commodity Futures Modernization Act) that exempted derivatives from government oversight or regulation, and moreso, banned regulation of derivatives, giving rise to the securitization chain where thousands of subprime loans were combined and sold to investers worldwide, removing the incentive of banks to care if mortgages were paid off or not... banks preferred subprime loans because the interest rates were higher, making them more money.Â
An earlier poster said this wasn't a partisan issue, and to some extent that is correct. Except that the people, the very individuals that truely caused the 2008 recession through financial quackery, are all Republicans. There just aren't enough lily-livered communist-leaning hippies in powerful financial positions. In fact, I don't think there's any. They're all Republicans. ÂAnd Democratic Congress members suffer from the same problems Democrats have suffered from since Nixon... lack of concesensus and naivity. Now... while the Republican elected politicians didn't plan to cause the recession for their own gain, they systematically caused it nonetheless... Âand it is the idealism of Republicanism that is behind this.
Again.. let me clue you in to the general idealisms of our two party system:
Democrats like taxes, social services, big government, and regulation and oversight. Twas always thus in modern politics.
Republicans like a hands off government, or no government at all. They do not like regulation, or government EVER getting involved in business. Twas never any different in modern politics.
You keep bringing up worthless facts that were reactions to the recession. The recession didn't magically appear in 2008. The market peaked in 2005 and it was a steady decline in property values since. But there were obvious issues as early as 2000, when the mortgage debt consolidation started to go into overdrive, and banks were basically gambling with our money... gambling on us losing.
You keep touting McCain. The LONE Republican that stood against the deregulation. In 2006. When shit was already flying everywhere. Yeah, that guy lost a presidency because he was too middle of the road, which you can read as: he happily takes on the popular politics. And the idea was completely wrong headed.... this sort of legislation would not have prevented the recession which was already imminint by 2001
Greenspan... was a key player in the deregulation, Sherlock. I can't think of anyone more singularly responsible for that recession than him, so my mind boggles why you'd quote him as though he were some hybrid Republican or something. He's a fucking banker. He was one of the architects for the deregulation that began in the 80's.
Ah, more Republican bullshit... rewrite history with false interpretations, off-topic distraction and flat lies.
People like you give Republicans a bad name. Perhaps you should be asking yourself how you ended up being either so dishonest, or so delusional that you're oblivious.
Well, let me just tell you: I am not an "addictive personality"
Oh, and I suppose those aren't your opiate receptors, you're just holding them for someone, right? Just adding to your point... when it comes to opiate-derrived or opiate-simulated narcotics, everyone has an addictive personality.
As little as 100 years ago people were using perfectly legal opium compounds such as paregoric, with little or no social problems.
Actually, paregoric opiate addiction destroyed thousands of lives, so I don't know what you mean by "little or no social problems." Big problems... it caused lasting physiological and social damage to all that used it.
More than one Republican tried to stop the government-funded housing bubble years before it exploded
Wow, you have a way with history. The subprime lending bubble (2008 recession) was not the brainchild of Democrats, but rather was directly caused by systematic deregulation and removal of banking financial oversight by each Republican administration starting with President Reagan. This recession was set into motion and brought to fruition fully by Republicans and conservatives fighting the bad "Big Government" ideals of Democrats.
I'm a painter from the 1940s
Sad... we have here another displaced (distempered? distemporalled?) victim of that damned Philadelphia Experiment.
Will mankind ever learn?
I really, really doubt they can see a photon from the side
FTFY (because all anything that sees can see is photons)
"I am, therefore I am." -- Akira