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And let’s be clear: Fannie and Freddie can’t be allowed to fail. With the collapse of subprime lending, they’re now more central than ever to the housing market, and the economy as a whole.
Actually, they can be allowed to fail. Their investors can take a loss on their investment. This is how we’re told the system is supposed to work. There’s risk involved in investment. When investors take a loss this is just the weeding of the garden that is Capitalism.
We could make Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac into government institutions. The public could assume the risk and control over this kind of financing. But no, the most liberal voice in the New York Times thinks that just isn’t possible. Instead, private investors are allowed to make a profit on mortgages, but take a loss? That’s unheard of! The public will just pick up the slack there. That’s what free market capitalism is all about.
It’s the same old story. The poor can get poorer. But if rich investors have to lose even a little bit of money, it’s time for the government to make sure they stay rich, and good liberals will explain to you how that’s simply how it must be done because we need those rich people to stay rich or else something really bad will happen.
Originally published at Ergotism. You can comment here or there.
There are a million terrorists in America right now.
Originally published at Ergotism. You can comment here or there.
This interview with our President is from 2004. It has never been on US TV.
All those people who are upset about the war and about torture, well, “they must not understand.” If you let human atrocities bug you, it’s just because you’re incapable of appreciating the genius of George W. Bush. What a pity.
Originally published at Ergotism. You can comment here or there.
Can we stop calling John McCain an environmentalist now? This is from electoral-vote.com: “John McCain has had a bit of trouble reconciling his conservative views on abortion and gun control with his much more liberal views on immigration and global warming.”
John McCain does not have “liberal views” on global warming. He does admit that global warming is real, which has raised the ire of global warming deniers such as Rush Limbaugh. But that’s not a liberal position. That’s just a realistic position. We don’t define what counts as a liberal position as anything to the left of Rush Limbaugh. The liberal position on global warming would be that we have to repond the problem and quickly. That’s not the McCain position.
McCain has a score of zero from the League of Conservation Voters. He says that he might support cap and trade programs as long as they’re not mandatory. At least he thinks he does; he’s not quite sure. As long as its not mandatory? If it’s not mandatory then it won’t work. What other laws aren’t mandatory? The entire point of a law is that it’s mandatory. I guess un-mandatory laws are just part of being a maverick.
McCain wants to repeal the gas tax; he wants to start offshore drilling, and drilling in Alaska for oil. And then he makes an ad about how oil is like, so bad, man; it’s so bad that we’ve got to drill for more of it! How exactly does that make him an environmentalist?
Of course, John McCain does have a TV ad where he stands on a mountaintop and breathes in the fresh clean mountain air. Maybe that’s what counts for being an environmentalist.
Originally published at Ergotism. You can comment here or there.
This is the dumbest thing I’ve read about in a long, long time. IT’S A FRACKIN’ CRACKER!
Originally published at Ergotism. You can comment here or there.
In an Iranian Image, a Missile Too Many
Looks like The Los Angeles Times, The Financial Times, The Chicago Tribune, BBC News, MSNBC, Yahoo! News, NYTimes.com all presented a fake manipulated image.
Originally published at Ergotism. You can comment here or there.
The news networks may be limiting their coverage of the Democratic Party convention.
Obama’s decision “makes it enormously more expensive,” said Paul Friedman, senior vice president at CBS News. “It does add to the overall question of how the networks should cover what is a non-news event.”
Since CBS News thinks that the Democratic Party’s convention is not a news event, I wandered over to their Website to see what they think is a news event.
Got it. JonBenet Ramsey: a news event. Democratic Party convention: not a news event. I’m glad we got that clear.
“We want to anchor at it,” one broadcast executive said. “[But] do you need to be there to anchor for all four nights? That’s something that we are asking ourselves.”
Do we need to be running top stories on JonBenet Ramsey twelve years after the fact? That’s not something we’re asking ourselves.
Originally published at Ergotism. You can comment here or there.
The FISA bill passed the Senate 69-28. Obama voted for it. Hillary voted against it.
If Hillary had not voted for the war in 2002, I’m convinced that she would be the nominee right now. Perhaps her vote on FISA means that she’s learned the hard way that giving in to the bullies doesn’t pay off like she thought it would. Good for her.
Originally published at Ergotism. You can comment here or there.
Americans have got to understand that we are paying present-day retirees with the taxes paid by young workers in America today. And that’s a disgrace. It’s an absolute disgrace, and it’s got to be fixed. — John McCain
For those not familiar, the phrase “the third rail of politics” is a reference to subway rails. The third rail is the rail with the electricity in it. It’s the rail that you never ever ever touch or you will get fried. John McCain just grabbed the third rail with both hands.
You have to wonder why he would say such a thing. Just stupid? Maybe. But let’s give his campaign a little credit. Perhaps they know they’re going to lose and so Karl Rove is using this election cycle as an opportunity to push the right-wing of American politics just a little more to the right. The next time someone says that Social Security is a disgrace, it won’t be as shocking. And then the time after that, it will be just another right-wing viewpoint which we have to respect and honor because they’ll howl to the moon if we don’t.
They’re not afraid to be extremists because they know it works. The extremists never get exactly what they ask for, but they succeed in moving the political center in their direction. And as a result of this long-term Republican strategy, the political center in D.C. is far to the right of the political center of the country. I’m really starting to believe that Democrats need more agitating extremists.
Originally published at Ergotism. You can comment here or there.
One thing’s for sure, John McCain is no kissy-face hippie. Hippies don’t love America. John McCain does.
Why is it that political discourse still contains anti-hippie rhetoric forty years later?
And what’s up with the McCain campaign’s consistent use of the feminine pronoun for America? “I served her…” “…puts her country and her people before self.” Sure, it’s one possible pronoun of many, but it’s antiquated, kind of insulting if you ask me, and weird. But the McCain campaign has clearly made a decision to use the feminine pronoun to refer to the country whenever possible. Why?
Originally published at Ergotism. You can comment here or there.
Peter G. Peterson: Let me give you a hypothetical, senator. What would or should we do if, in the post-June 30th period, a so-called sovereign Iraqi government asks us to leave, even if we are unhappy about the security situation there? I understand it’s a hypothetical, but it’s at least possible.
John McCain: Well, if that scenario evolves, then I think it’s obvious that we would have to leave because— if it was an elected government of Iraq— and we’ve been asked to leave other places in the world. If it were an extremist government, then I think we would have other challenges, but I don’t see how we could stay when our whole emphasis and policy has been based on turning the Iraqi government over to the Iraqi people.
NAJAF, Iraq (AFP) — Iraq said on Tuesday it will reject any security pact with the United States unless it sets a date for the pullout of US-led foreign troops, a proposal turned down by US President George W. Bush.
John McCain supports a timetable for withdrawal from Iraq at this time.
We’re all just waiting for his official statement saying that now is the time to end the war. It should be out any minute now…
Of course it’s not going to come out. In John McCain’s world the only nation that has real sovereignty is the USA. Other nations have sovereignty at our discretion.
Originally published at Ergotism. You can comment here or there.
After the Vietnam War, movies like “Apocalypse Now” and “Born on the Fourth of July” helped cement an image of psychologically damaged Vietnam veterans.
“In the ’80s and early ’90s, the Vietnam War vet was the ‘other,’ ” Breasseale said. “Hollywood had created the crazy Nam vet.”
I know some Vietnam vets, and the fact is, some of them are crazy. Some have PTSD, one has complications from botched psychiatric treatment he received from the Army. But now the Army is telling reporters that the whole idea of insanity being a predictable outcome of war is all the fault of Hollywood. Why, the insanity which follows war couldn’t have possibly been created by the people who designed and organized the actual war now could it? No. It’s Hollywood that “created the crazy Nam vet.” Not the war.
And of course, reporters are printing it.
The rest of the story is about how army officials are getting more involved in making Hollywood movies, all for the sake of accuracy of course. If you heard that in Libya, the military was involved in producing entertainment for the population at large, you’d call it propaganda.
Originally published at Ergotism. You can comment here or there.
The state of California fined Anthem Blue Cross a million dollars, but they’re not going to try to collect because they’re afraid they’ll be “outgunned” in court.
Who’s really in charge here? The people? Well, not directly. So then it’s representatives of the people? Well, they’re apparently unable to govern things either.
Obama’s FISA reversal has removed any hope I once had that he would try and institute a decent health care system. The health insurance corporations are not gonna give up without a fight, and Obama seems unwilling to stand up against corporate power.
Sure, he promised that he’d get health care done in his first year (contrasted with Hillary’s promise of some time in her second term) but Obama also promised to filibuster against any bill with telecom amnesty in it. And now not only is he failing to filibuster against it, he’s voting for the damned thing.
I would have understood if maybe he had said that campaigning kept him too busy to stick around in DC for a balls-to-the-wall drag-out filibuster, or even that a filibuster wouldn’t stop it anyway so that we needed a new strategy. But no; that’s not his position. He’s just planning on voting for the thing that he said he was gonna stick his neck out to stop. So now what good are his other promises? Not much.
I expected to be let down. I expected him to not live up to every promise perfectly. I expected him to compromise and refine his positions over time in ways I didn’t like. I didn’t expect a one-hundred-eighty degree head-swivel within the period of a month on a major issue. This is beyond flip-flopping. This is schizoid. What an asshole.
But that’s a tangent. The point is that corporate power rules absolutely more than anybody wants to admit. The tangent point is that no matter what he says, when the corporate shit is flying through the air, Obama is grabbing it to help feed it directly into the fan, and Democratic Party activists are organizing in record numbers to help him blow the shitstorm.
Originally published at Ergotism. You can comment here or there.
People joke about how the government is warning you about the threat of terrorists molesting your children, but they just keep getting closer and closer to actually saying it.
The White House said Thursday that dangerous detainees at Guantanamo Bay could end up walking Main Street U.S.A. as a result of last month’s Supreme Court ruling about detainees’ legal rights. Federal appeals courts, however, have indicated they have no intention of letting that happen…
“I’m sure that none of us want Khalid Sheikh Mohammed walking around our neighborhoods,” White House press secretary Dana Perino said about al-Qaida’s former third in command./p>
That’s the official statement of of White House press secretary Dana “What’s the Cuban Missile Crisis?” Perino. If we don’t torture them, they’ll be wandering around your neighborhood.
</p>Originally published at Ergotism. You can comment here or there.
The most popular group on my.barackobama.com is a group called “Senator Obama - Please Vote NO on Telecom Immunity - Get FISA Right.” How about them Innernets?
Originally published at Ergotism. You can comment here or there.
She stood back up, her face smiling proudly and her round breasts glistening from a spotlight in the dim bar, and left the banana on the bar, cut in four equal sections by the muscles of her vagina.
Excerpt from Something to Die For by James Webb
Originally published at Ergotism. You can comment here or there.
