Fire Hydrant of Freedom

Here is the problem with this theory. Many jihadists have lived in our nations, gone to our schools, enjoyed humane treatment in our lands and still gone on to wage jihad, often with a western passport in their possession.

The same thing can be said of rapists, murders, and other criminals in jails.

Vince

Was his being black helpful or hurtful to his candidacy?

IMHO he would not have even been noticed but for his being black, let alone being aided and abetted by a shameless and dishonest MSM.

There have been other black Presidential hopefuls, although BO was the first candidate that could be taken seriously. Initially yeah being black brought BO notoriety, but if he was like  Jesse Jackson or Al Sharpton you still think he would have won? Hell no!

Vince

Quote from: G M on Today at 10:28:04 AM
...Our first "affirmative action" president will have people wistfully longing for W...

Do you really believe this !?! "Affirmative  actions", people voted for him BECAUSE he is black!!!! PLEASE!!!! rolleyes

I guess its that white liberal guilt which explains NY, NJ,CT,MA,ME what about the rest of the country?

Vince

Is there any examples of International terrorism that was not done in the name of Islam ? I can only think of one Air India 1985, and even that you can conceivable argue was an internal affair Indian Sihk v. Indian Hindu).

anyways back to to election

Vince

This reminds me of my macroeconomic professor once said "When it comes to politicians when times are bad everyone is a Keynesian and when times are good classical"

http://www.businessweek.com/investing/insights/blog/archives/2008/09/community_reinv.html


Community Reinvestment Act had nothing to do with subprime crisis
Posted by: Aaron Pressman on September 29

Fresh off the false and politicized attack on Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, today we’re hearing the know-nothings blame the subprime crisis on the Community Reinvestment Act — a 30-year-old law that was actually weakened by the Bush administration just as the worst lending wave began. This is even more ridiculous than blaming Freddie and Fannie.

The Community Reinvestment Act, passed in 1977, requires banks to lend in the low-income neighborhoods where they take deposits. Just the idea that a lending crisis created from 2004 to 2007 was caused by a 1977 law is silly. But it’s even more ridiculous when you consider that most subprime loans were made by firms that aren’t subject to the CRA. University of Michigan law professor Michael Barr testified back in February before the House Committee on Financial Services that 50% of subprime loans were made by mortgage service companies not subject comprehensive federal supervision and another 30% were made by affiliates of banks or thrifts which are not subject to routine supervision or examinations. As former Fed Governor Ned Gramlich said in an August, 2007, speech shortly before he passed away: “In the subprime market where we badly need supervision, a majority of loans are made with very little supervision. It is like a city with a murder law, but no cops on the beat.”

Not surprisingly given the higher degree of supervision, loans made under the CRA program were made in a more responsible way than other subprime loans. CRA loans carried lower rates than other subprime loans and were less likely to end up securitized into the mortgage-backed securities that have caused so many losses, according to a recent study by the law firm Traiger & Hinckley (PDF file here).

Finally, keep in mind that the Bush administration has been weakening CRA enforcement and the law’s reach since the day it took office. The CRA was at its strongest in the 1990s, under the Clinton administration, a period when subprime loans performed quite well. It was only after the Bush administration cut back on CRA enforcement that problems arose, a timing issue which should stop those blaming the law dead in their tracks. The Federal Reserve, too, did nothing but encourage the wild west of lending in recent years. It wasn’t until the middle of 2007 that the Fed decided it was time to crack down on abusive pratices in the subprime lending market. Oops.

Better targets for blame in government circles might be the 2000 law which ensured that credit default swaps would remain unregulated, the SEC’s puzzling 2004 decision to allow the largest brokerage firms to borrow upwards of 30 times their capital and that same agency’s failure to oversee those brokerage firms in subsequent years as many gorged on subprime debt. (Barry Ritholtz had an excellent and more comprehensive survey of how Washington contributed to the crisis in this week’s Barron’s.)

There’s plenty more good reading on the CRA and the subprime crisis out in the blogosphere. Ellen Seidman, who headed the Office of Thrift Supervision in the late 90s, has written several fact-filled posts about the CRA controversey, including one just last week. University of Oregon professor and economist Mark Thoma has also defended the CRA on his blog. I also learned something from a post back in April by Robert Gordon, a senior fellow at the Center for American Progress, which ends with this ditty:


    It’s telling that, amid all the recent recriminations, even lenders have not fingered CRA. That’s because CRA didn’t bring about the reckless lending at the heart of the crisis. Just as sub-prime lending was exploding, CRA was losing force and relevance. And the worst offenders, the independent mortgage companies, were never subject to CRA — or any federal regulator. Law didn’t make them lend. The profit motive did. And that is not political correctness. It is correctness.

Vince:

What do YOU think explains his decsision to join this church/follow this pastor?  What do YOU think this says about him?

Crafty,

Sorry took so long to respond.  Work getting in the way!

For me to really get a feel for his decision to pick this particular church I think i would need to read his books. Not much for auto biographies (zzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzz!).

From what I gather this is a fairly prominent church in Chicago with many community out reach programs, seems like a good reason to join any church. Is it Black centric, yeah, where they angry at white people, yeah, I also think at the times they good reason for both. (I think its debatable if this type of rhetoric is needed now and if so to what extent). Do I think this mean Obama hates white people, no.

As for staying, as Obama has said he has many ties to the church. A church is not just pastor but all the people who belonged.

I give you an example, a friend of my thinks that both Pope John Paul II and Pope Benedict XVI are too liberal and didn't particularly like them. I asked him if he considered them anti-popes, he said "no they are the real popes, they might lead the church but they are not the church".

Vince











 

Barry-O has 20 years attending a racist, America-hating church and mostly voted "present" as a legislator. And this is experience we want for a president?

GM,

Sarah Palin went to a church that equates gibberish to speaking to God. Mitt Romney believes in holy text that were reveled from a hat,  and I go to church that protected child molesters. Look at any church/religion hard enough and you will find something 'f*cked up'. Obama has already addressed and has made his feelings clear, its time to move on.

I agree though that voting "present" as a legislator is relevant, what is also relevant is what were the votes for.

Vince

Hi All,

I got this email from my cousin who is currently working for an NGO in Kabul. Found it interesting thought I would share. I removed her and her boyfriends name.


Dear Friends and Family,
 
Greetings from Kabul. To be honest it's getting a little scary. Aside from the occasional suicide bombing in Kabul, last week Karzai decided to reinstate the  Department for Promotion of Virtue and Prevention of Vice - which existed during the Taliban time. This department was responsible for ensuring that Afghans we're living as "good Muslims", and went to great lengths to ensure they lived accordingly. Well 2 days ago, some people from the Department (this isn't confirmed but it's what everyone is suspecting) went to one of the restaurants that were serving alcohol and beat up and arrested the owner, and destroyed all the alcohol in sight. now no restaurants are allowed to serve alcohol, even to non-Muslims. Needless to say people will be flocking to the liquor stores this weekend to stock up. i was going to go, but S***** said not to because you never know who is watching you. Yeah, it's a little scary right now. The department also issued letters to restaurants prohibiting men and women from sitting together in public. It doesn't matter if they are expatriates or not.  How is any of this progress?
 
Apparently Karzai did it to gain tribal support, especially in the south, which btw is a full on war. It's so crazy down there. NGOs have either pulled out or put their programs on hold. And what makes me really angry is that many of our donors are withdrawing funding from our programme areas and diverting aid funding to provinces like Helmand and Kandahar. Not to say that these provinces don't need aid, but how can you deliver aid when you're busy dodging bullets?! There is absolutely no security down there. It makes absolutely no sense to me. And what is going to happen to the provinces that were once receiving aid and aren't any more.
 
On top of that a lot of donor funding is going into "Good Governance" initiatives, which mostly consists of establishing democratic institutions at the village level. This would be fine, but what many donors don't understand is that you just can't fund governance activities. I mean, now you've got this democratically elected village body. You've given them basically literacy and numeracy skills, and maybe some training in village planning. But if we don't support this structure with additional funds for development projects then what are these institutions supposed to do? They don't have money to do anything let alone operate. And what this does is just breed discontent in the village that development money isn't helping relieve any of the poverty. It's so frustrating I tell you.
 
Anyway, I'm sorry I needed to vent.
 
Hope everyone is well.
 
-S