Barack Obama

[smc]

As I wrote on inauguration day in my Facebook status, I am "wondering how long the illusions of the day will last in the minds of my celebrating friends."

[CreativeMind]

Originally Posted by smc

As I wrote on inauguration day in my Facebook status, I am "wondering how long the illusions of the day will last in the minds of my celebrating friends."

Well, considering that a poll just released shows that only 42% of the country now support the Obama economic plan, which means that 58% of the country feels it's a waste of money and it WON'T help the economy...

And considering that other polls show that (on average) about 60% of the American people now feel that CONGRESS is to blame for the economic crisis, every bit as much as Wall Street, for stupidly wasting money on stimulus packages and pork barreling it -- such as Nancy Pelosi wanting to spend $400 million (400 MILLION!!!) on condoms and birth control because, hey, that will really stimulate things (yes, bad pun intended)....

And considering it's been a Democratically controlled Congress for 2 1/2 years now, which means they controlled things going back BEFORE this crisis emerged...

...It's safe to say that with each passing day, as thousands and thousands of people continue to get laid off or lose their homes or see their bank accounts drained, that the glow of Inauguration Day has ALREADY passed.

Always remember rule number one in politics: EVERYONE votes their pocketbook. And no matter how big a smile or friendly a guy he might be, Obama now has to SOLVE this economic crisis, which mind you has escalated to being a GLOBAL crisis. So, in the coming year, Obama has two roads he can go down. It's that simple. He either proves his Harvard brilliance and the economy rights itself, in which case he seals his re-election in 4 years right off the bat...

...Or the economy continues to stay low for another few years, needing time to re-balance itself naturally over time, in which case he suffers the same fate of Jimmy Carter and being the guy who was President when economic times truly sucked, in which case he'll be voted out of office in a landslide (like Carter) because people will blame him for everything.

Bottom line: the "glow of Inauguration" (even a historic one like Obama's, being the first African-American President) will mean NOTHING to the average American if they're out of a job or can't meet their bills.

[randolph]

During WWII I wonder how many Germans wanted Hitler tried for war crimes.

The meltdown? The consensus is that Greenspan was the key player. The conservative fundamentalist philosophy of Milton Friedman that the Republicans and Greenspan worshiped is what led to this debacle.

[CreativeMind]

Originally Posted by randolph

During WWII I wonder how many Germans wanted Hitler tried for war crimes.

Just before you go out on TOO wild a limb, let me get this straight -- now you're comparing any Americans (like myself) who supported the Iraq War OR, as I cited before, the 80-plus percent of Americans who DON'T want to go after Bush, who have NO interest in it AT ALL and who just want to move on, to Nazi Germans???

Originally Posted by randolph

The meltdown? The consensus is that Greenspan was the key player. The conservative fundamentalist philosophy of Milton Friedman that the Republicans and Greenspan worshiped is what led to this debacle.

I would hardly say that's the consensus. But, hey, I'm also sure that the banking regulations that the Clinton era imposed (for example, where banks started to be rated by the government and thus were literally FORCED into making unsecured loans to unqualified and low income people in the name of "social justice") -- not to mention all the corruption and lying that people like Dodd or Frank (democrats both) both participated in as heads of Congressional banking committees -- played NO part at all in the collapse. Nope! It was ALL the Republicans fault and their philosophy, this despite the fact that Democrats (as I noted before) had ALREADY been in control of Congress for 2 years BEFORE the crisis hit.

So, feel free to keep singing that Greenspan/Republican tune and see how far it gets you since all of America is more than fully aware that it's now Obama (democrat) in charge of a Senate (democrat) and a House of Representatives (democrat) who are totally controlling things -- and thus credit AND/OR blame falls squarely on their shoulders. And given what I pointed out before -- namely, that only 40% of the American people now feel the government is doing the right thing and 60% now feel the democrats in Congress are actually making things WORSE -- it's gonna be pretty tough to blame the Republicans much longer.

As I noted before as well, with every passing day...as thousands and thousands of people continue to lose their jobs and homes and bank accounts...or as this meltdown continues to spiral around the world, prompting unrest overseas and protests and violence or whatever...this falls squarely on the Democrats now and THEIR ideological practices. And frankly, they're already running into trouble since not too many people are drinking the kool-aid they're trying to sell these days, with such ridiculously silly ideas such as spending half a billion dollars on condoms for kids or giving honeybees insurance or re-sodding some Washington DC monument lawns is going to give them back their jobs or revive the economy or put money back into their lost retirement accounts.

Bottom line: who do you REALLY think the average American is going to hold accountable come midterm elections IF things don't get substantially better? Do you actually believe they'll be sitting at home...broke and unemployed...and thinking, "Damn that Greenspan! This is STILL all his fault!" OR do you think that maybe...just maybe...they'll be turning on their TVs, seeing Obama and the democrats all over, and find themselves thinking "These guys told me if I put them in power they'd fix everything. And look where I am now!"

Me, I'm going with the latter. Like I said before, people always vote their pocketbook. And since most economists now predict it will take up to 3 years before we see any kind improvement, that isn't good news for the Dems. Then again, Jimmy Carter was the shittiest President ever (yes, even worse than Bush) and even he still goes around saying what a great job he did, so I guess Carter is proof positive that there's always going to be utterly delusional people out there...

[TracyCoxx]

Originally Posted by randolph

The meltdown? The consensus is that Greenspan was the key player. The conservative fundamentalist philosophy of Milton Friedman that the Republicans and Greenspan worshiped is what led to this debacle.

I've given my rundown on the conservative viewpoint of how the meltdown happened here:

Originally Posted by TracyCoxx

ACORN does more than just voter fraud. Carter created the Community Reinvestment Act (CRA) which encouraged lenders to make loans to poor minorities. Banks pretty much ignored the CRA because it made no financial sense. So ACORN harrassed banks until they would start making the questionable loans. They would hold sit ins at the banks to drive away costomers. They would also show that banks weren't complying with CRA at public hearings and thus preventing bank mergers which the banks wanted.

So the banks started making some bad loans to the poor. This still wasn't enough for ACORN. The banks told ACORN that Freddie Mac & Fannie Mae wouldn't buy the loans from them so that's all they could do.

So ACORN lobbied congress and Clinton to enforce the CRA and force Freddie Mac & Fannie Mae to buy the bad loans. Now that there was actually a market for bad loans banks started making loans to the poor. Clinton further enforced it by creating a CRA index for banks that the banks would use to compete. So they would actually compete to see who could make the most loans to the poor.

The obvious result of this madness is that people started defaulting on their loans in such great numbers that Freddie Mac & Fannie Mae couldn't insure all the bad loans, and the govt had to step in to help Freddie and Fannie last summer.

The real problem was that since there were so many defaulted loans, no one was really sure how much the loans were worth anymore and so the flow of money siezed up and banks began to go under. Thus the financial melt down.

Where was Obama in all this? He was head of the Chicago Annenburg Challenge where he and his buddie Bill Ayers helped raise millions for ACORN. Obama was also a layer for several of ACORN's court cases and gave them leadership training. Then he moven on to the senate where he continued to support ACORN and Freddie & Fannie. This is why after being in the senate for only 2-3 years Obama was the 2nd highest receiver os campaign funds from these organizations.

This is what happens when these idealistic policies make it into the real world.

If Obama is president, do you think he'll blame ACORN and all these bad policies for the financial mess? No. He'll put the blame on Bush who had been warning congress 17 times since 2001 that this would happen. So the problem will go unfixed and you can get ready to pay even more in taxes as the govt spends trillions more on future bailout packages.

Looks like I already have an answer to what Obama will do concerning ACORN, and there's that near $1 trillion dollar bail-out package. ACORN is eligible for $4 billion of Obama's spending package. Gee... it's almost like I'm psychic

Care to add more meat to your theory?