Have you watched Palin on TV, and are you voting differently because of it?

I saw her in person, she was awesome and I have already voted absentee for McCain/Palin!

Nope, I've already seen Obama.

So I won't be changing my vote based on Palin.

__________________
"No one believes more firmly than Comrade Napoleon that all animals are equal. He would be only too happy to let you make your decisions for yourselves. But sometimes you might make the wrong decisions, comrades, and then where should we be?"
- George Orwell Animal Farm

IMO she is terrible in interviews. I was undecided but leaning to Obama ( I am Republican btw) but after McCain picked her and I have seen ( or not seen her as the case was for the longest time) there is no way I can vote for McCain now.

__________________
"A true friend is someone who thinks that you are a good egg even though he knows that you are slightly cracked." ~ Bernard Meltzer

Yes, seen her/heard her No to voting differently.

I have seen her and while I would love to have her over for coffee, I couldn't support her for VP.

__________________
GO NAVY WRESTLING!!BEAT ARMY!!!
RJB 3/18/60 - 5/22/04
We miss you, sweet brother
God Bless the USA!!!!! Praying for my Youngster son at United States Naval Academy, class of 2014!!

Palin wisdom

YouTube - Jack Cafferty slams Sarah Palin!

What does the VP do, my third grade daughter could tell you.
YouTube - Sarah Palin on Vice-President job
YouTube - Sarah Palin on Vice-President job
YouTube - PALIN FORGETS HER FOREIGN POLICY CREDENTIALS AT TOWN HALL
YouTube - PALIN FORGETS HER FOREIGN POLICY CREDENTIALS AT TOWN HALL
YouTube - PALIN FORGETS HER FOREIGN POLICY CREDENTIALS AT TOWN HALL

Wow..

Not impressed.

Then tell us.

Because in all actuallity the VP's duties are determined by the president they serve under, except for serving as the President of the Senate where they may vote as a tie breaker:

As designated by the Constitution of the United States, the vice president also serves as the President of the Senate, and may break tie votes in that chamber. He or she may be assigned additional duties by the president but, as the Constitution assigns no executive powers to the vice president, in performing such duties he or she acts only as an agent of the president.

__________________
"No one believes more firmly than Comrade Napoleon that all animals are equal. He would be only too happy to let you make your decisions for yourselves. But sometimes you might make the wrong decisions, comrades, and then where should we be?"
- George Orwell Animal Farm

Yes i saw Sarah Palin a few times now and as far as changing my mind, no way there is no way any one could change my mind. We need a change and Obama is the man to do . I am a very left winged liberal democrat to the end. However even though I totally feel Obama is the right man for the job, he will have a big mess on his hands from the trouble the Bush /Cheney administration left us with, as always the rich get richer and the poor get poorer and in my time I have never seem out country in more trouble and things are getting worse then ever, we need a serious change, I cannot wait to see Bush leave office the days could not come any faster. Catherine

I think this was already posted. . .but I think it deserves posting again. Wait til the very end to see Clinton give his take on the mess we see now.

YouTube - Democrats in their own words Covering up the Fannie Mae, Freddie Mac Scam

ETA:You want to know how we really got in this mess? Be forewarned that the very end gets cheesey:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1RZVw3no2A4

__________________
"No one believes more firmly than Comrade Napoleon that all animals are equal. He would be only too happy to let you make your decisions for yourselves. But sometimes you might make the wrong decisions, comrades, and then where should we be?"
- George Orwell Animal Farm

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.
Community Reinvestment Act had nothing to do with subprime crisis - BusinessWeek

Nobody made these lenders make these bad loans. They did it out of greed.

Several government intervention policies are to blame.

According to this article written in 1999 they knew that the risks of a government bailout could happen.

Fannie Mae Eases Credit To Aid Mortgage Lending - New York Times

"In moving, even tentatively, into this new area of lending, Fannie Mae is taking on significantly more risk, which may not pose any difficulties during flush economic times. But the government-subsidized corporation may run into trouble in an economic downturn, prompting a government rescue similar to that of the savings and loan industry in the 1980's.

''From the perspective of many people, including me, this is another thrift industry growing up around us,'' said Peter Wallison a resident fellow at the American Enterprise Institute. ''If they fail, the government will have to step up and bail them out the way it stepped up and bailed out the thrift industry.''"

It wasn't the original ACT. . .it was the changes made to it during the Clinton administration that significantly increased the number of sub-primes and securitized them. Before the CRA. . .sub-primes didn't exist.

__________________
"No one believes more firmly than Comrade Napoleon that all animals are equal. He would be only too happy to let you make your decisions for yourselves. But sometimes you might make the wrong decisions, comrades, and then where should we be?"
- George Orwell Animal Farm

What changes would those be? I repeat; no government agency ever made any lender make any of these lenders make any of these loans. The only motivation for making these loans was the availability of cheap money and greed.

[i]The CRA mandates that each banking institution be evaluated to determine if it has met the credit needs of its entire community. That record is taken into account when the federal government considers an institution's application for deposit facilities, including mergers and acquisitions after the Riegle-Neal Interstate Banking and Branching Efficiency Act of 1994 repealed restrictions on interstate banking.

In 1992 the United States Congress passed the Federal Housing Enterprises Financial Safety and Soundness Act of 1992 requiring the Federal National Mortgage Association, commonly known as Fannie Mae, and the Federal Home Loan Mortgage Corporation, commonly known as Freddie Mac, to devote a percentage of their lending to support affordable housing. This in part, contributed to increased Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac pooling and selling of such loans as securities, (i.e. securitization), and expanded the secondary market for those loans.[2]

In early 1993 President Bill Clinton ordered new regulations for the CRA which would increase access to mortgage credit for inner city and distressed rural communities.[6] The new rules went into effect on January 31, 1995 and featured: requiring numerical assessments to get a satisfactory CRA rating; using federal home-loan data broken down by neighborhood, income group, and race; encouraging community groups to complain when banks were not loaning enough to specified neighborhood, income group, and race; allowing community groups that marketed loans to targeted groups to collect a fee from the banks.[7][5]

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Communi...ote-Bernanke-1


Feel free tho follow up on the footnotes yourself. I have to go to work now.

__________________
"No one believes more firmly than Comrade Napoleon that all animals are equal. He would be only too happy to let you make your decisions for yourselves. But sometimes you might make the wrong decisions, comrades, and then where should we be?"
- George Orwell Animal Farm

And, neither of those changes made a single bank make an uncreditworthy loan or mortgage.

http://news.yahoo.com/s/ibd/20080924...80924general01

" Rather than submit legislation that the GOP-led Congress was almost sure to reject, Clinton ordered Robert Rubin's Treasury Department to rewrite the rules in 1995.

The rewrite, as City Journal noted back in 2000, "made getting a satisfactory CRA rating harder." Banks were given strict new numerical quotas and measures for the level of "diversity" in their loan portfolios. Getting a good CRA rating was key for a bank that wanted to expand or merge with another.
Loans started being made on the basis of race, and often little else."

Walter E. Williams :: Townhall.com :: Subprime Bailout

"As with most economic problems, we find the hand of government. The Community Reinvestment Act of 1977, whose provisions were strengthened during the Clinton administration, is a federal law that mandates lenders to offer credit throughout their entire market and discourages them from restricting their credit services to high-income markets, a practice known as redlining. In other words, the Community Reinvestment Act encourages banks and thrifts to make loans to riskier customers."

"Government policy got us into the subprime mess and government's measure to fix the mess is going to create more mess."

You have given me a highly partisan screed. The bulk of these subprime loans went to white people. A lot went to speculators.

CRA mandates that banks not redline. It does not force any lending institution to make loans to unqualified borrowers. It never has.

It is just not only this policy but lots of others as well. This mess is the result of many government intervention policies. The Federal Reserve leaving interest rates way low (Alan Greenspan years) also plays a part. The only reason banks were able to loan money on questionable mortage loans is because they could pass off the loans to Freddie and Frannie.
Everytime the government tries to set up policy someone always loses..usually the US taxpayer.

Frannie and Freddie don't hold the lion's share of these bad mortgages. They belong to the free markets. Greenspan did keep rates artificially low. He also encouraged lenders to be more creative in their lending practices.

You cannot say that every time the government tries to set policy the taxpayer loses. You can say that Republicans are very bad at governing if you like. The current administration is a prime example of that. Like the Reagan administration, the middlee class fared poorly.

I still stand by the rich get richer and the poor get poorer, democrats are for the middle and low class of americans and Bush and Cheney and their pals made so much money it truly is not funny and they the Repulican Administration has left us in such a mess that this country could possibly stink into depression which is totally scary. Time for change. Catherine

I don't see why people insist on hanging on to failed ideology.

Neither do I. . . government regulation has proven to be failed ideology.

__________________
"No one believes more firmly than Comrade Napoleon that all animals are equal. He would be only too happy to let you make your decisions for yourselves. But sometimes you might make the wrong decisions, comrades, and then where should we be?"
- George Orwell Animal Farm

What gives you the impression that Dems are for the middle and low class? They have historically never been that party. . .it's just an illusion.

__________________
"No one believes more firmly than Comrade Napoleon that all animals are equal. He would be only too happy to let you make your decisions for yourselves. But sometimes you might make the wrong decisions, comrades, and then where should we be?"
- George Orwell Animal Farm

That's about the dumbest thing I've ever heard. How is making bad loans a greed thing. Would you loan your neighbor $200,000 knowing that there's a good chance they won't pay you back? That makes you greedy? I call bs!

Now, if some nifty members of Congress came along and said don't worry about whether or not your neighbor can pay you back, we'll guarantee it. Also, today must be your lucky day, because you can now bundle the loans you make and sell them on the stock market. So you start making loans to the whole neighborhood. You don't care. The more loans you make the more you have to sell. And you cook your books (because that's what they were doing at Fannie Mae) to make it look like everything was hunky dorey and those loans were not defaulting at alarming rates. Then that would be greedy.

And Freddie and Fannie don't hold most of the sub-prime mortgages. . . Well that's a big stupid DUH!!! They back mortgages and sell them off their books as quickly as possible, becuase they know they aren't worth the paper they are printed on. It's like if you make vacuum cleaners, kvmj Vacuums. . .they are pieces of crap, but you don't care. You aren't going to hold on to them. You're making your money selling them. The government guarantees them. Well, when some people in Congress start figuring out that you are selling crap, they want to look into it. BUT your buddies in Congress. . .Barney, et al. stand up and say, "There is nothing wrong at kvmj Vaccuums", all the while you're paying lots of money to them.

__________________
"No one believes more firmly than Comrade Napoleon that all animals are equal. He would be only too happy to let you make your decisions for yourselves. But sometimes you might make the wrong decisions, comrades, and then where should we be?"
- George Orwell Animal Farm

Really? Are you familiar with Buycks-Roberson(ACORN) v. Citibank Fed. Sav. Bank, 1995?

Civil Rights Litigation Clearinghouse

ETA:

Plaintiff's Lawyers

Alexis, Hilary I. (Illinois)
Childers, Michael Allen (Illinois)
Clayton, Fay (Illinois)
Cummings, Jeffrey Irvine (Illinois)
Love, Sara Norris (Virginia)
Miner, Judson Hirsch (Illinois)
Obama, Barack H. (Illinois)
Wickert, John Henry (Illinois)

__________________
"No one believes more firmly than Comrade Napoleon that all animals are equal. He would be only too happy to let you make your decisions for yourselves. But sometimes you might make the wrong decisions, comrades, and then where should we be?"
- George Orwell Animal Farm

Just a illision that democrats are for the middle and low class american citizens, yes I believe that always with my heart and soul. Again time for a serious change . I cannot wait till Bush leaves for good. Catherine

That's great that you believe that. Can you give any evidence that that's the truth?

__________________
"No one believes more firmly than Comrade Napoleon that all animals are equal. He would be only too happy to let you make your decisions for yourselves. But sometimes you might make the wrong decisions, comrades, and then where should we be?"
- George Orwell Animal Farm

Oh come on. Are you seriously contending that Republicans are the party who cares the most, and puts the most premium, on issues facing the middle or lower class Americans?

Guess I missed that version of "Today, through a Looking Glass."

Do you have one example of where the Republicans have stood up for the rights of working class Americans, when that position might work to the disadvantage of upper class Americans? And if you can identify one such moment (which I can't, but who knows), where were the Democrats on the issue?

I've been a-thinking, and I can't identify an instance.

How about this one:

The Civil Rights Act of 1957, primarily a voting rights bill, was the first civil rights legislation enacted by Congress in the United States since Reconstruction. After it was proposed to Congress by Republican President Dwight Eisenhower, Southern Democratic senator James Strom Thurmond sustained the longest filibuster in history in an attempt to keep it from becoming law.
Civil Rights Act of 1957 - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

or. . .this one:

The Revised Philadelphia Plan was a plan that required government contractors in Philadelphia to hire minority workers. Department of Labor Assistant Secretary for Wage and Labor Standards Arthur Fletcher implemented the Revised Philadelphia Plan in 1969, based on an earlier plan developed in 1967 by the Office of Federal Contract Compliance and the Philadelphia Federal Executive Board. The plan required federal contractors to meet certain goals for the hiring of African American employees by specific dates in order to combat institutionalized discrimination on the part of specific skilled building trades unions. The plan was quickly extended to other cities. In 1971, the Supreme Court refused to hear an appeal to the Fourth Circuit's decision in the case of Griggs vs. Duke Power Co., thereby implicitly upholding the legality of the Revised Philadelphia Plan.

__________________
"No one believes more firmly than Comrade Napoleon that all animals are equal. He would be only too happy to let you make your decisions for yourselves. But sometimes you might make the wrong decisions, comrades, and then where should we be?"
- George Orwell Animal Farm

How about something in the last 10 years? The Republican Party of today is quite different than the Republican Party of 40 or 50 years ago.

You'd be hardpressed to find ANYTHING in the last 10yrs by the Repubs OR Dems that isn't riddled with pork and special interest money buried somewhere in the bill. The illusion is that somehow the Dems aren't playing this game.

__________________
"No one believes more firmly than Comrade Napoleon that all animals are equal. He would be only too happy to let you make your decisions for yourselves. But sometimes you might make the wrong decisions, comrades, and then where should we be?"
- George Orwell Animal Farm

Bartels found that the real incomes of middle-class families grew more than twice as fast when Democrats were in the White House than when a Republican was president. And for the working poor, their real incomes grew six times as fast under a Democratic president.


Tricke down economics has killed the middle class of this country. It does not work!!!You stated in another thread that you thought you were better of today than 8 years ago...I dont see how.

8 years ago

gas 1.29 a gallon-today 3.67
milk 1.99 gallon-tiday-3.89
flour .59-today 2.29
eggs.89-today 2.49
property tax-1800 today 2600

our income as a family increase in 8 years +almost nothing!

Do you have a link for that? Assuming it is correct. . .what's the correlation between what they did and the numbers. Most economists will tell you it takes10-20 years to see the actual effects of legislation. Just because the rewards or losses came when a certain person was in the White House doesn't say anything about how those rewards or losses came to be.

ETA: Where'd you get those pricing numbers? They're wrong.

Gas in 2000 was $1.70 ish
http://www.eia.doe.gov/emeu/international/gas1.html

Funny that you pick 2000 for milk prices . . .
Following some of the lowest milk prices in the past 20 years

The price of milk has risen because legislation was paseed to save the small dairy farmers.

http://www.allbusiness.com/agricultu...6068041-1.html

Property tax doesn't have anything to do with who's in the White House. That's a state issue.

__________________
"No one believes more firmly than Comrade Napoleon that all animals are equal. He would be only too happy to let you make your decisions for yourselves. But sometimes you might make the wrong decisions, comrades, and then where should we be?"
- George Orwell Animal Farm