Haven't had time to follow Rangel. Dreads mentioned in another thread about only ill winds help no one...I'm one of the lucky stiffs who stands to benefit greatly if a certain insurance giant falls so you can imagine kinda busy. Seems like his wife has something on him and that should be enough to do him in.

As for 'mortgage welfare' I'm all for it, I applaud the authorities for doing the right thing and delivering on their promise to back Fannie and Freddie up. They may not have had much choice considering China's positions as regards the mortgage giants. Finally it isn't clear to me that they were engaged in the kind of explicitly and directly irresponsible behavior of the private banks. They surely over-levered but this was implicitly the nature of the beast given the gov backstop. Fannie and Freddie, to a considerable extent, were brought down due to the wrongdoings of others in the mortgage industry.

Where did you get this 'fact' about Obama asking Iraq not to allow withdrawal? I have to see the fantastic twisting of statements this claim will involve. Seeing as the Iraqis have been asking for withdrawal for some time, while Bush ntends no such thing, I can't see why Obama would have to ask for this.

manhattanite, with the passage of time you will understand that GC entitles himself to his own facts.

dread how unkind of you to say that ...anyway here is the link manny it is from NY post as conservative as the Times is a liberal rag here is the link ... http://www.nypost.com/seven/09152008/postopinion/opedcolumnists/obama_tried_to_stall_gis_iraq_withdrawal_129150.htm

GC, the guy who never met a fact he did not despise, offers that fannie mae and freddie mac are "democratic inventions" fannie mae was created as part of the New Deal in 1938, and went private in 1968. in order to counterbalance fannie mae's monopoly of the secondary mortgage market, freddie mac was formed in 1970. if my memory serves me correct, the Kent State University shootings were in 1970. did the song not say "tin soldiers and NIXON coming"? i hardly remember him to be a democrat. GC, you are entitled to your own opinions, but not to your own facts!

GC, under no circumstances would i read the New York Post. the sports pages, maybe. the editorials, never. and not the reportage and slanted coverage of everything. i lived in New York long enough to see their take on things. i'll pass.

dread Clinton loaded them up with candy and welfare mortgages for people who could not afford these things and put his cronies in charge to watch the candy store and they gave it away....demos still head and are paid millions to do it ....these two agencies as administered by demos are the major factor in the meltdown ...Obama and Dodd were the two most greased senators by the candy keepers a cool couple of hundred thou for the messiah and Dodd has had years of practice cant remember how much for him......................I was stoned on LSD the night of Kent State I remember it vividly

GC, Dread, I remember this scrawled on the wall of my college dorm hallway;

National Guard - 4

Kent State - 0



Charles Krauthammer: Palin steals Obama's fading spotlight
By Charles Krauthammer Washington Post
Article Launched: 09/12/2008 12:05:42 AM PDT


WASHINGTON — The Democrats are in a panic. In a presidential race that is impossible to lose, they are behind. Obama devotees are frantically giving advice. Tom Friedman tells him to "start slamming down some phones." Camille Paglia suggests, "be boring!"

Meanwhile, a posse of Democratic lawyers, mainstream reporters, lefty bloggers and various other Obamaphiles are scouring the vast tundra of Alaska for something, anything, to bring down Sarah Palin: her daughter's pregnancy, her ex-brother-in-law problem, her $60 per diem, and now her religion. (CNN reports — news flash! — that she apparently has never spoken in tongues.) Not since Henry II asked if no one would rid him of his turbulent priest, have so many so urgently volunteered for duty.

Paris Hilton ads

But Palin is not just a problem for Obama. She is also a symptom of what ails him. Before Palin, Obama was the ultimate celebrity candidate. For no presidential nominee in living memory had the gap between adulation and achievement been so great. Which is why McCain's Paris Hilton ads struck such a nerve. Obama's meteoric rise was based not on issues — there was not a dime's worth of difference between him and Hillary on issues — but on narrative, on eloquence, on charisma.

The unease at the Denver convention, the feeling of buyer's remorse, was the Democrats' realization that the arc of Obama's celebrity had peaked
— and had now entered a period of its steepest decline. That Palin could so instantly steal the celebrity spotlight is a reflection of that decline.

It was inevitable. Obama had managed to stay aloft for four full years. But no one can levitate forever. Five speeches map Obama's trajectory.

Obama burst into celebrityhood with his brilliant and moving 2004 Democratic convention speech (1). It turned an obscure state senator into a national figure and legitimate presidential candidate.

His next and highest moment (2) was the night of his Iowa caucus victory when he gave an equally stirring speech of the highest tones that dazzled a national audience just tuning in.

The problem is that Obama began believing in his own magical powers — the chants, the swoons, the "we are the ones" self-infatuation. Like Ronald Reagan, he was entirely driven by personality. Reagan's revolution was rooted in concrete political ideas (supply-side economics, welfare-state deregulation, national strength) that transcended one man. For Obama's movement, the man is the transcendence.

Which gave the Obama campaign a cult-like tinge. With every primary and every repetition of the high-flown, self-referential rhetoric, the campaign's insubstantiality became clear. By the time it was repeated yet again on the night of the last primary (3), the tropes were tired and flat. To top himself, Obama had to reach. Hence his triumphal declaration that history would note that night, his victory, his ascension, as "the moment when the rise of the oceans began to slow and our planet began to heal."

Bizarre in Berlin

Clang. But Obama heard only the cheers of the invited crowd. Not yet seeing how the pseudo-messianism was wearing thin, he did Berlin (4) and finally jumped the shark. That grandiloquent proclamation of universalist puffery popped the bubble. The grandiosity had become bizarre.

From there it was but a short step to Paris Hilton. Finally, the Obama people understood. Which is why the next data point (5) is so different. Obama's Denver acceptance speech was deliberately pedestrian, State-of-the-Union-ish, programmatic and only briefly (that lovely coda recalling the March on Washington) lyrical.

The problem, however, was that Obama had announced the Invesco Field setting for the speech during the pre-Berlin flush of hubris. They were stuck with the Greek columns, the circus atmosphere, the rock star fireworks farewell — as opposed to the warmer, traditional, balloon-filled convention-hall hug-a-thon. The incongruity between text and context was apparent. Obama was trying to make himself ordinary — and serious — but could hardly remember how.

One star fades, another is born. The very next morning McCain picks Sarah Palin and a new celebrity is launched. And in the celebrity game, novelty is trump. With her narrative, her persona, her charisma carrying the McCain campaign to places it has never been and by all logic has no right to be, she's pulling an Obama.

But her job is easier. She only has to remain airborne for seven more weeks. Obama maintained altitude for an astonishing four years. In politics, as in all games, however, it's the finish that counts.

dread one of my favorite columnists Stanley Crouch writes for the Post

the director of advertising for the NY Post while in conversation with the Gen.Manager of SAKS asked him why he did not advertise in the Post to which the GM replied " Your customers are our shoplifters "

Tex if you keep posting that stuff all the weanies get depressed and then they get aggressive and will start oinking and calling you names so dont say I did not warn you they turn into a mean crowd those WWW types