Political Hippo Circle Jerk - America, farg YEAH!

[Diomedes]

Or one of my personal favorites, the ole' head in a vice.

lmao

[ATV]

I'm a progressive liberal but this crap pisses me off and makes me feel quite a bit like a Limbaugh ranter...

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2009/09/22/AR2009092204290.html?hpid=artslot

Artificial sounds for hybrid cars? How fargin stupid. As if we needed more noise pollution. fargin bureaucrats can shove their noise makers up their ears.

[Diomedes]

not gonna read that article, but I'll tell you this:  I have a blind friend.  He can't hear a Prius.  If nothing else is going on, maybe he's got a chance to hear the wheels rolling on the ground, but that's not much, and when the hell is nothing else going on in a city?

[ATV]

We need more noises in the city.

[Diomedes]

We also need more people who choose to live in a busy place, so long as it doesn't inconvenience them.

[ATV]

True.

[PhillyPhreak54]

http://blogs.chron.com/lorensteffy/2009/09/feeding_the_rev.html

Palin's revisionist myth of Wall Street innocence

The drive to overhaul the financial system is losing steam. After all, lobbyists have had a year to chip away at public outrage and efforts to enact any meaningful policy changes.

On the political front, too much of the talk still attempts to blame one party or the other. As I've said plenty of times before, you don't get a crisis of this magnitude unless everybody helps. Nevertheless, Sarah Palin was in Hong Kong today spreading more myths about the cause of the crisis.

First, she did a little Federal Reserve bashing:

    How can we discuss reform without addressing the government policies at the root of the problems? The root of the collapse? And how can we think that setting up the Fed as the monitor of systemic risk in the financial sector will result in meaningful reform? The words 'fox' and 'henhouse' come to mind. The Fed's decisions helped create the bubble. Look at the root cause of most asset bubbles, and you'll see the Fed somewhere in the background.

That a little like saying if you look at the root cause of most floods, you'll find water somewhere in the background. The Fed sets interest rates, so any time there's a bubble, you could argue it had a hand. But that doesn't make it the financial fox in the henhouse. The fox intended to eat the hens. What's the Fed's incentive to destroy the economy?

Palin then moved on to what she sees as the other cause of the crisis - government getting in the way of free enterprise.

    Lack of government wasn't the problem, government policies were the problem.

Actually, a lack of enforcement of existing policies were the biggest problem, though certainly not the only one. Palin continued:

    The government ordered the loosening of lending standards. The Federal Reserve kept interest rates low. The government forced lending institutions to give loans to people who as I say, couldn't afford them. Speculators spotted new investment vehicles, jumped on board and rating agencies underestimated risks. So many to be blamed on so many different levels, but the fact remains that these people were responding to a market solution created by government policies that ran contrary to common sense.

This is one of the more common myths growing out of the crisis. Institutions weren't forced to lend to people with bad credit, they were eager to. They were making big money by doing it, and Wall Street was gobbling up so much of the secondary mortgage market that it threatened the dominance of Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac. Only then did the government allow, at Fannie and Freddie's request, a loosening of lending standards. The bigger problem was that as it loosened those standards, Congress didn't require Fan and Fred to increase their capital reserves. That's not surprising, since it also loosened capital reserve requirements for investment banks, at the banks' request.

Palin's right that speculators spotted new investment vehicles that rating agencies blessed as safe. But if we're looking for root causes, then it's worth asking who created those vehicles? Who sold them? Who paid the rating agencies for their overly generous evaluations? Who used those vehicles to hide troubled assets from their own investors and the general public? Who promised investors big returns without risk?

The answer, as always, is Wall Street. That's where this crisis began, and that's where another crisis will begin anew unless meaningful changes are enacted. If Palin truly reflects "the view from Main Street," she ought to stop playing the role of shadow lobbyist for investment bankers and start calling for reforms to protect investors.

[mpmcgraw]

Sarah Palin is pretty much exactly what is wrong with America.

Uneducated white trash. 

[Sgt PSN]

i don't know of a single opinion i share with sarah palin.  she's too far to the right for me.  but saying that she's uneducated white trash is pure ignorance. 

[mpmcgraw]

When you think Africa is a country and your only college degree is in communications after going to 5 different colleges to get said degree, you are uneducated.  and shooting animals from a helicopter is basically the white trash olympics.

[rjs246]

That Palin is even a topic of conversation says more about us as Americans than it does about her. She's a neophyte who got a taste of the big time and is trying to play political catch up. She has never been a player until a year ago so she never knew anything about anything and now reads word for word from the far-right playbook regurgitating what she's fed without having even had the time to absorb it and form her own judgment. She should be a non-entity.

Also, I'd still like bite her ass.

[rjs246]

When you think Africa is a country and your only college degree is in communications after going to 5 different colleges to get said degree, you are uneducated.  and shooting animals from a helicopter is basically the white trash olympics.

Dear superfan,

My degree is in communications. And the girls in my classes were farging smoking hot.

Love,

rjs246

[mpmcgraw]

I love you, but I can't say I'd put my support behind you if were a political candidate at this point.  

I'm also assuming you didnt go to 5 colleges and like 3 community colleges along the way to get this degree. I have no idea what it has to do with anything, I'm only sure it reflects poorly on her.

[rjs246]

You'll vote for me and be thankful for the honor.

Ingrate.

[Diomedes]

Is Palin isn't ignorant then I'm the most enlightened motherfarger on the planet.