I'm voting republican because...
 

Ed Huntress wrote:
"strabo" wrote in message
...
Hawke wrote:
i agree. mccain was born in the panama canal zone. he doesn't deserve
to be president...
So you think the children of service men and service women born on USA
military installations overseas are foreigners? I don't.


You seem to think that people born in Hawaii are not Americans. Bill
O'Reilly said on his show today that Obama was born in Hawaii. So I guess
that proves it, doesn't it? But you said that Obama is a foreigner. Logic
says that means you think everyone born in Hawaii is a foreigner too. You
are stupid, Dude.

There's a lot of anti-American feeling in Hawaii.

Making Hawaii a state was a mistake. The natives didn't want it and it
wasn't necessary from a commercial or strategic standpoint.

Hell, it was a mistake to make most of the territories west of the
Susquehanna River into states. They spit and fart too much, and they want us
to subsidize everything from their corn to their water projects.

Anything outside of Virginia is a pretender entity in the new world.

I'm voting republican because...
 

"BAR" wrote in message
. ..
Ed Huntress wrote:
"strabo" wrote in message
...
Hawke wrote:
i agree. mccain was born in the panama canal zone. he doesn't deserve
to be president...
So you think the children of service men and service women born on USA
military installations overseas are foreigners? I don't.


You seem to think that people born in Hawaii are not Americans. Bill
O'Reilly said on his show today that Obama was born in Hawaii. So I
guess
that proves it, doesn't it? But you said that Obama is a foreigner.
Logic
says that means you think everyone born in Hawaii is a foreigner too.
You
are stupid, Dude.

There's a lot of anti-American feeling in Hawaii.

Making Hawaii a state was a mistake. The natives didn't want it and it
wasn't necessary from a commercial or strategic standpoint.

Hell, it was a mistake to make most of the territories west of the
Susquehanna River into states. They spit and fart too much, and they want
us to subsidize everything from their corn to their water projects.

Anything outside of Virginia is a pretender entity in the new world.

Well, Virginia originally extended up to what is now Maine and into Canada,
and westward to California, so that doesn't help much. d8-) Plymouth, MA was
named after one of the two Virginia companies chartered by the king of
England. Mass. was the northern part of Virginia.

--
Ed Huntress

Our economy...
 

On Wed, 17 Sep 2008 20:34:55 -0400, john
wrote:


Gasoline is selling for three times what it was when Bush presumed
office.

Gasoline is going down, does he get credit for that too?

Gummer apparently hasn't bought any gasoline in the past week or so.


Odd...Last week it was $3.71, at the end of the week, it was $3.65,
this morning I filled up at $3.59

Doesnt seem like much of a rise, least not on this planet

Our economy...
 

"A Boater" wrote in message
. ..
wf3h wrote:

On Sep 16, 5:18 am, Gunner Asch wrote:

On the other hand..Im a survivalist and have made plans many many
years ago to allow me to weather the crashing of the country, for
whatever reason.

ah...a survivalist. living in the idaho mountains, drooling on your
bib about plots to dilute the white race's gene stock

yeah, that explains alot.


Gunner's Ass is a survivalist? Hehehe. Well, that explains a lot of the
drool dripping down his chin...survival of the least fit.


He's in his own personal fantasy world. He thinks he's a successful
republican businessman who is living the American dream. The reality, he
lives in Taft, Calif., which is outside Bakersfield. It's one ugly place,
flat, desert-like, and nobody in their right mind ever wanted to live there.
It was a place you drove by when you went up interstate 5 from LA to
northern California. All that was there was oil wells and coyotes. He's
living a lower working class life, he's never going to get ahead, he has no
health insurance, he's already had one heart attack, and as for being a
survivalist, I give you odds that he doesn't even live four more years. So
despite his best laid plans to survive some Sci-Fi disaster fantasy in
reality he'll die in poverty leaving nothing behind but junk and his dream
of surviving will be nothing but that, a dream. Knowing what a moron he is
makes it a lot easier to completely dismiss his twisted and irrelevant
blather.

Hawke

Our economy...
 

"Hawke" wrote in message
...

"A Boater" wrote in message
. ..
wf3h wrote:

On Sep 16, 5:18 am, Gunner Asch wrote:

On the other hand..Im a survivalist and have made plans many many
years ago to allow me to weather the crashing of the country, for
whatever reason.

ah...a survivalist. living in the idaho mountains, drooling on your
bib about plots to dilute the white race's gene stock

yeah, that explains alot.


Gunner's Ass is a survivalist? Hehehe. Well, that explains a lot of the
drool dripping down his chin...survival of the least fit.


He's in his own personal fantasy world. He thinks he's a successful
republican businessman who is living the American dream. The reality, he
lives in Taft, Calif., which is outside Bakersfield. It's one ugly place,
flat, desert-like, and nobody in their right mind ever wanted to live
there.
It was a place you drove by when you went up interstate 5 from LA to
northern California. All that was there was oil wells and coyotes. He's
living a lower working class life, he's never going to get ahead, he has
no
health insurance, he's already had one heart attack, and as for being a
survivalist, I give you odds that he doesn't even live four more years. So
despite his best laid plans to survive some Sci-Fi disaster fantasy in
reality he'll die in poverty leaving nothing behind but junk and his dream
of surviving will be nothing but that, a dream. Knowing what a moron he is
makes it a lot easier to completely dismiss his twisted and irrelevant
blather.

Hawke

Wow. I almost feel sorry for the guy. Broken dreams.

Our economy...
 

On Wed, 17 Sep 2008 20:34:55 -0400, john
wrote:


I was really almost getting to like the republican ticket until I did a
little research on the relaxation of the banking laws. Aparently the
law was ammended in 1999 by an attachment to the budget bill. The
attachment was created by Phil Graham. Now you all know who Phil Graham
is, a lobyist for the banking industry and until a few weeks ago the
adviser for John McCain. Phil is also the guy that they wrote about in
this site.
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2008/0..._n_111857.html

You've heard of mental depression; this is a mental recession," he said,


The Huffington Post is only a **** hair to the Right of Pravda.

Perhaps you may wish to review other data points?

http://www.floppingaces.net/2008/09/...posed-in-2005/

http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,338629,00.html

http://members4.boardhost.com/JohnSh...221523610.html
How Fannie and Freddie weren't reined-in

Posted by Jankdc on 9/15/2008, 4:06 pm

This article is getting deleted on the servers, so I am printing it in
full he

How Fannie and Freddie weren't reined-in
The Washington Post
5:04 AM EST September 15, 2008

Gary Gensler, an undersecretary of the Treasury, went to Capitol Hill
in March 2000 to testify in favor of a bill everyone knew would fail.

Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac were ascendant, giants of the mortgage
finance business and key players in the Clinton administration's drive
to expand homeownership. But Gensler and other Treasury officials
feared the companies had grown so large that, if they stumbled, the
damage to the U.S. economy could be staggering. Few officials had ever
publicly criticized Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, but Gensler concluded
it was time to urge Congress to rein them in.

"We thought this was a hand-on-the Bible moment," he recalled.

The bill failed.

The companies kept growing, the dangers posed by their scale and
financial practices kept mounting, critics kept warning of the
consequences. Yet across official Washington, those who might have
acted repeatedly failed to do so until it was too late. Last weekend,
the federal government seized control of the two companies to protect
the very mortgage market they were created to lubricate. The cost to
taxpayers could run into the tens of billions of dollars.

As policymakers now set out to decide what role government, and the
two companies, should play in the mortgage business, the failures of
the past two decades offer a cautionary tale.

Blessed with the advantages of a government agency and a private
company at the same time, Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac used their
windfall profits to co-opt the politicians who were supposed to
control them. The companies fought successfully against increased
regulation by cultivating their friends and hounding their enemies.

How Fannie and Freddie weren't reined-in

The agencies that regulated the companies were outmatched: They lacked
the money, the staff, the sophistication and the political support to
serve as an effective check.

But most of all, the companies were protected by the belief widespread
in Washington -- and aggressively promoted by Fannie Mae and Freddie
Mac -- that their success was inseparable from the expansion of
homeownership in America. That conviction was so strong that many
lawmakers and regulators ignored the peril posed to that ideal by the
failure of either company.

Weak regulator
In October 1992, a brief debate unfolded on the floor of the House of
Representatives over a bill to create a new regulator for Fannie Mae
and Freddie Mac. On one side stood Jim Leach, an Iowa Republican
concerned that Congress was "hamstringing" this new regulator at the
behest of the companies.

He warned that the two companies were changing "from being agencies of
the public at large to money machines for the stockholding few."

On the other side stood Barney Frank, a Massachusetts Democrat who
said the companies served a public purpose. They were in the business
of lowering the price of mortgage loans.

Congress chose to create a weak regulator, the Office of Federal
Housing Enterprise Oversight. The agency was required to get its
budget approved by Congress, while agencies that regulated banks set
their own budgets. That gave congressional allies an easy way to exert
pressure.

"Fannie Mae's lobbyists worked to insure that [the] agency was poorly
funded and its budget remained subject to approval in the annual
appropriations process," OFHEO said more than a decade later in a
report on Fannie Mae. "The goal of senior management was
straightforward: to force OFHEO to rely on the [Fannie] for
information and expertise to the degree that Fannie Mae would
essentially regulate itself."

Congress also wanted to free up money for Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac
to buy mortgage loans and specified that the pair would be required to
keep a much smaller share of their funds on hand than other financial
institutions. Where banks that held $100 could spend $90 buying
mortgage loans, Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac could spend $97.50 buying
loans.

Finally, Congress ordered that the companies be required to keep more
capital as a cushion against losses if they invested in riskier
securities. But the rule was never set during the Clinton
administration, which came to office that winter, and was only put in
place nine years later.

The Clinton administration wanted to expand the share of Americans who
owned homes, which had stagnated below 65 percent throughout the
1980s. Encouraging the growth of the two companies was a key part of
that plan.

"We began to stress homeownership as an explicit goal for this period
of American history," said Henry Cisneros, then Secretary of Housing
and Urban Development. "Fannie and Freddie became part of that
equation."

The result was a period of unrestrained growth for the companies. They
had pioneered the business of selling bundled mortgage loans to
investors and now, as demand from investors soared, so did their
profits.

Signal moment
Near the end of the Clinton administration, some of its officials had
concluded the companies were so large that their sheer size posed a
risk to the financial system.

In the fall of 1999, Treasury Secretary Lawrence Summers issued a
warning, saying, "Debates about systemic risk should also now include
government-sponsored enterprises, which are large and growing
rapidly."

It was a signal moment. An administration official had said in public
that Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac could be a hazard.

The next spring, seeking to limit the companies' growth, Treasury
official Gensler testified before Congress in favor of a bill that
would have suspended the Treasury's right to buy $2.25 billion of each
company's debt -- basically, a $4.5 billion lifeline for the
companies.

How Fannie and Freddie weren't reined-in

A Fannie Mae spokesman announced that Gensler's remarks had just cost
206,000 Americans the chance to buy a home because the market now saw
the companies as a riskier investment.

The Treasury Department folded in the face of public pressure.

There was an emerging consensus among politicians and even critics of
the two companies that Fannie Mae might be right. The companies
increasingly were seen as the engine of the housing boom. They were
increasingly impervious to calls for even modest reforms.

As early as 1996, the Congressional Budget Office had reported that
the two companies were using government support to goose profits,
rather than reducing mortgage rates as much as possible.

But the report concluded that severing government ties with Fannie Mae
and Freddie Mac would harm the housing market. In unusually colorful
language, the budget office wrote, "Once one agrees to share a canoe
with a bear, it is hard to get him out without obtaining his agreement
or getting wet."

'Big, fat gap'
Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac enjoyed the nearest thing to a license to
print money. The companies borrowed money at below-market interest
rates based on the perception that the government guaranteed
repayment, and then they used the money to buy mortgages that paid
market interest rates. Federal Reserve Chairman Alan Greenspan called
the difference between the interest rates a "big, fat gap." The budget
office study found that it was worth $3.9 billion in 1995. By 2004,
the office would estimate it was worth $20 billion.

As a result, the great risk to the profitability of Fannie Mae and
Freddie Mac was not the movement of interest rates or defaults by
borrowers, the concerns of a normal financial institution. Fannie
Mae's risk was political, the concern that the government would end
its special status.

So the companies increasingly used their windfall for a massive
campaign to protect that status.

"We manage our political risk with the same intensity that we manage
our credit and interest rate risks," Fannie Mae chief executive
Franklin Raines said in a 1999 meeting with investors.

Our economy...
 

Hawke wrote:
"A Boater" wrote in message
. ..
wf3h wrote:

On Sep 16, 5:18 am, Gunner Asch wrote:
On the other hand..Im a survivalist and have made plans many many
years ago to allow me to weather the crashing of the country, for
whatever reason.
ah...a survivalist. living in the idaho mountains, drooling on your
bib about plots to dilute the white race's gene stock

yeah, that explains alot.

Gunner's Ass is a survivalist? Hehehe. Well, that explains a lot of the
drool dripping down his chin...survival of the least fit.


He's in his own personal fantasy world. He thinks he's a successful
republican businessman who is living the American dream. The reality, he
lives in Taft, Calif., which is outside Bakersfield. It's one ugly place,
flat, desert-like, and nobody in their right mind ever wanted to live there.
It was a place you drove by when you went up interstate 5 from LA to
northern California. All that was there was oil wells and coyotes. He's
living a lower working class life, he's never going to get ahead, he has no
health insurance, he's already had one heart attack, and as for being a
survivalist, I give you odds that he doesn't even live four more years. So
despite his best laid plans to survive some Sci-Fi disaster fantasy in
reality he'll die in poverty leaving nothing behind but junk and his dream
of surviving will be nothing but that, a dream. Knowing what a moron he is
makes it a lot easier to completely dismiss his twisted and irrelevant
blather.

Hawke


From dust to dust, Hawke. You'll remember this when it's your time.





----== Posted via Pronews.Com - Unlimited-Unrestricted-Secure Usenet News==----
http://www.pronews.com The #1 Newsgroup Service in the World! 100,000 Newsgroups
---= - Total Privacy via Encryption =---

Our economy...
 

On Wed, 17 Sep 2008 23:29:41 -0700, "Roy Blankenship"
wrote:


"Hawke" wrote in message
.. .

"A Boater" wrote in message
. ..
wf3h wrote:

On Sep 16, 5:18 am, Gunner Asch wrote:

On the other hand..Im a survivalist and have made plans many many
years ago to allow me to weather the crashing of the country, for
whatever reason.

ah...a survivalist. living in the idaho mountains, drooling on your
bib about plots to dilute the white race's gene stock

yeah, that explains alot.


Gunner's Ass is a survivalist? Hehehe. Well, that explains a lot of the
drool dripping down his chin...survival of the least fit.


He's in his own personal fantasy world. He thinks he's a successful
republican businessman who is living the American dream. The reality, he
lives in Taft, Calif., which is outside Bakersfield. It's one ugly place,
flat, desert-like, and nobody in their right mind ever wanted to live
there.
It was a place you drove by when you went up interstate 5 from LA to
northern California. All that was there was oil wells and coyotes. He's
living a lower working class life, he's never going to get ahead, he has
no
health insurance, he's already had one heart attack, and as for being a
survivalist, I give you odds that he doesn't even live four more years. So
despite his best laid plans to survive some Sci-Fi disaster fantasy in
reality he'll die in poverty leaving nothing behind but junk and his dream
of surviving will be nothing but that, a dream. Knowing what a moron he is
makes it a lot easier to completely dismiss his twisted and irrelevant
blather.

Hawke

Wow. I almost feel sorry for the guy. Broken dreams.

Actually Roy..I live here intentionally. The place is fully paid off,
Ive got enough space to do pretty much what I want, the shop is
EXTREMELY well equipped, etc etc

I live in an area rich in cogeneration plants, oil infrastructure, and
surrounded by some of the most productive agriculture in the world.
Ive a very large circle of friends and aquaintences, in both that
area, including law enforcment and the city and county fathers.
Its a very Red area, where CCWs are common (unlike most of the rest of
California). The town itself is actually quite nice though its in a
bit of a depression, which is fine with me. Ive been there since
1983, and am quite comfortable there. Its my Home Base. A place to
retire, or hole up.

The parakeet of course has never been there, it being well over 25
miles off of I-5...so he really doesnt have a clue.

The town is backed up against the Temblor mountain range, being about
5 miles from the San Andres fault, good cattle grazing country, deer
hunting and about 1.5 hours from the Pacific ocean on good roads.
Several local lakes, the California aqueduct etc supply good fishing,
boating etc. Crime is very low, most households are well armed, we
have more CCW holders than law enforcement in the county. We kinda
like it that way.

It things turn to ****...Im not going to be without power...local
areas well served by cogeneration. Im not going to be without fuel,
several refineries in the area. Im not going to be without food, both
from my own crops, and from the surrounding area. I can easily barter
machining, welding, gunsmithing for food, fuel etc. I do it regularly
now..shrug. The two local machine shops borrow tooling etc from
me..G

Lots of horses in the area.

Its hot in the summer, but its high desert, not the Mojave. It doesnt
rain much, but there are many local wells, both public and private,
so water is not an issue.

We are far enough off the beaten path, that refugees from the LA area
will bypass us, and entry to the area is easily controlled. And will
be.

Ive got sufficient food, fuel, water, infrastructure laid in to keep
going in a total breakdown for up to 6 + months.
My security is pretty good, both in active and passive modes, plus
dogs etc. Being friends with a goodly number of the local law
enforcment adds some benefits as well.

When I lost my house in the '83 Coalinga Earthquake..I kept not only
my family sheltered, fed and watered, but virtually everyone on my
block as well. It took Fema etc nearly two weeks to get rolling, and
we were just hunky dorey.

I am self employed, indeed. And yes its feast or famine. And no,
unlike the Parakeet, I dont live in my moms basement and leech off
her. She is long dead..shrug. Someday the Parakeet will have to face
the outside world.

But Im doing ok, with more work coming in than I can handle most of
the time. Juggling it sometimes can be "interesting".

My health isnt all that bad. Ive got angina, havent had to take a
nitro in 3 yrs. But I AM almost 55, and have lead something of a hard
life, lots of dings, puckers, zippers on my old carcass, so its to be
expected. On the other hand, I can look down and still see my belt
buckle (the parakeet cant even see his feet...morbidly obese) and
while I cant run 3 miles anymore..I can walk/trot for days.

Ive never had a heart attack. But it did give me a warning, so Ive
changed my life style a bit, becoming less of a work a holic, eating
better etc.

If I die, my next of kin will be able to dispose of my assests and
while not be rich, will be comfortable. Its a shame the Parakeet has
so little knowlege of the Real world outside of his moms
basement....he is the sort to call a 57 Chevy...just an old car..a
junker. His ignorance is widely known, and laughed at because he
pontificates on things he is not only ignorant of, but incapable of
comprehending.

While he huddles in his chair, surrounded by rotting pizza boxes and
trash, in front of his computer, raging against the world from deep in
the heart of his Moms basement, Im puttering around in the machine
shop, or the welding shop, or simply sitting on the veranda, feet
propped up on the rail, cat in my lap, dogs at my feet, watching the
hummingbirds and noodling around on the banjo, or got one of the
sailboats out on a local lake, or the BMW scooter out on the winding
mountain roads.

Shrug..I guess we have different priorities, no? As to
surviving..shrug..no one knows if they are going to survive to
tommorow. All we can do is try to make plans, take steps etc to do
what we can for ourselves and our families in the event of an
emergency. Id be surprised if the Parakeet has a single fire
extinguisher in his home. Between the house, the shops etc..last
count I had 11. First aid kits, from simple to First Responder..and
the knowledge to use them. Id be surprised if the parakeet could
stand the sight of blood, let alone deliver a baby, or remove a hot
appendix. (Ive done both under extreme circumstances)

Shrug..let him feel smug and arrogant. Thats all he has. There is no
bottom or substance to him. I may or may not live to the average span
my family enjoys..the late 90s, but Ive LIVED and will continue to do
so.

On the other hand..I fully expect to bulldoze the Parakeets bloated
corpse into a mass grave, if Bad Things ever happen. Too bad its
likely he wont be recognizable, as Id like to **** on him in contempt
as he goes into the hole.

Gunner

Our economy...
 

On Wed, 17 Sep 2008 23:13:23 -0700, Gunner
wrote:

On Wed, 17 Sep 2008 20:34:55 -0400, john
wrote:


Gasoline is selling for three times what it was when Bush presumed
office.

Gasoline is going down, does he get credit for that too?

Gummer apparently hasn't bought any gasoline in the past week or so.


Odd...Last week it was $3.71, at the end of the week, it was $3.65,
this morning I filled up at $3.59

Doesnt seem like much of a rise, least not on this planet

I filled up this morning...$3.55

Odd....I thought gas was skyrocketing?

Gunner

I'm voting republican because...
 

Ed Huntress wrote:
"BAR" wrote in message
. ..
Ed Huntress wrote:
"strabo" wrote in message
...
Hawke wrote:
i agree. mccain was born in the panama canal zone. he doesn't deserve
to be president...
So you think the children of service men and service women born on USA
military installations overseas are foreigners? I don't.


You seem to think that people born in Hawaii are not Americans. Bill
O'Reilly said on his show today that Obama was born in Hawaii. So I
guess
that proves it, doesn't it? But you said that Obama is a foreigner.
Logic
says that means you think everyone born in Hawaii is a foreigner too.
You
are stupid, Dude.

There's a lot of anti-American feeling in Hawaii.

Making Hawaii a state was a mistake. The natives didn't want it and it
wasn't necessary from a commercial or strategic standpoint.
Hell, it was a mistake to make most of the territories west of the
Susquehanna River into states. They spit and fart too much, and they want
us to subsidize everything from their corn to their water projects.
Anything outside of Virginia is a pretender entity in the new world.

Well, Virginia originally extended up to what is now Maine and into Canada,
and westward to California, so that doesn't help much. d8-) Plymouth, MA was
named after one of the two Virginia companies chartered by the king of
England. Mass. was the northern part of Virginia.

I thought Virginia ended at the Mississippi River. I wasn't aware that
it stretched to the Spanish territories out west.