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20th February 2008, 14:10
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#163 (permalink) | ||
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Closet Gooner
Join Date: May 2006
Location: In a galaxy far far away
Posts: 4,598
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She first agreed along with other candidates that Florida and Michigan delegates wouldn't be seated but now will go to court to seat them. Nobody campaigned in those states and Barack didnt even have his name listed at Michigan. Their camp is talking about wooing not just super delegates but pledged delegates who have already been allocated to Obama based on his primary/caucus victories. It makes a mockery of democracy if delegates pledged based on votes are being approached to change their minds. She makes a speech that the economy is in bad shape because executives working in hedge funds are paid a lot of money for doing no work. Her own daughter works for a hedge fund  She does not want to divulge her tax returns but keeps lending her own campaign millions of dollars. Obama has already made public his tax returns and income sources. The Clintons have no values and even lie about small stuff. When asked about drug use, Bill cleverly said that 'he has never broken the laws of his country'. Later he admitted he had experimented with marijuana in London but claimed he never inhaled  . When Obama was asked by a reporter if he inhaled, he replied 'That was the point' |
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20th February 2008, 15:00
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#164 (permalink) |
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First Team Regular
Join Date: Aug 2003
Location: Thunder Road to Old Trafford
Posts: 10,000
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think Texas and Ohio will be her last stand....yes she is a 'fighter' but I think even she does not want the Democratic Party destroyed....which is what will happen if she tries to 'strong arm' her way to get the nomination....
March 4th...thats when this will all come down....and she is not certain to win both either....she is neck and neck in Texas and 7 points ahead in OH in the latest polls... of course I could be wrong  |
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20th February 2008, 15:18
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#165 (permalink) | |
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First Team Regular
Join Date: Dec 2000
Location: Saha's hospital room
Posts: 17,803
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What a sweet b-day present for me - Hillary losing her bid!  |
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20th February 2008, 15:24
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#166 (permalink) | |
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First Team Regular
Join Date: Dec 2000
Location: Saha's hospital room
Posts: 17,803
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Rumors in GA are Sonny Perdue might be in the running for VP. I really hope not. Don't need more sourthern bible thumpers involved. But this is exactly the reasons being floated that McCain will look to find a southern Republican for his VP - to get the southern vote (mostly bible thumpers). BTW, did anyone catch the youtube clip of Huckabee talking about changing the constitution to reflect the "word of God." |
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20th February 2008, 15:27
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#167 (permalink) |
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from Redcafe (matchfixing department)
Join Date: Mar 2002
Location: We want our own TV deal...
Posts: 11,150
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Can someone explain how it is fair that Obama gets 35 out of 50 delegates from Washington based on some caucus that about 30,000 ppl voted in when the primaries last night had them pretty much neck and neck?
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20th February 2008, 15:40
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#168 (permalink) | |
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Turns women gay
Join Date: Jan 2007
Location: Plotting to take over the world with my Illuminati brethren
Posts: 7,294
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20th February 2008, 16:18
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#169 (permalink) | |
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Lost his light sabre
Join Date: Feb 2006
Location: Polska
Posts: 9,920
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To put this in a shorter way... everyone but not Giuliani. |
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20th February 2008, 16:26
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#170 (permalink) | |
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First Team Regular
Join Date: Aug 2003
Location: Thunder Road to Old Trafford
Posts: 10,000
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20th February 2008, 16:38
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#171 (permalink) | |
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First Team Regular
Join Date: Aug 2003
Location: Thunder Road to Old Trafford
Posts: 10,000
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21st February 2008, 14:51
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#174 (permalink) | |
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First Team Regular
Join Date: Dec 2000
Location: Saha's hospital room
Posts: 17,803
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http://www.cnn.com/2007/US/11/13/sou....ap/index.html |
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21st February 2008, 14:58
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#175 (permalink) | |
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Paz's ion
Join Date: Oct 2001
Location: Please donate to the World Food Programme. They need $700m to provide the same food aid as last year.
Posts: 21,250
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21st February 2008, 15:06
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#177 (permalink) | |
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Turns women gay
Join Date: Jan 2007
Location: Plotting to take over the world with my Illuminati brethren
Posts: 7,294
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Quote:
Both the real and imagined campaigns have centred on a young, charismatic candidate from an ethnic minority, daring to take on an establishment workhorse with a promise to transcend race and heal America's partisan divide. But there's a twist. For what those West Wing fans stunned by the similarity between the fictitious Matthew Santos and the real-life Barack Obama have not known is that the resemblance is no coincidence. When the West Wing scriptwriters first devised their fictitious presidential candidate in the late summer of 2004, they modelled him in part on a young Illinois politician - not yet even a US senator - by the name of Barack Obama. "I drew inspiration from him in drawing this character," West Wing writer and producer Eli Attie told the Guardian. "When I had to write, Obama was just appearing on the national scene. He had done a great speech at the convention [which nominated John Kerry] and people were beginning to talk about him." Attie, who served as chief speechwriter to Al Gore during the ill-fated 2000 campaign and who wrote many of the key Santos episodes of the West Wing, put in a call to Obama aide David Axelrod. "I said, 'Tell me about this guy Barack Obama.'" With the Latino actor Jimmy Smits already cast for the show, Attie was especially keen to know how rising star Obama approached the question of his race. Axelrod's answers helped inform Santos's approach to his own Hispanic identity. "Some of Santos's insistence on not being defined by his race, his pride in it even as he rises above it, came from that," Attie said. The scriptwriter also borrowed from Obama's life the notion of a superstar candidate. "After that convention speech, Obama's life changed. He was mobbed wherever he went. He was more than a candidate seeking votes: people were seeking him. Some of Santos's celebrity aura came from that." The result is a bizarre case of art imitating life - only for life to imitate art back again. In the TV show, Santos begins as the rank outsider up against a national figure famous for standing at the side of a popular Democratic president. There are doubts about Santos's inexperience, having served just a few years in Congress, and about his ability to persuade voters to back an ethnic minority candidate - even as his own ethnic group harbour suspicions that he might not identify with them sufficiently. But the soaring power of his rhetoric, his declaration that the old divisions belong in the past and his sheer magnetism, ensure that he comes from behind in a fiercely close primary campaign and draws level with his once all-commanding opponent. Every aspect of that storyline has come true for Barack Obama. Axelrod, now chief strategist for the Obama campaign, recently joked in an email to Attie: "We're living your scripts!" What's more, the West Wing had the Republicans choose between a Christian preacher - a pre-echo of Mike Huckabee - and an older, maverick senator from the American west whose liberal positions on some issues had earned the distrust of the party's conservative base: a dead ringer for John McCain. In the West Wing, the McCain figure emerges comfortably as the party's choice. Apparently the character was not based on the current Republican frontrunner, but was simply a function of the casting of Alan Alda. "It was always an inside joke on the West Wing that the show had a prophetic quality," recalls Attie, now a writer and producer of House, starring Hugh Laurie. Various political scenarios sketched out on the programme would often materialise within weeks of airing. But the 2008 campaign, Attie concedes, is in an entirely different league. There are small differences of course. Santos had a white wife - stressing, says Attie, Santos's standing as a "post-racial figure" - while Michelle Obama is African-American. Ms Obama is the more outspoken, but with two young children each, both are equally photogenic. Obama aides will be hoping that the West Wing's prophetic streak holds: Santos eventually emerged as the Democratic nominee from a brokered convention - and went on to win the presidency. Barack Obama v Matt Santos Barack Obama Young, handsome and charismatic member of Congress, attempts to become America's first non-white president. Began political career as a community organiser in a big city (Chicago) before winning first election at local level. Married, with two young children. Faced stiff opposition in Democratic primary against occupant of the White House during previous Democratic administration (first lady Hillary Clinton) Rivals attack him as inexperienced after just four years in Congress, but triumphs through grassroots support, inspiring speeches and message of change. Republican opponent is veteran moderate senator from a western state, unpopular with conservative base (John McCain of Arizona). Matt Santos Young, handsome and charismatic member of Congress, attempts to become America's first non-white president. Began political career as a community organiser in a big city (Houston) before winning first election at local level. Married, with two young children. Faced stiff opposition in Democratic primary against occupant of the White House during previous Democratic administration (vice president Bob Russell). Rivals attack him as inexperienced after just six years in Congress, but triumphs through grassroots support, inspiring speeches and message of change. Republican opponent was veteran moderate senator from a western state, unpopular with conservative base (Arnie Vinick of California). http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2008...selections2008 |
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21st February 2008, 18:27
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#178 (permalink) |
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Turns women gay
Join Date: Jan 2007
Location: Plotting to take over the world with my Illuminati brethren
Posts: 7,294
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11 in a row for Obama
Barack Obama has gained an 11th straight victory in the race for the Democratic presidential nomination by winning the Democrats Abroad primary.
He now faces his rival, New York Senator Hillary Clinton, in a TV debate in Texas ahead of crucial primaries there and in Ohio next month. She is seeking to revive her campaign with wins in the two key states in order to stop Mr Obama's momentum. Mrs Clinton now needs a majority of the remaining delegates to beat Mr Obama. He has at least 1,351 - according to an Associated Press projection - of the 2,025 delegates he needs to secure the Democratic nomination at the party's convention in August. 'Yes we can' message While Democrats Abroad, representing the party's supporters living in more than 30 countries, gives Mr Obama only 2.5 delegates over two for Mrs Clinton, it continues his winning streak. Wisconsin's primary on Tuesday was significant for Mr Obama, says the BBC's Jonathan Beale, because he ate into Mrs Clinton's support base of white women and lower-income workers. Correspondents say the blue-collar vote will be crucial in the Ohio and Texas contests, and the Clinton campaign has already begun targeting lower-income workers in its ads. But in his drive to become the first black US president, Mr Obama has gained important support from some powerful unions, including the Teamsters and the Service Employees International Union. The first-term Illinois senator has brushed off criticism from Mrs Clinton and Republican front-runner John McCain that he lacks substance. His eloquent speeches and "yes we can" message of hope have inspired many voters. "It's a choice between a politics that offers more of the same divisions and distractions that didn't work in South Carolina and didn't work in Wisconsin and will not work in Texas," he said to a crowd of 17,000 in Dallas. "Or a politics of common sense, of common purpose, of shared sacrifice and shared prosperity." Victories needed But Mrs Clinton shot back at a New York fund-raiser, saying: "It's about picking a president who relies not just on words but on work, on hard work." Mrs Clinton has pursued live debates with Mr Obama, hoping her keen grasp of policy issues will be seen to outweigh his sparkling rhetoric. The Texas debate, at 0100 GMT Friday, is the first of two the Obama camp agreed to. Many analysts are saying Mrs Clinton can only turn around her campaign with big victories in Texas and Ohio on 4 March. She has not won a state primary or caucus since 5 February. Her husband, former President Bill Clinton, said he thought she could win the nomination over Mr Obama if she won the two large states. "If she wins in Texas and Ohio, she will win in Pennsylvania and I believe she will win the nomination," he said campaigning for his wife in Texas on Wednesday. http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/americas/7256937.stm |
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22nd February 2008, 01:41
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#181 (permalink) |
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Turns women gay
Join Date: Jan 2007
Location: Plotting to take over the world with my Illuminati brethren
Posts: 7,294
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Is it Obama who has the substance and Clinton who has the style?
US elections 2008: Hillary Clinton's plan to solve the subprime mortgage fiasco is the worst proposal to come along in decades
Americans who have paid any attention to the financial news of the past year know that something has gone terribly wrong with subprime mortgages. They may not know why something went wrong, nor even what a subprime mortgage is, but they know that there is trouble in the subprime sector, and that trouble in the subprime sector has led to trouble in the housing market and trouble for the economy generally. Americans who have paid any attention to the political news of the past year know that the deadlocked race between Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton for the Democratic nomination is a classic match-up of style versus substance (just ask David Brooks). Obama, as we all know, offers inspiration, uplift, perhaps even euphoria for his most devoted followers, but doesn't deliver much in the way of specific policy. Clinton, on the other hand, offers specific, concrete, detailed solutions to the problems facing her country and the world, and she promises to make up with hard work what she lacks in flash. Given these converging financial and political circumstances, what positions and actions should we expect the Democratic candidates to have taken on the subprime mortgage crisis? Surely, we should expect something like a moving speech about the plight of subprime borrowers from Obama (but nothing more), versus a 12-point plan from Clinton that would actually fix the mess. In fact, Obama and Clinton both have plans to address the subprime crisis. There are two salient differences between them: Obama's plan is significantly more detailed than Clinton's , and Obama's plan is a reasonable approach to the problem, while Clinton's is quite possibly the worst proposal any major presidential candidate has made in decades. To see why Clinton's plan is so misguided, let's first put the matter into some perspective. With the term "subprime" having entered everyday parlance denoting some vaguely sinister lending practices, it's easy to forget that subprime loans are an essential means of extending credit to working-class people, thereby greatly enhancing their prospects for owning property and joining the middle class. Bill Clinton and his supporters regularly like to boast of the expansion of homeownership during the Clinton-Gore years, particularly among minorities. But that expansion did not occur by magic: more people are homeowners now than in the past because of financial instruments that extend borrowing privileges down the socioeconomic ladder. Moreover, on the whole, subprime lending is a dramatic success. As of March last year, a full 87% of subprime borrowers were able to meet the obligations of their loans. (That figure is likely somewhat lower now, but still very impressive.) However, there is a subset of subprime borrowers who cannot meet their mortgage payments and are on the verge of foreclosure or bankruptcy. Typically, these are borrowers who have taken on an adjustable-rate mortgage, or ARM. Here is how an ARM works, and how it can go awry: A prospective borrower is offered a short-term (say, three-year) interest rate on a mortgage significantly lower than what would be offered on an equivalent 30-year fixed interest rate mortgage. Once the period of the initial rate expires, the interest rate is recalculated to meet current market conditions, at which point it frequently spikes and leaves borrowers unable to afford their monthly payments. Too often, though, this second stage of an ARM does not enter prospective borrowers' calculations. They are lured in by the initial low rate, and in some cases misled by unscrupulous brokers who promise that refinancing is an option if the interest rate increases, without bothering to mention that such refinancing is never guaranteed to present more favourable terms to the borrower. The proportion of borrowers facing financial ruin because of an unwise or fraudulent ARM may be small, but it is large enough to exert a downward pull on the housing market generally - hence it affects all of us - and even absent any self-interest, it entails that a large number of people are really suffering. Both Democratic candidates agree that something should be done to provide relief. What should it be? There are two primary factors that determine the monthly payment on a mortgage, the principal balance (ie, what the mortgage is worth), and the interest rate. Hence there are two ways the government can enable struggling borrowers to meet their mortgage obligations, namely by either altering the principal balance or altering the interest rate. The second solution is the more obvious of the two, precisely because it is the adjustable rates of subprime mortgages that have brought about the loan defaults that have saturated recent news. Suppose a borrower can afford an 8% monthly interest rate but not the 10% rate to which his ARM will soon adjust. To ease that borrower's burden, the government can decree that his interest rate will remain fixed at 8%, and so he need not worry about bankruptcy or foreclosure. This approach is the centrepiece of Clinton's plan: a five-year (at minimum) freeze on existing mortgage interest rates. At first glance, the plan may seem attractive. It unquestionably provides immediate relief to borrowers on the verge of default. The problem is that such an interest rate freeze provides short-term relief to a relatively small number of people at the cost of inflicting longer-term pain on a much larger number of people and risking damage to the broader housing market of indefinite duration. Why is that the case? Because a freeze on existing mortgage interest rates would quickly drive investors out of the housing market. Investors are an easily frightened bunch, and the uncertainty that an interest rate freeze would inject into the housing market would lead the risk-averse among them to move their investments elsewhere. Now, the price of a mortgage-backed security, like any asset, is determined by a supply-demand relationship. With fewer and fewer investors interested in buying mortgage-backed securities, the demand and therefore the price of such securities will fall. There also happens to be an inversely proportional relationship between the price and the yield (which can be understood as an interest rate) of a mortgage-backed security. Consequently, as the price of mortgage-derived assets falls, the yield will increase. And the ultimate effect will be a massive spike in the interest rates on new mortgages, as much as 8% or more according to Fortune's Jon Birger. So forget about the interests of the investor class: purely from the perspective of the average working man or woman, Clinton's interest rate freeze plan will make the obstacles to financial security and prosperity significantly more difficult to overcome. But of course, the implications of Clinton's plan extend well beyond the burdens it places on working people. Freezing existing mortgage interest rates will wreak havoc on the housing market as a whole, by eroding the investment base underlying the market and exacerbating the many problems of the housing market beyond anyone's predictive capabilities. What's more, Clinton insists on imposing an interest rate freeze for five full years. It should go without saying that conditions in the housing market are impossible to anticipate that far in advance. And even putting aside the manifold conceptual problems with the Clinton approach, the practical complications that would be involved in its implementation could strip away even the meagre achievement of giving some borrowers short-term relief. Imagine it is January 2009, and you are an investor buying some assets backed by ARMs. You are buying those assets because you expect the yield to increase, per the structure of ARMs. However, the recently inaugurated President Clinton has pushed through Congress her Mortgage Relief Act of 2009. Suddenly, the increased returns you were expecting, and which were guaranteed by the legally binding agreements to which you are a party, have been nullified by fiat. In that case, would you not go to court to recover your lost capital? Many investors would do just that. And so the reams upon reams of litigation Clinton's interest rate freeze would provoke could quite possibly forestall any easing of the burdens on homeowners on the brink of losing their homes. Yet the fact that such a proposal had become law could be sufficient to create the uncertainty in the housing market that would drive away investment and drive up new interest rates. In other words, the Clinton plan, if enacted, could very well simultaneously bring about the harms attendant upon it without providing any of its benefits. |
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22nd February 2008, 01:42
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#182 (permalink) |
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Turns women gay
Join Date: Jan 2007
Location: Plotting to take over the world with my Illuminati brethren
Posts: 7,294
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The alternative to tinkering with interest rates is to bring the principal balances of mortgages into line the values of mortgaged properties, so that borrowers are not left paying interest on mortgages worth more than their homes, and so that they have equity in their homes and hence an incentive to meet their mortgage payments. This is the centrepiece of Obama's plan: he intends to enable bankruptcy courts to modify mortgage payments, which they are currently prevented from doing by statute. Combined with what he calls a Universal Mortgage Credit, and a variety of other subsidies, the clear idea is to allow borrowers facing default to pay interest against effectively lower principals.
This proposal, like Clinton's, relieves the burdens on struggling borrowers. Unlike Clinton's plan, it does not punish investors or block prospective responsible borrowers from access to affordable home mortgages. On the contrary, it provides a means for those who work hard to amass capital and build a financially secure future for themselves. What's more, Obama also proposes to enhance the transparency of lending practices by instituting standardised metrics by which prospective borrowers can compare loans, so that they are able to make informed decisions. Such transparency is clearly good for borrowers, but it is also good for investors, who may be encouraged to reinvest by the knowledge that garbage securities with inflated ratings have been culled from the market, and thereby speed the recovery of the housing market. By contrast, Clinton demands "status reports" on the conversion of ARMs to fixed-rate mortgages, a policy that will likely achieve nothing apart from enabling her administration to pad its statistics. Both in conceptual breadth and in every specific policy detail, the Obama plan is vastly superior to the Clinton plan. The choice between the two is not even close. The moral of the story is that, in this instance as in many others, the prefabricated narrative of Hillary Clinton's concrete substance versus Barack Obama's ethereal uplift is wildly off-base. On a broad range of issues from education to trade to healthcare to immigration to retirement security and more, Obama's proposals are more substantive, more innovative and more intelligently crafted than Clinton's. In his victory speech after the South Carolina primary, Obama framed his contest with Clinton as "the past versus the future". This remark was widely interpreted to amount to little more than a rhetorical emphasis, or at most a barb at the idea of a restoration of the Clinton dynasty. But Obama's past-versus-future framework has a concrete meaning as well. Whereas his policies represent cutting-edge efforts to promote civil and social equality without impoverishing the country or installing an austerity regime, her policies are frequently a return to the 1970s-style price controls that we rightfully abandoned after it became clear that they had crippled the economy (this is literally so in the case of her interest rate freeze). Hillary Clinton's critics frequently charge that the junior senator from New York has waged a campaign that looks backward to the 1990s. They are off by about 20 years. http://commentisfree.guardian.co.uk/...ezer_burn.html |
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22nd February 2008, 01:43
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#183 (permalink) | |
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Reserve Team Player
Join Date: May 2005
Posts: 654
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This is typical NY Times BS. What a shame what that paper has turned into over the last bunch of years. |
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