bailout bill

Goodbye F-15 and hello P-51.

*whimpering* Sigh.

 

Or Mitsubishi J8M1...

 

That is cool.

 

In a fitting gesture, I'm just watching "Poseidon" on TNT...

 

Forgive my late arrival regarding this hot topic......
Interesting comments and fix suggestions...The bailout is a quick summery of a greed fix that has no isolation regarding a political party so all candidates should agree on. Well except the liberal leftwing...
After 2 years as majority leaders in congress why did you not fix the problem that they point fingers to conservatives now...
We have so many fingers pointing at the rightwing...Since the leftwing has had control of congress for the past 2 years why was no legislative initiative put into action from the liberal controled congress that blames the rightwing conservatives...
Simple you made it easy money and now rather than admit to it, you take the easy way out, blame Bush and the conservative right. When Clinton imposed deregulation of wall street during his administration...
Lets work together for once and help our children, instead of stupid selfish greed...

 

<Typically, Hook gets here late and has no idea what is really going on>

Is this a private party or can anyone join.

 

Allow me to put on my big, funny looking Mr. Politics hat for a moment to put forward a few points to our friends from Elsewhere.

Unlike say, a parlimentary system where the government apparatus is fully under the control of the majority party, the US system is little less instantly responsive to elections. The Securities and Exchange Commission, as well as the other major regulatory agencies, are part of the executive branch, and therefore controlled by the President and his appointees.

Now, the Congress can control how these regulations are implemented by way of legislation ... except for two things. The first is the filibuster, under which rules can be manipulated to require 60 votes in the Senate to pass a bill. The majority party currently controls 51, and that's if you include centerist independent Joe Lieberman, and one Senator who suffered a cerebral hemhorrage last year and is still recovering, and thus prone to missing votes.

The second thing is signing statements: dubiously legal "add-ons" to legislation written by the President's people which have the effect of re-writing the laws that have been passed by saying "We're not going to adhere to this part of this law, because we don't want to." It's part of the theory of the "Imperial Presidency," that the President is able to do anything including break the law.

Last but not least, in the US' supposedly left-leaning party (of which I must disclose I am an active member) there's a considerable clique which holds strongly pro-business viewpoints more akin to the free-marketism of their right-leaning opponents. These are usually referred to as "New," "Third Way," or "DLC" Democrats. "Blue Dogs" is another term for them. While they may not favor the utter social darwinism that the more extreme members of the right do, they are more likely to shy away from regulation and stiffer punitive measures against corporate offenders, making a majority even harder to reach.

Last but not least, there's a distinct lack of a uniform opinion and the backbone to support it in the Democratic congressional delegation. The DLC versus Progressive Caucus split is only one part of it: there's about as many opinions on the most important issue as their are congressional representatives, and one of the defining characteristics of the Democratic party is the lack of the (mostly) lock-step adherence to the leadership's priorities demonstrated by the Republicans.

 

To quote Will Rogers: "I don't belong to any organized political party. I'm a Democrat."

The current financial crisis is directly attributable to Phil Gramm's bill, which deregulated financial institutions, and allowed holding companies to be banks, mortgage companies, insurance companies, and anything else they wanted. He and his wife, who was the major lobbyist for the financial industry during that time, made tens, if not hundreds, of millions of dollars out of that. He is also the chief economic advisor to John McCain, who says straight out that he knows nothing about economics. If he is elected, Gramm will be setting the financial policies of the US for the next 4 years, something which utterly terrifies me. Four more years like the past eight may be more than the US can bear.

 

Whimper away Pirate-Man

 

Why are there blue dog and yellow dog Democrats but Republicans are simply Republicans?