It's the talk that matters. And not past talk, only the latest version.

Thanks, tazkcmo!

And losers. The Cool People watch reality TV, play Candy Crush and shop shop shop!















sarcasm

The paper trail shows the Nerd knew for a year that the water was unfit for human consumption but didn't worry if anyone found out because "those people" don't read and will never find out, seeing how the news corpse plays dead and all on command.

But then, while not a full blown nerd, I do carry the Nerd Gene as my living son is a full blown nerd as was my beloved departed one.

I seldom quote this guy, but on Leap Days and today:

“Show me a family of readers, and I will show you the people who move the world.” ― Napoléon Bonaparte

Very nice of you. Love the quote, never heard it before. When they were wee little tykes and even not so wee, they had two options after being put to bed and before "lights out": Stare silently at the ceiling or read a book. They made the wise choice and read. It paid off very well and now I'm the proud father of two full blown Nerds! Yay Nerds!

Here, in the words of Zachary Leven:

So what happened? Did Hillary vote for this bill because she became beholden to special interests on Wall Street? What excuse does she have? Here's her explanation in her own words:

"I rise today in support of final passage of S. 420, the Bankruptcy Reform Act. Many of my colleagues may remember that I was a strong critic of the bill that passed out of the 106th Congress....While we have yet to achieve the kind of bankruptcy reform I believe is possible, I have worked with a number of people to make improvements that bring us closer to our goals, particularly when it comes to child support. ...Let me be very clear -- I will not vote for final passage of this bill if it comes back from conference if these kind of reforms are missing. I am voting for this legislation because it is a work in progress, and it is making progress towards reform."

Now I deeply respect and admire Elizabeth Warren -- but it seems she left out some important details from her account. Clinton, in fact, worked with other members of congress to include amendments that addressed Elizabeth Warren's concerns. ...Clinton's position on this bill was no different than that uber-conservative, Barbara Boxer.

Here's what happened next -- the bill went to the Republican controlled congress, they stripped out those amendments, sent the bill back to the senate, the Democrats filibustered the bill, and Clinton voted to uphold the filibuster. Another version of the bill later passed that Hillary opposed. So that woman Warren describes in the first part of her interview -- the woman who "really gets it" -- turns out that woman never changed after all ...

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/zachary-leven/the-case-for-hillary_b_9201778.html

and yet its effects are still somehow her fault?

Had she voted, she would've made it easy for us to see where she really stood. She, of course, was by her husband's bedside as he recuperated from cardiac surgery.

All the above was back before the great Banking collapse of 2008. The deregulation of the Banks started when her husband was president.

The deregulation of the S&Ls started when Ronald Reagan was president. Those lessons also were ignored by Phil Gramm and Bill Clinton, who worked together to repeal the Glass-Steagall New Deal legislation, which enabled banks to follow the deregulatory nirvana bubble long enough to move their money mountain to Switzerland and leave the US taxpayers with the bill.

ETA: Details.

started under her husband, and because she was with her husband at his sickbed when the final vote on the bankruptcy bill (now minus the conditions she had set for supporting it) happened, the bankruptcy bill was her fault?! And it's because she sold herself to the banks?

Bizarre argument.

that she would have supported the bankruptcy bill.

It shows the history of her behavior.

Do you think another President Clinton will put the interests of Wall Street behind those of Detroit, your town, and Main Street?

For one, she's not Bill.
And second, the times are different. Politicians tend to respond to the Zeitgeist.

My liberal friends, both registered Democrats and Other, were quite excited to learn an anti-Vietnam guy was going to serve as President.

I, too, believed he would put the interests of ALL the nation ahead of that of the 1-percent. Same for President Obama when he took office. I had so hoped for change.

[font size="4"]I was wrong.[/font size]

As a forensic economist in the employ of the US Government, William K. Black helped send the S&L looters to jail in the late 80s and early 90's. In 2008, most of Iceland's banks collapsed and they called on Black to help prosecute 80 banksters.

One would think Black would be able to put a lot of Banksters behind bars. But, no dice. No Banksters are behind bars. As George W Bush said, "Commercial interests are very powerful interests," on Feb. 14, 2007 at a White House press conference in which he added, "Let me put it this way, ah, sometimes, ah, money trumps peace."

And then he giggled and not a single member of the callow, cowed and corrupt press corpse saw fit to ask a follow-up.

that are not really responding to the topic at hand. The OP was all about how Hillary supposedly sold out to Wall Street and hence supported the bankruptcy bill. I then posted a quite different interpretation of the events, and so far I have not seen any reason to change my view on this. General attacks on the Clintons etc. do not address the issue at hand.

Moreover, your past disappointment with Bill Clinton and Barack Obama is not an argument. I'm not starry-eyed about politicians. I simply think that Hillary, like Bill, will adjust her policies to the Zeitgeist. The 90s was still very much part of the deregulation phase in American politics. I think we are now moving into quite a different period, with a quite different consensus, and (cynically) I'm fairly confident that Hillary will respond accordingly.

Call me cynical.

None of them indicated in any way that Hillary Clinton supported the bankruptcy bill as it ended up being, or that she was motivated to do so because of Wall Street bribes, which is the charge in the OP.

FYI: What I wrote in the OP.

I'm arguing the opposite.

Whatever.

No matter what I provide, you won't accept it or you'll pretend you need something else to change your mind with facts.

No. The truth doesn't fit with your world view.

From my perspective, to put it simply, all I've learned from you is a new way to waste time.

By Pam Martens and Russ Martens
Wall Street on Parade, May 7, 2015

EXCERPT...

But the segment of the conference that has galvanized Wall Street reformers were the speeches by Brooksley Born, the former Chair of the Commodity Futures Trading Commission, and Anat Admati, a professor of finance and economics at Stanford University, a chief architect of the conference.

Brooksley Born is best known as the sole regulator in the Clinton administration who attempted to regulate derivatives and became the target of bullying by then Treasury Secretary Robert Rubin, his enforcer, Larry Summers, and Fed Chair Alan Greenspan. Frontline aired an expose on the guts Born summoned to stand up to the Wall Street enablers’ cartel. In the end, of course, Wall Street had its way and derivatives remained unregulated. Born resigned her post.

In her talk at the conference, Born takes on the preposterous proposition that markets can self-regulate. During her time at the CFTC, Born said Wall Street had poured billions of dollars into deregulation lobbying which was “supported by the fallacious beliefs championed notably by Alan Greenspan that financial markets are self regulating and that financial firms are capable of policing themselves.”

Born told the crowd that the dangers have only grown since the collapse:

[font color="green"]“The power and influence of the financial sector threatens a continuation of the regulatory capture that contributed to the financial crisis. Financial firms, too often, have significant say in the appointment of high regulatory officials. The tendency of some former government officials to obtain highly lucrative positions in the financial sector after leaving government may well act as an inducement to those remaining in government to serve the interest of the financial sector rather than those of the public.”[/font color]

[font color="green"]“With respect to derivatives trading, JPMorgan lost $6 billion through speculative trading of the London Whale and both MF Global and Peregrine Financial went bankrupt after allegedly engaging in misappropriation of customer funds. In light of all this, we must ask ourselves whether the financial and political power of our largest financial firms poses a threat to our policy making on financial regulation and seriously undercuts the administration of justice.”[/font color]

[font color="green"]“Dodd-Frank gave the Commodity Futures Trading Commission an enormous new responsibility to impose regulation on this previously unregulated market which was a significant cause of the financial crisis and which is currently estimated to be $400 trillion in notional amount [face amount] in the United States and almost $700 trillion globally. It’s actually larger than it was at the time of the financial crisis…The jury is still out on whether the regulatory regime under Dodd-Frank will be adequate to address the dangers of this market…"[/font color]

What Tim Russert said...