DU'ers....Please help me respond to this.... "A Muslim's View"

This morning I received a smear-mail of a photo of Obama, book in hand, with the caption "The Post-American World -- it's a Muslim's view." Being so sick of the bigotry and ignorance, I kindly told the sender that I was voting based on the issues. I also said that reading a book does not a Muslim make. And THIS is what I just received... Thoughts, please...other than "They're pissing in their pants and grasping at straws" :)




This election could very well be decided (again) by the Supreme Court. Why? Failure to disclose sources of campaign contributions (McCain has, Obama has not). There is serious concern that Obama's getting serious support from outside of the U.S., a violation of our election laws; and, 2) voter registration fraud. Apparently, there's evidence of rampant fraud there, too, and no, this isn't Republican-issued campaign propaganda. It's source (to me) is Investor's Business Daily, a respected daily business-oriented newspaper, and yes, the New York Times, as well as the liberal New Yorker.

The mortgage mess began thirty years ago during the Carter years when, in 1977, Congress passed the Community Reinvestment Act, which had a noble, if flawed, purpose: to get more people into home ownership. Banks were given CRA 'scores' and their CRA scores determined their treatment by the feds for all kinds of things. So the banks set to work loaning money in the ghettos and other substandard areas and to people with shaky credit histories, often with little or no proof of income or assets. (no doc loans) Banks would not have done this on their own; it's a total violation of time-honored sound lending principles and regulations in place since the 1930's.

The problem grew worse under Clinton, when Congress loosened up restrictions on lenders even further. It also repealed the Glass-Steagall Act (passed during the 1930's depression) which kept banks and investment banks ('Wall St.') separated. Banks and other lenders (think Countrywide) began lending to NINJA borrowers (NINJA= No Income, No Job, or Assets); Wall Street began buying up these shoddy loans and repackaging them as securities. Nobody apparently knew or cared to know what they were buying. Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac bought billions of dollars worth. It should be noted that the four biggest recipients of Freddie Mac and Fannie Mae campaign contributions were: Senators Chris Dodd, John Kerry, Barack Obama, and Hillary Clinton. Massachusetts' Barney Frank is up there on the list, too. Dodd is the chairman of the Senate Banking Committee; Frank has a similar position in the House. Yes, they held hearings into 'abuses' but nothing got done. Video footage is circulating of these congressional members brushing off charges of problems and abuse. Also included should be Rep. Maxine Waters and others in the congressional black caucus. In this footage, their lack of concern is appalling.

As a result of irresponsible (some say predatory) lending, home prices flew into the stratosphere (putting home ownership out of the reach of many) and setting us up for the eventual collapse of the system which has now come. Because many borrowers borrowed and paid too much for their homes, many (1,300 a day, now, in California alone) are now in foreclosure. This problem has not come about due to a lack of regulation but the government's intentional, willful directives to the lending industry to ignore time honored, sound lending practices.

Who is hurt? The very people that congress was trying to help. Who will hurt in the long run? We all will. We'll end up paying to bail out Fannie Mae, Freddie Mac, (quasi-government? Bullshit. They were private companies!) and others as congress tries to buy its way out of this mess. We'll pay through higher taxes (coming, no matter who is elected), and inflation (which means that the government "starts the printing presses" and prints more money, devaluing savings and retirement accounts and the purchasing power of fixed incomes). We'll also 'pay' because of a tightening of lending practices. The credit card in your wallet which formerly may have had a $10,000 spending limit may soon be reduced to $2,000 or even less. Banks are already doing this; credit card debt, also practically out-of-control, is widely regarded as the next ticking time bomb.

No, I'm not making this up. I've been reading it, with interest, from a variety of astute sources. The people who now claim to have the solutions are the very ones who helped to cause this problem. Yes, Wall Street can be faulted for its usual greed. Wall Street was enabled by an over eager, willing, and compliant congress.

John McCain, in 2004, tried to sound the alarm. He was blown off. Barack Obama, before he was a Senator, was a lawyer working for ACORN, an activist group promoting the very abomination of lending practices which have gotten us into this expensive mess.

If you still want to vote for this smooth talker, go right ahead. Just be aware of who is telling the truth. Certainly George 'Dubya' Bush has been a big disappointment. Nobody wants another four years of him. To think, howerer, that McCain want to simply extend the Bush years and legacies is to belive pure political propaganda. McCain wants to distance himself from Bush as fast and as firmly as possible. The last guy who wants to extend a war is one who spent a five year 'vacation' in the Hanoi Hilton.

This may not change how you vote. It should at least piss you off that you've been duped into paying for something by the same legislative Messiahs who now want your ballots.

A lot of serious questions need to be asked. Congress has much mud on its face and there's plenty to go around. About the last thing Congress wanted was to have this mess blow up just before elections. Hopefully, there will be hearings, some resignations, and perhaps even some well deserved jail terms. Some in congress, for the campaign dollars they've pockets and the influence it has bought, should be included in the list of those under indictment. But it's not all Wall Street and it's sure not all Bush.

There, I said it and will say it again.


They're pissing in their pants and grasping at straws"

That is all. They have lost and will now just throw anything.

Love the jump from Carter to Clinton. I seem to remember something happening in between them.

is that they seem to be signalling an intention to challenge the election results in the Supreme Court because of some bullshit campaign financing issue.

If we let that happen, a McCain presidency is assured - remember the court now is even more right-wing than it was in 2000!

of the presidency, vice presidency, Supreme Court, and Congress the last 8 years and nothing was done it seems to shut them up. Tell them everything he said is just the latest republican talking point to point fingers at someone who was president how many years ago?? It can't be the party that has had the power since the year 2000 fault *rolls eyes*

None. Zip. Zero.

There is something wrong with civics education in this country.

First off, every month, all donations are reported to the federal election commission. Basically, it is a huge spreadsheet with all of the donation information on it.

You can look up this data yourself at opensecrets.org.

Secondly, every statute consists of saying something like "If you do X, the penalty is Y". There is no campaign finance law in which "Y" is "we undo the election".

Yes, people can be fined, imprisoned, and all sorts of things for violating campaign finance laws and, yes, in order to prosecute an elected president for a crime, the process is impeachment. But, no, it doesn't change the result of an election.


This is just nonsense.

loosened restrictions. That damn Democratic congress!

Yeah, whenever they try and bash Clinton and get all "but but but he repealed glass-steagall" on you just ask them:

"Oh, was that part of Newt Gingrich's 'Contract with America'? Or was it a different Senator, seeing as how the Republicans controlled congress AND senate during the duration of Clinton's term..."

to dispute the shit.

I'm vague about the whole Fannie/Freddie thing, too, but in my mind nearly every one is at fault, so it's just a big clusterfuck, with no one person (and certainly no one party) left unscathed.

Still, here are very direct Bush statements which detract from the Democrat-only assaults being hurled:


These are statements from Bush, from the official white house website. This from the president who, instead of calling for us to sacrifice after 9/11, tells us to go shopping.

March 2004
http://www.whitehouse.gov/news/releases/2004/03/2004032...
One other thing I've done, is I've called on private sector mortgage banks and banks to be more aggressive about lending money to first-time home buyers. And the response has been really good. There's a lot of people in this -- our communities around the country that deeply care about the issue of homeownership, and they've been responsive.




August 2007

http://www.whitehouse.gov/news/releases/2007/08/2007083...
First, we're going to work to modernize and improve the Federal Housing Administration -- that's known as the FHA. The FHA is a government agency that provides mortgage insurance to borrowers through a network of private sector lenders. Sixteen months ago I sent Congress an FHA modernization bill that would help more homeowners qualify for this insurance by lowering down-payment requirements, by increasing loan limits and providing more flexibility in pricing. These reforms would allow the FHA to reach families that need help, those with low incomes and less-than-perfect credit records or little savings.

The democrats voted this down, which is a good thing.

And how they give more money to whoever is in power at the moment. While the Repubs were in charge of Congress, they raked it in. Since the Democrats have been on top, FMx2 has been giving more to them - though not as much as they used to give to the Repubs. http://www.opensecrets.org/news/2008/09/update-fannie-mae-and-freddie.html

maybe you would consider him, but he has been jerking around like a sock in the wind. If he knew what to do about the economy he should have shown it and prevented this disaster,and if he knows how to get Bin Laden(like he says) and where he is, and he hasn't got it done, he is a traitor.

YOU think about that and then think who has held a steady hand on the wheel and worked with the best economic minds in this country( who support Barack) and who will be there to steady this country so we don't jump out of windows and McCain/Palin and their foolishness seems far away and harmful.

Step aside and let a person lead who will do his best for you and me and not ride these incoherent
waves of straws and fraud.

1. Campaign Finance -

No, campaign finance laws are not a basis to "undo" an election, or even challenge the validity of one. There are penalties for violating campaign finance laws, and none of those penalties are "you don't win the election". The Obama campaign reports its monthly finances to the Federal Election Campaign. Can people sign up and make donations on the website using fake names or addresses? Yes. Is that detected and dealt with appropriately? Yes. Do you think those are really "Obama supporters" making those donations? No. McCain campaign operatives are purposefully making improper donations, so that when the monthly report is published, they can "find" them and say "Aha - improper donations!" It is a stupid game.

2. Voter registration fraud -

Every state administers its own election system. In many states volunteers can obtain registration forms and sign up other people to vote. However, in states that permit it, if you are a volunteer, you MUST turn in ALL the forms you have collected - whether people filled them out improperly or not. You are not ALLOWED to withhold forms that you've asked people to fill out. Accordingly, yes, a lot of volunteer organizations turn in forms with incorrect or improper data on them because, frankly, if you are the kind of person who "registers to vote" after three beers at the state fairgrounds, then odds are that you might have screwed up the form.

These "accusations" are normal election season garbage.

this election is just far too important...and I am sincerely sickened that we are at this point of hate...

not some radical Muslim, which is what they want you to believe, based solely on the title and how the author's name sounds. Of course, the Freepers are outraged by the title and don't have a clue who Zakaria is or what they are talking about. Ask your friend if he has ever even seen the guy on This Week or CNN or in Newsweek. Ask him if he even knows what the book is about.




Here is the Amazon.com review of the book:
http://www.amazon.com/Post-American-World-Fareed-Zakaria/dp/039306235X/ref=pd_bbs_sr_1?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1223589237&sr=8-1

Book Description
"This is not a book about the decline of America, but rather about the rise of everyone else." So begins Fareed Zakaria's important new work on the era we are now entering. Following on the success of his best-selling The Future of Freedom, Zakaria describes with equal prescience a world in which the United States will no longer dominate the global economy, orchestrate geopolitics, or overwhelm cultures. He sees the "rise of the rest"—the growth of countries like China, India, Brazil, Russia, and many others—as the great story of our time, and one that will reshape the world. The tallest buildings, biggest dams, largest-selling movies, and most advanced cell phones are all being built outside the United States. This economic growth is producing political confidence, national pride, and potentially international problems. How should the United States understand and thrive in this rapidly changing international climate? What does it mean to live in a truly global era? Zakaria answers these questions with his customary lucidity, insight, and imagination.


Here is the Publisher's Weekly review:

From Publishers Weekly
Starred Review. When a book proclaims that it is not about the decline of America but the rise of everyone else, readers might expect another diatribe about our dismal post-9/11 world. They are in for a pleasant surprise as Newsweek editor and popular pundit Zakaria (The Future of Freedom) delivers a stimulating, largely optimistic forecast of where the 21st century is heading. We are living in a peaceful era, he maintains; world violence peaked around 1990 and has plummeted to a record low. Burgeoning prosperity has spread to the developing world, raising standards of living in Brazil, India, China and Indonesia. Twenty years ago China discarded Soviet economics but not its politics, leading to a wildly effective, top-down, scorched-earth boom. Its political antithesis, India, also prospers while remaining a chaotic, inefficient democracy, as Indian elected officials are (generally) loathe to use the brutally efficient tactics that are the staple of Chinese governance. Paradoxically, India's greatest asset is its relative stability in the region; its officials take an unruly population for granted, while dissent produces paranoia in Chinese leaders. Zakaria predicts that despite its record of recent blunders at home and abroad, America will stay strong, buoyed by a stellar educational system and the influx of young immigrants, who give the U.S. a more youthful demographic than Europe and much of Asia whose workers support an increasing population of unproductive elderly. A lucid, thought-provoking appraisal of world affairs, this book will engage readers on both sides of the political spectrum. (May)
Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

And here is a link to a discussion of the book by Thomas Friedman and Fareed Zakaria:

http://www.amazon.com/gp/feature.html?docId=1000284751#FriedZak

I heard someone going on about this on a CBC talk show a few weeks ago using these exact same talking points - word for word.

Are these people living in Oz? Pay no attention to that man behind the curtain!

of any other Democrats. I'm surprised Nancy Pelosi wasn't in his list.

The Community Reinvest Act has nothing to do with the current mortgage meltdown. That explanation is both (not so) subtly racist and profoundly ignorant.

Blame Greenspan for lowering interest rates to the point where the international pool of money had to look outside U.S. treasuries for a safe investment with a reasonable rate of return; then blame Wall Street for catering to that market by securitizing home loans as CDOs; then blame Wall Street again for convincing folks these investments were as safe as Treasuries, on the basis of outdated risk models that did not take account of the fact lending standards would have to be lowered to satisfy demand; then blame Wall Street again for actually believing its own bullsh*t and keeping the riskiest tranches (with the highest theoretical returns) for itself; then blame whoever it was that bought up credit default swaps (basically, insurance for the CDOs) without having sufficient capital to cover potential losses; then blame the corporate lawyers who popularized the use of credit default swaps to allow undercapitalized buyers to obtain those swaps, while flying under the radar of insurance regulators; then blame the regulators for letting that happen.

Banks lent to folks with no or low qualifications not because they wanted to increase homeownership among poor black and Latino communities (is he seriously that f*cking stupid?), but because everybody was making boatloads of money off the CDOs, the banks got paid no matter what (because they sold the loans to Wall Street), the return on Treasuries sucked (see above), and large investors (including sophisticated institutional investors, who should have known better than to put people's pensions in this sh*t) wanted to buy more. To get more, lending standards had to be lowered (but the bankers' risk models didn't change). When lending standards were lowered, it increased demand. When supply can't keep pace with demand, prices rise. And when the demand side can borrow 100% of the money it is risking, they REALLY go up, until someone wakes up and realizes the fundamentals suck.

Glass-Seagall was repealed by the Gramm-Leach-Bliley Act (three Republicans, among whom is McCain's chief economic adviser), passed by a Republican Congress, and only after the Greenspan-headed Federal Reserve had been chipping away at it for years. Greenspan was instrumental in getting Glass-Seagall repealed. Shame on President Clinton for signing the bill into law, and on Bob Rubin, late of Goldman Sachs, for advising him to do so.

A little knowledge is a dangerous thing. To read this fool's email, you'd think that Republicans were pushing for regulations, fought the repeal of Glass-Seagall (are you friggin' kidding me!?!?!), and that if it weren't for the poor n*ggers and sp*cs living in million dollar mansions on welfare, we'd all be fine. What an uninformed, racist idiot.