4 Republicans Help Dodd (D-Countrywide) And Demos Destroy Economy And US

H.R. 4173 As Amended; Wall Street Reform and Consumer Protection Act of 2009

Let the party begin with the government supplying the cake from the week old shelf of closing bakeries everywhere. The government now owns you. Completely. Your cars, your insurance, your health, your banks and now your wallet or the lack thereof. And 4 spineless Republicans helped the government take more power while knowingly hurting you and the country.

Senate Passes Finance Bill

Biggest Regulatory Overhaul of Wall Street Since Depression Moves Closer to Law

"Simply, the American people are saying, 'you've got to protect us,' and we didn't back down from that," said Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D., Nev.). "When this bill becomes law, the joyride on Wall Street will come to a screeching halt."

But this screaming right wing radical disagrees with Harry Hasbeen:

"It will inevitably contract credit," said Sen. Judd Gregg (R., N.H.), who says the Senate bill "is probably undermining the system…probably making for a weaker system."

Yep, that's right, the government that needs a 26 page recipe to make brownies is going to regulate spending. You read that right. Congress, which couldn't balance a checkbook if their pointy little heads depended on it, are going to tell private enterprise how they must balance their checkbooks.

This is scary:

What's in the Fine Print

Key parts of the Senate bill and where it differs from the House version

Consumers

Senate version

• Consolidates responsibilities from seven agencies into a Bureau of Consumer Financial Protection within the Federal Reserve system to oversee products made available to consumers
• Limits ability of mortgage lenders to assess penalities on borrowers who pay off the loan early
• Prohibits paying brokers and loan officers more to steer borrowers to higher interest rates or certain risky features; commissions would be based on the size or number of loans originated

How House bill differs

• Oversight would be independent of the Fed and exclude insurance companies, auto dealers and accountants, among others

Investors

Senate version

• Creates Investment Advisory Committee within Securities and Exchange Commission
• Creates Office of Investor Advocate within SEC to identify problems in dealing with SEC and provide assistance
• Gives SEC the authority to grant shareholders proxy access to nominate directors
• Requires directors to win by majority vote in uncontested elections
• Gives shareholders the right to nonbinding vote on executive pay, excluding golden parachutes

How the house bill differs

• Would require institutions with assets of at least $1 billion to disclose to regulators the structures of all incentive-based compensation

Banks

Senate version

• Eliminates Office of Thrift Supervision
• Federal Reserve Board would keep oversight of largest bank holding companies
• State banks and holding companies would either be regulated by the Fed or FDIC
• National banks with less than $50 billion in assets would be under Office of the Comptroller of the Currency
• Banks would be generally barred from using their own capital to engage in speculative trades

How the house bill differs

• Preserves the Fed's and FDIC's bank-supervision roles; calls for OTS to be absorbed by the OCC

Markets

Senate version

• Hedge Funds: Requires investment advisers of hedge funds with $100 million or more in assets to register with the SEC
• Derivatives: Requires that many derivatives and overthe- counter financial products be traded on regulated platforms
• Securitizations : Requires companies that package loans into marketable securities to hold at least 5% of the credit risk
• Requires issuers to disclose more information about and analyze the quality of underlying assets

How the house bill differs

• Applies to funds with assets of $150 million or more; exempts venture-capital funds
• Exempts many end users from mandatory central clearing
• Exempts education, agriculture, veterans and small-business loans

Insurers

Senate version

• Creates Office of National Insurance within Treasury to monitor industry, recommending to the systemic-risk council insurers that should be treated as systemically important
• Office would recommend ways to modernize insurance regulation, but it is explicitly not a new regulator

How the house bill differs

• Proposes creation of a Federal Insurance Office with similar characteristics

Other Elements

Senate version

• Creates office at SEC to administer credit rating agencies' rules and practices

•  Creates Financial Stability Oversight Council, led by Treasury secretary, with nine voting members. Agency would identify systemic risks to the economy, promote market discipline and respond to emerging risks. It would also write regulations for risk-based capital, leverage and liquidity requirements

How the house bill differs

• Also creates seven-member advisory board for credit raters
• Large firms would pay into a $150 billion fund to manage the dissolution of failing firms considered systemically significant

 The 4 Republicans who voted for this atrocity to freedom are:

Scott Brown, Susan Collins, Chuck Grassley, Olympia Snowe.

Friday

Yellow Dog Democrats Are, Well, Yellow, So Are Blue Dogs

Nothing says party unity like, "Hey, he ain't my Prez." Nothing says party integrity like mere political dissembling.

Anti-Obama tack buoys some Democrats

Who says old dogs, yellow dogs and blue dogs can't learn new tricks?

"On the other hand, I think it's fair to say that one of the reasons there's so much unhappiness out there [among voters] is that the administration's policies have upset people."

How long until the DNC starts selling bumper stickers that say, "Obama sucks, Vote Democrat"?

Alcee Hastings (D-Fla) Finally Throws Support Behind Voter Identification!

I knew that a giant of integrity such as our good buddy Alcee would come around.

Rep. Alcee Hastings (D-Fla.) said Republicans were trying to stop the actual business of the House.

“First this is not American Idol or Dancing With the Stars,” Hastings said on the House floor. “This is America’s legislature. For all we know, on YouCut, Osama bin Laden could be voting. Please know that not handful of organized gotcha Republicans are going to control this legislature.”
 
Next, Alcee is going to force illegal aliens to identify themselves. You rock Alcee!

Mexico Is As Racist As Arizona!!!!!

That's it! I've got people, you know? And I'm banning them from traveling to Mexico. No more. That means no Burritos, no Margharitas, no jumping beans and no Taco Bell! No more racism from a place that profiles Anglos who just want to add to the economy of Mexico. Just like the brave mayors I am officially telling my people that there will be no more, none, IA funded travel to Mexico. Amigos? Yeah, right. Yo, Amigo, we no go!

I've also told my people there will be no more sneaking across the Rio Grande River illegally just to get free welfare and sopapillos. It's just embarrassing when they're arrested wearing Speedos. Hey people, you know who I'm talking about.

BLITZER: So if people want to come from Guatemala or Honduras or El Salvador or Nicaragua, they want to just come into Mexico, can they just walk in?"

CALDERON: No! They need to fulfill, uh, a form. They need to establish their right name. We analyze if they have not a criminal precedence.

BLITZER: Do Mexican police go around asking for papers of people they suspect are illegal immigrants?

CALDERON: Of course! Of course!

BLITZER: If somebody sneaks in from Nicaragua or some other country in Central America through the southern border of Mexico and they wind up in Mexico, they can going get a job?

CALDERON: No, no, no.

BLITZER: They can work?

CALDERON: If somebody do that without permissions, we send -- we send back them.

Anyway, who wants to hang around a bunch of racists? We'll just have to scrape by here in America without the almighty Peso. Bummer, yes I know, but wrong is wrong. No more picking their money from their trees for them. Let them do it themselves and see how much they like that!

Interesting Fact About The Empire State Building

Looking at old photographs I came across this one which I discovered is a collage (fake) of a dirigible docked atop the Empire State Building. Below the photograph is the story.

The photograph on the left evokes a Golden Age of air travel. Dirigibles would cross the Atlantic, then appear over Manhattan and glide up to the Empire State Building. After a dirigible docked at the world's tallest building, passengers would transfer from airship to skyscraper, and an elevator would whisk them to street level. Through it all, New Yorkers would be treated to the behemoth hovering overhead.

The only problem is that the photo is a fake. The artful composite illustrates nothing more than the wishful thinking of financier John. J. Raskob and former New York governor Al Smith, the pair that spearheaded the creation of the Empire State Building in the late 1920s. Previously,the building was to top out at the 85th floor, with a flat roof. But the story goes that Raskob looked at a scale model one day and declared, "It needs a hat." After all, the rival Chrysler Building was crowned with a distinctive stainless steel spire.

Unadorned, the Empire State project would reach higher than the Chrysler, but only by few feet. The addition conceived by Raskob's team would add another 200 feet-and it would serve more than a mere ornamental function. It would become a unique airport in the sky.

With legendary showmanship, Al Smith extolled the building taking shape, including its airship-docking role. The press chimed in with talk of "a sensational new era in the history of aviation." By opening day, May 1,1931, the masonry structure sported a cylindrical mooring mast, done up in chrome-nickel steel and faceted glass.

The Empire State Building was completed on time and under budget. Yet for such a well-thought-out building, it was remarkably unprepared for its role as aviation pioneer. Granted, the building's framework was stiffened against the 50-ton pull of a moored dirigible, some of the winch equipment for pulling in arriving ships was installed, and the 86th floor was readied with space for a departure lounge and customs ticket offices. The builder's lawyers even prepared a thick brief, arguing, amongst other things, that owners of neighboring buildings could not sustain a claim of trespass when they found dirigibles overhead. But no one worked out one other problem: wind. The steel-and-glass canyons of Manhattan are an airship captain's nightmare of shifting air currents. Raskob and Smith were inviting the unwieldy craft to come in low and slow, over hazards such as the menacing Chrysler Building spire, and somehow tie up without use of a ground crew. Then, too, if the crew released ballast to maintain pitch control, a torrent of water would cascade onto the streets below. And once secured, a dirigible could be tethered only at the nose, with no ground lines to keep it steady.

Passengers would have to make their way down a stinging gangway, nearly a quarter mile in the air, onto a narrow open walkway near the top of the mast. After squeezing through a tight door, they would have to descend two steep ladders inside the mast before reaching the elevators. "Can you see some of the 75-year-old dowager doing that?" asks Alexander Smirnoff, the current telecommunications director of the building, as he stands on that walkway.

Confronted with such daunting realities, Smith dispensed bland assurances that "there must be some way to work that thing out." He insisted that the US Navy was a partner in the project and its dirigible Los Angeles would dock at the mast. But the navy remained mum. The most it did was allow one of its smaller airships to hover nearby one day at the request of a newsreel company.

Passenger airship service was the province of Germany's Zeppelin Company, and its head, Hugo Eckener, did not hide his skepticism. That's fortunate for New York. Just imagine if the hydrogen-filled Hindenburg had exploded over midtown Manhattan instead of Lakehurst, New Jersey.

Eventually, the press' initial enthusiasm for the docking scheme began giving way to concerns about risk. A Philadelphia newspaper wrote, "Basically the proposal to dock transatlantic airships...hangs on the highly dubious contention that the saving of an hour's time to thirty or forty travelers is of more importance than the assured safety of thousands of citizens on the streets below."

One small airship did drop a long rope to the mast and held on from a distance for a precarious three minutes, and another delivered a bundle of newspapers by rope. After that, the effort was quietly abandoned. But the mast remained, and it eventually became an asset, turning out to be a spectacular radio and television transmitter. It also provided two popular and lucrative observation decks. And it gave the Empire State Building an unforgettable profile.

Finally, the mast became an enduring symbol of human folly. John Tauranac, author of The Empire State Building: The Making of a Landmark, called the airship plan "the looniest building scheme since the Tower of Babel."

-Lester A. Reingold
Air & Space Smithsonian, July 2000

Why Not Ohio? Spain Admits Its Green Hoax

“Spain admits that the green economy as sold to Obama is a disaster.”