Clipmarks | jklugman's Comments

Palin Goes After Obama-Ayers Connection

Sun, 05 Oct 2008 06:27:36 GMT

clipped by: merrie
clipper's remarks: Gov. Sarah Palin unleashed a new attack on Sen. Barack Obama, accusing him of "palling around with terrorists" for his association with former 1960s radical William Ayers. The Obama campaign immediately denounced the attack as "shameless" and "offensive."

"Americans need to know this."

Palin cited a front-page article in today’s New York Times that explored the ties between Obama and Ayers. Obama had served on a charity board with Ayers in Chicago during the mid-90s, and Ayers was present at an organizing meeting in 1995 to kick off Obama's first election campaign for the Illinois State Senate.

"There has been a lot of interest in what I read, and what I read lately well, was reading my copy of today’s New York Times and I was really interested to read about Barack's friends from Chicago," Palin said. "OK, now I get to bring this up not to pick a fight, but it was there in the New York Times, so we're gonna talk about it.

Clip Source: blogs.abcnews.com

Palin for the first time raised Obama’s connection to Ayers, one of the founding members of the Weather Underground, a '60s radical group that took credit for bombing attacks around the country, including explosions set off at the Pentagon and U.S. Capitol.

"Our opponent, though, is someone who sees America, it seems, as being so imperfect, imperfect enough that he's palling around with terrorists who would target their own country,"

"And it turns out one of Barack’s earliest supporters is a man who according to the New York Times, and are they ever wrong, according to the New York Times was a domestic terrorist and part of a group of that, quote, pushed a campaign of bombings that would target the Pentagon and the U.S. Capitol," Palin continued. "Wow. These are the same guys who think patriotism is paying higher taxes. This is not a man who sees America as I see America, OK?"

Tags: new york times, obama/ayers front page article, gov palin at fundraiser

Do Facts Matter?

Sun, 05 Oct 2008 03:36:43 GMT

clipped by: willhelm
clipper's remarks: "We also hear that it is the free market that is to blame. But the facts show that it was the government that pressured financial institutions in general to lend to subprime borrowers, with such things as the Community Reinvestment Act and, later, threats of legal action by then Attorney General Janet Reno if the feds did not like the statistics on who was getting loans and who wasn’t.

Is that the free market? Or do facts not matter?"

Clip Source: article.nationalreview.com

Fact Number One: It was liberal Democrats, led by Sen. Christopher Dodd and Congressman Barney Frank, who for years — including the present year — denied that Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac were taking big risks that could lead to a financial crisis.

It was Sen. Dodd, Congressman Frank, and other liberal Democrats who for years refused requests from the Bush administration to set up an agency to regulate Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac.

It was liberal Democrats, again led by Dodd and Frank, who for years pushed for Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac to go even further in promoting subprime mortgage loans, which are at the heart of today’s financial crisis.

Alan Greenspan warned them four years ago. So did the chairman of the Council of Economic Advisers to the president. So did Bush’s secretary of the Treasury, five years ago.

Yet, today, what are we hearing? That it was the Bush administration “right-wing ideology” of “de-regulation” that set the stage for the financial crisis. Do facts matter?

Did the Community Reinvestment Act cause the subprime meltdown?

Sat, 27 Sep 2008 16:45:44 GMT

clipped by: jklugman
clipper's remarks: There have been many clips here arguing that the Community Reinvestment Act (legislation forcing banks to loan in areas from which they take deposits, enacted in 1977 and strengthened in 1995) caused the subprime meltdown, because banks were forced to make loans in poor areas.

Robert Gordon shows that the CRA could not have been responsible for the subprime meltdown for two reasons:

1. Timing--CRA activity largely slowed down by 2002, yet sub-prime lending continued to intensify.
2. Lenders NOT covered by CRA played a huge role in sub-prime lending. "Half of sub-prime loans came from...mortgage companies beyon the reach of CRA...Most important, the lenders subject to CRA have engaged in less, not more, of the most dangerous lending...Independent mortgage companies...not covered by CRA, made high-price loans at more than twice the rate of the banks and thrifts."

Clip Source: www.prospect.org

First, consider timing.

In the mid-1990s, new CRA regulations and a wave of mergers led to a flurry of CRA activity, but, as noted by the New America Foundation's Ellen Seidman (and by Harvard's Joint Center), that activity "largely came to an end by 2001." In late 2004, the Bush administration announced plans to sharply weaken CRA regulations, pulling small and mid-sized banks out from under the law's toughest standards. Yet sub-prime lending continued, and even intensified -- at the very time when activity under CRA had slowed and the law had weakened.

Second, it is hard to blame CRA for the mortgage meltdown when CRA doesn't even apply to most of the loans that are behind it.

Tags: community reinvestment act, cra, subprime mortgage crisis, robert gordon

Psychopath Test

Thu, 08 Jun 2006 14:45:57 GMT

clipped by: knslyr
clipper's remarks: Are you a psychopath?

Clip Source: www.pridestomb.com

Psychopath Test

Read this question, come up with an answer and then scroll down to the
bottom for the result. This is not a trick question. It is as it reads.

No one I know has got it right.

A woman, while at the funeral of her own mother, met a guy whom she did
not know. She thought this guy was amazing. She believed him to be her
dream guy so much, that she fell in love with him right there, but never
asked for his number and could not find him. A few days later she killed

her sister.

Question: What is her motive for killing her sister?

[Give this some thought before you answer, see answer below]

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Answer:
She was hoping the guy would appear at the funeral again. If you
answered this correctly, you think like a psychopath. This was a test by
a famous American Psychologist used to test if one has the same
mentality as a killer.
Many arrested serial killers took part in the test and answered the
question correctly.

Posted by knslyr on 2006.06.08 at 06:41 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Tags: humor, psychopath test

Musim father burns Christian daughter alive

Fri, 15 Aug 2008 03:54:17 GMT

clipped by: Antara
clipper's remarks: what can you say?

Clip Source: www.worldnetdaily.com

Muslim father burns Christian daughter alive

Man slices out girl's tongue, ignites her after 'heated debate on religion'

A Saudi Arabian Muslim father cut out his daughter's tongue and lit her on fire upon learning that she had become a Christian.

The child became curious about Jesus Christ after she read Christian material online, the Gulf News reported.

Her father read of her Internet conversation, detached her tongue and burned her to death "following a heated debate on religion," according to an International Christian Concern report.

The father is employed by the muwateen, or Commission for Promotion of Virtue and Prevention of Vice. The muwateen are police tasked by the government with enforcing religious purity. The man has been taken into custody, and his identity has not been released.

Tags: religion, islam, christianity, another dead girl

Watch Obama own McCain on foreign policy

Sat, 27 Sep 2008 04:55:22 GMT

clipped by: masbury
clipper's remarks: Fluent and confident, Obama demonstrates how negotiation - even if it ultimately fails - leaves America in a stronger position than the McCain/Bush pre-conditions policy.

Clip Source: www.huffingtonpost.com

After McCain attacked him (angrily) for being open to negotiations, Barack Obama explained why negotiating is actually puts the United States in a stronger position, and why McCain's view is actually weak.

As he wrapped up his answer, Obama also hit McCain's refusal to commit to meeting with Spain -- a NATO ally.

[Video]

Tags: obama, mccain, debate, foreign policy

Palin Backs Obama's stand on launching attacks in Pakistan on terrorists

Sun, 28 Sep 2008 13:47:18 GMT

clipped by: jklugman
clipper's remarks: Go Temple!

Clip Source: www.cbsnews.com

“If the United States has al Qaeda, bin Laden, top-level lieutenants in our sights, and Pakistan is unable or unwilling to act, then we should take them out,” Obama added.

“You don’t say that out loud,” McCain said. “If you have to do things, you have to do things, and you work with the Pakistani government.”

Palin’s apparent disagreement with McCain’s position on Pakistan came as the Alaska governor was picking up a couple of cheesesteaks at Tony Luke’s in South Philadelphia. She was approached by a man wearing a Temple University t-shirt, who later identified himself as Michael Rovito.

“So we do cross-border, like from Afghanistan to Pakistan, you think?” Rovito asked.

“If that’s what we have to do stop the terrorists from coming any further in, absolutely, we should,” Palin said.

Tags: john mccain, sarah palin, barack obama, pakistan, war on terror, war-on-terror, temple university

Sarah Palin on Censorship

Sun, 14 Sep 2008 00:54:42 GMT

clipped by: DanaGarrett
clipper's remarks: Sarah Palin has the frightening quality of many who believe they are in possession of revealed, absolute truth: viz. that evidence is irrelevant when it contradicts revealed "truth." New evidence need not be considered, and toleration of it is a fault and temptation that needs to be eradicated. That's why she need not read a book she wants to ban.

Clip Source: www.nytimes.com

And she began to eye the library. For years, social conservatives had pressed the library director to remove books they considered immoral.

Witnesses and contemporary news accounts say Ms. Palin asked the librarian about removing books from the shelves. The McCain-Palin presidential campaign says Ms. Palin never advocated censorship.

But in 1995, Ms. Palin, then a city councilwoman, told colleagues that she had noticed the book “Daddy’s Roommate” on the shelves and that it did not belong there, according to Ms. Chase and Mr. Stein. Ms. Chase read the book, which helps children understand homosexuality, and said it was inoffensive; she suggested that Ms. Palin read it.

“Sarah said she didn’t need to read that stuff,” Ms. Chase said. “It was disturbing that someone would be willing to remove a book from the library and she didn’t even read it.”

List of Books the right-wing would love to Ban (but not Palin, Oh,,noooos w

Sun, 07 Sep 2008 13:20:44 GMT

clipped by: papananook
clipper's remarks: My apologies to clippers for not confirming story...but not for telling the truth about Sarah, the Queen of Lies and False conservatism. Shoot another wolf from a copturd, Queenie.

Clip Source: community.livejournal.com

Books (then) Mayor Sarah Palin tried to remove from Wasilla library. When the librarian refused to ban the books, Palin tried to get her fired. This information is taken from the official minutes of the Wasilla Library Board.

A Clockwork Orange by Anthony Burgess

A Wrinkle in Time by Madeleine L'Engle

Annie on My Mind by Nancy Garden

As I Lay Dying by William Faulkner

Blubber by Judy Blume

Brave New World by Aldous Huxley

Bridge to Terabithia by Katherine Paterson

Canterbury Tales by Chaucer

Carrie by Stephen King

Catch-22 by Joseph Heller

Christine by Stephen King

Confessions by Jean-Jacques Rousseau

Cujo by Stephen King

Daddy's Roommate by Michael Willhoite

Decameron by Boccaccio

The Living Bible by William C. Bower

To Kill A Mockingbird by Harper Lee

Twelfth Night by William Shakespeare

Webster's Ninth New Collegiate Dictionary by the Merriam-Webster

The Handmaid's Tale by Margaret Atwood

The Grapes of Wrath by John Steinbeck

The Color Purple by Alice Walker

Free-Market or Big Government, who's to blame for lending crisis?

Tue, 16 Sep 2008 17:38:05 GMT

clipped by: n2sooners

Clip Source: ibdeditorial.com

Obama in a statement yesterday blamed the shocking new round of subprime-related bankruptcies on the free-market system, and specifically the "trickle-down" economics of the Bush administration, which he tried to gig opponent John McCain for wanting to extend.

But it was the Clinton administration, obsessed with multiculturalism, that dictated where mortgage lenders could lend, and originally helped create the market for the high-risk subprime loans

Tough new regulations forced lenders into high-risk areas where they had no choice but to lower lending standards to make the loans that sound business practices had previously guarded against making. It was either that or face stiff government penalties.

President Clinton put on steroids the Community Redevelopment Act, a well-intended Carter-era law designed to encourage minority homeownership. And in so doing, he helped create the market for the risky subprime loans that he and Democrats now decry as not only greedy but "predatory."

Tags: housing, government, clinton, bush, politics

Sarah Palin is the GRANDMOTHER, not the mother [with photos]

Sun, 31 Aug 2008 22:05:30 GMT

clipped by: Spiritualmonkey

Clip Source: openthread.dailykos.com

Now, I've known liars in my life. Their single core problem is not with themselves, but those around them. If they're never called out on their twisting of truths and fabrications, they simply continue to make larger lies.

Well, Sarah, I'm calling you a liar. And not even a good one. Trig Paxson Van Palin is not your son. He is your grandson. The sooner you come forward with this revelation to the public, the better.

There could be calls below to delete this information. Calls that this type of information is muckraking and 'below us'. The truth is not below any progressive, nor any citizen of the world that is one heartbeat away from having Palin as leader of the free world. We simply ask that she be forthright, honest, and not waste our time with such juvenile games that anyone with eyes can see as fabrication.

Bristol Palin rightfully should be able to embrace her child in public as her own, with no shame, and no quarter. And a mother should be just as accepting.

Tags: sarah palin, politics, health, mccain, elections, wtf

Palin's Lawyer: Monegan Fired for 'Rogue Mentality'

Tue, 16 Sep 2008 06:41:04 GMT

clipped by: merrie
clipper's remarks: The filing includes a July 17, 2007, e-mail Palin sent to Monegan in which Palin complains that a proposal to restrict gun sales to people who make death threats would still allow her former brother-in-law, Trooper Mike Wooten, to carry a gun, despite the Palin family allegation that Wooten once threatened to kill the governor's father.

"Amazing," the e-mail says. "And he's still a trooper, and he still carries a gun, and he still tells anyone who will listen that he will 'never work for that b----' (me) because he has such anger and distain towards my family."

The papers add that even if Palin had asked the public safety commissioner to fire a state trooper "based on documented acts of violence and other improper conduct," that wouldn't violate the state Ethics Act "because the public generally shares a common interest in public order and safety."

Monegan's attorney didn't immediately return a call for comment.

September 15th, 2008 06:40 PM

Clip Source: www.adn.com

Walt Monegan lost his job as public safety commissioner because he resisted Gov. Sarah Palin's budget policies and ultimately showed "outright insubordination," say papers the governor's lawyer filed today with the state Personnel Board.

The filing includes a slew of e-mails from top Palin aides, including one from her budget director, Karen Rehfeld, saying she was "stunned and amazed" that Monegan appeared to be working with a state legislator to seek funding for a project Palin had previously vetoed.

It was Monegan's "rogue mentality" on budgeting and other policy issues that got him fired in July, not his alleged refusal to dismiss a state trooper who was involved in a messy divorce with the governor's sister, the filing says.

The papers were filed in support of the governor's request that the Personnel Board drop an ethics complaint Palin herself lodged requesting an investigation into whether she fired Monegan because of the family feud.

Tags: public safety commissioner, job separation for outright insubordination, budgeting, firearm sales, former brother-in-law trooper wooten

NYT: Palin hired cronies, pursued vendettas

Sun, 14 Sep 2008 20:06:03 GMT

clipped by: masbury
clipper's remarks: Appoints high school classmates, unqualified, to top Alaska positions. Reminds one of "You're doing a heckuva job, Brownie;" and of Dave Letterman's characterization of Bush's appointments as "No Crony Left Behind."

Clip Source: www.nytimes.com

The Wasilla City Council, with Sarah Palin, the future governor and vice-presidential nominee, at the center, in a 1998 photograph. Throughout her career, Ms. Palin has pursued vendettas, fired officials who crossed her and blurred the line between government and personal grievance.

So when there was a vacancy at the top of the State Division of Agriculture, she appointed a high school classmate, Franci Havemeister, to the $95,000-a-year directorship. A former real estate agent, Ms. Havemeister cited her childhood love of cows as a qualification for running the roughly $2 million agency.

Ms. Havemeister was one of at least five schoolmates Ms. Palin hired, often at salaries far exceeding their private sector wages

she has pursued vendettas, fired officials who crossed her and sometimes blurred the line between government and personal grievance, according to a review of public records and interviews with 60 Republican and Democratic legislators and local officials

Tags: palin, vendettas, politics

McCain's Desperation

Wed, 10 Sep 2008 16:40:40 GMT

clipped by: AtlLiberal
clipper's remarks: There are limits. For a candidate who claims that he'd rather lose a campaign than lose a war this latest McCain slime fest shows that he is the ultimate hypocrite. McCain's accusations are not even clever lies. They're just self-serving, grammar school playground lies. Are people so stupid that they'll buy this tripe?

Clip Source: www.swamppolitics.com

McCain plays dirty on Obama & sex-ed

Is Sen. John McCain against kindergartners being taught the difference between good touching and bad touching to protect children from sexual predators?

Or does the McCain campaign really have such a low opinion of Sen. Barack Obama that it actually believes he wanted to have Illinois kindergartners taught all the titillating details of human sexual anatomy.

There's another possibility, of course, that we are in the spitball phase of the campaign, where the McCain team is willing to send whatever it can Obama's way to see what sticks.

These questions are worth asking because of the McCain campaign's latest anti-Obama ad in which Obama is accused of wanting to teach "comprehensive sex education to kindergartners":

[Video]

Tags: politics, mccain, obama, sex ed

John McCain, Man of Dishonor

Sat, 13 Sep 2008 14:18:09 GMT

clipped by: jklugman

Clip Source: www.samefacts.com

McCain does it again: attacks Obama for proposing to cut a defense program that McCain himself proposed to kill.

Wait! It gets worse! The program in question is called Future Combat Systems. So McCain tried a little bit of lying-by-punning:

John McCain is launching a new line of attack against Barack Obama, criticizing his rival for saying Sunday that he would buck his own party by calling for an increase in the size of the U.S. military.

“Of course, now he wants to increase it,” McCain told an audience in Lee’s Summit, Missouri Monday. “But during the primary he told a liberal advocacy group that he’d cut defense spending by tens of billions of dollars. He promised them he would, quote, ‘slow our development of future combat systems.’”

See? Obama's opposition to a particular piece of Army pork gets turned into a desire to slow all progress in defense technology, simply by dropping the capital letters.

Tags: mark kleiman, john mccain, barack obama, hypocrisy, deception, future combat systems