Drew Dowdell

Correct. He is just opening up the healthcare program offered to federal employees to everyone. You'll still need to pay to play unless you are the most destitute out there.... which basically is happening already anyway.

If you're going to do Socialism, at least give the money to the poor people. To quote Dodgefan, "It's not so much that I care about what you're doing, it's the stupid way you're doing it." Actually, there were a lot of people who were duped by mortgage brokers and real estate agents. There were papers slipped in at the last minute and signatures that "magically" jumped from document to document. That isn't to say there weren't dumb consumers.... but fraud in the industry was rampant. This is the deregulation I was speaking to earlier. Mortgage brokers sold bad loans to people who were fraudulently representing their income to the banks. The banks would then package up a group of these mortgages into financial funds and sell the fund to some other institution. At this point, the visibility of who the mortgages are written to disappears. These funds would get traded around to other institutions, portioned out, repackaged with others, and resold. The funds were then rated as AAA by the financial ratings agencies....because these securities are backed by real estate and real estate never goes down in value.... "they aren't making more land" <insert cheesy salesman laugh here>. Now if you're a bank and you KNOW you're going to package these mortgages up and sell them to some poor schmuck who walks by, what do you care if the mortgage was based on fraud? Now you get a new job and start filling out the 401k paperwork and see this highly rated fund that's backed with real estate. Sounds like a good thing to bank your retirement on...right? Well, lots of people did. Government and Corporate were in it together. We probably wouldn't be where we are if there hadn't been a concerted effort <NAFTA> to keep the wages of the middle and lower classes down. I'm not saying this was a cause, but the situation wouldn't be nearly as dire had wages kept up with inflation.

Oh no.... as a kid I went by Andy... by my very late teens, I was Andrew... and for the past 10 years or so, I've been Drew. I am now ineligible for elected office?

Just imagine for a moment if it were the black candidate in this election, rather than the white candidate, who was born in Central America, was an indifferent churchgoer, had graduated near the bottom of his university class, had dumped his first wife, had regularly displayed an explosive and profane temper, and had referred to the Pakistani-Iraqi border ...

So, you're more pissed at the guy who is friends with the foxes than the guy who was paid to pick the lock on the hen house and let the foxes in....... got it. edit: Oh yeah, and this was the 3rd time the foxes got in and ate all the chickens.

Rizzo? wouldn't have been able to do any of it without the deregulation John McCain and Phil Gramm provided. It wasn't millionaires* getting the sub-prime loans btw. Gramm promptly retired at the end of his term and became a well paid lobbyist for one of the banks that helped write the legislation. *Mostly... I'm sure you can find a few who did.... but millionaires aren't generally defined as "sub-prime". The buddy-loans were mostly sweet deals at low interest rates, not mortgages made on fraudulent data to people unable to repay.

BUT BUT!!!!! THAT"S SOCIALISM!!!@#!@!! **SPUTTER** *SPITTLE*** We're privatizing the gains and socializing the losses. This is the biggest robbery of the American public ever orchestrated.

Some even use lies to try and accelerate themselves.

Dragon Naturally Speaking It's like $350.... surely a man with 7.... 9..... 11? houses can afford it.

Thanks to McCain for what? All he did was say "+1" when Bush proposed it.

Uhm...if you haven't been paying attention, we just socialized the two biggest mortgage companies, the two remaining investment banks, and the worlds largest insurance company.

You know that there are now website up just to keep track of the lies McCain and Palin are passing out... right?

Considering Fannie and Freddie both got where they are today because of John McCain and pals, I can understand they may be less willing to donate to McCain.

Well.. to be more specific, they're looking into if "naked" short selling should be illegal. Naked short selling (for those who don't know) is the practice of selling a stock short without first borrowing the shares or ensuring that the shares can be borrowed as is done in a conventional short sale. When the seller does not then obtain the shares within the required time frame, the result is known as a "fail to deliver". However, the transaction generally continues to sit open until the shares are acquired by the seller or the seller's broker, allowing a trade to occur when the order is filled. It's the process of selling something you don't have. And yes, it's the lack of regulation. The Gramm-Leach-Bliley act allowed conflicts of interest to evolve. Please read this whole article carefully. It shows John McCain at the heart of the S&L Crisis, Keating 5, Enron, and todays mess.

Oh nooo! Someone who was CEO in the 90s of a company that is failing today got a cheap loan from a buddy!

Uhm.... this is based on what exactly? The idea that "most" small business owners make over $250,000 a year is laughable at best.

I'd like to point out that the crisis we're in is not one of liquidity but on of solvency. If you're Lehman Bros./etc and you've already lost so much money that you're insolvent, you're not going to be paying any taxes anyway. A tax cut won't help you. The only way to stop this mess is to stop the foreclosures in the middle and lower classes. Once that shows signs of stabilizing, the pressure will come off the banks. Lowering the taxes on the middle and lower class will help them to better be able to pay their mortgage, thus the rich investors will get a return on their money. The rich will have to wait a few cycles, but they'll eventually get the money anyway.

Don't even have a car anymore.....

He's basing it on an incorrect assumption because he was fooled by percentages. The rich have gotten richer while the poor <and middle class> have gotten poorer. Tax brackets have adjusted upwards but wages have been stagnant or deflating.

Protectionism? Like trillions of dollars in bailouts? Or maybe Obama is getting a bounce because Americans realize that McCain was part of the deregulation that helped cause this mess in the first place... and that McCain has the author of the deregulation bill as his economic advisor. Actually, I'm more inclined to believe that the dip in that graph was McCain's bounce and now things are returning back to the statistical "norm". Palin's luster is wearing off substantially as she's gone from a +17 favorable rating to a -1 favorable rating in just 7 days.

All GM has to do is take the Malibu and add what it learned from the CTS.

Forgive me Reg, but where are you seeing the cheap interior plastic?

In what way can't Buick not be in the same league as the ES or MKS? This is a LOT more car than a Camry XLE or Avalon. ES and Avalon are Camry based, MKZ is Fusion based, MKS is Taurus based.

Now that's what I call a bounce!

1,000,000 plug in hybrids on the road by 2015 shouldn't be difficult at all. If GM, Honda, Ford, and Toyota each produce 100,000 per year, they'd hit the mark in 2.5 years. There are plenty of people who want to buy plug in hybrids, they may not be members of this board, but they're out there. Remember, not everyone is a car enthusiast.