J's Cafe Nette

Archive for September 29th, 2008

Glenn Reynolds at Instapundit is someone I respect.

If he trusts this information from one of his readers then I believe it is worthy of note.

Nah–no media bias..none at all.

The Anchoress offers this:

I suppose this is why print media and the press in general don’t care about their tumbling revenues; when The Pelosi gets the regulated internet and restricted Congress that she wants, and Obama gets his thugs and his Justice Department monitoring, intimidating and shutting down alternative media (and the dissenting voices we’ve been told are “patriotic” when a Republican is in the White House) the incestuous mainstream press will go back to being the only game in town. Pravda West.

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I’ve got to hand it to those Democrats and Speaker Pelosi. They sure knew how to game this whole issue on the Wall Street bailout.

First, they come out smiling and announcing how they have reached a deal:

House Financial Services Chairman Barney Frank, D-Mass., center, and
House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, D-Calif., left, Secretary of the Treasury
Henry Paulson, second right, and Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid, D-
Nev., right, announce a tentative deal. (AP)
HT: For the photo above toGateway Pundit

Then, after 40% of their own members do not vote in favor of the legislation, they blame everyone but themselves:

So now Barney Frank answers for the Speaker of the House? His tone and demeanor towards his fellow House members will certainly make it easier for dialogue to begin again..sure it will.

The Speaker used a tone and showed a disdain for both the President and the opposing party today in her remarks prior to the vote (not at other times on the House floor) which I do not believe I ever remember seeing in all my years of observing Congress.

Why would she want to sabotage this legislation? In my opinion, the answer is simple. The longer this remains an issue in front of the public and the press is hammering away at it, the more she believes it helps Barack Obama and Democrats in Congress running for re-election.

Frankly, I am reaching the point where I just don’t care anymore. Will it really make any difference who is elected to any of these offices come November?

Obviously, all the decency and honesty is evaporating faster than a bowl of jello set over an open flame.

I concede, Obama good, McCain, bad..Democrats, perfect..Republicans..unpatriotic, crybabies.

Think I’ll just go off and have a good cry now and maybe take down my American Flag. After all, wouldn’t want anyone to think I really jumped ship.

What shameful behavior on the part of our elected officials (and The Speaker in particular),when they hold the future of so many Americans in their hands.

Update: An Absolute Must Hear!! HT:Johnny Dollars Place

The best explanation on this vote I have heard yet! Listen to Karl Rove explain how the legislation was killed on the floor of the House.

Welcome, Anchoress readers.

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After calling House Republicans unpatriotic for not attending a meeting they never knew about and then getting on the floor today to make a partisan speech, it seems the “unpatriotic” Republicans joined quite a few of the “unpatriotic” Democrats in opposing the bailout bill. Final vote total: 205-228. Seems the extra dozen votes she could have received if she hadn’t been so partisan would have passed it for her.

Opponents said part of the reason for the opposition from Republicans was what they termed a partisan speech by House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, said one GOP source. House Minority Whip Roy Blunt said he thinks Republicans could have provided a dozen more votes had Pelosi not given her speech. [Emphasis mine.]

Pelosi had said that Congress needed to pass the bill, even though it was an outgrowth of the “failed economic policies” of the last eight years.

“When was the last time someone asked you for $700 billion?” she asked. “It is a number that is staggering, but tells us only the costs of the Bush administration’s failed economic policies — policies built on budgetary recklessness, on an anything goes mentality, with no regulation, no supervision, and no discipline in the system.”

House Republican Conference Chairman, Rep. Adam Putnam, R-Fla., said “he was disappointed that the process that yielded a bipartisan approach took a very marked, partisan tone at the end of the debate.”

This is not a partisan crisis, this is an economic crisis,” said Deputy Minority Whip Rep. Eric Cantor, who said that 94 Democrats also refused to go along with the bill. He described the vote as the result of “Speaker Pelosi’s failure to listen and failure to lead.”

Pelosi said that Republicans have not received the message from the White House that bipartisanship was needed.

“We delivered on our side of the bargain,” Pelosi said, congratulating Democratic leaders for getting 60 percent of the caucus to support the White House bill. “We extend a hand of cooperation to the White House, to the Republicans so we can get this issue resolved”

95 of her Democrats voted against the bill, along with 66 Republicans.

With all the documentation we have given you over the past couple of days as to how this mess began in the first place, it seems we don’t want the same people who got us here to try to get us out.

Pelosi made a mistake of gigantic proportions if she wanted this bill to pass. She should have stayed in her office and not said a thing and could have picked up enough votes to pass the legislation.

Her whip should have counted noses. She has enough Democrats in the House to pass anything she wishes to get passed, but even her own party went against her. Maybe they don’t trust Barney Frank to do the negotiations now either.

It is ludicrous to try to blame the president for the financial mess this country is in as far as this crisis goes since the record clearly shows it was Democratic House members who put in the faulty rules and refused to regulate Freddie and Fannie as long as seven years ago.

I think her days as Speaker are numbered, whoever is in charge of the next House.

I get no satisfaction from this outcome, except I hope the next bill will be negotiated by different people and be a truly bi-partisan bill from beginning to speeches in the debate.

Let’s see how they spin this now. I started to watch when she was speaking and got so disgusted I just turned it off and walked away.

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A Presidential candidate or a character in a steamy romance novel.

Which best describes the following sentence?

The rain pouring down, his jacket off, his white dress-shirt clinging to his body,…..

Geeze, if it was the romance novel at least I could put it down and walk away. On the other hand, I’m not one of those “young people” anymore so maybe it is true…maybe I just don’t understand:

“Sometimes the skies look cloudy and it’s dark. And you think the rains will never pass,” Obama preached, “The young people understand that the clouds -– these too will pass, that a brighter day will come.”

Only five more weeks folks, five more weeks.

HT:Drudge

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This is scary. My husband has a degree in accounting and could never explain so I could understand why the market crashed in 1929.

After the last couple of weeks I’m learning more about economics than I care to know.

The AP notes the President spoke to the nation today and Senators Dodd and Gregg appeared on some morning shows to explain the package as written.

By the way, if you want to read all 106 pages of the bill in PDF format you can get it here. I’m going to try to save it to my desktop so I can absorb it as I go along. Here’s hoping nothing else gets thrown in during conference.

Bush argued that jittery U.S. taxpayers will benefit from a number of safeguards that lawmakers wrote into the pending legislation during weekend negotiations on Capitol Hill, including checks and balances on the operation of the program.

The president spoke shortly after two leading players in the Hill bargaining went on television news shows to urge passage, even as both acknowledged the necessity of this action represents a sad day for the nation.

Asked if the compromise bill indeed will go through Congress, Sen. Chris Dodd, D-Conn., replied: “We hope so.”

But the Connecticut senator, chairman of the Banking Committee, also said the bill is not a panacea for all the problems that have bedeviled the U.S. financial markets. He also said, though, that failure to act would spread the contagion of frozen credit markets even further. “This is not just about Wall Street,” Dodd said. He said that it’s “potentially going to hurt other people across the country.”

Sen. Judd Gregg, R-N.H., who represented fellow Republicans in the weekend talks, called it a “tourniquet” for the ailing financial industry and slow-moving economy.

The latest assessments of prospects for passage came as investors worldwide and in early trading in the United States continued to show doubt about whether the bill would go through, much less go a long way toward curing the systemic problems that have unnerved financial markets across the globe for weeks.

The House was slated to vote later Monday on the deeply unpopular rescue package for the stressed financial industry. Bush on Sunday conceded this was a difficult vote in an election year – and repeated that sentiment in his statement Monday morning.

But he called a vote for the bill “a vote to prevent economic damage” to communities across the country.

He also said the legislation addresses the root cause of the problem – “assets related to home mortgages that have lost value during the housing decline.”

And the president noted that under provisions of the pending bill, “the federal government will be authorized to purchase these assets” and said that will help financial institutions to resume lending to individuals and businesses.

“I know many Americans are worried about the cost of the bill,” Bush said. But he also said the nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office and the federal Office of Management and Budget expect that the “ultimate cost to the taxpayer” will be much less.

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