I didn't say he blindly supports Bush.

• Old news but worth remembering - American Woman
  • Spurious clap trap without a shred of truth. Nattering nabobs busy again. - Writer
    • PNAC.... - Lurker
    • I beg to differ, try looking it up - Carla
      • Gasp spurt holy schnikies batman, it's all conjecture. - Writer
        • Try looking it up. To call something - Carla
          • wow the holidays must not be kind to you - rr
            • Well lets see - Carla
              • Very sorry for your loss Carla. - PK
              • Very sorry for your loss but - rr
              • What makes you think we don't have that? - Writer
                • What a wonderful way to show your *compassionate* - American Woman
                  • And I was supposed to know this how exactly? - Writer
                  • Was not aware of Carla's loss, but your response was completely uncalled for - rr
                    • The essence of their outrage is hijacked by just plain hatred. - Writer
                      • Go back 5 years... - Lurker
                        • -- - No
                          • Let me clarify it for you. - Lurker
                            • You have just proved the point I made below - rr
                              • Just for the record - Carla
                                • Again, Carla I'm sorry if I hurt your feelings - rr
                                  • Bush releases Hijacker Sought by U.S. - PK
                                    • Germany released him, OUR state department up in arms - rr
                                    • Get real, I read the entire article. Bush had NOTHING to do with it! - CeeCee
                                    • Looks more like Germany wouldn't give 'em up to the US. nm - Democrat
                                      • This story was on Scarborough Country - PK
                                        • Scarborough has not always supported Bush. SM - CeeCee
                                          • I didn't say he blindly supports Bush. - PK
                                            • Your exact words.... - CeeCee
                                              • Yeah? So what? - PK
                                                • No, what I don't care for is people who won't own up to what they said. - CeeCee
                                                  • Has it crossed your "mind" that Bush - huh?
                                                  • Just because YOU say Scarborough - PK
                                                    • Just to prove my point, from Crooks and Liars website. sm - CeeCee
                                                      • This proves only 2 things. - PK
                                                    • As a matter of fact, yes I do watch him and you are a liar. sm - CeeCee
                                                      • No, my dear, YOU are the liar. - PK
                                                        • Wow, did I say Liar. I really meant sm - CeeCee
                                                • What a pompus... - rr
                                                  • And you're a stupid moronic idiotic - LOL!
                                                    • Good grief. sm - CeeCee
                                                      • Blah blah blah - whine whine whine - LOL!
                                                        • One would have to have a certain level of intelligence to be bored. sm - CeeCee
                                                  • Instead of crashing our board and calling us names, - PK
                                        • I agree it's outrageous that guy is still drawing breath - rr
                                  • Those set free - PK
                                    • I just quick read this but - rr
                                • Bush damage - JJ
                              • Why do you come here at all? - This is the *liberal* board.
                    • How could you NOT be aware of it? - American Woman
                      • You need to take several deep breaths - rr
                        • It wouldn't matter what we said. - Writer
                          • Writer, in case you do see this - rr
          • LOL!!! Merry Christmas! - Writer

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As much as you want to blame Bill Clinton......don't forget who held the reins for the last 8 years......who let them run amuck? Why was nothing done?

Check out the mortgage failures.
Tell me which failed more, prime or subprime
Tell me what is the rate of failures under the CRA or even Bush's ADDI (which i attack alll the time)
Once again, REALITY AND THE DATA doesn't fit ya'lls claims.

Basically what happened was.. we reformed bankruptcy laws.. so that people who ran into dire straights could not restructure.

We packaged the loans into commodity derivatives. These are sorta mirror bets on the loans. Sorta..as the same loan will be sold many times in many derivative packages.. that's why the housing derivatives are worth more than all the real estate in the US. Derivatives are actually not that bad.. when a market is stable and only has to deal with natural forces. The housing market was bubbled.. partially due to low interest rates that encouraged everyone to buy, even the rich, and partially due to the CRA and the ADDI.. which did add customers to the market (helping form the bubble was the extent the CRA and the ADDI had in this mess)

All it took was a few failures to pop the bubble..and make real estate prices drop,. and mind you, it was mainly prime loans (READ not loans given to poor people and not loans under the CRA) that failed. The derivative market.,.which like I said, is really mirrors of the same loans.. cause the defaults to explode with ten times the ferocity, because one loan could effect the price of dozens of derivatives.

Really the poor and even irresponsible people .. simply did not have the economic ability to cause this mess. Pool all their money together and waste it on hookers.. it would have zero effect without help from the rich elites and their magnifying packaged derivatives.

THE CRA and ADDI both had stricter requirements than loans you got from normal banks.. both required income data.. where many prime loans did not.. they also greatly limited you on how much home you could purchase..whereas private banks did not care if you tried to buy something you could not afford.
Don't believe me?.. Look in the phone book.. call your own housing authority - you can get a loan for 106% the purchase price of a home even today.. if you're poor enough.
 

Ask to hear the red tape and hoops you must go through.. Heck, it is probably easier to just get a real job and earn real money than go through the FHA.

supports abstinence-only education in schools, but she has also said she does not support tax payer dollars to distribute birth control in schools. She is a member of Feminists for Life, which is an pro-life group.

Feminist for Life is a pro-life group that has had its positions distorted to show that they are against birth control. Palin critics (including many in the media) have cherry picked in order to smear Gov. Palin.

his own personal reasons.

http://www.tompaine.com/articles/20050620/why_george_went_to_war.php

The Downing Street memos have brought into focus an essential question: on what basis did President George W. Bush decide to invade Iraq? The memos are a government-level confirmation of what has been long believed by so many: that the administration was hell-bent on invading Iraq and was simply looking for justification, valid or not.

Despite such mounting evidence, Bush resolutely maintains total denial. In fact, when a British reporter asked the president recently about the Downing Street documents, Bush painted himself as a reluctant warrior. "Both of us didn't want to use our military," he said, answering for himself and British Prime Minister Blair. "Nobody wants to commit military into combat. It's the last option."

Yet there's evidence that Bush not only deliberately relied on false intelligence to justify an attack, but that he would have willingly used any excuse at all to invade Iraq. And that he was obsessed with the notion well before 9/11—indeed, even before he became president in early 2001.

In interviews I conducted last fall, a well-known journalist, biographer and Bush family friend who worked for a time with Bush on a ghostwritten memoir said that an Iraq war was always on Bush's brain.

"He was thinking about invading Iraq in 1999," said author and Houston Chronicle journalist Mickey Herskowitz. "It was on his mind. He said, 'One of the keys to being seen as a great leader is to be seen as a commander-in-chief.' And he said, 'My father had all this political capital built up when he drove the Iraqis out of Kuwait and he wasted it.' He went on, 'If I have a chance to invade…, if I had that much capital, I'm not going to waste it. I'm going to get everything passed that I want to get passed and I'm going to have a successful presidency.'"

Bush apparently accepted a view that Herskowitz, with his long experience of writing books with top Republicans, says was a common sentiment: that no president could be considered truly successful without one military "win" under his belt. Leading Republicans had long been enthralled by the effect of the minuscule Falklands War on British Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher's popularity, and ridiculed Democrats such as Jimmy Carter who were reluctant to use American force. Indeed, both Reagan and Bush's father successfully prosecuted limited invasions (Grenada, Panama and the Gulf War) without miring the United States in endless conflicts.

Herskowitz's revelations illuminate Bush's personal motivation for invading Iraq and, more importantly, his general inclination to use war to advance his domestic political ends. Furthermore, they establish that this thinking predated 9/11, predated his election to the presidency and predated his appointment of leading neoconservatives who had their own, separate, more complex geopolitical rationale for supporting an invasion.

Conversations With Bush The Candidate

Herskowitz—a longtime Houston newspaper columnist—has ghostwritten or co-authored autobiographies of a broad spectrum of famous people, including Reagan adviser Michael Deaver, Mickey Mantle, Dan Rather and Nixon cabinet secretary John B. Connally. Bush's 1999 comments to Herskowitz were made over the course of as many as 20 sessions together. Eventually, campaign staffers—expressing concern about things Bush had told the author that were included in the manuscript—pulled the project, and Bush campaign officials came to Herskowitz's house and took his original tapes and notes. Bush communications director Karen Hughes then assumed responsibility for the project, which was published in highly sanitized form as A Charge to Keep.

The revelations about Bush's attitude toward Iraq emerged during two taped sessions I held with Herskowitz. These conversations covered a variety of matters, including the journalist's continued closeness with the Bush family and fondness for Bush Senior—who clearly trusted Herskowitz enough to arrange for him to pen a subsequent authorized biography of Bush's grandfather, written and published in 2003.

I conducted those interviews last fall and published an article based on them during the final heated days of the 2004 campaign. Herskowitz's taped insights were verified to the satisfaction of editors at the Houston Chronicle, yet the story failed to gain broad mainstream coverage, primarily because news organization executives expressed concern about introducing such potent news so close to the election. Editors told me they worried about a huge backlash from the White House and charges of an "October Surprise."

Debating The Timeline For War

But today, as public doubts over the Iraq invasion grow, and with the Downing Street papers adding substance to those doubts, the Herskowitz interviews assume singular importance by providing profound insight into what motivated Bush—personally—in the days and weeks following 9/11. Those interviews introduce us to a George W. Bush, who, until 9/11, had no means for becoming "a great president"—because he had no easy path to war. Once handed the national tragedy of 9/11, Bush realized that the Afghanistan campaign and the covert war against terrorist organizations would not satisfy his ambitions for greatness. Thus, Bush shifted focus from Al Qaeda, perpetrator of the attacks on New York and Washington. Instead, he concentrated on ensuring his place in American history by going after a globally reviled and easily targeted state run by a ruthless dictator.

The Herskowitz interviews add an important dimension to our understanding of this presidency, especially in combination with further evidence that Bush's focus on Iraq was motivated by something other than credible intelligence. In their published accounts of the period between 9/11 and the March 2003 invasion, former White House Counterterrorism Coordinator Richard Clarke and journalist Bob Woodward both describe a president single-mindedly obsessed with Iraq. The first anecdote takes place the day after the World Trade Center collapsed, in the Situation Room of the White House. The witness is Richard Clarke, and the situation is captured in his book, Against All Enemies.

On September 12th, I left the Video Conferencing Center and there, wandering alone around the Situation Room, was the President. He looked like he wanted something to do. He grabbed a few of us and closed the door to the conference room. "Look," he told us, "I know you have a lot to do and all…but I want you, as soon as you can, to go back over everything, everything. See if Saddam did this. See if he's linked in any way…"

I was once again taken aback, incredulous, and it showed. "But, Mr. President, Al Qaeda did this."

"I know, I know, but…see if Saddam was involved. Just look. I want to know any shred…" …

"Look into Iraq, Saddam," the President said testily and left us. Lisa Gordon-Hagerty stared after him with her mouth hanging open.

Similarly, Bob Woodward, in a CBS News 60 Minutes interview about his book, Bush At War, captures a moment, on November 21, 2001, where the president expresses an acute sense of urgency that it is time to secretly plan the war with Iraq. Again, we know there was nothing in the way of credible intelligence to precipitate the president's actions.

Woodward: "President Bush, after a National Security Council meeting, takes Don Rumsfeld aside, collars him physically and takes him into a little cubbyhole room and closes the door and says, 'What have you got in terms of plans for Iraq? What is the status of the war plan? I want you to get on it. I want you to keep it secret.'"

Wallace (voiceover): Woodward says immediately after that, Rumsfeld told Gen. Tommy Franks to develop a war plan to invade Iraq and remove Saddam—and that Rumsfeld gave Franks a blank check.

Woodward: "Rumsfeld and Franks work out a deal essentially where Franks can spend any money he needs. And so he starts building runways and pipelines and doing all the necessary preparations in Kuwait specifically to make war possible."

Bush wanted a war so that he could build the political capital necessary to achieve his domestic agenda and become, in his mind, "a great president." Blair and the members of his cabinet, unaware of the Herskowitz conversations, placed Bush's decision to mount an invasion in or about July of 2002. But for Bush, the question that summer was not whether, it was only how and when. The most important question, why, was left for later.

Eventually, there would be a succession of answers to that question: weapons of mass destruction, links to Al Qaeda, the promotion of democracy, the domino theory of the Middle East. But none of them have been as convincing as the reason George W. Bush gave way back in the summer of 1999.