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October 10, 2008 12:31 AM UTC

Landslide Victory for Obama?

  • 99 Comments
  • by: Colorado Pols

As Politico reports:

Three weeks of historic economic upheaval have done more than just tilt a handful of once reliably Republican states in Barack Obama’s direction. Democratic strategists are now optimistic that the ongoing crisis could lead to a landslide Obama victory.

Four large states John McCain once seemed well-positioned to win – Virginia, North Carolina, Ohio and Florida – have in recent weeks shifted toward Obama. If Obama were to win those four states – a scenario that would represent a remarkable turn of events – he would likely surpass 350 electoral votes.

Under almost any feasible scenario, McCain cannot win the presidency if he loses any of those four states. And if Obama actually captured all four states, it would almost certainly signal a strong electoral tide that would likely sweep the Southwestern swing states – Colorado, New Mexico, Nevada – not to mention battlegrounds from New Hampshire to Iowa to Missouri.

According to Gallup’s tracking polls, Obama now leads McCain 52-41.

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99 thoughts on “Landslide Victory for Obama?”

  1. this is the kind of talk that makes people complacent. Polls are polls, polls are not votes.

    The whole fantasy about Obama winning West Virginia, Montana and other predominantly Republican states might sound nice, but it’s not going to happen.

    The race is slipping from McCain’s hands, but it’s not over until all the votes are counted.

    I will bet anyone (like I bet sxp yesterday) a 6-pack of the beer of their choosing that if Obama wins, it won’t be a landslide. I define landslide as 375+ Electoral College votes.

    I’ll either be knee-deep in beer, or very poor on November 5th.

    1. Democratic strategists are now optimistic that the ongoing crisis could lead to a landslide Obama victory.

      Thank GOD for economic crisis, then!!!

      Just a reminder, Al Gore was up by 9 points this time in 2000…

          1. What with the resolute stability we’re seeing in the world. 🙂

            It’s just amazing to me that some of the people who were crying into their beers in 2004 are getting cocky again.

        2. Katherine Harris herself, Florida SOS at the time, Gore actually DID win Florida in spite of the suppression, false purging of voters and unfortunate butterfly ballot and a full recount of the state would have resulted in a Gore presidency.  Probably why she felt  she was owed that congressional seat.  

          1. Easy to see from the full tracking poll graph that there was only ONE DAY when Gore was ahead of Bush in the last month: an outlier that had Gore ahead by 11. Every other poll had Bush with a solid lead.

            The other difference is that Gore had a lead for one day, while Obama has had the lead for two weeks.

            I don’t think this election is comparable to either 2000 or 2004. Perhaps 1992 is the closest recent election, although of course Perot messes the analysis up in some ways.

      3. Pollster has a good graph and comparison

        “In 2000, Bush led in most of the early polls, holding a 6 point lead with 107 days to go. Then Gore moved sharply up, erasing Bush’s lead and then adding a 3 point lead for Gore with about 56 days left. Bush promptly reversed Gore’s gains with a six point move in the GOP’s direction, and led by about 3 points over the last three weeks of the campaign. Of course, the 2000 polls were misleading in predicting a Bush win. Gore won the popular vote by 0.6 points.”

        If Gore lead in any poll by 9 points it was an outlier. Most polls pointed to a three point Bush lead at this time in 2000. Gore outperformed his polls by coming in slightly ahead instead of three points behind and Kerry underperformed his polls.

      4. is like witnessing Michael Phelps winning every race at the Olympics.  Watching the McCain campaign is like witnessing those Olympics where you are not supposed to laugh at the contestants.  

        1. I’m sure you meant well, but please don’t compare the Special Olympics to McCain and Palin’s execrable, dishonorable campaign.

          The Special Olympics are inspirational and heartwarming: people doing amazing things and reaching incredible goals, doing the best with what God gave them to work with. You have obviously never actually watched any of these events if you think for one moment that anyone would “laugh” at these athletes.

          By contrast, the McCain-Palin campaign, especially in recent weeks, is an example of the worst of man’s nature: venal, petty, ugly, attempting to win through lies and mudslinging, and failing to inspire and provide a vision for the future.

    2. That thing that the kids do with the “L” made out of a thumb and finger and put on their heads.  That’s for you.  

      Oh, by the way, no one for Obama cares if it’s 375 electoral votes.  Only that he wins.  Want to bet a beer on that??

      While you’re not watching the polls, perhaps you shouldn’t watch those pesky Senate race polls in, oh, say, NH, VA, NM, CO, AK, OR, MN, NC, MS and especially don’t watch the ones in GA and KY.

      You’re already “very poor.”  George Bush, John McCain and their buddies on Wall Street already did that to us.  Looked at your 401K recently?  Then you’d be crying in your beer, no matter who bought it.

      1. I was an Obama delegate man. I’m just not going to get overconfident.

        Who did you think I was? Some Republican troll?

        As “the kids” say, take a chill pill my friend.

        1. Over confidence and bragging about victories in advance is silly in a world where anything can happen, any story can break tomorrow.  Let’s just enjoy being up for the time being and hope for the best.

          1. As another Obama supporter, I’m very concerned that we not get overconfident. We have to GOTV: get out the vote!!! of those young and first-time voters who historically tend to stay home.

            Don’t let up!!! This election can be stolen by the GOP, and every indication is that they will be absolutely desperate to do so. We need to turn out people in such numbers that there’s no way they can succeed! And so that the Democrats and Obama get the clearest mandate possible for positive change!

    3. No, I just don’t think I can take that bet. I’m guessing there is a 1 in 3 chance of an Obama landslide. So I’m not going to bet any of my beer.

    5. First off yes – we need to work our okole’s off until 7:01 pm West coast time (Hawaii is a gimme).

      Second, it’s not just Obama. If we can make Ohio & Florida a clear win and put WVa even in the next week, then 5 or 6 more states become competitive.

      This gives us two gigantic advantages. First a gigantic landside gives Obama a lot moe political power when he arrives in Washington. If he wins by one vote, the Republicans will be at their obstrunctionist best. But with a gigantic win, they’ll realize they need to cooperate.

      Second there are Senate races. Even if Obama loses TX, GA, and MS – if his being able to campaign hard there means the Dems win the Senate races in those states – that is huge.

      So yes, keep working – don’t rest.

      1. I’ll be hoping you’re right while keeping my feet on the ground (literally and figuratively.)

        And does that mean you’re going to take my bet?

      2. David, everything else you said makes perfect sense but this line is nonsense. There is one thing certain about this election — it’s not going to get the Nancy L Baldwins of the world (and their representatives in Congress) to back down an inch. There may be a brief window where Obama can rally Washington to meet a crisis, but beyond that, it’s back to the endless campaign of the past 16 years.

  2. You all can relax now.  Obama has it in the bag.  You are just wasting your time with all those phone calls and walking.

    Good job.  Well done.

    Take a break!

  3. but McCain has run such a poor campaign that he is going to end up making Beauprez’s campaign look brilliant.  This is truly one of the most chaotic and incoherent presidential campaigns in recent memory.  How can he claim that the surge was a success and not give Bush any accolades?  The guy cowers from even mentioning Bush’s name.  Truly a stupid campaign in all respects and now all he has left are ad hominem attacks that make him look ridiculous.

    The economy has become such an obvious failure of Republican “borrow and spend” policies that for the first time in many elections the average voter is going to vote based on their economic self interest and not on any wedge issues which means they are going to vote for Democrats in droves.

      1. Kick off your shoes, sit back, down a few brewskis and await Obama’s inevitable coronation. It worked for president Dewey and it will work for Obama.  



         “There’ll be time enough for countin’ when the dealings done.”

        1. all the exit polling showing him winning in a landslide for the whole day, and disaster when the actual results started coming in.

          It must be tough to think that you’re going to be the most powerful person in the world for 9 or 10 hours, and then having that notion snatched from your hands.

              1. Add up all of Kerry’s electoral votes if those polls had been accurate, and you get 316 electoral votes (assuming I did it correctly), which is nobody’s definition of a landslide.

            2. winning the electoral vote while losing the popular. A few thousand more votes in Ohio and he would have done exactly that.

               And btw, most of the time, bush had about a 3 point lead in the poles, even going into the final weekend.  Don’t forget, that’s when the “20 years ago you had a DUI” bomb was dropped by the Democrats.  I’ll always believe that “November surprise” cost him the popular vote.

                    1. my blood sugar went into hyper space just reading your post. What is this: taunt diabetics day?;-)

          2. Those were exit polls.  Not the same thing and of course, as you would say, Republicans vote later in the day because they work.  But here’s the thing, these polls which poll the entire publid, they do a pretty good job for the most part.  Those above have already debunked the Kerry was ahead by 9 points BS you tried to sell above.  So now what misdirection do today’s talking points have for us to debunk?

        2. is not the same as kicking off your shoes.

          But considering how likely an Obama win is now looking, doesn’t it make sense to work for other candidates? Betsy Markey’s in a closer race, as is Mark Udall, and the ballot questions are probably going to be close as well.

          I’d suggest Democrats get a little more confidence in the top of the ticket and start working more for the lower races…

          Well, I would suggest it, if I didn’t know how paranoid Democrats are about this sort of thing. 🙂

        3. but this one was very dumb.

          Every Obama supporter I know is confident that their candidate is better by far than his opponent but that doesn’t make them complacent.  The big concern is election fraud which will steal this election.  Election fraud is illegally influencing an election through various tactics.  As you know this is different from voter fraud when an ineligible person attempts to vote.  Election fraud is a Republican staple and ranges from caging lists to robo calls giving out incorrect precinct locations.  As it becomes obvious that McCain can’t win a fair election then it becomes even more important to make sure that the vote totals are so overwhelming that election fraud can be neutralized.  They will attempt to blame it on the Bradley Effect but I am as sure as your name is bob that a number of election fraud schemes will be tried in the swing states and it won’t be the Democrats doing them.

          1. my birth certificate says my name is Robert.

            And knock off the paranoia.  If historians can be believed, your party wasn’t exactly adverse to stealing votes in Tammany Hall, Chicago, the Prendergast machine Kansas City and Texas (read Robert Caro’s bios of Lyndon Johnson and the saga of the missing ballot bgox that sent Landslide Lyndon to the Senate.)  

            If you want to claim that your foolish distinction between the voter fraud that your party specializes  in is different than the election fraud you claim Republicans like, then you win some kind of award for hypocrisy and pettifogging combined.

             When I die I want to be buried in Illinois so I won’t lose my right to vote.

            1. Tammany Hall declined in 1934 after the election of Guardia.  Lyndon Johnson has been dead for decades.

              Show me some voter fraud that is equal to what the Rove machine puts out.  In my dinky county Democrats have been receiving phone calls from supposedly the Obama campaign and the caller becomes highly obnoxious.  The real Obama organizer in our county has been trying to document these calls because they aren’t coming from the legitimate organization.

              If you think that the Republicans won’t consider going over the line if they can get away with it then you need to get checked for Alzheimer’s.  They are already inciting their crowds to violence and implying Obama’s a terrorist.  You original post was mocking Obama supporters but now your saying that we shouldn’t be concerned.  That’s a flip flop worthy of McCain.

              1. Read the CNN expose on ACORN’s voter fraud and try to pass that off as partisan rantings from the far right. They’re stealing every vote they can.

                 And take a course in reading comprension, or else stop smoking dope when you blog. I was teasing the Obamistas by reminding them of what could happen if they slack off, not mocking them. You, I’m mocking.  You deserve it.

                1. I’m crushed I tell you.  Just totally crushed.

                  Should I get off the lawn too?

                  If I’m that dumb then am I qualified for the VP slot?

                  I am concerned that our uber-patriots will engage in nefarious acts to sabotage a free and fair election.  It dishonors our troops and it cheapens our democracy.  If ACORN is inventing voters then boo on them too.  All I want is a free and fair election.  Is that too much to ask?

                  1. Acorn says Acorn didn’t break the law. Can’t be more clear than that. I guess we should have let Ted Bundy go when he pleaded innocent. What, GG, are you trying to prove you’re an even dumber shill than Libertine?

                    Right now, I put him slightly higher than you on the credibility list.

                    2. He called me an ageist “scumbag” just because I teased him about being an old curmudgeon.  He’s very, very sensitive about that kind of thing.  We must let him vent.  Otherwise his head might explode.  

                    3. ..and I thought I was the only one at whom he flies off the handle sometimes?  I guess I’m not as special as I thought.

                    5. Here is a good article from The Atlantic which blows your argument into 1.3 million little pieces.

                      Read the article bob and then tell me how evil ACORN is to register 1.3 million new voters.

                      http://marcambinder.theatlanti…

                      The bottom line is ACORN strives to register the young, the poor and minorities but that rankles Republicans who would prefer that only dumb whites be allowed in the voting booth.  ACORN strives for quality control but has had some dishonest canvassers on their payroll.  The smear campaign to discredit their successes is an obvious ploy to take focus away from Republican con games.

                      You attempt to play the balance of blame game to minimize Republican scandals.  Sad dude.  Really sad.

                    6. I think you are very happy to see fraud that benefits your party.  The Atlantic article was obviously written far in advance of the CNN documentation of voter fraud.

                      Or, do you really believe that all of the Dallas Cowboys live in Las Vegas and just happened to be registered by ACORN?

                       My, my, what a coincidence.

                    7. I know this has been a tough week for you with the stock market tanking and taking your 401K down with it.  I’ve probably lost your vote for blogger of the year because I took the bait and debunked your conventional wisdom that Democrats are as crooked as Republicans and that bothers me a lot.  If I had known that you were so thin skinned about your age and didn’t enjoy repartee I would have dialed it back but now I’m stuck watching Danny surge to a repeat victory.

                      Here is another blog from OpenLeft that discusses the Dallas Cowboy “coverup”.

                      http://www.openleft.com/showDi…

                      The Tony Romo registrations were a minuscule fraction of those 1.3 million new voters and the reality is that no one is going to actually try to vote as Tony Romo in Nevada and you know it.  You don’t acknowledge the good work that ACORN does and you don’t talk about the Republican registers in 2006 who tore up and never turned in new registrations when they were Democrats.

                      I promise I won’t make fun of your age again but this conventional wisdom that “they do it too” is garbage when you consider the scale and severity between the two parties.  It’s BS that Democrats are as dirty as Republicans and I’ll challenge you on that myth any day dude.

            3. Yes, the Democratic party is not lily-pure by any respect. Some election fraud goes on with both parties.

              The point is that the election CAN be stolen, and every indication – Coffman’s shenanigans, the failure of county clerks to register thousands of new voters, etc. – is that this can happen in Colorado. Coffman is looking like the new Katherine Harris or Robert Blackwell.

              The bigger the get-out-the-vote effort, the bigger the Obama win, then the less likely that such tactics will work, AND the less likely that the Democrats and Obama will themselves be accused of “stealing” the election.

              You can just imagine how hamstrung Kerry would have been in 2004 had he managed to squeak through in Ohio, win that state, become President, yet lose the popular vote by several million. Let’s finally have an election that isn’t such a nailbiter!

              1. I remember a lot of people – Dems and moderates – on this blog saying that Coffman would be a good SOS and were seriously considering voting for him. I considered it too but I’m glad I voted for Ken Gordon. Sheesh, if only a few other people had as well…

                1. hadn’t totally screwed the voting Ken Gordon might well have been elected.  Working GOTV that day there is no telling how many folks simply gave up and left because of the lines–I know for sure some did.    

      2. The celebrating will be so much more fun when the result is known instead of merely anticipated.  Let’s have the honeymoon after the wedding!  Not to say I won’t enjoy a beer before then, but I’ll keep the champagne on ice until the final out (lest we remind the Red Sox of the ’86 Series).

  4. Second rule – never give up your gun until they pry your cold dead fingers from around it.

    Those on Obama’s side need fight like hell until the polls are closed.  he will need to win by a sizable margin to ensure the Repub cheating team can not take away a fair win.

    1. My party has the gun nuts. Your candidate wants to limit us to buying one a month — and doesn’t even want us to buy automatic weapons or light artillery at all.

        My first rule of combat was:

       “He who fights and runs away,

             lives to run another day!”

      1. I’m fairly heavily armed.  I don’t know a working man who can afford more than 1 gun a month.

        If you got a better plan on how to deal with straw purchasers I would be happy to do that in the alternative.

        1. under your plan, starting at age 21, I would have been able to buy only 508 guns by now. Hardly seems fair or just.  Hell, next you’ll try to take away my right to carry a concealed flame thrower, though admittedly those are getting a little expensive to use these days given the cost of napalm and other petroleum products today.

          PS-my M-1 Garand will blow away your sissy Tek-9 any day. Range 300 meters, I’ll hit the target every time while the Tek-9 will endanger every pigeon flying overhead.

          (editor’s note: author is in satirical mode.)

            1. my classic m-3 Grant with the sponson mounted 75 mm and turret mounted 37mm can crush your candy-assed Hummer any day.

              I don’t look for parkiong spaces, I make them!

          1. Target shoot as well.

            As People pass away my collection expands because I am about the only one of my generation that still hunts or has guns.

            Being that I am an urban liberal, I am only hunter many of my friends know, and they often give me guns that they inherit.

            I have no military style firearms, but I have no problem with them either.

            As to preparing for battle: no, but if we don’t get going on stabilizing the economy we’ll all be looking at “Road Warrior”

      2. If there is one thing that we Americans like to do it is fight.

        George C.Scott’s speech at the beginning of Patton describes this well.

        We love the sting of battle,

        We love winners and cannot stand a loser.

        I belive that we shuold be able to carry guns all the time. After all, if the plan doesn’t work and  the major banks fail then it’s time to be stick up man at the grocery store for morning fruit loops!

      3. What, are you a member of the the “Gun of the Month Club” or something? 😉

        I would think that limiting people to buying one gun a month per person isn’t that horrible and terrible. 12 guns a year: why, I could have amassed an arsenal of 384 guns by now since I became legal. I’d have almost as many as Gecko! Or as a typical Palin rally nowadays… 🙁

    2. Close isn’t good enough.  It’s got to be too big to steal.  And there’s no reason why people can’t work for their Senate or  congressional candidates and for Obama at the same time.  In fact, in the closing weeks GOTV is all about getting the Dem vote out and making sure people realize how important it is to vote the WHOLE ballot. The bigger Obama’s lead the longer his coat tails can be.

    1. can lend the GOP a hand again with another October video.  He’d no doubt love four more years of the same clueless policies that have brought him more than he ever could have dreamed of just before the twin towers went down.  From his first goal, seeing our troops pulled out of Saudi Arabia, to his dream of severely damaging our economic might the past eight years must seem like a dream come true. He’s sure going to miss old GW but getting McSame would ease the pain.  

      1. “For the greater good – to keep a ‘terrorist’ from becoming President.”

        Heck, I wouldn’t put it past Bin Laden himself to issue some sort of video to try to ENSURE that McCain is elected president. Bin Laden knows that Bush and McCain are the best recruiting and propaganda tools that Al Qaeda has ever had.

        1. has already produced the ad that will run if there is indeed another Bin Laden video:

          “Tired of that SOB Bin Laden?  John McCain won’t follow him into Pakistan and kill him.

          I will.

          Vote for me.”

    2. It is just about time for the current administration to raise the terror alert to flaming chartreuse or some other weird color picked out by “tape the windows” Chertoff.  That will scare the sheep in to voting for old man Mccain.

      1. is that people are so cynical about this administration, and rightfully so, they could up the terror alert to red and put it on all the networks and I think the people would just collectively say “yeah, up yours !”

        I don’t think people are buying it anymore, either because they think the level is being manipulated for political reasons or those changing the level have no real hard intelligence to act on.

        1. and it’s why the Bush administration stopped notifying people whenever they’d get a threat.

          I mean, it’s not like that alert color will ever drop to blue.

  6. The conventional wisdom is that Sen. Barack Obama, D-Ill., is up in the polls because of the economic crisis.

    Actually, Obama is up in the polls because the reason for the economic crisis is being ignored in our narrative-creating centers, from the mainstream media to Congress to the White House to the presidential candidates themselves.

    If American citizens become too widely acquainted with the fact that race-based social engineering virtually created the subprime mortgage industry that has transformed the U.S. economy into the Titanic, Obama will sink in the polls.

    That’s because race-based social engineering is what Obama both advanced as a  “community organizer,” and later funded as an official of Chicago’s Woods Fund, where he served alongside unrepentant terrorist and political ally William Ayers.

    How exactly did the government overlay of race-based goals onto the real estate marketplace help create the subprime mortgage industry, which, having imploded, triggered the current economic crisis, and what did Obama have to do with it?

    The answer goes back to the totalitarian drawing boards of the social engineers.  Not “enough” minorities owned homes, the social engineers decided, because not enough minorities were eligible for mortgages.

    Therefore, they effectively junked all bottom-line, nonracial markers of mortgage eligibility, from steady employment and clean credit to the all-important down payment, that banks have traditionally relied on to determine the difference between a good and a bad credit risk.

    This paved the way for increasingly unconventional subprime loans for all. The social engineers claimed victory for what they called “affordable housing” – which also paradoxically created a vast market of extremely unaffordable housing – but it was just a house of cards. The real estate bubble popped, the bad loans came crashing down, and the world markets came tumbling after.

    In the New York Post, Stanley Kurtz described the techniques community organizers  use to intimidate banks into making bad loans: “In the name of fairness to minorities, community organizers occupy private offices, chant inside bank lobbies, and confront executives at their homes – and thereby force financial institutions to direct hundreds of millions of dollars in mortgages to low-credit customers.”

    He continued: “In other words, community organizers help to undermine the U.S. economy by pushing the banking system into a sinkhole of bad loans. And Obama spent years training and funding the organizers who do it.”

    Kurtz detailed the nature of that training and funding in concert with the Association of Community Organizers for Reform Now, an essential component in the drive to force banks “kicking and screaming” – as Madline Talbott, one of Obama’s close ACORN associates put it – into the risky loan business.

    At one point, Kurtz reported, “Obama was training the army of ACORN organizers who participated in Madeline Talbott’s drive against Chicago’s banks.”

    Will America elect someone this far left-wing to take charge of the Federal Reserve Bank?

    But the community shakedown artists had massive help along the way, as “affirmative action lending” practices were foisted on the banking industry at the national level, particularly during the presidencies of Jimmy Carter, Bill Clinton and George W. Bush.

    In 1977, President Jimmy Carter signed into law the Community Reinvestment Act, a law designed to encourage banks to make loans to high-risk borrowers in inner cities that had largely become impoverished because of the social welfare policies of Lyndon Johnson’s “Great Society.”

    Whatever the intent of the legislation, it quickly became corrupted as legislative and regulatory changes essentially demanded irresponsible behavior. Under the threat of lawsuits from community activists, and the further threat of federal sanctions, the banking industry was forced to forego sound business practices to create what became the subprime mortgage industry, an industry backed by Freddie Mac and Fannie Mae, the two quasi-private government institutions involved in the recent collapse.

    Among the activists involved in the lawsuits was one Barack H. Obama, who was one of the lawyers involved in a suit against Citibank Federal Savings Bank on behalf of the organization ACORN in 1994. The lawsuit was eventually voluntarily dismissed following a settlement agreement.

    Using the Community Reinvestment Act to over-ride normal business rules, and common sense, resulted in a bonanza for some – former Fannie Mae CEOs James Johnson and Franklin Raines and former Fannie Mae vice chairman Jamie Gorelick all walked away with millions thanks to improper accounting and inflated bonuses – and payoffs to members of Congress. Sen. Christopher Dodd received $165,000 from Fannie and Freddie, Sen. Obama $126,349.

    Meanwhile, Congressman Barney Frank, chairman of the House Financial Services Committee, has also profited, and was among the many who, just three years ago, claimed “These two entities – Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac – are not facing any kind of financial crisis, the more people exaggerate these problems, the more pressure there is on these companies, the less we will see in terms of affordable housing.”

    It is ironic that during the Enron scandal of 2001, company executives Ken Lay and Jeff Skilling were vilified and almost universally condemned. They were also tried, and convicted. Lay died and his sentence was vacated. Skilling was sentenced to 24 years.

    The Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac scandal is considerably more reaching and more damaging than Enron. It is time, even as the bailout goes into effect, for the principals like James Johnson and Franklin Raines and Jamie Gorelick and Christopher Dodd and Barney Frank to face similar justice.

    These lending practices were further institutionalized once government-sponsored Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, under Fannie Chief Executive Officer James A. Johnson, began snapping up high-risk loans and repackaging them for sale on the world market.

    Johnson is the person Obama chose to lead his vice-presidential selection committee, until financial shenanigans over a sweetheart housing loan forced him out. Johnson had even set a goal for Fannie Mae to buy up $1 trillion in low-income loans to ensure that “every American who wants to get a mortgage will have their loan approved.”

    Well, they did. And it didn’t work out so well, did it? Such is the human cost of social engineering. No wonder Obama doesn’t seem to want to discuss the pesky details. “The main thing is to just move away from this hyper-political environment and recognize the house is on fire,” he recently said.

    “Let’s put out the fire first,” he added, “and we can figure out what caused it.”

    Later, he means. Like after Election Day, when it’s too late to vote for the other guy. Because what voters in their right minds would expect the man who likes to set the fires to put them out?

    This issue must be raised during the final debate, or the truth may never be heard again.

    1. lack of properly assessing the risk of securitizing mortgages and selling them on the open market, and lack of any regulatory structure or oversight for these securities.

    3. The typical R answers to everything;

      A) It’s all Clinton’s fault

      B) Some Dem has done something as bad or worse

      have been joined by

      C) it’s all the fault of affirmative action and irresponsible minorities

      Correct answer:

      D) none of the above.  While deregulation does hark back to the Clinton era and there is plenty of irresponsibility to go around, the main causes are the extent of deregulation and complete lack of oversight coupled with exotic (house of cards) financial instruments, unbridled corporate greed,  ridiculous over valuation of houses creating the illusion of non-existent equity (how much of the “lost” wealth was pretend to begin with?) and eight years of foreign and domestic policies that have made us one of the world’s foremost debtor nations.

    6. Since you’re new here, you probably don’t realize that most people read the posts for a day or two before they cut and paste partisan spew.

      Of course, if you sign your name to something that someone else wrote, that’s plagiarism.  That gets you even fewer points.

      But hey, you’re anonymous, so you get to do shit you wouldn’t even tell your priest at confession.

  8. The economic crisis that we are experiencing today is getting worse. People are now anxious to experience the change that the president has promised. Recently, the Treasury of the United States is fraught with peril.  They also can’t seem to be able to hire anybody.  The third candidate for the Deputy Treasury Secretary has just thrown in the towel, and declined the position, another in a long line of problems with picks for the Obama cabinet.  The most recent declining candidate, H. Rodgin Cohen is counsel for numerous Wall Street firms. His relationship with them would be a conflict of interest, as the Treasury has been the one making personal loans to Wall Street firms.  The first dropped, most predictably, for tax discrepancies.  It is often hard to find good help, and this evidently also applies the United States Treasury.

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