The U.S. House passed the "Foreclosure Prevention Act of 2008" Thursday by a vote of 272-152. Check the roll call of who voted for the bill HERE
Here is some of the bill's fine print, as outlined by Congressman Paul in the above video:
- $2.5B line of credit to the Treasury (Fannie & Freddie – ‘F & F’) is now “open-ended”
- The U.S. Treasury now allowed to buy all ‘F & F’ housing securities
- Congress no longer involved in appropriating funds (the Treasury now does)
- National Debt Ceiling moved up another $800 BILLION
- Treasury Bills being exchanged for unwanted ‘F & F’ securities (Treasury Bills are the asset which “backs up our currency.”) This bill will breed inflation and place more pressure on the already deflated U.S. Dollar.
- Mortgage industry workers “will now have to be fingerprinted.”
- ALL credit card transactions will now be reported to the IRS.
Are you mad yet? The bill now moves to the Senate, where a vote is expected Friday or Saturday. The President has said he will sign the bill into law if it reaches his desk.
Contact Senators Carl Levin and Debbie Stabenow and let them know if you are upset about the "Mother of all Bailouts."
This is a horrible idea dreamed up by a Californian. Democrats should vote in the Democratic Primary where something is at stake -- the media reports after the "primary." They can either read "Hillary On a Roll, Wins Michigan" or "Uncommitted Defeats Hillary, Clinton Can't Win Against Nobody." Supporters of John Edwards and Barack Obama along with those angry at Granholm (trying to get a job in a possible, if now less likely, Hillary Administration) for strong-arming this through the MDP should VOTE UNCOMMITTED.
The main problem with Kos' scheme is that we Michigan Democrats need to worry about picking our own nominee, rather than attempt to have some small impact on their nominee. It's more imperative that we Michigan Democrats do our little part so that we do not end up with Hillary, our weakest candidate and least progressive potential president.
Every vote for Romney is also a vote for the headline "Hillary Wins Michigan, Controls Race."
So, think before you follow a bunch of out-of-staters trying to get you to vote for a Republican and instead
In the course of playing political "king of the hill" to see which state in the union can have their primary or caucus first this year, we ended up with the Presidential primaries (which normally happen in the spring) happening immediately after New Years and throughout January until culminating in "Tsunami Tuesday" on February 5th when over 20 states will have their primaries on the same day. Then we get to look forward to nine months of hard core negative Presidential campaigning instead of the normal three months.
In the middle of all that fun, the Michigan Democratic Party went and broke National Party rules about not infringing on the "importance" of Iowa and New Hampshire and decided to have our primary before February 5th. In response, the National Democratic Party has announced that they will not seat any delegates from Michigan at the National Convention.
If that happens, it means that Michigan will have no say in deciding who the Democratic candidate will be.
Also, because we moved our primary before Feb 5th, Barak Obama and John Edwards both inexplicably decided to pull their names from the ballot in Michigan completely, essentially handing Michigan over to Hillary on a silver platter.
So here we are... Michigan's primary is going to be January 15th, this coming Tuesday, and Michigan progressives are still unsure who to vote for.
Even if my vote does count the only major candidate I have to choose from is Hillary Clinton and she is not my first, second or even third choice. Any vote I cast for Kucinich or Dodd would essentially be nothing more than a protest vote.
So essentially there is a game of chicken going on between the Michigan Democratic Party and the National Democratic Party. So far the National Party has given no indication that they intend to back down from their stated intention of refusing to seat our delegates and all we have is the assurance of the Michigan Party leadership that they "wouldn't dare" refuse to seat our delegates at the convention.
If I do go vote in the Democratic Primary...
...and if I vote "uncommitted" because my preferred candidate, John Edwards, is not on the ballot...
...and if our delegates get seated at the national convention... then there is still no telling how the delegates I send there are going to vote. It could end up going to Mike Gravel for all I know.
What is important to me is to use my vote to its greatest effect. Normally that is simply voting for my candidate of choice but this situation has created quite a conundrum for me.
I could go vote for Hillary but I have been saying all along that she is my least favorite candidate and as long as there are other candidates out there whom I would rather vote for, I do not think I should go contribute to handing my state over to their competitor.
I could go vote for Dennis Kucinich, who I agree with on most issues and who I think would be a great President. Normally I would think that supporting Dennis would be the best use of my vote, but given the situation with the Democratic delegates from Michigan, it would be a gamble.
So...why not go vote in the Republican primary? At least they are guaranteed half of their delegates at their national convention. I may not be a Republican but I can take advantage of Michigan's open primary system to possibly have some positive effect on them.
If I go vote in the Republican primary for Ron Paul, and he has a strong enough showing in Michigan to at least get a few delegates, then it may send a strong message to the Republican Party that Ron Paul's anti-war message resonates with their base and it might move them ever-so-slightly to the left, away from the edge of fascism and totalitarianism they are currently teetering over.
The fact is that on some issues Ron Paul is even farther to the left than any of the Democratic candidates. Ron Paul is the only candidate on the Republican side even talking about the Constitution and the Legislative branch's responsibility to check the power of the Executive branch. He is bringing some small measure of sanity back to the Republican Party and he deserves to be supported by progressives for that reason alone. If I want to move the discussion in the direction that I want it to go, then I have to support the people talking about the subjects I want to talk about, no matter what party I find them in.
Now don't get me wrong, I am not a Ron Paul supporter. I actually wrote an article not that long ago entitled "Why Ron Paul is Unfit to be President". I agree with him on some issues, like Congress' responsibilities in declaring war and how we should not be putting military bases on foreign soil all over the world and how wars of aggression are wrong. However, Ron Paul also thinks that corporations should be allowed to police themselves and he believes that the best educational system is home schooling. Those are pretty clear reasons to oppose him, which is why I did until recently.
Rob Kall wrote an interesting endorsement of Ron Paul over at OpEdNews recently where he made some good points. Even if Ron Paul got elected President, the only things he would actually have the authority to change would be those matters of war and peace where I do agree with him. He would not have the authority to do any of the other stupid things he wants to do. As Commander in Chief he could pull our troops out of all the bases around the world and save us billion of dollars. However, getting rid of the IRS or FDA would require an act of Congress and he wouldn't be likely to get that much cooperation from either the Republicans or Democrats on that.
If I went and voted in the Republican primary for Mitt Romney, and he won, he would continue both the occupation of Iraq and conservative policies of disaster capitalism. At least with Ron Paul, he would end one of the two worst mistakes in modern American history.
So as I see the situation;
Since I can't vote for the candidate I want...
And since there is a good chance any protest vote I make within the Democratic Party will be a complete waste of time...
...the best use of my vote this week may actually be to go vote in the Republican Primary for Ron Paul. At least I could do my part to push the Republican Party, and therefore the entire political discourse in America, to the left.
With all the disgruntled Democratic voters who may flood the Republican Primary this year, the outcome could be very interesting.
Perhaps it is Providence.
Perhaps the Great Michigan Primary Debacle of 2008 is really an opportunity in disguise.
Perhaps this whole mess is an opportunity for Michigan Progressives to use their votes for something even more important, saving America by saving the Republicans from themselves.
I just received an unsolicited e-mail from "Sophie O" at mi4obama(?) that strongly urged me to vote for Ron Paul. The implication being that Sen. Obama's campaign is urging Michiganders to vote for Rep. Paul. Anyone else get this?
...Martin Luther King Jr. earned special ire from Paul's newsletters, which attacked the civil rights leader frequently, often to justify opposition to the federal holiday named after him. ("What an infamy Ronald Reagan approved it!" one newsletter complained in 1990. "We can thank him for our annual Hate Whitey Day.") In the early 1990s, a newsletter attacked the "X-Rated Martin Luther King" as a "world-class philanderer who beat up his paramours," "seduced underage girls and boys," and "made a pass at" fellow civil rights leader Ralph Abernathy. One newsletter ridiculed black activists who wanted to rename New York City after King, suggesting that "Welfaria," "Zooville," "Rapetown," "Dirtburg," and "Lazyopolis" were better alternatives. The same year, King was described as "a comsymp, if not an actual party member, and the man who replaced the evil of forced segregation with the evil of forced integration."
While bashing King, the newsletters had kind words for the former Imperial Wizard of the Ku Klux Klan, David Duke. ...
Hillary hasn't been good on MLK issues, but Paul is much worse.
Do you want to vote for Adolf, uh, Ron Paul now? Maybe not. I hope.
There is also the ethical issue about messing with somebody else's primary; I don't really like it, any more than I would appreciate 10 zillion Repubs crossing over and making Mike Gravel the winner. Dems should vote...DEM, etc.
And finally, there is also the "dilution" tactical problem, i.e., one Dem thinks, "I'll vote for that loser Huckabee and he'll win the Michigan vote, haw haw", but another thinks "I'll vote for that loser Ron Paul and he'll win the Michigan vote, haw haw", so that the "loser" votes may be spread out too much and let Romney or McCain slip through anyway--and ALSO let Hillary slip through.
This is what professionals call A Bad Result.
...I stated a few days ago that Senator Clinton needs to say, on record, unambiguously and as Shermanesque as possible, that she will not challenge the Michigan delegate ban under any circumstances, and not accept delegate votes from Michigan under any circumstances. If she won't commit to this statement, she is patently unqualified to run in the Democratic primary to begin with, as she would be advocating the strategy of stealing an election. I spent the last day or so trying to get an answer from the Clinton campaign, and no one will commit to this statement that I've talked to so far. Which is terrifying.
Therefore, I have changed my mind about the strategic advantage of voting for Ron Paul. It is now the clear strategic advantage, if you're in Michigan, to vote "uncommitted". Voting "uncommitted" in the Democratic primary allows the delegates to be freed up to support who they like, should the convention prove a close one.
Yes, most Michigan Democrats I know still plan on staying home, or voting in the Republican primary, but I hope the word gets out in time that there is a better option. Voting uncommitted isn't the same as not voting -- it's stopping Hillary Clinton from the potential of hijacking an election with invalid delgates (should the final totals be close). And that in and of itself is even more valuable than assuring Ron Paul keeps being a pest.
As for Hillary, by the way: congratulations on her slim 2-point victory over Barack in NH last night, although Barack's 9-point Iowa victory over her was proportionately more impressive.
However, as Maureen Dowd notes in Can Hillary Cry Her Way Back to the White House?,
...Gloria Steinem wrote in The Times yesterday that one of the reasons she is supporting Hillary is that she had "no masculinity to prove." But Hillary did feel she needed to prove her masculinity. That was why she voted to enable W. to invade Iraq without even reading the National Intelligence Estimate and backed the White House's bellicosity on Iran. ...
Hillary sounded silly trying to paint Obama as a poetic dreamer and herself as a prodigious doer. "Dr. King's dream began to be realized when President Johnson passed the Civil Rights Act," she said. Did any living Democrat ever imagine that any other living Democrat would try to win a presidential primary in New Hampshire by comparing herself to L.B.J.? (Who was driven out of politics by Gene McCarthy in New Hampshire.)
Her argument against Obama now boils down to an argument against idealism, which is probably the lowest and most unlikely point to which any Clinton could sink. The people from Hope are arguing against hope. ...
Hope against hope. Heh.
And with Hillary confirming in her victory speech that she'll get us out of Iraq "the right way", it implies she knows better than other Dem candidates what to do there. Which she didn't when she voted to send us to war there, causing far more tears in the families of our dead soldiers than she herself has shed recently; and I don't think she knows better now about Iraq, either. So much for Hillary.
So if you want a viable change candidate like Barack Obama (cf. the other poor man's Mich Lib, the Huffington Post, Obama Wins Key Support Of Nevada's Largest Union today) or John Edwards to win--and no lawsuit knocks over the primary, and if you don't want to boycott the primary, and maybe even if you like Richardson--, vote "uncommitted" and make sure all your friends do, too, and spread the word the best you can. --Kucinich is campaigning here, so he's violating the pledge not to campaign, maybe? and who wants to vote for a dishonest candidate? And Dodd is out. And Gravel...is Gravel, God bless him.
Ironically, then, if you are COMMITTED to change, you may have to vote UNCOMMITTED on 1/15. Funny, I know, but that's life.
It appears my watchdogging of the aftermath of Saul Anuzis' failed attempt to oust Ron Paul is coming to end today because Saul's contact page is back online. It is funny that Saul only started taking calls and emails again last night after he announces is going on vacation. (I might need a ruling to see if Saul's stonewalling of public outcry is actually over or if I need to continue blogging on this.)
Don't worry kids, Saul tends to screw up a lot and I will be back to blog about it.
But before I go, I have a couple of final facts for you. Saul made one more comment after yesterday's diary. Saul made a total of eight comments during the whole Ron Paul fiasco, proving he is more responsive to us liberals than anyone from the party he leads.
Saul, have fun yachting with Dick DeVos or whatever you Republicans do on Memorial day weekend. And for the rest of you, have fun watching Detroit beat Cleveland in all things sport.
Right now a Liberal has a better chance of talking to Saul than a Republican. Is he too busy mixing it up here on Michlib to repair his site? Whatever the reason his contact page is still down, I think Saul's troubles are hilarious...
I just did my daily search to see if Saul Anuzis and the MIGOP are accepting phone calls or emails yet. It appears the "censuring" of Ron Paul supporters and the anti-Anuzis crowd continues. Their contact page is down for the 7th day in a row.
Why does it matter, you ask? It is evidence that Saul's blunder is continuing to hurt Michigan Republicans. It exposes his inepititude at managing his party and that his reactionary politics fail. Oh and that he is a filthy liar about there "being no problems." Clearly somethings not okay, right Saul?
Despite Saul Anuzis'
claim that the MIGOP "handled all the volume" and their contact page was only down "temporarily," evidence points to otherwise.
If the Ron Paul controversy has ended, why is their contact page, http://www.migop.org... still down? I don't know about you but I find Saul's claims a bit dubious and methinks his cowardly backdown from his petition did not solve all their troubles. Do you think Saul has learned his lesson about meddling in primaries?
I am guessing Tim Walberg and Jerry Zandstra say no.
I got this email from the MI Republican Liberty Caucus today:
Michigan GOP Chairman Saul Anuzis will be issuing a statement retracting his call for Ron Paul to be excluded from future debates. His office now says
that there will be no "petition" circulated and a staffer says he hopes there will be a public statement about the matter later today. All of the website contact forms at http://www.migop.org... were deleted when the volume of negative comments exceeded the site's capacity.The state office (517) 487-5413 is still accepting calls.
92% Do not support Anuzis' efforts to bar Ron Paul from future debates
POLL QUESTION: Do you support Michigan Republican Chair Saul Anuzis' efforts to bar Congressman Ron Paul from future debates?
Yes--His Comments crossed the line
11 votes/8%
He has the right to say what he wants
128 votes/92%
Has Saul Anuzis had enough? The Michigan GOP big had wanted to ban presidential candidate Ron Paul from further debates. But an Internet wildfire may have derailed his efforts.
FNMN feedbacker Tim writes: "I contacted the Michigan GOP early this morning & was told Saul Anuzis was backing down & would be officially withdrawing his petition. Can anyone confirm this? Grassroots apparently turned into a grassfire on the neocons & instead of protecting their home they ran to hide. If they keep losing battles in their War Against Ron Paul, we might gain the White House for him yet!"
I just spoke with a friend who knows the people who work in the Michigan GOP office. He said the office "can't handle the volume" and "don't know what to do". Saul Anuzis's blackberry is flooded with messages, his voicemail is already full, and Ron Paul supporters are starting to find new phone numbers to reach him. They are totally freaked out.
Those are just the tip of the iceberg. There are over 300 blogposts about Saul and Ron Paul. Not to mention the hundreds of news stories.
I am guessing we won't be seeing comment #64 anytime soon.
(This was touched upon in LL's links, but worth emphasizing. - promoted by nirmal)
He's answering phone calls from angry Ron Paul supporters:
Undaunted, Paul-ites soon moved to another target: outspoken Michigan Republican Party chairman Saul Anuzis, who publicly called for Paul to be banned from further debates. The Michigan Republican Party has been deluged with incoming missives, some inviting Anuzis to go become the Republican party chair of Cuba. They're even calling his home. Anuzis won't give him and still plans to circulate a petition. (From the Hotline)
The MDP points out that Saul's petition against Ron Paul directly contradicts Saul's campaign pledge of neutrality in the Presidential primary race when he was running for MIGOP chair. I believe Tim Walberg and Jerry Zandstra know all about Saul's so-called primary neutrality. Read what the MDP has to say about the situation here.
