Family Guy Parody The Trashmen - Surfin’ Bird.

A-well-a everybody’s heard about the bird
B-b-b-bird, bird, bird, b-bird’s the word
A-well-a bird, bird, bird, the bird is the word
A-well-a bird, bird, bird, well the bird is the word

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FAIRFAX, Va. — A record-breaking season for voter registration drives ends Monday in nearly half the nation’s states, closing the books on a process that has helped Democrats and hurt Republicans in many states crucial to the fortunes of Barack Obama and John McCain.

Democrats have added more than 800,000 voters and Republicans have lost 300,000 in eight of the most tightly fought states in the presidential race: Florida, Pennsylvania, North Carolina, Colorado, Iowa, Nevada, New Mexico and New Hampshire. Changes occur when voters switch parties or are removed from registration lists because they moved, died or haven’t voted in recent elections.

Much of the work signing up new voters has been done by Democrat Obama’s campaign, as well as the political parties. In Pennsylvania, Democratic registration is up 400,000 from 2004; Republicans have lost 200,000.

Jon Carson, Obama’s national field director, says the latest data doesn’t capture a "massive spike" in registrations last week. Lines could form when registration closes Monday in 18 states and the District of Columbia. Some states have later deadlines; 10 allow Election Day registration.

On Monday, two organizations that seek to register young, minority and low-income Americans — Project Vote and the Association of Community Organizations for Reform Now (ACORN) — will announce that they helped 1.3 million people register or update their information this year.

More than half of them are in Ohio, Michigan, Florida and Pennsylvania, 60% are under 30 and about two-thirds are minorities, said Michael Slater, executive director of Project Vote. Carmen Arias of ACORN said the faltering economy motivates them.

GOP officials admit Democrats did a better job registering voters, but they say Republicans are better at getting voters to the polls, which could help McCain. "These aren’t normally people who vote in school board elections," said Rich Beeson, political director for the Republican National Committee. "These are people who need a lot of motivation."  {LINK}

Video says it all…

Graph of Federal Rescue Plans dating back to 2001. Warning Very large (1260×1681) Image.

C-Spans Debate hub is prime example of how news media should conduct business. C-Span has enthralled itself on being the most unbiased news source out there (because it provides live access to the white-house, house of representatives, and the congress) from their own site: C-SPAN offers gavel to gavel coverage of the U.S. House of Representatives. C-SPAN also offers a variety of public affairs programming including congressional hearings, press briefings from the White House, State Department and Pentagon, campaign and election coverage, and international programming. So I ask every-one of you to follow your “politicking” on PBS, C-Span or multiple news websites. Opinion should not ever be presented as news in any shape or form, and that is what we currently get from CNN, FOXNews, and MSNBC and news should never just come from one source.

As I crammed myself onto a crowded train this morning, I noticed there was a very pregnant woman standing near me, jammed in tightly and hanging on for dear life. I looked at the passengers sitting in the seats that are supposed to be surrendered to the elderly, physically challenged, and other people who need to sit, and all of them were listening to iPods. Most of them were also texting or reviewing email, one person was reading on a Kindle, and two people were watching movies. Not one of them even looked up; everyone was too absorbed in what they were listening to, reading, or watching to even notice the protruding belly and flushed face of the pregnant passenger.

Over the past few years, there have been countless discussions on minding our manners within our new modes of communication. Is it rude to text someone and ask him on a date? When is it appropriate to forward an email? Do we befriend someone on a social networking site we’ve only met once?

But while we’ve been debating the dos and don’ts of technology etiquette, it appears that many of us have forgotten some of the old school manners that our parents, grandparents, and teachers taught us—manners that have nothing to do with a keyboard or a monitor, but have everything to do with the long-forgotten Golden Rule. Maybe technology has eroded our brains so much that we can never go back to those golden days, but there are a few simple courtesies that I’d like to see make a comeback.

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Repealing glass-steagall had nothing to do with giving poor people mortgages- it made it so that insurance companies, banks, and anything else could all melt into one mega-financial institution, and it was the brainchild of McCain adviser/potential McCain treasury Secretary Phil Gramm.

What your dad is presumably talking about is stuff like the Community Reinvestment Act, which was signed into law in 1977. The Clinton administration made changes, and the Bush administration made changes, which I’m going to guess the GOP is not talking about.

So, bottom line, are these bad loans? Well, in November of 2000, the Cleveland Fed did a study and found that CRA loans were a little less profitable, and marginally more at risk of delinquency and default (more the former than the latter, which isn’t the worst). I don’t have all morning, but I wish I had more time to look into this.

Turns out that CRA, not Steagall, that helped this crisis occur. The Community Reinvestment Act was tweaked by both Clinton and Bush to increase home ownership among America’s negro and mestizo populations. Other legislation, such as the “Fair Housing Act”, also had similar aims. This legislation pressured the mortgage industry to give loans to blacks and mestizos with poor credit and finances. This was a driving force behind the subprime crisis.

Bottom line is, both Bush and Clinton are on the record promoting home “affordability”, one more recently than the other. Clinton was in the bank’s pockets, too, and of the many, many reasons for the crisis (inflationary Fed policy under Greenspan, poor enforcement of existing regulations, accounting shams, condo-flipping as a career option, etc) the minor deviations in performance for loans to working poor minorities, especially as traced to mid-90s changes in related laws, are probably not that high up. Can’t you and your dad agree that there are a bunch of scam artists in any business where you can get rich overnight, and that the banks bought off both parties in order to keep the orgy going?

But the yammering heads on the right are usually talking about the Community Reinvestment Act… The changes Clinton made were significant, and should have seen increased oversight later (and the regulators intended to in 2002) as its effects (in tandem with the repeal of Glass-Steagall) were better known. Instead, Bush juiced it up with even less regulation… nothing like a modest de-regulation for the sake of growth being co-opted for the sake of greed… especially when you can dump blame on the “entire system” rather than the parties actually at fault. So this “Diversity Recession” blames fault on Minorities, not those in Washington who can’t help but point fingers instead of having actual ACCOUNTABILITY. Clinton publicly said his changes to the Community Reinvestment Act needed to create new regulations in the coming months that would work for the new century. Of course the republican’s who claimed they would do this, promptly ignored the whole issue of new regulations once Clinton signed it. Basically he was punked by congress, and we get Diversity Recession.

“The diversity recession”. I like that. Sounds like a great way to pin the blame on the most powerful economic force in the United States, poor minorities. That way, you don’t feel bad for bailing out the horribly mistreated banks - they were fooled by those tricky poor people! Who knew you couldn’t math away your risk? Not the banks, for sure.

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Intelligent, articulate, and smart speeches dont just make the man, they make our next president.

video from 9/22/2008 shot in Green Bay, Wisconsin.

and with this I’ll start Picture Post for Education [tag]

“Project censored is one of the organizations that we should listen to, to be assured that our newspapers and our broadcast outlets are practicing thorough and ethical journalism.”
— Walter Cronkite

#1. Over One Million Iraqi Deaths Caused by US Occupation

# 2 Security and Prosperity Partnership: Militarized NAFTA

# 3 InfraGard: The FBI Deputizes Business

# 4 ILEA: Is the US Restarting Dirty Wars in Latin America?

# 5 Seizing War Protesters’ Assets

# 6 The Homegrown Terrorism Prevention Act

# 7 Guest Workers Inc.: Fraud and Human Trafficking

# 8 Executive Orders Can Be Changed Secretly

#9 Iraq and Afghanistan Vets Testify

# 10 APA Complicit in CIA Torture

# 11 El Salvador’s Water Privatization and the Global War on Terror

# 12 Bush Profiteers Collect Billions From No Child Left Behind

# 13 Tracking Billions of Dollars Lost in Iraq

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Factcheck.org and Politifact.com take issue with the assessment that McCain tries to portray Obama like other Democrats as “Tax and Spend Liberals,” pointing out that many of the McCain campaign’s claims about Obama’s tax initiatives are false or misleading.

In fact, even the conservative magazine National Review recently acknowledged that Obama’s plan offers more tax relief for middle class families than McCain’s. And even more recently Karl Rove and FoxNews themselves have caught on to McCains act.

Recent McCain campaign emails specifically target Obama’s tax plan for small businesses. The campaign has repeatedly claimed that Obama’s tax policies would raise taxes on 23 million small businesses, but, as Factcheck.org points out, that is simply not true. The Obama plan actually provides tax relief to small businesses in the form of a proposed capital gains tax exemption and tax credits to help cover the cost of employee health plans.

During a June interview with the Wall Street Journal, Obama stated he will exempt start-up small businesses from capital gains taxes in order to encourage small business development, saying, “Companies that are starting off…should be allowed to accumulate
capital, reinvest profits, if there are any, to the point that they
stabilize.”

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