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StumbleSUN EDITORIAL:
Reid bridges partisan gap
Nevada’s senior senator paved the way for the important bailout bill to pass Congress
Sunday, Oct. 5, 2008 | 2:10 a.m.
After the House of Representatives failed to approve a Wall Street bailout bill Monday, things looked bleak. The Dow Jones industrial average plunged 777 points, the largest one-day drop in history, fanning Americans’ fears about the economy.
The fate of the bailout, which was designed to stimulate the economy, was uncertain at best. House opponents echoed the feelings of many Americans, saying the bill was unseemly because it helped the very banks and investment houses that had dragged the economy down.
However, it was clear something needed to be done. Enter Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid, D-Nev.
Over the following days, Reid and others were able to cobble together a bill that, although far from perfect, addressed some of the objections and provided more help for Americans far from Wall Street.
The new bill includes a needed package of tax incentives the Senate previously passed, including tax credits for renewable energy and hurricane and flood victims. It also provided a much-needed exemption for more than 20 million Americans from the alternative minimum tax, which was designed for the richest of the rich but had extended into the upper middle class.
Although the incentives helped, what was really needed to move the bill was leadership. No one liked the idea of the bill, but it was necessary. Congress had to act to try to stimulate the economy and ease the credit crisis and the jitters on Wall Street.
Reid brought a typically divided Senate together.
“This is not a Democratic bill, this is not a Republican bill, this is our bill,” he said. “It will help stabilize the economy and helps people on those little side streets across America, those mean streets across America.”
The Senate passed the bill overwhelmingly, 74-25, Wednesday night, and the House passed the measure Friday.
The bottom line is: Without Harry Reid’s leadership, the nation would still be waiting for help.
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Before we start getting into any heavy petting of our grand politicians I want to know who slipped the provision in for childrens wooden arrows?
Adding $120 billion of pork to a bad $700 billion bill is standard Harry Reid.
Did Harry Reid lead removal of the $20 billion ACORN slush fund lobbyist Obama slipped in the bill?
DEMs had to pass this bill by any means to help recover from the Fannie and Freddie mess that they are in bed with.
Thank you Harry Reid and Nancy Pelosi
Hey I have an idea, let's quit electing this jackoff into office.
The ink hasn't even dried and their patting each other on the back like they did us a favor.
Thanks Harry. Now do us a real favor and step down in disgrace for the failure you and Nancy are. A 10% approval rating. GW has a better rating. Most people get fired when they are failures at their job. You should consider yourself lucky that most of the people who vote don't know what you really stand for.
car_1,
The language you use to describe Harry Reid is offensive in the extreme. Please refrain from using such terms on this site.
Thank you.
My most humble apologies. Was it referring to him as a jackoff or a failure which offended you? The former is perhaps a bit harsh, but I do not particularly care for Mr. Reid's brand of politics.
The SUN still thinks this bailout bill will work.
JERUSALEM -- The board of a nonprofit organization on which Sen. Barack Obama served as a paid director alongside a confessed domestic terrorist granted funding to a controversial Arab group that mourns the establishment of Israel as a "catastrophe" and supports intense immigration reform, including providing drivers licenses and education to illegal aliens.
The co-founder of the Arab group in question, Columbia University professor Rashid Khalidi, also has held a fundraiser for Obama. Khalidi is a harsh critic of Israel, has made statements supportive of Palestinian terror and reportedly has worked on behalf of the Palestine Liberation Organization while it was involved in anti-Western terrorism and was labeled by the State Department as a terror group.
In 2001, the Woods Fund, a Chicago-based nonprofit that describes itself as a group helping the disadvantaged, provided a $40,000 grant to the Arab American Action Network, or AAAN, for which Khalidi's wife, Mona, serves as president. The Fund provided a second grant to the AAAN for $35,000 in 2002.
Obama was a director of the Woods Fund board from 1999 to Dec. 11, 2002, according to the Fund's website. According to tax filings, Obama received compensation of $6,000 per year for his service in 1999 and 2000.
Obama served on the Wood's Fund board alongside William C. Ayers, a member of the Weathermen terrorist group which sought to overthrow of the U.S. government and took responsibility for bombing the U.S. Capitol in 1971.
Ayers, who still serves on the Woods Fund board, contributed $200 to Obama's senatorial campaign fund and has served on panels with Obama at numerous public speaking engagements. Ayers admitted to involvement in the bombings of U.S. governmental buildings in the 1970s. He is a professor at the University of Illinois at Chicago.
OBAMA LIES ABOUT CLOSE RELATIONS WITH TERRORISTS
In spite of Sen. Barack Obama's claims to the contrary, the Democratic presidential nominee had a close working relationship with former Weathermen terrorist leader William Ayers when the two served alongside each other on a hundred-million-dollar education foundation, according to the group's own archived records.
The records also show Obama's and Ayers' foundation granted money to radical leftist activist causes.
News reports, archived records, interviews and Ayers' own curriculum vitae document that Ayers was the founder of the Chicago Annenberg Challenge, or CAC, which bills itself as a school reform organization. Ayers also served as co-chairman of the Chicago School Reform Collaborative, one of the two operational arms of the CAC, from its formation in 1995 until 2000.
In 1995, Obama was appointed as the CAC's first chairman.
In response to a query by National Review Online writer Stanley Kurtz, the Obama campaign issued a statement claiming Ayers was not involved with Obama's "recruitment" to the CAC board. The statement said Deborah Leff and Patricia Albjerg Graham, who served as presidents of other foundations, recruited Obama.
Last April, Obama dismissed Ayers as just "a guy who lives in my neighborhood," and "not somebody who I exchange ideas with on a regular basis."
But Kurtz reviewed the CAC archives at the Richard J. Daley Library at the University of Illinois at Chicago, which houses CAC board meeting minutes and other documentation from the education foundation. He found that along with Leff and Graham, Ayers was one of a working group of five who assembled the initial board of the CAC, which hired Obama.
car_1,
I don't care for your politics, but I wouldn't ever call you a name like that. You seem fairly intelligent. You can make your point without resorting to such language. You might even bring some people around to your way of thinking.
Editors,
How about enforcing your own code of conduct?
"Agree not to upload, post, distribute, e-mail or otherwise publish or make available through this site any libelous, defamatory, obscene, harmful, vulgar, threatening, tortious, harassing, abusive, invasive of another's privacy, hateful, racially or ethnically objectionable, or otherwise illegal material"
This is a bill that would have been totally unnecessary if the Senators and congressmen who have been elected had done the duty which they were elected to perform. Instead Harry Reid and Nancy Pelosi acted solely to obstruct anything that was introduced by a Republican without being called to task by their fellow Democrats.
These two have been the most partisan members of congress since being placed in their positions. They have been nothing but obstructionists. Several years ago John McCain introduced a bill to require that Freddie Mac and Fannie Mae also be held to the requirement for adequate reserve funds for the loans that they purchased. Harry killed this.
The congress is supposed to be a place where the ideas of all members are presented, debated, and distilled to the best available solution through discussion. Nancy and Harry have prevented this debate from occurring whenever the idea was presented by one of their opponents. They should both be recalled, but that also takes much time.