My Personal Rants, Raves, and Ramblings

Republican U.S. Sen. Saxby Chambliss said Tuesday that some Atlanta banks are not making auto loans because of the credit squeeze connected to the current financial crisis facing the nation.

However, some state banking officials said while credit standards have tightened in recent months, they were not aware of any lenders putting the brakes on underwriting auto loans.

The first-term senator, who is running for re-election, said he has had confidential conversations with several bankers. Those bankers said the credit crunch and federal lawmakers’ inability to pass a rescue plan is quickly undermining their ability to do business, he said.

“There are some banks in Atlanta not making auto loans today,” Chambliss told reporters at a news conference at Peachtree-DeKalb Airport.

“Doing nothing is not the answer.”

Representatives of the state’s two big banking trade groups — the Georgia Bankers Association and the Community Bankers Association of Georgia — say they’re not aware of any total freezes.

“I’m not aware of any bank that has pulled back and said they’re stopping making auto loans because, quite frankly, they’re not doing that many of them in the first place,” said Steve Bridges, president and chief executive of the community bankers’ group. “The senator may be correct, but I have not had those conversations.”

SunTrust, the state’s biggest Georgia-headquartered bank, said it has reduced dealer-financed auto loans by about a third, but is still underwriting lending in that sector.

“We have not frozen; we have clearly tightened our lending standards in certain categories,” said Barry Koling, a SunTrust spokesman. “However, we remain committed to meeting the financial needs of our clients and we have by no means abandoned the lending business.”

Meanwhile, another financial trade group, the Georgia Credit Union Affiliates, said its auto loan volume has actually increased since last December.

WASHINGTON (AP) - The House on Monday defeated a $700 billion emergency rescue package, ignoring urgent pleas from President Bush and bipartisan congressional leaders to quickly bail out the staggering financial industry.
Stocks plummeted on Wall Street even before the 228-205 vote to reject the bill was announced on the House floor.

When the critical vote was tallied, too few members of the House were willing to support the unpopular measure with elections just five weeks away. Ample no votes came from both the Democratic and Republican sides of the aisle.

Bush and a host of leading congressional figures had implored the lawmakers to pass the legislation despite howls of protest from their constituents back home.

The overriding question for congressional leaders was what to do next. Congress has been trying to adjourn so that its members can go out and campaign. And with only five weeks left until Election Day, there was no clear indication of whether the leadership would keep them in Washington. Leaders were huddling after the vote to figure out their next steps.

A White House spokesman said that President Bush was "very disappointed."

"There's no question that the country is facing a difficult crisis that needs to be addressed," Tony Fratto told reporters. He said the president will be meeting with members of his team later in the day "to determine next steps."

"Obviously we are very disappointed in this outcome," Fratto said. ". There's no question that the country is facing a difficult crisis that needs to be addressed. The president will be meeting with his team this afternoon to determine the next steps and will also be in touch with congressional leaders."

Monday's mind-numbing vote had been preceded by unusually aggressive White House lobbying, and spokesman Tony Fratto said that Bush had used a "call list" of people he wanted to persuade to vote yes as late as just a short time before the vote.

Lawmakers shouted news of the plummeting Dow Jones average as lawmakers crowded on the House floor during the drawn-out and tense call of the roll, which dragged on for roughly 40 minutes as leaders on both sides scrambled to corral enough of their rank-and-file members to support the deeply unpopular measure.

They found only two.

Bush and his economic advisers, as well as congressional leaders in both parties had argued the plan was vital to insulating ordinary Americans from the effects of Wall Street's bad bets. The version that was up for vote Monday was the product of marathon closed-door negotiations on Capitol Hill over the weekend.

"We're all worried about losing our jobs," Rep. Paul Ryan, R-Wis., declared in an impassioned speech in support of the bill before the vote. "Most of us say, 'I want this thing to pass, but I want you to vote for it—not me.' "

Maxine Waters: Through nearly a dozen hearings, we were frankly trying to fix something that wasn’t broke. Mr. Chairman, we do not have a crisis at Freddie Mac, and particularly at Fannie Mae, under the outstanding leadership of Franklin Raines. [Raines would barely avoid prosecution for fraud.]

Gregory Meeks: … I’m just pissed off at OFHEO [the regulators trying to warn Congress of insolvency at the GSEs], because if it wasn’t for you, I don’t think we’d be here in the first place. … There’s been nothing that indicated that’s wrong with Fannie Mae, Freddie Mac has come up on its own … The question that then comes up is the competence that your agency has with reference to deciding and regulating these GSEs.

Lacy Clay: This hearing is about the political lynching of Franklin Raines.

Barney Frank: I don’t see anything in this report that raises safety and soundness problems.

No sooner had the video gone up of popular Hispanic actor Eduardo Verástegui denouncing presidential candidate Barack Obama on abortion than YouTube officials took it down. The video sharing site removed the full version of the video, which showed graphic images of abortions.

It did, however, leave an edited version in place that contains the Bella actor urging Latinos to vote against Obama without the footage of babies who have died from abortions.

“So now they try to solve the problem by having this credit bubble actually extended and I think the $700 billion will be like a drop in the bucket because the total credit market in the U.S. is something close to $60 trillion, then you have the CDS market – credit default swap – of around $62 trillion. Then you have the whole derivatives worldwide worth about a notional $1,300 trillion. So the $700 billion is really nothing and the Treasury is just giving out this figure when actually the end figure may be $5 trillion.”

Rule #5: Just do it, but marry well. Pour your heart and soul into a start-up, but try to do it before you marry. McNealy didn't marry until he was 39, he said, but has since caught up with four sons. "The most important decision you make is who you marry and have kids with," McNealy advised. "Pick a spouse or significant other, or whatever you want. Just make sure you pick a good one. There's some real technical advice for you from an entrepreneur."

- Sun Microsystems' Chairman and co-founder Scott McNealy

"Prepare thy work without, and make it fit for thyself in the field; and afterwards build thine house." - Proverbs 24:27

NEW ORLEANS -- A suburban New Orleans legislator is revisiting the controversial idea of paying poor women to undergo sterilization.

State Rep. John LaBruzzo told New Orleans Citybusiness, in an article published this week, that the program he is thinking about would be voluntary. It would pay poor women $1,000 to have their fallopian tubes tied.

"I've got a stack of e-mails for and against," LaBruzzo said. "Two-to-one in favor of something being done."

LaBruzzo, a Metairie Republican, said the plan could slow the growth of welfare rolls.

"It could be tubal ligation, IUD," LaBruzzo said. "It would be more coast-effective than having three to four kids. It would be more cost-effective for them."

Click here for the rest of the story

"...I think the responsibility that the Democrats have may rest more in resisting any efforts by Republicans in the Congress or by me when I was President to put some standards and tighten up a little on Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac." - Bill Clinton

"Gun-control advocates, religious leaders and government officials urged a key
Senate panel Tuesday to not let more Georgians carry firearms into places of
worship, schools, municipal buildings and mental hospitals.

But
gun-rights supporters say there is no evidence Georgians licensed to carry
firearms would endanger the public if allowed to bring their weapons to church
or onto college campuses.

The two conflicting views were aired when a
Senate committee heard testimony on possible legislation to amend Georgia’s
138-year-old law banning firearms at places of “public gatherings.”

The
committee’s chairman, Sen. Mitch Seabaugh (R-Sharpsburg), has written draft
legislation that would allow Georgians with carry licenses to take weapons into
most public places other than jails and courtrooms.

However, Seabaugh
stressed that his draft is only the beginning of the process. He expects other
places to be excluded in the bill before the 2009 session begins in January.

The move to weaken the current ban on guns at “public gatherings,”
including churches and college campuses, comes on the heels of House Bill 89,
which became law on July 1. That measure lets people with firearms licenses
carry guns into state parks, restaurants that serve alcohol and on mass transit.

GeorgiaCarry.org, which pushed House Bill 89, is also backing the move
to make it legal to carry guns to church and other places.

The group’s
president, Ed Stone, said people with carry licenses rarely commit crimes. But
he said current gun-control laws don’t prevent criminals from committing crimes.

“Public gatherings laws won’t keep criminals from carrying weapons,”
Stone said. “Criminals don’t pay attention to laws. That’s why they are
criminals. This only effects the most law-abiding of citizens.”

"An anonymous complaint stated that [The mother] had not bonded with her child and that baby Jessica had not been kept clean, according to agency records."

"About a month later, the state removed Jessica from her home and placed her with a foster family. The couple were devastated but determined to bring their daughter home, and they earnestly began working to fulfill the state’s demands that they take parenting classes, alcohol counseling and psychological evaluations in order to get Jessica back."

"They had made progress and hoped to have Jessica back this month. They were baby-proofing the house, putting plugs in electrical outlets, making sure the smoke detectors worked."

"The happy reunion never arrived. Jessica died while in the care of a state-appointed foster mother.

On Sept. 2, the foster mother, Wendy Osborne, failed to realize she left Jessica in her van, according to the police report. It was a day when temperatures reached 85 degrees. Two hours passed before Osborne checked her burgundy Dodge Caravan. Jessica, one day short of 9 months old, died in her car seat. Her body temperature reached 108 degrees, the police report said.

The next morning, Carter answered a knock on the door and saw several people from the Division of Family and Children Services and the Sheriff’s Office. Their news was horrifying."

Robert Scovil and fiancée Evelyn Carter with baby Jessica.

RICH ADDICKS / raddicks@ajc.com, courtesy of family/Staff

"Letting Democratic Congressman Hank Johnson run unopposed for re-election has
one write-in candidate talking “Bully!” for his own campaign.

Loren
Collins, a 30-year-old Atlanta attorney, announced Friday that he’s running
against the Democratic incumbent as a Bull Moose.

That’s right, it’s the
same, short-lived “Bull Moose” party that Theodore Roosevelt created to stage a
presidential comeback in the 1912 election.

“The Bull Moose Party is
intended to stand as a refuge for economically conservative Democrats, socially
liberal Republicans, classic liberals and libertarians,” Collins said in a
prepared statement on Friday."

"Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson says the government is crafting a plan to rescue banks from bad debts that are at the heart of Wall Street's worst financial crisis in decades.

Paulson said late Thursday the plan will need congressional approval. He and Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Bernanke briefed lawmakers on the options they are considering.

Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid, D-Nev., said he expected the administration and the Fed to have a proposal to lawmakers in a matter of hours, rather than days.

Paulson, Bernanke and Securities and Exchange Commission chair Christopher Cox asked lawmakers at the session to pass legislation giving the government power to buy distressed assets.

"It will be the power -- it may not be a new entity -- it will be the power to buy up illiquid assets," Rep. Barney Frank, D-Mass, said.

Frank said there was "virtually unanimous agreement" among lawmakers in attendance that such legislation was needed.

Stocks rallied more than 400 points late Thursday after a report that the Bush administration was working on a new plan to alleviate fallout from the housing and credit crises. Those debacles have badly bruised the economy and pushed unemployment to a five-year high."

"You push this populist nonsense that doesn’t make sense!"

- Neil Cavuto

"I can understand why a lot of American's would be umm confused as to why this company, and not another company would get access to federal money, well, why any company."

"You, the American workers, are the best in the world. But your economic security has been put at risk by the greed of Wall Street. That’s unacceptable.

My opponent’s only solutions are talk and taxes.

I’ll reform Wall Street and fix Washington. I’ve taken on tougher guys than this before."

"Sarah Palin, if she was just a plain Evangelical woman, would have a tough time thinking that she could be VP. An evangelical woman might have issues with submission. What's gonna happen with my kids? But a Pentecostal woman is saying God is calling me, I'm gonna answer this call."

Gibson: "Roe v Wade, do you think it should be reversed?"

Palin: "I think it should and I think that states should be able to decide that issue."

It's an unassuming restaurant off the beaten path...

And here are the left overs from ONE meal! (not including the two cinnamon rolls)

"It's not fancy. Pan-fried chicken, gravy and mashed potatoes. It's a small place. There's a two-hour wait and no reservations. But it's unique. Whenever I'm in Kansas City, I cannot leave town without going there."

- Rush Limbaugh on Stroud's Click for full article.