#1
Hopefully as successful as the war waged by Wall Street, it's lobbyists, and its Congressional and Executive sock puppets to loot the American taxpayer to cover their gambling loses.
#4
I suspect you are thinking of Smoot-Hawley, the tariff bill. Glass Steagall separated investment banking from commercial banking and prohibited interstate banking, among other things. It was passed in response to the GD and was not a cause. Its reimposition would do much to help us out of our current difficulty.
#5
Neither measure helped but I was indeed thinking of Glass Steagall. While it had short-term tactical value, prohibiting interstate banking and limiting the ability of commercial banks to manage risk did indeed IMO strongly deepen the GD, given the rampant hyperinflation in parts of Europe at the time (among other issues).
#6
I agree that the removal of the walls between investment banking and institutional banking were significant contributors to the current financial chaos. Had some provisions of Glass Steagall been in place, those huge losses by the investment houses on mortgage derivatives would not have leaked over into the institutional side and caused the credit crunch and the damage now in place.
I like being about to use a ATM card in Maryland at a branch of my bank in California. Interstate banking does not bother me...the elimination of the wall between investment and institutional banking does still and needs to be put back in place.
I notice...that I am using....a lot of dots in my posts...these days...am I channeling Maureen Dowd?....Crap.
Posted by: Karl Rove ||
12/28/2009 11:05 Comments ||
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#7
limiting the ability of commercial banks to manage risk did indeed IMO strongly deepen the GD Please provide links to background info on your assertion. This is the only place I've found this. Glass-Steagall was overturned in 11/99. Between 1940-1999 I see little evidence that commercial banks had trouble managing risks. Since 1999 commercial banks have done a superb job of mismanaging risk, the best ever in world history, and all this mismanagement was done without the burden of Glass-Steagall. Even the former head of Citigroup, which came into existence only because of Glass-Steagall's repeal, has expressed his regret for that change in the law. Paul Volcker supports reinstatement of it, very strongly.
Glass Steagle basically boils down to saying that bureaucrats can avoid systematic risks at banks.
They cannot.
The trouble was in the volume of credit (and governments loved taxing the effects of the credit). The way to lower the volume of credit is to raise reserve requirements.
#9
And what the Congress did was just the opposite: mandated risky loans to poor prospects with the implicit guarantee of government bailouts - but without any disciplined tracking of the risk that such would be needed and with overt threats if the banks priced risk into the loan rates.
I don't see any great likelihood that separating investment from commercial banking will do much to prevent that sort of ideological bias. It's not fair to say that the banks mismanaged risk - they responded quite rationally to the pressures presented them by Congress and also by the Bush admininstration which used house 'value' to keep consumers buying in order to finance the wars indirectly.
Market failure mandated, abetted and utterly unsurprising as a result.
An indirect analogue happened with the Great Depression. Combined with tariffs on imported goods, Glass-Steagall decoupled commercial loans from risk offsets the banks could have made on the investment side. What the Congress thought was a safeguard against market risk meant that risk could not be measured or offset, with the inevitable result that banks stopped lending, the CRA not having yet been adopted.
Most people don't realize how important credit is to tangible goods businesses. Access to well priced funds for inventory, cash flow management and investment is a huge multiplier of economic activity. Cut off that flow and business activity dries up. But capital for lending has to come from somewhere ... and if it is limited to simple deposits, that is a very limited source compared to markets.
#11
by the Bush admininstration which used house 'value' to keep consumers buying in order to finance the wars indirectly. I don't know that the Bush administration planned on using house values to indirectly finance the wars without raising taxes, but I do understand that the housing bubble did have that effect. Had the housing bubble somehow been killed at birth and no other bubble started, there would have been a recession instead. The US has been consuming far more than it produces for quite some time, the housing bubble just masked that.
I don't get that the Congressional mandate for loans to poor prospects had much of an effect on the housing bubble. CRA has been in effect since 1975 & wasn't a problem for the first 30 years. The explosion of credit default swaps had nothing to do with CRA & everything to do with the government preempting the states laws against CDS. In addition the SEC gave the 5 biggest banks an exemption from its old 12-1 reserve ratio (approx) after which they went to 40-1 leverage. Still, no one forced the banks to go hog wild between 2005 & the crash, they did it themselves. Their excesses were not rational by any means, but greedy and shortsighted.
While al-Qaedas structure may have been shaken it has not been destroyed and it is known for its resilience and reinvention. More significantly, its ideology of intolerance and suicidal violence spreads easily via the internet and is embedded in sections of the British Muslim population, notably on many university campuses.
The ideology is today more potent than the organisation and there are still a significant number of people in Britain who want to put it into practice here or overseas. Al-Qaeda and its mindset remain a danger.
#1
Seen this before - Clinton treated Al-Qaeda attackes - the '93 WTC bombing, the Khobar Towers, the USS Cole, the Bojinka plot, the embassy bombings as problems for law enforcement. And that led up to 9/11.
Prior to 9/11, that might be excused as naïveté (though I'd call it stupidity). Post 9/11, it smacks of criminal negligence.
#2
The article's headline reads: Our false sense of security should end here: al-Qaeda never went away
--- What false sense of security? Every morning since 9/11 I turn on the TV to see if there are any banner headlines running of another atrocity. If I am out in the boonies as I was on 7/7, I tune my satellite radio to the news channels.
However, one of Sutton's most notable moments is absent from the media hagiographies I have seen: he stated on television that he knew that an Islamic supremacist, Dr. Khalid al-Mansour, and advisor to a wealthy Saudi, had paid for Barack Obama's education at Harvard Law School.
Exactly how young Barack Obama, a man of slender means, managed to pay for a Harvard Law degree has long been a mystery, and the President has not been forthcoming about any details of his elite education.
Posted by: Deacon Blues ||
12/28/2009 11:53 ||
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#1
The Food and Agriculture Organization and the International Monetary Fund have had this diplomatic status for half a century.
This did not empower them to operate in America. The FAO could not interfere with an American farm. The IMF could not walk into an American bank.
Likewise Interpol cannot arrest anyone in America.
All this order does is give Interpol the same diplomatic status as UNESCO.
Posted by: john frum ||
12/28/2009 13:57 Comments ||
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#2
INTERPOL, meet 2d Amendment....
Posted by: Barbara Skolaut ||
12/28/2009 14:08 Comments ||
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#3
John,
OK, but doesn't that make them immune from US prosecution if they actually DO make an arrest in the US? It's like they left the rules but removed the penalty for violation?
#4
Interpol relies on local law enforcement (in the US - the DOJ) to enforce its red notices.
Interpol itself cannot arrest anyone in the US.
http://www.interpol.int/Public/Wanted/Default.asp
An Interpol Red Notice is not an international arrest warrant.
The persons concerned are wanted by national jurisdictions (or the International Criminal Tribunals, where appropriate) and Interpol's role is to assist the national police forces in identifying or locating those persons with a view to their arrest and extradition.
These red notices allow the warrant to be circulated worldwide with the request that the wanted person be arrested with a view to extradition
Posted by: john frum ||
12/28/2009 14:45 Comments ||
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#5
Thanks for the clarification, John. The way the article was written made it seem that Interpol was being given carte blanche to go after US citizens.
Posted by: Deacon Blues ||
12/28/2009 14:53 Comments ||
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#6
We talked about this last week. Bob Owens gets a little .. excitable on occasion. This time he's talking through his hat.
Posted by: Steve White ||
12/28/2009 15:55 Comments ||
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#7
ION FREEREPUBLIC > [AQ in Arabian Peninsula/
Yemen]AL QAEDA PRESS RELEASE CALLS NIDAL HASAN A "MOUJAHED BROTHER", CALLS FOR SOLDIERS TO FOLLOW HIS ACT.
IMO PR strongly infers call, support for MILITARY MUTINIES TO OCCUR WIDIN US REGIONAL, CONUS-NORAM, etc. MILFORS.
* FREEP POSTER > claims POTUS Bammer gave a seemingly disjointed or semi-confused press briefing today on DETROIT AIRLINER-MUTALLAB INCIDENT becuz Bammer realizes "his Muslim friends" are planning = coming to attack the USA, and most likely on his [first-term]POTUS watch???
* Also on FREEREPUBLIC > CHECHEN PRESIDENT: THE WEST WANTS TO DESTROY RUSSIA.
Democrats are retooling and reprising their "Party of No" attack on Republicans in Congress after they unanimously rejected financial reform and health care bills in votes this month.
But already, analysts are questioning whether charges of GOP obstructionism will be enough to keep voters from taking out their angst over the economy on Democrats next fall.
Truly, since the Republicans are saying no to things the voters don't want.
Last week, the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee began making robocalls against Republicans in four districts in Florida, Michigan and Pennsylvania for opposing a Democratic plan to tighten regulation of banks and financial services firms widely blamed for last year's economic meltdown.
"Remember? We said it can't happen again. But did you know Congressman [Mario] Diaz-Balart (R-Fla.) voted to let Wall Street continue the same risky practices that crippled retirement accounts and cost taxpayers $700 billion, including unchecked bonuses and salaries for executives?" says the call, which was first reported by the Miami Herald. "Maybe the $81,204 he got from financial special interests mattered more than taxpayers."
The recorded messages come on the heels of 60-second radio ads the DCCC rolled out in five districts in California, Nebraska and Pennsylvania highlighting the same Dec. 11 vote in which no Republican backed the regulation package.
The salvos come as other Democrats say they plan to paint Republicans as obstructionist for their down-the-line opposition to Senate health care legislation Thursday.
"History will judge harshly those who have chosen the simple path of obstruction over the hard work of making change. It always does," said Sen. Chris Dodd (D-Conn.), an architect on the Senate financial reform bill.
"I think it's a good argument for the Democrats. I just don't think it will work," said Stu Rothenberg of the non-partisan Rothenberg Political Report. "It is a good message if the fundamentals change. ...The problem is, if the economy is not in good shape and people still don't feel [a recovery], it's going to be about Obama and about the Democrats. With Democrats controlling everything, and how active the administration has been on all these fronts, I just don't think the Democrats are going to make it about the Republicans."
Republican lawmakers insist they're not worried about being slapped with a do-nothing label.
"Nobody's been an obstructionist. All we wanted to do was participate in the process," Sen. Orrin Hatch (R-Utah) said on CNN during a back-and-forth over the health care bill. "I think [Democrats] deserve some credit for getting it done, as bad as it is. But it's going to wreck our country, I have to tell you. And people out there know that."
A spokesman for the DCCC, Ryan Rudominer, said his committee's message is not so much about Republican inertia as about the GOP siding with the very banks and financial institutions that many Americans blame for tanking the economy last fall.
#1
I'll vote for a "No" party. Hell, I would vote for "Let's just meet for one month for one bill then party the rest of the year and leave the voters alone" party at this point.
#3
Well I think this "party of 'no'" attack dog tactic is a great campaign add for the Republicans.
I know that even here in the left coast, everyone with any sanity is up in arms about the health care bill and this cap and trade nonsense. Having the reputation as trying to hold the line against the looney left will have more resonance with voters to the positive than the dems can imagine.
Let's hope the dems continue this rhetoric to remind voters who is fighting for them.
Posted by: Karl Rove ||
12/28/2009 11:11 Comments ||
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#4
Not just No, but HELL NO!
2009 Fiscal Year Federal budget deficit: $1420 billion
2010 Projected Fiscal Year Federal budget deficit: $1170 billion. Which is now a fantasy since tax revenue will be much lower. Can you say projected 7% unemployment with a straight face?
2009 Federal debt increase: $2900 billion (bailouts and stealing money from Social Security and Medicare trust funds are "off budget")
2010 Projected Federal debt increase: $1400 billion. Again Marxist Math in action.
Posted by: ed ||
12/28/2009 11:51 Comments ||
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#5
Better the party of No than voting for the Demonrats, the party of human sacrifices, criminals, traitors, racists, and anti-human bigots.
My question is, why do we bother negotiating with vermin?
Bruised by the health care debate and worried about what 2010 will bring, moderate Senate Democrats are urging the White House to give up now on any effort to pass a cap-and-trade bill next year.
"I am communicating that in every way I know how," says Sen. Mary Landrieu (D-La.), one of at least half a dozen Democrats who've told the White House or their own leaders that it's time to jettison the centerpiece of their party's plan to curb global warming.
The creation of an economy-wide market for greenhouse gas emissions is as the heart of the climate bill that cleared the House earlier this year. But with the health care fight still raging and the economy still hurting, moderate Democrats have little appetite for another sweeping initiative -- especially another one likely to pass with little or no Republican support.
"We need to deal with the phenomena of global warming, but I think it's very difficult in the kind of economic circumstances we have right now," said Indiana Democratic Sen. Evan Bayh, who called passage of any economy-wide cap and trade "unlikely."
At a meeting about health care last month, moderates pushed to table climate legislation in favor of a jobs bill that would be an easier sell during the 2010 elections, according to Senate Democratic aides.
"I'd just as soon see that set aside until we work through the economy," said Sen. Ben Nelson (D-Neb.). "What we don't want to do is have anything get in the way of working to resolve the problems with the economy."
"Climate change in an election year has very poor prospects," added Sen. Kent Conrad (D-N.D.). "I've told that to the leadership."
At least some in the Democratic leadership appear to be listening. Asked about cap-and-trade last week, Senate Majority Whip Dick Durbin (D-Ill.) said: "At this point I'd like to see a complete bill but we have to be realistic."
Posted by: Fred ||
12/28/2009 00:00 ||
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#1
Another useless, needless piece of crap legislation built to destroy the middle class.
#5
As far as I can tell, all the Cap-and-Trade and other allegedly anti Climate Change political efforts have little or nothing to do with Climate Change and everything to do with creating One World Government of economic pseudo-socialism.
#6
Both Health Care Reform and Cap&Trade involve increased taxes, up front & right away, while benefits, if any, are years in the future. That will go over like a load of manure in the punch bowl.
U.S. federal authorities are investigating millions of dollars contributed by fraud suspect Allen Stanford and his staff to U.S. lawmakers in the past decade, the Miami Herald reported on Sunday.
The newspaper said the Justice Department investigation aimed to determine whether the banker received special favors from politicians while he was operating his alleged $7 billion Ponzi scheme centered on fraudulent certificates of deposit issued by his offshore bank in Antigua and Barbuda.
The U.S. Department of Justice said it had no comment on the Herald report.
The newspaper said an e-mail sent to Stanford by Texas Republican Representative Pete Sessions on the day authorities announced fraud charges against the billionaire financier, as well as $2.3 million in contributions he made to Sessions and other U.S. lawmakers, were "part of the government's inquiry."
It said Stanford, who has pleaded not guilty and is awaiting a trial set for January 2011, also spent $5 million on lobbying since 2001. It said he successfully lobbied in 2001 to kill a bill that would have exposed the flow of millions into his secretive offshore bank on the Caribbean island of Antigua.
The following year he helped block legislation that would have led to more government scrutiny of his now disgraced Antigua bank, the Miami Herald said.
Stanford, 59, has been in custody since June 19, when he was indicted on 21 criminal charges related to his alleged fraud. His global banking and securities business was shut down in February when the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission filed civil charges that he and others had committed fraud.
The Miami Herald said that on the day federal agents raided Stanford's offices in the United States, February 17, the financier received an e-mail message from Sessions, the chairman of the National Republican Congressional Committee.
The newspaper said the message was found on Stanford's computer servers and reads: "I love you and believe in you.
"If you want my ear/voice e-mail," the Miami Herald quoted the message as saying, adding it was signed "Pete."
At the end of 2009 many conservatives will have renewed appreciation for Winston Churchill's admonition: "Nothing in life is so exhilarating as to be shot at without result." Conservatives and their fellow citizens were not generally (unless engaged on the battlefield) shot at, but they were bombarded with an avalanche of leftist policy proposals. And yet, as Bill Kristol observes: "The Obama administration (so far) hasn't succeeded in doing too much damage to the American economy. Major parts of American society and the American polity are resisting the allure of a slide into European decadence. The climate change fear-mongers are increasingly discredited, and Copenhagen was a farce."
In short, the Obama team didn't succeed to the degree many of us anticipated and feared it would in refashioning domestic policy and achieving its free-market-killing initiatives. Card check is off the table. Cap-and-trade has been postponed. The stimulus bill did not endear the country to the wonders of big government. The health-care bill is not yet law, but is grossly unpopular. It is worth asking: why? Why did the most heralded politician to assume the White House in a generation, in the midst of a collapse of the private sector, and with huge Democratic majorities in the House and Senate not do any better (or do more damage, depending on your perspective)?
The answers are three-fold, I think. First, this president showed no inclination or talent to engage in the nitty-gritty business of lawmaking. He did not set forth his own specific proposals on key agenda items, set a deadline, or whip Congress into line. He preferred endless speeches, innumerable TV talk-show appearances, and campaign-style events, none of which solved the hard questions as to what it is that key legislation should contain. And then Congress did what it does best -- squabble, debate, reach gridlock, churn out pork-a-thon legislation in lieu of serious policy prescriptions, and show themselves to be obsessed with shielding their own constituents from measures they would willingly foist on others. The result was low output and an absence of thoughtful or innovative policy. And most glaringly, on his most important agenda item, Obama did not make substantive arguments nor focus on a coherent legislative health-care scheme that was designed to fulfill his objectives.
Second, the Obami ran Left, even beyond the tolerance of their own party. Democratic senators have held up cap-and-trade, not the Republicans. The Democrats can't find 60 votes in the Senate to take away the right to secret ballot in union elections. Again, the liberal aspirations of special interest groups don't match the political composition of those in office, even after an election that delivered across-the-board Democratic victories.
And finally, Obama himself did not inspire or persuade the public in the way his followers imagined he would. His campaign rhetoric wore thin, never rising above the level of platitudes. And when that rhetoric didn't persuade, the president diminished himself and the power of the bully pulpit by inveighing against opponents, picking fights with talk-show hosts and news networks, and condescending the public (e.g., red pill/blue bill health-care hooey, Gatesgate's "teachable moment," etc.). In short, he didn't lead.
This year ends with a sigh of relief from conservatives on the domestic front. Their work in opposing liberal Democratic policies is not, however, over. The health-care bill looms on the horizon and the Democrats will take a second pass at a number of their policy proposals. But there is a certain exhilaration in surviving the initial (and certainly the strongest barrage) of one's political enemies. And for conservatives, finding that the American people are increasingly rallying to their side in the political debate is particularly gratifying.
Posted by: Fred ||
12/28/2009 00:00 ||
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#1
In short, the free market is on life support & Obama wants to pull its plug. Friends & relatives of the patient are having 2nd thoughts.
The wisest quote of 2009 came from President Barack Obama, who cut off belligerent Republicans with the reminder: "Elections have consequences."
They surely do. And Americans are paying the consequences of the 2008 election.
The most tangible fallout of the electorate installing single-party rule in Washington is that policy-making has become an ideological exercise, rather than a pragmatic one.
Republicans still represent the views of roughly half of the America people -- on health care, it's more like 60 percent -- and yet the minority party has had no moderating effect on the health care reform packages moving swiftly to passage.
It's a bill written by Democrats and passed by Democrats, with all of the give-and-take taking place between Democrats. The horse-trading is between the middle and the left, instead of between the right and the left.
So instead of a bill that falls close to the middle, Congress will produce one that is well left of center.
The old saw, "power tends to corrupt and absolute power corrupts absolutely," applies perfectly to the process we're witnessing in Washington.
Moderate Democrats rose to express concerns about the size and scope of the bill, and held some sway. But because the negotiating was intra-party, it was too easy for the Democratic leadership to win over nettlesome holdouts with payoffs.
In the House, freshmen Democrats elected from conservative districts balked at voting for the most liberal bill to move in more than 40 years. They were bought off with promises of plum committee assignments or bullied into line by House Speaker Nancy Pelosi with threats of burial in committee catacombs.
Sen. Mary Landrieu, a Democrat from conservative Louisiana, held out, citing the enormous costs. Ironically, she delivered her vote after getting a promise of $300 million for her pork-laden state.
Sen. Ben Nelson, D-Neb., took up the torch lit by Michigan's Bart Stupak in the House and insisted that the Senate bill ban abortions from public funding. He didn't get his abortion amendment.
But he did win a promise from Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid to exempt Nebraska from the cost of the mandated Medicaid expansion.
Forty-nine other states will have to eat those costs, along with Nebraska's share. In Michigan, it could total $500 million the state doesn't have.
Send some love to Michigan Attorney General Mike Cox, who has joined a handful of his colleagues from other states to challenge the constitutionality of the curious deal.
Reid says this is how legislating works. It is when there's no check on power. Some of the stuff we've seen over the past couple of months would qualify as criminal coercion, vote buying and bribery if it were the private sector writing the checks.
But as Obama pointed out, elections have consequences. So at least for the next year, this Democratic Congress will be able to do whatever it pleases.
Posted by: Fred ||
12/28/2009 00:00 ||
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Understandbly, the White House is trying very hard to get out in front of the would-be Christmas bomber story. The head of the Department of Homeland Security isn't helping. I watched her on three shows and each time she was more annoying, maddening and absurd than the pevious appearance. It is her basic position that the "system worked" because the bureaucrats responded properly after the attack. That the attack was "foiled" by a bad detonator and some civilian passengers is proof, she claims, that her agency is doing everything right. That is just about the dumbest thing she could say, on the merits and politically.
I would wager that not one percent of Americans think the system is "working" when terrorists successfully get bombs onto planes (and succeed in activating them). Probably even fewer think it's fair that they have to take off their shoes, endure delays and madness while a known Islamic radical -- turned in by his own father -- can waltz onto a plane (and into the country). DHS had no role whatsoever in assuring that this bomb didn't go off. By her logic if the bomb had gone off, the system would have "worked" since it has done everything right.
Napolitano has a habit of arguing that DHS is a first responder outfit. Its mission is to deal with "man-caused-disasters" afer they occur. It appears she really believes it. If the White House wants to assure people that it takes the war on terror seriously (a term Robert Gibbs used this morning by the way), they could start by firing this patenly unqualified hack.
Posted by: Fred ||
12/28/2009 00:00 ||
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#1
Fire the patently unqualified hack who appointed her, too.
Posted by: Dave D. ||
12/28/2009 7:41 Comments ||
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#8
Newspeak: System worked - muslim terrorists were too incompetent to build a working bomb.
Posted by: ed ||
12/28/2009 12:12 Comments ||
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#9
All the appropriate agencies notified after the fact? CHECK
Proper paperwork filed? CHECK
Alleged perpetrator given Miranda rights and free legal counsel? CHECK
You're doing a heckava job, Nappie!
Posted by: regular joe ||
12/28/2009 12:14 Comments ||
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#10
The system DID work!!
Guys, you all keep forgetting that the purpose of the system is to prevent blame for disasters from accruing to the bureaucracy and the politicians!!
They admit that the whole purpose of DHS is to be a "first" responder NOT a preventer. They are there to pick up the aluminum and human confetti after a "man-caused disaster" while providing cover for the traitorous filth in government.
#11
I dunno. Napolitano has made a career of defending the indefensible. She has always been willing to go in front of reporters and cameras and utter complete nonsense. In Arizona where the subject was illegal immigration she did it on a regular basis. That is her primary qualification for the job she now holds. It is exactly what Obama wants her to do. Now, whether or not he'll throw her under the bus for this latest snafu is another matter. But if he does he'll be looking for someone just as obnoxious as she is to replace her. Trust me, folks, he will NOT be looking for a better solution to the problem.
Posted by: Abu Uluque ||
12/28/2009 18:04 Comments ||
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#12
BTW, here is some interesting footage of what the shoe bomber might have done if his bomb had worked properly: LINK
Posted by: Abu Uluque ||
12/28/2009 18:09 Comments ||
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#13
Janet(from another planet) Sez, "It (DHS C-4)went off like clockwork"
A multi-volume chronology and reference guide set detailing three years of the Mexican Drug War between 2010 and 2012.
Rantburg.com and borderlandbeat.com correspondent and author Chris Covert presents his first non-fiction work detailing
the drug and gang related violence in Mexico.
Chris gives us Mexican press dispatches of drug and gang war violence
over three years, presented in a multi volume set intended to chronicle the death, violence and mayhem which has
dominated Mexico for six years.
Rantburg was assembled from recycled algorithms in the United States of America. No
trees were destroyed in the production of this weblog. We did hurt some, though. Sorry.
At the end of 2009 many conservatives will have renewed appreciation for Winston Churchill's admonition: "Nothing in life is so exhilarating as to be shot at without result." Conservatives and their fellow citizens were not generally (unless engaged on the battlefield) shot at, but they were bombarded with an avalanche of leftist policy proposals. And yet, as Bill Kristol observes: "The Obama administration (so far) hasn't succeeded in doing too much damage to the American economy. Major parts of American society and the American polity are resisting the allure of a slide into European decadence. The climate change fear-mongers are increasingly discredited, and Copenhagen was a farce."
The wisest quote of 2009 came from President Barack Obama, who cut off belligerent Republicans with the reminder: "Elections have consequences." 
