It did not appear that the measure would come up for a second vote on Monday.

The bailout plan would have empowered the Treasury Department to take over bad mortgage debt from banks’ balance sheets in order to spur them into lending again. The legislation was the result of days of intense talks between the White House and congressional leaders, who agreed Sunday to a public bailout of the ailing financial industry after lawmakers insisted on sharing spending controls with the Bush administration.

The House held open its vote on the bailout plan well after the allotted time had expired; 228 lawmakers voted against the bill and 205 voted in favor.

In the final analysis, lawmakers on both sides of the political spectrum appeared to have reservations against the plan: Ninety-four Democrats and 132 Republicans voted “nay.”

In a press conference shortly after the measure failed, House Minority Leader John Boehner of Ohio said that House Republicans had no choice but to continue to work with Democrats to find a way to save the economy. Read more

Couldn’t agree more. The fact that O-Man didn’t get badly beaten, which I don’t even think Fox Noise has been saying, is in reality a huge win for him. This mornings polls that I have seen are giving O the Victory 51% to 38%.

The unfortunate part is the quest of whether it matters. Kerry was given the win in 2 out of 3 debates last time and that didn’t get him a W over GW. Even more importantly I believe that there is a huge segment of people that don’t admit how prejudiced they are. Once they get in that booth they just won’t be able to pull the trigger and vote for “the black guy”. I really hope I’m wrong, but only time will tell.
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Good evening from Fargo…..

I look forward to a lively discussion. I urge readers to give me their own assessments of the debate — who did the best, and why? Which points were the most effective? Who stumbled, and when? I’ll post as many of your comments as I can, sometimes adding observations of my own, sometimes not.

My first impression: Neither man committed a terrible goof. I learned in the last couple of weeks while working on an article about debate preparation (link below) that this was their single biggest concern. Defense is the name of the game.

To my eye, McCain was not at his best tonight. Comparing this debate to the two candidates’ appearance in August with Rick Warren at his Saddleback Church is interesting. I thought McCain on that occasion was warm, funny, confident, loose. By comparison, he seemed a little tight to me tonight.

Obama I think was closer to the top of his game. He dispelled the idea that he couldn’t keep up with McCain on foreign policy issues. Earlier this year some Republicans said they thought McCain would clobber the Democrat in this debate; it didn’t happen.

Obama said he is not going to raise, even lower, the taxes for 95% of the working families. If you make less than $250,000/year, you will not see anymore taxes, everyone over that will see a raise. If you make $250,000/year, you can afford more than a family of 6 who might not have their home anymore because the parents got laid off due to the economy. The single parent who works two/three jobs so that their children can have a decent chance at accomplishing something wonderful in their life. John McCain is against this, because he is part of that since he is worth around $25 million himself. Obama wants to close all of the loopholes in the business tax and give that money to people who need it. This country is being run by the rich and portrayed as the rich, however, working families are struggling to pay the mortgage and the medical bills. It isn’t right for some families to choose between paying for the house, eating properly or send their children to get an education. I am not talking about the people who screwed up their lives because of drugs, gambling or alcohol. I am talking about the families who work to try and get by and then get laid off because the company can’t afford them anymore due to the economic crisis.
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Republican John McCain ended the suspense…..

and agreed to attend the first of three debates with Democrat Barack Obama on Friday, setting up a showdown that could help decide a tight White House race. John McCain and Barack Obama.

With time running out, McCain backed away from his vow to skip the debate if negotiations were not completed on a $700 billion rescue of the U.S. financial industry. His campaign said enough progress had been made that he could participate in the debate, which will air on CNBC at 8p.m. Fargo time.

With time running out, McCain backed away from his vow to skip the debate if negotiations were not completed on a $700 billion rescue of the U.S. financial industry. His campaign said enough progress had been made that he could participate in the debate, which will air on CNBC at 9 p.m. New York time.

“The McCain campaign is resuming all activities,” a campaign statement said. “Following the debate, he will return to Washington to ensure that all voices and interests are represented in the final agreement.”

McCain flew to Oxford, walked through the debate hall and held a debate preparation session at the local high school in the afternoon.

Obama was on his campaign plane in Washington preparing for the flight to Mississippi when McCain’s announcement was made at midday. He also visited the University of Mississippi debate hall before the event.

The debate is scheduled to focus on foreign policy and national security, but the turmoil on Wall Street has dominated the campaign trail for nearly two weeks and is certain to be discussed.
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No Deal, GOP Sen. Richard Shelby emerged from a White House meeting on a $700 billion Wall Street bailout to say: “I don’t believe we have an agreement.”

Shelby, the top Republican on the Senate Banking Committee, had earlier told CNBC that he had serious doubts about the proposal.

Shelby’s opposition was the latest twist in a turbulent day in Washington, when several officials asserted that an agreement in principle had been reached, only to be contradicted moments later by other lawmakers.

President Bush convened the meeting of top officials from both parties—as well as the two presidential candiates—at the White House to hammer out an agreement on the bailout. The present urged lawmakers that he hoped an agreement would be reached soon.

“We’re in a serious economic crisis in the country if we don’t pass a piece of legislation,” Bush said at the beginning of the meeting. “We know we’ve got to get something done as quickly as possible. My hope is that we can reach an agreement very shortly.” Read more

Phantom Highly recommend’s it as a painless but hard-hitting educational tool and encourage the widest distribution and use by all groups concerned with the present unsustainable monetary system in Canada and the United States.
Gives insight to why so many financial instituions are failing such as American International Group, Lehman Brothers, Merrill Lynch.

Click below to Watch Part 2 Here
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Watch Video Now
Why can’t we all just get along.

It’s not eerie inflections straight out of the movie, Fargo.

It’s not when she dropped her first nuc-u-lar, and my mind screamed “sweet lord, please, not four more years of mispronunciation of a force that could turn us all into cosmic lint.”  Read More Here

Fargo Area Women

Grandma’s Secret Recipes

I would have bet good money as recently as amonth ago that I NEVER would utter such a disturbing sentence.

Karl seams to think todays campaigns have Both gone to far. Let’s take a look at His perspective.

Here is his exchange with Wallace:

WALLACE: Do you have any problem with what McCain is doing by, for instance, saying — which a lot of people thought was kind of made up — that Obama was smearing Palin?

ROVE: Well, first of all, I do think that the lipstick remark was an inappropriate — and maybe it was unconscious, but it was a deliberate slap at Gov. Palin.

The only time this word has intruded in recent months in the campaign was in her self-deprecating remark at the convention. So for him to use the lipstick remark less than two weeks after she used it struck me as too much of a coincidence not to have been a deliberate attack.
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Insurer American International Group struggled for survival a day after a financial tsunami swept away investment bank Lehman Brothers and forced the sale of rival Merrill Lynch in the biggest financial industry shake-up since the Great Depression.

AIG’s precipitous stock decline has led ratings agencies to threaten downgrades that could force it to post more collateral and nullify insurance contracts, possibly setting in motion a chain reaction that could threaten its survival.

In an ominous sign, Moody’s and Standard & Poor’s ratings agencies went ahead with downgrades after the market closed on Monday. S&P cut its AIG rating to ‘A-’ from ‘AA-’, while Moody’s downgraded AIG’s senior unsecured debt rating to A2 from Aa3.

“AIG seems to be the next guy on the chopping block,” said Tom Sowanick, chief investment officer at Clearbrook Financial LLC in Princeton, New Jersey.

Again seeking a private solution to Wall Street’s woes, the Fed had asked JPMorgan Chase and Goldman Sachs to explore arranging $70 billion to $75 billion in loans to support AIG, among other financing options, another person familiar with the situation said.

Fearing a financial meltdown, the U.S. presidential candidates sparred Monday over who could best restore the system’s health, with Republican John McCain pledging reform and Democrat Barack Obama saying hands-off Republican policies were the problem.

U.S. stocks tumbled across the board, with the Dow Jones industrial average dropping 504 points as Wall Street had its worst day since markets reopened after the Sept. 11 attacks.

There was speculation that Wall Street’s worsening meltdown could prompt the Fed to act.

U.S. short-term interest rate futures rose sharply Monday, reflecting the higher prospects for a rate cut at or before Tuesday’s Federal Reserve policy meeting.

And there were signs of widening macroeconomic shockwaves that could see a worsening of the credit crunch that has already threatened to worsen the housing downturn at the root of Wall Street’s troubles.

Largest US Bankruptcies in History

Lehman Brothers’ chapter 11 bankruptcy protection filing is the largest in history, dwarfing all others.
Take a look at the ten biggest corporate filings in US bankruptcy court, based on pre-bankruptcy assets.
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The Bush administration is pushing through a broad array of foreign weapons deals as it seeks to rearm Iraq and Afghanistan, contain North Korea and Iran, and solidify ties with onetime Russian allies.

President Hamid Karzai of Afghanistan, at a ceremony on Feb. 2, 2007, for the United States’ transfer to the Afghan Army of 213 Humvees and more than 12,000 light weapons.

From tanks, helicopters and fighter jets to missiles, remotely piloted aircraft and even warships, the Department of Defense has agreed so far this fiscal year to sell or transfer more than $32 billion in weapons and other military equipment to foreign governments, compared with $12 billion in 2005.

The trend, which started in 2006, is most pronounced in the Middle East, but it reaches into northern Africa, Asia, Latin America, Europe and even Canada, through dozens of deals that senior Bush administration officials say they are confident will both tighten military alliances and combat terrorism.

“This is not about being gunrunners,” said Bruce S. Lemkin, the Air Force deputy under secretary who is helping to coordinate many of the biggest sales. “This is about building a more secure world.”

The surging American arms sales reflect the foreign policy tides, including the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan and the broader campaign against international terrorism, that have dominated the Bush administration. Deliveries on orders now being placed will continue for several years, perhaps as one of President Bush’s most lasting legacies.

The United States is far from the only country pushing sophisticated weapons systems: it is facing intense competition from Russia and elsewhere in Europe, including continuing contests for multibillion-dollar deals to sell fighter jets to India and Brazil.

In that booming market, American military contractors are working closely with the Pentagon, which acts as a broker and procures arms for foreign customers through its Foreign Military Sales program.

All Minnesota Sports From Fargo

The Coen brothers’ “Burn After Reading” is a screwball comedy that occasionally becomes something more.

Fargo ND, The characters are zany, the plot coils upon itself with dizzy zeal, and the roles seem like a perfect fit for the actors — yes, even Brad Pitt, as Chad, a gum-chewing, fuzzy-headed physical fitness instructor. I’ve always thought of him as a fine actor, but here he reveals a dimension that, shall I say, we haven’t seen before.
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Perhaps no geography in America is as misunderstood as small towns and rural areas.

Fargo ND, Home to no more than one in five Americans, these areas barely register with the national media except for occasional reports about the towns’ general decrepitude, cultural backwardness and inexorable decline.

Yet in reality this part of America is far more diverse, and in many areas infinitely more vital, than the big-city-dominated media suspects. In fact, there are many demographic and economic dynamics that make this part of America far more competitive this year than in the recent past.

Both parties have acknowledged the importance of this battlefield through their choices for vice presidential nominees. Barack Obama’s running mate, Sen. Joe Biden, is being touted not so much as a Washington foreign policy wonk but as the “scrappy kid from Scranton” — even though he has represented Delaware in the Senate for 35 years. Even more obvious is John McCain’s tapping of Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin, a former small-town mayor from a rustic state without anything close to a major metropolitan area.

Even though many very small towns — with, say, fewer than 10,000 people — have continued to decline in population, there’s a significant demographic and economic rebound taking place in a host of somewhat larger communities. Places such as Sioux Falls and Fargo in the Dakotas as well as Asheville, N.C.; Wenatchee, Wash.; and Springfield, Mo., have been drawing a steady stream of people and businesses from both big cities and suburbs.

This dynamic could provide some welcome surprises for Democrats and potential nightmares for Republicans. During the primaries, Obama startled observers with his ability to win over Democratic voters in places like the Dakotas, Montana, Kansas, Nebraska and Indiana. More importantly, according to recent polls, he is running between 10 points and 40 points ahead of John F. Kerry in 2004.
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The presidential field has dwindled significantly, but not before the candidates raised more than half a billion dollars in 2007. By some predictions, the eventual nominees will need to raise $500 million apiece to compete—a record sum. To find out where all this money is coming from, click on the candidates’ names below and explore the options to the left. The candidates now file campaign finance reports monthly.

****

Obama, Barack

Total Spent $323,585,292
Cash on Hand $65,837,809

McCain, John

Total Spent $141,397,734
Cash on Hand $32,768,214

Free Pics of Top 50 Hot Girls Pictures as Rated by FargoPhantom.com.

NOTE: These are the top pictures, so some hot women may show up more than once

First off everyone is being way too critical of Tarvaris Jackson.

After having a rusty start to the game he really seemed to settle down after half and got us back into the game after the punt return by Blackmon. He could’ve easily mailed it in but he didn’t. He showed me something that alot of our fan base doesn’t have and that is heart   Read More Here

Chad Everson, a former North Dakotan….

and a North Dakota Ambassador, has got more on his hands than his Raku pottery business, the Clay Empire.

Everson is also the owner of Grizzly Groundswell, a conservative political blog that in the past year organized a national network of conservative bloggers and thinkers.

Read More Here

The Real World

Survivor

American Idol

Temptation Island

Who Wants to Marry A Millionaire?

Since the early part of this decade, America has enjoyed their reality tv. I remember when Survivor first came on–I was glued to my tv set. I wanted to see “real” people in unreal situations. How would they act? Who would back stab? Who was gossiping? I, like many Americans, enjoyed a somewhat guilty pleasure watching these shows and hoping that there would be something juicy said or done. The great thing about reality shows is that it had nonprofessional actors, ORDINARY PEOPLE, in extraordinary situations.
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The left has spent the last three day trying to kill the Palin candidacy in the crib.

Their allies in the media realize that if she is allowed to define herself, they are looking at the most formidable Republican politician since Ronald Reagan. That is why they are cowardly attacking a 17 year old girl or claiming that a mother is unfit for the job of Vice President.

They want the street organizer in the White House and the best way to do it to carpet bomb an up and coming GOP star, who because of her gender and personal story, is a major, major threat to them.

As my man Admiral Ackbar would say, “It’s a trap!”. Palin is going to take the stage tonight and wow the crowd and the televison audience. She knows how to communicate and she has the common touch that you cannot fake and that is going to resonate big time with undecided swing voters. The unease about Sarah Palin is that no one has seen her on the national stage. The only things people know about her story have come from far left wing journalists at liberal propoganda mills. This is her opportunity to tell her own story in her own words. If she goes out there tonight and tells the story of a conservative, workig mother ho made her own way in the world on nothing but her own merits, there is going to be a serious, serious, serious backlash against the pinkos in the media and their hero, the street organzier.

Just to Let You Know These People at the Phantom Will Publish all Views Submitted.

South Fargo Republicans