By Kevin Drawbaugh and Glenn Somerville

Wall Street faces curbs on risk taking and the prospect of lower profits under sweeping U.S. proposals to prevent a repeat of the credit crisis.

The Obama administration’s plan to rewrite financial rules, announced on Thursday, would create a single regulator to monitor any firm whose failure could threaten the financial system, while also tightening rules for big hedge funds and private equity firms.

U.S. Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner told Congress “comprehensive reform” was needed to prevent a repeat of the current credit crisis, the most virulent since the 1930s. “Not modest repairs at the margin, but new rules of the game.”More…

The proposals Geithner presented also require large, interconnected institutions to hold more capital, provide for derivatives to be traded on an exchange, and give the government authority to shut down troubled financial firms.

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This is on the main site, but WTF, here it is again…

Yep, Some of those hardcore conservatives in Texas may be showing their true color… its red, the same color as their necks.

What the f@ck are these fools thinking in Texas? Not sure if this is real or fake, but it sounds about right for some of the thinking in that neighborhood.
I read today that the Texas GOB(Good Ole Boys) had a GOP meeting and had made

these lovely pins asking the ridiculous question. I gotta admit, with some of the political intelligence that has come from the great state of Texas (GWB and friends), I can understand their confusion.

I have a better question to the GOP. Do you fools REALLY fund that shit or better yet, accept money from the hicks who dared even participate in that meeting? Scratch that, I already know the answer.

With a six-week breather before the next primary, Hillary Rodham Clinton turned her attention to Pennsylvania and beyond to counter the latest in a string of victories by Barack Obama in Southern states with large black voting blocs. Obama won roughly 90 percent of the black vote in Mississippi on Tuesday, but only about one-quarter of the white vote. That was similar to the breakdown that helped him win South Carolina, Alabama, Georgia and Louisiana before losing to Clinton in Texas and Ohio, which has similar voter demographics to neighboring Pennsylvania.Clinton was attending a presidential forum in Washington on Wednesday. Obama planned to be in his hometown of Chicago.

With 99 percent of the vote counted, Obama had 61 percent to 37 percent for Clinton.

Republican Sen. John McCain, who has already won enough delegates to claim the GOP nomination, rolled up 79 percent of the vote in Mississippi.

Obama picked up at least 17 of Mississippi’s 33 delegates to the Democratic National Convention, with five more to be awarded. He hoped for a win sizable enough to erase most if not all of Clinton’s 11-delegate gain from last week, when she won three primaries.

The Illinois senator had 1,596 delegates to 1,484 for Clinton. It takes 2,025 to win the nomination. With neither appearing able to win enough delegates through primaries and caucuses to claim the nomination, the importance of nearly 800 elected officials and party leaders who will attend the national convention as unelected superdelegates is increasing.

Obama leads Clinton among pledged delegates, 1,385-1,237 in The Associated Press count, while the former first lady has an advantage among superdelegates, 247-211.

Blacks, who also supported Obama in overwhelming numbers in earlier primaries, accounted for roughly half the ballots cast in Mississippi, according to interviews with voters leaving polling places. About one in six Democratic primary voters were independents, and Clinton and Obama split their support. Another 10 percent of voters were Republican, and they preferred Clinton by a margin of 3-1.

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Obama Spiritual Leaders

The following are excerpts of Democratic presidential candidate Barack Obama’s telephone interview Thursday with Tribune-Review reporter David. M. Brown.

Q: Gov. (Ed) Rendell and (Philadelphia) Mayor (Michael) Nutter held a conference call and did their best to say you are minimizing Pennsylvania and essentially your campaign is trying to paint Pennsylvania as not that important.

A: I don’t think there is any denying that we are an underdog there, and it’s important for us to remember that there are 10 other states. The irony of this, of course, is it’s the Clinton campaign that’s been trying to cherry-pick and decide which states are important. There are a whole slew of states that she’s dismissed. We’ve competed actively in every single state, and we’re going to compete actively in Pennsylvania.

Q: I don’t know if you’ve seen it, but it’s all over the wire today (from an ABC News story), a statement that your pastor (the Rev. Jeremiah Wright of Trinity United Church of Christ on Chicago’s South Side) made in a sermon in 2003 that instead of singing “God Bless America,” black people should sing a song essentially saying “God Damn America.”

A: I haven’t seen the line. This is a pastor who is on the brink of retirement who in the past has made some controversial statements. I profoundly disagree with some of these statements.

Q: What about this particular statement?A: Obviously, I disagree with that. Here is what happens when you just cherry-pick statements from a guy who had a 40-year career as a pastor. There are times when people say things that are just wrong. But I think it’s important to judge me on what I’ve said in the past and what I believe.Q: What about the big vote today in the Senate for a moratorium on congressional earmarks — items inserted into legislation to fund lawmakers’ pet projects — also called “pork barrel spending?”A: I’m a supporter of the idea of pausing a year so that we can make sure they are more transparent and more accountable.

Q: How do you differ from Sen. Clinton on the issue of gun control?

A: I think our positions are fairly similar. I’d let her characterize her own position. I certainly believe in the Second Amendment right, that people have the right to bear arms. But I also believe it is important to have some common-sense gun laws in place to make sure that straw purchasers aren’t being used to fill up our streets with illegal firearms, and that we have stronger background checks so we keep firearms out of the hands of people with mental health problems or young people or those who have committed crimes. I think it is important for us to strengthen our ability to trace guns that have been used in crimes to gun dealers to make sure they are not operating in an illegal way. I think it’s possible to reconcile the tradition of gun ownership, and the rights of sportsmen, hunters and those who want to protect their families, with keeping handguns that are used in crime off the streets. You can protect the rights of gun owners and at the same time keep guns out of the hands of criminals.