With so much news on the impeachment of Gov. Rod Blagojevich, I almost missed an incredible aspect of this amazing case:Nope, no trace of Jesse Jr. was to be found, but I did like the later comparison with the Soprano's Big Pussy. It's a good name for the little weasel too.
The Jesse Junior G-Man Task Force to Fight Political Corruption thing.
So I called the federal building in Chicago and asked for the Jesse Junior G-Man Task Force.
"Pardon me?" asked a female federal employee.
Don't be obtuse. It's been all over the national TV news, U.S. Rep. Jesse Jackson Jr. (D-Bud Light) working with the feds to fight corruption. So connect me to the Jesse Junior G-Man headquarters.
"I don't know what you're talking about," she said.
It might not be a formal "task force." Perhaps there's another name for it, like Jesse Junior G-Man Blago Working Group. I'm a reporter. You can tell me.
"Sorry," she said. "No Junior G-Man office here."
Oh, c'mon! Just stop with your little bureaucratic games. The story was on TV. Jackson's been working with the feds, which means he's a good guy.
But she had nothing for me, so I called someone else.
"Jesse Junior G-Man? No," a guy said. "Not on this floor."
Just tell me. The Junior G-Man works in a high-tech complex buried deep underground, right? Behind a series of cool interlocking steel doors, protecting the Cone of Silence, right?
Anyone who cares to notice knows that the political climate scientists have been cooking the books to try to prove that there actually is any global warming and that the evidence for man made global warming is nonexistent, but the ecoweenies have their propaganda machine ranting at full force so it may well take a really nasty winter in the USA before average folks figure out that they are being conned. Some useful tidbits via Deroy Murdock:
Actually, the odds are rising that snow, ice, and cold will grow increasingly common. As serious scientists repeatedly explain, global cooling is here. It is chilling temperatures and so-called "global-warming."
According to the National Climatic Data Center, 2008 will be America's coldest year since 1997, thanks to La Niña and precipitation in the central and eastern states. Solar quietude also may underlie global cooling. This year's sunspots and solar radiation approach the minimum in the Sun's cycle, corresponding with lower Earth temperatures. This echoes Harvard-Smithsonian astrophysicist Dr. Sallie Baliunas' belief that solar variability, much more than CO2, sways global temperatures.
...
"Global Warming is over, and Global Warming Theory has failed. There is no evidence that CO2 drives world temperatures or any consequent climate change," Imperial College London astrophysicist and long-range forecaster Piers Corbyn wrote British Members of Parliament on Oct. 28. "According to official data in every year since 1998, world temperatures have been colder than that year, yet CO2 has been rising rapidly." That evening, as the House of Commons debated legislation on so-called "global-warming," October snow fell in London for the first time since 1922.
...
So, is this all just propaganda concocted by Chevron-funded, right-wing, flat-Earthers? Ask Dr. Martin Hertzberg, a physical chemist and retired Navy meteorologist.
"As a scientist and lifelong liberal Democrat, I find the constant regurgitation of the anecdotal, fear mongering clap-trap about human-caused global warming to be a disservice to science," Hertzberg wrote in Sept. 26's USA Today. "From the El Niño year of 1998 until Jan., 2007, the average temperature of the Earth's atmosphere near its surface decreased some 0.25 C (0.45 F). From Jan., 2007 until the spring of 2008, it dropped a whopping 0.75 C (1.35 F)."
As global cooling becomes more widely recognized, Americans from Maine to Malibu should feel comfortable dreaming of a white Christmas.
I certainly am, but I expect that in Castle Gore, the Dark Prince of Climate BS is chewing the carpets. Would you buy carbon credits from anyone, much more that crazed bozo? Of course, no one seems to have mentioned this little cognitive problem to Barack Obama:
When will the "Let us take over and wreck your economy so we can save you from the climate boogey-man" gang admit the earth is cooling again, and when will they admit, "OK, since cooling is worse than warming, and our own theory is that mankind can impact global temperature by what we burn, it's now your duty to hold back the Big Freeze by going out there and burning all the fossil fuels you possibly can, as fast as you can"?
(Don't even get me started on "carbon trading," a weird scam in which the buyer acquires an invisible commodity of no earthly use to him, and both buyer and seller can benefit if they overestimate the amount being "transferred.")
Instead, on Monday, President-Elect Obama ("Delay is no longer an option; denial is no longer an acceptable response") appointed as Secretary of Energy (a position and an office not authorized in the Constitution) Steven Chu, the confirmed global warming lunatic from the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory who says coal -- the stuff that powered the industrial revolution, cheap coal which will last for centuries and which can be burned more cleanly now than ever before -- "is my worst nightmare."
This gang still intends to effectively ban both coal-fired and nuclear power generation. Do they believe they can meet our current demand with famously costly, unreliable, and toxic wind, solar and geothermal? (Look up the by-products of geothermal energy, some time. Then look up "battery farms.") Of course not. The gap can only be closed by "conservation," they'll admit when you take a pencil and start to work the numbers.
And what does "conservation" mean, precisely?
They'd like us to think they mean just turning out the lights in our empty rooms, that kind of thing. But they don't.
Mr. Obama has said it, straight out. He, the Chosen One, has had it Revealed to Him that we can no longer use 25 percent of the world's energy when we have only 5 percent of the world's population.
This is nonsense. All mankind uses less than 1 percent of the solar energy that streams past us every hour. Is it "unfair" that the Japanese eat "more than their fair per capita share" of the world's fish?
Are we now to be ruled by a depraved schoolchild obsessed with sharing the toys, granted the ability to carry forward that Ding-Dong School philosophy with powers reminiscent of the kid in the old "Twilight Zone" episode who could "wish people into the cornfield"?
We should be proud that we've learned how to capture and harness the lion's share of the available energy in this system. It's not like we refused to share with others "the secret of coal" or "the secret of oil," is it? They saw how good it was; they've been racing to catch up to us ever since; that's the main reason the world has escaped the life expectancies of the Stone Age.
There's a real world out there. Purposely, artificially impoverish the nation, force us to give up our competitive economic advantages, and we'll eventually go the way of the Carthaginians.
I tend to think of the latter days of the Roman Empire, but whatever it is, it only happens if we let these loons do it to us. So - let it snow.
Lots of luck with that since the Democrats running the Illinois state legislature are cut from the same cloth as Gov. Blagojevich. Hmm, that reminds me - I hope Michelle told the Secret Service agents to never open the freezer in the basement at the Obama mansion.This is a sad day for my state of Illinois… U.S. Sen. Dick DurbinOh, buck up!
It is a sad day for Illinois … Barack Obama
...
This is a sad day for Illinois government and for the people of our great state.. State Treasurer Alexi Giannoulias
I was deeply, deeply troubled and saddened by the charges ... Tammy Duckworth, director of the Illinois Department of Veterans Affairs.
I am immensely saddened... .Illinois Comptroller Dan Hynes
I was shocked and saddened today….U.S. Rep Jesse Jackson (D-Chicago)
...
Tuesday was a great day in Illinois, a thrilling day, an exciting, hopeful day; one of the few happy days we've had lately.
...
Any day that U.S. Atty. Patrick Fitzgerald brings forth such an array of charges against a big-fish defendant is a day to celebrate: Call it "Fitzmas," a joyous term coined three years ago in the liberal blogosphere when Fitzgerald was bringing indictments in the Valerie Plame-leak case. (Or, if you're Jewish, call it "Hahaha.")
Yet in statement after statement, our gloomy pols were keening as though a great leader had fallen or an important factory had closed.
Perhaps this was their acknowledgment of the severity of the charges and the depths of the alleged betrayal of the people. Perhaps they felt it would be undignified to pump their fists and say "Yessssss!" as many of the rest of us did.
But look. There have been many sad days in Illinois political history.
The days when elected officials have pocketed kickbacks, payoffs and bribes, for instance.
The days when plum jobs went to nitwit relatives and big contracts went to top donors.
The days when monied interests quietly killed legislation and line items disappeared from budgets because certain people hadn't adequately opened their wallets.
The complaint against Blagojevich alleges other sad days, such as Nov. 12 when the complaint says he discussed yanking an $8 million reimbursement payment to Children's Memorial Hospital because the hospital CEO hadn't donated $50,000 to Blagojevich's political warchest; and Nov. 3, when Blagojevich, his wife and a deputy allegedly hatched a plan to blackmail Tribune Co. into firing members of the editorial board.
Wednesday, when Blagojevich returned to work as the governor of Illinois, was a sad day.
But generally we never learn about these sad days, however, until after the fact -- until the happy day when the law pounces.
It's probably a naive thought, but this Fitzmas could become a holly, jolly day on our state's calendar -- the day our lawmakers wiped those obligatory frowns off their faces and decided finally to get serious about changing the political culture that so often gives us so many reasons to be sad.
Q: What's the difference between Barack Obama and Rod Blagojevich?A: Obama hasn't been caught yet.
The fruit themed Iphone apparently has a glitch that will photograph your genitals, attach it to an email and place it in your sent folder.This is likely too "good" to be true, but predictable hilarity ensues when the support forum dwellers weigh in. Hmm, I wonder why no one thought to ask credulous Susan if she was an Obama supporter?
We found the glitch reported in an Apple forum and penned by a woman called Susan.
She said she was searching through her husband's mobile, as you do, and found the snap of him attached to an email in the sent email file. The email had been sent to another woman. Obviously, she approached him with the accusation that he might be cheating on her.
The Fanboy's excuse was that he had taken the picture but never sent it to anyone. In fact he was so worried about his Iphone taking the picture that he said had paid a visit to the ironically named Apple Genius Bar. There he swore that a spokesapple had told him that it was a known glitch. Photos sometimes automatically attach themselves to an e-mail address and appear in the sent folder, even though no e-mail was ever sent, he swore blind that the Genius told him.
God bless our veterans and bring confusion to our enemies, foreign and domestic.
During their campaigns for the White House and Congress, Democrats played up their ambitious plans to cool a warming planet, revive the economy and fix a broken health care system.
But House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, in her first news conference since the party's big election victory, warned Wednesday that Democrats might have to scale back the size of their proposals as tax revenues slow and federal budget deficits soar because of a sluggish economy.
"I think it's important for the American people to know that many of our options have been diminished because of the downturn in the economy," Pelosi said. "We have a lot less money to draw upon."
Network anchors and reporters vied for airtime in which to express their own elation at Obama's win, and a sometimes inappropriate personal sense of victory; were reporters who said they were thrilled by Obama's winning sort of confirming charges of pro-Obama bias that had been leveled by McCain forces during the campaign?
"Morning Joe" show on MSNBC had Joe Scarborough talking to Chris Mathews about "amateur hour"-the Rahm Emmanual decision to "think about" taking the chief of staff position offered by Obama. Joe felt this should have been worked out long ago and is not something to be offered and then "thought about" out in public. Chris Mathews was upset at the criticism saying “Our Job (Journalists)Is To Make This Presidency Work”.
Joe immediately went after Mathews but Mathews held his ground talking about how in the world we live in right now it is of the utmost importance that this government succeed. Even Mika and a reporter from Time magazine jumped on Mathews for the comment, talking about how the media's job was in Cronkite's words to be "skeptical so the public would not be cynical."
Mathews still would not back down so Joe ended the segment by sarcastically saying it was "so nice" that the media didn't question the government in dangerous times like during the Iraq war, not questioning Rumsfelds actions and not second guessing Bush's motives.
"The main theme is not to invest in America," he says. "That means non-USA oil and gas companies. The antidrilling prejudice and windfall-profits enthusiasm will drive the United States to actually import more oil...Swell. But heck there are some bright spots:
...
"Avoid financials like Charles Schwab, since Obama believes in rewarding 'work not wealth,' so people who work at investment houses and their private clients will be taxed more to demotivate investment. The government should invest and individuals should not invest. That is a constant theme from the Obama camp.
"Non-U.S. health care: New, free medical-care program will kill drug prices and kill discovery budgets as science shifts from disease (no money) back to recreation. (You will pay for Viagra.) Thus non-U.S. drug companies will benefit from the United States getting rid of the drug-discovery business.
"Also watch out for bubble in U.S. solar and wind start-ups, since government subsidies will accelerate and swindles of all kinds will thus multiply.
...
"One U.S. bright spot: housing rebound. Combination of no-growth politics and mortgage forgiveness will reduce supply and increase demand, ending the housing problem. Also non-U.S. wealth will buy up prime real estate in big cities. But those long commutes from Stockton to San Francisco? That's dead. Get used to eating root vegetables in winter, since only Japanese tourists can afford Latin American peaches in winter."
She was in Grant Park on Tuesday night with Stedman Graham; pal Gayle King was set to fly in and join the party.Her grasp of Constitutional mechanics is as thin as her grasp of most other things that are non-food related. By the way, Oprah says that now she will be "unleashed" to discuss political issues at length on her show. Sheesh, a fat flack for the boy Communist.
"We want to be there that moment when Barack comes out ... and he is the new president of the United States," Winfrey said.
EVERYTIME YOU TURN AROUND, THERE’S ANOTHER COMMUNIST WITH HIS ARM AROUND OBAMA.
Hey, they recognize a fellow traveler.
Update:
and a better video of this knuckle dragging Obama stormtrooper:
Doesn't Barack Obama remind you of the smarmy little prat that regularly got forcibly separated from his pants when he was a school kid? You will notice that he didn't call Sarah Palin a pig again - I guess the contrast between Sarah and his harridan wife was just too much for his little passive aggressive brain.
Today, the Obama campaign announced that for the closing 24 hours of the presidential campaign, Barack Obama's favorite aunt Zeituni will become the poster girl of the campaign since she embodies all the aspects of Obama's plan for America - most particularly spreading the wealth of selfish people to those less fortunate. Below is Zeituni's statement released by the Obama campaign.
America been berry, berry good to me!
Thass right. I come to America on tourist visa but with high hopes for work and experience in brewery as well as great dancer. No one could give job since I only tourist and selfish people say that illegal. (Actually, dancing bars say I too old.) Not to worry, the People's Republic of Massachusetts beg me to take free housing, free food, free medical care, and free money for doing nothing!
Have I died and gone to heaven? Kenya was nothing like this. I even get extra money for being "health care advocate." No - nothing icky. I just help other people sign up for more free benefits. Is that great or what?
Only bad thing is that four years ago judge say I have to leave country because illegal. I worry, but friends say he just selfish, ignore him - so I do. No one bother me since! I even got to attend ceremony for Barack being sworn in as Senator in 2005. Anyone know why he cross fingers?
Now Barack's friends have me in fancy hotel until campaign over. They say, "Don't worry Aunty. No one will bother you." That OK, I just eat room service lobster and watch election news on all the Barack TV channels.
My advice - ignore selfish people Barack channels tell about. Vote for Barack and you may be able to live as well as I do! Even if you aren't related!
So if somebody wants to build a coal-powered plant, they can; it's just that it will bankrupt them because they're going to be charged a huge sum for all that greenhouse gas that's being emitted.
Beakes noted other examples of Obama and Biden making seemingly anti-coal statements, such as in February when Obama said he'd like to tax "dirty energy" such as coal and natural gas.
Under my plan of a cap and trade system, electricity rates would necessarily skyrocket. Even regardless of what I say about whether coal is good or bad. Because I’m capping greenhouse gases, coal power plants, you know, natural gas, you name it — whatever the plants were, whatever the industry was, uh, they would have to retrofit their operations. That will cost money. They will pass that money on to consumers.
Let me get this straight. A bankrupt coal plant will generate "billions of dollars" for solar and wind power?
That's math only a community organizer can understand.
There are PLO and Hamas flags decorating the room, along with Che and Mao posters. Khalidi, Ayers and Obama are slapping each others' backs, raising their glasses and toasting the upcoming destruction of the racist Zionist entity, all the while laughing at the thought of the final Final Solution. Obama says, "You know, when I take over, the first thing I'll do is withdraw all aid from those fascist kikes, and I'll give the Palis a couple nukes." Then he turns to Ayers, and asks him if he's come up with any fresh schemes for mass murder of the millions of recalcitrant capitalists, so that they can be implemented in the first one hundred days. After dessert, they get out an American flag, crumple it up on the floor, and jump up and down on it, shouting "Death to Capitalism, Death to America."
Golly, I thought the problem was when Michelle got up on the table and did a strip tease while Barack and the other radicals and terrorists yelled "Burn, baby, burn."
Meanwhile, Doug Ross has a tip:
Reason we can't release it is because statements Obama said to rile audience up during toast. He congratulates Khalidi for his work saying "Israel has no God-given right to occupy Palestine" plus there's been "genocide against the Palestinian people by Israelis.
All the LA Times has to do to prove us wrong is to release the tape. What have they got to hide?
Golly, I guess that Hussein is shy and doesn't want to talk about the all the good stuff that he heard from Rev. Wright. That's OK - we can help him out on that:
Kids, can you say lying crapsack? I knew you could! How long do thing it will be before Rev. Wright gets a sleepover at the White House if Obama gets elected?
The country's mediagenic socialist president, Cristina Fernandez de Kirchner, announced Tuesday the state would "protect" private pensions from "policies of plunder" by proposing to hand them over to the government.
Praising her own scheme, she claimed Argentina would "set an example" for global financial crisis management by pulling $29.5 billion out of the private sector, and making it public.
As aghast as Argentines are about this, Americans should be too, because a Democratic supermajority in Congress would have similar ideas about nationalizing 401(k)s.
...But, under the ruse of "protecting" Argentines from their own decisions, everyone will soon be forced into an involuntary pay-as-you-go program, like U.S. Social Security. Not only will the private assets be managed by bureaucrats, pension-holders will be paid what the government dictates.
With commodity prices falling sharply, the Argentine treasury strained for revenue, and the population aging, it's unlikely to be more than the $200 a month pensioners currently are paid. In fact, it's likely to be much less.
The assets are likely to be spent by government — not invested. It will save the government about $3.2 billion in interest payments since the government won't pay interest on $16 billion of government bonds in pension assets that it would own.
The Argentine Congress says it will ensure that assets are used for the pensions, but with money fungible and Argentine fiscal transparency weak, it's an easily skirted requirement.
...
Right now, markets see the pension grab as a sign of governmental insolvency following a 40% surge in spending this year in socialist redistribution schemes, and amid a political climate of blaming businesses.
"We believe that the actual motivation of the reform is to capture the flows of the private pension funds to cover the government's financing needs in the context of a severe credit crunch," said analyst Pablo Morra at Goldman Sachs Monday.
Because Argentina defaulted on $95 billion of sovereign debt in 2001, blaming its bondholders then unsatisfactorily settling its arrears, it's pretty well priced itself out of global capital markets. With $16 billion in bonds maturing in 2009 and 2010, and no new revenue in sight, the government seems to want that private pool of pension cash — $4.2 billion in contributions a year — to pay its bills and carry on as usual.
Sounds like a Barack Obama wet dream fer sure. All your money belongs to them. If you let them get away with it.
For a "professor" that taught constitutional law, it seems a tad extreme doesn't it? Naw, that's because Barack views the Constitution as "a fundamental flaw of this country that carries on to this day." I guess if he gets elected President and it comes time to take the oath of office he'll put his hands on his crotch like he does during the national anthem.
Apparently, Cuba does not have all the environmentalist wackos to prevent it from drilling. Consequently, Cuba just found 20 billion barrels of oil off its shores in the Gulf of Mexico, and now plans to be one of the top 20 exporting countries in the world.
This story alone should disqualify the Democrats from being reelected. Had there not been a moratorium on drilling, that oil would have been ours. What is wrong with this Country? Cuba is literally drilling where we are not allowed to drill! Had we discovered 20 billion barrels overnight, the price of gasoline would drop to close to $2.00 per gallon, and OPEC would have less leverage because we would control our own supply.
...it puts Cuba's reserves on par with those of the US and into the world's top 20. Drilling is expected to start next year by Cuba's state oil company Cubapetroleo, or Cupet.
Iowahawk says it better than I:
We've all witnessed a lot of insanity in American politics over the last few years. Up until the last few days, none of it has seriously bothered me; hey, just more grist for the satire mill. But after witnessing the media's blitzkreig on Joe 'the Plumber' Wurzelbacher, I can only muster anger, and no small amount of fear.
Politicians -- Sarah Palin, Bill Clinton, et al. -- obviously have to put up with some rude, nasty shit, but it's right there in the jobs description. Joe the Plumber is different. He was a guy tossing a football with his kid in the front yard of his $125,000 house when a politician picked him out as a prop for a 30 second newsbite for the cable news cameras. Joe simply had the temerity to speak truth (or, if you prefer, an uninformed opinion) to power, for which the politico-media axis apparently determined that he must be humiliated, harassed, smashed, destroyed. The viciousness and glee with which they set about the task ought to concern anyone who still cares about citizen participation, and freedom of speech, and all that old crap they taught in Civics class before politics turned into Narrative Deathrace 3000, and Web 2.0 turned into Berlin 1932.0.
Godwin's Law! you say? if the jackboot fits, wear it.
I'd say the jackboot fits Obama and his Flying Monkeys and assorted ass kissers quite well. Anyhow, Iowahawk has the answer for all who are disgusted by this thuggery.
Display it proudly. Because we all are Joe.
In Obama's America, only the Obama civilian national security patrols will have guns. More NRA ads at http://www.gunbanobama.com/.
Unqualified home buyers were not the only ones who benefitted from
Massachusetts Rep. Barney Frank’s efforts to deregulate Fannie Mae throughout
the 1990s.So did Frank’s partner, a Fannie Mae executive at the forefront
of the agency’s push to relax lending restrictions.
Now that Fannie Mae is at the epicenter of a financial meltdown that
threatens the U.S. economy, some are raising new questions about Frank's
relationship with Herb Moses, who was Fannie’s assistant director for product
initiatives. Moses worked at the government-sponsored enterprise from 1991 to
1998, while Frank was on the House Banking Committee, which had jurisdiction
over Fannie.
Both Frank and Moses assured the Wall Street Journal in 1992 that they
took pains to avoid any conflicts of interest. Critics, however, remain
skeptical.
"It’s absolutely a conflict," said Dan Gainor, vice president of the
Business & Media Institute. "He was voting on Fannie Mae at a time when he
was involved with a Fannie Mae executive. How is that not germane?
*It was Democrats who ordered and commanded Freddie & Fannie to
strong-arm banks into making billions of bad loans in the name of “fairness”.
*It was Democrats Franklin Raines, Jim Johnson and Jamie Gorelick who
ran these institutions, looted millions from them and now advise Obama on
economics.
*It was Democrats who accepted the lion’s share of the campaign cash
that Freddie & Fannie spread around town in order to become “too big to
fail”.
*It is Democrats who claim the problem stems from a lack of regulation
by Republicans–yet they vehemently blocked John McCain’s Regulatory Act in 2005
and taunted administration officials for even saying there was a problem.
*It was Democrat Barney Frank, former whorehouse operator and parking
ticket-fixer, who only last week held a cowardly anonymous voice vote to have
Freddie & Fannie make even more bad loans.
*It was Democrat Charlie Rangel who pry-barred a $10 million
“charitable donation” from the now-broke AIG insurance giant last year as the
cost of doing business before his committee. That’s how they do things in banana
republics, where, as fate would have it, Charlie keeps his tax-cheat
condos.
*It was Democrats who promulgated the mindless Sarbanes-Oxley
regulations that made a bad problem much worse.
If your drunken uncle drives into a ditch, do you just pull him out, dust
him off, give him a gallon of gas and a gallon of moonshine, hand him back his
keys and send him down the highway to get in a head-on with a schoolbus?
That's what comes of letting liberal tinkerers mess with just about anything and there's no excuse for letting them talk their way out of it. If John McCain won't belabor the Democrats for causing this disaster, the little people will have to do it, but Johnny could help his own cause a lot by lighting a few fires.Before the Democrats' affirmative action lending policies became an embarrassment, the Los Angeles Times reported that, starting in 1992, a majority-Democratic Congress "mandated that Fannie and Freddie increase their purchases of mortgages for low-income and medium-income borrowers. Operating under that requirement, Fannie Mae, in particular, has been aggressive and creative in stimulating minority gains."
Under Clinton, the entire federal government put massive pressure on banks to grant more mortgages to the poor and minorities. Clinton's secretary of Housing and Urban Development, Andrew Cuomo, investigated Fannie Mae for racial discrimination and proposed that 50 percent of Fannie Mae's and Freddie Mac's portfolio be made up of loans to low- to moderate-income borrowers by the year
2001.
Instead of looking at "outdated criteria," such as the mortgage applicant's credit history and ability to make a down payment, banks were encouraged to consider nontraditional measures of credit-worthiness, such as having a good jump shot or having a missing child named "Caylee."
Threatening lawsuits, Clinton's Federal Reserve demanded that banks treat welfare payments and unemployment benefits as valid income sources to qualify for a mortgage. That isn't a joke -- it's a fact.
When Democrats controlled both the executive and legislative branches, political correctness was given a veto over sound business practices.
In 1999, liberals were bragging about extending affirmative action to the financial sector. Los Angeles Times reporter Ron Brownstein hailed the Clinton administration's affirmative action lending policies as one of the "hidden success stories" of the Clinton administration, saying that "black and Latino homeownership has surged to the highest level ever recorded."
Meanwhile, economists were screaming from the rooftops that the Democrats were forcing mortgage lenders to issue loans that would fail the moment the housing market slowed and deadbeat borrowers couldn't get out of their loans by selling their houses.
A decade later, the housing bubble burst and, as predicted, food-stamp-backed mortgages collapsed. Democrats set an affirmative action time-bomb and now it's gone off.
In Bush's first year in office, the White House chief economist, N. Gregory Mankiw, warned that the government's "implicit subsidy" of Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, combined with loans to unqualified borrowers, was creating a huge risk for the entire financial system.
Rep. Barney Frank denounced Mankiw, saying he had no "concern about housing." How dare you oppose suicidal loans to people who can't repay them! The New York Times reported that Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac were "under heavy assault by the Republicans," but these entities still had "important political allies" in the Democrats.
Now, at a cost of hundreds of billions of dollars, middle-class taxpayers are going to be forced to bail out the Democrats' two most important constituent groups: rich Wall Street bankers and welfare recipients. Political correctness had already ruined education, sports, science and entertainment. But it took a Democratic president with Democratic congress for political correctness to wreck the financial industry.
It turns out that Clinton operative Jamie ("The Mistress of Disaster") Gorelick didn't just blind America's intelligence apparatus prior to 9/11. And she didn't simply suck down $26 million in salary from Fannie Mae before it imploded. And she didn't only set the stage for the mortgage meltdown. It turns out Ms. Gorelick may have had a teensy weensy conflict-of-interest while managing Fannie.
...
One of Countrywide's previously undisclosed customers at Fannie was Jamie Gorelick, an influential Democratic Party figure whose $960,000 mortgage refinancing in 2003 was handled through a program reserved for influential figures and friends of Countrywide's chief executive at the time, Angelo Mozilo. Ms. Gorelick was Fannie Mae's vice chairman at the time.
I'm starting to lose count of the number of disastrous and downright outrageous deals this Clinton operative has been involved with. Suffice it to say that if there's any justice in this country, she'll be fitted for an orange jumpsuit momentarily.Agreed. Here's a nice list of Gorelick malfeasance - she's clearly a busy gal.
What's funny is that even Bill Clinton is blaming Democrats for the mortgage meltdown. Just not himself.I'm laughing - aren't you?
Click the picture for the Remember the Blood of Heroes slideshow which serves as a useful reminder of reality while Barack Obama and today's Democrat party are busy singing Kumbaya.
CEDARBURG, Wisc. -- Hundreds of angry people in this small town outside Milwaukee taunted reporters and TV crews traveling with Sen. John McCain on Friday, chanting "Be fair!" and pointing fingers at a pack of journalists as they booed loudly.Of course they got the name of the former wrong, since CNN is now officially the Obama News Network:
On the first leg of the "McCain Street USA" tour -- which will take the Republican presidential nominee and his running mate, Alaska Gov. Sarah Palin, to small towns across the heartland -- the 30 or so reporters and crew were walking back to their buses to join the McCain motorcade when hundreds of townspeople started yelling.
"Stop lying! You are all liars! Tell the truth!" one woman yelled from the front of the pack.
...
The scene was reminiscent of one that occurred spontaneously at the RNC, when Mrs. Palin accused political pundits and columnists of misinformation. With thousands of red-meat Republicans in the huge Xcel Center in Minneapolis, the crowd turned ugly. Hundreds began pointing at a group of reporters and booing -- some chanted "CNN!" while others yelled "MSNBC!"
I can't f***ing believe it. I have been working hard for months for Obama from Mom's basement and he picks this old fart as second in command! The guy who back in 1987 got busted for plagiarizing his speeches from British Labor hero Neil Kinnock. The guy who said Barack was "the first mainstream African American" who was "clean," but that he was completely inexperienced. The guy who said, "You cannot go to a 7-Eleven or a Dunkin' Donuts unless you have a slight Indian accent. I'm not joking." The guy who has some sort of weird hairpiece stitched into his scalp!Well, Vera need not have worried, because it turns out that the text message was an elaborate prank by Barack Obama and his campaign staff, designed in the words of campaign manager David Axelrod "to see how much BS we could get the Kool-Aid drinkers to believe. It looks like a lot more than we anticipated. I mean, c'mon, who would believe that we would really announce this on a Saturday if it were true?"
I WANT TO SCREAM! THIS GUY IS A COMPLETE F***ING LOSER!
BARACK, WHY DID YOU DO THIS TO US????????????
Unspoken among the executives is the guarantee of increased ratings and stunning visuals from Invesco that could offset some of that larger than expected expenditure.I'll say. While everyone thought Obama was just in Germany to attend a free rock concert and snub wounded US soldiers, he and his posse were picking up some staging tips. Here's a mock-up of what it is going to look like:
This week, Barack Obama's challenge is to select a running mate who's young, hip, and whose accomplishments in life don't overshadow Obama's. Allow me to suggest Kevin Federline.All indications are that unlike Obama, Federline can talk without a teleprompter, so even he may be a stretch.
Barack Obama has admitted it was "boneheaded" to get involved in a land deal with Tony Rezko, his friend and fund-raiser. But the media's focus on that deal has distracted from the bigger question: Why would Obama become involved in any deal with a man like Rezko, who made his living sponging off taxpayers and corrupting public officials? Because, by the time of the deal, the two already had a long relationship of mutual benefit.The hope is for crooks who have Barry's cell phone number, but I digress.
...
After Rezko's 2006 indictment on unrelated federal corruption charges, Obama denied unequivocally that he'd ever helped the man: "I've never done any favors for him."
That's simply false. Rezko was a genius of corporate welfare who enriched himself at taxpayers' expense, both legally and illegally, via his multiple political connections. Yes, he went to others for the illegal deals that landed him in prison. But Rezko depended on Obama when he wanted legal access to the state treasury. The arrangement was a far cry from Obama's image of "change and hope."
In October 1998, Obama wrote city and state officials, urging them to give Rezko $14 million to build an apartment complex outside of Obama's state Senate district. The Chicago Sun-Times noted last year that Obama's request included $855,000 in "development fees" for Rezko and for another developer, Allison Davis, who happened to be Obama's old law-firm boss. Obama's spokesman said it was just a coincidence that the state senator wrote letters to obtain millions of dollars for his two longtime friends. In fact, Obama was a dependable ally of subsidized developers in the Legislature, giving Rezko and others broader help as well. In "The Case Against Barack Obama" [Freddoso's new book] I identify and parse six housing bills with which Obama was closely involved.
...These and the other Obama-backed bills helped make millionaires of Rezko and other slum developers at taxpayers' expense. The developers - including his former law boss and an adviser to his current campaign - reciprocated, together giving and raising hundreds of thousands of dollars for Obama's campaigns.
To sum up: Obama got them subsidies to build. He secured them a steady income of government rent subsidies. He arranged special tax credits and abatements for them. He backed measures that increased demand for their services, and helped them legally circumvent local laws.
Gosh, young Barry must have been a star pupil in the Chicago school of politics. I'm not as sure as Mr. Freddoso that Barry didn't do anything illegal though. Wanna bet that Rezko turns state's evidence to keep out of the slammer if Obama isn't in a position to pardon him after the election?
However, the best part is that ole Hussein thinks these types of "private-public partnerships" are just the ticket for developing affordable housing in the USA. Aside from the graft, read Binyamin Appelbaum's lengthy expose in the Boston Globe of how it worked out for the residents in Grim proving ground for Obama's housing policy:The squat brick buildings of Grove Parc Plaza, in a dense neighborhood that Barack Obama represented for eight years as a state senator, hold 504 apartments subsidized by the federal government for people who can't afford to live anywhere else.But it's not safe to live here.
About 99 of the units are vacant, many rendered uninhabitable by unfixed problems, such as collapsed roofs and fire damage. Mice scamper through the halls. Battered mailboxes hang open. Sewage backs up into kitchen sinks. In 2006, federal inspectors graded the condition of the complex an 11 on a 100-point scale - a score so bad the buildings now face demolition.
Grove Parc has become a symbol for some in Chicago of the broader failures of giving public subsidies to private companies to build and manage affordable housing - an approach strongly backed by Obama as the best replacement for public housing.
As a state senator, the presumptive Democratic presidential nominee coauthored an Illinois law creating a new pool of tax credits for developers. As a US senator, he pressed for increased federal subsidies. And as a presidential candidate, he has campaigned on a promise to create an Affordable Housing Trust Fund that could give developers an estimated $500 million a year.
But a Globe review found that thousands of apartments across Chicago that had been built with local, state, and federal subsidies - including several hundred in Obama's former district - deteriorated so completely that they were no longer habitable.
Grove Parc and several other prominent failures were developed and managed by Obama's close friends and political supporters. Those people profited from the subsidies even as many of Obama's constituents suffered. Tenants lost their homes; surrounding neighborhoods were blighted.
Maybe Barry should just call his big plan the My Developer Pals Trust Fund? As for the taxpayers, well they always get screwed, just more so in Chicago.