Good news and bad news about the economy

If the list of recent layoffs in the news has you in the dumps, I'm here to tell ya not to worry! You see, I was driving into town last week and on the way I saw 3 commercial buildings and one new subdivision under construction. Despite all that Barack Obama and Barney Frank (the banking queen) and the rest of the Democrat party have done to destroy the financial system by forcing banks to give mortgages to illegal aliens and deadbeats, there are still some folks with enough cash and confidence to go ahead with building projects.

Of course, there was some bad news too. I stopped to look over the new houses being built in the subdivision and wasn't too surprised to find that the crews putting them up spoke Spanish exclusively and loved loud Mexican music on the radio. Now I don't know that they actually were illegal aliens, but I would bet that if I snuck over and posted a "LA MIGRA!" sign at the entrance to the subdivision, I could hold up progress for several days.

But don't worry - I'm sure this is just part of the new Obama plan for bounteous living. American citizens can kick back and watch free TV (in an ecologically responsible way) while waiting for the government checks to roll in as the wetbacks do all the work. What a plan!

Mark Steyn in a similar vein:

At some point in the next four years, we will reach a situation where the majority of Americans pay no federal income tax but are able to vote themselves more goodies from those who do. The most basic of conservative principles is that if you reward bad behavior you get more of it. We now have a government offering trillion-dollar rewards for bad behavior to the financial system, to the housing market, to the auto unions and to individual voters. And the heirs to those Connecticut town meetings that Tocqueville regarded as the best form of government ever devised by man now underbudget their snow-removal costs, secure in the knowledge that the Feds will pick up the tab.

Heck, why not pick up everyone's snow removal costs up north or sun tan lotion costs for southerners? It's undoubtedly a basic human right to have clear driveways and avoid skin cancer. Think I'm kidding? Well, the Feds have already declared that having a cell phone is a human right.

Barney Frank had a "friend" in the mortgage business

Aside from campaign contributions from the crooks running Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, Rep. Barney Frank had another more intimate connection - his main gay squeeze was a Fannie Mae executive. Or as Ace observes: Barney has a Fannie buddy.

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 sure nice of the taxpayers to lubricate ole Barney's relationship with his boy toy.