Sunday, September 21, 2008

Palin Derangement Syndrome Database


Here's the collection so far.

Democrats


• Rep. Charles Rangel (D-NY) describes Palin as "disabled".
• Rep. Debbie Wasserman Schultz (D-FL) says Palin "doesn't know anything".
• Sen. Joe Biden (D-DE) believes that Palin's election would be a "backward step for women".
• Rep. Barney Frank (D-MA) believes that Palin's "family background, including the pregnancy of her unwed teenage daughter, should be fair game for campaign discussion."
• Obama Finance Director Howard Gutman claims that Palin "puts [her] career above [her] family."
• Michigan Democratic operative Barbara Theaker, introducing Joe Biden, calls Palin "a bucket of fluff."
• South Carolina Democratic Chair Carol Fowler: "[Palin's] primary qualification seems to be that she hasn’t had an abortion."
• Obama supporter Lincoln Chafee calls Sarah Palin a "cocky wacko."
• Former Gore advisor Bob Shrum: "However much the Republican base hoots and whistles, Palin may not become their Miss November; she’s been a runner-up before."

The Mainstream Media


• The Cleveland Plain-Dealer's Connie Schultz claims "[Palin] outed her pregnant daughter... [abortion] was never really a choice for this girl, unless she was willing to derail her mother's political career."
• The New York Times' Judith Warner characterizes Palin's selecton as a "thoroughgoing humiliation for America’s women."
• The New York Times' Maureen Dowd quotes a Palin detractor: "She’s a child, inexperienced and simplistic."
• The Kansas City Star's Mary Sanchez headlines a column "Palin is gloriously, fabulously unfit for duty."
• Chicago Sun-Times Columnist Mary Mitchell says "Sarah Palin makes me sick... [she] scares me... I couldn't help but wonder what it's really like for [her] kids."
• The New York Times' Maureen Dowd describes Palin as "our new Napoleon in bunny boots."
• The Atlantic's Andrew Sullivan: "She is the biggest joke to be put on a ticket in national politics... [She is] Princess of Alaska."
• The Washington Post's Wendy Doniger: "Her greatest hypocrisy is in her pretense that she is a woman."
• The New York Times' Gail Collins: "Given Palin’s affection for shooting wolves from airplanes with high-powered rifles, it’d be more appropriate to have them cowering in their dens while she aims her machine gun from a diving Cessna."
• The Boston Globe's Peter Gelzinis characterizes Palin as a "snow princess."
• Salon's Cintra Wilson says Palin is a "Christian Stepford wife in a sexy librarian costume... like one of those cutthroat Texas cheerleader stage moms."
• Salon's Juan Cole: "What is the difference between Palin and a Muslim fundamentalist? Lipstick."
• Air America's Randi Rhodes: "She’s friends with all the teenage boys. You have to say no when your kids say, ‘can we sleep over at the Palin’s? No! NO!’."

Hollywood


• Sandra Bernhard warns Palin: "[don't] come into Manhattan lest she get gang-raped by some of Sandra’s big black brothers."
• Bill Maher: I will send (Obama) whatever I have to to keep this snarling bitch out of the White House."
• Chevy Chase instructs SNL to "decimate this woman [Palin]."
• Pink: "This woman hates women... the woman terrifies me."
• Brad Garrett says Palin is "White trash."
• Roger Ebert describes Palin as "A shallow, chirpy person with those vaguely alarming eyeglasses."
• Pamela Anderson says the candidate "can suck it."
• Linda Carter: "She’s judgmental and dictatorial... I think America should be very afraid."
• Lindsay Lohan: "Is our country so divided that the Republicans best hope is a narrow minded, media obsessed homophobe?"

Major hat tips: Gateway Pundit and Palin Sexism Watch.
Linked by: American Digest, Ed Driscoll, Commonsense Junction, Ushanka.us and Vocal Minority. Thanks!

Podcast: Mark Levin explains the financial meltdown


Wow! Mark Levin devoted a segment of his show to explain the financial meltdown precipitated by Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac. Download it to your iPod now.

It's unbelievable.

Hat tip: Ace.

Saturday, September 20, 2008

Rev. Wright appears on a bus tire and then rolls under again


As a result of those crazy-whack ads trying to link Rush Limbaugh with John McCain (when everyone knows the two despise each other), the Reverend Jeremiah Wright may make a comeback in John McCain's campaign commercials.

“They played it one way, we played it another way,” said one of McCain’s top advisers, Mark Salter. “Now we’re both going to play it the same way.”

June 5, 2007. The scene: Hampton University. The speaker: Barack Obama.

And then I've gotta give a special shout out... to my pastor... (crowd whooping)... the guy who puts up with me... counsels me... listens to my wife complain about me...

...he's a friend... and a great leader... not just in Chicago but across the country. So please, everybody, give an extraordinary welcome to my pastor, Dr. Jeremiah Wright, Junior... (applause)... from the Trinity United Church of Christ! (applause)

Where is he at? There he is! (applause) ...That, that's him! (applause) That's him right there! (applause) You're in a suit today, right? (laughter, applause) Ha! Well.

When you watch the video you''ll notice Obama has affected a certain cadence for this speech that he does not adopt under normal speech-making circumstances these days.

Of course, one can forgive Obama his relationship with his pastor because, though he attended the church regularly for two decades, he never heard any of the virulently racist tripe that Wright peddled.

SEN. OBAMA: ...Look, I joined a church to worship God, not a pastor. This whole notion that he was my spiritual mentor and all this stuff, this is something that I've consistently discussed. I have not heard him make the offensive comments that ended up being looped on this show constantly. And I was offended by them and ultimately --

MR. O'REILLY: You had never heard those comments?

SEN. OBAMA: I hadn't heard those comments.

MR. O'REILLY: He was selling them in the lobby at the church.

SEN. OBAMA: What can I tell ya? ... ... ..

MR. O'REILLY: And he never said inflammatory stuff?

SEN. OBAMA: He didn't say stuff like that, all right.

MR. O'REILLY: Did he say white people were bad?

SEN. OBAMA: No. What he said was racism is bad.

MR. O'REILLY: But not white people are bad?

SEN. OBAMA: There was no doubt that what he said was racism was bad. The relationship was ruptured, I'm not a member of the church.

That thump you heard was Wright being thrown under the bus for the second time in public.

Maybe Obama was watching that "TV on a cellphone" service -- that the phone companies are offering these days -- while in church? Seems plausible to me.

Hat tip: LGF.

Lines o' the day: Obama votes present on the economy and Iran


I've got several winners. Let's start with The Anchoress:

Obama, Empty suit. Untruthful, blithering empty suit with too many dubious connections. Ask him about the AIG bailout, he votes “present.” If Palin had answered as he did, she’d be excoriated as “stupid” and “not ready.” But he’s The One. Put him in the WH with a Dem controlled Congress and a few judges to name to the SCOTUS and you can just turn out the lights.

Number Two: Iran's president prepares for his visit to New York:

Speaking to reporters at a press conference ahead of his visit to New York, Ahmadinejad also repeated previous anti-Israel comments, calling the Holocaust by Nazi Germany a "fake."

The Iranian President stated that the Jewish state wouldn't survive in any form.

He smirked at a former mantra of the Israeli right of a "Greater" Israel that would include occupied Palestinian territories, saying that while "some say the idea of Greater Israel has expired, I say the idea of a Lesser Israel has expired, too."

Number three: John McCain describes the ramifications of the protest against Iran's nutjob "president" Mahmoud Ahma-asshat (I think that's the way his name is spelled). There's an anti-Iran rally scheduled for Monday and Hillary Clinton was invited. When she found out that Sarah Palin was also invited, she instantly dropped out. Reportedly, the George Soros (a prime backer of MoveOn.org) and Barack Obama teams then swung into action and pressured the rally organizer to disinvite Palin. John McCain's response?

Regrettably that invitation has since been withdrawn under pressure from Democratic partisans. We stand shoulder to shoulder with Republicans, Democrats and independents alike to oppose Ahmadinejad's goal of a nuclear armed Iran. Senator Obama's campaign had the opportunity to join us. Senator Obama chose politics rather than the national interest.

Number four: EIB describes the ramifications of the botched rally against Ahmedinejad:

...if the Democrat Party and its extreme kook fringe cannot even unify, if we can't stand as one against the threat by Iran, then what the hell can we unify on? Why the hell should we be worried about the crossing the aisle and trying to break bread, make contact, find some sort of commonality with people like this, who would rather embarrass Sarah Palin and deny her a chance to show up and protest Iran or this group, the Conference of Presidents of Major American Jewish Organizations, what is there that we have in common with these people? How do you compromise with people who hate the country? How do you compromise with people who want this country to lose military conflicts? The Soros crowd, the far left, how do you compromise with them? Why do you want to walk across the aisle and meet 'em halfway or even partial way? Why don't you instead just want to wipe 'em out politically?

Number five: Jennifer Rubin, writing at Pajamas Media:

But Barack Obama may have been the biggest loser on a number of fronts... Obama is after all struggling to overcome skepticism in the Jewish community. His past affiliation with Palestinian groups, his flip-flop on an “Undivided Jerusalem,” his coterie of advisors who have made troubling comments regarding Israel or America Jews have given pause to some Jews, the vast majority of whom have voted Democratic in presidential elections.  The fact that partisan politics by Obama’s allies — and perhaps his own campaign — submarined an event in defense of both U.S. and Israeli interests will not go unnoticed. Many will ask: “Is bumping Palin off the stage more important than standing up to Ahmadinejad?” It seems so.

Number six: Barack Obama's website, describing his tough stance on Iran.

Diplomacy: Obama supports tough, direct presidential diplomacy with Iran without preconditions. Now is the time to pressure Iran directly to change their troubling behavior. Obama and Biden would offer the Iranian regime a choice. If Iran abandons its nuclear program and support for terrorism, we will offer incentives like membership in the World Trade Organization, economic investments, and a move toward normal diplomatic relations. If Iran continues its troubling behavior, we will step up our economic pressure and political isolation. Seeking this kind of comprehensive settlement with Iran is our best way to make progress.

Obama appears to be doing his best to live up to the nom de guerre long assigned to the Democrats: Party of Weakness.

His pathetic, feeble statement is sure to have Mahmoud and Khameini quaking in their boots. No wonder Iran's proxy -- the terrorist group Hamas -- endorsed Obama.

Update: Jewish groups were threatened with the loss of their tax-exempt status if they invited Palin to speak at the anti-Ahmadinejad rally. But ACORN is still tax-exempt?

The Peculiar Case of the AP's Missing Paragraphs


When an article by Beth Fouhy of the AP actually made it to the funny papers, it was curiously missing several paragraphs critical of Barack (name redacted) Obama. Compare and contrast the original with the version that hit the streets.

Key: I've colored the paragraphs that went missing in purple for the slower-witted liberals progressives out there. And I've bolded Fouhy's advertorializing for the Obama camp.

McCain says Fed should stop government bailouts By BETH FOUHY

GREEN BAY, Wis. (AP) — Republican John McCain said Friday the Federal Reserve needs to stop bailing out failed financial institutions. The Republican presidential hopeful said the Fed should get back to "its core business of responsibly managing our money supply and inflation" and he laid out several recommendations for stabilizing markets in the financial crisis that has rocked Wall Street and commanded the dialogue in the presidential campaign.

McCain made little mention of the massive proposal being crafted by Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson that could amount to a $1 trillion taxpayer bailout of the mortgage industry. McCain said simply that leaders should put aside partisan differences and "any action should be designed to keep people in their homes and safeguard the life savings of all Americans."

The Fed engineered an $85 billion takeover of insurance giant AIG this week after seizing control of housing giants Freddie Mac and Fannie Mae. McCain said that to help return the U.S. to fiscal solvency, the powerful central bank should instead focus on shoring up the dollar and keeping inflation low.

"A strong dollar will reduce energy and food prices," McCain said to applause from the Green Bay Chamber of Commerce. "It will stimulate sustainable economic growth and get this economy moving again."

In the speech and later at a boisterous rally in Minnesota, McCain sharply criticized Democratic rival Barack Obama for ties to Freddie Mac and Fannie Mae and for advocating tax increases McCain said would "turn a recession into a depression."

Obama has said he would raise taxes on people making over $250,000 a year and would cut taxes on the middle class. McCain restated his claim that Obama had voted to raise taxes on people who make just $42,000 a year — a claim that has been widely debunked by nonpartisan fact check organizations.

McCain noted the Illinois senator had taken large campaign contributions from both Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac and that the one-time head of Obama's vice presidential search team, Jim Johnson, had received a $21 million severance deal after stepping down as Fannie Mae CEO. McCain's campaign released a new television ad Friday hitting Obama for his connection to Johnson.

The Arizona senator neglected to say that some of his closest advisers had ties to or lobbied for the home loan giants.

McCain is correct when he says Obama is the No. 2 recipient of campaign money from employees of Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac. Obama has collected $126,349 from those sources, according to a compilation by the Center for Responsive Politics, second only to Senate Banking Committee Chairman Sen. Christopher Dodd, D-Conn., who has received $165,400. The ranking covers the period since 1989.

In Minnesota, the mention of Johnson's severance deal brought loud chants from thousands of McCain supporters who filled an airport hangar. "Give it back! Give it back!" they shouted.

Gee, I wonder why they cut out the stuff in purple?

As for the important ties between the Obama camp and the Fannie Mae debacle that threatens to melt our financial system down? How about the two disgraced Fannie Mae CEOs and Obama advisers (who, between 'em, ripped off taxpayers for around $111 million in compensation in six years) Franklin Raines and Jim Johnson?

  • The Washington Post, 7/16/08: “In the four years since he stepped down as Fannie Mae’s chief executive under the shadow of a $6.3 billion accounting scandal, Franklin D. Raines has been quietly constructing a new life for himself. He has shaved eight points off his golf handicap, taken a corner office in Steve Case’s D.C. conglomeration of finance, entertainment and health-care companies and more recently, taken calls from Barack Obama’s presidential campaign seeking his advice on mortgage and housing policy matters.”
  • The Washington Post, 8/28/08: “In the current crisis, their biggest backers have been Democrats such as Senate Banking Committee Chairman Christopher J. Dodd (Conn.) and House Financial Services Committee Chairman Barney Frank (Mass.). Two members of Mr. Obama’s political circle, James A. Johnson and Franklin D. Raines, are former chief executives of Fannie Mae.

And dont'cha just love the "[McCain] neglected to say that some of his closest advisers..." line?

Don't hold our breath while waiting for this quote in a Beth Fouhy article about the anointed one.

Obama neglected to say that some of his closest advisers were unrepentant terrorist Bill Ayers, virulently racist preacher Jeremiah Wright, and former Fannie Mae Chief Executive Jim Johnson. Obama also failed to mention his mentor Frank Marshall Davis, a notorious communist who fled Chicago when the FBI came calling (Obama referred to him only as "Frank" in his autobiography).


Hat tips: Hot Air's Ed Morrissey, Fausta and Larwyn. Linked by: Curmudgeonly & Skeptical. Thanks!

Friday, September 19, 2008

Rangel's Rolex



Charles Rangel (D-NY) has just a few lingering ethical issues.

His mansion is rent-controlled, an egregious abuse of New York's laws. While most folks enjoy just a single rent-controlled unit, Rangel has four of them all located in the Lenox Terrace luxury development.

The New York Times reported that the differences in rent between what Rangel was paying and the market rates on his additional apartments are around $30,000 a year.

And as Chairman of the tax-writing Ways and Means Committee, Rangel "forgot" to report $75,000 in income on his three-bedroom, three-bathroom beachfront home in the Dominican Republic.

Hey! It's easy to forget about your beachfront home, beyatches! That stuff happens to the best of us!

Yesterday's New York Post reports:

Rep. Charles Rangel has been using a House of Representatives parking garage for years as free storage space for his old Mercedes-Benz - a violation of congressional rules and a potential new tax woe for the embattled lawmaker... House rules forbid use of the garage for long-term storage more than 45 days - and congressional aides told The Post that Rangel's car has been sitting there for years... A House Web site on parking regulations informs anyone with a space that, under IRS regulations, the benefit of the free parking is considered 'imputed income' and must be declared to the government. The spaces are valued by the House at $290 per month... In addition to the storage issue, the vehicle... runs afoul of other rules set forth on the House Web site because it does not have license plates and does not display a current House parking permit.

Rangel, a Congressman for a mere four decades, is as an effective an argument for term limits as Robert Byrd's life support system. Note: Robert, I don't want you to expire prematurely, I just want you to resign before you explode in a shower of blood, feces and urine that will permanently stain the chamber. Uhm, sorry about the graphic imagery.

Hey, Charlie -- nice watch! What's one of those go for?

What? About seven grand? Very nice!

It's good to be a New York Congressman!


Major hat tips: Jammie Wearing Fool via (who else?) The Ubiquitous Larwyn!

Line o' the day: Out of warranty


Duane, writing at Hugh's site, describes Barack, uh, Obama's Inspirational Address To The Barbra Streisand, um, Hollywood Elites.

Obama:

So this should be a celebratory, but the truth is that, uh, I’m in a different mood tonight, um, partly because, uh, we just saw this week, uh... uh... a storm sweep through the Gulf, and there are millions of people without power, tens of thousands of people without a place to live. Uh, here in Los Angeles, there was a tragedy that, uh, took the lives of so many. Uh... and over the last couple of days, we’ve seen reports of the worst financial crisis that we’ve had in generations. Uh... and we don’t yet know how it’s going to play itself out...

I guess the teleprompter was in the shop.

$28,500 a plate doesn't buy the kind of speech it used to.

Thursday, September 18, 2008

Obamonopoly















Let's hope for a change that doesn't involve this set of crooks.

Update: Doug B. transformed this post into a video with outstanding musical accompaniment! Well done, Doug!

Background reading:
Real Clear Politics: The ACORN Obama Knows
Sweetness & Light: ACORN and the Mortgage Crisis
William J. Clinton: Remarks to the National Association of Home Builders
New York Post: The Real Scandal
Jammie Wearing Fool: Obama and Fannie Mae
Ace o' Spades: Unidentified bus runs over Franklin Raines
The Root Cause (of the Mortgage Crisis)

Linked by: Ace o' Spades, American Thinker, Don Surber, The incomparable Anchoress!, Fausta, Grouchy Old Cripple, Kevin Dayhoff, Delaware Curmudgeon, Lookin' for Learnin', Say Anything, M.K. Freeberg, MoveLeft.org, Topical Topics, A Newt One and Holy Coast. Thanks!

Question o' the day


Hugh Hewitt asks (via Larwyn):

If you had to trust all your money and your family's money to the care of either Barack Obama or John McCain, whom would you chose?

Keep in mind Obama's stellar stewardship of the Annenberg Challenge.

Well, there's that.


And don't forget about his stunning track record as a "community organizer"...


...and as a "State Senator."

Wednesday, September 17, 2008

Root Cause of the Mortgage Lending Crisis


What is the root cause of the current mortgage lending crisis?

Mortgages issued with no verification of income, no ability to make payments, and no down payments.

But why would anyone underwrite obviously risky mortgages?


Government regulation, led by prominent Democrats including former Clinton budget director and Fannie Mae CEO Franklin Raines. Raines managed to eke out a living by earning $90 million from 1998 to 2003 at Fannie.

In fact, the management team at Fannie Mae -- all four of whom were prominent Democrats -- pulled down nearly $200 million in pay over that time period.

Fannie Mae executives, aided and abetted by Congressional Democrats and the Clinton administration, went hog wild promoting low-quality loans. After all, their stock options and "earnings-per-share challenge grant awards" were at stake. A press release from 1999 -- announcing a $1 billion taxpayer-funded giveaway -- epitomized the era.

Congresswoman Eleanor Holmes Norton (D-DC) announced that she was introducing a bill today to make her $5,000 D.C. homebuyer credit permanent... "I have chosen to introduce the District of Columbia $5,000 Homebuyer Credit Act... because Fannie Mae has significantly increased the credit's value... by monetizing the $5,000 credit... As a result, for a $100,000 house, no down payment would be necessary..."

Not everyone was enamored with the "new Fannie Mae". A March 2002 Business Week article ("The Homes Keep Selling") sounded a lonely and unheeded alarm.

...gains in home prices are outstripping wage gains. That creates a gold-rush mentality in which potential homebuyers rush to grab a house as quickly as possible, even if they overpay. And mortgage lenders are willing to oblige, even in the case of buyers who might not have qualified before. ....the aggressive tactics of mortgage lenders have been made possible by the automated underwriting systems developed in recent years by the Federal National Mortgage Association (Fannie Mae)…. The new underwriting systems being used by Fannie Mae … allow for higher loan-to-income ratios than in the past to encourage home buying. …but the relaxed ratios could pose serious problems in the future. For one, there is already evidence that defaults are rising… For Fannie Mae … which only began expanding into subprime mortgages two years ago, deteriorating credit quality may be a new and unpleasant experience...

Unpleasant indeed.

Raines was finally forced out of FNMA in 2004 over accounting fraud allegations. Although he claimed innocence, he finally agreed to settle the suit with the government this year and said he would pay back a "few million of the [approximately] $50 million... he [allegedly] obtained illegally..."

Moreover, FNMA's secretive "Countrywide program" gave special loans to connected individuals including the Democratic Chairman of the Senate Banking Committee, Sen. Christopher Dodd, and the chairman of the Senate Budget Committee, Democrat Kent Conrad.

Greedy Democrats helped melt down the financial system by treating Fannie Mae like their own personal piggy bank.

In February 2004 Alan Greenspan warned that Fannie and Fredde could cost taxpayers dearly.

Mr. Greenspan said that Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, which buy up and repackage billions of dollars' worth of mortgages every year, have grown so rapidly and accumulated so much debt that they cannot adequately hedge against the risks of financial crises... The Fed chairman said both companies, which hold about $2 trillion worth of obligations tied to home mortgages, have grown much faster than their competitors because investors think the federal government will bail them out in a crisis.

Turns out he was right.

In 2003 the Bush administration tried to stop the madness.

The Bush administration today recommended the most significant regulatory overhaul in the housing finance industry since the savings and loan crisis a decade ago... Under the plan, disclosed at a Congressional hearing today, a new agency would be created within the Treasury Department to assume supervision of Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, the government-sponsored companies that are the two largest players in the mortgage lending industry...

...The new agency would have the authority, which now rests with Congress, to set one of the two capital-reserve requirements for the companies. It would exercise authority over any new lines of business. And it would determine whether the two are adequately managing the risks of their ballooning portfolios.

And why did the Bush administration attempts at a Fannie Mae reformation fail?

Among the groups denouncing the proposal today were the ...Congressional Democrats who fear that tighter regulation of the companies could sharply reduce their commitment to financing low-income and affordable housing.

These two entities — Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac — are not facing any kind of financial crisis,” said Representative Barney Frank of Massachusetts, the ranking Democrat on the Financial Services Committee. ”The more people exaggerate these problems, the more pressure there is on these companies, the less we will see in terms of affordable housing.” ...Representative Melvin L. Watt, Democrat of North Carolina, agreed.

Former Clinton Budget Director and FNMA CEO Franklin Raines made $90 million.

Clinton Deputy Attorney General and FNMA Vice Chair Jamie Gorelick made $26 million.

Kerry adviser and FNMA vice-chair James Johnson pulled down $21 million -- in one year.

Now consider: two of Barack Obama's key financial advisers are -- yep, you guessed it -- Franklin Raines and James Johnson.

Change!

Major hat tips: John Lott, Protein Wisdom, Ed Morrissey at Hot Air and The Volokh Conspiracy. Linked by: Brutally Honest, Fausta's Blog, Moving Left and Mitchell Langbert. Thanks!

Saudi Cleric sentences Horologists to death: Rielle Hunter in hiding


MEMRI reports that Saudi clerics have levied the death sentence on Horologists (experts at Horoscopes -- via LGF):

Member of the High Judicial Council in Saudi Arabia, Sheikh Salah Al-Fawzan, has called to kill the hosts of TV horoscope programs on the grounds that they “practice magic.” Al-Fawzan contends that, according to Islam, they are guilty of “a crime whose perpetrators must be put to death by the sword,” and that “it is forbidden to pray over their bodies.”

What this means for John Edwards and his squeeze Rielle Hunter is anyone's guess.

Rielle, of course, is a serious Horologist (careful, punsters!):

Despite someone trying their damnedest to keep confirmed homewrecker Rielle Hunter's website out of the public eye, it was really only a matter of time before the proof of this woman's weirdness surfaced. Entitled "Being Is Free," Hunter's site is chock-full of New Age-isms and talk of the zodiac, chakras, and spiritual healers, none of which granted Hunter enough serenity to resist the temptation of a married man with a dying wife. And while the site is offline, we got a look at the whole mess of it.

I'm guessing she's in hiding.

Oops! Biff Spackle says she already was in hiding. My bad!

The Patriot Micro Chip Breakthrough!


Master Gunnery Sergeant Kirk sent this one.

THE PATRIOT MICRO CHIP is intended to be implanted in terrorists.
The implant is specifically designed to be installed in the forehead.

When properly installed it will allow the implantee to speak to God.




It comes in various sizes:

The exact size of the implant will be selected by a well-trained and highly -skilled technician.

The implant may or may not be painless.
Side effects, like headaches and nausea, are temporary.
Some bleeding or swelling may occur at the injection site.

Please enjoy the security we provide for you.

Best regards,

Tuesday, September 16, 2008

Don't fret about gas prices, rubes, Barack Obama's got it handled!


Don't worry, compadre! Barack Obama has promised the American people that Magic Solar Energy Beans™ will soon be available.


Action: Go read Ace's post on the Gang of Idiots now and call the numbers he's got listed.

Hey, two can play the Photoshop game, Jill Greenberg!


To make up for the Greenberg fiasco, The Atlantic reissued its cover this month according to Junior Cub Reporter (Level IV) Biff Spackle.

She's a looker, alright. And if the photographer got herself fixed up a bit, she'd be okay too.

Vanderleun adds (via Larwyn):

Buh-Bye:

"The Vaughan Hannigan photo agency, which has represented the disgraced, excrement-obsessed photoshopper Jill Greenberg, has just dropped her from its client list." - Jeffrey Goldberg @ The Atlantic

Elsewhere, the brilliant and ethical Mark Tucker ["I'm a full-on Obama supporter; I'm a commercial photographer..."] has the real motivation all figured out: What I've Learned from this Greenberg/McCain fiasco

Maybe this was some back-room plot, planned months in advance, to move her out of the doldrums of commercial photography, and into the glamorous world of Fine Art...

This issue's a keeper.

Barack Obama caught in bed with Fannie Mae


Barack Obama's latest statements attempt to pin the current financial crisis on (who else?) Emperor Chimpatine McBushlitlerburton.

In a statement issued shortly after 6 a.m. on the U.S. east coast, Obama said he did not blame McCain, but "I do fault the economic philosophy he subscribes to. It's a philosophy we've had for the last eight years".

However, once we leave Obamaville and reenter the reality vortex, the ties between the Obama campaign, Democrats in general and the Fannie Mae debacle are tighter than Michael Moore's Sansabelt trousers.


OpenSecrets lists the top three politicians in which FNMA "invested" from 1989 to 2008.

Top Recipients of Fannie Mae/Freddie Mac Campaign Contributions, 1989-2008
Name Office State Party Grand Total
Dodd, Christopher S CT D $165,400
Obama, Barack S IL D $126,349
Kerry, John S MA D $111,000

All three were Democrats (Dodd was Chairman of the Senate Banking Committee), two were Democratic presidential candidates and Barack Obama received more in his short time in the Senate than all but one politician received in two decades!

Jim Geraghty, writing at The Campaign Spot notes:

Obama has two new ads up, both highlighting McCain advisers who have been employed as lobbyists.

If having a staffer who has worked as a lobbyist makes you "on the take," I wonder what it means when you take more money from companies like Fannie and Freddie than anybody except Chris Dodd. More than, say, 352 other lawmakers, going back to 1989.

Seems like time for a response ad. "When the highly-paid CEOs of Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac felt reformers closing in, they needed a defender. They knew where to send their money. The Banking Committee Chairman Chris Dodd... and Barack Obama. They gave Obama more than $126,000, in less than four years. While Fannie and Freddie was running aground, Dodd, Obama, and Congress looked elsewhere. Ask yourself who can really bring change to Washington, and keep our financial system from running aground."

We need not even mention well-connected Democrat Jamie "The Mistress of Disaster" Gorelick who presided over FNMA during the time it suffered a prior $10 billion accounting scandal while she earned a cool $26 million.


And Senator Obama's friends add some pieces to the puzzle. Remember this story from June 2008?

...former CEO of mortgage financing giant Fannie Mae, [Jim] Johnson is now vetting Vice Presidential candidates for Mr. Obama. But he is also a textbook case for poor disclosure as regulators sifted through the wreckage of Fannie's $10 billion accounting scandal. Despite an exhaustive federal inquiry, Mr. Johnson managed to avoid disclosing one very special perk: below-market interest-rate mortgages from Countrywide Financial, arranged by Countrywide CEO Angelo Mozilo. Journal reporters Glenn Simpson and James Hagerty broke the story this weekend.

...One question is whether Messrs. Johnson and Raines were using their position to pad their own incomes that were already fabulous thanks to an implicit taxpayer subsidy. (See the table nearby.) But the bigger issue is whether they steered Fannie policy into giving Mr. Mozilo and Countrywide favorable pricing, which means they helped to facilitate the mortgage boom and bust that Countrywide did so much to promote...

Addressing [FNMA's] too smooth (and fraudulent) reported earnings growth in the late 1990s and early 2000s, Ofheo reported: "Those achievements were illusions deliberately and systematically created by the Enterprise's senior management with the aid of inappropriate accounting and improper earnings management . . . By deliberately and intentionally manipulating accounting to hit earnings targets, senior management maximized the bonuses and other executive compensation they received, at the expense of shareholders."

Barack Obama was so deeply involved with Fannie Mae, he should have proposed marriage.

The crack investigative team at the New York Times will be delving into this egregious mess any minute now.

Hat tips: Rants & Refinements, jpm100 and Larwyn.

The contractor who should be writing the building code in Texas


Incredible photo spotted over at Prairie Pundit's place:

[This] is one of a group of pictures from the Daily Mail. Note every other house in the picture was not only destroyed but mostly washed away. The location is described as Gilchrist, Texas. There are several interesting photos at the link. I am impressed with the construction of the house in this photo. The contractor is likely to get some business.

Not only that, the contractor ought to be writing the building code in them parts.

Monday, September 15, 2008

To secure the Christian vote, Obama campaign sells buttons!


Gateway Pundit reports that Senator Obama is pursuing the Christian vote.

In its latest attempt to appeal to religious values voters the Obama camp will release... Buttons & Bumper Stickers!

The Barack Obama campaign released a new line of Obama faith merchandise--bumper stickers, buttons, and signs with three different messages...

...They were thinking of releasing Rev. Wright CD's too, but decided against it at the last minute.

Thank heavens: Junior Cub Reporter (Level III) Biff Spackle was able to secure a couple of rare Obama faith pins.

They do a solid job of winning over the Christian centrists.

They certainly sold me!

I sold my entire collection of Trumpet Magazines with Reverend Farrakhan and Senator Obama on the cover to raise money for the campaign.

Line o' the day: Scrutiny, with the emphasis on "Scru"


"If Barack Obama's past had been subjected to one tenth the media scrutiny during the full year of his candidacy, to which Sarah Palin has been subjected during the last 11 days, Obama .. would be junior senator from Illinois."

-- The American Thinker's James Pennington (via PrestoPundit).

Jamie Gorelick, Mistress of Disaster


It's not often that one person plays key roles in two -- count 'em, two -- trillion-dollar disasters. Welcome, my friends, to the world of well-connected Democrat Jamie Gorelick.

In 2004, observers were "astonished" to discover that a key member of the 9/11 Commission had a fatal conflict-of-interest. Jamie Gorelick had served as a Deputy Attorney General under Bill Clinton from 1994 to 1997.

It was later revealed that Gorelick had established a pre-Patriot Act "wall" that prevented the foreign intelligence and criminal investigative communities from collaborating.

Her 1995 memo, entitled "Instructions on Separation of Certain Foreign Counterintelligence and Criminal Investigations", stated explicitly that they would "go beyond what is legally required, [to] prevent any risk of creating an unwarranted appearance that FISA is being used to avoid procedural safeguards which would apply in a criminal investigation."

The result: shortly before 9/11, Gorelick's wall "specifically impeded the investigation into Zacarias Moussaoui", the so-called "20th hijacker."

At the time, an enraged FBI investigator wrote a memo to headquarters which included the sentence, 'Whatever has happened to this -- someday someone will die -- and wall or not -- the public will not understand why we were not more effective..."

The 2004 disclosure that Gorelick's service as a 9/11 Commissioner was the archetypical conflict-of-interest should have triggered a cacophony of complaints and demands for a new investigation. Instead, the mainstream media turned deaf and dumb and the controversy faded into the background.

Gorelick's "wall" wrapped a blindfold around America just when it needed its vision to stop the attacks that killed thousands and which sucked a half a trillion dollars out of the economy.

Where did Gorelick turn up next?

Though she had no training or experience in finance, Gorelick was appointed the Vice Chairman of Fannie Mae and served in the role from 1997 to 2003. During that six-year period, she earned over $26 million.

During Gorelick's tenure, FNMA suffered a $10 billion accounting scandal, an ominous harbinger of the firm's looming troubles. One of the falsified transactions helped FNMA hit earnings targets for 1998, which triggered bonuses for top executives including nearly $800,000 to Gorelick.

Put simply "Jamie Gorelick was one of the Fannie executives who benefited from inflated bonuses based on Enron-style accounting."

In 2002 Business Week interviewed Gorelick concerning the health of FNMA. She responded, "We believe we are managed safely. We are very pleased that Moody's gave us an A-minus in the area of bank financial strength -- without a reference to the government in any way. Fannie Mae is among the handful of top-quality institutions."

Less than a year later regulators "accused Fannie Mae of improper accounting to the tune of $9 billion in unrecorded losses."

Today, of course, FNMA is on taxpayer-funded life support, currently trading at 61 cents a share. And because it was thought to have been "managed safely" (Gorelick's words), many top-flight financial services companies held its stock.

Last week it was revealed that top insurer AIG was teetering on the precipice of disaster because, in part, it held $600 million in Fannie and Freddie. Roughly $4 billion in those stocks are held by insurers, according to rating agency A.M. Best.

Put simply, FNMA's collapse helped touch off the current swath of instability in the financial system.

It's not often that one person plays such a key role in two unmitigated disasters.

Democrat Jamie Gorelick is just such a person; that is why she has earned her nom de guerre "The Mistress of Disaster".

What do you call someone with a Midas Touch, only instead of gold everything they touch turns to s***? That's what Gorelick's got.

If I was one of her associates at the law firm of WilmerHale, I'd keep my head on a frickin' swivel.

Update: Just Barking Mad adds even more foaming-at-the-mouth-level anger to the story:

In 1999 Fannie Mae announced that it would purchase $10B in CRA loans. In 2001 they reached that target as Ms. Gorelick announced that they would roll these into special security issues...

Yep, you guessed it. Gorelick also had a direct hand in the mortgage securitization debacle. I'm guessing we could link her to a few other catastrophes if we did the legwork. Where was she when the Hindenberg below up, for instance?

Linked by: Instapundit, American Thinker, Memeorandum, RawStory, RS McCain, Clayton Cramer, EconoPundit, Jammie Wearing Fool and PrairiePundit. Thanks!