Quote of the Day
If John McCain had a long association with a guy who’d bombed abortion clinics, I don’t think people would say, “That’s ancient history.”
IBDeditorials.com: Terrorists For Obama.
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Let Limbaugh Moderate The Next Presidential Debate
I suggest we ask Rush Limbaugh to ‘moderate’ the next Presidential Debate. He does not have a book coming out on McCain. He has been a harsh critic of McCain at times. While he is a vocal conservative, he would add a good balance to the the line-up of Moderators we have this season. Compare him to Gwen Ifill.
Gwen Ifill is a partisan supporter of Barack Obama. As one writer described her, Ifill is so far in the Obama tank, she needs an oxygen line. She has book coming out that is nothing short of glowing in her admiration for the Senator. she has followed him on the campaign trail and written a piece for Essence that defines the term “Puff.”
What has been the reaction when people have questioned her ability to be impartial? RACISM she cries. She thinks I object to her because she is Black. How frighteningly silly.
I object because she is so obviously biased.
Let Rush Limbaugh moderate the next Presidential Debate. It will set the scales to fair and balanced.
Michelle Malkin’s article » A debate “moderator” in the tank for Obama comments:
Ifill and her publisher are banking on an Obama/Biden win to buoy her book sales. The moderator expected to treat both sides fairly has grandiosely declared this the “Age of Obama.” Can you imagine a right-leaning journalist writing a book about the “stunning” McCain campaign and its “bold” path to reform timed for release on Inauguration Day – and then expecting a slot as a moderator for the nation’s sole vice presidential debate?
Yeah, I just registered 6.4 on the Snicker Richter Scale, too.
Instapundit says The Fix Is In
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Pelosi Allows Dems To Vote No
Why did 94 #Democrats vote against the bailout? Take a look at Bill Dyer’s analysis:
I thought it was bad enough that House Speaker Nancy #Pelosi had made a deliberate decision not to make today’s vote on the Democrat’s economic stabilization bill a “party loyalty” vote in which the House Democratic leadership made absolutely clear that it expected loyal Democrats to vote in favor of the bill. Ignoring all of the immense power to persuade that inheres in the position of Speaker of the House, Speaker Pelosi wouldn’t even offer (or threaten to withhold) so much as a choice Capitol parking spot to make up the 12-vote margin between victory and defeat of H.R. 3997, the Emergency Economic Stabilization Act of 2008.
Speaking on John Gibson’s radio show later in the day, however, Karl Rove ran through, by name and often by committee or subcommittee chairmanship, the many, many Democratic members of the House whom Speaker Pelosi and the House Democratic leadership expressly authorized to vote against the economic stabilization bill. Glenn Reynolds boils this down to a succinct sentence which is almost exactly right: Pelosi gave key Democrats a pass on the bailout vote. The only quibble I have is that she didn’t just give key Democrats a pass. She gave them all a blanket pass, and then some members particular and specific encouragement to take it. It is inconceivable that she didn’t know exactly what the result would be.
The Dems Play Games with Votes.
Right Voices has a great video of Karl Rove
Mark My Words is a new blog I have just discovered. Read this for sure.
The Real Culprits In This Meltdown
I wrote a lengthy post on this top yesterday but Investor’s Business Daily has expanded and improved on my material.
Big Government: Barack Obama and Democrats blame the historic financial turmoil on the market. But if it’s dysfunctional, Democrats during the Clinton years are a prime reason for it…
[I]t was the Clinton administration, obsessed with multiculturalism, that dictated where mortgage lenders could lend, and originally helped create the market for the high-risk subprime loans now infecting like a retrovirus the balance sheets of many of Wall Street’s most revered institutions.
Tough new regulations forced lenders into high-risk areas where they had no choice but to lower lending standards to make the loans that sound business practices had previously guarded against making. It was either that or face stiff government penalties.
The untold story in this whole national crisis is that President Clinton put on steroids the Community Redevelopment Act, a well-intended Carter-era law designed to encourage minority home ownership. And in so doing, he helped create the market for the risky sub-prime loans that he and Democrats now decry as not only greedy but “predatory”…
Obama and Democrats on the Hill think even more regulation and more interference in the market will solve the problem their policies helped cause. For now, unarmed by the historic record, conventional wisdom is buying into their blame-business-first rhetoric and bigger-government solutions.
While government arguably has a role in helping low-income folks buy a home, Clinton went overboard by strong-arming lenders with tougher and tougher regulations, which only led to lenders taking on hundreds of billions in subprime bilge.
Market failure? Hardly. Once again, this crisis has government’s fingerprints all over it.
Powerline quotes Barney Frank in 2003 as saying
‘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.
Way to go Barney!
Investor’s Business Daily::The Real Culprits In This Meltdown.
Who's Leading Now?
Leaders lead. It may not be apparent when the water is calm and the breezes are gentle. Life is good and any pretender can clamor up the hill and proclaim their virtue.
When the sky darkens and the wind bites at our backs though, actors tumble down the hill. They hesitate. They overt-think. They circle the wagons in uncertainty.
A politician can declare that he is a leader. His political party can declare that he’s a leader. And hundreds of thousands of acolytes around the world can swoon devotedly at his feet, and he can rack up all the trappings of leadership. But none of that in fact makes him into a leader if he actually isn’t one.
Crises reveal, make, and define leaders. When the crisis is over, it’s easy to recognize in hindsight who the leader was, even if there was some doubt as to that during the crisis itself. Looking back, we can recognize a leader because he’s the one who the other potential actors and decision-makers actually followed.
#McCain‘s leadership – “Shut down the campaign. I’m headed to Washington. The country comes first.”
#Obama‘s leadership – “If anybody needs me I’ll be getting ready for the debate.’
Bill Dyer’s article – In the Current Financial Crisis, only McCain is Indispensible is one to read as well as this one by Hugh Hewitt.
Michelle Malkin weighs is with her thoughts and more thoughts.
TD had a brief but pithy article:
John McCain put his campaign on hold today, and called on Barack Obama to join him in Washington, DC in a bi-partisan effort to address the country’s economic crisis. McCain also proposed re-scheduling Friday’s debate and suspending campaign commercials.
Barack Obama responded by a) attempting to take credit for McCain’s idea, b) attempting to take credit for McCain’s economic proposals, c) accusing McCain of playing political tricks, d) refusing to cancel Friday’s debate, and e) essentially telling America: I’m going to keep campaigning and I’m not going to Washington to address the financial crisis. Call me if you need me!
The Democrats Did It
After days of moaning and blaming, perhaps a few facts should be inserted into the discussion about the current financial melt-down.
Barack Obama blames John McCain and Republicans for the mess. Why? According to Obama, Conservatives have been advocating de-regulation and free market controls and this de-regulation produced the current fiasco. Sounds great to liberals. Must be true.
However, a tiny bit of knowledge regarding economics and the free market concept are helpful. De-regulation did not cause this problem. New regulations caused it; new regulations from the Democrats.
Rewind to the 1995 Clinton Administration. Bill Clinton believed that everyone has a right to own a home. Everyone should own a house whether they can afford it or not. It was in the Constitution; or at least it should be. Banks were hesitant to follow the President’s lead however. They knew that there were certain geographic and demographic areas that foreclosure was a near certainty.
Mr. Banker, do you think it is too risky to loan money to people with a history of non-payment? Are you worried about default and foreclosure on loans to unstable people with unstable incomes? Enter Fannie and Freddie. They will cover the risk. When the loans fail (and they did by the thousands), someone else will take the loss. So, give them the loan.
To the average consumer this is great news. To the poorest in our country it is better news. It no longer takes a good work history and 10% cash down to buy a house. You just need a smile and a signature and you can finance 105%, buy the house of your dreams, and make payments when it is convenient. Trillions of federally insured dollars, that never should have been there in the first place, flowed into the credit markets. Understandably, home builders loved this plan. So did the Finance industry. All markets were booming. Politicians, especially friends of Obama, cashed in on the deals.
But everyone ignored some core principles of the free market. They forgot that risk requires compensation. Financial activities with risk fail, sometimes frequently, and require a high rate of potential return to cover the losses. Bill Clinton and Fannie Mae tried to remove the risk. But they couldn’t. They could only shift it to someone else; Fannie and Freddie. They forgot (if they ever knew) how money is actually made and how goods and services are exchanged.
Which brings us to the big, bad, predatory bankers and their outrageous practice of loaning money to people that could never afford it. This is exactly the change Bill Clinton and the Democrats were pushing. The created and changed laws so that people that could not afford a house could buy a house. Barney Frank is STILL trying to make this happen. The mortgage lenders were fulfilling the wishes of the White House. To vilify them now is to distort history.
This is not how the free-market works. It is not de-regulation it is changing regulations to produce a desired outcome with political pressure. Just the opposite of what McCain has advocated and exactly what Obama has supported. In 2005 when Conservatives tried to deal with the mess before it got out of control, McCain supported action and Obama opposed it.
Politicians are now crying that we must provide a $700 billion dollar bail-out, which is not nearly enough by the way. And who will be paying this enormous tab? You and me. People that have worked hard, paid our bills, scrimped, saved and managed our money wisely are absorbing the risk and paying the bills.
And who created this fiasco?
The Democrats did it.
Obama Flip-Flop
Give Matt Lauer at ‘Thumbs Up’ on this one. He catches Obama in a clear double-standard and Obama ducks for cover.
Lauer was talking about how Obama hit Sen. McCain for flip-flopping on the AIG bailout — saying he opposed it one day then announce he supported it the next day.
But, as Lauer pointed out, scarcely three minutes after McCain said he opposed the AIG bailout last week, “in an interview with Meredith Vieira, Joe Biden, your running mate was asked the exact same question, ‘should the federal government bailout AIG?’ And he said, ‘No, the federal government should not bailout AIG.'” (As we noted at the time.) “And I think that in that situation,” Obama said, “I think Joe should have waited as well.”
“But it’s the kind of thing that drives people crazy about politics,” Lauer said. “It sounds like you were trying to score some political points against John McCain using his words, when your own running mate had used very similar words.” (emphasis mine)
Thanks to Jake Trapper for finding this at Political Punch.
Who is Telling the Biggest Lies?
Ruth Marcus has an excellent article in the Washington Post, Closing the Whopper Gap. She compares the lies, exaggerations, and half-truths of McCain compared to Obama.
Guess who is telling the biggest lies? Barack Obama. Read the whole story.
Fannie Mae Five – Five Key Players Who Broke The System
What do Chris Dodd, Barney Frank, Jim Johnson, Franklin Raines and Tim Howard have in common (besides being engineers on the Barack Obama Election Express)? I try not to just scrape the content of other sites but Mcauleys World has a great article with info that is essential for everyone to know.
Five Key Players In Washington who had chances to prevent the Financial Crisis but who, by their actions or inactions helped to bring down Wall Street.
Senator Christopher Dodd
Democrat from Connecticut. Dodd has been in the Senate for 28 years. Dodd has served as Chairman of the Democratic National Committee. Dodd is Chairman of the Senate Banking Committee. As Chairman he had responsibility for acting as a “watch-dog” of Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac. Dodd has responsibilty for assisting in the selection of the CEO’s who run Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac. Dodd was a leading contender to be Obama’s Vice Presidential selection until his receipt of VIP loans from Countywide Financial were disclosed.
It has been reported that Dodd received $7,000,000 in loans from Countywide. Dodd’s Committee was responsible for overseeing Banks in the United States. Countrywide is one of the leading culprits responsible for the lending policies that brought on this Crisis. Countrywide is under FBI investigation for securities fraud. The Government Watchdog Group, The Center For Responsive Politics, reports that Senator Dodd received more campaign contributions from Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac than any other Senator. Read more
On Being Retired
A friend sent this to me and I had to pass it on.
Working people frequently ask retired people what we do to make our days interesting.
Well, for example, the other day I went downtown to go to the News Stand for the Wall Street Journal so I could track my investments. I was only in there for about 5 minutes. When I came out, there was a cop writing out a parking ticket. I said to him, ‘Come on, man, don’t you have anything better to do than write a retired person a ticket? Why aren’t you out chasing crooks or
child molesters…that’s out of your league, obviously !!!He ignored me and continued writing the ticket. I called him a ‘Nazi.’ He glared at me and wrote another ticket for having worn tires.
So I called him ‘Barney Fife’.
He finished the second ticket and put it on the windshield with the first. Then he wrote a third ticket. This went on for about 20 minutes. The more I abused him, the more tickets he wrote.
Personally, I didn’t care….. I came downtown on the bus. The car that he was putting the tickets on had a bumper sticker that said ‘OBAMA in ’08.’
I try to have a little fun each day now that I’m retired. It’s important to my health!
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