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Labels: gun rights Labels: 2008 presidential candidates Labels: global warming Nation of Islam leader Louis Farrakhan, another powerful Chicago-based political figure associated with the Rev. Jeremiah Wright and other long-time associates of Democratic Party presidential candidate Barack Obama, is leaving no doubt about what he thinks of the leader in the campaign for the White House. He says when Obama talks "the Messiah is absolutely speaking." Labels: 2008 presidential candidates CLEVELAND - A man at the center of a voter-registration scandal told The Post yesterday he was given cash and cigarettes by aggressive ACORN activists in exchange for registering an astonishing 72 times, in apparent violation of Ohio laws. "Sometimes, they come up and bribe me with a cigarette, or they'll give me a dollar to sign up," said Freddie Johnson, 19, who filled out 72 separate voter-registration cards over an 18-month period at the behest of the left-leaning Association of Community Organizations for Reform Now. "The ACORN people are everywhere, looking to sign people up. I tell them I am already registered. The girl said, 'You are?' I say, 'Yup,' and then they say, 'Can you just sign up again?' " he said. Johnson used the same information on all of his registration cards, and officials say they usually catch and toss out duplicate registrations. But the practice sparks fear that some multiple registrants could provide different information and vote more than once by absentee ballot. ACORN is under investigation in Ohio and at least eight other states - including Missouri, where the FBI said it's planning to look into potential voter fraud - for over-the-top efforts to get as many names as possible on the voter rolls regardless of whether a person is registered or eligible. It's even under investigation in Bridgeport, Conn., for allegedly registering a 7-year-old girl to vote, according to the State Elections Enforcement Commission. Meanwhile, a federal judge yesterday ordered Ohio's Secretary of State to verify the identity of newly registered voters by matching them with other government documents. The order was in response to a Republican lawsuit unrelated to the ACORN probe in Cuyahoga County, in which at least three people, including Johnson, have been subpoenaed. Bribing citizens with gifts, property or anything of value is a fourth-degree felony in Ohio, punishable by up to 18 months in prison. And it's a fifth-degree felony - punishable by 12 months in jail - for a person to pay "compensation on a fee-per-registration" system when signing up someone to vote. ... The Cleveland voting probe, first reported by The Post yesterday, also focused on Lateala Goins, who said she put her name on multiple voter registrations. She guessed ACORN canvassers then put fake addresses on them. "You can tell them you're registered as many times as you want - they do not care," she said. ACORN spokesman Kris Harsh said the group does not tolerate its workers paying people to sign the voter-registration cards. Charlene Davis, co-director of the election board in Jackson County, where Kansas City is, said the fraudulent registration forms came from the Association of Community Organizations for Reform Now, or ACORN. She said they were bogging down work Wednesday, the final day Missourians could register to vote. "I don't even know the entire scope of it because registrations are coming in so heavy," Davis said. "We have identified about 100 duplicates, and probably 280 addresses that don't exist, people who have driver's license numbers that won't verify or Social Security numbers that won't verify. Some have no address at all." The nonpartisan group works to recruit low-income voters, who tend to lean Democratic. Most polls show Republican presidential candidate John McCain with an edge in bellwether Missouri, but Democrat Barack Obama continues to put up a strong fight. Jess Ordower, Midwest director of ACORN, said his group hasn't done any registrations in Kansas City since late August. He said he was told three weeks ago by election officials that there were only about 135 questionable cards — 85 of them duplicates. "They keep telling different people different things," he said. "They gave us a list of 130, then told someone else it was 1,000." FBI spokeswoman Bridget Patton said the agency has been in contact with elections officials about potential voter fraud and plans to investigate. Labels: voter fraud BOISE -- In the wake of Thursday's announcement of job cuts at Micron, word today is that most of the 1,500 local layoffs will happen before Christmas. The overall, companywide restructuring announced Thursday will take two years, but Micron is working to shut down a majority of its NAND flash manufacturing lines in Boise as soon as possible -- over the next month or two. That means most of the 1,500 Boise workers will be laid off by the end of the year. This process begins with a one-week long voluntary program -- those who accept this option get an additional 6-weeks of pay, plus their severance packages. After that, it moves to an undetermined number of involuntary layoffs. Labels: 2008 presidential candidates, economics Labels: 2008 presidential candidates Woodwick Street was quiet — with a few residents working in their yards and adding to post-storm brush piles at the curb — when Texas Watchdog visited on a recent Saturday to try to find Harris County voter Linda K. Hill. “I’m sorry, but she passed on two years ago,” said a mustached man wearing a Dallas Cowboys baseball cap and driving a motorized chair down the street. He was Linda Hill’s husband, Henderson Hill Jr. Linda Kay Hill, a homemaker and Louisiana native, died Aug. 2, 2006, of a heart attack, her husband recalled, and is buried at Houston Memorial Gardens in Pearland. But Harris County voter records indicate she –- or someone using her identity –- cast a ballot in the November election that year. Linda Hill of Woodwick Street voted in person on Election Day, records show. She is among the more than 4,000 people whose names are listed both on Harris County’s voter rolls and also in a federal database of death records, a Texas Watchdog analysis has found. And dozens of those people, like Linda Hill, have apparently cast ballots from beyond the grave, records since 2004 show. One expert says the number of deceased names used to cast ballots may be higher than what Texas Watchdog’s analysis found. Instances of dead voters’ names being used to cast ballots were most frequent in three elections, the November 2004 general election, the November 2006 general election and the March 2008 Democratic primary, the analysis found. Labels: voter fraud Labels: economics Wouldn’t it be more useful to ask why black men are doing so much worse as the society has bent the 14th Amendment into a pretzel to justify racial discrimination in favor of blacks? If whites were at the top of stack on this, the “institutional racism” argument might be worthy of examination. But pretty clearly, the only way “institutional racism” is much of an argument is if these institutions dominated by liberals hate blacks (and only black men, at that), and love Asians more than whites. Maybe we should start looking at the cultural factors involved. Is there anything more obviously true than that cultural values about education influence how much education kids get? David seems like your typical first-time homeowner. The house is small, money's tight. But his family is happy. "It was our dream." he said. "So it was like our dream became true, finally." But getting a loan from the bank almost didn't happen. An employee from the bank called and said it seemed they had a problem. The problem was David's social security number ... it's a fake. He is undocumented, an illegal immigrant. David thought it was a dead end, but not in California. It's among a few states where banks are offering mortgages to people who they know are illegal. "He gave us good news, saying, 'oh, you have good credit, you've been good on your payments. Sure, we can help you out!,'" he recalls. David got a 30-year, $135,000 loan. He pays $950 a month for his house in the South Valley. The Valley non-profit group Acorn is helping people like David. They set him up with Citibank in Fresno, where a social security number is not required. Instead, it asks for an Individual Taxpayer Identification Number, or I-TIN. It proves they pay taxes to the IRS. Applicants also have to have a bank account, proof of US residency for two years, and two years of credit references. "The banks wanna get bigger, wanna give mortgages to people and they see this is a tremendous money making opportunity," says Diana Hull, an illegal immigrant opponent. Washingtonian says Raines just paid $4.9 million for "a three-bedroom, seven-bath penthouse condominium" in Washington's Ritz-Carlton Residences. The Washington Post says Raines and his wife are splitting up and agreed to sell their old house for $7.6 million. Fannie Mae, a mortgage finance company that is now controlled by the government, had to restate billions in earnings because of accounting problems during his tenure. "Regulators have said that of the $90 million paid to Mr. Raines from 1998 to 2003 at least $52 million — more than half — was tied to bonus targets that were reached by manipulating accounting," The New York Times reported two years ago. Labels: 2008 presidential candidates I hesitated to blog about this, because I don’t want my blogs to be tabloid like places and I’d never purposefully reveal information like this were it secret. But it’s not; the cat is already out of the bag. It’s about Christopher Buckley’s illegitimate child. Buckley, notably is the son of the late William F. Buckley. This topic illustrates why I don’t get bloggers like Clayton Cramer who seem so obsessed with problems in gay culture (yes there are problems) that he acts like that fact alone can be used to condemn homosexuality (but we know the condemners invariably have preexisting religious convictions against homosexuality that they are trying to justify). The Clayton Cramers of the world might have a point if heterosexuals like Christopher Buckley weren’t also always getting themselves into trouble. It’s that intractable thing called human nature, especially sexual nature (see also of recent note John Edwards and Bristol Palin). Labels: homosexuality Labels: cars “I don’t think there’s a statute of limitations on terrorist bombings,” Mr. Chapman said in an interview, speaking not of the law but of political and moral implications. “If you’re in public life, you ought to say, ‘I don’t want to be associated with this guy,’ ” Mr. Chapman said. “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.’ ” ARLINGTON, VA — Today, John M. Murtagh made the following statement on Barack Obama’s relationship with William Ayers: “When I was 9 years-old the Weather Underground, the terrorist group founded by Barack Obama’s friend William Ayers, firebombed my house. Barack Obama has dismissed concerns about his relationship with Ayers by noting that he was only a child when Ayers was planting bombs at the Pentagon and the U.S. Capitol. But Ayers has never apologized for his crimes, he has reveled in them, expressing regret only for the fact that he didn’t do more. “While Barack Obama once downplayed his relationship with Ayers, today his campaign took that deceit one step further. Barack Obama now denies he was even aware of his friend’s violent past when, in 1995, Ayers hosted a party launching Obama’s political career. Given Ayers’ celebrity status among the left, it’s difficult to believe. The question remains: what did Obama know, and when did he know it? When did Obama learn the truth about his friend? Barack Obama helped Ayers promote his book in 1997, served on charitable boards with him through 2002, and regularly exchanged emails and phone calls with him through 2005. At what point did Barack Obama discover that his friend was an unrepentant terrorist? And if he is so repulsed by the acts of terror committed by William Ayers, why did the relationship continue? Any honest accounting by Barack Obama will necessarily cast further doubt on his judgment and his fitness to serve as commander in chief. “Barack Obama may have been a child when William Ayers was plotting attacks against U.S. targets — but I was one of those targets. Barack Obama’s friend tried to kill my family.” Labels: 2008 presidential candidates Hey, is that even the right way to hold a rifle? Can't you shoot your foot off like that? Just wondering. I don't have a problem with Newsweek's use of a stock photo, as long as it isn't doctored. It would be physically impossible for Governor Palin to shoot that rifle in that position, for three reasons: 1. She cannot reach the trigger without shifting her grip. 2. She has the breech open, so the firing pin cannot make contact with any rounds in the chamber. 3. She's not holding a rifle. It's a shotgun. Labels: 2008 presidential candidates Labels: economics David Kernell, 20, of Knoxville, Tenn. entered the plea in federal court in Knoxville, the same day prosecutors unsealed an indictment charging him with intentionally accessing Palin's e-mail account without authorization. Kernell, an economics student at the University of Tennessee, was brought into court wearing handcuffs and shackles on his ankles. He was released without posting bond, but the court forbade him from owning a computer and limited his Internet use to checking e-mail and doing class work. Kernell's father is longtime state Rep. Mike Kernell of Memphis, chairman of Tennessee's House Government Operations Committee. The lawmaker has said he had nothing to do with the hacking incident. Labels: 2008 presidential candidates State authorities on Tuesday raided an organization that registers low-income people to vote, alleging that its canvassers falsified forms with bogus names, fake addresses or famous personalities. The secretary of state's office launched an investigation after noticing that names did not match addresses and that most members of the Dallas Cowboys appeared to be registering in Nevada to vote in November's general election. "Some of these (forms) were facially fraudulent; we basically had the starting lineup for the Dallas Cowboys," Secretary of State Ross Miller said. "Tony Romo is not registered to vote in Nevada. Anyone trying to pose as Terrell Owens won't be able to cast a ballot." Agents with the secretary of state and state attorney general offices served a search warrant on the headquarters of the Association of Community Organizations for Reform Now, or ACORN, at 953 E. Sahara Ave. shortly after 9 a.m. They seized voter registration forms and computer databases to determine how many fake forms were submitted and identify employees who were responsible. They also sought information regarding current and past employees and managers. "We don't know how many (falsified forms) are here; there may be two, or there may be thousands," said Bob Walsh, spokesman for the secretary of state's office. Registration fraud typically stems from workers striving to meet their daily quota of submitted voter forms, Miller said. Most organizations require their workers to sign up 20 voters a day. Fraudulent forms start filtering in when workers struggle to meet their quota and either fill in bogus names or accept documents with names that are clearly falsified, Miller said. In a statement released by ACORN on Tuesday, Interim Chief Organizer Bertha Lewis said the group based in Clark County routinely flagged suspect applications and notified the Clark County Election Department. The group provided state and county officials with the names of individuals who submitted the falsified registration forms. Labels: 2008 presidential candidates Barack Obama is outspending John McCain at nearly a three-to-one clip on television time in the final weeks of the presidential election, according to ad buy information obtained by The Fix, a financial edge that is almost certainly contributing to the momentum for the Illinois senator in key battleground states. From Sept. 30 to Oct. 6, Obama spent more than $20 million on television ads in 17 states including more than $3 million in Pennsylvania and more than $2 million each in Florida, Michigan and Ohio. McCain in that same time frame spent just $7.2 million in 15 states. Even when the Republican National Committee's independent expenditure spending in Indiana, Michigan, Ohio, Pennsylvania, Virginia and Wisconsin is factored in (a total of $5.3 million), Obama still outspent the combined GOP forces by roughly $8 million in the last week alone. (See full distribution after the jump.) Labels: 2008 presidential candidates A gay chef murdered his lover, cut out part of his leg, seasoned it with herbs and fried it, a court has heard. Anthony Morley, 35, chewed one of the pieces before throwing it into his kitchen bin. Morley, a former holder of the Mr Gay UK title, then walked to a nearby takeaway restaurant and told horrified staff: 'I have killed someone, call the police'. Labels: homosexuality The Massachusetts Democrat, chairman of the House Financial Services Committee, said the GOP is appealing to its base by blaming the country's mortgage foreclosure problem on efforts to expand affordable housing through the Community Reinvestment Act. Labels: economics Labels: 2008 presidential candidates Although our Founding Fathers would have comprehended and endorsed Ahmadinejad’s speech to the United Nations, present-day Americans would find it strange should they happen to hear about it. Unlike their forbears, Americans today live a material life, not a spiritual one. Americans are far too likely to dismiss Ahmadinejad’s words about obeisance to God and justice as the mumbo-jumbo of an “Islamist extremist.” The hubris of Americans and their belief in U.S. “exceptionalism” would cause them to reject Ahmadinejad’s holding the US, its NATO puppets, and Israel accountable before the UN General Assembly. So successfully has Ahmadinejad been demonized by the propagandistic US media that his speech would be dismissed out of hand by the arrogance of those who regard themselves as the salt of the earth. NAIROBI, Kenya – The government of Kenya is holding WND senior staff reporter Jerome Corsi in custody at immigration headquarters after police picked him up at his hotel just prior to a scheduled news conference in which he planned to announce the findings of his investigation into Barack Obama's connections in the country. Corsi, the author of the No. 1 best-selling book "The Obama Nation," was picked up by authorities at his hotel at 9:45 a.m. and is being detained at Nyayo House, the provincial headquarters for Nairobi. "Just as we were about to start the 10 a.m. press conference at the Grand Regency Hotel in Nairobi, Kenyan immigration approached us and detained us," Corsi told WND by telephone this morning. "Tim Bueler, my publicist, and I are now in the immigration offices, with our passports taken. The immigration officer told the press, 'There is no problem, and Dr. Corsi is a friend of Kenya.'" Corsi had extensive meetings with top Kenyan officials upon his arrival. His visit and his activities during his stay have been well-known to authorities at the highest levels. Labels: 2008 presidential candidates Over the weekend, I watched a hilarious, dead-on, and surprisingly honest skit on Saturday Night Live about the craptastic bailout and its Democrat roots. The skit called out Fannie/Freddie and featured Nancy Pelosi dragging out various sob-story “victims” — who turned out to be a parade of deadbeats and schemers. I was going to post the video for you tonight, but I can’t. The video has been pulled. Vanished into thin air. (Go here for full transcript and screenshots.) ... One of the rapacious couples featured in the skit was Herbert and Marion Sandler (portrayed by Darrell Hammond and Casey Wilson). Unlike the other composite figures, the Sandlers are a real-life couple. ... As Todd Thurman at Heritage notes, the Sandlers are left-wing moguls who built “a mortgage company whose major product was subprime mortgages and they sold it to Wachovia for $24.2 billion in 2006. And what do the Sandlers do when they are not peddling subprime garbage? They are busy writing checks to leftist groups like the Center for American Progress, the American Civil Liberties Union, and Association of Community Organizations for Reform Now (ACORN). Yes that ACORN.” The Sandlers are seething over the skit. And George Soros must be livid as well. Anyone else smell a legal threat behind the disappearance of the vid? Labels: economics Labels: 2008 presidential candidates Today, just 23% have even a little confidence in the ability of Congress to deal with the nation’s economic problems and only 24% believe most Members of Congress understand legislation before they vote on it. Last week, the House of Representatives initially rejected a financial bailout bill proposed by the Bush Administration. Later, after the Senate added a number of items that some call “pork” and others call “sweeteners,” the measure eventually passed. While the bill survived Washington, it did so at a time when just 30% of voters favored it and 45% were opposed. Labels: politicians behaving badly Labels: economics Labels: economics Labels: Csharp Germany said on Sunday it would guarantee all private German bank accounts – currently worth €568bn – in a dramatic move to prevent panic withdrawals as fears over the worldwide financial crisis spread to Europe’s largest economy. “We want to tell people that their savings are safe,” Angela Merkel, chancellor, said at an unscheduled press conference on Sunday. The scheme would cover existing accounts and others which savers might open. German government officials also late on Sunday said the country’s commercial banks had agreed to inject an extra €15bn of liquidity into Hypo Real Estate, the ailing German mortgage and public sector lender, raising the bail-out agreed last week to €50bn, the largest since the outbreak of the financial crisis. The original rescue attempt had threatened to collapse after it emerged at the weekend that the full extent of Hypo’s funding gap had not been disclosed. Berlin’s decision on savings – which followed controversial action by Ireland last week to guarantee the liabilities of six of its banks – will see the abolition of its current protection scheme, which guarantees 90 per cent of all bank deposits but only up to €20,000 per account. The UK and France were trying on Sunday to learn details of the German plan, amid concerns other EU governments would have to follow Berlin’s lead and offer similar safeguards to savers, to avoid a cross-border flight of capital to more secure banks. “We aren’t sure exactly what they’re proposing,” said one UK official, noting that there was annoyance that Ms Merkel had acted unilaterally only hours after attending an economic summit in Paris at which she agreed there should be greater cross-border co-ordination of measures during the economic crisis. The Danish government early on Monday guaranteed all bank deposits in Denmark as part of a deal with banks to set up a Dkr35bn ($6.5bn) liquidation fund. Until now, deposits in Danish banks had been guaranteed up to 300,000 crowns. At the summit, leaders from France, Germany, Italy and the UK agreed not to let any large financial institution in their country fail, according to people familiar with the talks. Labels: economics “When Barack Obama Jr. was born on Aug. 4,1961, in Honolulu, Kenya was a British colony, still part of the United Kingdom’s dwindling empire. As a Kenyan native, Barack Obama Sr. was a British subject whose citizenship status was governed by The British Nationality Act of 1948. That same act governed the status of Obama Sr.‘s children. Since Sen. Obama has neither renounced his U.S. citizenship nor sworn an oath of allegiance to Kenya, his Kenyan citizenship automatically expired on Aug. 4,1982.” Labels: 2008 presidential candidates Labels: welcome to Idaho Labels: movie reviews
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Remove the Palin for VP Sticker Before Entering Oregon?
I understand that if you have a McCain sticker on your car in West Los Angeles these days, the odds of having your car keyed are pretty high. I know Oregon is a pretty far left state as well. Is Bend, Oregon in that same category? Should I remove the Palin sticker before I go into a state awash in people that believe that property is theft, meat is murder, dairy is rape, and all the rest of the liberal agenda?
The Gun Show "Loophole"
Most gun owners know that there is no loophole. Federal law does not currently prohibit two private parties transferring a firearm. Some states have laws about this, but the federal government does not. There is no more a gun show "loophole" than there is a newspaper advertisement "loophole" because newspapers accept ads for guns for sale.
Nonetheless, I have long been concerned about gun shows. The vast majority of the people that I have met at gun shows seemed like perfectly decent people--but I've met a few attendees who I found myself wondering, "Would you pass a background check?" And a lot of people who really ought to know better don't seem to ask any questions. After California prohibited private party transfers in 1991, I was at a gun show in Marin County, and someone there tried to sell me a Remington Model 11 semiauto shotgun. I explained that this wasn't a legal transaction--and his response was basically, it didn't matter, he was a Marin County Deputy Sheriff.
Anyway, is there a real problem with gun shows? There's a new study that you can read about here, that concludes: No. They examined homicide and suicide statistics for the years 1994-2004 for California and Texas--the two extremes on gun show regulation. They looked specifically at what happened to homicide and suicide rates in surrounding zipcodes in the week after gun shows. They found a statistically significant increase in gun suicides--but it was very small--perhaps four more gun suicides per year in the entire state of California. And they found that this was balanced out by an equivalent drop in non-gun suicides. Only the method seems to have been affected--not the result. They found no effect on homicide rates in California. I confess: even I was a bit surprised by that.
In Texas, which has effectively no regulation of gun shows, the results were counterintuitive. Gun homicide rates actually fell in the surrounding zipcodes in the week after gun shows. Again, the difference was really, really tiny, but measureable. There was no effect on suicide rates.
Surprised? I am. It would appear that gun shows, whatever objection gun control activists might have, are simply not a public safety issue--whether the state regulates them tightly or loosely.
Most amazingly, one of the authors of the study, Mark Duggan, has a history of publishing work that is pretty clearly not pro-gun, such as his paper, "More Guns, More Crime."
Let's Hope This Tendency Isn't Genetic
Obama's cousin lost a Presidential election--and the results were ugly:Kenyan Prime Minister Raila Odinga, a Luo Marxist, and former Kenyan Barack Obama are cousins.
In an interview with Reuters in January, Odinga said Barack called him twice in one day to express his concern over the violent situation in Kenya since Odinga lost the elections.
But, the situation did not improve.
The opposition claimed the election was rigged in favour of President Mwai Kibaki.
Odinga's thugs then went on a rampage killing hundreds of Kenyans and burning churches.
Doug Ross reported on the election violence:When Raila Odinga lost the presidential election last week (12/27) to Mwai Kibaki, he claimed the vote was rigged, whereupon his tribal followers went on murderous rampages such as in the town of Eldoret, where on New Years Day dozens of people were burned to death in a church set on fire... Throughout Kenya, hundreds of people have been politically murdered in the last few days.
Snowfall
It is only October 11--and we already have snow on Bogus Basin. Of course, we had a second year of low sunspot activity, so I am not surprised.
Obamessiah Was Parody!
But others are taking it more seriously. From the October 9, 2008 World Net Daily:
The endorsements that Obama has received (the Communist Party USA, Castro, Khaddafi, and North Korea) ought to be enough. But Louis Farrakhan? This is such a stinging collection of anti-Americans that I am now sure Obama will be our next President.
The Corruption of the Voting Process
The October 10, 2008 New York Post:
And this October 8, 2008 Associated Press report:KANSAS CITY, Mo. - Officials in Missouri, a hard-fought jewel in the presidential race, are sifting through possibly hundreds of questionable or duplicate voter-registration forms submitted by an advocacy group that has been accused of election fraud in other states.
I keep hoping that one of these days, we can do something like requiring ID to vote.
I'm Glad That I Accepted A Disappointing Offer on the Boise House
This valley is about to get a lot more unpleasant. From October 10, 2008 KTVB:
My daughter has been out trying to buy a house--and let me emphasize trying. A surprising number of people with houses for sale are unable to move even a little bit, not because the offers my daughter and son-in-law are making are insulting (they aren't--I taught my daughter not to take advantage of people in distress), and not because the sellers are unrealistic--but because many of them are underwater--they sometimes owe more on the house that the listing price. One poor guy, who doesn't even live in the Boise area anymore, tried (and failed) to get a bank loan to pay part of the closing costs. Wow.
I see some pretty dark times ahead for the United States. If Obama were a genuine socialist, I could see the next Administration going for some sort of major redistribution of wealth. But Obama is a Chicago machine politician. What we'll get (if Congress goes along with him) is likely to be a very complex scheme that throws a few bones to poor blacks (under the guise of slavery reparations) while continuing the Democratic Party's agenda of redistributing wealth from middle class Americans to obscenely rich con men--like Franklin Raines. Why, it sounds much like the subprime mortgage madness that led to the current disaster!
It's Unfortunate That McCain Has Decided To Lose
I had my misgivings about McCain during the primaries, which is one of many reasons that I wasn't behind him. One of my fears was that he was so close to the Democrats that we might not be able to tell the difference if he won or not. But it is increasingly clear that even the one aspect of McCain that might cause him to really fight--his personal ambition--isn't enough to overcome his general sympathy with the Democrats. At least, not enough to make a serious effort to win.
If I hadn't lost my job, I would have kicked in some money after he picked Palin. Now, I'm glad that I didn't waste the money, since McCain clearly doesn't want to beat Obama. This October 10, 2008 column in The Politico really captures the frustration of Republicans who have suddenly figured out that our party doesn't have a serious candidate:The unmistakable momentum behind Barack Obama's campaign, combined with worry that John McCain is not doing enough to stop it, is ratcheting up fears and frustrations among conservatives.
It is going to be a very, very ugly four years. It may be less, depending on how rapidly the Obamanistas consolidate power. Look at what happened in Chile, when Allende's bureaucrats started to shut down opposition newspapers and radio stations--and Pelosi and friends have already made it clear that they intend to bring back the "Equal Time" rule as a way to suppress conservative voices.
And nowhere is this emotion on plainer display than at Republican rallies, where voters this week have shouted out insults at the mention of Obama, pleaded with McCain to get more aggressive with the Democrat and generally demonstrated the sort of visceral anger and unease that reflects a party on the precipice of panic.
The calendar is closing and the polls, at least right now, are not.
With McCain passing up the opportunity to level any tough personal shots in his first two debates and the very real prospect of an Obama presidency setting in, the sort of hard-core partisan activists who turn out for campaign events are venting in unusually personal terms.
"Terrorist!” one man screamed Monday at a New Mexico rally after McCain voiced the campaign’s new rhetorical staple aimed at raising doubts about the Illinois senator: “Who is the real Barack Obama?”
"He's a damn liar!” yelled a woman Wednesday in Pennsylvania. "Get him. He's bad for our country."
At both stops, there were cries of, “Nobama,” picking up on a phrase that has appeared on yard signs, T-shirts and bumper stickers.
And Thursday, at a campaign town hall in Wisconsin, one Republican brought the crowd to its feet when he used his turn at the microphone to offer a soliloquy so impassioned it made the network news and earned extended play on Rush Limbaugh’s program.
“I’m mad; I’m really mad!” the voter bellowed. “And what’s going to surprise ya, is it’s not the economy — it’s the socialists taking over our country.”
After the crowd settled down he was back at it. “When you have an Obama, Pelosi and the rest of the hooligans up there gonna run this country, we gotta have our head examined!”
Voting From The Grave
Texas Watchdog has a truly terrifying story of the dead coming back to life--terrifying because of the sheer numbers of dead people who voted, or remain on the voter registration rolls:
And yet Democrats are still vigorously resisting requiring voters to produce ID when voting. Gee, why do you think that is?
Imagine How Bad This Would Be If They Didn't Pass The Bailout!
If there is anything that better demonstrates the ignorance of the professional politician class than the results of their efforts to "save" the system, it is the continuing collapse of the markets.
This can't all be laid at Obama's feet, but most of it can be laid at the feet of the Democratic Party and its associated radicals--and yet, in spite of their clear responsibility for the originating crisis, I expect that Democrats are going to be the major beneficiaries next month.
It would really help if the Republican Party stood for something other than, "Me, too."
"Doctor, Why Does My Head Hurt?"
"I keep banging my head against the wall to stop my headache. Should I keep doing this to cure my headache?" That's the only line that makes sense when I read an article like this from October 9, 2008 Inside Higher Education:The latest generation of adults in the United States may be the first since World War II, and possibly before that, not to attain higher levels of education than the previous generations. While white and Asian American young people are outpacing previous generations, the gaps for other minority groups are large enough that the current generation is, on average, heading toward being less educated than its predecessor.
The article goes on to discuss how the current generation of blacks and Hispanics--who have been given enormous assistance through affirmative action admissions programs and scholarships--are actually less likely to complete college than the previous generation. Asians, of course, are now well ahead of whites, and women are ahead of men. But:For black and Latino women, for example, the most recent generation outperformed the prior ones, but the opposite is true for men. And across racial and ethnic groups, women are achieving a higher level of education than men.
So this horribly racist system is discriminating against black and Hispanic men--but not against black and Hispanic women?
Five Million Illegal Aliens With Mortgages?
Neal Boortz linked to Newsbusters, which linked to this KFYI news story:One illegal alien was arrested this year in Tucson after allegedly using a stolen social security number to buy two homes and rack up over $780,000 in bad debt.
Even if you are one of those who think that our government is "unfair" in discriminating against illegal aliens, think about this: why would it make sense to make a house loan to someone who stands a chance of being arrested and deported? How likely is it that someone who has been deported is going to be able and willing to continue making payments?
Some five million fraudulent home mortgages are in the hands of illegal aliens, according to the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development. It's not known how many of those have contributed to the subprime housing mortgage meltdown, but it has affected every state, including Arizona.The problem began years ago when banks were forced to give mortgages without confirming social security numbers or borrower identification. As a result, illegal immigrants were able to obtain home mortgages which they could not afford.
Neal Boortz links to this Fresno TV station story about the role that ACORN (the group that Obama helped to get funding in the 1990s) played in this:
Now, I am not going to say that the banks who made such loans are completely free and clear of responsibility--but they were under enormous pressure to make loans like this from the federal government and activist groups such as ACORN. And because neither Democrats nor many left-leaning Republicans (like McCain and Bush) were willing to do much about illegal immigration, this was inevitable. I'm sure that illegal aliens were only a part of this crisis--but every little bit hurts!
Another Corrupt Corporate Fat Cat That The Democrats Won't Be Questioning
Thanks to Michelle Malkin for pointing to the details. October 9, 2008 USA Today reports on Franklin Raines swingin' new bachelor pad:
And of course, Raines has been Obama's adviser on housing matters. I can see why!
Why Voter Fraud Really Has To Be Fixed
Ogden on Politics points out that comparing population estimates for Marion County, Indiana with voter registration suggests that at least 105% of those eligible to vote are registered:I knew that the numbers would start exceeding 100% at some point and the election officials couldn't keep ignoring the elephant in the room - how do you have more registered voters than people eligible to vote? Well Indianapolis has now reached that point. Let's do the math.
A number of commenters have pointed out that using estimates of population is a tricky business, and perhaps this really isn't proof of voter registration fraud. And they are correct. But it sure smells really bad--especially when you factor in that at least some of the adult population of Marion County is clearly not eligible to vote: those who are not U.S. citizens. And you know what, I am going to guess that there are some people who are eligible to vote who do not register to vote, because of boredom, religious objections (yes, I'm thinking of Jehovah's Witnesses), or laziness. This 105% registration rate therefore looks even more suspicious.
According to STATSIndiana, In 2007, Indianapolis/Marion County had an estimated population of 876,804. Of that number 232,607 were below 18 years of age, for a total of 644,197 people in Marion County/Indianapolis 18 or over and thus eligible to vote. (Indiana allows felons to vote as long as they are not incarcerated).
So we have 644,197 people eligible to be registered in Marion County/Indianapolis, and 677,401 people registered. Congratulations go to Indianapolis for having 105% of its residents registered!
The Democrats keep making excuses why you shouldn't have to show ID to vote. You have to show ID to do all sorts of things: buy guns; buy alcohol; buy cigarettes; cash checks. But something fundamental to honest elections, and the Democrats object? There's a reason that people joke that the Democratic Party's motto is, "Vote early, vote often." Because it is widespread.
Many years ago, when I ran for city council in Santa Monica, I was astonished at how many people were on the voter registration rolls years after they had died--and after they should have been purged from the rolls, for having not voted. The dead don't just vote in Chicago, I'm afraid.
Now, some commenters over at Ogden on Politics say that Republicans do dirty tricks at election time, too. Probably true. But that's an argument for cleaning up the system, not gaming it. Require some sort of state issued ID card to vote. Make them free, so that no one has an excuse. But even that isn't enough to make the ACLU happy, because the ACLU isn't interested in honest elections, but Democratic Party control.
Imagine If Republicans Were Leading Black Men Around in Chains
In San Francisco. In the middle of public streets. The "slave" is completely and utterly naked.
From a purely aesthetic standpoint, there's something even uglier. An old fat man wearing nothing but a cowboy hat and a kerchief. While the picture has been edited, the location of his hand leaves no question what's going on. And the police?There were many youth at the fair, but also men and women ‘who were old enough to know better.’ We saw some children and a lot of people with their dogs, even though there was a warning against bringing children or pets because of the adult-oriented themes. I wondered why the organizers equated children and pets. There was also a sign at the main entrances which said “Nudity is Illegal.” Naked individuals walked right by, apparently without noticing the signs. The San Francisco police stood by and did nothing. One 29-year-veteran of the force said during an interview that they were told to ignore what was going on. “You don’t know the political climate,” he told us.
I see homosexuals complain that social conservatives overemphasize these problems:
I've long been quite critical of heterosexual immorality as well, and there's more of it. (Since straights are 95-98% of the population, you would expect there to be more heterosexual immorality.) But there is one fundamental difference: Positive Liberty's admission that there are "problems" in gay culture is the first such admission that I've ever seen from a homosexual. Social conservatives are quite prepared to admit that "straight culture" (for lack of a better term) has substantial problems in it. And you won't find too many straights (except those who are trying to make excuses for homosexuality) who would find the heterosexual equivalent of these weird behaviors in San Francisco to be acceptable.
Fuel Filter
I had the fuel filter on the Corvette replaced this morning. It's a bit more expensive than I would have expected (and more than the service writer expected) because from 1999 onward, the fuel filter has a regulator in it as well.
Total damage for this was about $140. Ouch! But the last time I replaced a fuel filter myself, it caused me to swear off doing auto maintenance. By the time I was done "replacing" the fuel filter on my 1979 Pontiac Grand Am, I had a nasty blister on my thumb, I had bought another wrench--and there was still gasoline dripping out of the carburetor where the fuel line went into it--so I had to take it to the shop anyway.
I was a little suspicious that "it's time to replace the fuel filter" might be a scam that repair shops use to sell a marginally useful service, but to my surprise, it feels like it has noticeably more guts than it had before (and the Corvette isn't exactly in the slowpoke category). I don't know how much crud may have accumulated in the fuel filter over 64,000 miles, but I am wondering if it was enough to slow delivery of gasoline.
The Obama/Ayers Connection
A great quote from an October 3, 2008 New York Times article about the Obama/Ayers connection:Steve Chapman, a columnist for The Chicago Tribune, defended Mr. Obama’s relationship with the Rev. Jeremiah A. Wright Jr., his longtime pastor, whose black liberation theology and “God damn America” sermon became notorious last spring. But he denounced Mr. Obama for associating with Mr. Ayers, whom he said the University of Illinois should never have hired.
And the proof of that is that Obama is making a big deal about McCain's somewhat peripheral involvement with the Keating 6. Keating was a bad guy; he corrupted members of Congress, and McCain was involved in this, although not as deeply as the five Democrats who made up the rest of the Keating 6. But Keating, as bad as he was, wasn't setting off bombs. This statement from one of the intended victims is worth reading:
Ask yourself: if someone seeking the Republican Party nomination for President had been talking to and going to the house of a Klansman who had firebombed black churches during the civil rights struggle, would the media be making excuses for it? If that Klansman, as late as 2001, was unrepentant, saying that he wished that he burned more black churches, would even a fleeting relationship with the Republican nominee be okay?
I fear for what this country is going to be like a few months into President Obama's Administration. Taxes will be higher? Sure. But that's just money. I shudder to think of the sort of 1960s radicals who are going to be appointed to the federal bench, and staffing sub-Cabinet posts all across the bureaucracy. The only real hope is that Obama will instead fill those posts with corrupt Chicago sorts, like Rezko. They, at least, will settle for robbing us blind.
Are Liberal Journalists Trying To Look Stupid?
I can never tell how much of what passes for journalism these days is actually intentional self-parody. For example, a Los Angeles Times reporter points to a Newsweek cover photo of Sarah Palin with a gun, and asks:
What follows is an especially entertaining collection of comments, many of which make the same point (along with the fact that the reporter clearly lacks enough knowledge to be asking a question like that):
For those of you are part of the liberal intelligentsia, worshiping at your Obamessiah altars daily, and don't understand why the rest of us find this astonishing ignorance so funny, let me put it in terms that you might understand.
Someone finds a photograph of McCain, taken a long, long time ago, using an IBM Selectric typewriter, and fails to notice that McCain is much younger in the picture. A journalist looks at it, and asks, "Boy, what a weird laptop he's using."
Wal-Mart or Home Depot As Employers
Anyone want to share their experience with either of them? I'll keep it confidential if you prefer. I'm looking at the prospect of hitting them up for full-time work shortly. The pay's lousy (not much better than unemployment), but at least as a full-time employee, I would get health insurance.
UPDATE: It appears that I will be contracting in Bend for the forseeable future, four days a week. The rate's not spectacular, but even after paying for lodging, travel, and meals, it's a giant step up from Home Depot or Wal-Mart. I'm glad that gas is dropping in price. And I'll have paid experience in C#/.NET as a result--so that my 30 years of software engineering experience will again be worth more than a cup of coffee.
UPDATE 2: Motel 6 looks to be the cheapest place to stay in town. Once I've been there a week or two, and I'm sure that this isn't just a flash in the pan, I'll probably look for a room to rent--it is considerably cheaper than staying in a motel all the time.
Beyond Deranged
Michelle Malkin linked to this discussion going on over at Democratic Underground (where real Democrats go to vent)--and because Governor Palin is wearing white... Well, you will just have to see it yourself:Palin is wearing white again, inciting the racist crowds
I thought that just meant that she was in good enough shape that she didn't need to wear a "slimming" color, like black! But seriously: the vast swarm of comments responding to this are overwhelmingly on this same strange frequency: that wearing white is a racist message. One lone troublemaker actually suggested that sometimes, white is just a color:
She should just drop all pretense and put on her white hood and light up a cross. She is a despicable human being.8. Come on. I have tons of issues with Palin, but I could care less what
And the response was?
she wears. 15. you know that everything the repukes do is about code, including this.
And I thought the crowd convinced that everything was a vast conspiracy involving the Trilateral Commission/Council on Foreign Relations/Illuminati/Bilderbergers/International Jewish Bankers were a bit unhinged! But the Democrats are taking the cake for insanity these days! What if Governor Palin had worn red? What would that be "code" for? Time to slaughter your non-white neighbors? What if she wore brown? Time to bury them?
Credit Shortage?
It's only one data point, but my daughter and son-in-law went out to find a mortgage a couple of days ago (since they have been living in our old house--which is supposed to be out of our hair by the end of the month). No problem at all.
The Guy Charged With Hacking Gov. Palin's Email
I remember when this happened, there were a lot of people arguing that it wasn't politically motivated. And now we see who has been indicted:KNOXVILLE, Tenn. (AP) - The son of a Democratic Tennessee state lawmaker pleaded not guilty Wednesday to hacking the e-mail account of Republican vice presidential candidate Sarah Palin.
Maybe not. But there's a reason that my friend Stacy McCain (no, not a relative of that other McCain) wrote a book called Donkey Cons a few years ago. There are lots of crooked and morally depraved politicians, and no party has a monopoly on this--but it is astonishing how much more often they turn out to be Democrats than Republicans.
If Anything Should Discredit Obama...
It would be his association with the crowd that brought us the housing disaster. Stanley Kurtz at National Review Online has a detailed article tracing the chronology of this--worth reading in full, especially because ACORN, the group that did much of the early pushing, has a long history of dishonesty in voter registration drives:‘You’ve got only a couple thousand bucks in the bank. Your job pays you dog-food wages. Your credit history has been bent, stapled, and mutilated. You declared bankruptcy in 1989. Don’t despair: You can still buy a house.” So began an April 1995 article in the Chicago Sun-Times that went on to direct prospective home-buyers fitting this profile to a group of far-left “community organizers” called ACORN, for assistance. In retrospect, of course, encouraging customers like this to buy homes seems little short of madness.
Let me encourage you to read in full. And hand it around to your buddies who were planning to vote for Obama because he supports "change."
Militant ACORN
At the time, however, that 1995 Chicago newspaper article represented something of a triumph for Barack Obama. That same year, as a director at Chicago’s Woods Fund, Obama was successfully pushing for a major expansion of assistance to ACORN, and sending still more money ACORN’s way from his post as board chair of the Chicago Annenberg Challenge. Through both funding and personal-leadership training, Obama supported ACORN. And ACORN, far more than we’ve recognized up to now, had a major role in precipitating the subprime crisis.
...
While the 1977 Community Reinvestment Act did call on banks to increase lending in poor and minority neighborhoods, its exact requirements were vague, and therefore open to a good deal of regulatory interpretation. Banks merger or expansion plans were rarely held up under CRA until the late 1980s, when ACORN perfected its technique of filing CRA complaints in tandem with the sort of intimidation tactics perfected by that original “community organizer” (and Obama idol), Saul Alinsky.
At first, ACORN’s anti-bank actions were relatively few in number. However, under a provision of the 1989 savings and loan bailout pushed by liberal Democratic legislators, like Massachusetts Congressman Joseph P. Kennedy, lenders were required to compile public records of mortgage applicants by race, gender, and income. Although the statistics produced by these studies were presented in highly misleading ways, groups like ACORN were able to use them to embarrass banks into lowering credit standards. At the same time, a wave of banking mergers in the early 1990's provided an opening for ACORN to use CRA to force lending changes. Any merger could be blocked under CRA, and once ACORN began systematically filing protests over minority lending, a formerly toothless set of regulations began to bite.
UPDATE: And unfortunately, this set of searches in Las Vegas doesn't even qualify as news anymore, because it involves voter registration fraud by an organization, ACORN, with lots of experience doing this:
The Fat Cats Are Trying To Buy The Election!
Using vast quantities of money, some of it clearly obtained illegally, to gobble up all the television advertising time! But because it is a Democrat doing it, Democrats won't get all huffy about the evils of the fat cats this time around. From the Washington Post:
It does look like Obama's going to win this--and this country is going to be in for a world of hurt. If we're lucky, it will just be a matter of impoverishing us. If his delusions about foreign policy get implemented, we might not be so lucky as to only be impoverished.
Gay Cannibalism Again
From the October 7, 2008 Daily Mail:
I know that there are straight cannibals out there. Why aren't they getting more press? I mean compared to gays like this? Or Jeffrey Dahmer? Is it just the homophobia of the news media?
Things That Irritate Me
I keep getting these automated calls that tell me that my LAST CHANCE to refinance my credit card debt at a lower rate is about to pass, and I should stay on the line! Today, having received about ten of these calls in the last few weeks, I pressed 1, and when the human being came on the line, I was politely explained, "Could you please put me on your don't call list? I have absolutely no need to refinance credit card debt. You are wasting your time, and my time as well." And the telemarketer at the other end hung up on me.
I am wondering if the "don't call list" might have expired.....
Barney Frank Finally Has To Defend His Actions
And what a clueless twit he is:BOSTON (AP) - Rep. Barney Frank said Monday that Republican criticism of Democrats over the nation's housing crisis is a veiled attack on the poor that's racially motivated.
Nope. It's an unveiled attack on the Democrats, who put subprime mortgages at higher priority than financial security--as this November 11, 2003 Wall Street Journal article reminds us:But especially notable is the support for Fannie and Freddie from liberals who normally detest corporate welfare. In this case, Congressman Barney Frank criticized Mr. Mankiw because he is worried about the tiny little matter of safety and soundness rather than "concern about housing." But as Mr. Mankiw pointed out, most of the federal subsidy for the companies goes to enrich private investors and executives, not poor home-owners.
Democrats used "helping the poor" as an excuse to enrich a bunch of sleazy financial schemers who are, after all, one of the core factions of the Democratic Party: George Soros; the Sandlers; Franklin Raines. And what happened to a lot of poor people without financial sophistication who bought houses on loans that they couldn't support? They're losing their houses, and will end up with black marks on their credit histories that will follow them around for many years. If they had no credit history before, thanks to Barney Frank and friends, they now have a bad credit history.
By the way, that 2003 article from the Wall Street Journal had a very prescient warning:One weakness of democracy is that it tends to ignore problems before they erupt into crises. The risk portfolios of Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac are a classic example. We'd prefer to see both privatized. But short of that, the least U.S. taxpayers deserve is the assurance that companies that profit from their subsidy are subject to a complete financial entrail reading by the U.S. Treasury.
You can see why Democrats hate the WSJ so much.
The Line Noise Contributors
Yesterday I mentioned the apparently illegal contributions to the Obama campaign. One reader asked why some of these illegal contributors aren't being prosecuted.
1. With respect to foreign contributions, I am quite sure that the U.S. government lacks the authority to prosecute people outside the U.S. for something like improper campaign contributions--and something tells me that Iran isn't going to be assisting us with that effort.
2. Foreign contributions made by persons in the U.S. would seem to be prosecutable--but I suspect that the defendants would plead ignorance, and because the contributions were to Obamessiah, I am skeptical that any prosecutions would be successful.
3. I'm not sure of the exact wording of the statute, but even if U.S. campaign contributions prohibit you from giving above a certain level (as opposed to the campaign accepting above a certain level), it might be difficult to prove that a person who made lots of small contributions knowingly exceeded the campaign limits. Someone who wrote a single check for $10,000 might be another matter.
4. However, as a reader pointed out, when someone gives contributions with an obviously false name, address, and employer--that certainly seems to establish that the contributor was knowingly breaking the law. It isn't like these contributors neglected to fill in the forms--they put in false information. Since these contributions were apparently made by credit card, it is possible to track them down and prosecute. But that would require Bush's Justice Department to actually care about prosecuting such cases.
Paul Craig Roberts Praising Ahmadinejad
I used to admire Paul Craig Roberts quite a bit--a long time ago. But over the last few years, he seems to have gone off the deep end. A couple of years back, Roberts was comparing current tax policy to slavery, and I pointed out how tremendously ignorant that was. And here. Now I see that he is praising President Ahmadinejad of Iran:
Does anyone know what happened? I can understand libertarians who become enamored of non-interventionism as a foreign policy--but this is hardly sufficient reason to be saying nice things about Ahmadinejad, who is about as fiercely antilibertarian as I can imagine.
I can understand libertarians who think that we are too easy on Israel. We have historically given them the benefit of the doubt, and this has certainly contributed to Arab hostility towards the United States. But anyone who talks about holding "Israel accountable before the UN General Assembly" and doesn't seem to be concerned about holding countries that are far worse than Israel on human rights and aggression responsible for their actions isn't a libertarian at all.
I can understand Christians who are concerned about the materialist focus that the left has taken in this country--that only wealth matters, and everything is irrelevant. But Roberts' hostility to the Bush Administration makes very little sense in that regard. If wealth was all that mattered, we would have bought off Iraq in 2002, not invaded them. Wars are always more expensive than paying the Danegeld.
So, what happened to Roberts?
The Weirdness Gets Worse
I always take WorldNetDaily with a grain of salt, but when a reporter looking into Obama's connections to the Kenyan government gets arrested just before a press conference? It makes you wonder if he has found something important:
The Billionaire Wing of the Democratic Party
Michelle Malkin discusses the Saturday Night Live skit about the bailout that mentions a real-life couple--the Sandlers--whose sale of Golden West Financial to Wachovia a couple of years back played a major part in sinking Wachovia:
Michelle also links to Ed Lasky at American Thinker explaining what happened:Herbert and Marion Sandler, a New York lawyer and Wall Street analyst respectively, bought a small California thrift in 1963 and built it into GDW — one of the largest thrifts in the nation. The company’s business was built on adjustable rate mortgages (ARMs. These were mortgages offered at low “teaser” rates that ratcheted upward as interest rates increased. They were often sold aggressively to unsophisticated home buyers who did not comprehend the vast financial risks they were taking, or who assumed that housing prices would rise high enough to provide a profit to them when they sold their houses. They were targets for lenders peddling mortgages that should have been stamped with a skull and crossbones, for these were among the most seductive and dangerous types of mortgage.
The Sandlers personally made $2.4 billion on this sale. You can see why they are backing the hard left end of the Democratic Party.
Part of why we tend to bounce back and forth between Republicans and Democrats in this country is that Republicans create an environment in which people can become wealthy. This isn't necessarily a bad thing--but it also means that obscene wealth gets created. When that happens, the obscenely rich fund left-wing causes such as MoveOn.org, ACORN, and the rest of the hard left end of the Democratic Party. A few years of the financial manipulators and speculators who are at the core of the Democratic Party being in charge, and enough of that wealth is destroyed (or snorted up the noses of the obscenely rich) for Republicans to get back in control.
UPDATE: Here's the skit, copied elsewhere. It is actually quite funny, and in a parody sort of way, surprisingly accurate. Here's a Wall Street Journal article of October 2, 2008, with embarrassing quotes that provide a factual basis for the skit. If facts mattered, this would be a major defeat for the Democratic Party, and those Republicans who were stupid enough to go along with this insane bailout. But facts really don't matter to many voters.
That's It! These Contributors Are Line Noise!
Those of you computer geeks who are in the fossil category with me may recall the saying:It has been observed that a TECO command sequence more closely resembles transmission line noise than readable text.
The rest of you have no idea what TECO is--and many of may have no idea what "transmission line noise" is. (Ah, you haven't lived until you've hacked into the ARPAnet with a teletype machine!)
Well, it turns that this October 6, 2008 CBS News story has discovered the modern living variant of this:CBS News has learned that two donors to the Obama campaign that gave a total of $7,722 appear to have made their contributions under fake names that look like they were written by a mouse running across a keyboard: Dahsudhu Hdusahfd of Df, Hawaii with the following employer CZXVC/ZXVZXV and Uadhshgu Hduadh listed as living in Dhff, Florida listed their employer as DASADA/SAFASF.
That's it! These bogus contributions are line noise! Or bad mouse drivers! Or electrical storms confusing the keyboard cables!
CBS News did not find any records of these last names, towns or employers anywhere else. Newsweek reported two questionable Obama donors over the weekend named “Doodad Pro” and “Good Will”.
Contributions from the two donors Hdusahfd and Hduadh were made on the same day starting on July 16, 2008. Federal Election Commission (FEC) records show the campaign began refunding the donations as early as August 6, 2008.
Despite numerous refunds from the Obama campaign, Hdusahfd still has a record of giving a total of $7500 to Obama which is well over the legal limit for the primary and general election of $4600. Hduadh gave $14,200 but the Obama campaign returned all but $222.00.
Buckley's Famous Aphorism Returns
William Buckley once said "I would rather be governed by the first 2000 names in the Boston phone book than by the Harvard faculty." Rasmussen Reports tells us:If they could vote to keep or replace the entire Congress, 59% of voters would like to throw them all out and start over again. The latest Rasmussen Reports national telephone survey found that just 17% would vote to keep the current legislators in office.
More important, with respect to those 2000 names:Only half (49%) believe that the current Congress is better than individuals selected at random from the phone book. Thirty-three percent (33%) believe a randomly selected group of Americans could do a better job and 19% are not sure (see crosstabs).
I would have to say that the 49% may be correct in the sense of "well informed" but not in the sense of morally "better." What a random sample of Americans knows might be deficient, compared to Congress (although perhaps not by the huge margin that the elites would like to believe). But I find it very easy to believe that a random sample of Americans would be less corrupted by the influence of K Street lobbyists than the current pack of jackasses.
I really wish that the popular revulsion at Congressional incompetence and stupidity would cause a massive rejection of the current political class next month. But that just isn't going to happen.
A Strange Notion of Honor
These are the depressing news stories that just make you shake your head in disbelief. From October 6, 2008 KNBC:Karthik Rajaram, 45, was found dead with a gun in hand by police officers who followed a trail of carnage from bedroom to bedroom through the big, two-story house in the Porter Ranch area of the San Fernando Valley.
I suppose if this guy was about to be arrested for some horrifying crime, I could understand his notion that there was some "honor" in committing suicide. (Some years back, I went through Time magazine's anti-gun propaganda article, "Death by Gun," categorizing the various deaths. I was tempted to create a category called, "Psychiatrists/psychologists committing suicide before trial for child molestation" because there were so many incidents in that category.)
Investigators quickly found two suicide letters and a will, and determined that the man once worked for a major accounting firm and was at least the part-owner of a financial holding company, Deputy Chief Michel Moore said.
"We believe that he has become despondent recently over financial dealings and the financial situation of his household, and that this murder-suicide event is a direct result of that," Moore said.
The man wrote in his suicide letter that he felt he had two options -- to just kill himself or to kill himself and his family -- and decided the second option was more honorable, Moore said.
I can understand why someone who is suffering from a painful, terminal illness might decide to take his own life, to end the suffering. I want to cry when I read about cases like that--and it happens a lot--but I can understand why for some people, it might seem the best way out of a horrible situation.
I can understand why someone who is in a terribly degrading situation--with no way out--might be tempted to do so. In nineteenth century San Francisco, when Chinese slave/prostitutes had become so old and sick (usually from tuberculosis) that they could no longer work, their pimps would lock them in their rooms with a lethal overdose of opium, so that they could commit suicide. (The pimps certainly weren't going to release them from their cells.) Under those hopeless conditions, I can see why someone might decide that it was time for the degradation and suffering to end.
But what financial circumstances would lead you to kill yourself? Is life so hard at 45 that the prospect of working at Home Depot or Jack-in-the-Box is worse than killing your family and yourself?
And what "honor" is there in murdering your family members? I can't imagine anything less honorable.
The gun was purchased September 16--so it appears that California's 15 day waiting period for handguns didn't help any. (Of course, as this graph shows, the evidence for its efficacy is rather elusive.)
If you are someone reading this, depressed about your financial condition, remember that the current craziness is going to come to an end one of these days. The markets will recover--and if you don't do something stupid, like sell all your stocks, you will see your portfolio and 401k recover. So don't something stupid like that, and especially don't do something stupid like this guy did. And above all: there is no honor in killing innocents.
Even Bill Clinton Admits The Democrats Had Some Part
Most of the way through this video interview with Bill Clinton, he admits that Democrats resisted regulatory efforts by both the Clinton and Republicans in Congress concerning Fannie Mae.
Last of the Permanent Positions In Boise Says No
I had been waiting for second interviews with a couple of employers here in Boise--but both of them had so many other engineers to pick from, that I didn't make the cut.
Another Great Success Of Bush & The Democrats
The one thing that you can really count on is that when George Bush decides to "cross the aisle" and work with the Democrats, the result is almost always a disaster. How many school teachers who hate Bush for "No Child Left Behind" realize that this disaster was originally Teddy Kennedy's bright idea? Now they gave us this bogus bailout to save the market...and the Dow is collapsing today.
The only positive aspect of this pork barrel disaster is there is a huge tax credit for plugin hybrids: One particular $1 billion chunk of that extra money has been earmarked to provide cash back to American drivers who opt to buy plug-in vehicles. Tax credits starting at $4,168 (there's a nice round number for you) will go to people to buy a vehicle with a battery pack that has at least 4 kWh of capacity. From there the credits ramp up to $7,500 for vehicles with a 16 kWh pack. For those that haven't been paying attention, that just happens to be the size of the pack in the Chevy Volt. Medium and heavy duty trucks with plug-in capability are also eligible for credits of $10-15,000.
That brings the Chevy Volt down into the price range that it would sell well. Of course, this still gives us the problem that tax subsidies can hide a host of economically irrational actions.
C# Won't Work As A Label
When I started blogging about C#, I added a label C# to my blog, to make it easier for readers to pursue all the C# postings. But of course, the reference to labels turns into:
http://www.claytoncramer.com/weblog/labels/C#.html
And what happens when a browser sees a # in a URL? Why, it treats what follows as a label! So I have changed from C# to Csharp for the posting labels.
I Thought This Was All The Fault of Republicans!
And yet it isn't just U.S. mortgage lenders in trouble. From the October 5, 2008 Financial Times:
And a bunch of other European governments are doing likewise, later in the article. There's obviously something else going on here besides U.S. regulation.
This Is Downright Weird
I mentioned Berg v. Obama, filed in federal court a couple of months back. I said at the time that I didn't believe Berg's claim--that Obama isn't a natural born citizen of the U.S. (and perhaps not even a naturalized citizen), as much as I wanted it to be true. But what is making this more and more interesting is the motion by Barack Obama and the Democratic National Committee asking the federal judge to dismiss the suit. Go here and look at filing 12.
Instead of simply providing the certified Hawaii birth certificate that would satisfy Berg's request--and clearly establish that Obama is a natural born citizen of the U.S.--the lawyers for Obama and the DNC are claiming that Berg doesn't have standing to file the suit.
Ordinarily, you would only make an issue of standing if you thought you might lose if the plaintiff established standing, or if you were concerned about the costs of defending such a suit. But the only way that they could lose would be if Obama couldn't provide a valid, certified birth certificate establishing that he was born in Hawaii. How hard could that be? And it can't be that expensive, either. This is the type of motion that I would expect to see if, in fact, there is something about Obama's birth certificate that is a problem. Perhaps he was really born in Hawaii--but something else about that birth certificate creates a problem.
In this case, Mr. Berg fails to allege any concrete, specific injury in fact to himself.... For that reason, a voter does not have standing to challenge the qualifications of a candidate for President of the United States.
More bizarrely, Obama and the DNC's lawyers are claiming that even if Berg had standing, the Constitution provides no action that the courts can take:In any event, the Complaint fails to state a claim upon which relief can be granted because it fails to establish a cause of action.
I'm not a lawyer, so I'm not quite sure what this means--but if I read this correctly, they are arguing that just because the Constitution requires you to be a natural born citizen to be elected, that therefore the courts lack authority to remove Obama from the ballot if he isn't a natural born citizen. What is this Constitutional provision, then? Just a suggestion?
UPDATE: Even a bit more weird: one of Obama's own web sites, while insisting that he was born in Hawaii, acknowledges that Obama held Kenyan citizenship until 1982, quoting the Washington Post to that effect:
Now, dual citizenship wouldn't be a problem, as long as he was a natural born citizen of the United States, and had never lost his U.S. citizenship (as some have claimed with respect to his mother's marriage to an Indonesian when Obama was five). But why not just produce the certified copy of the Hawaii birth certificate, and make Berg's entire lawsuit go away?
UPDATE: I'm told that the "cause of action" language means that Berg hasn't demonstrated that he would be harmed by Obama taking office contrary to the Constitutional provision, and therefore the federal courts can't enforce this provision. If so, it means that this provision is effectively not enforceable by individual suit.
Boise: Some Very Nice People Live Here
I dropped off my wife's TrailBlazer at Big O Tires in Meridian Friday morning to get a tire repaired, and while I was waiting, I ran across the street to Jack in the Box to have one of their breakfast burritos. During conversation with the gal behind the counter, I mentioned that I had been caught in the big HP layoff.
There was a young guy waiting for his order; he told me that he had just hired on at Shopko, and that they were starting to hire seasonal help. An older guy heard the conversation, and told me that his employer, a trash hauler, was hiring at the moment. An older woman worked for the same trash hauler, and told me that it was a good place to work, with what sounded like surprisingly good benefits for that level of job.
Now, I appear to have a reasonably high paying software engineering contract position lined up in Bend, so I am not likely to pursue any of these opportunities at this point in time--but it is one aspect of Boise that I really like, compared to most parts of California where I have lived. People go out of their way to show their practical concern and interest in complete strangers.
An American Carol
If you thought Airplane! and Top Secret were riotously funny, you will probably enjoy David Zucker's latest film, An American Carol. It is intentionally parallel to Dickens' A Christmas Carol--and in one or two places, it carries the parallel forward in ways that don't work, except for the slapstick sight gags that come from little Timmy, and his sister with the vision problems. But the real strength of the movie is that it is (and I'm not giving anything away here), about an obnoxious Hollywood "documentary" film maker whose anti-Americanism is given a thorough shaking by visits from three American patriots from the past.
This could have been a really, really preachy film--but with David Zucker making it? There are too many sight gags, completely unexpected twists, and wickedly sharp satirical jabs. My cheeks still hurt from laughing--and I've been out of the movie for an hour. The sequence with the chanting college students and the tenured radicals musical number is still giving me a chuckle!
It is rated PG-13, primarily for language, although the sequence with the ACLU zombies is probably too violent and bloody for it have reached PG anyway. I do wish that Zucker had decided to go for a PG rating, because there are large numbers of social conservatives who would have appreciated the film quite a bit more with only the most trivial of changes. As it is, my wife is tempted (when it comes out on video) to use the sequence of George Washington (played by John Voight) in St. Paul's Chapel (just down the block from the World Trade Center) at some point in the classroom. It is powerful.
A number of the actors who appear in this film are noted conservatives or libertarians--which makes them stand out for that very reason in Hollywood, and you can tell that some of them were putting heart and soul into their performances. Kelsey Grammer's performance as George S. Patton is simultaneously dramatic and humorous. James Woods' performance is especially touching because he actually warned the flight crew on a Boston to Los Angeles flight a month before 9/11 that some of those onboard were acting oddly--almost like they were planning to hijack the flight. We now know that these were the 9/11 hijackers, doing a dry run.
