The Dems Earmark The Bailout Bill!?!?!? For ACORN?!?!?!

UPDATE:  You should see the Senate version of the bill…  I just got done reading it…  holy god.

 

Note:  Background info on ACORN as a follow up has been posted HERE

Back to  our original programming…

HOLY CRAP!

No wonder the Republicans are freaking out over this bill and the whole thing is about to fall through…

The friggin Democrats put EARMARKS in the bill!!!!

And not only are they trying to earmark the bill, they are earmarking the bill for ACORN, an activist group that is under investigation for voter registration fraud in several states.

Leave it to the Democrats….

Will it never end?  Seriously?

For more info MM is keeping updates.

UPDATE:  An explanation from Papau2 (An Author Here On Texas Hill Country)

Sen. Lindsay Graham has jumped a few logic hurdles to get from the Affordable Housing Trust Fund — part of the legislation that passed the Senate Banking Committee in May and is poised to come to the Senate floor as early as this week — to a 20% of bailout bill will go to groups like the ACORN and the National Council of La Raza.

The “trust fund” does get its revenues from a legislatively fixed share of the surpluses of the government’s Federal Housing Administration or the profits from the government-sponsored enterprises Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac. The latest version — in the housing and GSE oversight bill that cleared the Senate Banking Committee in May — would establish the fund by taking 1.2 basis points of interest from Fannie and Freddie’s loan portfolio — about $500 million a year. – over the 2 year life of the bailout that is 1 billion out of $700 billion in the rescue bill with $625 million going to Acorn and such groups for “housing aid”- after two years, all of the money to Acorn would go to the housing grant for bailing out troubled homeowners through FHA guarantees of modified loans (Richard Shelby in May stated he had reached a “compromise” with committee chairman Chris Dodd on the housing fund such that money from the “trust fund” would be used to fund the bill’s main action of bailing out troubled homeowners through FHA guarantees of modified loans. After two years, all of the money would go to the housing grant. The version of the bill that passed the Senate committee in May “diverted” half of the money intended for the housing trust fund in its first year and 25% in its second year, but after that 100% of the funds go into the housing trust fund).

The trust fund would allow recipients (Acorn and such) to use the money for lobbying and possibly political campaigning only because the prohibitions on using the funds for lobbying and political activity contain virtually no teeth in enforcing these bans. There are no explicit requirements for recipients of the grants to fill out timesheets for housing activity, or restrictions on groups using grant money to pay employees who also happen to do other things — such as lobbying and political campaigning. And there are really no penalties other than being forced to give the money back and being disqualified for a new grant.

It is true that ACORN histrory includes election fraud and misuse of federal funds with several ACORN workers indicted and/or convicted of voter registration fraud with phony signatures, and with Acorn sanctioned specifically for misuse of federal housing funds. In 1994, the ACORN Housing Corporation (AHC) received a grant from the newly created Americorps to assist low-income families at finding housing. In applying for the grant, the AHC claimed its activities were completley separate from ACORN – only to find out one year later via the Americorps Inspector General that “AHC used Americorps grant funds to benefit ACORN either directly or indirectly” with several instances of cost-shifting from ACORN’s lobbying group to the housing entity, and also found several instances of steering recipients of housing counseling into ACORN memberships.

Obama Fails The Leadership Test… Again.

It is quite rare that I get so… upset… about an issue that anger shows up in my writing.

This is one of those issues.

This is one of those things that I find so incredulous that I can’t believe it. This is one of those things that I don’t understand why the whole country doesn’t stand up give the “Scooby Doo” look and cry out with a unified WTF???

What’s the issue? Well, let me back up a bit…

One of the major reasons that a large number of Democrats have serious issues with Barack Obama is that he has accomplished very little in all his years in public service and has avoided taking a real stand on just about every serious issue.

He is great with rhetoric, but when it comes down to it… he either folds like he did on FISA or he avoids the vote completely.

And such is the case with the single most important issue in the country today… “The Bailout.”

According to CBS,

Although Barack Obama argues that the financial meltdown is an “emergency situation”, he said today that he may remain on the campaign trail, rather than returning to the Capitol, to vote on the $700 billion plan.

Wait… excuse me? Are you serious?

In what is most probably the single most important vote all year, and perhaps since the AUMF, Obama is gonna skip it?

Then, when questioned by the shocked reporter, he comes up with this excuse,

“Look if we get a consensus and everybody is popping champagne – then I will probably be going back to campaign with folks who are having a tough time in places like Ohio, and Michigan and Pennsylvania,” Obama said adding, “If this ends up being a close vote or a vote where the outcome is an open question then obviously this is a top priority.”

Ok, so, this guy that wants to be President of the United States is going to go ahead a let others lead on such a monumentally important bill?

For real?

Way to show leadership, man… way to step up to the plate. You still don’t get it do you, Barack?

We don’t need someone to hold our hands. We don’t need you in our high school gym telling us that our lives suck and we all need some sort of ambiguous “change” that apparently only you can bring.

We need someone to LEAD US, to DO SOMETHING, to STAND UP FOR WHAT’S RIGHT.

You are the one that does not get it!!!

I cannot believe that you would skip a vote that even you admit is so fundamentally important that it is going to affect everything you are promising to people in that “battleground state” high school auditorium…

From Politico

Sen. Barack Obama (D-Ill.) said in an interview aired Tuesday that the cost of the mortgage bailout plan may rein in his ambitious plans for health care, energy, education and infrastructure.

So what are you gonna say to those people on that town square that you seem so concerned about? Huh?

How about something like…

“I am gonna do everything I promised as long as the guys I left in Washington don’t do some stupid shit while I am not there… because I wanted to be sure I was here promising you things that I don’t know I am going to be able to do and did not participate in the discussion or vote on the bill that is essential to determining whether I will be able to deliver or not….”

And so, Obama fails the leadership test for the third time.

Oh, and if you would like to jog the memory, CLICK HERE to review the first two failures.

No Deal. No ‘Bama. No Way.

BTW – Barack… way to hedge on actually having to deliver on anything.

Yeah… I caught that.

(This is crossposted from my wordpress account)

Obama Fails Real Life 3AM Phone Call Test – Big Time

From Jonah Goldberg in the LA Times:

The Obama campaign has for months pursued the odd strategy of having the junior senator from Illinois act as if he were already kinda-sorta president of the United States. In June, it tried sticking a quasi-presidential seal on his lectern. Then in July, he conducted what seemed like official state visits with foreign leaders and delivered something like a “prenaugural” address in Berlin, inviting comparisons to JFK and Reagan.

Now fate has given Obama a chance to be presidential rather than pretend….

Obama’s response?

First, late Thursday evening, he gave a conventional written statement calling for calm, U.N. action and “restraint” from both sides — followed an hour later by a slightly stronger condemnation of Russian aggression and a call for a cease-fire.

During Obama’s make-believe presidency, we’ve heard about bold action, about the courage to talk to dictators. When faced with a real “3 a.m. moment,” Obama — who boasts about 200 foreign policy advisors, broken into 10 subgroups — proclaims, “I’m going to get some shave ice.”

WOW…  maybe we should actually put someone up for nomination that would be President, not someone that pretends.

We would do well to remember that this is a man with VERY few actual accomplishments professionally either in politics or in academia. 

As the Editor of the Harvard Law Review he managed to avoid publishing even one article, and at my Law School it was impossible to become Editor without publishing so I have no idea how he managed that.  As a Lecturer at the University of Chicago, he did not publish one piece of academic work, but did manage to take a year to write his book about himself…  in Bali….

He was a State Senator for 8 years, which is a job that meets only 65 some odd days a year, and did not pass even 1 piece of legislation for the first 5 years in office, and only started passing bills when they were essentially handed to him at the finish line. 

He was also a US Senator for ONE year before he decided that he was qualified to be President, with his lack of accomplishment in the Senate that astounds, not to mention the fact that he is one of the least bi-partisan people in the Senate.

Essentially, the only thing he has done is write books about himself and win elections.  That’s it.

And yet, because we HOPE and BELIEVE, we are supposed to trust that this man is able to handle that 3AM phone call?

Well, Obama has failed a real test of what a 3am phone call is.  And failed big.

 

 

Read the whole article…  Jonah has some very not nice things to say about Obama, but he is right on the nose in every respect.

 

 

 

Thanks to Deja Vu